the Clarendon Press, containing annotations by the late A. H. F. Lefroy, Professor of Roman Law and Jurisprudence in the University of Toronto, to whom Harrison was proud to extend his friendship-Rarum genus! et quidem omnia præclara rara. Lefroy did not hesitate to say that Harrison in these lectures had explained the true value, aspect and intent of Austin's analysis of Sovereignty with a lucidity not to be found elsewhere. And to translate Austin's "cryptic and dark originals" to the common mind is an achievement in itself.

Students will find much of value in Harrison's tract on the "Historical Method," but it is necessary to recognize that the author does not always keep distinctly in view the boundaries between Legal History and Historical Jurisprudence. To dispel any misconceptions on this point, Professor Lefroy (on p. 174) quotes Professor Jethro Brown's admirable statement of the distinction between the two fields as follows: "Legal History affects to describe the actual development of law as it has been at the different periods of the national history. Historical Jurisprudence should state, as far as may be, the moral, social and economic causes which account for that development. The one answers the question 'How?'; the other seeks to find some answer to the question 'Why?' The one describes legal development; the other explains it."

Frederic Harrison's despair over the outlook for Democracy is but an echo of nineteenth century thought shared by such seers as John Stuart Mill, Sir Henry Maine, Carlyle and Lord Macaulay. The latter, in writing to a friend in the United States, in the year 1857, said. "It is quite plain that your Government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority, for with you the majority is the Government, and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy. The day will come when, in the State of New York, a multitude of people, not one of whom has had more than half a breakfast,

or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a Legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of a Legislature will be chosen? . . . Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of Government with a strong hand; or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman empire was in the fifth; with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institu

tions."

In the sweeping rejection by the electorate of the proposed Capital Levy for Switzerland the world has been given a notable object lesson of the sanity of Swiss public opinion. In December last some 840,000 voters went to the polls on this fateful question-the first referendum of the sort in historywith the result that the proposal was defeated by a majority of nearly seven to one. Of the twenty-five confederated States of Switzerland not one supported the project; and, what is more remarkable, not a single town where the Labour Party had a potential majority declared in favour of it. The Socialists and Communists, who were responsible for the evocation of the referendum, were splendidly organized, and cannot claim that there was anything in the nature of a snap verdict obtained from the electorate. The Swiss law only requires a demand for a referendum to bear 30,000 signatures while in this instance 80,000 had been procured. The trap for the suffrages of the peasantry was very cleverly baited with promises of old age and disability pensions. So that in every respect the battle was fought out by the parties at full strength. The referendum had been preceded by the rejection by the Swiss Parliament of a bill initiated by the Socialist party levying a tax of eight per cent. on capital sums of $16,000, the rate of tax rising to

sixty per cent. on fortunes over $600,000. The object of this proposal was avowedly that of providing funds for "social reforms," that is to say, mad schemes to convert the confederated States of Switzerland into an economic Utopia. Happily, the action of the Parliament was handsomely endorsed by the people at the polls, and the door very firmly slammed in the face of politico-economic anarchy. No doubt Labour took fright at the spectacle of Capital quietly removing itself from the country; Swiss bonds were being freely sold, and the proceeds reinvested in foreign securities which would be exempt from the proposed levy. In the result the economic nerves of the commonwealth have been soothed, and a perfectly new reading given to Racine's epigram: Point d'argent, point de Suisse.

Speaking of the Referendum, we note that the Saturday Review thinks that it might be invoked as a means of safeguarding the British constitution against the dangers involved in the Parliament Act of 1911, a relic of Mr. Asquith's opportunism which left his country with a "lop-sided constitution." With the House of Commons enjoying the power of "abolishing the Throne and the House of Lords," able, indeed, to play the deuce with things generally-by repetitive legislation as provided by the Act referred to-something ought to be done to restrain the forces of destruction to be set in motion so easily at the present time. Our distinguished lay contemporary puts the case thus:

"In order to secure fair play for all parties it is necessary that the right of appeal to a popular vote should be available both against revolutionary legislation, and also against what the Radicals and Socialists might call 'reactionary' measures, though in many cases what they call reaction is only a return to common sense. All that is necessary is, first, that in cases of a dispute between the two Houses the Upper House should

have a right to demand a referendum; and, secondly, that where the two Houses are agreed, a substantial minority in the House of Commons should have the same right."

To apply the Referendum to England would be a portentous thing. It is direct instead of representative government by the people. Lord Treasurer Burleigh in Elizabeth's time said that "England can never be ruined but by a Parliament," and it would seem to be the most effective way of accomplishing this ruin for Parliament to make it possible for questions of incalculable moment and complexity before it to be submitted to the vote-unsophisticated and otherwiseof the electorate. The primary business of the Parliament of Great Britain is to govern Great Britain, and we believe that it has all the courage and wise resourcefulness to do so yet. The Referendum is not suited to the political temper of the British people— at least that is the opinion of those best qualified to speak on the subject. And this, of all times since the fifteenth century, is the very worst for England to engage in political experiments. If the Parliament Act of 1911 left the constitution lop-sided, let the present ministry proceed to straighten it according to the will of Parliament.

In the course of a thoughtful article on the Philosophy of the Law, published in a recent number of The Literary Review, Dean Harlan S. Stone, of Columbia University, points out that the reason for the slow development of legal philosophy in the United States and for the paucity of literature devoted to the analysis, restatement and reconstruction of the fundamental notions underlying legal experience which go to make up a philosophy of law, lies in the fact that the pressure of professional practice and the endless flow of litigation prevent reflective thinking and meditation both at the Bar and on the Bench. This, perhaps, is equally true of

Canada; but, making all allowances for the numerical disparity between the profession in this country and the profession in the United States, it is fair to acknowledge that there is a larger manifestation by the latter of an earnest spirit of enquiry into the scientific and philosophic aspects of the law. But we hope the time is not far distant when we shall be able to say nous avons changé tout cela. Surrounded as we are on every side by the demand for enlightenment as to whether the social institutions inherited by this age are not outworn and wholly unsuited to the complexity of modern life, if our system of government and the law which safeguards it are to be justified we think the burden of vindication rests heavily upon the shoulders of the legal profession. Time must be found, then, both for preparation for this duty and for its fulfilment.

It has been said that the present is an age that has no use for ethical or juristic science, but envisages only the science of economics. We cannot think that this is true because it would mean that man has revalued, or rather transvalued, his springs of happiness and reverted to the ideals of the cave-dweller, when the life was not more than meat nor the body more than raiment. It is conceivable that if the community is rooted and grounded in knowledge of the obligations of citizenship-which demand an acceptance of law as a social instrument the social conscience, which has not seemed to be robust of late, might be left to recover of itself. It would draw its refreshment from the enlightened social consciousness. And so those, within and without the legal profession, who think much about the needs of the times, in addition to recognizing the external value of law as a social regimen, must seek to apprehend its philosophy in order to know how it justifies its way to man through his reason.

"Law and its administration are necessary to make possible the social life of man and a common effort toward social progress. For the thorough