ARTICLE X.-NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES OWE TO EACH OTHER.*-In selecting a title for this book Professor Sumner seems to have had in mind that of the famous chapter on the snakes in Ireland, since his argument is devoted to showing that social classes owe nothing to each other, but are bound to let each other entirely alone. The sum and substance of his creed is that of the four-footed saltationist in the poultry yard, "Every one for himself," with its inevitable corollary, "Devil take the hindmost." He has little patience with "friends of humanity" and "social reformers."

"Society needs first of all to be freed from these meddlers, that is, to be let alone! Here we are then once more back at the old doctrine-Laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt English and it will read Mind your own business. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty. Let every man be happy in his own way. If his sphere of action and interest impinges on that of any other man there will have to be compromise and adjustment. Wait for the occasion. Do not attempt to generalize those interferences or to plan for them a priori. . . If the social doctors will mind their own business we shall have no troubles but what belong to nature. These we will endure or combat as we can. What we desire is that the friends of humanity will cease to add to them," etc., etc.

Under the head of the evils thus needlessly and wrongfully imposed on society by the intermeddling friends of humanity Professor Sumner includes popular education by the State, all State charities (alms-houses possibly excepted), legal restraints on social vices, "Government boards, commissions, and inspectors," internal improvements, pensions, and apparently every form or subject of legislation which aims to "protect" or benefit any portion of the community at the public cost. All these he stigmatizes as "jobs," or in other words robbery, the victim being the industrious tax-payer, who though he has to bear the expense is never consulted or thought of, and whom Professor Sumner therefore designates as "the Forgotten Man." In behalf of this

*What Social Classes owe to each other. By WM. GRAHAM SUMNER, Professor of Political and Social Science in Yale College. New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square.

1883.

hitherto undiscovered and unimagined being the Professor's indignation and sympathies are deeply aroused. The wrongs that he endures and the burdens that he is compelled to bear are pathetically portrayed, and should the Forgotten Man ever read this book he will doubtless be surprised to discover how lamentable have been his sufferings. Such is much more likely to be the case if he omits, as Professor Sumner does, to offset against his alleged wrongs the benefits that he derives from them, and fails to remember, as Professor Sumner does, that it is mainly to his own efforts and votes that they owe their existence. We fear that the Professor's sympathies are wasted. It may be safely predicted that "the Forgotten Man" will be about the last convert he will make to theories of society which would strip it of its potent and active energies for the general helpfulness and advancement, and reduce it to a mere aggregation of individuals like a savage tribe, associated simply for the mutual defence of life and property.

More especially will the Forgotten Man prove stiff-necked and perverse toward Professor Sumner's doctrine that men as members of society have no "natural rights." If he could be persuaded to believe that the saving of taxes and the accumulation of pennies are the chief end of man, and to abolish all the different forms of social protection which the Professor denounces as tyrannical "jobs," he would still cling to his "natural rights" veluti canis ad radicem. We fancy him after his emancipation, seated like Macaulay's New Zealander, and in much the same garb, on the ruins of Brooklyn Bridge, contemplating crumbled school houses and hospitals, exploded boilers, and broken banks, having just discovered that even his natural rights have gone in the general wreck. We hear him drawing unfavorable comparisons between the laissez faire philosophers and "the friends of humanity," and with mingled truth and pathos replying to this last demand of his deliverers from taxation,

"Who steals my purse steals trash,

But he who filches from me natural rights
Takes that which not enriches him

And leaves me poor indeed!"

No book by Professor Sumner would bear the stamp of authenticity without an occasional onslaught at protective tariffs, and in that respect this work shows abundant proof of genuineness. "Protection" is the bête noir of the Professor, and he logically

carries his aversion even to protection by patents. "Think," he exclaims, "of a journal which makes it its special business to denounce monopolies, yet favors a protective tariff, and has not a word to say against trades unions or patents!" By an unlucky slip of memory the Professor neglected to enumerate copyrights in this black list of enormities. Indeed we have carefully reviewed the whole book without discovering any such reference. It is a sad commentary on this omission that on turning to the title page leaf of the volume we find there the publishers' copyright notice with the significant warning, "All rights reserved.” Of course Professor Sumner is not responsible for this patenting of his book. It was the act of his publishers, done without his knowledge and probably without his approval. He was the Forgotten Man in the transaction and has our sympathies accordingly. But it illustrates how the "jobberies" by which the Forgotten Man is victimized may sometimes serve to put money in his pocket, and thus partially mitigate the miseries with which they afflict him.

Although there is more or less in Professor Sumner's little book with which we cannot sympathize, there is also very much which we believe to be incontrovertible and timely. To say that it is a work of marked ability and interest and an admirable specimen of literary and argumentative skill is only to say that it has the characteristic qualities of all its author's productions. No one can read it without enjoyment and instruction, and we heartily commend its perusal to both believers and disbelievers in the laissez faire philosophy."

A HANDBOOK OF THE ENGLISH VERSIONS OF THE BIBLE.*Dr. Mombert's Hand-book bears many marks of original research and patient study of original editions and versions, but at the same time he allows himself to make such free use of the writings of those who have preceded him, and so often appropriates their results without indicating the extent of his indebtedness, that one can never be sure how much credit is due to him. Citations and even phraseology and order of thought are at times unconsciously borrowed where quotation marks or a marginal reference would have been better for his own credit. One or two examples must suffice.

* A Handbook of the English Versions of the Bible, with copious examples illustrating the ancestry and relationship of the several versions, and comparative tables. By J. I. MOMBERT, D.D. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Company. Price, $2.50.

Dr. Eadie (i. 179) begins a paragraph thus:

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At the Treaty of Cambray in 1529, when Tunstall, More, and Hacket were the English representatives, it was agreed that while mercantile traffic between the Low Countries and England was to continue, no one was to print or sell any Lutheran books on either side." Tunstall came home by way of Antwerp, and his exploit there has been recorded by Halle, the old Chronicler. Dr. Mombert says: (page 101),

At the treaty of Cambray, in 1529, where Tonstal, More, and Hacket represented England, it was stipulated that the contracting parties were not "to print or sell any Lutheran books on either side." Tonstal took Antwerp on his way to England, and to that visit (in 1529) is referred the following incident narrated by Halle, the chronicler.

Dr. Eadie (ii. 15) says, "The Genevan version is often called the "Breeches Bible," from its rendering of Gen. iii. 7." Dr. Mombert (p. 246) confounding the version with the first edition says, "The original edition of the Genevan Bible was a quarto volume, and is often called the "Breeches Bible" from its rendering of Gen. iii. 7."

On page 69, after three paragraphs in each of which a long list of words is borrowed, Dr. Mombert refers to "Dr. Eadie, where more illustrations may be seen," ," but does not give credit for those he has cited. And on page 411, trusting too implicitly to the accuracy of Dr. Eadie's pen, he adopts his misprints in quoting from the title page of Hugh Broughton's works, "the great Albionian Divine, renowned in many nations for his skill in Salem's and Athens' tongues;" when an inspection of the title page would have shown a different orthography for Albionean, and "rare skill in Salems and Athens tongues."

We have found many cases of error either in transcribing or in proof-reading, most of them of comparatively small importance, yet frequent enough and serious enough to be puzzling in a book which undertakes to reproduce ancient orthography with great exactness whenever practicable. On pages 284, 285 citations are made from the Life of Broughton, which should be credited to his Works on page 227, the expression "when he would ruin their favour," should be "win their favour:" and there are cases too numerous to be mentioned of misprints in references to the Scriptures.

"William Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire, A. D. 1471.” We incline to consider this date a misprint, inasmuch as there is great uncertainty as to the year, and most authorities assign bis

birth to about the year 1484. "Any more precise determination of the date (says Demaus) must be the result of further investigation."

To describe a book (page 163) as "Tyndale's version revised by Luther," is an infelicity of expression, the meaning of which one might well be at a loss to explain. On pages 16, 17, Dr. Mombert inserts a specimen of Elfric's translation of the decalogue, and two pages further on repeats the specimen from another source, apparently not noticing that the two are identical throughout (with possibly, two trifling exceptions). In connection with both of them, too, he refers to the mutilation of the decalogue by the omission of the second commandment and the subdivision of the tenth, although the remark is not pertinent to either of the examples.

Not to continue this line of remark we note that the index, in many respects a good one, slurs over a number of references both numerous and important, with the unsatisfactory word passim, and the reader who would find a quotation from Eadie, Erasmus, Fry, Fulke, Lewis, Marsh, and others, will get no help at all from the Index, but must search the pages for himself.

In referring to Sir John Cheke's version of Matthew (1550), Dr. Mombert follows Lewis' inaccurate statement that it lacks only a part of the last chapter, when Goodwin's edition, which he cites in the margin, shows a hiatus of the entire seventeenth chapter with portions of the sixteenth and eighteenth. He agrees with other writers in saying that Cheke's object seems to have been "to saxonize the English version and to expel from it every vestige of Latin," and in quoting several illustrations of this purpose, as toller, frosent, biword, freshmen, for publican, apostle, parable, proselytes; but the statement seems to be overdrawn when one looks through the version and finds a long list of words of Greek and Latin origin of which phantasm, parable, apostle, margarites (pearls), hypocrite, minister, president, dissension, talentes, legion, and crucify are examples.

Dr. Mombert throws some side light on the question where Tyndale's version of the five books of Moses was printed. Of this very rare work only two complete copies are extant, one of which is in the Grenville Library in the British Museum, the other in the Lenox Library. Genesis and Numbers are in black letter; Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy in Roman letter. The colophon at the end of Genesis gives the following clew: