striking resemblance to Cromwell, was immediately cast aside for one bearing a likeness to the restored King. But the Royalists were not appeased by this duplicity. An enquiry into the doctrines of the Leviathan,' with a view to its sup-pression, found no difficulty in obtaining the sanction of Charles's first Parliament (1666). Hobbes, attacked as infidel, appealed to the good-humoured King in proof of his orthodoxy, as he had appealed to the Royal Society in proof of the soundness of his mathematics. an His idea of heresy was indeed as absurd as his conception of lightning. As there was no Court of Heresy in England since the High Commission Court was abolished by the Long Parliament, he contended that the Leviathan,' which was published after that period, could not be deemed heretical in any sense. The truth or falsity of a creed was to be tested by its agreement with the law of the country in which it was promulgated, and not by its conformity with Divine revelation. Milton held aloof from all places of public worship; Hobbes most sedulously attended the services of the English Church. He, therefore, could point to his practice, and it was easy for him to adduce passages from the Leviathan' to prove that his practice conformed to his theory. The King, however, did not interfere except to protect the philosopher from persecution. Hobbes was permitted to pass his days quietly in London, or in Derbyshire with the Devonshire family, who, as they had sheltered his youth, flung the shield of their protection over his old age. He felt, however, that his scheme of philosophy was played out. There was as little room for free thought in England under the Restoration as under the Commonwealth. But the literary activity of Hobbes, dammed up in one quarter, broke out in another. He dedicated the closing years of his life (1674-5) to the translation of the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey,' and survived the undertaking. As a rendering of the spirit and vigour of the original, Hobbes's version is far below Chapman's, and cannot bear even a remote comparison with that of Cowper. Homer, stripped of his figures and similes, is reduced to twothirds of his Greek dimensions. To Hobbes's generation the work may have been an agreeable surprise. To us, it bears the same relation to Chapman's or Pope's, as a Virgin of Cimabue to the Divine Madonnas of Raphael. Hobbes showed the weakness of his poetic insight by his absurd praise of Gondebert. He could have little perception of the marvellous beauties of the original, when he placed Davenant above Homer. * Letters on the nature and conditions of Heroic Poetry.' The The fact is, Hobbes was eminently disqualified for the task by nature and experience. He was a materialist, the disperser of every illusion which the feelings impose upon the intellect. In mental analysis, in carrying the torch of enquiry into the darkest recesses of the human mind, in unravelling the complex skein of human motives, Hobbes probably had no equal. His version of 'Thucydides' is, therefore, read with profit and enjoyment, while few open his 'Homer' except to gratify literary curiosity. Hobbes's doctrines, reasoned out to their legitimate results, would have led him to the revolutionary code of civil rights, and the enthronement of reason as the goddess of humanity. But he stopped midway, because his age presented barriers to free-thought dangerous to overleap. Had it not been for Cromwell, the Leviathan' would never have been written. Had it not been for the reactionary spirit of Charles's Parliament, Hobbes would probably have passed his decline in harmonizing the discordant parts of his own system, instead of travestying the thoughts of others. He passed much of his time abroad. French and Italian were as familiar to him as his mother tongue. But he had not, like Descartes, Rousseau, or Voltaire, the slender courage to seek refuge in Holland or Switzerland in order to launch with safety his thunderbolts round Europe. He paid the penalty, therefore, in wasting his life upon a hybrid system of philosophy which neither pleased kings nor opened the understanding of the people, because it was subversive of the interests of both. His ethics have as strong a tendency to corrupt morals as his politics to destroy liberty. But the efforts of Hobbes set men thinking. He had upturned the clod, leaving it for others to reap the harvest. Locke appropriated his law of the association of ideas, and embodied his fragmentary discourses on the intellectual powers in his great work on the human understanding. In the next century, Hobbes's ethics and citizenship culminated in Helvetianism and the revolutionary code of the Convention. But in the progress of human thought, Hobbes's name is engraven on no edifice, nor identified with the triumph of any great principle. With all his industry and talent, through his disposition to flatter those in authority, and his overweening care of his own safety, he merely enabled others to extract fame out of his obscurity, and with the fragments of his system to build up a reputation which belonged to himself. ART. ART. VI.-1. Agricultural Returns of Great Britain for 1886. London. 1886. 2. Statistical Abstract for the Colonial and other Possessions of the United Kingdom. London, 1885. 3. Report of the American Department of Agriculture for 1885. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1886. 4. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1885. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1886. 5. Report of the Minister of Agriculture for the Dominion of Canada, 1885. Ottawa. 1886. 6. Statistical Abstract for Canada, 1886. 7. Crop Bulletins for Manitoba, 1886. Winnipeg: Department of Agriculture. 1886. 8. Official Reports of the Government of India. 1884 to 1886. YROWING wheat at a loss is an operation that cannot be persisted in for a long period on an extensive scale; and it is not surprising that, after three years of unremunerative prices, many British farmers are disposed to regard their struggle with foreign and colonial competitors as almost hopeless. That few farmers in the United Kingdom have been able to grow wheat without loss during the last three years, is generally admitted. Indeed, when the high rents and other expenses of years further back are considered, it is not too much to say, that wheat-growing has failed to yield a living profit in this country for the ten years ending with 1886. Any one doubting this statement has only to look at the figures in the Agricultural Returns-bearing in mind the fondness of farmers for wheat, as a ready-money crop, and as almost indispensable on account of the usefulness of its straw-and he will doubt no longer. Since 1876 the area of the wheat crop of the United Kingdom has decreased by 767,448 acres, or by nearly 25 per cent.; and this was not because other corn crops paid well, for the net decrease in the area under all kinds of corn during the period has been 1,196,059 acres, which quantity has been absorbed in the increase of permanent pasture, cultivated grasses, and clover. But rents have gone down greatly since 1876, and farmers have learned how to cut down expenses in many ways, so that if they expected prices to range as they were from 1876 to 1882 inclusive, that is from an annual average price of 44s. 4d. to 56s. 9d. per quarter, wheat would probably be grown now as extensively as it was cultivated ten years ago. Of course, if the average price of wheat were never to be below 40s., it would sometimes be higher, and, supposing it to range from Vol. 164.-No. 328. 40s, to 2 H 40s. to 45s., as a general rule, there is reason to believe that our farmers might easily be placed in a position to grow with profit a much larger acreage than they have produced during the last few years. The changes necessary in order to place them in such a position may be briefly stated. It is obvious that the rents readily paid when the average price of wheat usually ranged above 50s. cannot be expected, if prices are likely to be 20 per cent. lower. When the rents paid by sitting tenants have been brought down to the level of those charged in new lettings, there will not be much cause for complaint on that score. Next, enterprise should be encouraged by allowing fair compensation for all tenants' improvements which add to the value of a holding, and that without the cumbrous and often costly machinery of the Agricultural Holdings Act. Restrictive covenants must be abolished, and farmers must be free, subject to reasonable penalties for deterioration, to crop their land and sell its produce to the best advantage. The right to sell straw often makes all the difference between growing wheat at a profit and growing it at a loss. Wheatstraw in many districts sells at from five to eight times its manurial value; and where that is the case, the folly of insisting on its being all trodden down in yards by live-stock is obvious. Justice from railway companies is another condition essential to farmers. Lastly, such relief from local and imperial taxation as can fairly be allowed to farmers is reasonably to be expected, considering the trying conditions under which they have to carry on their industry. With respect to tithe rent-charge, which many farmers regard as a great grievance, there is reason to expect that the direct payment of it will shortly be demanded from the owners of real property, instead of from tenants, in the first instance. As it is certainly very much to the disadvantage of the country that land should be diverted from arable cultivation to grass, the non-agricultural classes will be wise, even from a selfish point of view, if they not only refrain from opposing, but earnestly help forward, any reasonable reforms or concessions which will give farmers a fair chance of meeting foreign competition. In proceeding to consider what grounds there are for expecting that, under fair conditions, wheat in the future may be profitably produced in this country, the cost of growing the crop is, of course, the first point to be dealt with. Now, the circumstances of farming, under the general heads of expenses and returns, vary so greatly, even in our own country, that it is impossible to state with precision what is the minimum or the average cost of producing an acre of wheat. Indeed, it is not too too much to say, that very few farmers know what it separately costs them to grow wheat. This is not so surprising as outsiders might deem it, as it is by no means easy to calculate the cost of one crop out of a series. Again, it is difficult to apportion the miscellaneous expenses of a farm, which cannot be charged to any particular crop or even field. Yet, if certain rules of valuation were uniformly followed, estimates close enough for their purpose might be made. An effort to obtain such estimates from growers of wheat in all the principal producing districts of England was made by the Mark Lane Express' in 1885; and the returns collected were published in that journal. Although, unfortunately, many of the contributors failed to follow the directions intended to secure uniformity of method, there is safety in numbers, and it may perhaps be assumed that the errors were mutually corrective to a great extent. At any rate, the returns are the most complete of their kind ever collected, and it is worth while to give them some consideration. For all England the average expense of producing the wheat crop came out at 81. Os. 7d. an acre, and the average returns at 81. 2s. 7d., wheat being uniformly valued at 36s. a quarter. There was thus an average profit of 2s. an acre; but no interest on capital was charged, and comparatively few returns showed any profit, except when straw was sold. It is also to be observed that, out of 200 returns, only a dozen put the rent at less than 17. an acre, although thirty-seven out of the forty English counties were represented. Several charged for rent over 21. an acre, and some much higher amounts. If similar returns were collected now, rents would undoubtedly come out lower, and if wheat-growing is to pay in England, the average rent should be below, rather than above, 17. per acre. Tithe rent-charge varied from a few pence to 10s, an acre, the average being a little over 4s. Rates and taxes ranged in amount from 1s. 2d. to 11s. in extreme instances. The cost of manuring was most commonly put at 27. to 31. an acre. Now, the higher of these amounts is not enough to charge for farmyard-manure, if the selling value of the straw used in making it be charged; but then a large proportion of the correspondents could not sell straw, their agreements forbidding the sale, and in their case it was proper to charge only consuming value. Besides, the whole value of a good dressing of farmyard-manure ought not to be charged to the crop to which it is applied. In this connection it may be mentioned that wheat has been grown continuously for several years on certain plots at Woburn, under the management of the Royal Agricultural Society, at a cost of less than 21. per acre for manure, yielding, on an average, during the last five years, 2 H 2 30.9 bushels |