useful suggestions of a practical nature. Let me jot down a few points which certainly seem to call for some sort of home-rule treatment. About ten years ago the town of Newry laudably resolved to provide itself with good water. The strictly necessary preliminary expenses would have been trifling had there been some local tribunal to decide on the spot, or at least in Ireland, the points at issue. But it was necessary to pass a bill through Parliament. Witnesses had to be brought to London, and counsel to be retained for months. The bill was passed at last; but it cost the town of Newry £20,000. In cases like this why should there not be a body of Special Commissioners with assessors, as in the Court of Admiralty? Why should it be necessary to incur the delay and expense of obtaining Parliamentary powers for matters of such purely local interest as the laying down of pipes, the construction of reservoirs, and the necessary imposition of rates? A tribunal such as I have suggested could, like Election Judges, examine witnesses on the spot, and issue a special report which would have the force of law. Any reasonable arrangement might be made for power of appeal-a power which would be rarely exercised under the circumstances. Gas lies under the same practical disabilities as water. But tramways may be laid down by Orders in Council. So that the principle of my suggestion is already recognised. Why should not local railways be under the control of local Boards-subject, of course, to appeal to some superior tribunal as to cost and power to take land at a valuation? Even now the county tribunals are entrusted with authority for the making, repairing, and rating for roads. Why should a difference be made between local roads and local railways? These are samples of many things which touch the daily interests of the Irish people, but which they are not free to transact without the annoyance and expense of being obliged to come over to London for Parliamentary sanction. Who will deny that Home Rule is needed in such cases? Whether a body of Commissioners, with full powers, sitting in Dublin as a Central Body, would be better than a shifting commission deciding causes on the spot is a subject of fair discussion. The experiment, if successful in Ireland (as it probably would be), would certainly be extended to other parts of the United Kingdom, and a vast saving would thus be made in the time and energy of the Imperial Parliament, which are now so much frittered away on matters which would be much more effectively as well as economically dealt with outside the walls of Parliament. One other question, a paramount one, which Ireland is clearly entitled to settle for herself, is the question of higher education. So long as the Roman Catholics of Ireland are not allowed a University and secondary schools for the education of their children they have a right to protest that they are not on a footing of religious equality with the rest of their fellow-subjects. To throw Trinity College open to them at this time of day in full satisfaction of their claims is, however well intended, little better than mockery. Where the Queen's Colleges failed, Trinity College is not likely to succeed. Is it the influence of the priesthood that is dreaded? The way to rivet that influence is to confine the education of the Irish laity to convent schools and religious seminaries. The minds of the priests themselves would expand and be ennobled by the more bracing atmosphere of a University life, and the daily friction with the minds of the Roman Catholic laity. We have tried long enough to coerce the Roman Catholics of Ireland out of their religious convictions, and we have succeeded in making them the most Ultramontane nation in Europe. Would it not be well to try the effect of letting them for once have their own way in the matter of education? I am not so sanguine as to suppose that Home Rule of the kind which I have suggested would at once satisfy Mr. Parnell and those who sympathize with him. But I believe that it would, in due time, satisfy the vast majority of the Irish population. At all events, when the British Parliament has satisfied all the legitimate demands of the Irish people it will then, but not before, be in a secure position for resisting all demands which are not legitimate. MALCOLM MACCOLL. USURY. A REPLY AND A REJOINDER. I HAVE been honoured by the receipt of a letter from the Bishop of Manchester, which, with his Lordship's permission, I have requested the editor of the CONTEMPORARY REVIEW to place before the large circle of his readers, with a brief accompanying statement of the circumstances by which the letter has been called forth, and such imperfect reply as it is in my power without delay to render. J. RUSKIN. MANCHESTER, December 8, 1879. DEAR SIR,-In a letter from yourself to the Rev. F. A. Malleson, published in the CONTEMPORARY REVIEW of the current month (p. 548), I observe the following passage:-"I have never yet heard so much as one (preacher) heartily proclaiming against all those deceivers with vain words,' that no 'covetous person, which is an idolator, hath any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God;' and on myself personally and publicly challenging the Bishops of England generally, and by name the Bishop of Manchester, to say whether usury was, or was not, according to the will of God, I have received no answer from any one of them." I confess, for myself, that until I saw this passage in print a few days ago, I was unaware of the existence of such challenge, and therefore I could not answer it. It appears to have been delivered (A) in No. 82 of a series of letters which, under the title of Fors Clavigera, you have for some time been addressing to the working classes of England, but which, from the peculiar mode of their publication, are not easily accessible to the general reader; and which I have only caught a glimpse of, on the library-table of the Athenæum Club, on the rare occasions when I am able to use my privileges as a member of that Society. I have no idea why I had the honour of being specially mentioned by name (B) ; but I beg to assure you that my silence did not arise from any discourtesy towards my challenger, nor from that discretion which, some people may think, is usually the better part of episcopal valour, and which consists in ignoring inconve nient questions from a sense of.inability to answer them; but simply from the fact that I was not conscious that your lance had touched my shield. The question you have asked is just one of those to which Aristotle's wise caution applies: "We must distinguish and define such words, if we would know how far, and in what sense, the opposite views are true” (Eth. Nic., ix. c. viii. § 3). What do you mean by " usury"? (c) Do you comprehend under it any payment of money as interest for the use of borrowed capital? or only exorbitant, inequitable, grinding interest, such as the money-lender, Fufidius, extorted? Quinas hic capiti mercedes exsecat, atque Quanto perditior quisque est, tanto acrius urget: Sub patribus duris tironum. Maxime, quis non, Jupiter, exclamat, simul atque audivit ?-Hor. Sat. i. 2. 14-18. Usury, in itself, is a purely neutral word, carrying with it, in its primary meaning, neither praise nor blame; and a "usurer" is defined in our dictionaries as "a person accustomed to lend money and take interest for it"-which is the ordinary function of a banker, without whose help great commercial undertakings could not be carried out; though it is obvious how easily the word may pass into a term of reproach, so that to have been "called a usurer" was one of the bitter memories that rankled most in Shylock's catalogue of his wrongs. I do not believe that anything has done more harm to the practical efficacy of religious sanctions than the extravagant attempts that are frequently made to impose them in cases which they never originally contemplated, or to read into "ordinances," evidently "imposed for a time”—dikaιwμara μέxpι кapoυ (Heb. ix. 10)—a law of eternal and immutable obligation. Just as we are told (D) not to expect to find in the Bible a scheme of physical science, so I do not expect to find there a scheme of political economy. What I do expect to find, in relation to my duty to my neighbour, are those unalterable principles of equity, fairness, truthfulness, honesty (E), which are the indispensable bases of civil society. I am sure I have no need to remind you that, while a Jew. was forbidden by his law to take usury-i.e., interest for the loan of money-from his brother, if he were waxen poor and fallen into decay with him, and this generous provision was extended even to strangers and sojourners in the land (Lev. xxv. 35-38), and the interesting story in Nehemiah (v. 1—13), tells us how this principle was recognised in the latest days of the commonwealth-still in that old law there is no denunciation of usury in general, and it was expressly permitted in the case of ordinary strangers (Deut. xxiii. 20). * In Proverbs xxviii. 8, "usury" is coupled with "unjust gain," and a pitiless spirit towards the poor, which shows in what sense the word is to be understood there, and in such other passages as Ps. xv. 5 and Ezek. xviii 8, 9. It seems to me plain also that our Blessed Lord's precept about "lending, hoping for nothing again" (Luke vi. 35), has the same, or a similar, class of circumstances in view, and was intended simply to govern a Christian man's conduct to the poor and needy, and "such as have no helper," and cannot, without a violent twist (F), be construed into a general law determining for ever and in all cases the legitimate use of capital. Indeed, on another occasion, and in a very memorable parable, the great Founder of Christianity recognises, and impliedly sanctions, the practice of lending money at interest. "Thou oughtest," says the master, addressing his unprofitable servant "thou oughtest "__ de oε" to have put my money to the exchangers; and then, at my coming, I should have received mine own with usury.” έδει σε "St. Paul, no doubt, denounces the covetous." (G) But who is the TAεOVÉKTNS? Not the man who may happen to have money out on πλεονέκτης loan at a fair rate of interest; but, as Liddell and Scott give the meaning of the word, "one who has or claims more than his share; hence, greedy, grasping, selfish." Of such men, whose affections are wholly set on things of the earth, and who are not very scrupulous how they gratify them, it may, perhaps, not improperly be said (H) that they have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." But here, again, it would be a manifest "wresting" of the words to make them apply to a case which we have no proof that the Apostle had in contemplation when he uttered them. Rapacity, greed of gain, harsh and oppressive dealing, taking unfair advantage of our own superior knowledge and another's ignorance, shutting up the bowels of compassion towards a brother who we see has need-all these and the like things are forbidden by the very spirit of Christianity, and are manifestly "not according to the will of God," for they are all of them forms of injustice or wrong. But money may be lent at interest without one of these bad passions being brought into play, and in these cases I confess my inability to see where, either in terms or in spirit, such use of money is condemned either by the Christian code of charity, or by that natural law of conscience which we are told (1) is written on the hearts of men. Let me take two or three simple instances by way of illustration. The following has happened to myself. All my life through-from the time when my income was not a tenth part of what it is now-I have felt it a duty, while endeavouring to discharge all proper claims, to live within that income, so to adjust my expenditure to it that there should be a margin on the right side. This margin, of course, accumulated, and reached in time, say, £1000. Just then, say, the London and North-Western Railway Company proposed to issue Debenture Stock, bearing four per cent. interest, for the purpose of exommunications of and so increasing the wealth, by facilitating the intercommunications of the country. Whom in the world am I injuring-what conceivable wrong am I doing where or how am I thwarting "the Will of God"—if I let the Company have my £1000, and have been receiving from them |