regard to investments that may have been made or calculations based on the action of a prior Legislature, even though such action took the form of a contract.

In drawing the analogy between land and the liquor traffic, and the public health and kindred cases, the term "Legislature" should be used broadly, so as to include the people themselves when performing the supreme legislative functions of making or amending constitutions, as well as the particular bodies to whom legislative power under our system is delegated. These decisions from our highest court, have practically put at rest the moral and legal aspects of Prof. Ely's principal objection in whatever form he may state it. The greatest difficulties that the single tax idea encounters, do not lie in its moral, economic and legal aspects, but in its practicability and in getting even people who are in full sympathy with it, to clearly understand it; and to get such as do understand it, to unite and make common cause to put it in force or practice.

The economic, moral and legal phases of the question have been so fully discussed (and among the ablest contributions in this line I refer the reader to an article in "The Harvard Law Review" for January, 1888, by Samuel B. Black, Esq., of the New York City Bar), that we naturally inquire why so little has been said as to its practibility, or its actual workings when put into practice.

People generally are much more concerned in knowing how any given scheme will work in actual use, or how it will be likely to work, than they are interested in its abstract soundness as a theory or a principle.

In this connection an eminent authority like Prof. T. H. Huxley, cannot be ignored. In an article in the "Nineteenth Century," entitled "The Struggle for Existence," he forcibly says: "One of the most essential conditions, if not the chief cause, of the struggle for existence, is the tendency to multiply without limit, which man shares with all living things. It is notable that 'increase and multiply' is a commandment traditionally much older than the ten, and that it is, perhaps the only one which has been spontaneously and ex animo obeyed by the great majority of the human race. But in civilized society, the inevitable result of such obedience is the

establishment in all its intensity, of that struggle for existence, the war of each against all, the mitigation or abolition of which was the chief end of social organization. So long as unlimited multiplication goes on, no social organization which has ever been devised, or is likely to be devised, no fiddlefaddling with the distribution of wealth, will deliver society from the tendency to be destroyed by the reproduction within itself, in its intensest form, of that struggle for existence, the limitation of which is the object of society."

I cannot refrain from suggesting that Prof. Huxley is recognized as one of the most profound thinkers and scientists of this or any other age; and if his opinion on the multiplication of the human race as above stated, is anything like correct, then the advocacy and practice of the Malthusian doctrine, would be far more important, and of greater utility and real value to the nations of the earth, than Henry George's plan of taxing land values, or Edward Bellamy's entrancing scheme of nationalism.

A writer of discrimination has recently raised a practical objection, in the "Popular Science Monthly," against the single tax idea, which in spite of my sympathy in favor of the single tax, I have not yet been able to answer to my own satisfaction.

He says: "A man will ordinarily undergo greater hardships, practice more self-denial, exercise more of the virtues which go to the upbuilding of the commonwealth, in order to secure a home, than to accomplish any other object. This is what his mind is first set on, and when he has gained it, his efforts are equally enlisted to keep it. The single tax threatens to profoundly alter the meaning of this word as we understand it. It is not consistent with the idea of home, that somebody should take it away from us by bidding at an auction. If it be said that no such auction would take place, but that the State would fix the tax at a rate previously ascertained as sufficient to take the economic rent, differing from the present tax only in amount, then we say that there is no means of ascertaining what the economic rent is. It would be possible to form an approximate estimate at the beginning, by taking as a standard the rents paid by individuals for the

use of land as a matter of bargain. But the standard would only serve for the first renting. What about the second? Land values change. It is the aim of the single tax to gather in the values that grow with the progress of society. A large part of Mr. George's argument is addressed to the coming time when all available land shall be appropriated. Renting by auction is the only process that will enable society to collect economic rent surely, equitably, progressively and scientifically."

It occurs to me that to this it may be pertinently added, that if we had a complete system of single tax laws in full operation, we would experience the same difficulty in getting Assessors to assess "land values" at their full value, as we now do in having real and personal property assessed at its true value, as provided by existing laws; unless human nature would change with the change in the law. But this suggestion raises a line of objections that I must leave to the reader to think out for himself.

In attempting to solve these objections, the intelligent thinker may conclude that whether the remedy proposed in "Progress and Poverty," or the fascinating scheme of nationalization in "Looking Backward." will ever become realities or not, the fact that tens of millions of thoughtful people, all over the world, are reading and taking a deep interest in the principles set forth in those celebrated books, must convince the most sluggish thinker that the process of governmental evolution has already practically leavened the whole people, and prepared them for some radical change from their present economic and social conditions. All thinkers must admit that amid advancing wealth, labor saving machinery, the highest development in the arts and sciences, in a social organization, on a high plane of civilization and under a system of government such as ours, there is something radically wrong, that will produce such an unequal distribution of wealth, with such unequal opportunities as everywhere stare us in the face. In the midst of the greatest wealth and progress, exists the deepest poverty. Must we confess that civilization can give us no practical remedy? Is it possible that the remedy proposed by Henry George will bring about that millennial happiness

and remove from humanity that dreadful want and "fear of want," which he so ably argues that it will? He is certainly great, able and in earnest.

In the October number of the North American Review, in reference to the London strikes, he says: "The wheels of industry blocked, commerce paralyzed, perishable cargoes rotting, ships unable to go to sea, trade driven away, enormous losses going on, ordered armies of tens and scores of thousands parading, great bodies of men fed by public rations. Yet law and order reigned throughout. So has our civilization soared, that what happened in London when the sun was sinking, is told in New York ere the shadows have more than begun to lengthen. Think of what advances in the arts of production this suggests. Then think of what this London strike so forcibly brings out-that in the distribution of wealth we are in reality no further advanced than when barbarian fought barbarian. The lesson of all strikes, coming sharper and clearer as the years go by, is the lesson that the social problem cannot be ignored." W. M. RAPSHER.

Mauch Chunk, Pa.

Books received and to be noticed in May number:

Reports of Cases adjudged and determined in the Court of Chancery of the State of New York. Notes by Robert Desty. Book VII. The Lawyers' Co-op. Pub. Co. Rochester, N. Y. 1889.

A Treatise on Pleading and Practice in Equity, in the Courts of the U. S. By Roger Foster. The Boston Book Co. Boston, Mass.

1890.

A Treatise on the Law of Corporate Bonds and Mortgages, being the 2d ed. of Railroad Securities, Revised. By Leonard A. Jones. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Boston and N. Y. 1890. Lawyers' Reports Annotated. Book V. The Lawyers'

Co-op. Pub. Co.

Rochester, N. Y.

1890.

NEITHER can a mad man, nor a mad woman, enter into the marriage relation. But if it has been entered, then they shall not be separated.-Pseudo-Fabian.

THE REJECTION OF HEARSAY EVIDENCE.

In the February number of the CURRENT COMMENT, appeared an article over the signature of Lewis Edmonds, on the Rejection of Hearsay Evidence. Mr. Edmonds, in this paper, shows himself learned in the law, and a bold innovator of the old, and what has been regarded for ages, the fundamental laws of evidence. It is but just to say that through the fearless pruning and grafting of the law by such men, many of the relics and fictions of antiquity have given way to more common sense procedure, and perhaps the criticism may be as justly made, that through such men in their efforts to improve the laws, the regulation pendulum has been by the first stroke of the innovator driven far beyond the safety line, in the opposite direction. This we believe would be fatally true if Mr. Edmonds' ideas were adopted. His views are radical in the

extreme.

Now let us analyze the grounds on which he says this class of evidence is rejected. We can not agree with him, that it rests upon the same grounds upon which the courts heretofore rejected the evidence of interested parties, but Mr. Edmonds insists that these two classes of evidence rested upon the same reasons as rejected testimony, to wit: "The distrust of the jury to detect falsehood, and the fear of the perjury of the witness." Now we admit that the rejection of the evidence of interested parties rested upon this ground, and we further admit that it is now accepted that the reason for the rule rejecting such evidence was not sound, and that error rather than truth, was the result of such rule, when applied to legal investigations. But it does not follow, because the law rejecting this evidence was an impediment to justice, that hearsay evidence can be safely admitted, unless it can be shown that the rejection of this evidence rests upon the same reasons, and that the abolition of the rule would work like results in both classes of evidence.

The interested witness, in testifying, appears before the jury, and submits himself to the severe cross examination of counsel, the careful purging of the court, and scrutiny of the jury. His conduct is taken into account and he is only permitted to