LITERARY NOTICES. 



127 



the importance of the work that has been 

 done by Mr. Herbert Spencer, and gives him 

 the foremost place as a systematic thinker, 

 not only among his contemporaries, but 

 anion"- all English thinkers of the century. 

 Of the other two workers in psychology who 

 have claims to a position somewhere near 

 the level of Mr. Spencer, George Henry 

 Lewes and Alexander Bain, Mr. Courtney 

 gives to Mr. Lewes the higher place. The 

 book is a very readable one, and, from the 

 extent and variety of its information, will 

 prove attractive to a large class of persons. 



The Interoceanic Canal and the Monroe 

 Doctrine. New York : G. P. Putnam's 

 Sons. 1880. Pp. 118. Price, $1. 



In the pages of this little volume will be 

 found compiled a considerable amount of 

 information concerning the commercial im- 

 portance of the interoceanic canal, the his- 

 tory of the various schemes for construct- 

 ing it, and its relation to the interests of 

 the United States. It is a timely summary 

 of the leading general facts regarding the 

 enterprise, but does not go fully into the 

 discussion of the merits of any particular 

 project. The book was evidently prepared 

 for an emergency the arrival of De Les- 

 seps in this country with the design of 

 heading him off in his project. Unless 

 there was an unavowed and sinister pur- 

 pose in its publication, we can not see why 

 it should have been issued anonymously. 

 If its author was interested in a rival 

 scheme, and a man of mark, he would very 

 naturally withhold his name from the title- 

 page ; but, in treating a great public inter- 

 est like this in an open and candid way, 

 there can be no occasion for the conceal- 

 ment of authorship. That the book is 

 aimed at De Lesseps i3 shown by the prom- 

 inent use the writer makes of the Monroe 

 doctrine, as a means of defeating a foreign 

 project. We showed last month the hum- 

 bug of this Monroe-doctrine pretext, and 

 there are plenty of indications that the 

 public is beginning to understand how ut- 

 terly it i3 perverted when applied to the cut- 

 ting of a ship-waterway across the Ameri- 

 can Isthmus. The book is narrow in spirit, 

 and advocates a bigoted and illiberal nation- 

 al policy, which, if carried out, would become 

 a scandal to American history. 



Free Ships. By Captain John Codman. 



Labor-makjng Machinery. By Frederick 

 Perry Powers. Price, 25 cents each. 



The Action of the United States Tariff. 



By Alfred Tylor, F. G. S. New York : 



G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1880. Price, 10 



cents. 



In issuing the series of " Economic 

 Monographs," of which the first two pam- 

 phlets above are numbers, the Putnams are 

 rendering a valuable service to popular edu- 

 cation, in a direction in which enlighten- 

 ment is greatly needed. 



The essay on " Free Ships " is an able dis- 

 cussion of the reasons for the decline of the 

 American carrying-trade, in which the folly 

 and stupidity of our legislation on the sub- 

 ject are clearly shown. Captain Codman 

 points out that this legislation has been 

 continually in the interests of a handful of 

 ship-builders, while the vastly larger inter- 

 ests of the ship-owners have been systemat- 

 ically ignored. At the time when the carry- 

 ing-trade of the world was done in wooden 

 ships, Americans were able to build the best 

 and cheapest ships ; and England, recogniz- 

 ing the interests of the ship-owners as right- 

 ly predominant over those of her ship-build- 

 ers, allowed her merchants to freely pur- 

 chase ships wherever they pleased. Un- 

 der this policy, her carrying-trade thrived, 

 and has continued to thrive. And when 

 American merchants were placed under the 

 same conditions as they were when our 

 ships were the best that could be had our 

 carrying-trade also thrived. When iron 

 supplanted wood in ship-construction, and 

 we could, in consequence, no longer build 

 as cheaply as England, our legislators had 

 not the wisdom to follow the policy that 

 had proved so successful in England. In- 

 stead of allowing our merchants to purchase 

 vessels where they could get them cheapest, 

 they began fostering the ship-building in- 

 terest not by putting a heavy duty on 

 foreign ships, but by prohibiting the pur- 

 chase of such ships at all. Those engaged 

 in other protected industries have been con- 

 tent with the imposition of onerous duties 

 on competing foreign products, but, if one 

 prefers these, he is at liberty to buy them 

 and pay the duty. This sort of protection 

 is not enough, however, for the ship-build- 

 ers ; nothing short of absolute prohibition 

 has been able to satisfy them. The inter- 



