340 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was always the most important point to insist upon. It is to be 

 feared that some thousands of Laidlers will not think so much of 

 it now. So much does it become political philosophers to be care- 

 ful. Some medicines are also poisons; such medicines should 

 never be issued over the counter to any and every purchaser with- 

 out a warning label ; and this I hope I may say without seeming 

 disrespect for Mr. Herbert Spencer. 



Your obedient servant, 



Frederick Greenwood. 



November 7th. 



PROF. HUXLEY'S LETTER. 



To the Editor of " The Times " : 



Sir : I have read with very great interest the " heckling " of 

 Mr. Morley, the letters of Mr. Spencer and of Mr. Greenwood, and 

 your editorial comments on this triangular duel. But, if I may 

 speak in the name of that not inconsiderable number of persons 

 to whom absolute ethics and a priori politics are alike stumbling- 

 blocks, permit me, borrowing a phrase which a learned judge has 

 immortalized, to say that " You have not helped us much." 



Let me explain the nature of the further help we require by 

 putting a case which is not altogether imaginary : 



A score of years ago A. B. bought a piece of land ; he paid the 

 price asked by the vender, and all the conditions required by the 

 law were fulfilled in the transference of ownership. The transac- 

 tion was as much a free contract as if A. B. had gone to market 

 and bought a cabbage. At the time that A. B. handed over his 

 money he believed that the State was a copartner in the contract, 

 in so far that it undertook to maintain his rights of ownership 

 against everything and everybody who should attempt to invade 

 them, except an act of the Legislature, or the orders of the com- 

 manding officer in war-time, or a police officer legally authorized. 

 A. B. has gone on paying his taxes to the State all these years, in 

 full conviction that the State contracted, among other things, to 

 afford him the protection thus defined. 



A. B.'s lawyers assured him that the title to the land was per- 

 fectly good. This means that, for several centuries at least, 

 neither force nor fraud has intervened, but that the land has 

 passed from owner to owner by free contract. At the same time, 

 A. B., who is somewhat pedantic in the matter of historical accu- 

 racy, admits that, for anything he knows to the contrary, in the 

 reign of King John his bit of land may have belonged to Cedric 

 the Saxon ; and that possibly the son-in-law of that worthy thane, 

 after the quarrel with Rowena, related by an historian of later 

 date than Scott, may have taken forcible possession of it, and, 

 in virtue of his favor at Court, kept it for himself and his de- 

 scendants. 



