192 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



inferences is other tilings equal. Does M. de Laveleye really think, 

 when comparing the state of the last generation with that of the 

 present, that other things are so equal that to the growth of State- 

 administrations can be ascribed the decrease of crime ? He ignores 

 those two factors, far more important than all others, which have pro- 

 duced a social revolution railways and free-trade : the last resulting 

 from the abolition of governmental restraints after a long struggle, 

 and the first effected by private enterj^rise carried out in spite of 

 strenuous opposition for some time made in the Legislature. Beyond 

 all question, the prosperity due to these factors has greatly ameliorated 

 the condition of the working-classes, and by so doing has diminished 

 crime ; for undoubtedly, diminishing the difficulties of getting food, 

 diminishes one of the temptations to crime. If M. de Laveleye refers 

 to a more recent diminution, then, unless he denies the alleged relation 

 between drunkenness and crime, he must admit that the temperance 

 agitation, with its pledges, its " Bands of Hope," and its " Blue Rib- 

 bon League," has had a good deal to do with it. 



Before passing to the chief question let me correct M. de Laveleye 

 on some minor points. He says 



"I think that the great fundamental error of Mr. Herbert Spencer's system, 

 which is so generally accepted at the present day, consists iu the helief that if 

 State power were hut sufficiently reduced," &c. 



Now I set against this a sentence not long since published by Mr. 

 Frederic Harrison : 



"Mr. Spencer has himself just published .... 'The Man versus The State,' 

 to which he hardly expects to make a convert except here and there, and about 

 which an unfriendly critic might say that it might be entitled 'Mr. Spencer 

 against all England.' " {Nineteenth Century, vol. xvi. p. 366.) 



The fear lest my arguments should prevail, which I presume prompted 

 M. de Laveleye's article, is evidently ill-founded. I wish I saw reason 

 to believe that his estimate is nearer to the truth than the opposite 

 one. 



On p. 490, M. de Laveleye writes 



" The law that Mr. Herbert Spencer desires society to adopt is simply Dar- 

 win's law ' the survival of the fittest.' " $ 



Perhaps I may be excused for wishing here to prevent further con- 

 firmation of a current error. In his article, M. de Laveleye has quoted 

 from " Social Statics " passages showing insistance on the benefits re- 

 sulting from survival of the fittest among mankind, as well as among 

 animals ; though he ignores the fact that the work as a whole is an 

 elaborate statement of the conditions under which, and limits within 

 which, the natural process of elimination of the unfit should be allowed 

 to operate. Here my immediate purpose is to correct the impression 

 which his statement, as above worded, produces, by naming the dates : 



