SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 709 



is useful when it is employed as a remedy — and rightly so." Referring to 

 the unjust laws promulgated against the Catholics under James I, the Eng- 

 lishman says, ''Unjust as these stipulations were, the safety of the state 

 rendered them necessary." It is only when such principles are found in 

 the mouth of a terrorist like Marat that their infamous character is fully 

 realized. " Before this supreme law," he wrote, alluding to " the safety of 

 the people," and in justification of the crimes that he and his partisans com- 

 mitted, " all other laws should be as naught. To save the country all means 

 are good, all means are just, all means are meritorious." 



M. Proal's exposition of the direful fruits of such a political philosophy 

 is scholarly and complete. Of the eleven chapters in his book, nine of them 

 are devoted to a citation of some of the more striking crimes of ancient and 

 modern history, particularly that of France, committed to insure " the safety 

 of the people." They are of great interest and value, including as they do 

 Political Assassination and Tyrannicide, Anarchism, Political Hatreds, Polit- 

 ical Hypocrisy, Political Spoliation, Corruption among Politicians, Electoral 

 Corruption, The Corruption of Law and Justice by Politics, and The Cor- 

 ruption of Morals by Politics. The cumulative effect of this mass of facts is 

 irresistible. They make clear, as nothing else can, how politics may poison 

 the whole social fabric — how, indeed, it may produce effects wholly unex- 

 pected. "Bad political morals," says M. Proal, "spread to the people; they 

 accustom it to deceit, cruelty, and injustice, and they diminish its loathing for 

 evil. The immorality of those who govern infects sooner or later those who 

 are governed." He tells us that " the Terror rendered cruel even those who 

 fought against it, and it left its mark upon the youth of the higher classes." 

 He tells us further that " the triumph of might makes ]Deople lose confidence 

 in right, and destroys their faith in justice." Not only do immoral politics 

 lead to cruelty and greed, but, as M. Proal shows by a number of examples, 

 to intemperance, gluttony, and even sexual laxity. He shows, finally, that 

 by " the creation of privileges " they produce changes in the structure of 

 society. " Undoing the work of God, who gave the same rights to all men," 

 he says, " they have created inequality in the matter of civil and political 

 rights, they have altered the true mutual relations of men, and they have 

 established inequality even in I'espect to justice." 



The only important lesson taught by this demoralization is not the 

 necessity of a scrupulous observance of a rigid code of ethics in political 

 action. Hardly less imijortant is the lesson that all writers and public 

 speakers should possess sound judgment. " I believe," says M. Proal, " that 

 disordered ideas produce moral disorder, that a false thesis may call forth 

 an infinite number of bad actions, that a sophism is often more danger- 

 ous to society than a crime." As judge of the Court of Appeal at Aix, be- 

 fore which political criminals had been tried, he had ample opportunity to 

 confirna this view. Reprobation too severe can not, therefore, be visited 

 upon such a writer as M. Renan, who says, " It is better that a people should 

 be immoi'al than that it should be fanatical." Nor should approval ever 

 be bestowed upon works in glorification of revolution or other forms of 

 violence. They are text-books of political crime. " The historian," said 

 Lamartine, who, with Thiers and Louis Blanc, had been guilty of the 

 offense, " who furnishes crime with an excuse and cruelty with a fallacious 

 pretext, paves the way unawares for future indulgence toward the imita- 

 tors of these crimes." As to certain newspapers and speakers, with which. 



