Republican Institutions 357 



reached the ideal of a repuLlic where there is no great 

 wealth and no abject poverty, where the abolition of 

 titles should secure that there shall be as much equality 

 among men in social life as there is in the eye of the 

 law. It is interesting, then, and it is instructive to ask 

 how far the condition of Norway justifies the hopes and 

 efforts of those who are striving constantly to bring 

 about a similar condition of things among ourselves. 



If we were to take as an answer to this question the 

 picture which Ibsen presents us of social life in ISTorway, 

 we should say that the result was wholly unsatisfactory; 

 that the only effect of the strivings of Norway after 

 republican equality had been to produce a people who, 

 in their private life, were sordid, selfish, by no means 

 very moral (the proportion of illegitimate births in 

 Norway is very large), and in their public life were 

 narrow, self-interested, conventional, hypocritical. But 

 this estimate of Ibsen's cannot be a fair one. One of 

 the things wdiich proves that the Norwegians are cap- 

 able of a wise and far-sighted self-government is the 

 way in which they have dealt with the liquor traffic, 

 and have succeeded in cleansing the nation from one of 

 its greatest vices — excessive intemperance. 



The absence of anything like abject poverty is, again, 

 a remarkable and a most pleasing featui'e of the social 

 condition of the country ; and a still more remarkable 

 and more pleasing one is the almost total absence of 

 serious crime in the rural districts ; so that, as we have 

 already pointed out, there exists in these country 

 districts no regular police. It must be acknowledged 

 by any one who has conversed with the better sort of 

 members of the louder class, that for education and 



