119 
of Edinburgh, Session 1866-67. 
\ftth, That the expenses of the Congress be defrayed by an inter- 
national tax, to be fixed by the Congress ; that the said tax be propor- 
tioned to the number of votes enjoyed for the previous year by each 
State, and be levied by the several States on their own inhabitants. 
Many provisions of a more special kind would, of course, suggest 
themselves were the scheme to assume a practical shape ; but the 
preceding will sufficiently indicate its general character. A body 
which should take cognizance of the real power and importance of 
its various members would have a very much better chance of being 
accepted in lieu of the verdict of battle than those of a body of 
which all the members voted equally. The chances would then be 
many that individual States would gain no more by fighting than 
by voting; and to assume that, in such circumstances, they would 
in general prefer to vote, is surely to credit them with no very 
wonderful measure either of humanity or of wisdom. 
2. On the Sophists of the Fifth Century, b.c. By 
Professor Blackie. 
The object of this paper was to controvert the views of Mr G-rote 
as stated in his history of Greece and in his work on Plato. Pro- 
fessor Blackie, while admitting that the Sophists might have been 
somewhat hardly dealt with by certain extreme writers in modern 
times, and recognising gladly the view stated by Meiners and Hegel 
that their teaching was an important and necessary step in the 
intellectual development of Greece, nevertheless maintained that 
the current character of the Sophists, as handed down to us from 
ancient times, was in the main correct ; and that all that could be 
said in defence of their teaching amounted to no more than a slight 
palliation of the charges brought against them by Plato and Aristo- 
phanes, not to an acquittal. The portrait of the Sophists left us 
by these two great writers was substantially correct ; and, if any 
man considered their testimony unworthy of credit, it was amply 
confirmed in all points by Aristotle, and Xenophon, and Isocrates in 
passages of their works, which had been ably analysed by Mr Cope 
of Trinity College, Cambridge, but which Mr Grote had either over- 
looked altogether, or looked at with eyes of prejudice and obliquity. 
Professor Blackie concluded his paper with the following five points 
of the Sophistical doctrine, as he gathered it from Plato: — 
