The tenant farmers are much clearer than the landlords

upon this point. Again and again in their local meetings, held since the London Conference, they have repudiated the idea of protection, and have adopted as their platform the demand for fixity of tenure, fair rents, and free sale of the tenants' improvements, coupled with the demand for a land court for the settlement of rents and other questions arising between tenants and landlords. The idea of Lord Winchilsea's Union is that the interests of all three classes concerned in farming are identical, and that landlords, tenant farmers, and laborers are all involved in the present crisis. These three classes may all be interested in the land; but matters have now reached a point at which the landlords' and the tenants' interests are antagonistic. There is no questioning this. Reductions in rent and more favorable conditions of tenure are the only salvation for the farmer, and, to meet him on these points, the landlord will have to make substantial and permanent concessions. It is the fear that the landlord will not so meet him, which is impelling the tenant farmer to follow the example of the Irish farmer and to press his claims upon Parliament. To this end, the more radical farmers' organizations have altogether dissociated themselves from the landlords, and it is because they know that at this crisis the interests of the tenants and of the landlords are not identical, that these same organizations have stood aloof from Lord Winchilsea's Agricultural Union.

It was never possible to see how the rural laborers could be expected to associate themselves with the union. Lord Winchilsea's idea was that the laborers' representatives were to sit in council with the representatives of the landlords and of the tenant farmers, and at election times the laborers were to vote for the candidates of the agricultural party. To induce the laborer to come in, Lord Winchilsea proposed a sliding scale for laborers' wages, under which the wages of a day laborer were to move upward with the upward movement in the price of wheat. But the laborers. were shy of the scheme. For generations past in the purely agricultural districts of England, the laborers have been and are now working for a wage which is only sufficient to keep

body and soul together-for a wage which permits of their making absolutely no provision for sickness or old age. It would be next to impossible, if they are to work at all, for their wages to slide below the present level, and although the rural laborer in England does not understand much about politics, he is wide awake enough to know that, when his interest is sought for a scheme like the Agricultural Union, his vote is wanted afterwards, and he is dubious about all schemes emanating from landlords, which, if they are to go through Parliament at all, are to go through by the aid of his vote.

The rural laborer is already on the side of the Radicals. He is the backbone of the Radical Party in rural England, and if the tenant farmers are really looking to Parliament for a measure establishing a land court and embodying their other demands, at the polls they will have to part company with the landlords, as they did on the protection resolution at the London Conference. Hitherto, and increasingly since the Reform Act of 1884 gave the franchise to the rural laborers, the tenant farmers have voted with the landlords, and for the Conservatives. They cannot hope for the three F's from the Conservatives; they cannot build up a really strong and independent farmers' party in the House of Commons; but they can follow the example of their laborers and vote for the Radicals, and it will be only from the Radicals that they can obtain such a drastic reform of the land laws as will enable them to begin to meet the conditions which the extent and permanence of foreign competition in food products has brought about.

Free trade in food stuffs must be permanent in England. There is now no help for it, and the landowner will have to make up his mind either to meet these conditions or to have his tenantless farms thrown upon his hands. English farm laborers cannot work for less wages than they are now receiving; for, as it is, in the long run the wage has in most cases to be supplemented by Poor Law relief. English tenant farmers cannot go on working hard only to pay impossible rents. Much of the farming land in England is now of no greater value than farm lands in the Western States.

This is a disagreeable fact for English landowners. They have been a long time in realizing it; but now the new conditions have to be faced. This is the lesson of the present crisis in English farming, and much of the inconvenience and loss attending the rearrangement which will soon have to be brought about, if not voluntarily, then by the interference of Parliament, must inevitably fall upon the landlords. EDWARD PORRITT.

Farmington, Conn.

AN ATHENIAN PARALLEL TO A FUNCTION OF

Μ'

OUR SUPREME COURT.

R. BRYCE remarks that "no feature of the government of the United States has awakened so much curiosity in the European mind, caused so much discussion, received so much admiration, and been more frequently misunderstood, than the duties assigned to the Supreme Court and the functions which it discharges in guarding the ark of the constitution." (Am. Com. I. p. 237.) The same causes that have led the European mind to misunderstand some of the functions of that court have prevented due recognition of the close analogy between those functions and the part borne in the Athenian constitution by the yрapn Taрavóμwv or action for unconstitutionality. The parallel, though not exact, is a striking one. If our court is worthy of special admiration as an instrument for guarding the constitution from violation, then we may certainly take it as a mark of extraordinary political genius, that the Athenians so early contrived a similar bulwark of their constitutional democracy.

The mode in which the question whether a law is constitutional or not is brought before our courts is well known. to all Americans. The principle on which the court renders. its decision, so often misunderstood by foreigners, is well stated by Mr. Bryce in terms like the following. We in the United States recognize in our laws four different grades, of different degrees of authority. These are (1) the Federal constitution, (2) Federal statutes, (3) State constitutions, (4) State statutes. Law of a lower grade is invalid, and no law, if found in conflict with law of a higher grade. The Federal constitution was ratified and made binding, not by Congress, but by the people acting through conventions assembled in the several States. Neither Congress nor any other power, save the people themselves, can alter it in the smallest particular. And the people themselves can alter or repeal its provisions only under the restrictions which

they, or rather now their predecessors, imposed upon such action. But suppose Congress, or the framers of a State constitution, or a State legislature, oversteps the limits imposed by the fundamental law. In that case the statute or the provision of the State constitution so transgressing is null and void. All this is familiar doctrine. Equally familiar, as was said before, is the manner in which the question is settled, whether the Federal constitution is or is not violated by the statute in question. Some one who doubts the validity of the new law resists the enforcement of it upon himself. In deciding the individual case, the Supreme Court-supposing that the case eventually comes before. that court-of necessity decides by implication, whether the statute was valid or not. Mr. Bryce carefully notes, and the matter is of some importance for the case in hand, that there is here no conflict between the judicial and the lawmaking power. The court merely secures to each kind of law its due authority. The relative strength of each kind of law has been settled already. All the court does is to point out that a conflict exists between two laws of different degrees of authority. Then the question is at an end, for the weaker law is extinct.

Turning now to Athenian law, where do we find the parallel? The ypaþǹ πaρavóμwv, briefly, was a public action, which any full citizen might bring for the purpose of annulling a ψήφισμα or νόμος alleged to be in violation of any vópos still in force. Within one year of the date of the passage of the law or decree this action would lie against the proposer himself. The action was one of the ratable suits; that is, the author of the vópos or výpiμa, if found guilty of proposing an unconstitutional measure, was liable to the penalty advocated by the accuser, unless the convicted man could persuade the court to adopt the milder penalty which he himself offered as a substitute. The penalty might therefore be a severe one. After the lapse of one year the author of the measure could no longer be personally attacked, but the measure itself was still open to question by a suit of the same kind. Whether the person of the proposer, or the law or decree alone was attacked, the success of the accuser