sive, though perhaps an abler, man than Henry. In this he is probably quite right. His account of the hounding down of Boniface, and the cruel destruction of the Templars, is as stirring as it is truthful; but he certainly pushes his theory to an altogether impossible extreme when he states that the moneyed class, the bourgeoisie, was already the dominant force in France. The heroes of Froissart still lay in the future; and for centuries to come the burgher was to be outweighed by king, priest, and noble. The economic man, the man of trade and money, was, at that time, in no sense dominant.

That there is grave reason for some of Mr. Adams's melancholy forebodings, no serious student of the times, no sociologist or reformer, and no practical politician who is interested in more than momentary success, will deny. A foolish optimist is only less noxious than an utter pessimist; and the prerequisite for any effort, whether hopeful or hopeless, to better our conditions is an accurate knowledge of what these conditions are. There is no use in blinding ourselves to certain of the tendencies and results of our high-pressure civilization. Some very ominous facts have become more and more apparent during the present century, in which the social movement of the white race has gone on with such unexampled and ever-accelerating rapidity. The rich have undoubtedly grown richer; and, while the most careful students are inclined to answer with an emphatic negative the proposition that the poor have grown poorer, it is nevertheless

certain that there has been a large absolute, though not relative increase of poverty, and that the very poor tend to huddle in immense masses in the cities. Even though these masses are, relatively to the rest of the population, smaller than they formerly were, they constitute a standing menace, not merely to our prosperity, but to our existence. The improvement in the means of communication, moreover, has so far immensely increased the tendency of the urban population to grow at the expense of the rural; and philosophers have usually been inclined to regard the ultimate safety of a nation as resting upon its peasantry. The improvement in machinery, the very perfection of scientific processes, cause great, even though temporary, suffering to unskilled laborers. Moreover, there is a certain softness of fibre in civilized nations which, if it were to prove progressive, might mean the development of a cultured and refined people quite unable to hold its own in those conflicts through which alone any great race can ultimately march to victory. There is also a tendency to become fixed, and to lose flexibility. Most ominous of all, there has become evident, during the last two generations, a very pronounced tendency among the most highly civilized races, and among the most highly civilized portions of all races, to lose the power of multiplying and even to decrease: so much so as to make the fears of the disciples of Malthus a century ago seem rather absurd to the dweller in France or New England to-day.

Mr. Adams does not believe that any individual or group of individuals can influence the destiny of a race for good or for evil. All of us admit that it is very hard by individual effort thus to make any alteration in destiny; but we do not think it impossible; and Mr. Adams will have performed a great service if he succeeds in fixing the eyes of the men who ought to know thoroughly the problems set us to solve, upon the essential features of these problems. I do not think his diagnosis of the disease is in all respects accurate. I believe there is an immense amount of healthy tissue as to the existence of which he is blind; but there is disease, and it is serious enough to warrant very careful examination.

However, Mr. Adams is certainly in error in putting the immense importance he does upon the question of the expansion or contraction of the currency. There is no doubt whatever that a nation is profoundly affected by the character of its currency; but there seems to be equally little doubt that the currency is only one, and by no means the most important, among a hundred causes which profoundly affect it. The United States has been on a gold basis, and on a silver basis; it has been on a paper basis, and on a basis of what might be called the scraps and odds and ends of the currencies of a dozen other nations; but it has kept on developing along the same lines no matter what its currency has been. If a change of currency were so enacted as to amount to dishonesty, that is, to the repudiation of

debts, it would be a very bad thing morally; or, if a change took place in a manner that would temporarily reduce the purchasing power of the wageearner, it would be a very bad thing materially; but the current of the national life would not be wholly diverted or arrested, it would merely be checked, even by such a radical change. The forces that most profoundly shape the course of a nation's life lie far deeper than the mere use of gold or of silver, the mere question of the appreciation or depreciation of one metal when compared with the other, or when compared with commodities generally.

Mr. Adams unconsciously shows this in his first and extremely interesting chapter on the Romans. In one part of this chapter he seems to ascribe the ruin of the Roman Empire to the contraction of the currency, saying, "with contraction came that fall of prices which first ruined, then enslaved, and finally exterminated the native rural population of Italy." This he attributes to the growth of the economic or capitalistic spirit. As he puts it, "the stronger type exterminated the weaker, the money-lender killed out the husbandman, the soldiers vanished, and the farms on which they once flourished were left desolate."

But, curiously enough, Mr. Adams himself shows that all this really occurred during the two centuries, or thereabout, extending from the end of the second Punic war through the reign of the first of the Roman emperors; and this was a period of currency expansion, not of currency contraction. Moreover,