who had remained loyal to the Federal Government, or who may have voluntarily returned to their allegiance before a time fixed. This having been done, there would be no real danger in restoring the Southern States to their old position in the Union. It would be a diminished position, because the masters would no longer be allowed representatives in Congress in right of three fifths of their slaves. The slaves once freed, and enabled to hold property, and the country thrown open to free colonization, in a few years there would be a free population in sympathy with the rest of the Union. The most actively disloyal part of the population, already diminished by the war, would probably in great part emigrate, if the North were successful. Even if the negroes were not admitted to the suffrage, or if their former masters were able to control their votes, there is no probability, humbled and prostrated as the Slave Power would be, that in the next few years it would rally sufficiently to render any use which it could make of constitutional freedom again dangerous to the Union. When it is remembered that the thinly peopled Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and some parts even of the South-Eastern States, have even now so few slaves that they may be made entirely free at a very trifling expense in the way of redemption, and when the probable great influx of Northern settlers into those provinces is considered, the chance of any dangerous power in the councils of the United States to be exercised by the six or seven Cotton States, if allowed to retain their constitutional freedom, must appear so small, that there would be little temptation to deny them that common right.

It may, however, prove impossible to reduce the seceded States to unconditional submission, without a greater lapse of time, and greater sacrifices than the North may be willing to endure. If so, the terms of compromise suggested by Mr. Cairnes, which would secure all west of the Mississippi for free labor, would be a great immediate gain to the cause of freedom, and would, probably, in no long period, secure its complete triumph. We agree with Mr. Cairnes, that this is the only kind of compromise which should be entertained for a moment. That peace should be made by giving up the cause of quarrel, the exclusion of slavery from the Territories, would be one of the greatest calamities which could happen to civilization and to mankind. Close the Territories, prevent the spread of the disease to territory not now afflicted with it, and much will already have been done to hasten its doom. But that doom would still be distant if the vast uncolonized region of Arkansas and Texas, which alone is thought sufficient to form five States, were left to be filled up by a population of slaves and their masters; and no treaty of separation can be regarded with any satisfaction, but one which should convert the whole country west of the Mississippi into free soil.

The influence which Mr. Mill has exercised upon public opinion in England in reference to the American war is a very great one. He was one of the few enlightened men in Europe whose faith in our institutions never faltered despite their many blemishes and faults, and who believed that a great people could not and would not be balked in the pursuit of their high mission.

Let us now examine a little more closely the place that Mill should hold among the contemporary thinkers of the

world. While we do not share the opinion expressed by Buckle, that if a jury of twelve of the most enlightened men of Europe were impanelled to decide by their verdict who had done most for the advancement of knowledge in Europe they should unhesitatingly pronounce the name of John Stuart Mill, we nevertheless believe that he has done more than any other thinker of England for the cause of liberal opinions, and the destruction of fetichisms in theology and politics. While Spencer is the bolder reasoner, and perhaps the greater geniu Mill's high social position and practical turn of thought er abled him to exercise a greater influence. And herein lies the great difference between the thinker and the statesman. It may be wrong, judged from a lexicographical point of view, to call Mill a statesman, as he has never held any very exalted pos:tion in the council chamber of England, yet there is no other word which so fully expresses our meaning of Mr. Mill's qualities of mind. Familiar with the utmost limits of philosophical inquiry, conscious of the great truths on the side of those who hold that all governmental interference in any department of human activity is mischievous, he has nevertheless devoted his faculties and energies to the inculcation only of that part of these truths and the advocacy of such reforms as he believed immediately practicable. This, many would consider a defect. It is held, and with a great deal of reason, by men whose lives are devoted to the furthering of great social reforms, that it is our duty to exact the utmost farthing that governments owe to society, and to accept no compromise which does not admit the full justice of the whole of the claim. Such men hold with Emerson that we should speak our minds in words as loud as cannon-balls, and express our whole mind upon any question in which the interest of the whole of mankind is involved. Yet, in doing so, men of the greatest intellect, though useful as guides to truth, whose words of wisdom will benefit future generations, exercise but little influence upon their contemporaries. An argument logically pursued to its ultimate conclusion, a conclusion like Spencer's deduction of the Rights of Children from his first principle, repels rather than attracts the majority even of thinking men.

For that reason, the study of history in a philosophical spirit is absolutely necessary to one who desires to be useful to his fellow men in the inauguration and practical execution of social reforms. Neither error nor the institutions which are based upon it can be extirpated, branch and root, by one effort. Every reform is a compromise between truth and error, but this compromise expresses the intellectual standpoint of the great body of the people, and shows to what extent the truth will be accepted and acted upon. In that sense every great reform which history records may be considered a compromise. The reason why so many a great mind has failed to induce his contemporaries to coin his thoughts into acts, was because he forgot that progress was made only by a slow and tedious system of education, and not by sudden leaps and jumps. Such men generally forget the historical value of what in the abstract we may believe to be injustice or error. One of the most striking evidences of this in History is the fate of Charlemagne's Empire. Charlemagne attempted to govern barbarians by a system of law and order, fitted only for a comparatively civilized community. By the force of will, and indomitable energy, he succeeded during the brief space of his reign in bringing order out of chaos. Yet, hardly had he passed from the stage, when every vestige of his existence, in so far as public and governmental institutions are concerned, was blotted out also, and for several hundred years European society was in a position and condition as if he had never lived. The mistake made by the French Encyclopedists, and subsequently by the leaders of the French Revolution, was of the same character. They failed to accord to the various forms of religion their historical value and importance; they therefore enthroned the goddess of Reason at a period when the people's ideas of reason were as imperfect as their ideas of religion, and their work failed because the spirit of the age was not in harmony with the intelligence and knowledge of a few hundred philosophers and statesmen. reaction is only the necessary consequence of a premature development. Reactions never occur when the progress is in accordance with the true spirit of the age. Mill's sagacity, judgment, and breadth of philosophic view prevent him from

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attempting to force progress. He is a great reformer, not by boldness of theory and vastness of conception, for many have surpassed him in this, but by reason of advocating only such reforms for which he believes the people ripe. When judged from this standpoint, Mill looms up in gigantic proportions, for then and then only can we properly estimate his principal force. To compare great things to small, the influence of his words upon the thinking men of Europe is much like the influence of an honest lawyer who has never been known to have been engaged in an unjust cause. In course of time his causes are almost prejudged in his favor. Then begins the dangerous part of the influence of such an advocate; prejudiced in his favor, judges no longer sift with the same care the evidence upon which the advocate relies for success, that they would exercise were they less satisfied of the honesty of counsel. Mill's influence in England has arrived pretty much at that stage. With a certain class of thinkers upon any knotty social or controversial question his words are almost conclusive. So long as Mill preserves the force of his faculties and the strength of his judgment, his influence is immeasurably more beneficial than it can possibly prove baneful; but when we consider how in their old age such lights as Newton, Burke, and Brougham have been dimmed; how conservatives in politics or religion have constantly cited such examples to prove the instability of man's attachment to reason, and his proneness to return with advanced experience to faith in authority, we are almost tempted to wish that such men would die when they have reached the zenith of their power, so that we should not be afflicted with the pitiable sight of the gradual decay of faculties and powers which have at one time been the wonder and admiration of the world.

We therefore regard with some misgivings the influence Mill exercises upon the intelligent classes of England. It is too overshadowing, and also exhibits the dearth of bold and original thinkers in that country. We trust, however, that our fears may never be realized. There are numerous examples in the history of literature that it is possible to grow old without growing intellectually weak. Goethe and Humboldt possessed

in the evening of their long and honored lives the same, if not superior, intellectual vigor that they enjoyed at that period when both intellectual and physical force are supposed to culminate in man.

At all events Mill is entitled to the lasting gratitude of progressive men the world over for what he has accomplished. Born in a position which naturally might have led him to espouse the cause of governments, he voluntarily devoted his brilliant faculties to the service of the whole of mankind. From early life in a quasi-governmental employ, he never became the apologist of his superiors, and refused, though beset by every temptation so to do, to become the tool of party. Outside and above all partisanship, he has viewed his contemporaneous history from so elevated a standpoint, that at no time was the charge ever ventured upon, that he ever expressed an opinion from any but the most disinterested and pure motives. What he has done will always entitle him to be classed among the great benefactors of mankind, and consecrate his memory as one who at all times espoused the cause of the suffering part of humanity, though widely separated from them by wealth, social position, and culture. S. S.

PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES.

[UNDER this head we shall in future give quarterly reports of the Proceedings of Learned Societies in the United States. Officers of these associations will please send in a short resumé of their proceedings, up to within twenty days of the date of publication of this journal. We give in this number only the proceedings of two Societies, in consequence of our inability to obtain the rest in time.-EDs.]

THE SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF
SOCIAL SCIENCE.

THIS organization, founded October 9, 1862, has since continued to hold regular weekly meetings, except during the summer season, under the designation of The Society for the Advancement of Social Science. The place for meeting is at