Mr. Dicey in his Case against Home Rule does me the honour to refer to an article which I wrote a year ago on “American Home Rule,”[1] expressing in one place “disagreement in the general conclusion to which the article is intended to lead,” and in another “inability to follow the inference” which he supposes […]

American experience has been frequently cited, in the course of the controversy now raging in England over the Irish question, both by way of warning and of example. For instance, I have found in the Times as well as in other journals–the Spectator, I think, among the number–very contemptuous dismissals of the plan of offering […]

It is recorded of a patriotic member of the Committee of Ways and Means, that after hearing from the Special Commissioner of the Revenue an elaborate and strongly fortified argument which made a deep impression on the committee in favor of a reduction of the whiskey tax, on the ground that the then rate, two […]

We had, four or five weeks ago, a few words of controversy with the Christian Union as to the comparative morality of the Prussians and Americans, or, rather, their comparative religiousness–meaning by religiousness a disposition “to serve others and live as in God’s sight;” in other words, unselfishness and spirituality. We let it drop, from […]

The feeling of amazement with which the world is looking on at the Prussian campaigns comes not so much from the tremendous display of physical force they afford–though there is in this something almost appalling–as from the consciousness which everybody begins to have that to put such an engine of destruction as the German army […]

Our readers and those of The Galaxy are familiar with the controversy between Dr. Fitzedward Hall and Mr. Grant White (November, 1873). When one comes to inquire what it was all about, and why Mr. White was led to consider Dr. Hall a “yahoo of literature,” and “a man born without a sense of decency,” […]

It is impossible to see, much less experience, a financial panic without an almost appalling consciousness that a new and terrible form of danger and distress has been added in comparatively recent times to the list of those by which human life is menaced or perplexed. Any one who stood on Wall Street, or in […]

Mr. Mill was, in many respects, one of the most singular men ever produced by English society. His father was a prominent member of the small sect or coterie of Benthamites, whose attempts to reform the world, during the whole of the earlier part of the present century, furnished abundant matter for ridicule to the […]

Mr. Froude’s attempt to secure from the American public a favorable judgment on the dealings of England with Ireland has had one good result–though we fear only one–in leading to a little closer examination of the real state of American opinion about Irish grievances than it has yet received. He will go back to England […]

There has been something almost tragic about the close of Mr. Greeley’s career. After a life of, on the whole, remarkable success and prosperity, he fell finally under the weight of accumulated misfortunes. Nobody who heard him declare that “he accepted the Cincinnati Convention and its consequences,” but must be struck by the illustration of […]

Mr. Froude announced that his object in coming to America was to enlighten the American public as to the true nature of Irish discontent, in such manner that American opinion, acting on Irish opinion, would reconcile the Irish to the English connection, and turn their attention to practical remedies for whatever was wrong in their […]

A considerable body of the graduates of the Irish Catholic University, including members of the legal and medical professions, presented a long and solemn memorial to Cardinal Cullen and the other Catholic bishops at the late commencement of that institution, which throws a good deal of light not only on the vexed question of Catholic […]

The recent address delivered by Professor Tyndall before the British Association at Belfast, in which he “confessed” that he “prolonged the vision backward across the boundary of experimental evidence, and discerned in matter the promise and potency of every quality and form of life,” produced one by no means very surprising result. Dr. Watts, a […]

Some of the letters from clergymen which have been called out by our article on the part recently taken by them in scientific discussion maintain that, although ministers may not be familiar with the facts of science, many of them are fully competent to weigh the arguments founded on these facts put forward by scientific […]

Biologist like Professor Huxley have, as popular lecturers, the advantage over scientific men in other fields, of occupying themselves with what is to ninety-nine men and women out of a hundred the most momentous of all problems–the manner in which life on this globe began, and in which men and other animals came to be […]

The last “statement,” it is reasonable to hope, has been made in the Beecher-Tilton case previous to the trial at law, and it is safe to say that it has left the public mind in as unsettled a state as ever before. People do not know what to believe, but they do not want to […]

I September 8, 1877. Having just returned from a few weeks’ stay in Virginia it has occurred to me as probable that your readers would be interested in hearing how such changes in Southern manners and tone of thought and economical outlook as could be noted in a brief visit strike one who had travelled […]

The Baltimore American, discussing the plan of the Hopkins University in that city, says: “The Nation suggests to the Board of Trustees a university that would leave Latin, Greek, mathematics, and the elements of natural science out of its curriculum.” This is so great a mistake that we are at a loss to understand how […]

Mr. Galton, in his work on “Hereditary Genius,” has drawn attention in a striking chapter to the effect which the systematic destruction and expatriation, by the Inquisition or the religious intolerance of the government, of the leading men of the nation–its boldest thinkers, most ardent investigators, most prudent and careful and ingenious workers, in generation […]

The Episcopal Church, at the late Triennial Convention, took up and determined to make a more vigorous effort to deal with the problem presented by the irreligion of the poor and the dishonesty of church-members. It is an unfortunate and, at first sight, somewhat puzzling circumstance, that so many of the culprits in the late […]