resorts to his legal remedies ; the former's produce is seized and sold, all of which leads to the destruction of Christian charity, and to the harmony that ought to prevail between the pastor and his flock,' which, as Lord John Russell has stated, was the result of the state of things existing before the Act of 1836. Whatever may be said in the support of the rights of the clergy to the ordinary tithe, there seems to us to be no justification for the other exaction. With regard to the former, they may say, We accepted our position on the faith of its regular payment: no matter what happened, that at least was certain, and whether the farmer chose to farm well or ill, that at least was due to us. But they cannot say that with regard to the extraordinary tithe. A clergyman may spend the whole of his life in a parish, and cannot complain, or take any action against his parishioners if they do not choose to convert their land into extraordinary tithe-paying land. Nay, if they choose to convert such land into ordinary land, he cannot complain, but will be obliged to accept ordinary tithe simply. There can, therefore, as it seems to us, be no reason why the clergy should not be deprived of their right to this decidedly unearned increment,' and to

that end legislation is desirable.

In the first session of 1884 a Bill was introduced into the House of Commons by Mr. Inderwick, Q.C., the member for Rye, and was backed up by such men as Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Walter. It had for its object the removal from the land of all liability to extraordinary tithe in respect of any special cultivation, and the making of reasonable compensation to the existing tithe-owners. To effect this the Bill sought to prohibit any future levy of extraordinary tithe by declaring that from and after the 1st of April, 1886, the rights of all persons in any extraordinary tithe-charges should cease. In arriving at the net annual value of the existing tithe in each district the average of the gross receipts for seven years ending ist October, 1884, less 25 per cent. for certain deductions, was to be taken. In assessing the capital value the Tithe Commissioners were to take into consideration the length of time during which the extraordinary charge had been paid, the prospect of the continuance or discontinuance of the special cultivation in respect of which the charge was made, and any other special circumstances applicable to the district. They were to certify the capital value of the charge on the whole district and on the land of each landowner in the district. The land thus certified as liable was for the future to be subjected to an annual charge equal to 4 per cent. per annum on

the capital value of the charge. Subject to existing tenancies this substituted charge was, as between landlord and tenant, to be payable by the former any contrary agreement notwithstanding, and the tenant was not to be subjected to having his property taken by distress, that remedy being taken. away, and the rent-charge to be recoverable only by action in the High Court or County Court, which was to have special powers of dealing with the matter.

It is scarcely necessary to state that this Bill was not passed. When the Act of 1873 was before Parliament it contained words making it applicable to hop gardens, but these were dropped out at the instance of some of the Kentish members. The work has now to be done over again, and in the present state of business in the House of Commons it is very doubtful whether Mr. Inderwick's Bill will secure that amount of support which will ensure its passing. It cannot be said to deal harshly with the clergy, whose interests are carefully protected. Indeed it may be thought by some that the Bill errs in an excess of liberality to them, and now that it is proposed to throw the burden on the landlord and not on the tenant, this view of the subject may receive a considerable amount of attention.

That the clergy and the tithe-owners generally have not suffered by the operation of the Commutation Act may be gathered from the fact already adduced, that the average value of £100 of tithe during the period since 1836 has been £3 above par. A recently published return issued by the Tithe Commissioners showed that the sum derived from tithes exceeds four millions sterling per annum, and this is exclusive of the annual value of the land assigned to the Church, and of money payments in lieu of tithe which may be set down. at another million. When these sums are compared with the figures which a competent Church authority, writing at the close of the eighteenth century, gave as the whole annual income of the Church from all sources, namely, £1,500,000, it cannot be pretended that the clergy have been dealt with otherwise than liberally under the various legislative enactments affecting them.

Nothing has been said, though no doubt much could be said, about tithes in the City of London. The Commutation Act did not affect these. As they are calculated at a rate fixed more than two hundred years ago on the rental value of all houses, shops, warehouses, cellars, stables, and every of them, within the said City and Liberty thereof,' it may be assumed that they amount to no small sum, though what it is exactly we are not in a position to say.

We have shown that the question of the tithe rent-charge, whether ordinary or extraordinary, requires, in the interest alike of the producer and the consumer, to be reconsidered. We have not thought it necessary here to consider the question whether, or not, anything should be paid by Dissenters and others towards the support of the Church. That is another and a wider question altogether. It has been throughout assumed that something must be paid. But the mode of arriving at that something appears to us to be so mischievous that a reform is imperatively called for. It now only remains to sum up what, in our view, needs to be done. First, then, with regard to ordinary tithe there are two courses open : either make it a fixed money payment, or, if it is to fluctuate, so amend the basis of valuation and the mode of ascertaining it as to get rid of the intricate calculations that have now to be made. Amendment appears to us to be difficult and likely to lead to a recurrence of mischiefs similar to those now complained of. It would involve a very complete revision of, and alteration in the mode of making, the returns of corn sold, for one thing. A fixed payment seems to us by far the best for both parties, who would then know exactly their relative positions. But whether a fixed payment be ultimately agreed on, or whether some other course be adopted, it is a tax which the landlord should pay and not the tenant. It is the former whom the Act considers to be an interested person,' and it is to the interest of the community that the land, or rather the landowner, should bear the burdens that properly attach to it.

As for extraordinary tithe, the plan suggested by Mr. Inderwick's Bill is the least that can be asked for in the interests of the tithe-payers. It seems to us so indefensible that the sooner it is abolished the better. There may be cases, as, for instance, in parishes where the present incumbents found on coming to take up their livings that extraordinary tithe was being paid, where some compensation should be paid for the abolition. But there seems to us no reason why compensation should be made all round. Even in the case we have suggested it should be borne in mind that it was always in the power of the tithe-payer so to convert his land as to have to pay only ordinary tithe, in which case the tithe-receiver had no remedy, nor was he entitled to any compensation.

It may be thought that this is a subject that has but a limited application. We do not so view it. Whatever afflicts a part of the body politic affects in some degree the whole.

British agriculture is in a state of change, and there can be little doubt that the tendency towards converting much of our arable land into market and fruit gardens will increase. Should it do so, there must be no bar placed in its way by the demands for such obnoxious imposts as extraordinary tithe. At present the farmers have to contend with the importation of foreign produce at a disadvantage. Nobody but a fair-trade lunatic would dream of imposing duties on the importation of this foreign produce. But that is no reason why our own producers should be handicapped so as to favour persons who have practically done nothing for what they receive.

RICHARD BARTRAM.

ART. V.-Solomon Maimon.

ONE effect of 'Daniel Deronda' was to make known to a wide circle of readers the vitality of Judaism as a system which still holds sway over the mental as well as the external life of men. During the few years which have passed since the publication of that great fiction, the interest in

modern Judaism has continued to grow. It is not many

months since the Western world was startled by an outbreak of an ancient feeling against the Jews, which had been supposed to be long dead, at least in some of the quarters where it was displayed. The popular literature of the day also seems to indicate that the life of the existing Jewish communities is attracting a large share of attention in the reading world. The charming pictures which Emil Franzos has drawn of Jewish life in the villages of Eastern Galicia are not only popular in Germany, but some have been reproduced in a cheap form in New York to meet the demand of German Americans, and some have also been translated into English. The interest of English readers in the same subject is further shown by the recent translation of Kompert's 'Scenes from the Ghetto.' Among students of philosophical literature a fresh interest has been awakened in the history of Jewish thought by the revival of the question in reference to the sources of Spinoza's philosophy. The affinities of this system with the familiar tendencies of Cartesian speculation have led the historians of philosophy generally to represent the former as simply the enevitable development of the latter, while the affinities of Spinozism with the unfamiliar speculations of earlier Jewish thinkers have been almost alogether ignored.

In these circumstances a special interest may be felt in the life of one of the most remarkable Jews of modern times—a life which forms one of the most extraordinary biographies in the history of literature.

*

Readers of Daniel Deronda' may remember that the hero of the novel, in his search among the Jews of London for some one who could throw light on the sad story of Mirah, was attracted one day to a second-hand bookshop, where his eye fell on that wonderful bit of autobiography-the life of the Polish Jew, Solomon Maimon.' There are few men so extraordinary as Maimon who have met with so little recognition in English literature. Milman, in his History of the Jews,' refers once to the autobiography as a curious and rare book,' but apparently he knew it only from some quotations in Franck's 'La Cabbale.' Among English metaphysical writers, the only one who seems to have studied the speculations of Maimon is Dr. Hodgson. Even the new edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica' gives no place to Maimon among its biographies. And yet he is a prominent figure among the metaphysicians of the Kantian period. Cuno Fischer, in his 'Geschichte der Neuren Philosophie,' devotes a whole chapter to the life of Maimon, while the contemporary critics of Kant are dismissed with little or no biographical notice. Fischer's sketch is just sufficient to whet curiosity for further details, but, amid the dearth of rare literature in Colonial libraries, I certainly never anticipated to come in a Canadian town, upon a curious and rare' German book of last century, which was known even to Milman only through some quotations by a French author. One day, however, in Toronto, in order to while away an unoccupied hour, I was glancing, like Daniel Deronda, over the shelves of a second-hand bookseller, when I was attracted by a small volume, in a good state of preservation, with S. Maimon's Lebensgeschichte' on the back; and on taking it down I found it to be the veritable autobiography which I had been curious to see. A very few pages were sufficient to explain the fascination which the book exercises over its readers; but it remains somewhat difficult to understand why the circle of its readers should have been so small.

Solomon Maimon was born in 1753, at the village of Sukowiborg, in Polish Lithuania. The village lies on the

* Vol. iii. p. 370, note.

Dr. Hodgson explains his relation to Maimon in the Preface to his Philosophy of Reflection,' pp. 16-18.