of the same sort in the world. It has a side-wheel steamer, which, in case of mutiny anywhere this side of Sandy Hook, can carry enough men down the harbour and the bay to make a sure work of suppression. It also carries a fire-engine and hose, which have frequently been of use in an emergency. Besides the steamer, there is a flotilla of row-boats; and that these small boats have not been inefficient in capturing river pirates or smugglers, let a pile of boats in the courtyard of headquarters bear witness, for each one of these -more than two score of craft of one sort or another, from whalers to punts-testifies to a capture afloat in the year 1887. But the work is very hard on the men. The tides and currents run very strong. The intense heat in summer, and the terrible cold in winter fast tell upon the men, and the waste of power is consequently great. It is so even on the Thames; but here, with stronger currents and a more extreme climate, it is enormous. And the Commissioners have made up their minds that, come what may, the majority of the rowboats must give place to steam launches. The capital sunk in them will not be great, and the economy effected by them in wear and tear of men and in enhanced efficiency will soon repay the outlay. It is simply ridiculous that in two such ports as London and New York the river police have in these days to depend mainly on row-boats to take them from point to point in the course of their duty, or to enable them to patrol such an extensive water frontage as they have in both cases to inspect.

The keynote of the New York police service was struck by the President of the Board when, in reply to a question I put to him a few days ago, he said, "We are never satisfied." Ceaseless development is the condition of success. As the population grows there must be more men to guard the public security; as the city grows― and for many a year it has only been able to grow in one direction, that is to the north-improved means of communication are as necessary as an increase of men. When burglars took to the blowpipe in opening safes and in entering banks, society invented deposit vaults, which are watched day and night. So as forgers and swindlers and sneak thieves get more cunning, the police must be more and more provided with the means of checking them. Science has placed enormous explosives in the hands of would-be criminals at a low cost; the police must have all the more power to search for such miscreants, and anticipate them in their devilish work. In a city in which there are so many pawnshops, and liquor and beer saloons, the duties of the police require the support of a strong public opinion. And the Commissioners can hardly complain of the want of this support save in one respect. They have been well backed up in closing the more iniquitous "dives" and disreputable resorts; and the provision of the law that no liquors shall be sold in any place of amusement is found

to work very well. But public opinion does not back the police in their attempts to suppress gambling. "Bookmaking" at horse races has been put down apparently, no doubt, but not betting; and no one who moves about in New York can fail to know that gambling goes on in spite of all that the police can do, and very heavy gambling too, especially at poker and faro. The arrests average one a day, but the convictions amounted to less than one and a half per week in 1886. The police justices, elected from a class in which gambling is the one amusement, and if not gamblers themselves then habitual associates of notorious gamblers, take very good care that "the sports," by which is meant those who like fast living, shall not suffer heavily when caught. In such cases, they all but invariably lean against the police, where they can find a chance to do so; and if they cannot, then they impose the smallest possible penalties. Yet the police do not relax their exertions, and gamblers have to be a little less open about their doings than they used to be. But it is not surprising when the convictions are on a descending, though the arrests are on an ascending, scale-that in every class of society gambling should be found, from Fifth Avenue to the lowest slums. Gambling apparatus, and apparatus for swindling gamblers, are openly sold, and according to a recent decision there is no law to stop the traffic. But this is not the fault of the police, who, at any rate, have done their duty. Indeed the sense of duty, the esprit de corps, of the New York police is very high. They are strictly governed, but they have their rights even as against the commissioners; and they are a conspicuous example of the fact that a very democratic community may have a very severe and well-handled police, if only care be taken to keep it free from the pestiferous influence of small politicians. The police must be, in fact, on such a basis that, while subject in all their doings to the law and the officers of the law, no single office-holder, no single creature of the popular impulse of the moment, can cause them to vary their course. It would be better if, as has been happily achieved in New York, the police could be made perfectly independent of party, even when a particular party has long held power. But perhaps this is too much to hope for in

every case.

NEW YORK, January 1888.

CHARLES WILLIAMS.

NATIONALITY.

WO circumstances have concurred to produce the present article.

union between Great Britain and Ireland, I have felt the want of discussing the subject of nationality from a more general point of view than can be adopted on platforms, and my interest in that subject, as connected with the foundations of international law, is not of yesterday. The following reflections, which have sprung from these origins, contain no direct treatment of the topic of the day. If this should not prevent their being read, they may be found to contain some things which both parties to the Irish question will admit; but such will hardly be the case with all their contents, for thought if it is real cannot be colourless.

Regarding a nationality as a population having a just claim to some degree or other of political recognition, the first remark to make is that there is no external sign by which such a population can be recognized, and the trouble of thought about it saved. In this matter, as in all others, sound politics refuses to sanction rule-ofthumb processes. The most obvious mark, that of language, has a certain relation to the subject, through the difficulty of uniting populations speaking different languages in one popular and parliamentary government, carried on by discussion, oral and printed. But while the example of Switzerland shows that this difficulty is not always insuperable, on the other side the mark fails altogether. The proposition that all who do speak the same language can be united in one popular and parliamentary government has probably never been asserted, and argument would be wasted on any one who ventured to assert it, in face of the facts about England and the United States, Ontario and Australia. Geographical position as a test, even when

combined with language, does not advance the solution much further. What is the width of the sea, the height of the mountains, or the depth of the river, which amounts to a political severance? What are the area and population, and what is the compactness of shape, which may compensate the want of natural frontiers in supporting a claim to distinctness? Is a frontier to be deemed natural with reference to the obstacle it places in the way of social and commercial intercourse, or, which may be a very different thing, with reference to its aptness for military defence? These questions need only be stated in order to show their inherent vagueness. It would always be easy to answer them so as to suit the conclusion which, in any given case, might be desired on quite other grounds.

But of all the imaginable rule-of-thumb solutions for the question of nationality, that of race seems now to be the most popular. The association theory of psychology, which reduced the mind and character of man to what is written by experience on a blank sheet of paper, modified and fixed by association, was not long ago the ruling one in England. Even yet its last word may not have been spoken in connection with the development of the species, but as a sufficient explanation of the individual man, giving a philosophical support to the assertion that all men are born equal, its diametrical conflict with the facts of heredity has caused it to drop out of sight within living memory with a rapidity somewhat remarkable in the history of opinions. But though its decline has been followed by much talk about race, our knowledge of that element in the problem did not enlarge with equal rapidity. Scarcely had we begun to emancipate ourselves from a psychology which, however its leading authorities may have conceived it, did certainly, as currently held, make race impossible, than we plunged into a different error. Comparative philology and the speculations founded on it were then, I will not say at their height in Germany, but at the height of their importation into England. So to the practical negation of race succeeded the crudest of all theories about it, that which identified distinctions of race with distinctions of language. We were Teutons or Celts according to the language which we spoke, or which our male ancestors had spoken within historical times, for small account was taken of the question whether a body of conquering immigrants had brought many women with them. Still less account, if possible, was taken of the questions whether, in many countries of Western Europe, there was not a large basis of population which had come down from times anterior to the first introduction of any Teutonic or Celtic language, and whether the historical instances of a people having changed its language without much admixture of blood were not sufficient to lead to the belief that many similar changes must have taken place in prehistoric times. Teutons or Celts we were to

on the

be, and in this rough-and-ready fashion we were enlisted under one or other of the banners, unconscious that they floated over a bog lying equally outside the true frontiers both of history and of politics, though filibustering expeditions were directed from it into either domain. Already, however, the prevailing views question of race have been profoundly modified since the Teuton and Celt epidemic raged most violently. Comparative physiology has taken its place in the discussion by the side of comparative philology, psychological observation has moderated psychological theory, historical documents and prehistoric remains have been more critically examined, and art, especially architectural art, has been studied in its relation to the popular character of which it is the expression. The diversity of sources from which light has come has made a judicial spirit more than ever necessary for summing up their data: and what, for our present purpose, has been the result? It is that if, for tests of nationality, language is insufficient and geography vague, race fails equally for a different reason.

The distinctions now existing among mankind have taken shape by a process bearing much resemblance to that by which the lithological components of the earth's crust have been differentiated. While the gaseous sphere cooled and shrank, it was only at first that the forms which appeared within it could be determined by the free behaviour of the elements contained. The parts which successively became liquid or solid gave rise to resistances which affected the further formation of masses. So the first tribal or political groups which appeared among men may have been due to differences beyond which modern knowledge has not penetrated, and may have strictly corresponded with those differences; but soon the pressure of circumstances, whether geographical surroundings or the contact of other human groups, must have become a factor, always important and often dominant, both in the differentiation and in the grouping. The groups have been perpetually melted down and recast under a conflict of forces, partly internal, including the physical as well as the mental and moral characters of each group for the time being, and partly external, including the action of neighbours as well as the climate and the soil. If it cannot be said that the external forces have more and more prevailed over the internal ones, this is only because the results of the former have been continually embodied in the latter, so that the internal characters of to-day are at least in the main the effects of external causes. Thus the formation of political groups and the formation of races are features of the same process. Either may at any given time and in any given part of the world be developed in advance of the other. The unity of the race may precede the unity of the group and lead to it, as in the case of Italy, which attained its political unification because there