outside drawers of ladies-cloth or flannel, in shapely leggin form, to fit inside the shoe-tops, will answer purposes of warmth much better than the usual flannel skirt, and render white muslin as superfluous as it is inappropriate. Shoes with low, broad heels, wide soles, and roomy uppers, are admissible in point of custom, and can be readily procured of anatomical shoemakers.

Thus far the attire suggested is healthful and comfortable, and in quality, design, and finish may satisfy the most exacting taste. But to make the external dress comformable to the world, and answer the highest needs, is not yet within the possibilities of woman. Nevertheless, much can be done in this direction without rendering the wearer obnoxious to friends and society. Heavy plaitings, long trains, intricate and endless draperies and trimmings, are not absolutely demanded, even of those who move in the dress-circles of the world. To the women who would be healthy, happy, and useful members of the community, fashion gives kindly thought. In the midst of her bewildering exhibit of complex, heavily garnished costumes, are found the redingote, pelisse, simple basque, and round skirt, and plain princesse gown. The walking-skirt entirely clearing the ground, happily holds its place. Many women, in different walks of life, are wearing loose, light, simply fashioned yet tasteful dresses, without question or criticism. In some quiet country resorts, and health institutions, picturesque short costumes are worn, the skirts reaching nearly to the tops of high-laced shoes, with drawers or leggins of the dress-material fitting inside of the shoes, and in many cases they have proved the main factor in recovery of health.

KATE J. JACKSON.

COMMENTS.

MR. EDITOR: Mrs. Cady Stanton, in her contribution to the May number of the REVIEW, entitled "Has Christianity benefited Woman?" declares that "the church in the fifth century fully developed the doctrine of original sin, making woman its weak and guilty author." While there is some ambiguity in this language, it is noteworthy that the temper of Mrs. Stanton's article goes far to justify the scorned dogma. The article is passionate, intolerant, and startlingly free from the conventional limitations of delicacy. In all these respects it stands in marked contrast with Bishop Spalding's rejoinder. Whatever may be thought of the cogency of his arguments, the bishop is uniformly calm, dignified, and courteous. It is unfortunate for Mrs. Stanton that, with so fine an opportunity for proving the woman equal to the man, she has thus allowed him to get the advantage of her. Even to hint the opinion that "all the degradation and injustice that she [woman] has suffered might logically be traced to the same source [Christianity]," is to manifest a partisan unfairness from which not only sweetness but light has wholly disappeared. Nothing can be more disingenuous than to represent, though by quotation, Paul's doctrine of marriage as providing simply for "the gratification of instinct without sin." He says, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." Is that to love grossly Mrs. Stanton's reasoning is vitiated by several obvious fallacies. By an insufficient induction she tries to establish the favorable condition of woman previous to the Christian era. From the uncertain usages of the ancient Egyptians and Germans she derives "a long, spiral ergo" of inference and conclusion. At this point Bishop Spalding's historical survey is much broader, and his collection of facts much more complete. If he had chosen to muster authorities, he would have had an embarrassment of riches. Neander, for example, in treating of "the ennobled family relations" resulting from Christianity, says: "Wherever Christianity found entrance, the equal dignity and worth of the female sex, as possessing a nature created in the image of God, and allied to the divine, no less than the male, was brought distinctly before the consciousness, in opposition to the principles of the ancient world, particularly in the East, where the woman was placed in an altogether subordinate relation to man." Another fallacy running through Mrs. Stanton's argument is that which is known as post hoc, propter hoc. Like Latimer's peasant, who ascribed the Goodwin Sands to Tenderden Steeple, she makes Christianity the cause of evils with which it has no causal connection. Shall we hold laws responsible for the crimes that they do not

prevent and charity organizations for the pauperism they cannot remove? or the really noble cause of woman's elevation for Mrs. Stanton's bad logic? A third fallacy in her argument is the confounding of the church with Christianity. Christianity is more than the church. Christianity may be in the air as a controlling zeit-geist, and may even be promoting a reform to which the church is a positive obstruction. Thus it is that "the canon law," which so excites Mrs. Stanton's spleen, may not, in various particulars, be properly Christian at all. Here Bishop Spalding's church principles inevitably limited the effectiveness of his reply. The whole tenor of Mrs. Stanton's article excites the suspicion that in her passion for "perfect equilibrium” between the sexes, she is willing to destroy marriage and the family. Does she really mean to intimate that Aspasia and Diotema, in their "questionable position," did not sacrifice too much to intellectual and social independence?

J. R. KENDRICK.

MR. EDITOR: I have read with great interest the able discussion in the February number of the REVIEW, on the question of electing the President of our Republic. It appears to me that the real difficulty about the direct vote in the Convention of 1787 was different from what is generally supposed. I take it that it lay in the dual position of the slaves, who were considered at one and the same time as human beings and as chattels. It must be remembered that the mode of representing them in Congress had wellnigh broken up the Convention, and that after it had been settled, every one feared to re-open the question. This settlement permitted the slave States to add three-fifths of the number of slaves to the white population in fixing the ratio of representation of those States in Congress, and a similar advantage was claimed by those States in Presidential elections. But in a direct vote such an advantage would have flagrantly degraded every vote in a free State, since it would have made five votes in a slave State equal to eight in a free State, and shown openly that eight Northerners were only worth five Southerners. A wish to avoid this dilemma I conceive to have been the main reason against adopting the direct vote in the Convention; and to-day, as this reason fails, the main objection against a direct vote no longer exists. Let me also call attention to the monstrous inequalities inherent in our present system. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that there are 360 electoral votes in all, of which New York is entitled to thirty-six and Vermont to three. Let us suppose, also, that in a close election 500 Vermonters had crossed the line, and by voting in this State had secured the vote of New York for their candidate. Admitting that by this change Vermont were lost to them, they only lose one one hundred and twentieth, while they gain onetenth of the Electoral College. But if the result in their State is not affected, then from mere useless swellers of a majority, mere ciphers, these 500 men have decided the vote of one-tenth of the entire voting power of the country. Many other illustrations of a like nature will suggest themselves. The argument that the Electoral College preserves the influence of the smaller States vanishes when seen by this light. It does the very contrary. In the State of Vermont a majority of 100,000 would only give three votes to a Presidential candidate, while a majority of one in New York State will give him

thirty-six. This proves conclusively that by the electoral system the weight of a vote increases in direct ratio with the size of the State, and gives an extravagantly disproportionate power to the large States. The direct vote, which makes the vote of one citizen equal to that of another, no matter where cast, would not deprive the smaller States of their proper influence; it would restore it to them. ISAAC L. RICE.

MR. EDITOR: I regret to learn, through his article on "Free Thought in America," in your April number, that the distinguished Briton, Mr. Robert Buchanan, has imbibed so unfavorable an opinion of the United States and of Ingersoll. I, in common with the English critic, deplore the materialism of our age, and recognize the need of a more humanized humanity. This is why I support our great poet-orator. Therefore, when I find him characterized as "a devil's advocate, preaching the gospel of hot ginger, cakes, and ale," I feel like saying-little as he needs it -a word in his vindication. If our country is materialistic, who made it so? The Christian church has hitherto held almost undisputed sway. Free thought cannot do much worse. Ingersoll, rightly understood, is a modern prophet. Let us remember that it was Christ who anathematized the Scribes and Pharisees, and drove the money-changers from the sanctuary. Ingersoll, far from "entering the temples of religion with his hat on one side, a cigar in his mouth, and a jest upon his lips," is assailing the shrines of superstition with the bludgeon of his intellect, the rapier of his ridicule, and the sword of his righteous wrath. He, happily, has no reverence for rot nor respect for pretentious pietism; but, far from "trampling on the lotus, the rose, and the lily in the garden of the gods," he would root up the deadly nightshade of error and the poison vine of ignorance, to replant in a better earth the flowers of a fairer life. Mr. Buchanan admits that "the history of Christianity has been a long chapter of horrors," and that "its priests and paid prófessors have been the enemies of human progress." In this confession he gives up his case against our great champion, since to crush out such crimes and evils Ingersoll takes his sturdy and relentless stand. Two great antagonistic currents of philosophy are discernible as running through civilization; the theological and the scientific. Theology, as a body of dogma, positing a supposititious deity in an impossible heaven, erects upon such arbitrary divine authority the tyranny of king over subject, of priest over layman, of master over slave, and finds its motive in a selfish other-worldliness. Science, on the other hand, though it declines to affirm an unknowable god and an unverifiable immortality, would make "man the master of things," would in government decree democracy, in industry coöperation, and would recognize its motive in human mutualism. Against the one tendency and for the other Ingersoll ever lifts the magic of his voice. On the one or other of these sides all must sooner or later array themselves; and in this holy warfare liberals of every school, uniting on the main issues and sinking their minor differences, should show one solid front. That Ingersoll represents completeness no man claims; but were all men more like him, the world would be far nearer its millennium. To oppose him is to oppose progress. COURTLANDT PALMER.

MR. EDITOR: Mr. David Dudley Field shows, among other things, in his otherwise able article in the May number of the REVIEW, that he is not familiar with the history of coöperation in Europe - of the coöperative factories and shops founded and managed by labor exclusively, and of the cooperative factories and homes founded and managed by labor and capital united. While they were and are good enough, in their way, as palliatives only, or as "local applications," their most enthusiastic advocates now admit that they have failed as radical cures of the "king's evil" that affects Europe; that, therefore, they would still more completely fail as remedies for the still more grievous corporate evil of America, is a conclusion that seems to me entirely self-evident. No thinking man complains of associations or of corporations in themselves, nor of combined action and aggregated capital in themselves. What is government, else, or society, or a nation, or an army? What working men and serious students do protest against, and what they are determined to abolish, is the creation of a privileged class, with all the inherent vices and insolent pretensions of the old oligarchies, and without even one of their remedial or humane limitations. A new corporation that, as the great English lawyer says, has "neither a soul to be saved, nor a breech to be kicked," is a far more dangerous enemy to the "ideal commonwealth,” which, as Mr. Field says, is "our American aim" (in which there shall be not only no inequality of rights, but in which all shall have food, raiment, shelter, and equal chances of pursuing their own welfare) than an "old family," whose fears and whose traditions, if they did not break the shackles of labor, at least covered the iron with velvet-or homespun. Now- and this fact should be emphasized -Mr. Field's definition of an ideal commonwealth is an exact description of American life (excepting as to the colored races) before the rise of the present corporative dynasty (excepting again, to use Mr. Field's words, applied to a different policy, "where the laws of the land were pitted against the laws of nature"- that is to say, in the Southern States, in which the ever-hungry maw of slavery incessantly devoured the most fertile land, and thereby drove the negroless whites to the swamps and mountains, precisely as a kindred system drove the Irish peasants to the wet bogs and barren hills of Connemara). The slave power was a corporation whose tyranny was limited here and there by individual human sympathies, and everywhere by the fear of a servile insurrection; but these artificial beings, "bloodless and incorporeal," that we call corporations, are absolutely destitute of all human sympathies, and, again, are only held in check by the fear of a fiercer insurrection of the laborers. Mr. Field's remedy not only comes too late, but it does not strike at the root of our political upas-tree. Corporate usurpations have come from special privileges to classes, conferred on them by legislation. The evils that laws have wrought, other laws must not remedy only, but make impossible for all time to come. It is contrary to the American idea to depend for justice on the supposed "fraternal feelings" of a class whose entire power rests on monopoly - that is to say, on inequality of rights. The true remedy must be sought in restoring equality of rights, either by the sternest State supervision of corporate actions, or by State ownership and direct control of undertakings now delegated to practically irresponsible combinations of capitalists.

J. V. NELSON.