already overcrowded labour market.  Mr. Ritchie answers that, while the conclusion usually drawn from this argument is a sentimental reaction in favour of the old family ideal, as, for instance, in Mr. Besant’s books, there is another alternative, and that is the resettling of the labour question.  ’The elevation of the status of women and the regulation of the conditions of labour are ultimately,’ he says, ’inseparable questions.  On the basis of individualism, I cannot see how it is possible to answer the objections of Sir James Stephen.’  Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his Sociology, expresses his fear that women, if admitted now to political life, might do mischief by introducing the ethics of the family into the State.  ’Under the ethics of the family the greatest benefits must be given where the merits are smallest; under the ethics of the State the benefits must be proportioned to the merits.’  In answer to this, Mr. Ritchie asks whether in any society we have ever seen people so get benefits in proportion to their merits, and protests against Mr. Spencer’s separation of the ethics of the family from those of the State.  If something is right in a family, it is difficult to see why it is therefore, without any further reason, wrong in the State.  If the participation of women in politics means that as a good family educates all its members, so must a good State, what better issue could there be?  The family ideal of the State may be difficult of attainment, but as an ideal it is better than the policeman theory.  It would mean the moralisation of politics.  The cultivation of separate sorts of virtues and separate ideals of duty in men and women has led to the whole social fabric being weaker and unhealthier than it need be.  As for the objection that in countries where it is considered necessary to have compulsory military service for all men, it would be unjust and inexpedient that women should have a voice in political matters, Mr. Ritchie meets it, or tries to meet it, by proposing that all women physically fitted for such purpose should be compelled to undergo training as nurses, and should be liable to be called upon to serve as nurses in time of war.  This training, he remarks, ’would be more useful to them and to the community in time of peace than his military training is to the peasant or artisan.’  Mr. Ritchie’s little book is extremely suggestive, and full of valuable ideas for the philosophic student of sociology.

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Mr. Alan Cole’s lecture on Irish lace, delivered recently before the Society of Arts, contains some extremely useful suggestions as to the best method of securing an immediate connection between the art schools of a country and the country’s ordinary manufactures.  In 1883, Mr. Cole was deputed by the Department of Science and Art to lecture at Cork and at Limerick on the subject of lace-making, and to give a history of its rise and development in other countries, as well as a review of the many