QUEEN'S QUARTERLY

VOL. VII.

JULY, 1899.

No. I

All articles intending for publication, books for review. exchanges,-and all correspondence relating thereto-should be addressed to the editors, Queen's University, Kingston, Ont.

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN LEGISLATION
AND MORALITY.

HE Century which is just closing has witnessed wide reach

ing changes in the structure and general conditions of civilized society. The great awakening of commercial activity and the rapid movement of people from one locality or country to another have broken in upon settled social establishments. New lands, new areas of productive power, new methods of manufacture and improved processes, together with greatly increased means and facilities for intercommunication have revolutionized old economic conditions and practices. The result of the change to different conditions of life is that great numbers of people, engaged in industrial pursuits, for example, find it almost impossible to adapt themselves to a world constantly unfolding itself before them in new ways, and this either because they are totally unfitted to adopt a change of employment or because they are ignorant of the means whereby freedom from economic thraldom may be secured. Hence, the ordinary man seeks at once to inquire the reason of the many difficulties which he is constantly forced to meet, but contented with a more or less imperfect examination of conditions he assumes that the whole of society is quite astray. He sees only a state of affairs where the rich are prospering at the expense of the poor and soon he becomes at war with himself and his fellows. His practical life leads him to set up a 'social problem' which must of necessity

have a definite social cure. The whole economic structure rests for him on some sort of foundation which he thinks in a more or less vague way is wrongly laid and wrongly built upon. Hence depending on his definite, limited ideas, he is ready to adopt any scheme, any proposition which looks to wholesale reconstruction. The point of view of the ordinary moral reformer is exactly the same, there is a certain moral evil: it must have a certain definite cure. Once we have obtained a new economic structure the artisan's happiness is complete ;-once we arrive at a wholesale plan for the regeneration of evils in the state the heaven of the reformer is won. An additional element which influences the man engaged in endeavor to strengthen morality is this, that many of the later movements appear to strike at the root of settled religious observances. The shock to the religious world from inquiry and criticism seems to have been already sufficient to unsettle faith; and in his alarm at the more radical effects which new economic tendencies seem to threaten, the reformer falls back upon the past and is ready with every weapon to fight for old ideas at any cost.

As in the world of trade and commerce so in the region of intellectual work, great achievements have been wrought. Here the evidence would seem to indicate that most has been done in the field of the more practical sciences. Long in a semi-dormant state they seek to occupy the whole intellectual field. Not that literature, philosophy and the arts have no place: not that determined effort on the part of noble minds is not being made to recall the multitude to the ideal life. Such efforts are being continually put forth and are silently working a revolution whose results shall be more fully apparent only when the reaction against the scientific spirit has properly come. Now the characteristic of scientific inquiry is that it is constantly looking for actual results. Definite accomplishment is its watchword. But when we bring this scientific method into the world of politics and society we are seeking to make use of a method and a spirit which requires to be very carefully employed. For the scientific spirit, as I have said, looking to definite accomplishments, is taken up by the labor leader or the zealous social reformer who each. in his own way thinks he has discovered a scientific foundation for the ideas and aims that bis every day life has fixed for him.

I hope I shall not be supposed to mean that scientific teaching necessarily narrows men's views or leads to purely materialistic results in the various activities of life. But rather that by the nature of such teaching and study those who are grown impatient of the slow inquiry into social questions or those whose training is not such as to warrant the use of scientific methods are led to devise short means whereby some tangible results may be the more readily won in the field of reform.

On this side of the sea the comparative ease with which nature has been conquered, together with a wide freedom that confirms our British pride in doing as we like, has strongly tended to accentuate our delight in definite accomplishment. Moreover a large part of the American people have long considered that all good things come from the Government and we in Canada are ready to adopt the same view. It tends to shift responsibility and we forget that our real governors are after all ourselves. Too many of our law-makers also fall to the level of demagogues and truckle to every sectional wish of the electorate. Hence the moral reformer seeking to ameliorate aggravated conditions of life or to root out some evil in the state and approaching the matter from the 'problem' point of view naturally looks for a special means of accomplishing his purpose. And since the most expeditious machinery is that of special legislation, Parliament is expected to do all that is necessary by granting some kind of a remedial measure. Hence our Legislative Halls are besieged by suppliants asking for peculiar legislation, relying upon petitions numerously signed by the electors. Therefore it follows that many of our statutes are purely efforts of a distracted party to conciliate a rebellious element in its ranks or perhaps to forestall the Opposition, by gaining for example the favor of the Lord's Day Alliance or the Licensed Victuallers Association.

With these preliminary observations let us proceed to investigate some of the principles that should guide us in endeavoring to place upon the statute books acts that deal more or less directly with moral questions. Having done this we shall then pass on to consider briefly some particular aspects of our present legislation.

In the early stages of Hebrew history legislation and morality were in complete harmony for no differentiation had