in the exercise of ordinary care and prudence he ought not to have done or did he omit any precaution which a prudent and careful man would or ought to have taken.

In order to recover, the plaintiff must establish by a fair preponderance of proof that the defendant was guilty of negligence, and that the injury complained of was the natural and ordinary result of such negligence, and that the negligence was the proximate cause of the injury, which a reasonably prudent and cautious person ought to have apprehended might result from the act which he did.

But the fact that the plaintiff was hurt without his own fault or negligence, cuts no figure in the absence of evidence going to show the defendant to be legally chargeable with the injury.

Now all this has been swept away, and one large body of relations between man and man has been recognized as exempt from what seemed to be the most reasonable and common sense rules.

In the next place this legislation abandons the common law doctrine of compensation. In no case under the English law or under any of the continental laws does the injured man receive back what he has lost, nor does he receive its equivalent. What he receives is an arbitrary portion of it. It is given to him as alms. Its amount bears no relation whatever to the degree of fault which may be ascribed to the master, and the amount of suffering and injury which the man himself has received. It is assessed in the spirit of poor law relief and not in the spirit of damages. It is this form of the compensation awarded under the statute which makes me say that it is a taking from the rich and giving to the poor, because all idea of merit or demerit on either side has been removed, and the only question is, whether the relation of employer and employed existed at the time of the injury?

Another observation occurs to me, and that is, that none of this legislation is or can be general, but must necessarily be special and confined to a part only of the laboring population. If I am a German employer and keep the number of my shop hands down to nine, the law does not apply to me. If I am a German farmer or an English farmer, I may have a thousand

hands under me, and the law does not apply to me. It has been an accepted principle of modern legislation, that it should be general where new burdens were imposed upon the subject of it. It should be general at least in so far that it should apply to all the members of a given class. I do not cite this as a fault in this legislation: I only mention it as one point in which it departs from the recognized habits of English law makers.

Another thing that is noticeable, though it is not new, is the restriction imposed by these statutes upon freedom of contract. This, to be sure, is only one more step in the direction in which legislation has long been tending. There are a great many vital subjects on which we can no longer contract as we will. We can no longer make any contract we please with an insurance company. We can no longer make any contract we please with a railroad company for transportation of our goods, and now the Englishman is forbidden to make any contract he pleases with the man who employs him, or with the man whom he employs, if the employment is one of a certain category.

Now what does all this mean? It seems to me that such legislation is the beginning of the application to our social system of ideas flagrantly in conflict with those upon which it has been built up. It is the beginning of the substitution of society for the man. It is the beginning of the substitution of the Commune for the individual. With this in mind it is rather curious to reflect that the whole history of law, so far as we know anything about it, displays the struggle of the individual out of the traditional bonds in which his city, his village, or his family confined him. In the words of Prof. Maine, "the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from status to contract": is it possible that we are approaching the beginning of a reversal of the process, and that we are drifting to a condition where, making allowance for what is termed "industrialism," a man's rights and duties are to be determined more by what closely resembles status than by his own free choice, as expressed by contract?

New Haven, July, 1898.

MORRIS F. TYLER.

Mc

DENMARK AND ITS AGED POOR.

OST students of social questions know more or less of the details of the provision made in the elaborate scheme of German State Insurance for workers whose vigour has waned or vanished with increasing years. Far otherwise is it with regard to the special provision which the neighboring country of Denmark has made for its disabled workers. Some ignominiously thrust it aside as a mere mischievous extension of poor-law relief. Some have never heard of what is being done in a country which they probably regard as insignificant. Yet it is a fact, that a most important social experiment has been made during the last seven years in this little kingdom, and in what follows an account is given of the nature of this experiment and of some of its results, so far as these are at present available.

On the 9th of April, in the year 1891, the law under which the new conditions of the experiment referred to were established was finally approved. It came into operation on July Ist of the same year for all the country, excepting only the metropolis, Copenhagen, and its suburb, Frederiksberg. In these, the operation of the law was delayed till January 1st, 1892. The general purport of the law was, that persons qualified by age and by character were to be entitled to relief from public funds freed from all dishonour, or from any loss of citizenship rights, such as accompany the receipt of ordinary poorrelief. The age qualification is that applicants must have completed their 60th year. The character-test involves several points, failure in regard to any of which destine the applicant to receive assistance in case of destitution from the poor-law funds and under the circumstances of dishonour associated with the pauper. The successful applicant, then,

must be free from taint of crime or of misdemeanours involving loss of civil rights and dishonour. He (or she) is disqualified if his need arise from having followed a disorderly or extravagant mode of life, from having made excessive provision

for children or others (in order to qualify by poverty for the relief), or otherwise from his own fault. It is also a disqualification if the applicant has, during the ten years preceding the application, received relief under the poor-law or been found guilty of vagrancy or begging. Further, to state clearly what is assumed in the preceding, grants are only made in case of need; that is to say, age, character and need are all taken into consideration.

A temporary arrangement provided for the case of those who, not having received poor-relief while between 50 and 60 years of age, had yet, when over 60, but before the new law came into force, been driven to seek the assistance of the poorlaw. Relief under such circumstances is no disqualification, which merely means that persons who thus accepted the less desirable form of relief are not to be forever condemned to it because they had the misfortune to be old and destitute (though deserving) before the new form of relief was established.

The assistance given must be sufficient to provide the necessaries of life and treatment in case of sickness for the applicant and for those dependent on him. The relief may be withdrawn on cessation of need or of merit, and its amount depends on the resources of the recipient, being less where there is income from other sources than where there is absolute dependence on the grant made.

Applicants are required to make a statement of any means they may possess, and of the approximate earnings of their household during the preceding year. They must also state the amount of their debts, if any, the causes of their need and the amount of assistance required. Their statements have to be attested by two persons, who, as well as the applicant, are liable to severe punishment for false declarations. Assistance given while inquiry is being made into the case is accounted as poorlaw relief if the application be refused. The applicant's estimate of his own needs serves as a guide (and a maximum limit) in determining how much is to be given. Appeal from the decision of the authority which deals with the application is possible, and to some extent the facility is used. The details of such appeals would lead us aside into some explanation of

the local government of the country, so that we may be content with the knowledge that the decision of the persons who first receive applications is capable of being challenged before higher authorities. This challenge may not only deal with such matters as the amount of a first grant, but with any subsequent alterations in a grant. It ought to be mentioned that, at any rate in the towns, the officials who deal with this special relief are not the same as those who administer the ordinary poorrelief.

As affecting the action of local authorities, the different allocation of the financial burden of ordinary poor-relief and of this special old-age relief must be noted. In the case of paupers, the place of settlement must refund to the place giving relief the whole of its expenses. In the case of these pensions (as it will be convenient to call them) only three-quarters of the outlay can be thus reclaimed. But the burden on the locality granting pensions is less than thus appears, for a grant is made from State funds which is not to exceed one-half of the total expense, and which has so far been almost exactly one-half. A fixed maximum of 2,000,000 kroner ($536,000) has been set to this State grant, but it remains to be seen whether, if the expenses grow well beyond the point for which this is sufficient, this grant will be enlarged. The total grant is distributed to the various localities in proportion to the expenses of each locality.

Having now presented an account of the new conditions under which pensions are available to the aged poor in Denmark, I might proceed to criticise the system, pointing out its difficulties and reproducing some part of the many and interesting debates of which it has formed the subject among those interested or affected by the scheme. I prefer, however, to present an account of the chief features of the experience under the new system, after which exigencies of space will forbid all but a very few remarks critical of the moral influence exerted by the pensions. The presentation of the facts will, unfortunately, involve statements of numbers and sums of money, and for clearness and brevity these will generally be given in tabular form.