One more experience in legislation is an nounced from New Zealand. This time it takes the form of a state system of old-age pensions, by which the poor are to be provided for in their old age in all cases in which they have not made a sufficient provision to secure themselves against want. As yet the details of the scheme are not available for criticism, but its main features are sufficiently distinct to arouse interest and atten tion. Unlike the German system, which is pater nal in its operation by compelling workmen to contribute to a provident fund while they are young and vigorous, the New Zealand plan is evidently socialistic in idea. There is to be no special contribution by the workers to secure the advantage of the pension. As a citizen, the State recognizes that it is bound to see that he or she does not want food and covering in old age, and if it is clear that any one has not the means of providing these at sixty-five years, the State will supply it. The pensions are to be paid out of the general taxation of the country, and will, of course, be made to take the place of other State aid as administered elsewhere, in the various forms of workhouses, refuges, and other State charities. Many things may no doubt be urged both for and against the experiment in theory, but it can hardly be doubted that the civilized world may be the gainer by having it presented as an object lesson in practice. New Zealand has already tried many things — some of them with marked success; it will be interesting to see the results that follow upon her last departure in state socialism. — Harper's Weekly. Under no title of the law does it so often hap pen that a judge falls into the error of prejudging a case as in prosecutions for the publication of immoral literature. There is no reason for this except that a weak judge is liable to be overcome by the temptation to appear respectable at the defendant's expense. Admirable is the blunt honesty of the late Judge Nelson, of Boston, who, in a case of this -kind, when Assistant District Attorney Almy was struggling to construe into a publication some objectionable notions that ex isted in his own fancy rather than in the book itself, dismissed the case with the remark : " The court is robust enough to stand that." London reeently had a laugh at Sir John Bridge, who was so previous as to request ladies to retire from the
court room before the reading of alleged immoral matter, and, of course, before it could be deter mined whether it were really immoral or not. A spectator hits off the scene in this way : — There was a blushing magistrate All in the street of Bow; Said he : " This case is very blue; Dear ladies, go! I beg you to — It really is not fit for you." And yet they would not go. The magistrate he shook his head, And said with air recondite : "The law permits you to be here, 'Tis true; but mark, this book will sear Your moral fiber; mine, I fear. Was long since quite beyond it." And yet the ladies stayed and stayed Until the case was over; Their friends now scan them eagerly The awful difference to see 'Twixt what they were and what they be, Yet naught can they discover.
CURRENT EVENTS. No less than five systems of law are in use in Ger many. The English and Chinese languages are said to be the only two among all those known that class inani mate objects as of the neuter gender. An amusing " international " incident recently stirred up the Spanish legation at Berlin. The French cook beat the German housemaid for damaging a cake before he took time to discover that the English chambermaid was the culprit. As the crime was committed on " foreign " soil, the police would have been unable to right the wrongs of the housemaid had not the ambassador discharged the cook; other wise the German woman would have been compelled to submit in her own country to Spanish jurisdiction, because the place where she received her beating is extra-territorial. France has paid its last pension to Napoleon the First's soldiers. In 1869 a law was passed granting fifty dollars a year to all non-commissioned offi cers and privates who had served ten years in the armies of the First Republic or of the First Empire and had received a wound. For the first year the payments amounted to six hundred thousand dol lars; last year the sum was fifty dollars; and the last recipient is now dead, at the age of one hundred and five years.
