It is remarkable that increased military service in Germany and France has been accompanied by higher rates of suicide, which only serves still further to illustrate a theory of Professor Morselli (1879), in which it is laid down that a soldier's life is doubly exposed to self-murder. Intemperance is also a powerful cause, to which Brown attributes 12 per cent. of suicides in England, while Casper gives the ratio as high as 25 per cent. in Germany. The French classification is generally admitted to be pretty true of all countries: 34 per cent. from insanity, 15 per cent. drink, 23 per cent. grief, and 28 per cent. various causes. Among the latter, Dr. Crichton Browne counts "the loss of those religious feelings which contribute to the strength and endurance of the mind," and this also helps to explain the rise in France and Germany.

The wear-and-tear of town life has such an ill effect on the brain and nervous system that suicide is twice as common as in the country. Paris holds a terrible pre-eminence (five times the rate of London), showing how closely this spectre follows on the kibes of pleasure and extravagance. The rates in the great cities for the past ten years averaged per million inhabitants, yearly, as follows:-

Spring
Summer
Autumn
Winter.

296

313

196

195

It is gratifying to observe that London is almost the least given to suicide, and that the rate is now 13 per cent. less than in the ten years ending with 1860, although, as shown previously, the rate for England has risen in the interval. The same is true of Berlin with respect to Prussia. Can it be that climatic changes often turn the balance, as in the case of the seasons? Notwithstanding the greater suffering of the poor in winter, and the gloominess of that time of year, it is the season when suicide is lowest, the ratios being as follows:

1,000

As regards the sexes, it appears that three-fourths of the cases are males, which shows that if the female intellect be less powerful than man's, it is at the same time better balanced, or at least more capable of standing against reverses of fortune, and facing the battle of life. The ratio differs with each country as follows :—

The higher percentages for women are in the two countries where they take an active part in the business of life, which is of course only a natural consequence, but it may serve as a caution to prevent them from taking part in politics, or matters best suited for men. Their influence in checking or preventing suicide is seen to happiest advantage in the fact that married people are less exposed than unmarried, since the latter constitute 56 per cent., the married only 44 per cent. of the total. Domestic ties, religious training in youth, and a sense of the duties that each of us owes to society, are the best safeguards against the growing evil. There is nothing in true philosophy or civilization contrary to those precepts of Christianity which tell us, that he who commits suicide is like a soldier who deserts his post, and that every dereliction on the part of an individual must redound to the injury of the commonwealth.

M. G. MULHALL.

THE NEW EGYPTIAN CONSTITUTION.

THE

HERE are two tests by which a Constitution must be judged. One is, does it oppose a permanent barrier to the introduction of arbitrary and bad government? The other test is, does it develop the political independence of the people in such a way that the path is made clear for the ultimate attainment of the best possible government of which the country admits? One of these tests may be satisfied without the other, and that constitution is best, which, in the highest degree, most assuredly satisfies both.

For instance, it is the best defence of the Constitution of the United States that the broad representative basis on which it rests, and the elastic institutions it comprises, afford the highest hopes that some day the best governmental system for the country, according to its peculiar social, economical, and geographical conditions, will be worked out. But the long persistence of slavery, the notorious administrative corruption, and the abuses following at once from over-centralization and over-decentralization, are sufficient proof that the constitution has not satisfied the test of permanently resisting bad principles and practices of government.

Similarly in England, up to quite modern times, the Constitution satisfied the test of vindicating the principle of political freedom and of preparing the way for a system of government fully adequate to the requirements and aspirations of the people, but certainly did not satisfy the test of rendering arbitrary or corrupt government impossible. It was only when the recognition of Ministerial responsibility, publicity of administration, and the definition of the prerogatives of the Crown proceeded with accelerated rapidity— as they have been doing for the last half century-that unassailable barriers were, for the first time, raised against bad government.

The two tests are now in course of being satisfied at once. An effective popular check is maintained against despotism and corruption in the present, and it only needs an indefinite extension of the electoral area, and improved mechanism for ensuring adequate representation, to secure that, in the future, the government shall exactly correspond with the true national requirements.

It

These remarks suggest the true and only standard by which the new Egyptian Constitution should be tried. Of course, this Constitution, just because it is new and because it is Egyptian, has a variety of foes, or more or less sceptical and cynical well-wishers. is, first of all, a "paper" constitution-a species of original sin, for which, in some people's mind, there is no atonement. Secondly, it is true that the Egyptian people are scarcely yet escaped out of practical slavery, and have little enough of the political instincts of the inhabitants of even the worst governed European country. Thirdly, the constitution is imposed from without, and not developed from within. Fourthly, the crying want of the people at the moment is rather the negative element of security against rapacity, corruption, and anarchy, than the positive element of political power.

All these deductions from the value of the new Egyptian Constitution are well worthy of consideration, and should certainly check any disposition to premature jubilation or extravagant hopes. Nevertheless, the provision of a permanent system of government for Egypt was an indispensable part of the task of resettling the country; and the only relevant question now is, to what extent does the particular system provided satisfy the two tests propounded above? Does the system, in proportion to its development, tend to render bad government impossible? Does the system tend to bring about such a correspondence between the will of the whole people and the conduct of government that at some future day, in default of external obstacles, the form and practice of government will exactly conform to the needs of the people?

It is no answer to these questions to allege that the new Assemblies now created are to have a very limited influence on legislation, and that the individual Egyptian is to have-owing to the doubly indirect system of representation adopted-only a very remote influence on the debates in those Assemblies. The issue turns on the preparation made for the future, not on the arrangements for the immediate present; on the organic structure of the whole constitutional fabric, not on the temporary restrictions and limitations. These restrictions and limitations are of political, not of constitutional, import. A few strokes of the pen can sweep them out, substituting direct for indirect elections, and imparting to the Legislative Council and the General Assembly exclusive and plenary

legislative powers. Unlike the constitutions granted to their people by the feudal monarchs of Europe, the Egyptian Constitution does not represent existing politic al facts and the adjustment of actual political forces. It is rather a witness for the claims of humanity which will one day be vindicated, and can only be successfully vindicated, by the training which the habitual use of these very forms will supply.

Here, too, lies one of the main difficulties of the situation, and which might seem to give a peculiar venom to the imputation of the constitution being on "paper." Everywhere in Western Europe, even in France at the time of the first Revolution, the elements of the new constitutions have been found in the reciprocal relationships in which consisted the essence of the feudal system. The people had well-ascertained claims against their chiefs, and the chiefs had well-ascertained claims against their people. The Public Assembly was a mere organ for the regulation and settlement of these opposed claims. Individuality and community of interest were reconciled from the first by more or less rough representative expedients, and the example of the Church, in its councils and its episcopal organization, was ever at hand to prefigure machinery of secular government.

But in Egypt the only materials on which to build have been the rude machinery for electing village sheiks, and the spurious and only nominally elective process for choosing members of the Chamber of Notables. These materials afforded a basis, but a wholly insufficient one, upon which to construct an easily regulated system of universal male suffrage, and a series of national and local Assemblies resting on a representative foundation.

In order to appreciate the magnitude of the edifice which has been constructed on such frail materials, it will be convenient, first, to review the different Assemblies which have been created, and then to examine the electoral system on which they repose.

There are to be three classes of Assemblies-that is, one "Legislative Council," one "General Assembly," and as many "Provincial Councils" as there are provinces in Egypt proper, that is, fourteen.

To the English mind, the centre of the system will be the Legislative Council. As the Constitution is at present settled, the only authoritative source of legislation is the Khédive with his Council of Ministers. That is, every law and decree is promulgated in the name of the Khédive, after being countersigned by the President of the Council of Ministers, and the particular Minister concerned.

Nevertheless, the Legislative Council cannot but have very considerable influence on legislation, so great influence indeed that it is hardly conceivable that a law could be persisted in, in the face of a determined remonstrance of the Legislative Councii. 3 P

VOL. XLIII.