We ridicule fetish-worship, yet, spite of experience, the civilized man bows down and worships the Legislature, and invokes its aid as blindly as the savage does that of his favourite idol-spite of the experience we have had not only of its inability to do good, but evil instead of good. What are the thousands of Acts of Parliament which repeal preceding Acts but so many admissions of its fallibility? What evidence of failure can be more convincing than the confession in the Report of the Poor Law Commission: "We find, on the one hand, that there is scarcely one statute connected with the administration of public relief which has produced the effect designed by the Legislature, and that the majority of them have created new evils, and aggravated those evils which they were intended to prevent." In a minute of the Board of Trade (November, 1883), it is said that since "the Shipwreck Committee of 1836, scarcely a session has passed without some Act being passed, or some steps being taken by the Legislature or the Government, with this object (preventing shipwrecks); and that "the multiplicity of statutes, which were all consolidated into one Act in 1854, has again become a scandal and a reproach;" each measure being passed because previous ones had failed. And there comes presently the confession that "the loss of life and of ships has been greater since 1876 than it ever was before." And note this-meanwhile the cost of administration has been raised from £17,000 a year to £73,000 a year.