Pliable. There is this to be considered, the foreigner at present has it all his own way, and if we were to threaten to levy retaliatory duties, and he saw we were in earnest, he would think twice or thrice before he provoked our wrath, and would probably "come down." The closing of the English ports would be a very serious matter to him. Faithful. No doubt retaliation on our part would be a serious matter to France and one or two other countries; but is it prudent to threaten unless you are sure you will strike? You must remember this of all protective countries, that the high duties have been imposed on foreign goods, in order as far as possible to keep them out of the country; and the duties are chiefly aimed against English goods. The foreigner believes that his right policy is to exclude our goods, and we are always confirming him in this opinion by our indiscreet and probably unfounded boast, that if only his protective duties were abolished, we should flood his markets. Any retaliatory move on our our part would therefore in all probability be merely met on his part by a corresponding increase of duties, making them perhaps absolutely prohibitory. We might, of course, still further increase our duties and go on cutting each other's throats, to the great injury of both, and especially of England, who has the largest foreign and carrying trade in the world. Even France, whose exports to us exceed ours to her, and who would suffer most from a change in our system, would probably not in the end be injured as much as we should, for her whole foreign trade is not half so great as ours, and she is already accustomed to protective duties. Other countries, such as America, Germany, &c., would laugh at our proposed retaliation. Their manufacturers would gladly give up their small modicum of export trade to us, if only their Governments would still further tax or prohibit our imports. Certainly our international relations would not be improved by the initiation of a war of tariffs. 66 Pliable. Oh, come now; we at least should not be initiating a war of tariffs," the war exists, but all on one side. We have stood still, steadily, calmly, not to say stolidly-in the way Englishmen will-to be shot at without returning the fire, and it is about time for us to take the offensive. Faithful. Perhaps, but if we opened fire on the enemy-as you choose to assume him to be-for every gun we could bring to bear, he could unmask half a dozen and of greater calibre; and we should certainly get the worst of it. No doubt the foreigner would not like to be excluded from our ports; but so long as he believes that his best policy is to exclude our goods, retaliation on our part would be met by counter-retaliation on the other, and the responsibility of beginning this war of tariffs would be a serious one. I say then, in conclusion, that your proposal would be very injurious if adopted, and could not by any possibility lead to any ultimate beneficial results. I agree with you, however, so far as this, that if we could have universal Free Trade instead of one-sided Free Trade it would be better certainly for other nations, and probably for Great Britain. There is something however to be said for isolated Free Trade from one point of view, namely, that the protective duties of other countries, by raising their cost of production, actually give us a real protection in our own markets, and diminish foreign powers of competition with us in neutral markets; and every increase in their duties furthers this result. Anyhow, the one-sided Free Trade we enjoy is certainly better than no Free Trade at all. Pliable. As is usual in dialogues, either real or fictitious, I have hardly been able to get a word in edgeways lately; but I do not know that I have anything especial to add just now. You certainly have not entirely convinced me, but then I did not suppose you would. Who was ever convinced by argument? I confess I cannot meet all your points off-hand, but I expect when I come to think them over in the privacy of the study, I shall satisfactorily prove to myself that they are fallacious and answerable. Faithful. I think not, and I believe not. Facts are proverbially stubborn things; but you Fair-Traders seem to have become infected with the stubbornness without assimilating the facts. Pliable. Oh, but there is nothing more fallacious than facts except figures, don't you know? Faithful. All I want you to do is, as a classical writer says—and the ancients, bother them, have been beforehand with us in all our best thoughts" to examine with judgment each opinion; if it seems true, embrace it; if false, gird up the loins of thy mind to withstand it." Let me just add this: that if your Conservative friends take up this matter in the way they seem disposed to do, they will certainly land in a quagmire, from which they will find it difficult to extricate themselves. Pliable. I don't know what they mean to do, or what the order of the day may be. Faithful. Here we are at home again. Come now, Pliable, don't take such a despondent view of things in general and trade in particular; prophecies of evil often bring about their own fulfilment. Remember that this is not the first time by a score that England's last days have been numbered. We are, according to some Cassandras, always going to the dogs; and yet comparing one decade with another, we find that England steadily increases in wealth, health, wisdom, and happiness. Cheer up, the knell has not yet sounded, and unless you FairTraders get your finger in the pie, England will continue to flourish as a bay tree-though without the wickedness that is supposed to accompany so much success. SYDNEY C. BUXTON. THE GREEK TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. The New Testament in the Original Greek. The text THE HE textual criticism of the New Testament is fast becoming a burning question of the milder kind. In ordinary times a book like "The New Testament " by Drs. Westcott and Hort would have stolen quietly into the world, and, eagerly though it might have been received by a small circle of specialists and students, its influence would not at least at first-have been felt very much beyond them. But the appearance almost* at the same time of the Revised Version of the English New Testament, and the large extent to which the new readings. had been admitted into this, naturally affected a wider public and awoke a keener controversy. If there was ever any doubt on the matter, there can be doubt no longer. The newer theories of textual criticism will have to do battle for their existence. They will have to overcome something more than the vis inertia of a general dislike to change. There is a mustering of forces and a raising of standards which betokens a war in which each side will have both leaders and followers. Foremost in the attack is the article which stands at the head of the current number of the Quarterly Review. The incognito is not difficult to penetrate. There are not many hands that could deal such ringing blows, or that would deal them with such evident, not to say exuberant, glee. A subject that might well be thought dry and uninteresting ceases to be so under such treatment; and, even if the reader is being himself belaboured, he cannot fail to take his punishment in good part. I should not for a moment pretend to carry on the discussion in the same strain. In a duel of wit and invective I should be indeed " impar congressus Achillei." And yet, after all, there is a Nemesis which is apt to overtake brilliant writers. And there are perhaps subjects on Almost, but not quite, as the Quarterly Reviewer assumes (p. 319), and as I had myself assumed elsewhere (see the Expositor, New Series, No. ii. p. 243). The text of which mention is made above was, I believe, formally published five days before the Revised Version. There seems to have been no deliberate plan in such coincidence as there was. which plain unadorned statement and strict inference would be less appropriate and less sufficient. The Quarterly Reviewer seems to me, if I may say so, to possess every qualification for his task, but one. His scholarship is ripe, his learning great, his confidence in his cause absolute, his style vivacious and telling to an extraordinary degree. The one thing that he lacks is a grasp on the central conditions of the problem and a real understanding of his opponents' position. It is unfortunate, though in no way a matter for which he can be blamed, that his criticism should have been written before the second volume, containing Dr. Hort's Introduction and Appendix, had appeared. In glancing over the pages hastily, while his own article was being printed, he has been led to make one or two charges which cannot be sustained. The quotations on page 319 would give the ordinary reader a quite misleading idea of the extent to which the subjective element has prevailed in determining the text of the Cambridge edition. A certain degree of subjectivity must enter into more parts of the process than one. The Reviewer exclaims against this, and yet his own. article is full of it from beginning to end. His principles of textual criticism are arrived at per saltum, or, one might almost say, picked up off the ground with little or no methodical investigation; and his judgments on particular readings have evidently been decided more by taste and feeling than by any strict laws of evidence. Drs. Westcott and Hort, on the other hand, though they recognize the necessity of falling back, sooner or later, upon the individual mind, have probably done more than any of their predecessors to restrict the subjective element in criticism, and to mark out the definite lines which a sound criticism must follow. As the remainder of this paper will illustrate freely the way in which this has been done, there will be the less need for me to enlarge upon it at present. There is, however, perhaps a certain amount of foundation for the charge in the predominantly abstract form which Dr. Hort, who is alone responsible for the Introduction, has given to his argument. This has given rise to misunderstanding in several quarters. If he had worked more by means of concrete examples, as in the short section on "Conflate Readings," I cannot help thinking that the argument would have been at once easier to follow and more generally convincing, though it would have been difficult to convey so many valuable results in so short a compass. And yet abstract statement and capricious subjective criticism are of course at bottom quite different things. The reader may rest assured that these seeming abstractions rest upon a most solid and laborious collection of facts. Of this, too, I hope to give a slight and partial illustration from the experience of one who has been working at textual criticism for not more than a fifth part of the thirty years which Drs. Westcott and Hort have devoted to it. Another point of a similar kind on which the Review is calculated to give a misleading impression is in regard to the extent to which the editors It is far too much to say have admitted "Conjectural Emendations." that "they see a ghost to be exorcised in every dark corner," and that "specimens of the writers' skill in this department abound." Though here again it is open to those who cordially accept the main principles which he lays down, to think that Dr. Hort (who is evidently, in this respect, bolder than his colleague) has gone rather too far. Such conjectures as are put forward are at once tentative in their character and tentatively stated. I believe I shall be right in saying that every one might be rejected without in the least affecting the integrity of the argument. The outposts of an army may be driven in and yet its position in no way weakened. It should not be thought from this that I would wish the conjectures away, for they are always interesting and instructive, and (pace the Reviewer) there are really some two or three passages, e.g., Col. ii. 18, which it seems impossible to help regarding as desperate. I would only maintain-and in this I think Dr. Hort himself would agree with me-that the conjectures are not at all essential to the case. On such points as these the Reviewer would seem, from his necessarily hasty glance at the introductory matter, to have given an incorrect and exaggerated impression; but the defects of his criticism go deeper than this. There is one fundamental principle in his opponents' reasoning which he not only does not understand, but of which he does not seem to have the faintest glimmering-the principle of Genealogy. Introduce this one factor, and it will be seen how the whole fabric of elaborate criticism is shaken to its base. The writer is really all at sea. His heaviest batteries are discharged at random. The "shot and shell" which are to "leave no dark corner standing for the ghost of a respectable doubt hereafter to hide in," bury themselves harmlessly in the earth, far away from the true scene of action. It is easy to see, à priori, what an effect genealogy may have upon the bearing of the evidence. If we start from the autographs, and follow in imagination the different lines of descent, it is certain that these different lines would meet with very varied fortunes. On one, multiplication of copies would be rapid, and preservation, comparatively speaking, complete. Others would die out or be lost altogether. It is with MSS. just as it would be with living generations of men. Suppose two families, one patrician and the other plebeian, to start side by side, say, at the Conquest; one might be long ago extinct, while the other had multiplied a hundred or a thousandfold. Yet the blood of the last survivor of the first would be pure, while the others would be terræ filii to the end. Between these two extreme cases there would be any number of variations and gradations besides. A few scattered descend *The remarks on Conjectural Emendation are confined to rather less than a page and a-half. They conclude thus:-"The place of Conjectural Emendation in the textual criticism of the New Testament is, however, so inconsiderable that we should have hesitated to say even this much about it, did it not throw considerable light on the true nature of all textual criticism," &c.-Appendix, p. 72. 3 т VOL. XL. |