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Montesquieu.
43

with us, and the jealousies and antipathies of white, brown, yellow and black races present an insoluble problem to the legislator in almost every part of the globe. Nor are the legislative problems which, apart from race, arise from the contrast between different degrees and stages of civilization, less numerous, less difficult, or less interesting. Within the British Empire we have to legislate for the hill-tribes of India, for the fetish-worshippers of Western Africa, and for the savages of New Guinea, and a museum full of instruction and suggestions to the statesman and the jurist is to be found in the Regulations made by the Government of British India for its less advanced regions and in the Ordinances which have been passed for the West African Protectorates. Thus the causes of difference remain and are of importance. But on the whole the importance of the causes which make for difference tends to decrease, and the importance of the causes which make for uniformity tends to increase. Take up one of the annual summaries of the world's legislation which are published by the French and English Societies of Comparative Legislation. Your first impression will be one of bewilderment at the multiplicity and variety of the subjects dealt with. But if you read on, and still more if you extend your studies over a series of years, you will be struck with the large number of important subjects which recur with unfailing regularity in the legislation of each state in each year. Education, factory laws, mining laws, liquor traffic,—everywhere you will find the same problems being dealt with on lines of increasing similarity, though with a due recognition of the differences arising from diversities of race, character and local conditions. In the year 1902 the legislature