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A new theory has just been propounded at Paris in a book called “Armanase,” (a Sanscrit word, meaning the “Reign of Capacity").  The author asserts the present forms of administrative government are injurious instead of useful to society, and ought to be replaced by institutions of a new and different order.  His principle is, that the sovereignty of the individual ought to be instituted for that of governments, and that great associations of mutual assurance may be advantageously substituted for the existing system of management by office-holders.  The author shows also that the progress of the natural and mechanical sciences will deliver man from the pressure of the more painful sorts of labor; and that wealth, freed from the barriers which now hinder its circulation, would be distributed freely throughout society.  Intellectual property would be seriously guaranteed, and would enrich the men of genius, whose inventions and discoveries are now profitable, not to the authors, but to the capitalists who take advantage of them.  By this means an important element of revolutions will be removed.  The author proposes, that in order to prevent all suffering, a civil list shall be set apart for the people, who will be the king.  This civil list is to be composed of a tax of one per cent., levied on all who have property in favor of those who have nothing.  But, says he, let no one imagine that all would be dissolution and ruin in this system, without law or government.  Crimes and offenses will be tried by juries, that is to say, by a living code.  Property will no longer be seizable for debt, and the courts will become useless.  Everybody shall have the absolute right to buy land by paying its possessor ten per cent, on its value:  this is to give a chance for carrying on all sorts of grand public enterprises without trouble from the proprietors of little pieces of land.  It may perhaps be doubted, whether the “Reign of Capacity” has exhibited any astonishing endowments in that respect.

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THACKERAY, in Pendennis, has given offense, it appears, to some of the gensd’armes of the Press, by his satirical sketches of the literary profession.  Those whose withers are unwrung will admit the truth of many pages and laugh at the caricature in the rest.  In the last number of the North British Review is a clever article upon the subject, written with good temper and good sense.  Hitherto publishers have been ridiculed and declaimed against as “tyrants” and “tradesmen,”—­made to bear the onus of “poetical” improvidence, and to sustain the weight of a crime which no author can pardon—­the rejection of manuscripts.  The authors have painted the portraits of publishers; but an ancient fable suggests that if the lion had painted a certain picture, it would not have been a lion we should see biting the dust.

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