I find several noteworthy examples of bad diction in an article in a recent number of an Australian magazine. The following are some of them: "_Large capital_ always manages to make _itself_ master of the situation; it is the small capitalist and the small landholder that would suffer," etc. Should be, "_The large capitalist ... himself_," etc. Again: "The small farmer would ... be despoiled ... of the meager profit which _strenuous_ labor had conquered from the _reluctant_ soil." Not only are the epithets in italics superfluous, and consequently weakening in their effect, but idiom does not permit _strenuous_ to be used to qualify _labor_: _hard_ labor and _strenuous_ effort. Again: "Capital has always the choice _of_ a large field." Should be, "the choice _offered by_ a large field." Again: "Should capital be withdrawn, tenements would soon prove insufficient." Should be, "_the number of_ tenements would," etc. Again: "Men of wealth, therefore, would find their Fifth Avenue mansions and their summer villas a little more burdened with taxes, but with this increase happily balanced by the exemption of their bonds and mortgages, their plate and furniture." The thought here is so simple that we easily divine it; but, if we look at the sentence at all carefully, we find that, though we supply the ellipses in the most charitable manner possible, the sentence really says: "Men would find their mansions more burdened, but would find them with this increased burden happily balanced by the exemption," etc. The sentence should have been framed somewhat in this wise: "Men ... would find their ... mansions ... more burdened with taxes, but this increase in the taxes on their real estate would be happily balanced by the exemption from taxation of their bonds, mortgages, plate, and furniture." Again: "Men generally ... would be inclined to laugh at the idea of intrusting the modern politician with such gigantic opportunities for enriching his favorites." We do not _intrust_ one another with _opportunities_. _To enrich_ would better the diction. Again: "The value of land that has accrued from labor is not ... a just object for confiscation." Correctly: "The value of land that has _resulted_ from labor is not _justly_ ... an object _of_ confiscation." _Accrue_ is properly used more in the sense of _spontaneous growth_. Again: "If the state attempts to confiscate this increase by means of taxes, either rentals will increase correspondingly, or such a check will be put upon _the_ growth _of each place_ and _all the_ enterprises _connected with it_ that greater injury would be done than if things had been left untouched." We have here, it will be observed, a confusion of moods; the sentence begins in the indicative and ends in the conditional. The words in italics are worse than superfluous. Rewritten: "If the state _should_ attempt to confiscate this increase by means of taxes, either rentals _would_ increase correspondingly, or such a check _would_ be put upon growth and enterprise that greater injury would," etc. Again: "The _theory_ that land ... is a _boon_ of Nature, to which every person has an inalienable right equal to every other person, is not new." The words _theory_ and _boon_ are here misused. A _theory_ is a system of suppositions. The things man receives from Nature are _gifts_, not _boons_: the gift of reason, the gift of speech, etc. The sentence should be: "The _declaration_ (or _assertion_) that land ... is a _gift_ of Nature, to which every person has an inalienable right equal to _that of any_ other person, is not new." Or, more simply and quite as forcibly: "... to which one person has an inalienable right equal to that of another, is not new." Or, more simply still, and more forcibly: "... to which one _man_ has as good a right as another, is not new." By substituting the word _man_ for _person_, we have a word of one syllable that expresses, in this connection, all that the longer word expresses. The fewer the syllables, if the thought be fully expressed, the more vigorous the diction. Inalienability being foreign to the discussion, the long word _inalienable_ only encumbers the sentence.