The twentieth century

HANDBOUND
AT THE

UNIVERSITY OF

TDROVTn DDrrcc

f

W

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTUEY

AND AFTER

XIX-

A MONTHLY REVIEW

EDITED BY JAMES KNOWLES

VOL. LIII

JANUARY- JUNE 1903

NEW YORK
LEONARD SCOTT PUBLICATION CO.

LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY, LIMITED

A-
T3

f.55

CONTENTS OF VOL. LIH

PAGE

THE CLERGY AND THE EDUCATION ACT. By D. C. Lathbury . . 1
THE NONCONFORMISTS AND THE EDUCATION ACT. By the Rev. Dr. J.

Guinness Rogers . . . . . ... 14

THE RIPON EPISODE. By Walter R. Cassels . . . .26

SIB OLIVER LODGE AND OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS:

(1) By Arthur C. Benson ...... 41

(2) By Frank Fletcher ...... 48

Is SOCIETY WOBSE THAN IT WAS ? By Lady Quendolen Ramsden . 54

LABELS. By C. B. Wheeler ....... 62

ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN POLITICS IN THE EAST. By AH Haydar Midhat . 67

THE ABYSSINIAN QUESTION AND ITS HISTORY. By George F, H. Berkeley 79
THE FINANCIAL FUTURE. By J. W. Cross . . . . .98

THE GROWTH OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD. By Sir Michael

Foster. ........ 107

ANOTHER VIEW OF JANE AUSTEN'S NOVELS. By Miss Annie Gladstone . 113
THE PRICE OF FOOD IN OUR NEXT GREAT WAR. By Captain Stewart L.

Murray ........ 122

THE STORY OF 'THE FOURTH PARTY' (concluded). — III. ITS NIRVANA.

By Harold E. Gorst ....... 132

LAST MONTH. By Sir Wemyss Reid . . 143, 337, 509, 708, 883, 1053

THE SEARCH-LIGHT : A PLAY IN ONE ACT. By Mrs. W. K. Clifford . 159

OUR CHANGING CONSTITUTION — 'THE KING IN COUNCIL.' By Sidney Low 177

THE POLITICAL TESTAMENT OF FUAD PASHA .... 190

BRITISH PHILISTINISM AND INDIAN ART. By E. B Hnvell . . 198

THE STUDY OF GREEK. By Herbert Paul ..... 210

PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL. By the Hon. Lady Ponsonby . . . 225
THE RAVEN. By R. Sosworth Smith . . . . 241, 430

AN AGRICULTURAL PARCEL POST. By J. Henniker Heaton . . 253

THE EFFECT OF CORN LAWS — A REPLY. By Harold Cox . . . 264

WASHINGTON, D.C. By the Hon. Maud Pauncefote . . . 275

MISTRESS AND MAID. By Mrs. Frederic Harrison .... 284

A WORKING MAN'S VIEW OF TRADE UNIONS. By James G. Hutchinson . 290

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY. By Charles Bright . 299
THE BEGINNING OF TOYNBEE HALL — A REMINISCENCE. By Mrs. S. A.

Barnett . . . . . . . 306

THE DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION. By O. Eltzbacher . . . 315

WHO WAS CAIN'S WIFE ? By W. Henry Kesteven . . . 330 -

THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAND'S POWER. By Professor A. Vambery . 353

THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS. By John Foster Fraser . 390
THE NEW EDUCATION AUTHORITY FOR LONDON. By the Hon. E. Lyulph

Stanley . . . . . . . 403

MACEDONIA AND ITS REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEES. By G. F. ABBOTT . 414

REINCARNATION. By Narayan Harischandra .... 446

THE REAL CIMABUE. By Langton Douglas . . . 453

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN THE NETHERLANDS. By John C. Medd . 466
THE EFFECTS OF THE CORN LAWS — A REJOINDER. By Sir Guilford L.

Molesworth ........ 476

THE BBONTE NOVELS. By Walter Frewen Lord .... 484

THE CRUSADE AGAINST PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS. By Sir Robert Anderson 496
SOCIAL REFORM : THE OBLIGATION OF THE TORY PARTY. By the Right

Hon. Sir John Gorst . 519

iv CONTENTS OF VOL. LII1

FAOI

THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH :

(1) By the Right Hon. Viscount Halifax . . . .533

(2) A REPLY. By J. Lawson Walton .... 747
THE CHURCH'S LAST CHANCE. By Lady Wimborne . . . 555
LOYALTY TO THE PRAYER BOOK. By Sir George Arthur . . . 567
AN APPEAL TO THE DEAN AND CANONS OF WESTMINSTER. By the Rev.

Hubert Handley ....... 577

EUROPE AND SOUTH AMERICA. By Somers Somerset . . . 581

SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE. By John

Macdonell ........ 587

THE ' HORRIBLE JUMBLE ' OF THE IRISH LAND LAWS. By Sir Alexander

Miller. ........ 599

LITERARY CRITICS AND THE DRAMA. By Henry Arthur Jones . . 614

THE GOSPEL OF MR. F. W. H. MYERS. By W. H. Mallock . . 628

FROM THIS WORLD TO THE NEXT. By Frederic Harrison . . . 645

THE NOVELS OF PEACOCK. By Herbert Paul .... 651

A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT. By the Countess of Wancick . . . 665

CORN-SHOWING IN BRITISH COUNTRIES. By E. Jerome Dyer . . 670

THE DUEL IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA. By It. Cl. Bachofen von Echt . 678
THE INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY. By J. Keir Hardie . . . 636
THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE LICENSING QUESTION. By Sir Robert

Hunter ........ 695

THE IRISH LAND BILL :

(1) ' A SCHEME OF PERNICIOUS AGRARIAN QUACKERY.' By His

Honour Judge O'Connor Morris . . . .721

(2) THE LATEST: Is IT THE LAST? By the Right Hon. Lord

Monteagle ....... 738

THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN GERMANY. By O. Eltzbacher . . 755

THE CANALS OF MARS : ARE THEY REAL ? By the Rev. Edmund Ledger 773
THE MONUMENTS IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL. By Alfred Higgins . 786

THE DETERIORATION IN THE NATIONAL PHYSIQUE. By George F. Shee . 797
WHAT is THE ADVANTAGE OF FOREIGN TRADE ? By the Right Hon.

Leonard Courtney ....... 806

SOME MORE LETTERS OF MRS. CARLYLE. By Augustine Birrell . . 813

LONDON CONGESTION AND CROSS-TRAFFIC. By Captain George S. C.

Swinton ........ 821

A FORGOTTEN ADVENTURER. By the Countess of Jersey . . . 834

THE NEW ZEALAND ELECTIONS. " By O. T. J. Alpers . . . 849

RADIUM AND ITS POSITION IN NATURE By William Ackroyd . . 856

THE LOST ART OF SINGING. By M. A. R. Tuker . . . .865

A FUTURE FOR IRISH BOGS. By Lieut. -General Sir Richard Sankey . 876
IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY :

(1) By the Right Hon. Sir Herbert Maxivell . . .897

(2) By Sir Gilbert Parker . . . . . .906

(3) By Benjamin Taylor ...... 911

HOME RULE WITHOUT SEPARATION. By the Right Hon. Sir Henry

Drummond Wolff ....... 918

THE BOND-HAY TREATY. By P. T. McGrath . . . .924

CONQUEST BY BANK AND RAILWAYS. By Alfred Stead . . . 936

' THE WAY OF DREAMS.' By Lady Currie . . . . .950

FREE LIBRARIES. By J. Churton Collins ..... 968

MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER. By the Hon. Mrs. Chapman 982 \
AN UNPOPULAR INDUSTRY. By Miss Catherine Webb . . . 989

ISiONEHENGE AND THE MIDSUMMER SUNRISE. By Arthur R. Hinks . 1002

WESSEX WITCHES, WITCHERY, AND WITCHCRAFT. By Hermann Lea . 1010

THE INCREASE OF CANCER. By Dr. Alfred Wolff . . . . 1025

THE TAJ AND ITS DESIGNERS. By E. B. Havell .... 1039

INDUSTRIES FOR THE BLIND IN EGYPT. By the Countess of Meath . 1050

LORD KELVIN ON SCIENCE AND THEISM 1068

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTURY

AND AFTER

XX

No. CCCXI— JANUARY 1903

THE CLERGY AND THE EDUCATION ACT

THE Education Bill of 1902 has contained many surprises, but the
greatest of them has been reserved for the clergy of the Church of
England. "With few exceptions they saw nothing in the Bill but an
end to a financial burden. Their schools were to be maintained out
of the rates, and if the obligation to keep the buildings in repair
caused some of them a passing anxiety it was slight in comparison
with the relief afforded in other directions. That the Bill would make
a radical change in their own relation to their schools never occurred
to them. Nor, indeed, did it occur to their opponents. A measure
which embodies the greatest ecclesiastical revolution that the Church
of England has seen since the Reformation is still regarded by
Nonconformists as a formal confirmation of the clergy in all their
traditional privileges. A measure which makes the vicar of each
parish in which there is a Church school the removable deputy of
VOL. LIII — No. 311 B

2 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

a lay committee is still commonly described as a fresh riveting of
sacerdotal chains. The clergy may be pardoned for not being wise
before the fact when as yet their adversaries have not become wise
after it.

The explanation of this inability to realise what the Bill would
do must be sought in a remote past. Before the Act of 1870 the
elementary education of the country was practically in the hands of
the clergy. They had taken it up when there was no one else to do
it. For a generation indeed the State had contributed largely to
the support and to a less extent to the building of voluntary schools.
Bat the initiative in the vast majority of cases had lain with the
«lergy. As the Government grants were increased to meet new and
larger conceptions of the meaning of education the burdens thrown
-on the clergy grew in at least an equal degree. Nominally, indeed,
they were borne by the body of subscribers to the schools. But these
.subscribers had to be obtained by the importunity, stimulated by
the example, and not infrequently replaced by the self-sacrifice of
the clergy. It was only natural, therefore, that in the clerical scheme
of the universe the parish school should hold a place only second to
that of the parish church. Indeed, as the parish school had often
to be kept going out of the vicar's own pocket, while the parish
-church kept itself, there was some excuse for his thinking it the
more important of the two. The Act of 1870 altered all this. The
elementary education of the country became the concern of the
State. The clergy were no longer the sole providers of schools. They
had indeed provided those which the State found in existence and
they were encouraged to provide more. But their default no longer
left their parishes school-less ; it only ensured the setting up of a
State school. As we look back thirty years it seems strange that
the significance of this change was not better understood. In giving
"voluntary schools a formidable rival in the shape of Board schools
the Act took away one of the most effective inducements to the con-
tinuance of voluntary subscriptions. This was the origin of the
* intolerable strain ' of which so much has been heard, and of the
desire of the clergy to gain access to the inexhaustible fund out of
which the Board schools were able to make good their deficiencies.

For a long time, as the late Archbishop of Canterbury told us not
long ago, this desire was kept in check by the fear that aid from the
rates meant control by the ratepayers. In an evil hour some
ingenious person bethought him of the plan which has been adopted
in the new Act. Representation the ratepayers must have, but so
long as a perpetual majority was assured to the denominational
managers no great harm need come of this. The representative
managers would grow weary of being perpetually outvoted, and in
time they would cease to attend. But the contribution from the
rates would survive their departure and place the Church schools on

1903 THE CLERGY AND THE EDUCATION ACT 3

the secure financial level enjoyed by the Board schools. How far
this expectation would have been borne out by the event we shall
never know, because the introduction of the Kenyon-Slaney clause
has imported into the Bill a new and graver mischief than any
necessarily associated with rate aid. But even without this addition
the new Education Act would in the end have been fatal to the
value if not to the existence of Church schools. If, indeed, the Act
had in express words given the clergy the control of the religious
teaching and the managers the control of the secular education —
which was what in the first instance was supposed to be intended —
the best of the Church schools would not have been injured.
There would often have been friction, there would sometimes have
been ill-will, but in the end the parson, if he were a resolute man,
would have got his way. But he would have got it at the cost of a
severe struggle, and how many of the clergy would have had the
strength of purpose to carry on such a struggle ? The object of the
representative managers would have been to water down the religious
teaching so as to make it suitable for all the children attending the
school. This wish would certainly have been shared by some, very
often by all, the denominational managers, and thus a united board
would have been able to represent to the clergyman that he was
imperilling the peace of the parish, and perhaps depriving Noncon-
formist children of the benefit of the religious lesson, for the sake of
teaching the Church children dogmas which might equally well be
imparted to them when they had left school and were preparing for
confirmation. So put, the appeal would, I believe, have made a very
strong impression on large numbers of the clergy, and in this way
the religious teaching in Church schools would gradually have been
assimilated to that of a good Board school. The clergy, however,
as a body either refused to admit the existence of any such danger,
or accepted it as at all events a less evil than the sale of their schools
to the State.

They forgot when they did so that the exclusive attention paid
to voluntary schools had by this time become positively detrimental
to the object for which those schools had been founded. That
object was the religious education of the people. In the first
instance, indeed, the Church had given secular instruction as well,
but this was only because at that time there was no one else to do it.
Down to 1870 all went smoothly. When pretty well every school
was a Church school, there was no need to inquire whether religious
teaching and secular teaching were separable or inseparable. After
1870, however, the face of things was altered. In spite of all the
efforts of the supporters of voluntary schools, the Board schools first
overtook and then passed them. Wherever a Church school was
given up, a School Board got possession of it. Wherever a new
parish was formed, the chances were that to provide school as well

B 2

4 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

as church was more than the parishioners could compass, and the work
was left to a School Board. Every year, therefore, the number of
children who ought to have been in Church schools grew larger and
the impossibility of ever bringing them into Church schools plainer.
The utmost that was to be hoped from rate aid was the continuance
of existing Church schools, yet every year the existing Church-
schools became more inadequate to the work they were designed!
to do. The children belonging to the Church of England had in-
sensibly distributed themselves into a declining minority which still
attended Church schools, and a growing majority which attended
Board schools. Hereafter I believe the clergy will look back with
wonder at the indifference with which they had come to regard this
latter class. It was simply an accident that the children included
in it were not in a Church school, and that accident did not lessen in
the least degree the responsibility of the clergy in regard to them.
But it was a responsibility which the law forbade them to discharge
in the most natural and convenient way. They could not follow the
children into the Board schools and teach them their religion in the
hour set apart for the religious lesson.

It is fair to say that some time before the introduction of the
present Act the bishops had made an effort to get the right of
entry secured by law. In certain resolutions adopted by the joint
committee of the Convocations of Canterbury and York, there is one
asking that facilities may be granted to the clergy to give religious
instruction to any of the children in Board schools whose parents
may wish them to receive it, and offering similar opportunities for
the entry of Nonconformist teachers into Church schools. The
value attached to this proposal by its authors may be judged from
the fact that it was not pressed upon the Government in the course
of the negotiations which we must suppose to have been going on
while the Bill was on the stocks. There must have been a time
when the bishops were consulted or sounded as to the terms which
would satisfy the Church, and, if the spiritual welfare of the vast
army of children in Board schools had been very much in their
thoughts, it is inconceivable that the Bill when it came should have
contained no provision for their instruction. It has even been said —
I do not know with what amount of truth — that there was a time
when the Government were not indisposed to give the right of entry
a prominent place in their measure and only abandoned the idea
in deference to episcopal opposition. Anyhow the Church, so far
as her mind could be gathered from the bishops, the Convocations,
and the Diocesan Conferences, was willing to let those of her children
who were in Board schools go untaught, provided that she was
allowed to throw the maintenance of her own schools on the rates.
It was certain that the denominational right of entry to all schools
could not be carried through Parliament unless the Church was

1903 THE CLERGY AND THE EDUCATION ACT 5

prepared to give the representatives of the ratepayers a majority
of places on the boards of management, and rather than make this
concession she left the children in Board schools to the chances of
the Cowper-Temple clause.

Two reasons — two presentable reasons, that is to say — may be
assigned for this choice. A theory had been set up — having no
known origin and applied to no other system of education — that
religious and secular instruction must be given by the same teacher.
No doubt this combination of functions had its advantages. It set
the clergy free for other work, and it secured some knowledge of
the art of teaching in the teacher. It is to be feared that by the
side of the schoolmaster the vicar of the parish often showed to
disadvantage. He had never learnt how to give a lesson, and he, and
the children, soon discovered that to do so is seldom a matter of
intuition. On the other hand, the effective teaching of religion
•demands something more than mere technical aptitude and the
power of keeping order in a class. It requires a strong sense of
the importance of the work the teacher has taken upon himself and
of the part that religion plays in the formation of character. In
theory the schoolmaster in a Church school had been chosen for his
religious quite as much as for his secular qualifications. But the
secular qualifications were far more easily tested and the absence of
them entailed the loss of the Government grant. In many cases,
therefore, the fact that a teacher had been a student at a Church
Training College was held sufficient as a religious test, and it is
difficult to say what other could have been suggested for general
adoption. But when two years' residence at a Church Training
College became a regular mode of entry into the teaching profession
it necessarily ceased to have any religious significance. I once
asked the Principal of a great training college what the religious
standard among the students was. ' Very much,' he said, ' what it
is among the young men from whom they are taken.' With most of
them the professional side of their work was more absorbing than the
religious side. They got up a certain minimum of religious know-
ledge, but there their interest in the subject ended. It is evident
that teachers of this quality were not likely to do much towards the
creation of that special atmosphere which is often described as the
glory of a Church school. That the existence of such an atmosphere
is a very great advantage from the point of view of religion, I should
be the last to deny. But I contend first that it is not created by the
mere fact that the teachers come from St. Mark's or Whitelands, and
next that where it exists it must necessarily constitute a very serious
grievance to Nonconformists. It is an awkward fact that in some
8,000 parishes there is only one school and that a Church school. In
the great majority of cases Nonconformist parents have not, so far as
appears, objected to this. The religious character of the school has

6 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

not been marked enough to exercise any real influence on their
children. If any appreciable number of these schools were what a
Church school ought to be — if, that is, the purpose of all concerned in
them were to present the Church in the most favourable light possi-
ble, and if that purpose were carried out with the deliberate enthu-
siasm which befits men to whom religion is the great end of life —
what might not be the effect on Nonconformist children ? Prosely-
tism in the strict sense of the word there would be none. Men who
value their own creeds are not the men to treat lightly the creeds of
others. But it is a commonplace that the surest of all methods of
conversion is to make a religion attractive, to create in those who are
outside the desire to be like those whom it animates. If every
Church school in England were what a very few are, Nonconformist
parents would have real cause for alarm. As it is, they have next to
none, but that is because such Church schools as I have described are
only to be found here and there. The atmosphere argument either
proves nothing or proves a great deal too much. Either the atmo-
sphere is not to be found, or it is an atmosphere which ought not to
exist except where there are more schools than one.

We are now in a position to review the nature of the choice
which the clergy have made. The control of elementary education
had passed from them in 1870. For a time they hoped that Board
schools would only have to be provided in a few exceptional districts
and that voluntary schools would remain the rule. By degrees it
became evident that, instead of this, Board schools were everywhere
beating the voluntary schools, in virtue of the automatic method of
their creation and of the fact that they were maintained out of the
rates. The lesson that the clergy ought to have learnt from this
was that the days of voluntary schools were over, that an effort
which had been heroic at a time when but for the clergy the people
would have gone uneducated was an anachronism when the State
had taken the duty of education upon itself. The lesson that the
clergy did learn was that they must capture a share of the rates for
their own schools. They forgot, that is to say, the object for which
those schools had been founded. They forgot that a Church school
exists or ought to exist for the one purpose of teaching religion, and
that in so far as it serves any other it is only to enable it to teach
religion to more children. They forgot that in practice the secular
interests of their schools had often trespassed upon the religious inter-
ests, and that Church schools had oiten become famous as places of edu-
cation at the sacrifice to a great extent of their distinctive character.
And most of all they forgot that every year more and more children
were passing altogether out of their hands and that every year the
comparative number of children in Board schools and in Church schools
was changing to the disadvantage of the latter. In other words, they
forgot that schools which existed solely for the sake of Church

1903 THE CLERGY AND THE EDUCATION ACT 1

teaching ought to be abandoned without hesitation whenever Church
teaching could be better served in other ways. What they should
have proposed to the Government as the only solution that would
satisfy them was the taking over by the local authorities at a fair
price of all Church schools which stood in need of aid from the rates,
and the recognition of a right of entry in the vicar of the parish or
his deputies into every school provided or taken over by the local
authority for the purpose of giving religious instruction during
school hours to all children entered in the school register as belong-
ing to the Church of England. This would have secured them the
substance of Church teaching, though at the sacrifice of the
machinery by which this substance had hitherto been secured.
And even the sacrifice would have been only apparent, since the
money paid for the school buildings might have been spent in
training a distinct class of teachers for the express purpose of giving
the religious lesson in State schools.

So far, therefore, as the wishes of the clergy went, the Govern-
ment were left in no doubt. In this respect Mr. Balfour has been
blamed without reason. He is accused of accepting an amendment
which converted a measure designed to secure the clergy in the
possession of their schools into a possible instrument of expulsion.
But the mistake was not Mr. Balfour 's. He only took the clergy at
their word and gave them neither more nor less than they had asked
for. It was they who took no account of the change in the position
of school managers which the mere fact of a Church school having a
right to rate aid would be certain to effect in it. The Bishop of
Eochester put this quite rightly in the Lords on the 15th of December.
' It is,' he said, ' a matter of public notoriety that the management
clause in which the sting of the Kenyon-Slaney amendment lay hid
is the work of the whole representative body of the Church.' From
every place where the clergy met together had gone up the demand
for rate aid coupled with the concession of two places on the
managing board to the representatives of the ratepayers. It is
quite true that the majority of those from whom the request came
did not realise what was involved in it. Indeed, I am not at all
sure that Mr. Balfour himself fully realised it until, alarmed by the
Sevenoaks election, he set to work to discover how far the bill
could be modified to meet Nonconformist and anti-clerical objectors.

His search in this direction was soon rewarded. The manage-
ment clause said nothing about the clergyman of the parish. It spoke
only of the four foundation or denominational managers and of the
two managers appointed by the local authority. To these, there-
fore, belonged all the rights of management except such as were
reserved for the local authority. With the consent of that authority
they could appoint the teachers, and, as this consent might not be
withheld except on educational grounds, their choice, so far as it

8 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

was made on religious grounds, was quite unfettered. Indeed, the
Kenyon-Slaney clause as amended in the House of Lords at the
instance of the Government operated rather in restraint than in
amplification of the managers' powers. The reference to the trust
deed and the appeal to the bishop, limited and worthless as they are,
were not in the 7th clause. That contained no restriction on the
powers of the managers. What the Kenyon-Slaney amendment
really did was to bring out the true meaning of the clause — to say
in words what the managers might do instead of leaving it to be
slowly discovered by experiment. But for this the clergy would
have gone on believing their position secure until some managers
bolder than the rest had closed the school door against the vicar.
I cannot see, therefore, that they have any case against the Govern-
ment. They said by their representatives, official and other, ' Give
us a two-thirds majority on the committees of management and
maintenance out of the rates, and we are content.' They have got
both.

But the fact that the clause which has aroused so much opposi-
tion among the clergy was in the Bill all along, though it clears the
Government of blame, does not make it, and ought not to make it,
less of a shock to the clergy. What the Bill does is to laicise the
Church schools. The Opposition wanted to do more than this.
Their contention was that Church schools ought to be secularised.
This demand the Government have consistently resisted. The
Church schools were to remain Church schools in name. They
were to retain their denominational character so far as this is com-
patible with the rejection of a foundation principle of the denomina-
tion to which they are supposed to belong. A Church school under
the Kenyon-Slaney clause is like a Baptist school from which all
mention of adult baptism is excluded, or a Wesleyan school which
knows nothing of the Conference. So long as the Education Act of
1902 remains in force so much of a clergyman's pastoral work as has
been done in the school will be done in subjection to the laity.
The right to pronounce whether a particular doctrine is the doctrine
of the Church of England will, it is true, belong to the bishops, but
to the laity will belong the more practically important function
of deciding whether the doctrine in question shall be taught in a
Church of England school.

The speeches of the Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords and
of the Prime Minister in the House of Commons show that the
powers now for the first time entrusted to the laity are intended for
use, not for show. The lay managers are meant to serve a purpose.
The Government are evidently alarmed at the threatened revival of
the agitation of 1898. If they look at the matter from the strictly
ministerial point of view they may possibly be right. An anti-
Ritualist movement of any magnitude in the country generally

1903 THE CLERGY AND THE EDUCATION ACT 9

seems to me a most unlikely event. I could almost say that I wish
it were more likely than it is. For an anti-Ritualist movement,
where it is genuine and not a mere political dodge, is, at least, evi-
dence that those who take part in it care something about religion.
It is better that a man should wish to suppress confession because
he thinks that it puts the priest in the place of (rod than that he
should extend to it a contemptuous tolerance because he does not
really believe that there is such a thing as sin. The reason why we
are secure against an anti-Ritualist agitation on a large scale is that
a large proportion of the electorate has ceased to take any interest
in religion. The vision of a future life, the thought of their own
position in regard to that future life, no longer excites either hope
or fear. But a Prime Minister has to take into account the state of
opinion in his party as well as in the country, and I can easily
believe that Mr. Balfour finds this part of the prospect less satisfac-
tory. The squire is seldom a sacerdotalist, and the squire is still a
power in the Unionist ranks. On the 17th of last month Mr. Bal-
four said plainly that if the management clause of the Act had not
been understood to exclude clerical management the House would
not have looked at it. ' I had difficulty enough,' he went on, 'in
passing it as it was . . . difficulty among those who are my most
constant and loyal friends on this side of the House.' These words
reveal a state of feeling in the Unionist Party of which few of the
clergy had any suspicion. More than any other party at this
moment it is an anti-clerical party. It may seem absurd to say
this just when the whole Nonconformist body are in arms
against the alleged greed and arrogance of the Anglican clergy.
But there is a very real difference between the two tempers. The
Nonconformists dislike the clergy because they are established.
If the Church of England were a voluntary body they would no
more concern themselves with her clergy than they do with the
Roman Catholic clergy. The Unionists whom Mr. Balfour had in
his mind do not, indeed, dislike the clergy, but they like them,
as some people like cats, in their place, and that place a strictly
subordinate one. The Kenyon-Slaney clause exactly meets this
feeling. It does not forbid the managers of a Church school to
leave the clergyman in undisturbed possession of the position he has
hitherto held. Provided that he behaves himself nicely he will be
allowed and even pressed to remain. It is only when his preaching
or ritual happens to offend them that they will make use of their
new powers. In their eyes the clergyman is a useful agent but a bad
principal, and an agent they mean him to remain. So long as the
clergy were content to accept the status thus assigned to them there
was no need to register it in an Act of Parliament. Now that so
many of them take a different view of their duties and responsibilities
they need to be restrained by legislation. But, as Mr. Balfour

10 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

explained when the Kenyon-Slaney amendment was first submitted
to the House of Commons, the passing of a Clergy Discipline Bill
would be a long, troublesome, and doubtful business. The advantage
of the Education Act as completed by this clause is that it does half
the work of a Clergy Discipline Act without either trouble or un-
certainty. It gives the school managers the power of hitting the
clergy in what for various reasons is a very tender place. The
managers, as the Lord Chancellor has pointed out, will be able to hold
it in terrorem over them, and, now that attention has been drawn
to their powers, there is good reason to believe that they will be
used.

This, then, is the unappetising mess of pottage for which the
clergy have sold their birthright. They have, it is true, been uncon-
scious Esaus, but, all the same, they have played Esau's part. They
have been so absorbed in considering how to keep their schools alive
that they have not stopped to ask themselves of what use they will
be to them under the new management. It will not be long, how-
ever, before they will have evidence on this head. Wherever a
clergyman is not popular with his parishioners, they will now have
the means of making him feel their displeasure. The managers of
the Church school will have only to express their regret that by
lighting candles in the day-time, or wearing 'Mass vestments,' or
preaching the Eeal Presence in the pulpit, or sitting in the church
to hear confessions, he has forfeited their confidence, and driven them
to refuse him admission to the Church school. Thus the Act makes
a change of vital importance in the position of every parish priest.
Hitherto he has had nobody over him except the bishop and the law
courts. In future he will be subject as regards a large part of his work
to a lay tribunal of first instance with nothing to guide its members
except their own fancies. No doubt it is a part of his work which in
many cases he has left to be done by others. Mr. Balfour had
facts on his side when, in replying to Lord Hugh Cecil, he charged
the clergy with systematically making over to the elementary school
master their function in the Church school. Possibly this is one
explanation of the strange fact that the Church is often weakest
in the districts where single schools are most frequent. She has had
the education of the children in her own hands, but she has allowed
religious instruction to rank among the incidents of school life which
find their natural end when the school age is passed. But though
Mr. Balfour's charge is a true one as regards many of the clergy, it
does not bear out the conclusion he sought to draw from it. There
is a world of difference in principle between a system which makes
the parish schoolmaster the delegate of the vicar of the parish and a
system which makes him the delegate of the school managers. In
the former case, the authority remains with the vicar. He can at
any moment resume the function he has laid aside, and he can exer-

1903 TEE CLERGY AND THE EDUCATION ACT 11

cise an effectual supervision over the deputy to whom he has for the
time entrusted it. In the latter case the vicar is in the school only
on sufferance, the control of the religious instruction is out of his
hands.

It is inconceivable that the clergy should long accept such a
state of things as this. Parliament cannot relieve them of a duty
entrusted to them at their ordination, or bid them trouble them-
selves no further about a responsibility which has passed into the
keeping of a lay committee. If a clergyman is shut out of his
school, it will at once become his business to make other provision
for the religious instruction of the children whom he can no longer
reach in the school building or during school hours. How far such
an arrangement will conduce to the religious peace of a parish I
leave to the imaginations of the authors of the Kenyon-Slaney clause.
There is no need to inquire, with Mr. Balfour, whether the Church of
England regards teaching as the inalienable right of the clergy, or,
with Sir William Harcourt, whether at the Eeformation she did
not by express ordinance make over that right to the laity. Both
speculations belong to a class on which the time of politicians is
very idly spent. For them the only question worth considering is
not : ' Are such and such bodies of men right in thinking this or
that ? ' but : ' Is it true that they think it ? ' There was a great
deal of very useless discussion last spring as to the supposed want of
logic in Nonconformists when they objected to support voluntary
schools out of the rates, after supporting them without protest out of
the taxes. Probably many politicians wish now, and many more
will wish at the next General Election, that they had been at equal
pains to ascertain whether Nonconformists really did feel this
objection. In the same way the smooth working of the Education
Act will depend much less on the reasonableness than on the strength
of the hostility it has evoked in the clergy. They are indeed a body
of men as to whose action it is specially unsafe to hazard a positive
prediction. They are isolated, they are divided, they have no
recognised leaders. But to be turned out of the schools they have
till now held to be their own, or to be let remain in them only so
long as the managers think that they can be of use to the regular
schoolmaster, is a greater slight than has yet been offered them.
And it is one which, as I sincerely hope, they will not take
patiently.

But what are they to do ? It is not often that a question of this
moment admits of so plain and straightforward an answer. Let
them in the first place bethink them of the large and increasing
number of the children nominally under their charge whom they
have allowed to slip out of knowledge. What has until now been
their defence when they have been accused of neglecting Church
children in Board schools ? That entry into these schools could only

12 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

be had by giving up their own schools, and that to do this would be
to sacrifice all the advantages which children enjoy who are brought
up in a thoroughly Church atmosphere. We shall not hear much
of this argument under the new Act. Whatever other merits a
school in which the parish priest has of right no place may chance
to possess, it will certainly not have a Church atmosphere. The
parish priest who tries to give it one will soon discover that in
order to succeed he must secure the support of a majority of his
colleagues on the management, two of whom need not, and probably
will not, be Churchmen. When the clergy come to realise that for
this they have raised controversial passion to an almost unprecedented
height, undone all the advances previously made towards a better
understanding with Nonconformists, and permitted themselves to be
presented to one half of their countrymen as setting rate aid above
every other consideration, they will surely see that it is better to
have a secure position in every public elementary school than a
position from which they may at any moment be dislodged in
a particular variety of elementary schools. At all events, this
conviction is every day becoming more general. A year ago the
Churchmen who entertained it could almost be counted on the ten
fingers. Now those who hold this to be the only ultimate solution
of the religious difficulty in education are to be found at every
corner. The only point on which there is any real difference of
opinion is the length of time it will take to bring it about.

There are three systems, any one of which might conceivably be
substituted for that set up by the new Act — the Scottish system, the
German system, and the system which provides religious instruction
in all public elementary schools, but provides it at the cost and by
the agents of the denominations. The Scottish system leaves the
local authority free to teach what religion it likes in its own schools,
while permitting local minorities to build schools for themselves and
to draw their share of the Government grant. The German system
takes care that, in every school where the children are of more than
one religion, each creed shall furnish a corresponding proportion of
the teachers. Either of these plans is defensible in principle, but it
is more than doubtful whether either of them would work well
in England. The German system involves concurrent endowment,
and so has no chance of being accepted by Nonconformists. The
Scottish suits a country where the immense majority of the people
are of one religion, and that a religion the members of which are not
divided among themselves on any important matters of doctrine. This
is not a description which can be applied to the Church of England.
Among us the local authorities would constantly be asked to decide,
not merely whether the religion taught in their schools should be that
of the Church of England, but whether it should be that of the High
Church or the Low Church section of the Church of England. In this

1903 THE CLERGY AND THE EDUCATION ACT 13

way the question for the clergy is narrowed to the simple issue :
' Shall we, in the matter of religious teaching, rest content with the
Education Act of 1902, or do our utmost to get universal State
schools with denominational religious instruction set up in place of it ?'
I cannot believe that the clergy as a body will be long in making up
their minds what their answer shall be. They will prefer State
schools into which they can enter as of right to Church schools in
which they will at best be tolerated visitors. They may, however,
hesitate to declare themselves active supporters of the change
because of the difficulties which are assumed to lie in the way.
Some of these difficulties are purely mechanical, and may be got over
by a little common sense. Others relate to the supposed injury done
to the children by the discovery that mankind is not of one mind
upon the subject of religion — a fact which we may safely assume them
to have learnt when first they saw some of their companions going to
church and some to chapel. Others again rest on the alleged unwilling-
ness and incompetence of the clergy to give the religious lesson. That
some of the clergy will dislike going into the State schools, just as they
have disliked going into their own schools, is certain. But to say this
is only to say that every profession is irksome to some of its members.
Probably there are clergymen who do not welcome the return of
Sunday, and are happier outside their churches than inside them,
but we do not for that reason abolish public worship; We are
content to hope that a more careful use of patronage and a sounder
public opinion will gradually mend matters. That there are some
of the clergy who can neither give a lesson properly nor keep a class
in decent order is likely enough, but if every bishop would make six
months at a training college part of the necessary preparation for
taking orders this difficulty would soon disappear. It cannot be
impossible for a curate, with time and proper preparation, to rise to
the level of a certificated teacher. Nor will the work be wholly
done by the clergy. The need of providing religious instruction in
State schools will create a class of laymen who will offer themselves
for this duty, just as they do now for that of a lay reader. The
office of religious instructor in State schools will supply a new and
useful outlet for that lay energy which, as we are so often told, is
now allowed to run to waste.

Details like these, however, belong to the future. The business
of the present is to give expression and organisation to the growing
determination of the clergy that, so far as its arrangements for
teaching religion are concerned, the Education Act of 1902 shall
have but a short time to live.

D. C. LATHBUKY.

14 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

THE NONCONFORMISTS AND THE
EDUCATION ACT

THE Education Bill has passed into law, but the controversies amid
which it has been shaped into its present form have not therefore
come to an end. It would, indeed, be a real misfortune if, in sheer
weariness, the nation resolved to close the present discussion before
reaching a settlement which, at all events, should settle something,
and give a promise, if not of permanence, at least of lasting as long
as that which has been so rudely broken up. There has, indeed, been
discussion, which to those who do not realise the vital character of
some of the issues at stake may be wearving usque ad nauseam,
and the rude pushing of it aside may be justified by the same
reasoning which has been employed in defence of the guillotine in
Parliament. But the plea is just as weak in the one case as in the
other. The subject is not exhausted. It has simply passed out of
the stage of theory into that of action.

The attempt to fix the responsibility for the prolongation of the
Committee debates upon some excess of original sin on the part of
the Opposition, and especially of the Nonconformist section of it, is
worse than futile. It is to be traced rather to the mistaken policy
of Mr. Balfour in the construction of the measure, while the secret
of that must be found in the political circumstances of the time.
Assuming that the educational arrangements of the country were, as
some experts never weary of asserting, in a state of chaos, an honest
endeavour to reduce them to order — to co-ordinate them, I believe,
is the correct word to employ — would have been welcomed by all
lovers of efficiency. But that itself would have been sufficient for
one Bill. The Cockerton judgment — the secret history of which has
yet to be told — supplied a favourable opportunity for the introduction
of a measure whose one object should have been to make our system
complete and effective. But one condition of its favourable accept-
ance by Parliament and the country was that it should steer
absolutely clear of the religious difficulty. Mr. Balfour thought
differently. He is a friend of education, but he is also the leader of
a powerful party in which the Anglican clergy and their followers

1903 NONCONFORMISTS AND THE EDUCATION ACT 15

form a very numerous and influential element, and the leaders not
only of the extreme section, with Lord Hugh Cecil at their head, but
the Bishops, with the Convocation behind them, were clamouring
for substantial help to their sectarian schools. If educational pro-
gress alone had been contemplated in the Government policy, it
would have been wiser to divide the present Bill and treat the purely
educational arrangements apart. Mr. Balfour, in his Mansion House
speech, complained that questions of local government and sectarian
difference had been largely discussed, while those of educational
efficiency had been thrust into the background. There are numbers,
probably more among his political opponents than among his sup-
porters, who share his regrets. But the very nature of the Bill
decided the nature of the debates, and he must accept the responsi-
bility for the misfortune he deplores. It would hardly have been
possible to initiate what is nothing less than a revolution in the
administration of our educational system without a discussion on
points of local government ; but if this were inevitable, it surely
made it all the more necessary that questions so difficult should not
be still further complicated by the reopening of that religious con-
troversy which has so seriously hampered educational efficiency, and
which, it may be safely predicted, will continue to do so until it is
finally disposed of by a settlement which, however it may disappoint
extremists of all schools, will commend itself to the nation at large
as fair and equitable.

The expediency of keeping the two questions apart is so manifest
that the opposite course would hardly have been taken had there
not been some very strong reason which made it imperative. This
is not far to seek. The proposals as to the ' Voluntary ' schools were
sure to encounter so fierce an opposition that had they stood alone, the
fate of the Bill, even in a Parliament where the Ministry have so over-
whelming a majority, might have been somewhat doubtful. Certainly
it would only have been carried by the most severe exercise of party
discipline. The sympathy of those who were really interested in meet-
ing one of the most imperative demands of the new century had to be
•caught by high sounding professions of the great reform to be effected
in our scholastic system. The blessed word 'co-ordination' was coined
to attract the unwary, and so experts, who would have looked very
suspiciously on a scheme which did nothing but relieve denomina-
tionalists from bearing the cost of their own schools, were induced to
regard the proposals with a favour which otherwise they would certainly
have failed to secure. With this view, a large number of men engaged
in educational work and supposed to be representative of different
shades of opinion were consulted, and practical suggestions were asked
from them. To me it has been extremely amusing to hear in different
parts of the country of individuals who have given themselves out to
be, to some extent, authors of the Bill. Their mode of talking of

16 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

their share in the work has led some of their neighbours to think
that they were suffering from a violent attack of tete montee. But
this would be to judge them unfairly. It has been the policy of
the Government to consult a number of school managers and
teachers of a particular type, to introduce certain changes recom-
mended by them which probably may be regarded as distinct reforms,
and to use any favour which the measure might thus obtain for the
purpose of passing its more obnoxious provisions. But if in dis-
cussion the two objects of the measure seemed to come into collision
the interests of denominationalism were to be regarded as paramount
and supreme.

The results which have followed are so much in the natural order
of events that it is folly to complain of them. It is the Ministry itself
which has dragged the questions of local government and sectarian
antagonism into the arena, and so prevented due attention being
given to matters more directly educational and therefore of more vital
importance. It is deeply to be regretted that the latter have been
so lightly handled, and have in fact been dismissed with hardly
any notice at all. It is, to say the least, curious that the first step
taken by those who are intent on promoting efficiency should
be the abolition of the Boards whose work has earned for them
so high a reputation in all parts of the country, and especially in
those large towns where schools are most imperatively needed.
The need for certain changes, such as the abolition of the cumulative
vote, and possibly an entirely different system of administration for
urban and rural districts, has long been felt- by all who had a
practical knowledge of the subject. But to abolish at one fell stroke
public bodies which were rendering such invaluable service in a
sphere where it was sorely needed was a piece of fatuous folly which
seems to indicate that a minister who was impatient of the details
of the legislation had probably been unduly influenced by some
aspiring official who was too satisfied with his own judgment to
be influenced by the experience of the last thirty years. So far
from regretting that so much time has been spent in discussion
of questions bearing on local government, I have a strong conviction
that the work of the future will be materially hindered because they
have been so summarily settled by a majority which has acted as
though its business was to vote but not give reasons.

But it is with the Nonconformist opposition that I am chiefly
concerned. It is no exaggeration to say that the Free Churches
have seldom, if ever, been more united in opinion, more resolute in
purpose, and, it must be added, more fiery in temper and expression
than in their resistance to this measure. The Spectator, with more
than ordinary unfairness, speaks of the ' untiring animosity to the
Government Bill which has been shown by that section of the Non-
conformists who were opposed to the Government policy in the late

1903 NONCONFORMISTS AND THE EDUCATION ACT 17

•war.' No suggestion could be much further from the truth. Pro-Boers
Tiave been, as they were sure to be, prominent among the critics of
the measure, but not more so than Liberal Unionists who, through-
out the Home Kule agitation and the South African war, have been
steady supporters of the Ministry. There has been an all but
•universal uprising among all who can fairly be regarded as repre-
senting Nonconformity against a measure which is directly opposed,
not so much to their sectarian interests, but to those great principles
of religious equality without which there can be no true liberty.

It has been a great surprise as well as satisfaction to many of us
to find that among the most pronounced of the opponents are men
who belong to the Liberal Unionist camp. I listened recently with
interest and some little amusement as well as amazement to the fervid
denunciation of the measure by one of my brethren who had done
his utmost to build up the power of the party which was seeking to
inflict so cruel a wrong on him and his fellow-religionists. I could not
follow him to the full extent of the resistance which he advocated, but
I could quite understand the bitterness with which he resented the
betrayal of the trust which he had reposed in statesmen who were
using the votes which they had asked for against the Boers in order
to crush himself and his fellow-Nonconformists.

But a second and more suggestive feature still is the fervour with
which the younger Nonconformist ministers are throwing themselves
into the crusade. For the first time we have a considerable Wesleyan
contingent in the Free Church ranks, and these men, not Sir George
Chubb, represent the spirit of young Methodism. I speak from
direct personal knowledge when I say that the younger Congregation-
alists are more resolute than were numbers in 1870. I confess that
personally I have been greatly struck with the new spirit which has
been revealed by many of them. They have grown up in a different
environment from their fathers, and the change is shown in their
temperament. They are no longer content with toleration, or even
with graceful concessions, when questions of right are at stake.
Events have been helping them to realise their true position in our
free Commonwealth. Those who reproach them for their strenuous
advocacy of right, and regard them as rivals for the status and power
at present belonging to the Establishment, fail to understand their
position altogether. They have simply shaken off once and for ever
the idea that they are asking a favour when they demand the ordi-
nary rights of citizens. In my earlier days, there was a society ' for
the protection of civil and religious liberty,' which in its very title
indicated the limit which the Dissenting idealist had reached. The
new generation has happily gone far beyond that. Its representatives
feel the stimulus of the new blood of liberty which courses through
their veins, and they refuse to acquiesce in the continuance of any
State privilege to a particular Church.

VOL. LIII— No. 311 P

18 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

By men of this temper and with these views the Education Bill
is regarded as both an insult and an injury. They did not need
Cardinal Vaughan to tell them that its passing would be the victory
of the Government over the Nonconformists. For that was what
had impressed itself upon them from the outset. It may or may
not be true (I do not think it necessary to deny it) that their
indignation has led them to exaggerate the evil which the Bill
will do. But its real character seemed to them to be sufficiently
indicated in the benedictions bestowed upon it from the first by
bishops and clergy. If in this they are mistaken, the blame hardly
rests upon them. They had the late Primate's all too candid admission
that a few years ago — that is, of course, before disunion had paralysed
the Liberal party, and the war had supplied an opportunity for
playing on that patriotic sentiment which is common alike to
Churchman and Dissenter — he would not have contemplated the
possibility of the introduction of a measure so favourable to Voluntary
Schools. The whole subsequent history of the Bill has simply con-
firmed this original impression. Most of all, the discussions in
Committee of the House of Lords have only made it more manifest
that its practical effect will be to relieve Churchmen from the support
of schools which are Church institutions. Of course, a certain number
who pride themselves on being educationalists, and sneer in the most
approved style at the religious difficulty, have been caught by the
specious professions of improvement in the machinery. But even these
advantages have to some extent disappeared, largely in consequence
of the difficulties arising from the determination to safeguard the
denominational interests, at whatever cost to educational efficiency.

In face of such facts as these Nonconformists can hardly be
reproached if they have been stirred to unusual earnestness. Nothing,
perhaps, has surprised them more in the whole course of the discus-
sion than the indignation expressed by Mr. Balfour at their ingratitude.
If the Premier really intended to be their benefactor, he has suc-
ceeded with wonderful skill in hiding his benevolent intentions
from them. There was no reason why they should not have been
quick to appreciate any kindly sentiment on his part. I cannot
individually profess any sympathy with the principles or policy of
his Government. But certainly there was no reason why any of us
should have judged him unfairly. In the Unionist ranks were a
considerable number of Nonconformists who were not its least sturdy
and valuable members. But among these are to be found some of
his severest critics of to-day. There was every inducement to them
to regard his propositions with favour. But the stern evidence of
facts has forced even them into opposition which has been essentially
distasteful. It would have been even more widespread and deter-
mined had not the presence of Mr. Chamberlain in the Government
awakened the hope that the measure might be so modified as to

1903 NONCONFORMISTS AND THE EDUCATION ACT 19

remove some Nonconformist objections. Mr. Balfour's strong de-
liverance on the Kenyon-Slaney amendment was almost the only sign
of a desire to understand the real Nonconformist objection, and
even that indicated a desire rather to correct the extravagances of
extreme Anglicans than to meet the just demands of those outside
the Church. Apart from that, it might reasonably have been
thought, what Cardinal Vaughan certainly did think and what
strongly impressed the Free Church deputation, that Nonconformists
were the opponents whom the Prime Minister was determined to
vanquish. But his own confession in parting with the Bill settles
the point. ' It is a Bill ' (he says) ' which does as much as any
friend of the Church could possibly hope for denominational
education.'

Mr. Balfour has, in fact, treated the whole matter too much as a
party game. Certainly his conduct of the debate in Committee has
been marked by great adroitness. But his has been the art of a
skilful fencer rather than that of a man of intense convictions.
Strange as it may seem to him, I, as a pronounced Nonconformist,
understand the position of Lord Hugh Cecil a great deal better than
his, and am quite prepared to believe that he on his side would do
more justice to our Free Churches. It is, in truth, extremely diffi-
cult for those who are in the thick of the political fight to treat
a question which has ranged the two parties in distinct opposition to
each other from an independent standpoint. It must be confessed,
too, that seldom has our party system appeared to more disadvantage
than in the present heated controversy. Possibly this is partly the
result of the appeals to ' the man in the street ' which have been so
frequent of late. I heard Dr. Parker once say from his pulpit in his
own vivid style, ' Every washerwoman in Europe thinks that she
could manage the war.' That is the kind of belief which we have
been encouraging — a belief based on the extraordinary fallacy that
the less a man knows of a subject the more likely is he to form
a correct opinion upon it. But if ' the man in the street ' is to be
made into an arbiter, of course every effort will be put forth to
influence his judgment. Possibly it is to this cause that the
extreme bitterness which has been characteristic of the discussion
out of doors is to be attributed.

Even Mr. Balfour himself has not escaped from the evil influence.
' Up to the present time, at least' (he said in his Manchester speech),
' the voice of the calumniator has been too long uncontradicted.'
Assuredly such a style of argument will convince no one, and the
louder the cheers with which a meeting of excited partisans greet it
the more evil its influence. Is it not possible to differ from Mr.
Balfour in opinion as to the effect of some provision in the measure
and yet not to be a liar or a calumniator ? This kind of attack
necessarily invites a similar style of defence, and there is great danger

c 2

20 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan

lest the controversy may become so passionate that the true issue
may be forgotten.

One favourite objection against the opposition to the Bill is that
it has been instigated mainly by ' political Dissenters.' If it were
so it would not be a grievous fault. Why should it be counted for
righteousness to Lord Hugh Cecil that he is a political Churchman,
while Dr. Clifford is branded with reproach as a political Dissenter ?
Or why should archbishops and bishops, moving heaven and earth to
secure privileges for their Church, be commended as defenders of the
faith, while dissenting ministers are exposed to all kinds of oppro-
brium simply because they vindicate the rights of the Christian
conscience ? The intention, however, is to depreciate the strength
of the agitation by representing it as manufactured, and therefore
without any solid basis in the convictions of those who are apparently
so zealous in its favour. If it were possible to take a poll of the
Free Churches it would be abundantly manifest that a more egregious
mistake had never been made. The great meetings which have
been held in the metropolis and elsewhere speak for themselves,
but even more significant are the memorable gatherings which
have been held all over the country, and which, almost without
exception, have been as enthusiastic as they have been numerous.
The feature in the movement which has attracted the largest
amount of attention, and also provoked the keenest criticism, is
the determination which has again and again found expression in
resolutions enthusiastically carried to oppose the Bill, should it be
passed, by the non-payment of rates. It would be easy to dismiss
this as a mere piece of vapouring, but such a criticism is as worthless
as it is cheap. Personally I am unconvinced by the arguments
which have been adduced in favour of this passive resistance, but I
have never failed to recognise the intense sincerity of those who take
the opposite view. I think I share to the fullest extent the strong
religious objection to the Bill by which the action is justified,
although I cannot but regard it as indefensible and inexpedient.

To say the least, such a refusal is so closely akin to lawlessness
that Nonconformists who have been nursed on entirely different
traditions may well hesitate before adopting it. It is at once the
privilege and the duty of citizens in a free State to secure the
triumph of their principles by an appeal to the intelligence of the
whole community. We are at present in a minority in Parliament.
Our business is to convert that minority into a majority, and in
order to this to demand that as soon as possible the country be
consulted on the subject. It has been seriously argued that there
is nothing left for us to do except to submit to distraint of our
goods, and even to imprisonment, rather than pay a tax of which
our consciences disapprove. But surely the work of converting
a number of our fellow-countrymen, sufficient to reverse the

1903 NONCONFORMISTS AND THE EDUCATION ACT 21

present decision in favour of the Bill, is work enough. There is a
considerable variety of methods by which this may be done. We
have been taunted by the new Chancellor of the Exchequer with
our patience under the injustice of the last thirty years. It is for
us to see to it that that reproach be addressed to us no more. We
have been anxious for the success of one of the greatest of our public
institutions, and so have been content to work on, all too quietly
submitting to the wrong. In the future we must pursue a different
policy. No opportunity must be omitted for bringing home to the
minds of the people the injustice of the present system. Every
Parliamentary, every Municipal, every County Council election should
be made a platform for the inculcation of our principles. Parents
should be more carefully instructed as to their rights under the Con-
science Clause, and should be urged to insist upon them. Every devia-
tion from the law, every abuse of power on the part of denominational
managers, should be exposed not only in the Press but in Parliament.
The agitation should never be allowed to sleep until this obnoxious
measure has been expunged from the Statute Book.

In the meantime it seems to be the first duty of the hour care-
fully to survey the battle-field, and to estimate the actual gains and
losses of the fight. In the heat of the battle there is a natural
tendency to accentuate particular incidents which are afterwards seen
to be of comparatively small importance. ' When the hurlyburly's
done/ there is a possibility of a more dispassionate judgment. Some
very strong assertions have been made as to the probable effect of
the Bill on Nonconformists, especially in single-school district?.
They have not been purposely exaggerated, but their authors seem
to have had regard to the actual provisions of the Bill rather than
to the probable results of its working. In other words, there are
forces at work in English society, even in those circles which might
seem to be most exempt from their influence, which will distinctly
check, if they do not altogether correct, the clerical animus. Mr.
Balfour himself practically recognised this when he gave such forcible
expression to his views of the mischief wrought by clerical autocrats.
The absence of any strong sympathy also on the part of the leading
laity of the Church is a very significant fact. It is not too much to
say that the large majority of Church laymen are opposed to extreme
clerical pretensions, and the best of them have from the first looked
askance at the Ministerial policy. The unmistakable indications of the
lack of confidence in the laity on the part of the clergy are another
indication of this fact. There is an inherent sense of fairness in the
English mind which rebels against the grasping spirit which has been
manifested by the clerical party, and the wrong which will be done to
all other sections of the community. It will surely be the part of
sound policy for Nonconformists to appeal to this feeling, and by their
own moderation, and subordination of any sectarian feeling to great

22 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

national interests, to win the sympathy of that large class which is
not absolutely dominated by party sentiment.

The crucial question, perhaps, is whether the present Bill is a
measure of progress or reaction. A good deal may be said in support
of the latter view. Indeed, those who have read the speeches in
Convocation, and still more those who have studied the conduct
of the Bishops in the House of Lords, would find it hard to arrive at
any other conclusion. It was doubtless intended to be a distinct
move on behalf of clerical influence in education, and than this
nothing need be more reactionary. And, so far as the mere letter of
the law is concerned, it has succeeded. The Voluntary Schools have
apparently secured a new lease of life, and have made a financial
bargain which must be eminently satisfactory to their managers.
But that is really the utmost which the clergy have secured. They
have haggled over terms like a lot of Jew brokers. But if they sup-
pose that they have strengthened the influence of the Church in the
country by this wretched bargaining, they are labouring under a fatal
delusion. The mode in which Mr. Balfour has conducted the financial
clauses, so as practically to prevent them coming under Parliamentary
discussion at all, has not helped to recommend the policy to the
country. The effect upon the popular mind will be even worse when
it comes to be understood that but for the doles to the Church the
country need not have been afflicted with a new corn-tax. On the
whole the clerical party may find that even their monetary advan-
tages have been gained at too high a price.

But the financial gain is really all that they have secured. In
securing it they have roused the passionate indignation of those who
are jealous of the great constitutional principle that taxation and
representation should always go together. They have succeeded
by means of a pliant majority in warding off that complete popular
control which they so much dread. But it may be safely predicted
that even that which has been conceded will materially alter the
character of the schools, which will no longer be the schools of the
parson, to be used simply as an appendage to the church, with its
teachers as the humble instruments of the rector. In writing thus
I do not underrate the gross injustice which is at the root of the
entire arrangement. The forcing of thousands of Nonconformist
children into schools where, as we have been told, a Church atmo-
sphere is to be maintained, and the exclusion of those who are not
members of the Anglican Church from the higher grade of the
teachers in these schools, are such grave wrongs that our only
surprise is that men of high character and standing should be
content to inflict them upon those whom they regard as brethren
in Christ. But, while feeling this, I have the further conviction
that in the long run they will inflict the greatest injury on those
who hope to profit by them.

1903 NONCONFORMISTS AND THE EDUCATION ACT 23

For these and other reasons, I cannot take an alarmist view
of the present situation, or approve of any counsels of despair. The
Bill which certainly was not intended to bless may yet be a land-
mark in the advance to a system of national education which shall
have a promise of permanency because of its thorough equity.
If Nonconformists are led to trust more to themselves and less to
any political party — or, to put it more plainly and emphatically, if
they come to learn that they are the centre of the Liberal party, and
are not to have their claims postponed to the Greek kalends — it will
be a distinct advantage. The question of Disestablishment has been
raised by the bishops and Convocation, and raised in such a form
that it should not be allowed to sleep again. The discussion itself
has abundantly shown that the real difficulty of the education
question is the claim to sectarian ascendency. Many of the highest-
minded of the clergy themselves have seen that the only effectual
remedy is to separate the religious from the secular element in
instruction, and confine the work of the State to the latter entirely.
Despite the discouraging appearances of the moment, it may yet
prove that this Bill has helped on to this equitable settlement.

It is not to be denied that the proceedings in the last stage of
the Bill have served to embitter feeling and to make 'it more difficult
to secure a favourable hearing for any counsels of moderation.
Unfortunately, the Bishops have shown an absolute inability to
understand the Nonconformist case. The appeal of the venerable
Primate, which the infirmities of age prevented him from delivering
himself, and which was conveyed to the House through the Bishop
of Winchester, to which the sequel has given such pathetic and melan-
choly interest, was touching and might have produced some effect had
it been accompanied with anything in the form of a real attempt on
the part of his episcopal colleagues to understand the actual relation
of the Established Church and the Dissenting Churches outside. But
the only prelate on the Bench who gave indication of an honest en-
deavour to meet Nonconformist difficulties was the Bishop of Hereford.
Two or three Bishops of his type, with a corresponding number of
like-minded Dissenters, might have found a modus vivendi. But
alas ! Dr. Percival stood alone in his broad Christian sympathy, his
chivalrous courage, his practical sagacity. We had, indeed, during
the earlier stages of the measure, various hints from time to time
of a compromise. They were at no time very promising, for the
episcopal notions of a compromise were too much like the cry of
£ hands up' with which we became so familiar during the late war.
But lately even these have died away, and the Bishops have simply
pushed the claims of their Church with unblushing effrontery.

The last scene was the worst of all — the most unworthy of any
religious party — the most wanton sacrifice of dignity and character
for the smallest advantage. It is hard to say whether the Bishop of

24 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

Manchester, the Duke of Norfolk, or the Prime Minister played the
most undignified part in this sordid transaction. If Mr. Balfour
were wise he would lay to heart the manly protest of Colonel
Pilkington. That gentleman has surprised many of his Noncon-
formist friends, among whom I reckon myself, by the staunch support
he has given to the Government on this Bill. But the trickery by.
which the last morsel was to be secured for the denominational
schools was too much for this high-minded Christian Englishman,,
trained in Puritan traditions. His words ought to have served as a
warning. It must have been hard for him to speak them, but, like
the wise and manly utterances of the Bishop of Hereford in the other
House, they indicated a point of danger to which, were they wise,.
Bishops and statesmen alike would give heed.

The incident has its own lessons for Nonconformist opponents.
The member for Newton has an exceptional position, for there are
not many who are at once so faithful to Nonconformity and so loyal
to the Unionist party. Of course this might incline him to inde-
pendent action in relation to a question so difficult for him as Educa-
tion. But in another sense he is representative of a class which is
more numerous than is generally supposed, the strong body of
politicians who are not violent partisans and who incline to one
side or the other, according to their judgment as to the trend of
policy at the time. What Nonconformists have to do at present is-
to secure so far as it is possible, without any compromise of principle,
the sympathy of this class. They have a distinct hold upon it now, for,,
despite Erastian vapourings, there is a growing feeling in opposition
to any interference of the State in matters of religious belief. In
asserting that the people should control all schools which they
support, and that the educational profession should be kept as free
of religious tests as other departments of the Civil Service, the
Nonconformists have the sympathy of the class to which I refer..
They have to beware lest it be lost by any unwisdom on their part.

To those who feel bound by loyalty to conscience to refuse
payment of the education rate there is nothing to be said. But
this is surely a matter for the individual. As soon as there is an
attempt to organise resistance it passes into an entirely different
category, and becomes a matter of political tactics. As to the
leadings of a man's own conscience an outsider is no judge. To-
his own master he stands or falls. But a matter of policy presents
fair subject for general discussion. To me it appears that one result
of such an attempt would be to alienate a large amount of the very
sympathy we need and which would be invaluable in the struggle
before us.

Nonconformists do well to be angry, and it may be that the
longer they muse the more fiercely the fire may burn. But anger is
not a safe counsellor. VvThat we have to do is to consider how best>

1903 NONCONFORMISTS AND THE EDUCATION ACT 25

to utilise the new conditions. We may make the new authorities as
favourable as the School Boards have generally been. For be it
remembered that even School Boards were not regarded in the same
light by us in 1870 as we view them to-day. In educating others
their members were educated into more liberal views themselves.
The same will occur again when in the rural districts the school is no
longer the peculium of the parson. The Kenyon-Slaney clause,
however administered, has delivered us from that. For the present
the higher offices in thousands of schools are closed against all but
members of the favoured sect. But the grievance has been exposed,
and that is the first step towards removal. Further the teacher has
now become the servant of the State, and it is simply impossible
that after sweeping away tests to so large an extent in the universities
they should be retained in day schools. For my own part I feel as
Mr. Gladstone did when in the peroration of one of his most memorable,
speeches he roused the spirits of his followers to enthusiasm by
asserting that the flowing tide is with us.

It is for Nonconformists to address themselves to their work in this
temper. For the moment the currents may be against us, but there
have been signs of change already, and it does not need a blind optim-
ism to justify the expectation that soon a true Liberalism will be on
the crest of the wave. On Nonconformists must fall much of the
responsibility for bringing about the change they so earnestly desire.
It is to be accomplished not by passionate protest or sullen obstruc-
tion, but by an honest determination to take advantage of every
opportunity which the new system affords, and so to accelerate a
more equitable settlement. The difficulty will be to preserve in the
midst of the unfortunate struggle a spirit of Christian charity.

Looked at in the interests of true religion, which is a different
thing from churchmanship in whatever Church, the present con-
troversy is melancholy in the last degree. I do not believe that any
Church can possibly be a gainer by securing control over the teaching
in the public schools. But religion itself must certainly suffer
from the keen antagonism which the attempt to secure this
ascendency for the Anglican Church has called forth. Oh, the pity
of it ! The better relations which were growing up between Church-
men and Dissenters have been rudely interrupted. A work which
ought to have called forth the common zeal of all Churches has led
to angry strife. The real interests of a great national as well as
religious work have been retarded ; and all for what ? The storm
itself would be sufficiently discouraging were it not that it is
continually out of these conflicts of opinion that the most enduring}
benefits are evolved. May it be so in the present case !

J. GUINNESS EOGERS.

26 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

THE RIPON EPISODE

NOTHING could be more surprising than the surprise and horror
expressed by many churchmen and laymen, and by the press gene-
rally, at some reported utterances of the Dean of Ripon at a meeting
of the Churchmen's Union on the 29th of October, regarding the
birth of Christ from a Virgin, the Ascension, and the Eesurrection.
They were described as blasphemous, and the keenest indignation
was expressed against a dignitary of the Church who could avow such
opinions and still continue in his sacred office and recite the creeds.
The sudden outburst seems extraordinary when we consider that,
for years, a system of criticism has been proceeding almost unnoticed
amongst us, which has rendered the expression of new and startling
views of ancient dogmas quite familiar to ordinary readers of current
literature. The mass of men, however, betray an ignorance or in-
difference regarding religion which they do not exhibit in the affairs
of daily life. The ' higher criticism ' has revolutionised former ideas
regarding the books of the Old Testament, and undermined the
foundations of the New, without exciting either surprise or alarm,
until some passing expressions of a Dean attract unexpected attention.
The crackle of a squib in a respectable and somnolent quarter might
similarly appear to the neighbourhood the explosion of a dynamite
bomb by a party of Nihilists. It must be admitted, however, that
to anyone unacquainted with the critical work of our time, the
utterances in question may well have appeared startling, and it may
be very interesting to set them clearly forth, and consider some
remarkable circumstances immediately connected with them in the
Church in England.

The following is the report which appeared in the Times of the
expressions with which we have more especially to do :

The fault of those who had written on natural religion was that they had
assumed a contrast between this and revealed religion. The Bible was in the
fullest sense human and natural. The Bible culminated in Christ, and Christ had
been viewed in past times in an unnatural light. Disputes had made Christ's life
unreal to us, and it seemed to him that we were hampered still by the wrong
processes of the past. Taking the moral supremacy of Christ for granted, they
were met on the threshold of two Gospels by what seemed a prodigy — the birth of
Christ from a Virgin. His own belief was that they might safely leave that out
of account and treat it in exactly the same way as the words ' descended into
Hell ' were treated. Outside the first two chapters of St. Matthew and the first

1903 THE RIPON EPISODE 27

two chapters of St. Luke, the Virgin-birth was absolutely non-existent in the
New Testament. The natural inference was that it was unknown to the writers of
the New Testament, except to those who penned those four chapters. And might
it not be that they arose from a misunderstanding ? As to the miracles, was it
irreverent to believe that Our Lord Himself could not have made a distinction
between what modern science would recognise as death and the many forms of
swooning, syncope, or hysteria, which sometimes deceived the wisest in modern
times, and that when He bade His disciples to heal the sick and raise the dead,
He was speaking of a process very different from that which would be accepted in
these scientific days as the raising of an actual dead body to life ? But many of
the so-called miracles, such as demoniacal possession and its cure, were quite
natural, although he admitted that if some of the references in the Gospels were
taken literally they were contrary to nature as we knew it. He instanced the
turning of water into wine, walking on the sea, and stilling the wind. He had
never been able to think of the Resurrection as a violation of natural law. The
preaching of the Resurrection in later times was that of a spiritual existence, a
spiritual body. The accounts all said that He was invisible save to the eye of
Faith. It might be said that when they spoke of a spiritual existence they were
going into the region of the supernatural, but that was not so.

After the discussion of this address had proceeded for some time in
the newspapers the reporter of the Times stated that he had not
been allowed to see the Dean of Ripon's MS., as the Dean said that
' he did not wish it published,' but he affirmed that the report of the
address which appeared in the Times of the 31st of October, and of
which the above is a copy, ' was, at his request submitted to and
approved by Dr. Fremantle at the conclusion of the lecture, and
that no alteration of any kind was made after he had seen it.' Of
this he advances evidence of various kinds.

The Dean of Eipon, however, considered that he was misrepre-
sented by the reporter, and in answer to many inquiries on the
subject he sent a statement to the Ripon Gazette, of which the
following extract more immediately bearing on the points in question
may be read with interest :

That there are difficulties in some matters connected with the manifestation of
God in Christ it would be untruthful not to admit, especially in those of the
Virgin-birth, in some of the ' wonderful works,' and in the Resurrection. But in
the first of these, though the facts (1) that it is never mentioned in the New
Testament except in the first two chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke, and (2)
that it was not part of the creed of Nicasa, make it of less authority (as in the
parallel case of the words ' Descended into Hell '), yet the accounts might be
understood without any violation of biological law. The incarnation and divinity
of our Saviour stand on the firm ground of what He did and thought, and what
He has been to mankind. As to the last point, that of the Resurrection, the
views of Bishop Horsley, of Dean Goulburn, and of Bishop Westcott, which have
so often been urged by Canon MacColl, as well as by myself in Ripon Cathedral
and elsewhere, were followed, namely, that the Resurrection was not a return to
the mortal conditions of this life, but a manifestation of the spiritual state and
the ' spiritual body.' As to the ' mighty works ' of our Lord, in some cases we
could see them to be instances of the power of a Majestic Presence and Personality
over weakened and hysterical frames ; and possibly other cases might be similarly
accounted for. But since in all things, even the commonest, there is an element

28 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

of the unknown, we must expect that this would be the case still more in the
works of Christ Himself. If we could know everything, no doubt all would
appear quite natural according to the higher conception of nature, for which the
writer is contending. This is brought out in the late Duke of Argyll's great work,
The Reign of Law.

Before proceeding to make any remarks on these statements,
it may be well to complete the history of this episode. The Bishop
of Eipon addressed the following letter to the Dean, which may at
once be given with the Dean's reply.

The Palace, Eipon,

November 22nd, 1902.

MY DEAB DEAN, — You will not be surprised that I write to you respecting
the paper which you read in London, and on the condensed reports of which many
comments have appeared. Some of these, and the inferences drawn from your
words, challenge the sincerity of your position as a clergyman of the Church of
England.

I can understand that you may find it difficult and even repugnant to you to
defend yourself against charges of personal insincerity. To be asked to affirm the
sincerity of your belief in the creeds which you constantly recite in the Church
looks like an impeachment of your honour ; and, under ordinary circumstances, it
may be said that a man casts a slur upon his honour by attempting to affirm it.

If the present matter were only one in which irresponsible individuals, or
irresponsible societies, concerned themselves, I should readily recognise your right
to be silent ; but when you realise that there are many devout and simple-hearted
people who are perplexed and uneasy, I am persuaded that you will not hesitate
to reassure them that, whatever words or phrases you may have used, your own
faith in the simple statements of the creeds of our Church is clear, firm and loyal.

Knowing you as I do, remembering how earnestly you have preached Christ to
men, and recalling your triumphant voice in reciting the Creed, I am confident
that you would not retain your position for an hour if the declaration of faith
made in public worship were contradicted by your own convictions. I hope,
therefore, that you will have no difficulty in giving these assurances which your
friends and many hearts are looking for with anxiety.

Ever yours truly,

W. B. Rirox.

To the Hon. and Very Rev. the Dean of Ripon.

The Deanery, Ripon,

November 23rd, 1902.

MY DEAK LOED, — Since you write to me in the name of the simple-hearted1
and devout, I readily break through my rule of silence on such an occasion as that
which has arisen, and give to them, through you, the assurance you ask for.

It seems a strange thing to be supposed to be doubtful about the truths on
which I live from day to day, and without which the world would be unmeaning
to me. But I gladly give to those whom you represent the assurance that I repeat
the Creeds (as you say) in a triumphant voice; because they enable me to express
daily Christ as God manifest in the flesh, and that I have no other object in life
but to take Him into my inmost being, to preach Him as the Saviour of mankind,
and to make Him supreme over every part of human life.

I shall be truly glad if these few words can have the reassuring effect which
you kindly think they may have.

Believe me,

Ever yours sincerely,

W. H. FKKMANTLE,

To the Lord Bishop of Ripon.

1903 THE RIPON EPISODE 29

This may seem to close the whole controversy, and the state-
ments which have aroused so much horror appear to vanish in a halo
of pious sentiment. The Bishop's gentle request for an explanation
of expressions, the inferences from which ' challenge the sincerity of
the Dean's position as a clergyman of the Church of England,' and
the Dean's surprise and pain at being supposed to be doubtful about
the truths on which he lives from day to day, and without which the
world would be unmeaning to him, bring the episode to a worthy
conclusion. In reality, however, the interest of the position only
commences, and I propose to consider how far the points raised by
Dr. Fremantle are personal to himself, whether they are not openly
expressed by others in the Church of England, and whether in their
spiritualised form they fairly represent the views of the Church of
England as set forth in the Thirty-nine Articles, to which, as I
understand, all clergymen are bound to subscribe.

By a remarkable coincidence we are furnished with a singular
opportunity of illustrating all these points through the declarations of
the Bishop of Kipon himself. The Bishop has quite recently pub-
lished a most able and interesting Introduction to the Study of the
Scriptures, written specially ' for those who are troubled and per-
plexed' by the results of modern criticism, which has appeared as In-
troduction to ' The Temple Bible/ and which specially deals with ' the
distinction between historical accuracy and spiritual truths ' in the
Bible. It is written with all the charm of style and brilliancy of
imagination which characterise Dr. Carpenter, and although here
only brief illustrations can be given, the whole composition will well
repay close attention by all who are interested in the religious
controversy of the present day.

It may be well at once to turn to the special points raised in this
attack on the Dean of Ripon, but I may first mention that the
Bishop is not afraid of, and does not condemn, the higher criticism
which has so seriously busied itself with the books of the Old and
New Testament, the value and necessity of which he very frankly
acknowledges. Speaking more especially of the New Testament Dr.
Carpenter says :

Every book has to give account of itself; its claim to originality, if such a
claim exists, must be investigated ; its value as a witness or evidence of contem-
porary events must be estimated ; its relationship to other books or narratives
must be understood.1

In order to explain the statements with which we are more particu-
larly concerned here, it is necessary to state more in detail the
manner in which the four Gospels are treated.

The Gospel of St. John obviously stands alone, while the three other gospels
are closely and intimately related to one another. These, then, called the Syn-
optic Gospels, give rise to the Synoptic question.2

1 P. 125. » P. 127 f.

30 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

Taking the first three Gospels, he points out that there are certain
portions which are common to all three, others which are common to
two Gospels and lacking in the remaining Gospel, and lastly each
Gospel has a portion peculiar to itself. The portions common to all
three Gospels he proposes to call the ' Common stock,' and he
decides that the nearest sources of information about Jesus Christ
are to be found in this common stock Gospel.

Whatever is found here, belongs to the earliest period, and being common
stock, it belongs in all probability to the period before editing was thought of.3

He naturally sets a high value on what is found in this ' common
stock,' as a

highly valuable historical contribution, if not absolutely contemporary, at least
so nearly contemporary that it may be regarded as a narrative of facts practically
accepted among those who were well acquainted with the story.4 ... In it we have
what we may call, without disparagement to the veracity of any additions found
in the several Gospels, the most valuable and authentic recital of the story of
Jesus Christ.5

Now, after stating these preliminary considerations, which are
essential to a right understanding of what follows, we come to the
point immediately interesting in connection with the utterances of
the Dean of Kipon, which called forth the courteous letter of the
Bishop :

Now, in the common stock gospel, the miraculous accessories connected with
the birth and resurrection of Jesus do not find a place. These accessories are
found in the group of secondary witnesses, i.e. in narrative common to two
evangelists. Upon these, in the first instance, we have purposely refused to lay
stress. Our belief in Jesus Christ must be based upon moral conviction, not upon
physical wonder. The argument that He was wonderfully born and miraculously
raised, and that therefore He was of God, does not evoke, at any rate to-day, an
adequate and satisfactory response ; even if it could be considered valid, it would
not create a worthy or an acceptable faith. We must invert the process. The
weight of the argument, then, hangs upon the moral splendour of Jesus Christ ; it
is because He interprets us so completely to ourselves that we recognise the God
in Him, and recognising this, the physical marvels at the opening and close of His
career do not appear incongruous.6

The language of the Diocese of Eipon is very uniform, for it is
difficult to distinguish between the statements of the Bishop and
those of the Dean, which Dr. Carpenter in his letter requests the
latter to explain. ' When we thus reverse the method of the earlier
apologists we are reverting to the method of Christ Himself.' Dr.
Carpenter resumes :

He sighed over those who asked miracles as a means of faith : He declared
that He would enter the souls of men only in a legitimate fashion ; He would
appeal to them by that which they could immediately appreciate and understand.
. . . * An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.' 7

1 P. 128. 4 P. 129. & P. 130. • P. 131 f. 7 P. 132 f.

1903 THE RIP ON EPISODE 31

The Bishop does not suggest, as so many others have done, that
the statement of the Virgin-birth in the first Synoptic arises from a
quotation of the Septuagint translation of Isaiah vii. 14, which
erroneously renders the Hebrew word for a young woman by TrapQsvos,
'Virgin,' the prophet whom he quotes having only said that a young
woman, perhaps his own wife, is with child, and will bring forth a
son whose birth will be a ' sign ' to Ahaz, whilst ' Matthew ' (i. 23)
quotes it as proof of his doctrine of the miraculous conception of
Mary, showing that a mistaken ' prophetic gnosis ' is responsible for
the dogma.8 Nor does he refer to the astronomical-Myth theory of
others, which represents the birth of the Sun-God at the winter
solstice, about Christmas, when the constellation Virgo rises above
the horizon. Neither is it within the scope of his work to treat of
what has been called ' the moral preparation for Christ ' among the
Greeks and other races.

Deification for them was an easy process, so easy that their demigods could not
be redeemers. And yet their legends of Heracles, the son of the father of the
gods and a human mother, who when on earth went about righting wrongs, and
after labouring and suffering for mankind ascended to heaven from the pyre on
Oeta ; and of Prometheus, who was crucified for revealing to mankind the arts
and sciences which dignify and bless their lives, suggest a parallel which is too
obvious to need exposition. Parenthetically, we may add that other mythologies
have adumbrated the same truths. In India the Brahmans could point to the
various avatars of Vishnu, in which they beheld not mere theophanies, ' but the
presence, at once mystical and real, of the Supreme Being in a human individual,
who is at one and the same time true God and true man ; and this intimate union
of the two natures is represented as continuing after the death of the individual
in whom it took place.' 9 The Persians also looked for a coming Saviour, who was
to be born of a virgin mother, conceived by the holy spirit of Zarathustra three
thousand years after the revelation of that prophet. So deeply rooted in the
human breast is the instinct that none can bring to man the salvation which he
needs, except one who is both God and man.10

Leaving altogether for a moment the Introduction to the 'Temple
Bible,' it may be well to glance further into the able and most
interesting work just quoted and recently published, Contentio
Veritatis, which consists of lectures delivered by six Oxford tutors,
all of them clergymen of the Church of England, which well deserves
serious attention. The second lecture, just quoted, is by the Rev.
\V. R. Inge, M.A., Fellow, Tutor, and Chaplain of Hertford College,
formerly Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Bampton
Lecturer, upon ' The Person of Christ.' It is a remarkably able and
eloquent discourse, and nothing can exceed the fairness and candour
of his treatment of the arguments — qualities, I must say, which equally
characterise the whole of the six lectures, the only difficulty of
adequately representing his views within the limits of this article

8 This, however, is referred to in the work Contentio Veritatis, p. 218.

9 Barth, Religions of India, p. 170.

10 Contentio Veritaiis, by Six Oxford Tutors, p. 66 f.

32 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

being that the fundamental facts are surrounded and transformed by
such a halo of mystic transfiguration, that it is almost impossible
within reasonable bounds of quotation fairly to represent the views of
the school to which he belongs.

Religion [Mr. Inge says], when it confines itself strictly to its own province
never speaks in the past tense. It is concerned only with what is, not with what
was. History as history is not its business. . . . Events or aspects of events,
which relate only to the past, may be left to historians. . . . Errors in history or
errors in science, do not save or damn. Errors in religion are always due to what
Plato calls ' the lie in the soul,' but a man may believe in ' Brute the Trojan,' or in
the philosopher's stone, without being a knave. Religion is a very practical
matter — its object, as an intellectual faculty, is to see things as they are, not to
discover how they came to be. This is not said to disparage the past, or to suggest
that it is unimportant. . . . When the theologian puts historical propositions into
his creed, he does so because he is convinced that there are important truths, in
the spiritual order, which are dependent on, or inseparable from, those events in
the past.

Now these introductory words, which seem to be a spiritual preparation
for what is immediately to follow, require to be borne in mind, as
Mr. Inge at once proceeds to say :

Let us then (to return to the particular topic which we are now considering)
ask ourselves, "What is the truth, in the spiritual order p,u which it is intended to
protect by the doctrines of the Virgin-birth, Resurrection and Ascension ? The
answer is plain : it is the identification of the man Christ Jesus with the word of
God. The Church held, and still holds, that this identification is of vital impor-
tance, the articulus stantis et cadentis eccZesice. In other words, the Church holds
that the redemption of humanity, by taking it up into the Divine Life, had, as its
necessary counterpart — its symbol or sacrament in the visible order — the Incarna-
tion of the Word of God in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth. We shall, therefore,
reach the centre of our subject if we consider : (1) Is this identification certain ?
(2) Is it still an integral part of the Christian religion ? and (3) Does the doctrine
of the divinity of the man Christ Jesus conflict with generally accepted conclusions
of philosophy and science, and in particular with the theory or doctrine of
evolution ? 12

I may at once mention that, in the succeeding discussion of
these questions, there is no further elucidation of the Virgin-birth,
and no examination of the physical miracles of the Resurrection and
Ascension. The whole treatment of the subject turns upon spiritual
considerations, although I must again repeat that nothing could be
more fair than Mr. Inge's recognition of the difficulties which stand
in the way of proving his conclusions. In regard to the (1) point
Mr. Inge says :

The historical fact of a supremely important religious movement in the first
century A.D. is not disputed, nor can it be denied that the first Christians believed
that it had its source in Christ. But is it certain that the Christ of the Church
is not merely an idealised figure, to whom was attributed (in perfectly good faith)
all that the religious consciousness of the age found to be most worthy of a Divine
Being ? The scepticism with which the story of the Incarnation is often regarded

11 The italics are mine. 12 Contentio Veritatis, p. 90 f.

1903 THE R1PON EPISODE 33

by thoughtful people, must not he condemned as a perverse refusal to accept a
narrative which is usually well attested, still less as a judicial hlindness. In
almost all other cases the historian is able to test his materials by some external
criticism of probability. . . . But in the case of the Incarnation we have nothing
with which to compare it ; the only external criterion to which we can appeal is
the judgment of the Christian Church as to what it ' behoved' the Son of God to
do and suffer ; and this is a matter on which human beings cannot speak with
authority, and are not likely to agree.13

After stating some objections which may be made to the Incarnation,
and in modified naturalistic explanation of the doctrine connected
with it, Mr. Inge continues :

It is from no wish to ask a hearing for unprofitable speculations that I think
it right to say that theories of this kind cannot be disproved with the completeness
which all Christians would desire. In dealing with past events we must be
•content with something less than certainty. The whole history is beyond all
question honeycombed with false statements which must go for ever uncorrected ;
even the simplest event or conversation is seldom described with any approach to
accuracy by those who have seen or heard it a few minutes before. It is, therefore,
'barely honest to assert, as some have done, that, on the historical evidence only,
either the discourses of Christ, or His miracles, or His resurrection on the third
day after His crucifixion, are absolutely certain. The evidence may be as good as
possible ; it is not possible for it to be good enough to justify such a statement as
this.14

Mr. Inge concludes his discussion of the various points by
asserting ' that belief in the " Divinity " of the Historical Christ is
still an essential part of Christianity,' but the physical features of
the Virgin-birth, Eesurrection and Ascension are as evidently left
aside as they are by the Bishop of Eipon. His spiritual position
may be simply illustrated by some of his concluding remarks :

This discussion may seem unsatisfactory, both in its method and conclusion,
to those who have been accustomed to find the ' proofs ' of Christianity in the
historical evidence for the Resurrection of Christ, and in the miracles which He is
recorded to have wrought while on earth. This mode of apologetics was very
popular in the last century, and was elaborated with great skill by divines whose
names are still famous. But it was not an accident that it flourished most at the
period when religion was at its very lowest ebb in England. I do not wish to
associate myself with the contempt which has been cast upon the ' Old Bailey
theology ' of Paley and his school, but I do wish to impress upon my readers, with
all the earnestness that I can, that it is a false method, and that those who rely
upon it are trusting to a broken reed, which will pierce their hands as soon as they
really lean upon it. The majority of Christians to-day do not really lean upon it,
whatever they may think ; they are Christians because they have found Christ, or
rather because Christ has found them, not because they have given the Apostles a
fair trial on the charge of perjury and acquitted them. The Christ whose claims
are made ' probable ' by such arguments is a dead Christ, who could only preside
•over a dead church.15

It is scarcely necessary to point out that in all the writers with
whom we are dealing, not only is no endeavour made to produce
definite evidence of the Virgin-birth, Kesurrection and Ascension.

13 Contentw Veritatis, p. 91 f. H II). p. 93. 1S 11. p. 103

VOL. LIII — No. 311 D

34 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

but it is either directly or indirectly admitted that no adequate
proof can be given. At the same time, after allowing the solid basis
of the doctrines to crumble away, it is curious how confidently a
spiritualised semblance of them is made to replace the vanished
substance. There seems to be no recognition of a difference of
validity between the solid rock upon which the belief was once held
to be built, and the shifting sand upon which the mystic interpretation
is supposed to be solidly erected. Take, for instance, the clear terms in
which the Fourth Article of Keligion, to which it has been generally
understood that clergymen subscribe on entering the Church of
England, states the doctrine of the Eesurrection and Ascension, and
compare them with the unseizable definitions now expressed.
' Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again His body,
with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of
Man's nature ; wherewith He ascended into Heaven, and there sitteth,
until He return to judge all men at the last day.' Not only have we
no approach to this clear definition of the doctrine in question, but
on the contrary a distinct abandonment of it, and systematic
avoidance of details in dealing with the subject. This is quoted,
not with the view of condemnation, but solely for the purpose of
definitely understanding the change which has taken place in regard
to these dogmas. That such a change has been made in the views
of a large proportion of the most able and cultivated men in the
Church and out of it cannot be doubted or concealed, and it is most
desirable that the change should be recognised.

In the absence of satisfactory evidence, it would appear that
modern views of Christianity are supposed to be justified by some
theory of Inspiration and Revelation, apart from the definite state-
ments in the New Testament, and it may be well to inquire how
these are explained. In his Introduction to the ' Temple Bible,' the
Bishop of Kipon deals with this subject in a very attractive manner.
Dr. Carpenter naturally commences by the questions :

What is Inspiration, that we may be ready to recognise its features ? What
is Kevelation, that -we may be prepared to receive it when it comes ? w

I am afraid that most of us will agree with the answer which
the Bishop himself immediately returns :

Even in the answer that I give to these questions I am afraid that the reader
will be disappointed, for I confess that I know no satisfactory definition either for
Inspiration or Revelation.17

Nothing could be more frank and intelligent than his whole
discussion of the subject. He shows how impossible it is to define
what we mean by the inspiration of the poet or the painter, and the
parallel difficulty exists everywhere in the Scriptures.

16 P. 83. >7 P. 84.

1903 THE R1PON EPISODE 35

la it any surprise, then [he inquires], to be told that definition of Bible
inspiration is not to be expected, and ought not to be insisted on ? 1S

All that he can say is :

It is like genius. We know it when we see it, but we cannot define it.

Parts of the Bible do not carry oat the note of inspiration, whilst
others do :

It will then be asked how do we discriminate between the inspiration of the
Bible and the inspiration of the great works of human genius ? What marks the
difference between the inspiration of St. John and that of Shakespeare ? Is not
the inspiration of the Bible separate and unique ? or are we to view it as belonging
to the same family and lineage as that of the recognised masterpieces of literature
and art? The answer eeerns to me simple enough. In one sense we can recog-
nise no difference ; in another sense we must recognise a deep and real difference.

Without further quotation the Bishop's answer to the question may
be given in his sentence :

It is in the persistently Godward direction of the Bible that we note the
characteristic of its inspiration.19

And he considers that the witness to his view of Bible inspiration
is to be found in the history of the religious consciousness of Christendom.20

It is evidently not necessary to go more fully into this discussion,
for such inspiration is merely an emotional question and cannot
justify the mystic views which we are considering.

We may now proceed to quote the Bishop of Kipon's views on
Revelation.

Another word often used in connection with the Bible [he says] is the word
Revelation. So strongly has the idea of revelation been associated with the Bible
that the word Revelation has been used as synonymous with the Bible. The
Bible is the ' Revelation,' or it is the ' Revealed Word.' Can we define Revela-
tion ? 21

To anyone who has read the Bishop's references to and acceptance
of the results of the 'higher criticism' on the Bible, this introduction
to the discussion of Revelation is especially curious and significant,
and his development of the idea becomes doubly interesting.

Before we answer this [he continues] let us clear away a confusion. Revela-
tion and Inspiration have been treated as convertible terms. This is a confusion.
There may be inspiration without revelation ; and there may be revelation with-
out inspiration. On the other hand, inspiration may lead to revelation, and
revelation is often impossible without it. But nevertheless it is of moment to
remember that they are not the same thing. Inspiration is the breath of life in
a work or a man. Revelation is the unveiling of a truth or principle which
clears or enlarges our thoughts. We know more through revelation; we feel
more through inspiration.22

These definitions may be unexpected and surprising, but there

19 P. 87. 10 P. 91 f. -° P. 93.

21 P. 96. « p 96

36 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

must be an increase of surprise as we proceed to hear the Bishop's
exposition how ' Kevelation is unveiling of truth.'

What, then, is revelation ? [he asks] Shall we be wrong in saying that the
addition of any truth or principle which enlarges our range of knowledge is a
revelation ? The truth unknown before is unveiled and thus becomes a revelation
to us. Further, it is to be remembered that the word revelation implies that the
truth or fact unveiled existed before it was made known. The discoveries of
science unveil to us laws which have been at work for all the ages. Revelation
is not the invention of a new truth, but the uncovering of an old one. As clouds
melt and disclose the sun, so does knowledge banish ignorance and show us things
as they are.23

This homely aspect of Revelation, so different from what might
have been expected, considering the lofty view hitherto given of it,
becomes somewhat astonishing when we find it illustrated by its
application to scientific progress and exemplified by the Bishop in
the following instances of Revelation :

How readily we have accepted the laws of motion, for instance ! How difficult
it is for us to take in the clumsy Ptolemaic theories ! The burst of surprise once
over, the new truth or law takes its place among things which are quite natural,
as we say. We find ourselves able to test and apply them.24

It is a splendid instance of the progress of religious thought when
we find a Bishop, in his anxiety to express the character of Revela-
tion, referring to the ' clumsy Ptolemaic theories ' which the Church,
believing them to be in exact agreement with Biblical statements,
thrust down the throat of poor Gralileo, and forced him to swear that
the earth was the centre of the universe and stood still. The world
generally has not considered this episode as strong evidence for the
Revelation theory as applied to the Old Testament and the Church.
' The thing once revealed seems so obvious,' the Bishop says, but it
does not render the truth of Revelation much more obvious to the
ordinary mind.

But we must hear his final explanation of his view of Revelation
in the Bible:

If we keep this thought in view, we shall be able to estimate the importance
of the revelation contained in the Bible. I say contained in the Bible ; for the
Bible is like a mine : the gold is found in an environment of nature ; sometimes
it may be sifted out easily as over a running stream : at other times we must dig
as for hid treasure, or even only reach the gold after a long and hard crushing
process. ... In other words, the revelation is given to us in different degrees and
under different conditions. This is surely the true view of Revelation ; it is, if
we follow the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the scriptural view of Revela-
tion ; the Revelation was given 'by divers portions and in divers manners.'
Other notions of Revelation than this have been current, but it seems to me both
wise and reverent to accept the just and well-considered description which we are
given by this writer. It affirms a truth which is simple and can be easily verified
— it avoids foolish and exaggerated literalism : it leads to a clear and intelligible
climax, the Revelation in a Person. The Revelation, then, came in bits and in
various ways.25

23 Introduction to Temple Bible, p. 97. 24 Tb. p. 97. 2S Ib. p. 98 f.

1903 THE EIPON EPISODE 37

The ' clear and intelligible climax ' to which such Eevelation leads is,
I think, very different from that which the Bishop desires and supposes,
but here I have only to point out that these theories of Inspiration
and Eevelation in no way help us in considering the statements
regarding the Virgin-birth, Eesurrection and Ascension.

If we turn to Contentio Veritatis we do not get much greater
help, but here we are forced to deal much more briefly with the
subject. The Eev. W. C. Allen, who treats in it of Modern
Criticism and the New Testament in the same able and candid way
of which I have already spoken, says :

It is in this direct appeal of the New Testament to the human conscience that
its inspiration lies. That the religious value of the New Testament is bound up
with the ideas of Revelation and Inspiration is plain. The difficulty is to give to
these terms clear definition. Indeed, definition must for the present content itself
with negative rather than with positive methods. On the one hand, a conception
of Inspiration such as that commonly understood by the phrase, verbal Inspiration,
which can only maintain its ground by denying the legitimacy of the application
of critical methods to the Sacred Books, is thereby self-condemned and must be
set aside as arbitrary. On the other hand, critical writers who suppose that a
result of their work has been the elimination of the element of Inspiration, fail to
appreciate the limitations of criticism. Inspiration is a quality which cannot
possibly be diminished by increase of true knowledge.20

This inspiration, however, which is clearly the element of
personal emotion, and certainly not in any way a supernatural effect,
may safely be passed over as in no way elucidating the questions
before us. But Mr. Allen proceeds to Eevelation, and states the case
briefly as follows :

The truth is that the question of the inspiration of the Bible, i.e. whether or no
it contain a Revelation of God, is really independent of criticism. It is a part of
the larger question, Is there a God who can reveal Himself? and is cognate to
the similar questions, Is there a Revelation in Nature ? Is there a Revelation in
History ? Is there a Revelation in Christ ?

Now the conclusion that this treatment of the question is similar
to that of the Bishop of Eipon, and takes refuge in vague feeling
instead of establishing a doctrine, can be shown by simply quoting
the answer which Mr. Allen gives to some of these questions, for
space forbids more adequate treatment. To the question, ' Is there
a Eevelation in History ? ' Mr. Allen replies :

To some men the development of human life and thought is inexplicable with-
out the presupposition of the divine mind directing, guiding, controlling it. To
others, such an assumption is wholly superfluous and misleading. Certainly the
existence of God cannot be proved — cannot, that is to say, be expressed in terms
which will coerce the intellect and compel the belief of those who do not already
find God to be a necessary factor in life's experience. So-called proofs of His
existence are not really proofs, even to those who believe in Him. The facts stated
as being of the nature of proofs are the expression of belief, not the cause of it.
They presuppose belief, and do not create it.

26 Introduction to Temple Bible, p. 235 f.

38 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

Passing on to the question of Eevelation in the Bible, Mr. Allen
says:

The essential presupposition of Revelation is the existence of God. Do we find
God to be in some sense a part of the most elementary phenomena of conscious-
ness ? Then much that is said about Him in the Old Testament will approve itself
to us as a true expression of His nature, and the proper way of stating the process
•which led to expression will be, not that it is a development of thought, due to
natural causes, but that the Old Testament writers give expression to this con-
sciousness of God, who revealed Himself to them in increasing degree as history
progressed.27

Passing on to the New Testament he says :

The question of Revelation in the New Testament, and consequently of its
inspiration, depends almost entirely upon the attitude adopted towards the doctrine
of the Incarnation. And with regard to this it must be said clearly that conscious-
ness of the divine life of God and perception of the divine element in Christ are
two very different things. There is this fundamental difference between them,
Knowledge of God is for many men, not an inference from the facts of conscious-
ness, but a part of those facts. But knowledge of God in Christ is such aa
inference. ' We saw and (then) believed.' . . . These will very probably assent
to the definition of the Revelation and Inspiration of the Old Testament just stated.
But how will they regard the New Testament ? They will probably be inclined
to draw a distinction between the Gospels as containing the teaching of Christ and
the remaining books — Revelation, they will urge, implies fresh development, new
growth. Writers who express for the first time a new aspect of the Divine Life
may rightly be called inspired.2^ ... In conclusion, the claim of the Bible, the
Old Testament as well as the New, may be said to lie in its revelation of the divine
nature and the divine will. Just in so far as this is recognised will its authority
be regarded as paramount. It appeals directly to the human heart and conscience.29

It will have struck many how singular is the statement above
that the question of Revelation in the New Testament, and conse-
quently of its inspiration, depends almost entirely upon the attitude
adopted towards the doctrine of the Incarnation. One might have
thought that the attitude towards such supernatural doctrines must
much more naturally depend almost entirely on that towards the
doctrine of the Revelation and Inspiration of the New Testament
upon whose authority alone such doctrines can rest. This is only
another illustration of the fact that, in all these arguments, Reve-
lation and Inspiration are mere personal impressions, and that we
have not here to do with doctrines which can be established by
reasonable evidence. Throughout the Introduction to the Temple
Bible, and Gontentio Veritatis, from which these inadequate
quotations have been made, will be found a similar treatment of
ancient doctrines, and these works will well repay the student who
takes them up. I hope I may be allowed to express my own sincere
respect for the writers, who are eminently able and honest men. No
one obliged them to express themselves in this manner, but at a
time when the Church may be said to be passing through a period

27 Introduction to Temple Bible, p. 238. 28 II. p. 239. -9 Ib. p. 242.

1903 THE RIPON EPISODE 39

of great spiritual difficulty, they have voluntarily stepped forth to
help the weaker and more troubled brethren, and provide them -with
spiritualised views of doctrines regarding which their minds have
been of late rudely shaken, and they have done this with singular
ability and still more singular candour. But they have had to make
bricks without straw, of which no abiding city can be built. If they
have led the doubting into a seeming paradise of rest, it is one,
unfortunately, from which they may any day be expelled by the
Angel of Truth with two-edged sw.ord, and it seems to me both right
and expedient that warning of this should be given.

In examining these spiritualised versions of ancient creeds,
I confess that a charming allegory by Hans Christian Andersen
has been irresistibly brought to my mind. It is entitled The
Emperor's New Clothes. Some clever knaves get hold of a monarch
who is unusually fond of dress, and lead him to believe that they
can weave the most beautiful fabric that eyes have ever seen, but
which has the extraordinary quality of becoming invisible, even
when made into clothes, to everybody who is unsuitable to his
position, or very stupid. A magnificent dress for an approaching
procession is supposed to be made of this amazing fabric for the
Emperor, and although many high officials inspect it whilst it is
being woven, who see nothing on the loom, the penalty of being
considered unfit for their high position or very stupid if it be in-
visible to them, induces them to admire and proclaim it beautiful.
For the same reason, the Emperor cannot admit that he himself sees
nothing, and he goes through the form of putting on the new clothes
and issuing under his royal canopy to the admiration of the people,
who are likewise forced to pretend loyalappreciation of the monarch's
robes. No one dared to remark that they saw nothing, until a little
«hild at last exclaimed, ' But the Emperor has no clothes on ! ' As
for myself, at the risk of being thought very stupid or unfit for the
high office of critic, I frankly confess that the fabric woven to
drape these old doctrines seems to me intellectually invisible, and
the new clothes purely imaginary, and I shall be surprised if the
voice of innocence does not sooner or later pronounce the truth that
they have ' nothing on,' and the hesitating crowd then ratify the
verdict.

WALTER K. CASSELS.

Since this article was written, the following letter from Dr.
Fremantle to the Bishop of Kipon has been published :

I find to my surprise that the statement in printed account of my paper on
natural Christianity, to the effect that the account of Our Lord's Virgin-birth
•* might be understood without any violation of biological law ' has been misunder-

40 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan-.

stood, and has been taken as meaning that the accounts might be read as implying
that Our Lord was born from a man and a woman by the ordinary process of
generation.

This is an entire misconception. Not only was there in my paper no denial
of the birth from a Virgin, but there was an attempt to explain (I trust humbly
and reverently, as befits such a subject) how we might understand, without any
violation of biological law, that which is described in the Article of the Creed,
' Conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,' and in St. Luke's
Gospel by the words ' The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the favour of
the Highest shall overshadow thee ; therefore, that holy thing which shall be born
of thee shall be called the Son of God.' I write this because I have only to-day
spoken to a friend, a theologian and a man of influence, who had misconceived
my statement as above described, and who was greatly relieved when I explained
it as I have now done. Pray make any use of this letter to correct any similar
misconception.

I am sorry to say that I cannot in the least understand how this
explanation can be supposed to bring the Virgin-birth into con-
formity with biological law.

w. K. a

1903

SIR OLIVER LODGE
AND OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS

I AM very grateful to Sir Oliver Lodge for hoisting my little bookr
The Schoolmaster, upon his burly knees ; even though, of the brisk
shower of slaps that he has administered to public-school educa-
tion, some have incidentally fallen upon myself, it would be im-
possible to resent them, in the face of the royal compliments with
which he has mollified his castigation.

Sir Oliver Lodge's contention is briefly this : he practically charges
me with having brought out the box of public- school education before
the world ; he indicates that I have rapped the sides to show how
hollow it is, and have ended by turning it upside down to prove
that there is nothing in it. He says that I have done this in a com-
placent and, on the whole, self-satisfied manner, as though I had
stated, after my public investigation of the contents, that it is, after
all, a very good box. Well, such is my candid belief. I think it is
a good box. I am sure that the public schools are now doing a great
work. I believe that they train boys in virtue, kindliness, common-
sense, manliness and diligence. But I do not think all these boys
wholly well educated. There is one thing obviously lacking from the
box, and that is the training of intelligence ; and this can, I believe,
be introduced ; the box is not too full to hold it.

Sir Oliver Lodge admits, with reservations, that, as far as charac-
ter and manliness go, the public-school product is not a bad one, so
that this discussion may be confined to the intellectual education
conferred by public schools. Moreover I would say that I believe
that the intellectual training received by boys of undoubted ability,
specialists and so forth, at public schools, is on the whole a good one.
The boys whose case I would here consider are the boys of average
moderate ability, and the boys of decidedly inferior capacity. These
are the boys for whom I do not think the public schools provide a
satisfactory education, considering it wholly from the intellectual
side.

I substantially admit everything in Sir Oliver Lodge's indictment.

41

42 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

except his description of my own mental attitude. I may gay in passing
that I think that he has pressed my admissions to rather too logical a
conclusion, without allowing sufficiently for the necessarily complex
nature of the public-school system, or for the idiosyncrasies of boy-
nature. My book was not intended to be an attack on public-school
education. It was written with a wholly different object. It was
written from the point of view of a master who had been a classical
teacher in a public school for eighteen years, and had for eleven years
presided over a boarding-house. It was addressed mainly to two
classes of readers. It was intended primarily for young men who
were engaged in choosing a profession, and for men who had recently
adopted the profession of teaching. It was meant to show that the
profession of a schoolmaster was a very real and noble vocation, one
that might be generously adopted and zealously practised; and I
also hoped that the book might be read by parents, and might
increase the confidence between parents and masters, and put their
relations on a sounder footing.

The intellectual aspect of the matter only came in incidentally,
but there was very little satisfaction in my mental attitude in penning
the frank confession that the intellectual standard of the nation, and
of the public schools as reflecting the spirit of the nation, was low ; it
has been unhappily evident in the debates on the Education Bill that
the aspects of education that have aroused interest in the country are
the political and denominational aspects, or, at all events, that if
intellectual interest has been felt, it has certainly not been expressed.
I tried to make the book a temperate statement of what I believed to
be the truth. I had no taste for lecturing all the world on its lack of
intellectual interest, but I can honestly say that I was very far from
viewing the condition of things with satisfaction : indeed the book
contained a strong appeal to teachers to cultivate intellectual interests
with all their might, and insisted upon this as a paramount duty ;
such complacency as may appear in the book is only, I would say,
the result of trying to face things as they are, tranquilly and without
undue excitement.

I will now say a few words upon the general question ; I do not
believe that the intellectual tone of schools is at all likely to rise
unless the intellectual tone of the country rises. The public schools
indeed are only a gauge of public feeling. All schoolmasters know the
impossibility of contending successfully in both the moral and intel-
lectual regions against an undercurrent of adverse home influence or
apathy. Most boys instinctively and rightly feel the home life to be
the real life ; and they are not likely, unless in exceptional cases, to
adopt the school standard as a superior one, nor would it be at all to
be desired that they should.

But it may be urged, and rightly, that any cure must originate,
at all events partially, in the schools ; and I do not deny it. The

1903 OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS 43

question then is, how can the intellectual side of school life be
amended ?

I have no hesitation in admitting that the first difficulty which
besets public-school education nowadays is the multiplicity of
subjects taught, or supposed to be taught. That a boy of moderate
or small capacity should be supposed to be learning at the same time
three languages — one modern and two ancient — besides his own,
mathematics, divinity, history, geography, and science, is a simply
preposterous state of things. The result is that in the majority of
those subjects a boy never emerges out of the elementary stages, has
no sense of mastery, and very little of interest. This congestion of
subjects is the growth of the last fifty years. Before that time the
education given was mainly literary and classical. I am not posing
as an anti-classicist ; and I humbly believe that the education of the
earlier part of the last century was a better one than the present,
merely because it was simpler, and because the boys had at least the
chance of mastering their subjects.

And yet the difficulty of simplifying matters is very great.
While the teaching of mathematics and science is obligatory, while
French is insisted upon, while the Universities exercise so strong
a compulsion, and demand Latin and Greek, while history and
geography naturally have to find a place, it is very difficult to see
what to throw overboard.

My own belief is that, if a boy could be taught the elements of
mathematics and science, English by means of history and geography,
enough French to be able to read a French book, and write a letter
in grammatical French, and possibly to read German, he would have
got together the materials for a good education. But this extrudes
the classics altogether. The best system of all would be to let a boy
be competently instructed in five subjects at the outside, and to let
one of these, selecting it by natural taste and capacity, be a special
subject, which he might feel he had mastered. But the practical
difficulties are enormous ; this system, so simple to describe, would
require probably a great increase of the teaching staff, and the time-
table would present insuperable difficulties — moreover, from the
financial point of view, the payment of these extra masters would at
the majority of schools be entirely out of the question. I do not say
that the problem might not be successfully grappled with, but it is
idle to pretend that the solution is simple.

Next, as to methods. Sir Oliver Lodge here adopts an almost
unreasonable attitude, and I think hardly allows for the conditions of
school life. He asks why certain educational processes, such as repeti-
tion lessons, which I stated were, in my opinion, unproductive, are
not given up ? Does Sir Oliver Lodge suppose that the assistant-masters
at public schools have a certain subject assigned to them which they
may teach on their own method and in their own way ? As a matter

44 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

of fact, the exact lessons that we have to do are all laid down in
time-tables, and very little divergence is possible. The plain duty
of an assistant-master is to prepare the boys for specified examina-
tions, and an exact and undeviating system is laid down for him,
which settles not only what lessons are to be prepared and what
exercises are to be done, but exactly how they are to be done. In these
matters assistant-masters have no independence. The theory, I
suppose, is that the headmaster of a school is the teacher of the boys,
and that the assistant-masters carry out his orders and teach the
boys on the system laid down for them. Personally I think that
many of our traditional methods are at fault ; we aim at minute and
relentless accuracy in the classics, to be arrived at by grammar
papers dealing mostly with rare and exceptional forms, verses and
prose interlineally corrected, words parsed on paper, and lessons
prepared with dictionaries ; these were all excellent methods when
classics held the field ; but to pursue them now, when classics have
been practically crowded into a corner, and to pursue the same or
similar methods with all the other subjects that have forced their
way into the curriculum, only results in sacrificing everything, in-
tellectual interest included, to accuracy. Accuracy is a noble and a
necessary thing, but it can be insisted upon until human nature
rebels, not in outspoken rebellion, but in a tacit blankness of mind
opposed to all intellectual progress. There is no lack of diligence at
public schools ; what is lacking is interest, and intellectual activity.

Another point where Sir Oliver Lodge is unfair to the conditions
of human life is where he contrasts the eager-eyed -children, full of
questions and curiosity, with the blank indifference of boyhood
educated on public-school methods. But he must remember that
simultaneously with the period of growth, and as a natural outcome
of the physical strain inseparable from arriving at maturity, comes a
listless period when boys undoubtedly do lose interest, quite apart
from the interest which is sacrificed by our educational methods.

I do not think that this physical fact is sufficiently taken into
account in schools; and I am strongly of opinion that as much
drudgery as can be proved to be unproductive, like the heartbreak-
ing toil of ' fair copies ' or the mechanical labour of dictionary turn-
ing, ought to be spared the boys. But, on the other hand, it is
necessary to make sure that the boy is using something, that some
mental effort is being made ; and that requires the direction of what
I should call a sympathetic teacher, and Sir Oliver Lodge a trained
teacher.

May I here advert to a small point made by Sir Oliver Lodge
which shows I think that he is not fully aware of the idiosyncrasies
of boys? I made a statement in my book about decisiveness in
teaching, a quality to which I seemed to him to attach an extravagant

1903 OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS 45

value. I think that the statement was made in too wide a sense.
I was thinking, when I made it, of the kind of classes which I have
generally had to teach, younger boys of moderate capacity. It
would not apply to older or abler boys, nor would it apply to private
tuition, with a smaller class. But for boys of small capacity, it is
necessary by some means or other to disabuse them of a not
unnatural delusion encouraged by commentators, that a writer in a
foreign language might have meant anything, and may be made to
mean anything by juggling with words. It is certain that many boys,
under our system of education, do not understand that a writer,
particularly an ancient writer, has had a definite thought in his
mind which he is expressing in a natural way ; and that our diffi-
culty in understanding it arises from an absence of complete
familiarity with the medium of expression. For such boys deci-
siveness is a pure gain. Moreover in young and sharp boys there
is often a strong vein of a certain malice, and if they imagine a
teacher to be imperfectly acquainted with his subject, they are quite
capable of expending their energies in framing apparently innocent
questions, with a view to exposing, if possible, gaps in that teacher's
knowledge. Such boys would be quite incapable of feeling the
reverent joy, to which Sir Oliver Lodge alludes, of finding themselves
in communion with a teacher who is an eager and unsatisfied learner
like themselves.

A few words must now be said about the teachers themselves,
and how to raise the intellectual standard among them.

Suppose that at the present time an intelligent and active young
man goes up to the University, with the intention of entering the
teaching profession, how will he spend his time ? He realises the
practical necessity of taking a good degree, if he is to secure one of
the better appointments, and the main part of the solidus dies is
given to prescribed work. Moreover he comes up from a public
school with a firm belief in the necessity and saving virtue of active
physical exercise. Well, I venture to say that the margin of time
left, after fulfilling a few social engagements, is not a very large one ;
and that it requires a man of very active and intelligent curiosity to
read as well, widely and enthusiastically, and to indulge in the
' ingenuous collision ' of mind with mind, that Carlyle speaks of as
being one of the great benefits of a University. Probably a man of
great intellectual eagerness, if he reads hard at his prescribed
subjects, will be apt to neglect athletic pursuits, or at all events
their natural sequel, the discussion of athletic topics, in favour of
general reading. But if he is a severely practical man, he will know
that a combination of academical success with athletic distinction is
far more likely to procure him a good scholastic appointment than
any amount of general intellectual interest. Here the pressure of

46 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

the public comes in ; headmasters know that the public attach great
importance to their children being guided and directed in athletic
matters by men of proved competence ; and when they also know-
that the public care very little about the boys being made intelligent,
it needs a very strong headmaster, with a very definite theory of his
own, to appoint men whose chief characteristic is intellectual interest
and vivid intelligence, unless such intelligence has the hall-mark of
academical success, and is moreover accompanied by athletic pro-
ficiency. I am inclined to think myself that athletic pursuits, how-
ever salutary in themselves, do occupy too much of the mental horizon
at the Universities, among public school men. But I do not believe
that this is generally felt. And, after all, there is a good deal to be
said for the ordinary view ; for the civic life and the moral character
of boys are largely bound up with their physical energies, so that in
the end the pressure of public opinion does make itself felt, and the
parents get the things that they value.

Of course this difficulty about the teachers would be remedied,
to a certain extent, if the normal school and university training
were a training in intellectual activity and mental interest. But
this is unfortunately not necessarily the case.

Moreover it is unhappily clear — I have made careful inquiries on
the subject — that masters at public schools live at the present time
a life of such pressure, that it is practically impossible, unless in
exceptional cases, for them to have any intellectual life of their own,
or to pursue studies or to indulge interests apart from their specified
subjects and professional work. I think that this is a great, but not
an irremediable evil ; and it stands to reason that teachers are not
likely to originate any very active intellectual interest among the
boys they teach, if they have no particular interests of their own,
apart from discharging their multifarious duties as conscientiously
and cheerfully as possible.

Much more might be written on the subject which would be
foreign to our present purpose. I will merely briefly recapitulate
my argument.

I fully and entirely agree with Sir Oliver Lodge that the in-
tellectual outlook in public-school education is not encouraging, and
that the methods pursued are not such as are calculated to produce
intellectual interest.

As to the cure for this state of things, my belief is that the only
radical cure is a lifting of the intellectual tone of the nation ; but if
this must originate in schools, then I would say that the grave fault
of our present system of education is the congestion of subjects, and
that this must at all costs be remedied. Next I would say that our
methods are somewhat at fault, but that, if education could be sim-
plified and pressure of subjects relieved, our present methods would

1903 OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS 47

not be so much at fault as they are at present. And, lastly, I would
say that it is necessary to raise the intellectual tone of teachers —
and that this can be done partly by the teachers themselves, partly
by relieving them of the pressure of excessive drudgery, and partly by
making a schoolmaster's life more of a career for an active and ener-
getic man. But, to argue in a circle, this last change is not like]y
to take place until the general public have a higher sense of the
value of intellectual things.

ARTHUR C. BENSOX.

48 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

SIR OLIVER LODGE
AND OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS

II

'* WE shall not greatly err if we take Mr. Benson's book as represent-
ing English school life in its best and truest and sanest aspect.'
On this assumption, Sir Oliver Lodge, in the December number of
this Keview, bases a comprehensive attack upon our public schools.
Yet I believe that the opinion of many schoolmasters about the
book might be fairly expressed in the terms of Dr. Johnson's famous
comment on Pope's translation of the Iliad. ' Some very pretty
essays, Mr. Benson, but please don't call them representative of
English public schools.' We read in it, with interest and some
amusement, the graceful obiter dicta in which a literary member of
our profession has touched the fringe of the big problems of our
work, passing from grave to gay, and from things important to
things unimportant, with an ease and literary skill which disarm
criticism. But it is a different matter when this work is treated as
seriously representing English public schools, and when obiter dicta,
with that superficial truth which characterises such sayings, are
treated as dogmas of the scholastic creed and made the text for a
serious attack. This is what Sir Oliver Lodge has done.

I content myself with one instance, before passing to the broader
and more important subject of the article. ' It is better/ says
Mr. Benson, ' to be perfectly decisive, even if you may be occasionally
wrong.' Taken in connection with its context, it is not hard to see
the element of truth in this dictum. The man who can never make
up his own mind is, no doubt, liable to leave a feeling of hopelessness
in the minds of his pupils. ' If our teachers cannot be sure of the
truth,' they will argue, ' why should we vex our souls to attain the
unattainable?' The attitude of philosophic doubt is apt to dis-
courage the young mind. In contrast to such a teacher the
enthusiast who knows no doubt, who has made up his own mind and
hardly pauses to give reasons for it, even if he be intolerant of ignor-
ance or difference of opinion, is both welcome and inspiring. Long
may there be some such intolerant enthusiasts among us. But a

1903 OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS 49

type no less common, I believe, and no less inspiring, is that of the
teacher who is rather the joint investigator than the infallible
expounder of already formed and unalterable opinions. ' Mr. A.,' so
I was told lately about a former colleague of mine who taught on
this method, ' didn't know so very much, but he taught you just
twice as much as he knew.' We learnt long ago from Plato's
' Dialogues ' that it is the process, not merely the result, of thought
that has educational value, and I refuse to believe that this type of
' teacher who is also a learner ' is rare on the literary side of our
public schools. Sir Oliver Lodge might find even there many who
have not bowed the knee to this Baal of affected ' omniscience,'
which he assumes that we worship. I am sure that when he implies,
as he seems to do, that literary studies, as contrasted with scientific,
encourage this spirit in the teacher, he is doing a gross injustice to
these subjects. It is largely because they afford so splendid a field
for the other method of teaching, because they enable the pupil

to watch

The master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play,

that our classical studies continue to hold their place as mental
training.

But the gravamen of the accusation (if I understand the article
aright) is that ' the intellectual side is not cultivated ' in our public
schools. This criticism, which is a very serious condemnation, if
true, is supported by several quotations from Mr. Benson's book.
' Intellectual things are, to put it frankly, unfashionable ' ; ' the
germ of intellectual life in many cases dies a natural death from
mere inanition ' ; ' intellectual life is left ' (by the masters) ' to take
care of itself; if a boy's 'home is one where intellect is valued,'
then only ' he has a fair chance of keeping interest up in a timid
and secluded way.' Similarly the masters, we are told, ' have no
intellectual ideal ' ; they ' must perpetually resist the impulse to
soar'; they ' omit intellectual enjoyment from their programme.'
Finally, we send out boys ' who hate knowledge and think books
dreary, who are perfectly self-satisfied and entirely ignorant . . .
arrogantly and contemptuously ignorant.' Sir Oliver Lodge, not
unnaturally, but I think unfairly, clinches all this by comparing
the similar indictment made against the state of intelligence in the
army, and holds the public school responsible for both.

Now it is generally waste of time to discuss a question of fact.
Mr. Benson says that our schools are hopelessly unintellectual, and
Mr. Benson ' is an honourable man.' I, for my part, with a shorter
but apparently less unfavourable experience of public schools, am
inclined on this point de republica non desperare. To each of the above-
quoted statements I should oppose a modest but deliberate denial.

VOL. LIU— No. 311 E

50 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

I could speak from personal experience of an interest in literature
created entirely by the influence of a public school, and of enthusiasms
first kindled and then fostered by the boys and masters with whom
I came in contact. I could name many a boy in the school I now
serve, apart from those who have reached the highest form (to whom
even Mr. Benson could not ascribe a complete absence of intellectual
interests), whose literary or scientific interests and enthusiasms have
developed steadily and apparently unhindered during their school
career ; and I have watched such boys not losing their enthusiasms
but imparting them to others, and leavening the general mass with
their wholesome interests. Above all, I protest against the ascription
to the public schools of the failings of the army. Army ' education '
is fast bound by Government regulations, by a prescribed examina-
tion which leaves us no choice. The result is that, in the matter of
education, boys preparing for the army are ' with us, but not of us.'
That the public schools are most successful in preparing for that
examination I know well ; but I believe that the examination itself
is a bad one, and that the want of ideas and interests ascribed
to army men is due to that point in which the teaching it
necessitates differs from the rest of our education. I refer to the
limitation of a boy to certain stages in certain subjects, and the
necessary refusal to pursue a branch of knowledge beyond a certain
point, because ' it doesn't pay ' in the examination. It is just this
limitation which seems to many of us to mar the army training, and,
I may add, to make it unrepresentative of public-school education.

But what the public, our employer, has a right to expect from
public schoolmasters in reference to a question of this kind is not so
much a denial of the charge as a statement of what actually are the
intellectual influences at work in our schools. How far, and by what
means, does our system lend itself to fostering such influences ? The
personality of the masters, which must necessarily be an important
element in the matter, I prefer to pass over. I would only say that
some even of us might claim to be 'live people, engaged in real
and progressive work and full of enthusiasm for it ' — a class which
Sir Oliver Lodge thinks the boy is first likely to encounter in the
University ' don.' But, putting aside the character of the teachers,
the intellectual atmosphere of the school will depend largely on two
elements — on the boys, and on the curriculum.

What steps do we take to secure that the boys then selves shall
be favourable to an atmosphere of intellectual ideas ? I believe that
more depends upon this than is always realised. A few boys with
real enthusiasms for subjects other than athletics will speedily kindle
interests and awaken enthusiasm in a House. It is just for this
reason that we value so much our entrance scholarships, not primarily
as providing us with boys who will do us credit afterwards, but as
furnishing an intellectual leaven, as securing not infrequently intelli-

1903 OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS 51

gent boys from a different class, to whom the high fees of a school
like that to which I belong would be otherwise prohibitive. Such
boys fully repay what is given them in the majority of cases. In most
public schools they are distributed among the different boarding-
houses, and eventually supply the chief, though not of course the
whole, of the sixth-form rulers of those houses. If, like Plato's re-
public, we claim ' dues of nurture ' from those whom we so train,
and make our philosophers kings, who shall blame us ?

In this particular, I am aware, not all schools have the same system.
I cannot help thinking that the difference between Mr. Benson's
experience and mine in this question of the intellectual standard of
our schools may be due in part to the different treatment of scholars
to which we are accustomed. The Eton practice of reserving one
house for the scholars, on whom other schools depend largely to
leaven the whole lump, may have advantages of its own, but must
certainly have the disadvantage of depriving the rest of the school of
most valuable intellectual influences. In this respect, at any rate,
we may claim that Eton and Winchester, if the most historic, are
not the most representative, of our public schools. I believe the
difference to be of fundamental importance.

But it is by diversity of intellectual interests as well as by
a leaven of intelligence that ideas will be fostered. Most of our
schools now are no longer confined to one groove. The scientific
boy is housed with the classical, the historian and the mathematician
live side by side, and the juxtaposition necessarily produces a certain
rivalry of studies and interchange of ideas. In few, if any, of our
public schools now is it possible for a boy to grow up thinking that
his own groove is the only one. In this way, I am sure, any school
which has not a modern side as well as a classical, and which does
not also give opportunities for more definite specialisation in science
and mathematics and history, loses a valuable intellectual asset.

This brings me to the subject of our curriculum, against which,
so far as I understand him, Sir Oliver Lodge's main attack is really
directed. He talks rather vaguely of ' a surfeit of book-knowledge
and dead and fusty material,' and tells us that ' everything is so
portentously dull ' in our subjects, ' that degrees of unattractiveness
seem unworthy of attention.' Without taking quite seriously a
statement so sweeping and unjust as this, we may understand him
to believe that most of what is taught in our schools has no interest
of its own, and is calculated to chill rather than foster enthusiasm.
It is the old cynical criticism, that our education consists in * teaching
boys subjects they hate by methods which make them hate them
still more.' What truth, or rather what basis of truth, is there in
this accusation ?

I should like to say one word on this term ' interesting,' which is
so commonly applied now as the test of teaching. It seems likely

E 2

52 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Tan,

that ' interest 'is to be the fetish of the new schoolmaster, as
' accuracy ' was of the old. Both are good things, but both are
liable to be exalted at the expense of true education. Much work
must be done in life to which the term ' interesting ' can hardly be
applied, and any education which exalts ' interest ' at the expense of
application is, to my mind, going on the wrong tack. To be
' stimulating,' I should say, rather than to be ' interesting,' is the
true ideal for the teacher. Interest is undoubtedly one of the most
stimulating elements, but it is not everything.

With this proviso, I do not for a moment deny that, if it be true
that our subjects are completely lacking in interest, we are failing
in our educational duty. But let it be remembered that there are
various kinds of interest. There is the superficial pleasure of
hearing new information, or seeing new experiments. That will
always form part, though not a very large part, of our education.
But there is the higher interest of grappling with new difficulties, of
realising by practical experiment one's own mental growth. The
exercise of the faculty of understanding is in itself pleasant, if once
the boy can be got to realise it. Mr. Benson's bribe of easier work
to follow, whereby he persuades an unwilling form to grapple with
Greek conditional sentences, is a confession of weakness hardly to be
expected from so good a teacher. There is no reason why a problem
of language of this kind, involving as it does an insight into the
working of our own minds, and not merely into Greek constructions,
should not be as interesting, as it gradually becomes clearer to the
intelligence, as any of the thousand and one puzzles with which a
boy voluntarily employs himself. In such a case I do not believe it
is the subject which is at fault.

To the growing mind, no subject need be dull in which the boy
feels that he is ' getting on.' Ask a small boy what subject he likes
best, and ten to one he will name the one in which he finds that he
can make most progress. To the weak linguist, science or mathe-
matics or history or English literature lessons will be the most
interesting. To another boy who lacks (as so many boys do up to
quite a late period in their development) the power of grasping the
meaning of English literature or history or Scripture, the Latin prose
or Greek translation will give the most satisfaction, because it is
in this that he feels he can get most ' grip.' Stagnation is always dull ;
but no subject is dull to the specialist in it.

We at the public schools are, I think, realising this more and
more. We are beginning to make provision to allow boys who have
a special bent in any direction to concentrate upon it, to the partial
(but not complete) exclusion of others. The historian, the scientist,
the mathematician, is provided for in this way as well as the classic.
I hope that we may soon see the purely literary, as opposed to the
linguistic, faculty similarly recognised, and that boys to whom the

1903 OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS 53

higher and more accurate side of scholarship is unattainable may
yet be admitted to a wide reading of the classics, even at the expense
•of some of that grammatical accuracy which is so valuable to the
real scholar and so great a stumbling-block to his weaker, though
.perhaps hardly less appreciative, brother. I admit that tradition
and Oxford and Cambridge entrance examinations stand in the way ;
yet I have reason to believe that a change on these lines would be
welcomed by many of the leading teachers of our public schools.

If I may return, in conclusion, to Mr. Benson's book, I would
suggest that he seems to feel himself more tied and bound than
many of us do by the limitations of system. English literature is
not to be taught as a subject because its ' treatment by commentators
is as a rule so profoundly unintelligent.' If so, why use com-
mentators? No English literature lesson need be dependent on
special editions, if the teacher chooses to shake himself free. That
the individuality of the teacher need not be cramped by routine
may be realised by anyone who passes from Mr. Benson's book to
read the recently published Life of Edward Bcnven of Harrow.
We cannot all have his originality or his freedom of action ; but
some measure of both is welcomed and allowed, I doubt not, by
every wise headmaster to his colleagues. Not in a complete
upheaval of our old system, but in the broadening and adaptation or
it, lies to my mind the hope of the future. We have in our public
schools and in the classics two much criticised, but long-valued,
bases of education. In both, I believe, there is life and vigour yet,
if we will but use them to the full. ' Spartam nacti sumus : hanc
-exornemus.'

FRANK FLETCHER.

54 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

IS SOCIETY WORSE THAN IT WAS?

WHEN Queen Victoria began to reign, her youth and innocence had
such an effect on Society that people, conscious of their imperfections,
began to amend their former ways. Respectability became the
fashion, and those whose conduct had not been irreproachable
were ashamed, and, outwardly at least, conformed to all rules of
propriety.

This, however, lasted only for the lifetime of one generation,
and then, as Society grew larger, people became more and more
worldly, and less and less careful to maintain a high standard until
now, when though perhaps not sufficiently ashamed of it they are
not altogether pleased with the state of affairs.

If the question be asked, * Is Society now better than it was a
hundred years ago?' the frequent answer hastily and cheerfully
given is, ' Yes, undoubtedly, for people are more sober, more refined,
and no longer swear.'

This is true to a certain extent, but when we consider how much
more educated, refined, and sober the whole nation has become, and
what vast strides have been made in science and all kinds of know-
ledge, then in comparison Society seems to have made little, if any,
progress. There may be now as many wise, charming, and bril-
liantly clever people as there were then, but they have not increased
in number, though Society has.

Society has its rules, and claims as heretofore to be an example
in good manners and honourable behaviour. Any person openly
convicted of cheating, or of breaking the marriage laws, is expelled.
A few who manage to conceal their misdoings and appear outwardly
respectable are welcome to remain.

There are others, really noble and good, who, though in the
world, are not of the world, whose homes are an example of all that
is best in the British nation, and whose good influence would be felt
if Society had not grown so large that it can no longer be controlled
by one set. There are now many circles within it, each containing
people who consider themselves leaders of their own surroundings,
some of whom are so far from being patterns of good behaviour that it

1903 IS SOCIETY WORSE THAN IT WAS? 55

becomes a question whether the term of reproach ' not in Society '
may not in future become one of commendation.

But let us consider first the improvements claimed to have been
made within the last century — in sobriety, manners, and refinement.
Certainly among men it is no longer thought a fine thing to drink
too much. Insobriety happens very seldom, and when it does, is
considered a disgrace. But women drink far more than they did
fifty years ago, not only wine, but spirits and liqueurs. People
interested in the subject say that the liking for alcohol is increasing
alarmingly among them, though of course they indulge in it secretly.
It is said that dressmakers and grocers procure wine or spirits for
' the lady,' and call it by some other name in the bill paid by the
husband. Whether this be true or not, there is little doubt that
many women drink far more than is necessary or good for them.
Perhaps the now common practice of smoking cigarettes habitually
may tend to increase this evil. Then the taking of drugs seems
much more common. There is a greater impatience at the least
pain. A slight headache, often caused only by racketing about
after too many pleasures, is made an excuse for taking antipyrine, or
some other soothing medicine, with results disastrous to heart and
nerves.

As to manners, it is curious to observe how far less they have
improved in Society, than among those from whom good manners
are least expected. Except in the case of a panic, it was less disagree-
able to be in a common crowd at the entrance of an exhibition or
theatre, than in a large drawing-room at the Palace, before the new
regulations were made. In the common crowd, you are good-
humouredly tolerated, sometimes even assisted, never intentionally
pushed.

In Croker's Diary we read : ' A great crowd at the Drawing-room,
and the absence of hoops brings the ladies into such close contact
that some of them quarrelled, and were near pulling one another's
feathers.' We are not quite so bad as this now, but some years ago
a man in uniform, desirous of helping his wife and daughters to the
royal presence, forgetting his manners, said, ' No room ? Oh, you
just follow me, I will make room,' and assisted by sharp epaulettes
he did so.

Good manners are often to be met with in a 'bus or third-class
railway carriage. There you are welcomed with kind hands stretched
out to lift your birdcage or bandbox. It is surprisingly rare to meet with
common civility in a first-class carriage. For instance, going by train
to garden parties near London, without any encumbrances of birds
or boxes, you are unwillingly, ungraciously permitted to squeeze into
a seat, the other occupants of the carriage making it very clear that,
because you happen to be unknown to them, no civility is to be
expected on their part. It may be urged as an excuse that heat,

56 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

stuffiness, and overcrowding are more annoying to gentlefolk, but then
good manners should conceal it. As a French writer has said, ' La
politesse a ete inventee pour remplacer la bonte de coeur qui nous
manque.' But those wanting in kindness of heart do not always avail
themselves of the invention.

The same can be said of those who extinguish all view of the
stage with their large hats at a morning performance, and others
who discuss the play, or their own affairs, in a loud voice during the
performance. This, in the last few years, has become an intolerable
nuisance. Can nothing be done to put an end to it? In a Paris theatre
any attempt at talking is instantly stopped by loud hisses. In London
a polite request for silence has no effect. It is people in Society, as
well as those out of it, who are guilty of this kind of selfishness. The
other day a little girl, whose father had vainly tried to remonstrate
with some chatterer in the stalls, said in a clear but subdued voice,
' Oh, it's no good • leave him alone, papa ! He looks like my dentist,
and might pay me out some day.' The child's remark had the
desired effect.

As to refinement, of course a spade is no longer called a spade
quite so plainly as long ago, and swearing is never heard. Some of
the slang expressions now in use may not be considered very refined,
but they are harmless. It is, however, doubtful if anything in former
years can have been more seriously objectionable than the conversa-
tion that goes on in some houses at the present time. What excuse
can be made for people, by birth gentlefolk, who allow stories and
jokes to be circulated round the dinner-table in whispers, because
they are too bad to be repeated aloud ; and for those women who
encourage by their laughter coarse conversation full of allusions
and doubles-ententes, who discuss such disgraceful gossip in their
drawing-rooms that it must poison the mind of any innocent young
woman who may be present ?

Honesty has always been reckoned one of the essential qualities
of every member of society, and when it concerns gambling and racing
is strictly adhered to. But in other matters not connected directly
with friends or acquaintances, some people have very lax ideas on the
subject. To be so extravagant as to buy more than can possibly be
paid for, is certainly cheating, though not perhaps of the same kind as
Society blames most. And this is done by many without shame or re-
morse for the ruin it often causes to the tradespeople. There are women,
for instance, who indulge in every kind of extravagance they cannot
afford, and at the same time are willing enough to give away money
which is not theirs, thereby gaining the credit of being charitable.
In a few instances they have even been heard preaching to working
girls on the desirability of dressing quietly and being respectable.
It is doubtful if such incongruity and hypocrisy were practised a
hundred years ago.

1903 IS SOCIETY WORSE THAN IT WAS? 57

No doubt there always were, and are now, people who do not
pretend to be otherwise than worldly, and are for ever striving to
obtain pleasures or advantages. Some of them, whose greatest fear
is being uncomfortable or bored, try to avoid these by running after
the wealthy. Now and then they discover new rich people, and
hastily introduce them into the inner fashionable circle, without the
least caring whether they possess anything besides money, nor how this
was acquired. They stand at what we will call the ' turnstile ' of
Society, and say (in veiled language no' doubt), ' What will you give in
return for these introductions ? ' The answer comes later, honestly
paid in some substantial form or other, a carriage, horses, or a sum of
money purposely lost at a game of cards. Occasionally some charity
benefits largely, but seldom in the real giver's name. Once through
the gate, they are welcomed by many ; albeit some may smile and
call them ' vulgar/ in reality they are not more so than those who
introduced them.

Sometimes, when fault is found with the present-day manners
and morals, the blame is laid on Americans and nouveaux riches, of
whom there are a greater number than formerly. But it is doubtful
whether this accusation is justified. It is true American girls are
supposed to be independent and free and easy in manner, but surely
not so silly or so devoid of womanly dignity as to behave as a few
English young ladies do, who, in trying to copy fast married women,
only succeed in imitating the saucy, romping manners of factory
girls, and even, like them, in ' keeping company with their young
man.' For what else can it be called, when girls consent to drive off at
night in hansoms with their partners, instead of dancing ? Yet this
has been known to occur at balls where chaperones were considered
superfluous.

As to American women, they certainly encourage extravagance
in dress, but they are generally speaking well-educated, energetic,
self-reliant, and those who have married Englishmen have in most
cases proved to be exemplary wives and mothers.

As a rule the nouveaux riches help to exaggerate the importance
of wealth by their extravagance, but there are many exceptions.
Some, aware of the responsibility of riches, spend their money not
only in the encouragement of science, culture, and art, but also in
charity. If some bring an element of vulgarity into Society, it is
no serious fault, nor one that can be cavilled at by those who toady to
and worship the wealthy.

If there be reason to think that Society is deteriorating rather
than improving, it is not owing to these, nor even perhaps, as some
suppose, to the bad influence of a few among the aristocracy, who,
by their conduct, have extinguished the respect hitherto accorded
to their old family names, but rather to the apathy of some, and
the timidity amounting to cowardice of others, belonging to that

58 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

vast majority of respectable people who condone conduct which in
their heart of hearts they condemn.

They ought to be the example, but they have never realised their
responsibilities. With some the dread of being considered strait-
laced or prim, is far greater than the fear of evil. Virtuous them-
selves, they yet know and believe all the evil gossip about others
from whom they readily accept invitations and benefits. They
allow gambling to go on in their houses, for they have not the
pluck to forbid games of cards being plajed for money. Idle
people are encouraged by them to play ' bridge,' not merely as a
recreation in the evening, but as the business of the day, begin-
ning after luncheon and continuing throughout the night. In enter-
taining their friends and acquaintances, so anxious are they to be
popular and please those who are the fashion of the day, that they
encourage flirtations among married people, and would sooner think
of leaving out the husbands, than of not including in their invita-
tions the well-known admirers of their guests.

They pride themselves in knowing all the on dits and latest
gossip, so that they may be able to arrange for people to meet
in their houses whom it would be far kinder to keep apart. If it
result in marring the happiness of some man or woman's life, they
are unconcerned. ' It is no business of theirs,' they say. If, however,
it all ends in some open scandal, they are the first to turn away in
virtuous indignation, and are shocked at what they themselves have
really done their best to bring about. It never dawns upon their
minds that they have shared in the evil, and are in a great measure
responsible for what has occurred. If, however, they suspected
their cook of making rendez-vous with the married policeman, they
would see the harm more clearly, and consider it their duty to put a
stop to it at once.

These are people who never think perhaps, because they never
give themselves time. By no means wicked, for, on the contrary,
they are kind, well-intentioned, and even in their way religious.
They go regularly to church, and are horrified at any unorthodox
ideas. When for a moment they have time to speak seriously, you
find that Divine words, like ' Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of
these,' are loved and reverenced by them, but, like holy relics of
some long lost friend, they are locked away and treasured carefully,
but have no part or meaning in their daily life.

Yet it is to them that many a man or woman might point and
say, 'In your house the great sorrow of my life began/ or 'The
gambling in your house was the beginning of my ruin.'

With some respectable persons the fault lies in their denseness
or stupidity. For instance, one will tell you all sorts of wicked
unpardonable things Lady X. has done, and shortly afterwards will
say, ' She is giving a ball next week. There she is, standing near

1903 IS SOCIETY WORSE THAN IT WAS? 59

the door in pale green. Shall I introduce you ? She may invite
you and your pretty daughter ! ' Surprised, you reply, ' No, thank
you; after all you have told me I would rather not make her
acquaintance.' ' But she gives such excellent balls ; surely for the
sake of your daughter ? ' and if you take the trouble to explain that
you object to making the acquaintance of, or accepting a kindness
from, anyone whose conduct you abhor, your opinion is received
with the same shocked surprise as if you had spoken lightly of the
Bible.

Or, again, somebody deplores to you in confidence, ' What a
dreadful pity it is that the objectionable little Mrs. Dragonfly has
quite got hold of Mr. Z., who is so charming. I know you have
asked him to your dance, but I fear he will not come unless
you send an invitation to Mrs. D. ! ' Then you answer, ' I agree
with you, Mr. Z. is charming, and he will come or not as he chooses,
but I shall not ask Mrs. D.' This somebody goes on urging you,
saying, ' After all, Mrs. Dragonfly is very pretty, lively, and much
admired. Everybody asks her. You know, a few smart married
women like her are always an attraction to any ball.' This advice,
if worldly, is genuine and kindly meant.

Another time some timid woman will reveal to you in confidence
how terribly shocked she was at something said in the conversation,
when the women were alone after dinner. When you ask, ' What
did you do ? Did you remonstrate, or get up and leave them ? '
' Oh no,' she answers, ' I could not get up. I was afraid they
would think me prudish, or that I considered myself better than
they ; I said nothing.'

Sometimes this kind of weakness only comes from humility or a
mistaken idea of charity. ' Are we then,' they ask, ' to decline to
invite or to meet any person whose conduct, in our opinion, does not
come up to our own standard ? Are we to judge others whose lives
may be more beset with temptations, difficulties, and dangers than
our own ? If so, is this consistent with Christian charity ? '

No, nor are they required to judge others, but rather to judge
themselves. To be lenient to the faults of others, only if they
be fashionable, and for as long as they prosper, and their friendship
be of worldly advantage, is not charity. It is also easy to forgive
sins when they are not committed against ourselves. We know that,
though we may love sinners, we are to hate sin.

It is possible to be hospitable, generous, considerate, and kind to
all our friends and acquaintances, and at the same time to be firm
and true to our own principles.

Parents who are not wise in choosing their friends, and invite
gamblers and other idlers to their houses, cannot bring up their
children well. This may account for there being now so many
young people who spend their whole time in madly rushing after

60 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

amusements. Though born in a position where the highest educa-
tion is attainable, they seem to be idle, uncultivated, with little
interest in anything beyond childish pleasures. If you ask them to
go to the play, they will only consent provided it be one devoid of
story, but with plenty of dancing and singing in it. They groan
at the very mention of Shakespeare.

Even if they wish to improve, having never been taught the
necessity of any duty or work, always surrounded only by the worldly,
frivolous friends of their parents, it is almost impossible for them to
do so. The boys go to school, and may come in contact with better
influences; but the girls, if they marry, have little chance of
becoming good wives or mothers, or in any way useful members of
society.

Men, as well as women, may be held equally responsible for the
faults of society. But women, if they have the will, possess greater
power for good. A man, beyond his own personal example, has
fewer opportunities of influencing others. He is afraid of appearing
priggish if he expresses disapproval, and believes he has no in-
fluence.

Yet, though he may not know it, sometimes he possesses more
influence than he thinks. One word of good and true friendly
advice of his may have more effect on a woman than any preaching
from her own sex. From them she is accustomed to hear virtue extolled,
but from him it surprises her and obliges her to think. Perhaps
startled to find his ideals are higher than her own, she follows his
counsel ; and who knows whether or no it may be just at a turning
point of her life ? If men, on the other hand, realised the effect
their flippant words may have on others, they would be more
•careful.

A woman, however, has the greatest influence over society in
general. To begin with, the home and children are much more under
her influence. If she entertains, all the invitations and social
arrangements are, generally speaking, entirely under her control.
Therefore her opportunities for influencing the conduct, manners,
tone, and conversation of her surroundings are greater than those of
her husband. There are many good women who do all this, but it
were better if there were more. As long as people continue satis-
fied, the present state of affairs will continue.

That the responsibilities of Society are very great and can in no
way be evaded is true, for no one denies that the vices of Society
have a disastrous effect on the nation at large.

If a desire for improvement were to arise again as in 1837, it
would be hailed with joy by all those who still cling to the old-
fashioned ideas embodied in the saying, Noblesse oblige.

No doubt the leaven is there, but the mass of dough is too
great to be effectually pervaded by it. The hope for improvement

1903 IS SOCIETY WORSE THAN IT WAS? 61

lies in the young people of this present generation. If some young
married women will only lead the way, others will follow.

Do not listen to the cynical worldling who tells you there is
no use in trying to alter anything. Let him sit with folded hands
in contented apathy saying, ' All is not so bad,' and that it is
better ' to live and let live,' and surtout point de zele ! Pay no
heed to him ; remember that Society's influence reaches to the
heart of the nation ; so for the sake of your country, for the sake of
all you love best, cling to your highest ideals of life, and your home
will become a beacon for good. No matter if you are poor or
stand alone, there is still power in your life's example if only
(to use the words of Emerson) you take care to ' hitch your car to a
star.'

G-UENDOLEN KAMSDEN.

62 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

LABELS

MANKIND has a great love for labels; a person, quality, or action
without a ticket is as unsatisfactory as a store-cupboard where the
different pqts and tins display no outward evidence of their contents.
We feel vaguely irritated at any specimen which is fluttering loosely
about, instead of reposing in an orderly manner impaled on a pin in
its appropriate compartment. Besides, the label is usually supposed
to give some indication of the nature of the article ; we are saved
the trouble of investigating a man's character, for instance, when we
learn that he is a ' hero ' or a ' felon ' or a ' saint ; ' we need not
waste time in trying to discriminate between A's attitude and B's,
when we are told that the former is remarkable for his ' firmness '
and the latter for his ' obstinacy ; ' C we might deem bad-tempered,
had we not been forewarned that he 'possessed a great deal of
character.'

Probably there never was a greater lover of labels than Dr.
Johnson ; the very strength as well as the narrowness of his intellect
drove him to find a name for everything, and when once the name
was found and applied, there was an end of all discussion, so far as
the Doctor was concerned : ' Sir, the man's a rogue, so let's hear no
more about him.'

Of course it sometimes happens that the labels get a little mixed :
the good dog gets a bad name and a consequent short shrift, while
the bad dog gets a good one and so carries on a long and unchecked
career of that barking and biting which we are told on high authority
is natural to him. In fact, we are sometimes tempted to believe that
some freakish sprite has been taking a hint from The Wrong Box and
' playing billy with the labels ' in transit. Even in the nursery we
begin to discover that the sinner is not quite so sinful or the saint so
sanctified as their respective labels would indicate — especially if the
saint or sinner is a member of one's own household.

This has been, quite inappropriately, called a whitewashing age ;
presumably because certain writers, in analysing the characters of
Judas Iscariot, Caesar Borgia, Judge Jeffreys and others whom our
forefathers deemed infamous, have discovered that, like the Master

1903 LABELS 63

they served, they were not quite so black as they were painted. But
analysis is not whitewash ; so far from being anxious to cover over
any defects, the modern spirit makes an almost frenzied use of the
scraper and the burning lamp ; it has but one aim, to remove all the
incrustations of time or prejudice, and get at the real facts, at the
real man behind the facts ; and to do this it must disregard the label
attached to the man.

If we push this to extremes we shall end by discarding labels
altogether, in which case we shall be reduced like the sages of
Laputa to carrying things about with us to save the trouble of using
words ; and this would obviously be inconvenient. But without
adopting such an extreme course, we may yet advance one step in
the direction of clear thinking by investigating a few of these labels
and seeing how far they are in themselves responsible for the attitude
we take towards the world at large. We are all in a greater or less
degree the slaves of words, judging of an action by the name we give
it or hear given it by others. This tyranny of words was well illus-
trated by a remark made by a woman of at least average intellect :
' That sounds very reasonable. But are you not now preaching
Protection ? Because if you are, I entirely disagree with what you
say.' She had been willing to swallow the doctrine, but the label
stuck in her throat.

It was only in the frankness of her avowal that this elementary
politician differed from a great number of ordinary people who have
made up their minds — or what does duty for their minds — on most
questions which they have heard discussed, Imperialism, Nihilism,
Free Trade, Free Love, Atheism, Militarism, and half a score of
other -isms ; so that on supplying them with the title they will
talk both loud and long for or against the topic in accordance with their
convictions ; whereas, if you introduce the subject matter, carefully
keeping the label out of sight, they will generally be found to admit
that there is a good deal to be said on both sides of the question ;
and this is tantamount to admitting that the picture called up by
the label is not a true representation of the object.

The use of labels, then, is subject to two drawbacks : the label
may be misapplied, or though rightly applied it may be misleading
owing to the false ideas inherent in the name. Owing to long mis-
use and a number of sentimental influences, many qualities which
come outside the sphere of morality — i.e. in themselves are neither
right nor wrong — are invested with attributes of praise or blame
which they by no means deserve. And this prejudice is not easily got
rid of; for, though we all — except Nietzsche and his disciples — love
the virtues and abhor the vices, we very rarely venture to dissect any
of the qualities which we learnt in the schoolroom to classify under
these two heads; such an examination being generally termed
' tampering with one's conscience,' and productive of a very advanced

64 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

state of immorality. To which it can only be answered that the
conscience which cannot endure the investigation of any of the facts
of life must be based on rather a rotten foundation.

As an instance of the first danger in the use of labels, the danger
of misapplication, we may take the word Duty, the name we give to
one of the deepest and finest of all human impulses, the only one of
the great spiritual trio of which, as George Eliot says, we can feel
perfectly certain at all times. Yet is there any degree of rudeness,
malice, or unkindness, which is not rendered excusable, and even
praiseworthy, if it can be labelled ' Duty ' ? The phrase ' I must do my
duty ' more often than not means ' I am going to make myself
unpleasant to my neighbour ' ; and this not from any conscious
hypocrisy. The man or woman who opens a neighbour's eyes to the
' real character ' of a third person is generally under the impression
that he is more than justified in what he does ; he begins by tying
the label Duty on to his action, and then very often feels genuinely
distressed at having to carry out this self-appointed task. Indeed
when we ask ' What is duty ? ' we propound a riddle comparable only
with that asked long ago by the Procurator of Judaea, and will do well
to imitate his speedy retirement, recognising the futility of our own
questioning ; for one thing alone is certain, that the answer can
come from no lips but our own.

Think, again, of the amazing series of actions that are glorified
under the term ' Patriotism ; ' there is hardly a crime in the calendar
which does not become praiseworthy if the perpetrator can be held
to have acted from patriotic motives. Even thinking people admit
that ' political crimes ' come in quite a different category from those
attempted for private ends, while those actions which would land a
man in gaol or on the scaffold if done in the interests of Tom, Dick,
or Harry, will earn the perpetrator distinction if the dominions of
King Thomas, King Bichard, or King Henry can be held to have got
any benefit from them.

A few minutes' reflection will furnish anyone with half a dozen
other labels, equally useful for the malevolent, equally injurious to
society. ' Liberty,' ' the Public Weal,' ' the maintenance of the
Constitution,' ' the interests of Morality ; ' were all these personified,
how they would gasp and stare at the strange brood of actions to
which they are forced to act parent ! Not that I would for a
moment be held to undervalue these principles in themselves ; they
are as real as the Equator, and a reasonable being would as soon
speak disrespectfully of them. The pity is that these labels, so
admirably descriptive of certain lines of action, are all too often
applied, with most disastrous result?, to actions entirely foreign to
their scope and purpose.

The second drawback to the use of labels — that is the praise or
blame which attaches to the mere utterance of them — is well instanced

1903 LABELS 65

by the term Constancy, or Fidelity ; for these words are always used
with a certain appreciative significance, though the quality they
connote is in itself neither good nor bad. Feeling that perseverance
in a good cause is praiseworthy, we are misled by analogy and
cherish a sneaking admiration for persistence in a bad one. We
usually consider the life-long devotion of a bad woman to a bad man
a redeeming feature in her character ; really it is only an item in
her list of vices, and a very serious one, for her reformation is not
likely to begin until she gets rid of it. The persistent belief in the
Stuarts, long after they had manifested their incapacity to rule,
is regarded as commanding our respect at least, if not our admiration.
The glamour which the word 'Loyalty 'sheds over the men who came
out in the '15 and the '45 blinds us to the really selfish and
criminal nature of their undertaking. No clearer instance can be
given of the possibility of detesting a cause and at the same time
admiring the man who perseveres in it than the touching Jacobite
epitaph, written by Lord Macaulay of all people in the world.
Those beautiful lines would certainly never have been written had he
not felt that loyalty was a quality admirable in itself quite irrespective
of the justice or injustice of the cause.

It is only because we do not look things squarely in the face that
we denounce inconstancy in love or friendship. The fundamental
law of life is the law of change ; the man who for the whole of his
life loves the same woman in the same way, so far from manifesting
his greatness of soul, has probably only proved himself to be a very
unprogressive person. It is only possible for a man to keep his early
ideals by shutting his eyes to the facts of life, by laying out a
pleasure garden round his soul and refusing to stir beyond its
bounds, lest he should find something to spoil his dreams. But
the man who would fulfil the law of his being, the law of progress,
whose supreme desire and aim in life is to learn, to whom each year
is but a new term at school with new lessons to be learned or
neglected, how can he keep the same ideals, preserve the same tastes,
worship the same God, his whole life through? And since it is
mainly on these three factors that love and friendship depend, how
can he keep the same objects of his affection ? It may be, of course,
that the woman you love will so grow and progress along the same
lines as yourself, that she will always hold the same position in your
thoughts which she held when first you loved her; but this does
not prove your constancy ; it proves your inconstancy ; for every
year the woman you love is different : and between loving a woman
who is different and loving a different woman, tell me, 0 splitters of
hairs, where lies the distinction ?

The same is true of friendship. We part in early manhood from
one who is to all appearances our Second Self, and when we meet
again after the lapse of years we are surprised to find how little we

VOL. LIII — No. 311 F

66 THE NINETEENTH CENTUR7 Jan.

have in common. We can meet, it is true, in the green meadows of
the past, and each ' Do you remember ' seems to put us for the
moment on the old terms again. But conversation cannot be all
reminiscence, and as soon as we talk of ourselves as we are, we too
often find that there is a great gulf between us ; we take ourselves
to task for not feeling the same warmth as of old, and are apt with a
lurking feeling of shame to accuse ourselves of inconstancy. We
seek to drown the idea by taking repeated pulls at the flagon of
Memory which we have in common, but sooner or later, if we are
honest, we have to admit that we no longer love the friend of our youth.
But we have not proved ourselves inconstant ; just the reverse, we
are constant to the memory of the man we knew years ago. All
through our absence we have pictured him trudging along the same
path as ourselves, climbing the same heights, struggling through
the same bogs ; while all the time his steps have taken him in quite
another direction, his experiences have been quite different from ours,
and it is only by the rarest of chances that we find him landed on
the same plateau or lying at the foot of the same cliff as we.

If, then, what is commonly termed inconstancy turns out to be
constancy, and if all healthy-minded people are bound to advance,
even at the cost of severing the links which unite them to the past,
must we not admit that the use of such terms is mischievous ?

Of all the labels which mankind uses, none probably embraces
more remarkable incongruities than the word 'Pleasure.' Well
might Democritus split his sides at the sight of the toil, the dis-
comfort, the expense, the real physical pain that people will cheer-
fully undergo so long as they can persuade themselves that their
sufferings are all in the cause of Pleasure. It requires a man of
more than ordinary discernment to observe, with Gr. H. Lewes,
that the world would be a good enough place but for its pleasures,
while only a very few possess enough strength of mind to squarely
turn their backs on enjoyment and be happy. The hours we spend
in uncongenial society, in pursuits which cannot by any possibility be
of use to anyone, in doing things we take no interest in, in reading
books which need never have been written, in writing articles which
need never be read — all these added together would amount to years
in the course of a lifetime, and yet we submit smilingly, uncom-
plainingly, because we find all these things labelled ' Pleasure' and
we ought to take a little relaxation.

C. B, WHEELER.

1903

ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN POLITICS
IN THE EAST

FOR some time we have been witnessing certain incidents, such as
the passage of the Russian fleet through the Straits, and the
Shipka manifestations, which point to great black clouds upon the
Turkish horizon. And while the troubles continue in Macedonia the
only Power to counsel the Sultan to apply a policy of reform is
Russia.

This reversal of the natural order of things forces us to pass in
review the history of Turkey, since the Eastern Question has become
the supreme problem of the diplomatic world in Europe, and to seek
the causes of this sudden change.

Until the eighteenth century Turkey was governed according to
the democratic system of the religious laws of the Mussulmans ; but
Europe having changed her mode of administration, the organisation
of the States was based upon quite a different system, which obliged
Turkey also to modernise her ancient form of rule. This change
gave rise to many internal conflicts, while repeated wars with
Russia weakened the State, when Europe was advancing, thanks to
the improved method of her administration.

That this state of things had become intolerable was made
manifest in the reign of Selim the Third, towards the end of the
eighteenth century, and the Sultan endeavoured to reorganise the
Empire and ameliorate the condition of the army in accordance
with the exigencies of the times, but the opposition of the janissaries
and a change of ruler left these projects unexecuted, and the honour
of suppressing the janissaries and initiating military reforms fell
upon Sultan Mahmoud. This Sultan resuscitated the Empire by
establishing military discipline, and changed and improved a great
number of the customs of the country ; but he could not bring him-
self to relinquish that absolute power which accorded so well with
his character, and the form of government remained the same.

In 1838, on the accession of Sultan Medjid, the administration
of the country underwent a certain change, and a law, under the
name of Tanzimat Hairie, was drawn up, assuring the security of

67 F2

68 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

property, life, and honour, and a Supreme Council was formed at
Constantinople to see that it was carried out. These reforms con-
tinued until towards the end of the reign of Abdul Medjid, and year
by year improvements became more numerous ; the people looked
forward to the future with confidence, and trade, industry, and
agriculture increased to such a degree that they did not suffer by
comparison with the old state of things. The revenue of the State
rose in 1850 to ten million Turkish pounds, and although there was
no surplus on account of the proportionate increase in expenses yet
it is also to be remarked that the State had no debt, either at home
or abroad.

If all these reforms applied by Turkey, who had been the victim
of such untoward events and had been forced to submit to a dis-
organised administration for so long, may count for progress, yet
it is certain that they were not sufficient to place her on a level
with the rest of Europe. Rechid Pacha, the great reformer, was the
first to try and institute reforms and to liberate the people ; but his
life was very short. It is true that upon the promulgation of the
Tanzimat by Eechid Pacha, which secured peace and safety to all
classes of Turkish subjects, the Christians were the only ones to
complain of certain restrictions ; this was because they were better
educated and knew more of the world, their business bringing them
continually into relations with foreigners, and it came to be believed
that the Christians were oppressed by the Mussulmans.

This state of things attracted, on the one hand, the attention of
Europe towards Turkey ; and Russia, on the other side, taking as
her basis the clauses of the Treaty of Kainardje, claimed her right of
protection over the Christians of the Empire, which gave rise to the
Crimean war. Although the Treaty of Paris had annulled the claim
of Russia to protect the Christians in the East, and had assured the
integrity of Turkey, Panslavism was the principal lever used by the
Russians against Turkey. To put these Panslavist ideas into
execution societies were formed in Russia, which excited the
country, and the Crimean war was hardly over when Prince
Grortchakoff sent notes to the European Powers, complaining afresh
of the condition of the Christians in the East.

The Turkish nation had kept in grateful remembrance the
friendship of the two great nations of the West ; and the reform
party, under the energetic leadership of Rechid, Fuad, and Midhat
Pachas, sought to obtain the goodwill of England.

In 1860 Abdul Medjid died, and was succeeded by his brother
Abdul Aziz, and Ali and Fuad Pachas found themselves at the head
of power, and continued the reforms which they had begun. These
two statesmen recognised the inutility and futility of all reforms
which were not based upon a radical change in the form of govern-
ment, and which did not give the people a share in its administra-

1903 ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN POLITICS IN THE EAST 69

tion. But before giving up the ancient system it would be
necessary to form a Chamber of Deputies, establish electoral laws,
and to invest the Ministers with a certain amount of power to oppose
to that of the Sultan. But in consequence of the despotic nature of
Abdul Aziz it was found impossible to undertake the execution of
these projects, or even to bring them forward for discussion. So
they were forced to have recourse to another method, which,
although leading up to the same object, purported to arise from
imperial initiative. AH and Fuad Pachas recalled Midhat Pacha
from the government of the Danube, and the three together
succeeded in getting the law on vilayets promulgated. But Sultan
Abdul Aziz was not sufficiently advanced. He thought that the
nation and the State were two entirely separate affairs, and that their
ideas were quite foreign to one another ; moreover, believing in the
flattery of some of his ministers and courtiers, his despotic ideas
took deeper root in him day by day, and, instead of himself sub-
mitting to the law, he wanted the law to submit to him and his
caprices; all the measures adopted for the improvement and re-
organisation of the Empire were a dead letter to him. After the
death of Ali and Fuad Pachas, in 1871, Abdul Aziz made Mahmoud
Nedim Pacha his Grand Vizier, who was a declared partisan of Russian
policy, and who involved the State in debt to the amount of two
hundred millions, after having separated the Bulgarian Church from
the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople. The new Grand Vizier
aggravated the condition of affairs in Herzegovina, and was the
cause of the assassination of the Consuls at Salonica. He also
allowed himself to become a docile tool in the hands of the Russian
Ambassador. Any one who wanted a post under Government was
obliged to address himself to the Russian Ambassador, General
Ignatieff, to get his wishes put into execution. On the other hand
the Russian Ambassador was the man who settled the troubles which
supervened in the provinces. I think that a letter from the
Russian Ambassador to Mahmoud Nedim, which was passed on to the
Sultan, and was published at the beginning of the reign of Abdul
Hamid in a pamphlet called Ussi-Inkilab ('The Cause of the
Evolution'), will be an interesting document in proving this fact.

The First Dragoman of the Russian Embassy to Mahmoud Nedim.

My dear Highness, — I have communicated the observations of your Highness
to His Excellency the Ambassador, who has assured us in his reply that he will
use his influence to arrest the Herzegovinian insurrection. No one desires more
earnestly than ourselves the success of your Highness's projects.

Your Highness may give the necessary assurances to whom they may concern.
Dated 1873.

The people rose in indignation against this bad government, and
the critical situation of the Empire forced Midhat Pacha to place

70 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

himself at the head of the party which brought about the dethrone-
ment of Abdul Aziz. Kussia, displeased at a change which by its
very nature was calculated to destroy her interests, made difficulties
on all sides, and addressed herself to the Powers who had signed the
Treaty of Paris, calling upon them for a Congress, under the pretext*
that the troubles in Turkey in Europe were brought about for the
object purely and simply of hindering reform.

Abdul Hamid, on succeeding to the throne, in 1878, wrote to
Midhat Pacha, assuring him of his intention to respect the various
clauses of the Constitution which Sultan Murad, his brother, had
respected concerning the sovereign power. But later on he changed
his mind, wished to introduce certain modifications, and demanded to
be allowed to personally revise the Constitution, a rough draft of
which he sent to Midhat Pacha in the following letter :

Letter addressed by the Sultan to Midhat Pacha, on the Eve of His
Grand Vizierat.1

To my Illustrious Yizier Midhat Pacha, — We have made ourselves acquainted
with the Constitution which you unofficially forwarded to us, and we have noticed
in it passages incompatible with the habits and aptitudes of the nation. Our
desire is to assure the future of the country by just administration, and we
cannot but appreciate all efforts towards that end. And one of the objects to
which we attach much importance is that of safeguarding the sovereign right by
a new organisation drawn up with regard to the needs of the people. We desire
therefore that the Constitution should be discussed by the Council of Ministers,
and should be revised in the manner referred to above. Communicate our greet-
ings to our Grand Vizier and show him this order. In any case we expect from
your patriotism that your efforts shall tend towards the object we have in view
and demand that this Irade shall be kept secret between our Grand Vizier and
yourself.

ABDTJL HAJHID.
25 November 1876 (9 Zilkade" 1293) Hegeira.

To which Midhat Pacha gave the following reply :

Letter written by Midhat Pacha to the First Secretary at the Palace.1

Excellency, — As it was impossible for me to thank His Majesty for the favours
and the many proofs of goodwill with which he overwhelms me every day and
every moment, I am unable in all my life to testify to my gratitude for the signal
honour, so disproportionate to my deserts, which I have received in the reply of
an autograph letter from His Majesty, inviting me to furnish certain explanations
of the text of the Constitution unofficially forwarded to His Majesty. As to the
contents of the report which has been submitted, I myself also recognise that the
majority of the articles require to be modified and changed, and I think it is not
necessary to say that if this text has been submitted to His Majesty as an incom-
plete rough draft, it was simply with the intention of correcting it later, according
to the views and wishes of His Majesty. This report has been drawn up and
completed by the Commission convened for the purpose by Imperial command,
and, as the time has come when the text should be studied by the Council of
Ministers, the terms of the Imperial Irade have been communicated to His High-

1 Translated from the Turkish originals

1903 ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN POLITICS IN THE EAST 71

ness the Grand Vizier. Now, urged by my fidelity to my Sovereign, and my love
for my country, I feel it incumbent upon me, and have the courage to be of
opinion that there are two methods of extrication from our present position. The
first consists in putting into execution, before the meeting of the Conference, the
reforms for our home government that "were promised and proclaimed to all the
Powers, and the time needed for so doing would be three or four days at the out-
side. The second method is to accept the proposals formulated by the Powers and
to make up our minds to live henceforth and for ever under their tutelage. If the
first method is not adopted, or even if its promulgation is delayed and retarded
until after the meeting of the Conference, the second becomes inevitable. My
attachment to my Sovereign and my love for my country force me to give utter-
ance to these ideas.

MIDHAT.
27 November 1876 (11 ZilkadS 1293) Hegeira.

And the Ottoman Constitution was then officially proclaimed. This
proclamation was published on the day that the Conference met, and
there are historians and statesmen in Europe who do not hesitate to
declare that Midhat Pacha played a trick on Europe. That is a
great mistake. It is true that Midhat Pacha did not accept the
propositions of the Conference which made certain concessions to
Bulgaria, for the concessions made to Bulgaria, initiated by Russia,
might lead the other provinces of Turkey to follow its example, which
would cause sooner or later the dismemberment of the Empire. It
was for this reason that he forced the Sultan either to accept the
clauses of the Conference or to promulgate the Constitution. This
Constitution, which assured liberty to the various elements of
Turkey, put an end to despotic government and united under the
same flag thirty million Turkish subjects. The Sultan accepted
the Constitution, but Midhat Pacha, having lost faith in his
Sovereign, wished to place the Ottoman Constitution under the
protection of some of the friendly Powers, who hesitated to under-
take the task while congratulating the Turkish Government upon
taking such a step. We publish a letter from Midhat Pacha to
Lord Derby, which sets forth his policy.

Letter to Lord Derby.2

My Lord, — The object of the Crimean War, so generously undertaken by
England and France, was the perpetuation of the independence and integrity of
the Ottoman Empire and a strong and prosperous Turkey, which involved the
maintenance of the balance of power in Europe, if the Ottoman statesmen who
succeeded to power at the close of this memorable war, and whose dearest wish it
was to break with the traditions of the past, had only understood the full signifi-
cance of their responsible task ; but they were so absorbed in foreign politics, and
so many difficulties arose at every turn, that they limited their efforts to assisting
the introduction into the legislature of the Empire of certain liberal principles, with
the object of restraining and repressing the despotic form of government generally
deferring until a later date the inauguration of reforms more serious and more
suited to the time and circumstances. Unfortunately the reforms which they had

2 Translated from the French original.

72 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

undertaken, restricted though they were, could not be developed in the manner
which was anticipated, and did not do the work which their authors had expected
of them, nor satisfy the needs of the time.

Therefore every Turk who is sincerely devoted to his country cannot but
regret from the bottom of his heart that the Ottoman Empire did not know how
to profit by the position in which the Powers had placed her in order that she
might secure for herself a future consonant with the wishes of Europe and worthy
of the generous sacrifices of England. But if Turkey is guilty — which in point
of fact she is — of having lost a precious chance of profiting by the eminently
benevolent services of England, services manifested in such a striking manner by
the results of the Crimean War, perhaps the English Government may have to
reproach itself with having cast away the seed before it had had time to germinate,
and of having relaxed too early that severity which it had previously shown in
the interests, we admit, of Turkey, and of having thought us ripe for emancipation
when our enemies were only flattering our passions and enticing us into a path
beset with dangers.

Turkey formerly owed her prestige to the institutions of past ages, which,
while respecting the absolute power of the Sultans, also served as a powerful
counterbalance to all abuse of sovereign power and safeguarded the interests of the
peoples subject to its sway ; at the present time she is deprived of every institution
calculated to defend the rights of her subjects against an absolute power.

It is obvious to many minds that our present condition can but engender, in
the more or less distant future, consequences disastrous to the Empire. They
have tried to solve the problem of the amelioration of our government by the
creation of institutions which, without being perfectly identical with the national
institutions of the most highly civilised European countries, would be, nevertheless,,
powerful enough to arrest the deviation of sovereign power, to ensure the benefit*
of a settled government with a special object of improving the disastrous condition
of our finances by exerting supreme control over the public revenues and granting
absolute equality to all classes of the population without distinction of race or
religion. And probably the statesmen of Turkey, who had turned their attention
to this important subject, would have succeeded in solving the problem they had
set themselves if they had been able to count upon the support of England, whose
powerful moral influence, always exercised with discretion and in season, would
have succeeded in satisfactorily applying the required system to the above men-
tioned limited conditions and in gradually bringing about the required result.
Such result was well worthy of the benevolent solicitude of England, who might
have brought it about either by her own isolated action or by mutual agreement
with all the Powers. Moreover Europe had already decided to interfere, should
any insurrectionary movement threaten to disturb the peace of the East, no
matter whether that movement might have been provoked from outside or should
have arisen from troubles proceeding from bad administration, and to impose
means of pacification, without any regard for the independence of the Sultan,
guaranteed by the terms of the Treaty of Paris. Nothing would have prevented
the Powers from interfering, in the interest of Europe, and recommending the
Sultan to adopt certain institutions, guaranteeing political rights to all his sub-
jects, and at the same time insuring the peace of Europe and the East. Yes, my
Lord, the present position of Turkey, a position of which the Powers had never
even dared to dream, whose political principles are diametrically opposed to those
of Great Britain, might have been markedly improved if Turkey had learnt by the
experience of her late mistakes, and applied herself earnestly to repair them, and
especially if England, overlooking what had taken place in the past, had interested
herself in our fate with the solicitude and affectionate severity with which she
had watched over us at an earlier date. The lack of this severity is most cer-
tainly one of the causes of the present troubled state of the Empire.

1903 ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN POLITICS IN THE EAST 73

In submitting confidentially the preceding considerations to the kind attention
of your Excellency, as they have been inspired by my conscience, I have a secret
conviction that if they should have the good fortune to merit the approval of your
Excellency, who are so worthy a subject of that Power whose sacrifices for the
Turkish Empire awaken a feeling of profound gratitude in every Mussulman and
Christian who is sincerely attached to Turkey, they may become the starting point
of the establishment of a system of government to which the Ottoman Empire
will owe the birth of her political organisation and Europe the solution of the
problem of the pacification of the East.

I am happy, my Lord, to take this opportunity of offering your Excellency the
assurance of my greatest esteem.

(Signed) MIDHAT.
17 December 1876.

As may be seen from the correspondence which took place be-
tween Midhat Pacha and Said Pacha, then Chief Secretary at the
Palace and now Grand Vizier, England and France contented them-
selves with expressing their satisfaction at the promulgation of the
Constitution, without entirely participating in the aims of Midhat
Pacha.

To the Chief Secretary of the Palace.

Excellency, — All the sincere friends of Turkey never cease to engage us — as
M. Thiers did lately — to advise us to give, in the present circumstances, proofs of
our goodwill to Europe. This very day a despatch from Mussurus Pacha informs
us that Lord Derby congratulates the Imperial Government on the dissolution of the
Conference, which he considers as a success for Turkey. Lord Derby at the same
time advises us to conclude peace with Servia as soon as possible, and to put those
of the Articles of the Constitution and those questions adopted by the Conference
in the way of immediate realisation. And while taking this friendly counsel into
very serious consideration, let us set to work to put into execution without delay
the Firmans having reference to the reforms. An Imperial Irade, promulgated the
day before yesterday, forbids the admission of Christians into the military schools,
which a former Irade had authorised. Now this prohibition is of a nature to
compromise in its very beginning an important reform which the whole world is
expecting the Constitution to make ; and it is natural that obstacles of such a
nature should discourage and paralyse the efforts which we are constantly making
to serve our country with devotion. We therefore greatly regret that, of all the
questions that are to be placed before to-day's Council for its consideration, this
one alone remains in suspense, all the more so since the explanations which we
submitted to His Majesty in writing yesterday morning have remained unanswered.
For this reason I must throw myself upon the Imperial goodwill, and cannot pray
too earnestly that His Majesty will bring to bear upon this subject all the pru-
dence and attention which it deserves.

MIDHAT.
24 January 1877 (8 Mouharam 1294) Hegeira.

To the Grand Vizier Midhat Pacha.3

Highness, — I had the honour to receive on my return home your Highness'a
letter, together with the translation of Odian Effendi's telegram.

The despatch, the transmission of which to Constantinople by Lord Beaconsfield
is announced by Odian Effendi, seems to have already reached its destination ;

3 Translated from the Turkish original.

74 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

for to-day at the Palace Sir Henry Elliot said that a happy solution of the present
difficulty appeared imminent, and that the Porte having given evidence by her
actions of her intention to bring about reforms, the Conference was thinking of
only retaining such of its various proposals as concerned the institution of a com-
posite and temporary commission to deal with the insurgent provinces.

I take the respectful liberty of submitting to your Highness my personal
opinion upon the following point :

The reflection issued by Odian EfFendi with the view of guaranteeing the
application of the Constitution and of entering this engagement in the report of
the Conference cannot but serve our interests. Your Highness may remember
that about twenty days ago I drew your Highness's attention to this very point,
for the Constitution, which is your Highness's work, cannot stand without such a
guarantee. In order to avoid a loss of precious time in long correspondence and
interminable discussions, it is my opinion that your Highness would do well to go
yourself direct to the Palace and to explain to His Majesty in an audience the
true state of the case and thus bring the question to a satisfactory conclusion.

I have the honour to be. . . .

(Signed) SAID,*
Chief Secretary of the Palace.
11 January 1877. Hegeira (25 Zilhidje 1293). 6 o'clock P.M.

To the Grand Vizier, Midhat Pacha.5

Highness, —

I have informed His Majesty that Lord Derby, after learning the decision of
the Grand Council, far from manifesting displeasure, even went so far as to con-
sider the propositions very favourable, and to pronounce that the composition of
the Grand Council, due to your distinguished talents, merits not only all our
appreciation but also that of foreign States.

All these actions being very praiseworthy, His Majesty has been pleased to
approve them. In view of the remarks of Lord Derby that the earliest possible
application of the reforms compatible with the Constitution ought to be begun as
soon as possible, and taking into consideration the recommendations of the Great
Powers that a study of the details of these reforms cannot but be in the interest of
the country, His Majesty orders that, starting from to-morrow, and without losing
a minute, your Highness shall make it your business to inform him of the measures
that must be adopted for the improvement and organisation of the insurgent
provinces.

I have the honour. . . .

SAID,

Chief Secretary of the Palace.
21 January 1877. Hegeira (5 Moharem 1294). 2 o'clock (night).

Kussia, perceiving that the change that had taken place in the
form of government would entirely upset the policy that she had
pursued for so long, then sought through the instrumentality of
General Ignatieff to regain her influence in the Palace, expressing
herself in very strong terms. The visit of the Ambassador's repre-
sentative to the Palace is related in detail by the Chief Secretary to
Midhat Pacha in the following letter :

4 Now Grand Vizier.

6 Translated from the Turkish origical.

To the Grand Vizier, Midkat Pacha.0

Highness, — By Imperial command I hasten to give your Highness the follow-
ing information :

The Russian Ambassador having indirectly insisted that His Majesty should
accept the proposals already made, the following official declarations have been
made to him in reply : From the outset of the events which have given rise to
these propositions the Imperial government has exerted every effort, and still per-
sists in that intention j nevertheless the reciprocal and pacific agreement of the
Powers is indispensable, in order that these efforts may bear fruit without giving
rise to any annoying incidents which would disturb the general peace. That is to
say that any persistence in proposals of a nature likely to injure the rights and
independence of the Empire would create a regrettable situation, the responsibility
of which would fall upon those who had brought it about.

This decision was remitted to the Ambassador by the intermediary ; he showed
anxiety, and displayed signs of annoyance and irritability ; moreover, having
listened to these replies in silence, the Ambassador took some minutes to consider,
then delivered himself of a long speech, the gist of which is as follows: The
Russian Government in no way desires war; as to himself personally, considering
the position he has held with regard to the Sublime Porte for some time, he had
not hoped to obtain a satisfactory result by entering into direct communication
with His Majesty ; he had therefore decided to propose to the Ambassadors and
Delegates of the Powers that they should confer with His Majesty upon the sub-
ject. With the object of getting his propositions accepted, and in support of his
demands, he enumerated the evils of war, and charged his intermediary to explain
to His Majesty that the safety of the Empire demanded that the matter should be
referred to the decisions of the foreign Powers. The Ambassador also told the
intermediary in question that the Ambassador would receive a substantial reward
from his Government in the event of his getting the Sultan to conform to his
wishes.

At the reception of the intermediary by His Majesty, the same answers were
given, and His Majesty added that latterly all Ottomans had learnt to know in
which direction lay their safety and their danger, and that Mussulmans and
Christians alike were ready to avert that danger, that excitement ran high among
his subjects, that feeling was so strong that the Bulgarians, who were considered
by Russia to have been ill-treated by the Government, were disposed to join their
compatriots for purposes of war and defence ; moreover, they were proving the
sincerity of their words by their deeds, the peaceful intentions of the Imperial
Government and the Conference alone opposing the execution of their desires.
Nevertheless, if the Conference insisted upon its proposals being carried out, war
would inevitably ensue, which would be entered upon as a duty, for the purpose
of avenging the insults to our honour. All resistance to public opinion would
become impossible to the Imperial Government, and His Majesty would be
forced to put himself at the head of his people to defend the flag.

His Majesty thinks it probable that Ignatieif will change his mind with regard
to insisting upon these points; on the other hand, the information recently
received here would indicate that Lord Salisbury's line of conduct having met with
as much disapproval in England as among the English residents here, it is possible
that Lord Salisbury may not persist in carrying out his first intentions.

We think it would be advisable for our delegates to express themselves in
similar language.

I have the honour. . . . SAID,

Chief Secretary of the Palace.
8 January 1877. Hegeira (22 Zilhidje 1293).

* Translated from the Turkish originals.

76 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

Midhat Pacha, on his part, wrote to Mussurus Pacha, the
Ambassador in London, with the intention of giving England full
information concerning the Eussian activity in Turkey.

Confidential Telegram to Mussurus Pacha.1

For some days the idea of a direct connection with Russia has most inoppor-
tunely made itself apparent among us. Those who applaud this idea take care
not to mention the propaganda in the hearing of the Sultan's ministers, nor to
proclaim it openly, but nevertheless it seems to exercise a certain influence over
timorous and egoistical minds. If these gentlemen are to be believed, Russia cares
nothing either for the autonomy of the three provinces or for the administrative
and governmental reforms which have been projected. We need only throw our-
selves upon her generosity to avert the dangers of war. She wishes nothing
better than to leave Turkey in the enjoyment of her independence and integrity,
would not be the mosst exacting of Powers so far as the Oriental Christians are
concerned, and if the Sublime Porte would only renounce the privileges contained
in Article V. of the Treaty of Paris, which under no circumstances has prevented
the Powers from interfering in the relations between the Sultan and his subjects,
the effect in Russia's goodwill towards the Empire would soon make itself felt,
and would fortify us against all interference from without. It would not even be
the protectorate of the orthodox demanded by Mentchakoff ; Russia would only
ask to help us with her advice, in her character of a neighbouring Power directly
interested in the tranquillity of our country.

Those who have been able to imagine such a combination cannot be aware
either of the position that their country would take or the part they destine her
to play, and in any other circumstances this combination would not warrant the
Imperial Government in taking any notice of it. But so overwhelming are the inex-
tricable difficulties among which we are struggling at the present moment, with
no possibility of finding an issue to the situation, that at any given moment this
fatal idea may gain the upper hand. Threatened by a war in which they cannot
hope to find an ally, brought face to face with proposals and demands which they
find it impossible to reconcile with the independence and integrity of the Empire,
brought also face to face with an exasperated nation, the present ministers of His
Majesty at this eleventh hour would ouly take counsel of their mortified patriotism,
and if the country is to be lost by war they would prefer to give themselves up
altogether to despair to lending themselves to any combination tending to turn
Turkey into a Russian province. But their voice cannot make itself heard — and
there would remain to them nothing but to retire.

It is in quite a confidential way that I am giving you this information respect-
ing the catastrophe which is preparing. I think that we ought not to allow Lord
Derby to remain in ignorance, that we should entreat him not to abandon us in
the midst of the dangers which threaten us on all sides. In our opinion these
dangers may be averted if they would make up their minds only to demand
guarantees for reforms based upon the principle of decentralisation, and for a
control of the people in conformity with the Parliamentary system.

Will you kindly let me know as soon as possible what impressions you receive
from your conversation with Lord Derby ?

MIDHAT.
10 January 1877.

After all the efforts exerted by Midhat Pacha to procure for
Turkey the friendship of the Western Powers, and particularly that of

7 Mussurus Pacha, Turkish Ambassador in London, 1876. Translated from the
French original.

1903 ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN POLITICS IN THE EAST 77

England, who would not attach to the question the importance it
deserved, it is not surprising that we have to state that at the
present time Russian policy is gaining much ground in Turkey.
The Turks know perfectly well that those Turkish statesmen who
have the safety of their country at heart are inclined towards the
English and French policy. The great Kechid Pacha, Ali, and
Fuad Pacha were supported by Lord Palmerston, and Midhat Pacha
by Lord Beaconsfield ; while those Ottoman ministers who only
sought their own personal advancement, such as Mahmoud Nedim
Pacha, and gave themselves up to the ruin of their country, enjoyed
great consideration on the part of Russia.

In making allusion to the support which England gave to such
statesmen as Rechid, Fuad, and Midhat we cannot bring ourselves to
believe that her friendship was altogether personal. Each of these
men was the representative of an idea, a party. This Liberal idea,
this reform party (called Young Turkey) did not perish with the
assassination of Midhat, but on the contrary Liberal Ottomans have
greatly increased in numbers.

Sultan Abdul Hamid, who for twenty-five years has done all in
his power to bring discredit on the partisans of reform in Turkey,
has sent among them men without either faith or law, who have
tried to prejudice them in the eyes of the world. And if this Liberal
party remains in the shade it is because of the terror that reigns at
Constantinople, and also grows in a direct ratio, and because not one
partisan of reform is in power or protected by a friendly Power. It
is fighting the Government in the midst of the ignorance of the
population.

In comparison with its situation in the reign of Abdul Aziz the
Ottoman Empire has manifestly declined ; her navy is ruined, her
army broken up, her finances in a state of bankruptcy.

The State revenue amounts at the present time to about
6,000,000£. Turkish, which is derived from the National Debt, which
now reaches a sum of more than 200,000,000^.

The Bagdad Railway Concession has been obstinately refused
to the English by Sultan Abdul Hamid, though they have more
than once made offers for it on terms very advantageous to the
Turks; notwithstanding the fact that, in accordance with the
programme of Ali, Fuad, and Midhat Pachas, this concession was to
have been offered to England.

If events had been more favourable to the partisans of the
English party, and if, on the other hand, the agents of Russia had
been less lucky in their intrigues, it is certain that the face of
the Eastern Question would have worn quite another aspect.

The domination of Russian policy and the decline of English
influence since 1884 have caused not only chaos in the home
Government, but have insensibly modified all the treaties existing

78 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

with foreign countries. To-day it is the passage of the Straits,
brought about by the Skipka rising ; to-morrow it will be the
defence of the Eussian Consulates in the provinces, which are
agitated by the Eussian troops ; then the North Anatolian Eailway
Concession, which is in negotiation, will turn a part of Turkey into
a tributary province of the Muscovite [Empire.

For many years it has been a question of a sick man. Who
will deny that he is in his death throes to-day ?

In an article published by a Eussian personage in the Revue de
Paris in 1899 it was clearly proved how the Cabinet at St. Peters-
burg hesitated to insist upon the Treaty of San Stephano, in face
of the activity displayed by Great Britain. The author of this
article is surprised that, considering what has taken place in
Armenia, the Eussian Government did not take advantage of the
circumstances to occupy Constantinople, at the same time declaring
that he who would offer a barrier to this traditional policy of Russia
must needs be a very bold man.

ALI HAYDAR MIDHAT.

1903

THE ABYSSINIAN QUESTION AND ITS
HISTORY

Le Ne"gus : . . . salt apres lui, comme de son vivant, 1'unite Abyssine ne court
pas de pe"ril. II est sur, d'autre part, que la France et la Russie ont un interet
trop net & maintenir I'inte'grit^ de la nation et de la patrie Abyssine, pour per-
mettre contre ce pays quelque nouvelle entreprise de violence. II tient Faveu que
les Anglais ne peuvent se passer de lui pour r6gler la question du Nil. II sent &
son cote" la clef de la fecondite de 1'Egypte. . . .

Je sais de quoi je parle, ayant vu, par la volonte du Negus, le secret dont il a
6carte d'autres yeux. . . .

Ce n'est point une prophe"tie que j'ecris & la derniere ligne de ce livre, mais
une conclusion logique que je tire de faits observes :

Avant que du Cap au Caire courre un chemm de fer de conquete, boulevard de
1'ambition d'un seul peuple, en travers de 1'Afrique, il y aura une grande route
commerciale offerte a 1'activite" bienfaisante de tous. Sur le carrefour de la mer
Rouge, sa porte triomphale aura ete" ouverte par Me"nelik et nous.

Such are the concluding sentences of M. Hugues Le Roux in his
book Menelik et nous, published during the latter half of the year
1901 as a result of his travels in Abyssinia from December 1900 to
June 1901. And this book is not, like our English descriptions of the
Negus' territories, the work of a private explorer, bent on sport or
even on scientific research. It is, prima facie, a political study of the
nation. M. Le Eoux was officially invited to visit the country by
the Emperor Menelik, through his chief councillor M. Ilg. He be-
came the guest of His Imperial Majesty during his stay in Ethiopia.
Before deciding to leave home, he consulted in Paris the Ministers
for Foreign Affairs, for the Navy and for the Colonies, all of whom
urged him to accept the invitation and offered to advance a sum of
18,000 francs towards defraying his expenses. His journey may be
termed an official visit. He began by inspecting the English ports
of Aden and Zeila.

His book leaves no room for doubt, even if any still existed, that
through Abyssinia the French hope to establish a line of trade across
Africa from east to west in opposition to our Cape to Cairo railway
from north to south. In this they have already achieved some
success. They have settled themselves along the Grulf of Tadjoura,
on the south of which they hold the magnificent Bay of Djibouti, while

79

80 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

on the north their flag waves over the small port of Obok. But
their real triumph in these regions has been the establishment of a
lasting friendship with Abyssinia by judicious consignments of arms
and ammunition — which were used against Italy in the war of 1896.
Finally, they are now in the act of building a French railway from
Djibouti to Addis Abeba, the capital of Abyssinia. This railway will
completely cut out the British port of Zeila, for in the concession
granted by Menelik it is stipulated that no company is to be per-
mitted to construct a railroad on Abyssinian territory that shall enter
into competition with that of M. Ilg and M. Chefneux.1

Such being the condition of affairs, it is perhaps time that Britons
should realise the importance of the Negus and his Empire — a state
that has entered the political circle almost without our being aware
of it.

Its population, the major portion of which is Semitic in blood,
consists perhaps of 10 million inhabitants, and its army of about
400,000 men. These are the highest estimates. In 1896, when
Menelik made a public appeal for volunteers against Italy, it is said
that 200,000 men answered his call to arms. But since then he has
increased his territory and improved his organisation ; his prestige
has been enormously enhanced. It is quite possible that he may
have doubled the number of his fighting men. He has modern rifles
and modern guns; even in 1896 his artillery was equal to that of
Baratieri, though not so well served. Anent this last point, a
characteristic story is told by an Italian officer who while hostage in
the Shoan camp was asked by a chief to explain some points relating
to the service of artillery. On his refusing the Balambaras merely
remarked, ' Never mind. We have learnt to use modern rifles, and
we shall soon learn to use modern guns.' It seems that they have
done so.

For purposes of clearness this sketch of the last sixty years will
be divided into three periods: I. The period before European
intervention. II. The period when European nations begin to
threaten Abyssinian independence. III. The period of the great
struggle between Italy and Shoa.

I. Abyssinia,2 or Ethiopia, as it is more correctly called, is the
oldest nation in the world, if we except Egypt, which can now hardly be
called a nation. For forty centuries we see Egypt a land of fertility
and bright sunshine, while Ethiopia from time to time looms through
the mist of early history, appearing then, as it does on our modern
maps, a dark mass of mountains of which but little is known. But
mountains breed a hardy race of men and a spirit of independence.

1 Menelik et nout, Hugues Le Roux, p. 80.

2 The word ' Abyssinia;' is derived from'Abeschi, meaning ' cross-breeds ' or ' mon-
grels,' and was first applied to the Ethiopians by their Arab invaders as a term of
contempt. Ethiopia is the true and]ancient;name of the country.

1903 THE ABYSSINIAN QUESTION AND ITS HISTORY 81

The Ethiopians have probably never been permanently conquered,
whereas Egypt has again and again fallen a prey to her invaders.

Pre-Christian Ethiopia does not concern the present subject except
that in 986 B.C. we come to the first traditional date of any actual
importance, when Maqueda, Queen of Sheba, visits Solomon, and the
result of this visit is the birth of a son named Menelik, from whom
every subsequent emperor deems it necessary to trace his descent.
The history of modern Ethiopia does not in reality begin until about
the year 330 A.D., when Christianity was first preached by St.
Frumentius (a bishop consecrated by St. Athanasius), who was
wrecked on the coast of the Red Sea. This is the great landmark
in the story ; from that time a fresh basis of continuity is introduced
into the national life. It is its Christianity that has preserved the
integrity of Abyssinia. When the Mohammedans swept round the
coasts of the Mediterranean, cutting her off from the rest of the
civilised world, when they penetrated westward through Constantinople
to the walls of Vienna, even when they spread their creed deep into
the centre of Africa, the Ethiopian mountaineers threw back wave
after wave of invasion, opposing a dogged resistance, that might at
times be defeated, but could never be permanently overcome.
1 Ethiopia,' says Menelik in his letter to the civilised powers (the
10th of April, 1891), 'has been for fourteen centuries an island of
Christians amidst the sea of pagans. As the Almighty has protected
Ethiopia to this day, I am confident that He will protect and
increase her in the future.'

Owing to these desolating wars of religion which for 250 years
cut her off from all connection with the civilised world, Abyssinia
has not yet developed beyond the feudal stage. Her dominions
consist of innumerable small fiefs grouped into four large provinces,
each of which has at times formed an independent nation : Tigre in
the north, Amhara in the centre, Gojjam in the west, and Shoa in
the south-west (to these the south-eastern province of Harrar has
lately been added by Menelik). Each province was constantly at
war with its neighbour. For 150 years before 1840 the history of
Abyssinia is nothing but a story of internecine struggle. It presents
all the worst aspects of feudalism. The chiefs are practically
independent, the people are downtrodden, and the Negus is power-
less. The Mohammedans, taking advantage of the general chaos,
are rapidly gaining ground.

So far had this degeneration gone that in 1840 the Negus, of the
line of Solomon, had fallen entirely under the control of Ras Ali and
his mother Menen, who were Mohammedans, so that Ethiopia,
hitherto invincible, had actually sunk for the moment under the rule
of Islam.

It was at this epoch, when it seemed that she might actually fall
to pieces owing to her internal dissensions, that a great man appeared —

VOL. LIII— No. 311 G

82 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

namely, the Emperor Theodore. During the next sixty years, from
being a collection of unknown and barbarous tribes, Abyssinia
gradually becomes a united and an important factor in the politics of
the civilised world. She owes her regeneration to a succession of
three rulers of remarkable ability — the Emperors Theodore, John,
and Menelik.

Never probably has there been a more remarkable life than that
of Theodore, or Kasa, as was his true name. He was born in 1818,
or according to other authorities in 1820, being the illegitimate son
of Hailo, chief of the small province of Quara. Owing to the
rebellion of his father and Eas Ali's consequent invasion, he was
obliged to fly with his mother, and for some years they lived in the
most extreme poverty in Grondar. Yet from being a beggar he rose
to be emperor. The regeneration of Abyssinia is undoubtedly due to
his genius. He deliberately set himself to overthrow the Moham-
medan power and to reunite the whole race under one Christian
ruler. That he should have been unable to complete the latter
project makes it extremely probable that it was then impossible, for
he was a man of extraordinary talents. So great was his fame as a
warrior that on more than one occasion hostile armies fled before
him without striking a blow, deeming his power supernatural. Yet
he was unequal to the task of subduing the border chieftains. He
had conceived the true method of doing so — namely, by organising
a standing army on European lines. But the difficulties were
insurmountable ; he found himself constantly deserted and betrayed.
Irritated and reckless, he became half insane. At times, like Ivan
the Terrible of Kussia, he ordered the most savage cruelties to be
carried out for no purpose whatsoever : men were beaten to death
without a cause, priests died at the stake, monasteries were sacked —
until one by one his followers deserted him in terror for their lives
and for their souls. Yet no one dared to meet him in battle.
His career of success remained unbroken. At length, in 1868, it
was brought to an end by the expedition under Lord Napier, who
advanced to free the Europeans that Theodore had imprisoned.
Although while still at the height of his power he had more than
once commanded armies 150,000 strong, to meet the British
Theodore could only raise a paltry eight or ten thousand men.
Almost all had deserted him ; yet even now no man of his own race
'dared to face him in the field. The struggle was short. As the
British entered the gates of Magdala they crossed the body of
Theodore, who had blown his brains out, proving once again, what he
had shown throughout his whole life, that he preferred death to defeat.

The greatest benefits that the Abyssinian nation owes to him are
the expulsion of the Mohammedans and the revival of a central imperial
government. Before him the power of the Negus Nagasti had sunk into
being merely a name. After him it was a reality. The rival chiefs no

1903 THE ABYSSINIAN QUESTION AND ITS HISTORY 83

longer claim independent sovereignty; they each, endeavour to
become emperor of the whole race. If Abyssinia should some day
become the first native African civilised nation, it will be due to the
iron determination of Theodore.

During the period of his true greatness he was well disposed
to Great Britain. Two Englishmen, Plowden, the British consul at
Massowah, and Bell, a retired naval officer, were amongst his best and
truest friends- to the day of their death. It was only due to the
mistaken action of the British Government and to his own violent
temper that the final breach took place.

By the death of Theodore the Ethiopians felt that they had been
freed from the ravages of a wild animal. The relief throughout the
nation was intense, and a salutary feeling of respect was excited for
a people that did not hesitate to spend its blood and money simply
in order to restore to liberty a handful of fellow-countrymen. The
Abyssinian expedition of 1868 cost us 9 millions, but, after the first
seven or eight weeks of uncertainty, it was well done. The sight of
the British field force slowly and surely advancing for hundreds of
miles through that strange and almost impassable country, and, once
the object was accomplished, retracing its steps without seeking any
compensation in plunder or territory, inspired a deep feeling of
admiration amongst those warlike populations. An Italian officer,
Major Gramerra, relates that even in the next generation one of his
native soldiers told him he had enlisted because he heard that the
Italians were friends of the British — more openhanded, so it was
said, though not so rich. And we were allies of Abyssinia ; for the
new Emperor John gained his throne chiefly through British rifles
and British advice. He therefore regarded himself to his dying day
as the friend of Queen Victoria.

In John of Tigre the Abyssinians were fortunate enough to find
another ruler of unusual ability. He had not the genius of
Theodore, but he had far more patience and stability. He worked in
a careful manner and with good results for his country. Personally
fearless, he has left behind him the reputation of a great warrior and
a successful leader ; at the same time he was tinged with that
religious fanaticism which also influenced the life of his generalissimo,
Ras Alula ; yet he was a man (comparatively speaking) of enlighten-
ment and moderation, who understood the importance of European
influence. His personal appearance is thus described by Sir Grerald
Portal, who visited his camp in 1888 :

He appeared to me to be taller than the majority of Abyssinians, about forty-
five years of age, with a thin, intelligent-looking face and keen bright eyes. His
complexion was very dark, though by no means black, the forehead prominent,
and nose thin and aquiline ; an otherwise good and intellectual face was, however,
somewhat marred by a cruel-looking mouth, the thin lips of which were usually
parted, disclosing an even row of strong white teeth. . . . His Majesty's manner
had been courteous and dignified throughout (the interview).

o 2

84 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

In another passage Sir Gerald Portal says that Ras Alula was feared,
but hated, whereas John was feared, but ' appeared to be loved and
respected by his wild subjects to a remarkable degree.' 3

It is impossible to study the history of his reign without
sympathising with his difficulties ; from the very first he shows an
unusual power of judgment as well as a bold heart. In 1869, when
the British retired, a state of anarchy reigned throughout Abyssinia.
John had been the ally of England, but he could only raise 12,000
men, whereas his chief rival, Gobasie of Amhara, had 60,000. But
the 12,000 Tigreans were well armed with British weapons, and he
was acting under the advice of a non-commissioned officer named
Kirkham, who had seen service in India. The result of the encounter
was a complete victory over Grobasie, and Kirkham was promoted to
the rank of general in the Abyssinian army, but he shortly afterwards
fell into disgrace and died in prison.

The Emperor (John now claimed that title) was thus rid of his
chief enemy, but he had still to meet the rulers of Gojjam and Shoa.
Gojjam had been given by Gobasie to a young and valiant follower
of his named Eas Adal, who, however, took the name of Tecla
Aimanot (foundation of religion) on becoming Negus of Gojjam — a
throne that be occupied until his death in 1901. Discouraged,
perhaps, by the overthrow of his master, Tecla Aimanot submitted
without a prolonged struggle, and John had no longer any rival left
except Menelik of Shoa, who is now known to all the world as
the Negus Nagasti of Abyssinia, and celebrated as the victor of
Adowa.

For the next eight years the history of these two men is the
history of Abyssinia. The contrast between them is strongly
marked. John is the greater warrior, but Menelik is the abler
politician. John wins our sympathy by his courage and activity,
while Menelik, though by no means deficient in these qualities, does
not fight unless (as he himself has said) he is compelled to do so. Yet
his early days were full of adventures and danger. As he has since
become famous, a short account of his life may perhaps be in-
teresting.

When Theodore in 1856 conquered Shoa, the Shoan Prince
Ailu, unable to contend against the invader, entrusted Menelik, his
only son, at that time about ten years old, to the care of his most
faithful followers. In spite of their desperate resistance young
Menelik was captured, and compelled to go to the imperial court ;
but Theodore seems to have taken a fancy to the boy, for during ten
years of captivity he treated him well, and gave him the title of
Dedjazmatch. Finally, in 1865, Menelik, now twenty-one years of
age, escaped and sought refuge with Workitu, Queen of the Wollo
Gallas, determined at all costs to recover his inheritance in Shoa.
* My Mission to Abyssinia, p. 152.

1903 THE ABYSSINIAN QUESTION AND ITS HISTORY85

Now Queen Workitu had been compelled to give her son as
hostage to Theodore ; so no sooner did the Emperor hear that
Menelik was at her Court than he sent her the following laconic
message : ' Either you protect Menelik and your son will be
executed, or else you give up Menelik and your son will be restored
to you.'

The old men, her advisers, strongly urged her to surrender
Menelik, firstly in order to save her son's life, secondly in order to
save her own throne ; but, contrary to all expectation, this brave
woman firmly refused to do so. ' If I follow your advice,' she said,
' it would mean two victims, both my son and Menelik ; now God
designs that one of the two shall be saved.' She therefore sent
Menelik to Shoa under a strong escort, and Theodore had her son
executed ; this was the first of three great occasions on which
Menelik's life was preserved in an almost miraculous manner.
' . On reaching Shoa he was confronted by an army under Bezabu,
the governor 4 appointed by Theodore, and it became evident that he
must fight if he were to save his life and win back his inheritance.
The chances were all against him, for his enemies were numerous
and appeared resolute. Menelik, therefore, as seems to be his cus-
tom, entered a church near the field of battle, and prayed long and
earnestly for success, then, mounting his horse, he prepared to lead
the attack. But here for the second time fortune stood by him in
a wonderful manner. No attack was necessary. When the Shoans
understood that it was indeed the grandson of the great Selassie
and the son of their beloved Prince Ailu, they refused to strike a
blow against him ; they received him in triumph and crowned him
their king (August 1865).

During the next eight years we find Menelik consolidating his
dominions and extending his rule over the Galla tribes. In 1868
Theodore died, and it was not until 1873 that the duel really began
between Menelik and the new Emperor John.

In that year certain Shoan rebels fled to John and besought his
protection. This was the opportunity that the Emperor required — an
excuse for bringing all Abyssinia under his rule and subduing
Menelik, who from the very first had been his rival. He invaded
Shoa. But here for the third time fortune interfered on behalf of
Menelik. Before John could complete his conquest he heard that
the Egyptians were marching against Abyssinia ; he was therefore
obliged to withdraw his forces and prepare to meet the foreign
invader.

The crisis could not be regarded as anything but serious. The
Egyptians were armed with Remingtons and organised according to

4 Called Alesie by other writers who consider Bezabu as merely a rebel. The
accounts vary ; according to some of them, Menelik was compelled to do a great
deal of fighting before being finally victorious.

86 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

European ideas. Indeed, John is said at first to have contemplated
seeking European assistance, but he was soon convinced that he
must rely only upon his own energy and resources. His cause was
a good one. In 1875 the Khedive Ismail had planned an invasion
of Abyssinia, whose border chiefs were constantly making small raids
on Egyptian territory. But he did not intend to limit his efforts to
mere reprisals ; he planned a conquest of Ethiopia — at all events of
Tigre — and arranged that an expedition should start secretly from
Massowah. Once the success had been achieved, he believed that
the European powers would acquiesce in his new conquest.

Amongst the Egyptian officers the whole affair was regarded as
a triumphal march, consequently the expedition was very badly
managed. Only 5,000 men had been ordered to start from
Massowah, and only 2,200 arrived at Grundet,5 where John had
determined to meet them. The Egyptians were echeloned over a
space of nine miles, a straggling column marching southwards to
the River Mareb. Their advanced guard, under Zichi (a European),
was a mile in front of the main body, under Colonel Ahrendrup (a
Danish officer in Ismail's service) ; in rear of him came an American
colonel with 800 men ; and in rear of all came Arakel Bey with 800
good Sudanese riflemen.

The night before the battle John crossed the Mareb River
unperceived ; he then divided his army into three columns, sending
one to the right and one to the left. At early dawn he surrounded
and attacked the advanced guard, driving it back on to the main
body under Colonel Ahrendrup, and after an hour's fighting both
detachments were destroyed. The next body of men, however, the
eight hundred under the American officer, held out well, and
although John attacked them at 9 A.M. it was not until 2 P.M.
that their resistance was overcome. There now remained only the
Sudanese under Arakel Bey. These unfortunate men saw plainly
that they had not the slightest chance of victory ; they were entirely
outnumbered and their retreat was cut off. Nevertheless they
fought with characteristic courage, struggling on gamely for two
hours longer. Quarter was neither asked nor given. In the evening
four men out of the whole Egyptian force escaped and made their
way to Massowah, where their narrative was at once suppressed by
order of Ismail, who desired that the whole matter should remain
unknown. But throughout the Sudan there still lingers a story of
how the body of Arakel Bey was found lying with its back to a
rock and surrounded by fifteen dead Abyssinians whom he had shot.

Shortly afterwards the news arrived that Miinzinger Pasha, who
had been ordered to create a diversion by advancing from the east
through Aussa, had been surrounded and killed by John's allies.
The campaign for 1875 was therefore at an end.

5 In the south of Serae, on the road from Godofelassi to Adowa.

1903 THE ABYSSINIAN QUESTION AND ITS HISTORY 87

In 1876 Ismail prepared to avenge Ms defeat at Gundet. This
time he sent a well-organised force of 10,000 men under Prince
Hassan, and they penetrated as far as Grura, in northern Okule-Kusai.
Here they took up a strong position in front of a mountain, on which
their Sudanese reserves were posted. Either flank rested on a small
fort ; it seemed, in fact, to be a place of absolute security for these
10,000 men, armed as they were with the latest weapons of
Europe.

John employed the usual Abyssinian tactics. He proceeded to
attack the front of the position, at the same time enveloping both
flanks and attacking the mountain in their rear. The Sudanese
again distinguished themselves by their brave defence, but they were
unable to hold out against the rush of the Abyssinians, who must
have been almost 100,000 strong. The Egyptians gave way as soon
as they saw their retreat threatened, and Prince Hassan remained a
prisoner in the hands of John. Thus ended the battle of Grura in
another complete defeat for the Egyptians. Prince Hassan was
afterwards set free on payment of a heavy ransom, but not until John
had tattooed on his arm, as memento of his visit, a cross with the
inscription, ' The mark of the Christian King.'

These glorious campaigns added greatly to the prestige of the
Emperor and to the renown of the nation. But during his absence
Menelik had not been idle. In 1876 he had seized Grondar (the
capital of Amhara) and proclaimed himself Negus Nagasti, invading
Gojjam, which was defenceless owing to the absence of Tecla Aimanot
with the Emperor. In fact, Menelik might have been successful had
it not been for the revolt of his own subjects, who disapproved of these
aggressive tactics. When John returned he found Menelik almost
powerless owing to rebellions and discontent. Had it not been for
the rainy season the Emperor could have invaded Shoa without
difficulty ; as it was, he did not succeed in doing so until 1878, and
Menelik, though he had raised an army, submitted almost without
a blow, agreeing to pay tribute on condition of being granted the
title of Negus. From this time forth John was nominally master
of the whole nation.

This, then, was the condition of affairs when the British and
Italians first came into close connection with the native powers OH
the Ked Sea coast. John and his faithful follower Eas Alula were
the heroes of the successful wars against Egypt ; but in the back-
ground stood Menelik at the head of the most populous of the four
provinces (Harrar was still in the hands of Egypt). That he had no
sense of patriotism beyond the boundaries of Shoa he had already
made clear; but he was unalterably determined to avenge the
humiliation inflicted on him by the Emperor, and some day himself
to sit on the imperial throne of Ethiopia.

II. It is at this period that we reach an entirely new phase in

88 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

the history of the world — namely, that which ended in the partition
of Africa. Abyssinia was now to find herself face to face with
European nations, that came, not as heretofore for temporary
purposes, but to effect permanent settlements, and eventually to
extend their sway over the whole continent. Those with which she
had to deal were Great Britain, Italy, and eventually France. At
the same time her western flank was threatened by the huge Dervish
empire, founded originally by the Mahdi.

The greatness of Turkey was on the wane, and already her
possessions were being divided up amongst the Christian nations. L>
1882, after the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, England may be considered a&
having definitely established herself in Egypt. In the same year
the Italians officially declared Assab, on the Red Sea coast, to be an
Italian colony. John was therefore brought into contact with two
new powers, acting in unison, and both bent on expansion.

For the moment, however, their own difficulties were more than
they could cope with. The rise of the Mahdi had formed the
innumerable savage tribes of central Africa into one single empire —
aggressive, proselytising, and fanatical. These Mohammedans were-
a danger not only to British and Italian interests, but to the very
existence of Abyssinia herself. They pressed hard upon the southern
frontiers of Egypt, and they overran the whole of north-eastern Africa
almost to the coasts of the Red Sea, besieging the Egyptian garrisons
in Tokar, Sinkat, Kassala, Berber, and even threatening the ports.
United action became necessary to repel the invaders. Great Britain,
now that she had established herself on the Nile, felt responsible-
for the Egyptian garrisons. We find, therefore, that in 1884 Admiral
Hewett concludes an alliance with John, whereby the Abyssinian&
were to relieve the garrisons of Kassala, Amedib, Sanhit, &c., whose
provisions were beginning to run short.

The- enterprise was a failure. The Negus occupied the northern1
province of Bogos, though only after a gift of 10,000 rifles — which,
together with those captured in 1875 and 1876, made a total of
about 25,000 that he had secured in the course of nine years. But
he only relieved the smaller garrisons of Gallabat and Gera. Then
on the 5th of February 1885 Khartum fell. This was a blow to
British prestige. But Kassala was still holding out, so Ras Alula
started to its relief. He was met about half-way by Osman Digna
with about 8,000 Dervishes, his own force being perhaps 10,000
strong. This was a notable encounter between the two greatest
native leaders in Africa. Osman Digna was the best known of the
Mahdi's generals, and Ras Alula was already celebrated for bis
service against the Egyptians in 1875 and 1876, though he has
since won a far higher renown by his victories against Italy. At
Kufit the two armies met. For a time the fanatical valour of the
Dervishes bore back the Abyssinians. But Ras Alula was a man who

1903 THE ABYSSINIAN QUESTION AND ITS HISTORY 89

never failed in an emergency. At the critical moment of the battle,
marking an important point in the Dervish line, he himself galloped
forward, and led the Abyssinians to the charge, shouting, it is said,
'This time we will conquer or die.' The Mahdists were routed.
But the garrison of Kassala unfortunately failed to take advantage of
the victory. They remained in the town, where, after a magnificent
resistance, they were eventually compelled to surrender. The defence
of Kassala is the most glorious episode of any during these wars,
excepting, of course, Gordon's defence of Khartum.

Up to this point Great Britain had always been the ally of
Abyssinia. But here we come to the parting of the ways. From
this time forth the British Government had to choose between their
friendship for Italy and their alliance with John. They chose the
former. It was no longer possible for them to support both powers,
because the breach between Italy and Abyssinia was daily becoming
more serious.

For some years the Italians had been aiming at the establishment
of a permanent colony on the Red Sea coast. On the 5th of February,
1885, the very day of the fall of Khartum, Colonel Saletta with
1,000 men had occupied Massowah, a port that had hitherto been
held by Egypt, but which the Emperors of Ethiopia had always
claimed as belonging to their ancient dominions. This, however,
alone, would not have been sufficient to provoke hostilities. But
the Italians very soon discovered that the sea coast was almost
useless for purposes of colonisation, owing to its low and unhealthy
character. They wanted to advance thirty or forty miles inland in
order to establish themselves on the high plateau of Abyssinia. It
was in endeavouring to accomplish this that they came into conflict
with the Emperor John and Ras Alula.

A series of untoward accidents rapidly increased the latent
hostility that culminated in 1887 in the first Italo- Abyssinian war :
the protection by General Saletta of a native chief who afterwards
turned out to be a personal enemy of Ras Alula ; the capture by
the Ras of Count Salimbeni's party, whom he took to be spies because
it contained two military men ; and finally the advance of General
Gene to the village of Ua. On hearing of this last move Alula sent
an ultimatum on the 12th of January, 1887, demanding the evacua-
tion of Ua by the 21st of January — 'otherwise know that our
friendship has ceased.'

This meant war. To such a letter there could of course be only
one answer — a refusal ; so on the 25th of January Ras Alula with
10,000 men advanced against Saati, then a fortified village held by
two companies, a section of artillery, and 300 irregulars under com-
mand of Major Boretti.

At 11 A.M. the action began. Alula quickly surrounded the
village and cut it off from Massowah ; he then posted some of his

90 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

men on the heights opposite the Italian position, whilst the
remainder of his army crept forward amongst the valleys, evidently
intending to get as near as possible before exposing themselves in
the final rush.

Boretti, however, observed this advance and sent a half-company
of white men and fifty natives under Lieutenant Cuomo to compel the
enemy to show themselves. The movement was entirely successful.
In a valley Cuomo discovered about a hundred Abyssinians, on
whom he opened a deadly fire. As if by enchantment, the whole
force of the enemy discovered themselves, and while the men under
Lieutenant Cuomo (who was mortally wounded) were retiring,
according to orders, they moved to attack the fort.

Boretti was in no wise discomposed, and received his bold
assailants with a terrible fire from both rifles and artillery, repulsing
them several times and finally compelling them, discouraged by
their losses, to give up the attempt and retreat towards Desset.6

The Italian casualties were only five killed and three wounded ;
those of the Abyssinians were about 200 killed and wounded.

It] was a brilliant victory for the small force of white men,
and the news was received with enthusiasm at Rome. But the
Italians might well have remembered that Has Alula was a leader of
many years' experience, and that a repulse of this magnitude was no
new or important matter to him. His reply was swift and decisive.

On the following day General Ofene, being anxious about the fate
of his garrison at Saati, sent a battalion 500 strong, with fifty irregu-
lars and two machine-guns, under Colonel De Cristoforis, to reinforce
it from Monkullo ; this order led to an action that has become
famous.

News of Boretti's success had already reached De Cristoforis, and
it was with highly elated spirits that the battalion began its march
from Monkullo. For the first eight miles all went well, until, in fact, it
had arrived at Dogali — a name that is remembered with pride by
every Italian. Here their advanced guard was suddenly attacked
by Has Alula, who with his whole army was lying in wait for them.

De Cristoforis might perhaps have retraced his steps to Monkullo,
but this was the last course that he was disposed to adopt. In
any case, being in charge of a large convoy for Saati, his movements
were necessarily impeded. He was in the unfortunate position of
having to defend a convoy against overwhelming numbers — a situa-
tion that usually leads to the defenders being sacrificed — so, instead
of retiring, he merely sent a message to Massowah asking for rein-
forcements. It was eight o'clock in the morning when the affair
began. The Italians made a magnificent resistance, but from the
very first their chances were desperate. Alula, whose followers were
chiefly armed with spears, was working forward by wide circling
6 Melli, La Colonia Eritrea.

1903 THE ABYSSINIAN QUESTION AND ITS HISTORY 91

movements on both flanks with the intention of completely sur-
rounding them, and then narrowing the circle by slow degrees until
the moment should arrive when a final rush of his 10,000 men over
the last two or three hundred yards would complete the matter in a
few seconds. The Italians had taken up their position along the side
of a hill on the right of the road, and during the action they advanced
by rushes to another higher hill, where they made their final stand.
After the first half-hour both machine-guns jammed, so that they
had only their rifles to rely on. At one o'clock Kas Alula, having
completed two concentric circles round them and closed inwards to
within a short distance, gave the order to charge. Then the hand-
to-hand fighting began; the Italians having opened fire at the
longer ranges had by this time exhausted their ammunition, but
each man defended his life with bayonet or sword.7 To the last they
struggled against an enemy twenty times their number, falling one
by one on the position they were holding ; 23 officers killed and
1 wounded; 407 men killed and 81 wounded. Such is the death-
roll of that sad but glorious day.

It was a brave end for the battalion, and one on which Italian
writers love to dwell. Even amongst the last ten or twelve survivors
not a man thought of flight or surrender : when the reinforcements
arrived from Massowah on the following morning they found their
comrades lying side by side along the brow of the hill that they had
defended, where they lie to this day with a white cross above them.

Within the following twenty-four hours Major Boretti evacuated
Saati, and, conducting his retreat with great ability, reached Monkullo
in safety.

The massacre of Dogali created a profound sensation of sorrow
and anger in Italy. The Depretis ministry fell, and De Eobilant, who
in one of the African debates had referred to the Abyssinian chiefs
as 'three or four plunderers,' was replaced by Signer Crispi as
minister for foreign affairs. (It is noticeable that at this period,
while supporting the popular desire for revenge, Signer Crispi
described himself as hostile to colonial expeditions.)

Meanwhile the preparations for ' the Revenge ' were proceeding
apace. Twenty million lire were voted and a special corps organised for
Africa. The British Government offered their assistance, and, with the
hope of detaching the Negus from supporting Alula, Sir Gerald Portal
was sent to Abyssinia. This mission was a failure, so Italy prepared
to face war alone against John and his whole empire.

The massacre of Dogali had taken place on the 26th of January,
1887 ; by November a corps of 18,000 fighting men was assembled
at Massowah, of whom only 2,000 were natives. In addition to this
force there were several friendly chiefs who had ranged themselves on

7 ' They fought like devils until the last man fell,' said one of the Abyssinian
afterwards, when describing the scene to Sir Gerald Portal.

92 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

the side of Italy. In command was General Di San Marzano,
Saletta being retained in his post as far as the normal military
institutions of the colony were concerned ; everything was being
prepared for a great struggle.

On their side the Abyssinians were not idle. Messengers had
been sent far and wide throughout Ethiopia, and almost every chief
had answered the summons. Sir Gerald Portal returned to Mas-
sowah with the news that the Emperor was marching with 80,000
men to support his faithful vassal and companion-in-arms, Ras
Alula. Two men only amongst his more important subjects were not
in arms against Italy : one was the King of Gojjam, who had
been left to defend his own country as a bulwark against the
Dervishes ; the other was Menelik, Negus of Shoa, who through the
efforts of Count Antonelli, then Resident in Shoa, had signed a
friendly convention with Italy whereby he was to receive 5,000 rifles
and remain neutral. This had not prevented his marching in
obedience to the orders of the Negus ; but it was obvious that in case
of any reverse he would proclaim himself the ally of Italy ; he was
in fact waiting to see which side was the stronger.

In view of such a formidable superiority of numbers, Di San
Marzano resolved to stand on the defensive. Massowah itself had
been fortified until it was impregnable — at all events to any force
that Abyssinia could bring against it. A railway had been built
almost as far as Saati ; two lines of forts had been constructed ;
everything had in fact been done that modern military science
could suggest — within the limits of 20 million lire (about 760,000^.)
— and the result was a defensive position against which it was hoped
that the Abyssinian army would dash itself to pieces in paroxysms of
fruitless heroism.

At the beginning of March 1888 the Negus appeared before the
Italian fortifications. At first he seemed ready to enter into
negotiation, but this soon proved fruitless ; it was then hoped that he
would attempt an attack on one of the prepared positions, and,
indeed, it is said that Ras Alula strongly urged him to do so. But
on this occasion John must be considered to have established more
fully than by all his victories a just claim to be regarded as a great
leader. He recognised from the first that the task was beyond the
power of his army. Although surrounded by fighting chiefs who
had come from all parts of Ethiopia to win spoil and glory, although
he must have seen his prestige decreasing daily in the eyes of his
impressionable followers, he refused to allow any assault to be made
on the forts. For a whole month the two armies faced one another,
and then, on the night of the 2nd of April, the Emperor began a
rapid retreat. The campaign was over.

Thus ended the ' Revenge ' of the Italians. It is a very curious
instance of how little is often understood of the true nature of
success by those who are concerned in gaining it. In Italy it

1903 THE ABYSSINIAN QUESTION AND ITS HISTORY 93

became the subject, amongst certain classes, of the bitterest gibes
about an army that dared not fire a shot even against savages. Yet
what could be more foolish ? The Government had ordered Di San
Marzano to risk nothing ; they merely wished to make their existing
possessions secure against invasion, and they had done so. They
required no fresh accessions of territory. Had they desired to extend
their boundaries, it was not the moment to do so when the whole of
Ethiopia was united in arms against them — a thing that had hitherto
so rarely occurred. By a policy of inactivity they had defeated
the Negus and ruined his prestige far more effectually than by a
successful attack. Had they been in a position to spend 40,000,000^.
sterling instead of 20,000,000 lire, greater results might have been
hoped for ; but they were not. Many of the soldiers of course desired
a revenge for Dogali ; but those who fight merely for the abstract
idea of revenge are on the road to reap the most unprofitable crop in
the world.

On the Abyssinian side similar opinions prevailed. During the
Italian campaign the Dervishes had attacked Ras Adal and defeated
him at Debra Sin, after which they burnt Gondar, the capital of
Amhara ; this was one of the reasons that later on led the Emperor
to retire. Yet to such a degree had his prestige suffered from the
month of inactivity before Saati that even he, the hero of so many
victories, was at first unable to raise an army for the reconquest of
Gojjam,8 now in revolt.

Meanwhile Menelik, true to his treaty with Italy, but a traitor
to his race, was carrying on open negotiations with the Roman
Government, and had incited Tecla Aimanot, King of Gojjam, to
rebellion. These two rebels, when united, were now more powerful
than the Emperor himself. John, in fact, was surrounded by enemies.
On the east he was at war with Italy, on the west with the Dervishes,
and in his own empire with Menelik of Shoa and Tecla Aimanot of
Gojjam. He is said also to have been suffering from an internal
disease. But difficulties and danger had been his portion from
early youth, and he was ready to meet all his antagonists. By
October (1888) he had collected a sufficiently large army to invade
and reconquer Gojjam. He then turned his forces against Menelik,
but that astute chieftain had no longer any fear of him : the 5,000
rifles had by now arrived, and Menelik was in a strong position on
the banks of the Abai. The Emperor found the Shoans were too
powerful to be attacked, and was obliged to encamp opposite them
and open negotiations. For over three months Menelik kept his
sovereign engaged in discussing terms; he himself was making

8 Ras Adal (Tecla Aimanot) had complained bitterly that John sent him no re-
inforcements with which to meet the Dervishes ; hence his rebellion. The import-
ance of this Dervish inroad has been somewhat exaggerated. It was merely a raid
that achieved some success owing to its rapidity.

94 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

arrangements for a Shoan embassy, under his cousin, Dedjatch
Maconnen, to go to Kome, and hoped for further good results from
his European alliance. And this policy was successful. While still
exchanging messages with Menelik, news was suddenly brought to
the Emperor of a fresh invasion by the Dervishes ; so he was obliged
to retire, leaving his rebellious vassal in triumphant possession of
the field.9

Here, however, was a cause in which the heart and, indeed, the
very existence of Christian Ethiopia was concerned : for a war against
the infidels John soon found himself able to march northwards with
a numerous army, even though Shoa stood aloof. On the 10th of
March, 1889, he approached Metemmeh, on the borders of the Sudan,
first sending messengers to announce his coming, that his enemies
might not say that he arrived like a thief in the night.10 The
Dervishes were 85,000 in number, and occupying an entrenched
camp so strong that it seemed unwise to attack it. But John had
had some unfortunate experience of waiting opposite fortified positions
for the enemy to come out and take the offensive. Trusting in his
superior numbers, he determined to try whether fortune, that had
been so kind during his youth, had entirely abandoned him in his
old age. Having surrounded the Dervish zariba, he led his men to
the attack, which they carried out with desperate courage. At first
he was repulsed, but eventually the headlong dash of the Abyssinians
bore all before them ; the zariba was entered and burnt ; a
fraction of its defenders escaped to a smaller zariba, where they
rested themselves, awaiting death. The Abyssinians spread through
the town triumphant, plundering and burning. Victory was theirs ;
but its fruit they were never to enjoy. During the evening the
news spread from mouth to mouth that John himself had been
mortally wounded. The army left without a chief vanished as rapidly
as it had arrived, for the warriors, being heavily laden with plunder
and encumbered by prisoners, were anxious to return to their homes.
Three days later the Dervishes succeeded in overtaking and destroy-
ing the royal bodyguard and capturing the corpse of John, which
they afterwards showed to the Khalifa as a proof of victory ; but
they did not dare to continue their invasion, and they have since
been compelled to admit that they were completely defeated and
well-nigh annihilated at the battle of Metemmeh.11

Thus ended the Emperor John — a man of uncertain moods, but
worthy to be honoured amongst the bravest. He had no legitimate
heir, for his son had died while he was encamped before Saati; but after
learning that his wound was mortal he called the chiefs around him

9 Whether he was obliged to retire by news that the dervishes were moving, or
whether he came to some secret understanding with Menelik, is not certain.

10 Makdiism and the Egyptian Soudan. Sir Francis Wingate, K.C.B.

11 Sir Francis Wingate, it.

1903 THE ABYSSINIAN QUESTION AND ITS HISTORY 95

and presented to them Kas Mangasha as his successor, openly
acknowledging him to be his natural son by the wife of his own
brother. After his death, however, this acknowledgment became
useless, for there was now no man powerful enough to contend with
Menelik, who was at once crowned Negus Nagasti.

III. The third period is that in which Italy attempts to extend
her protectorate over the whole of Abyssinia. This she endeavours
to do by means of her old ally Menelik.

This policy of the Italians is identified with the name of Count
Antonelli, a nephew of the celebrated cardinal. He had been many
years at the Shoan court, and had succeeded in winning the confidence
of Menelik to the exclusion of the Swiss and French interest. His
scheme of action was to bring Menelik under the Italian protectorate,
and then to set Menelik over the rest of Ethiopia, thus bringing the
whole country into their sphere of influence. This policy was for a
time successful ; but it had the serious defect of relying entirely on
the gratitude of Menelik and the treaties signed by him. And
Menelik was far too astute to allow any advantage to escape him,
and indeed too patriotic to allow his nation to sink into a mere
protectorate of Italy.

On the death of John the Italians dashed down from the north
and seized three outlying provinces, Serae, Okule-Kusai, and
Hamacen. At the same time Menelik advanced from the south
until his forces joined hands with those of Italy. It was in vain
that young Mangasha and his sole supporter, Kas Alula, struggled
against the rival powers. They were too weak to oppose them both.

The Italians, therefore, arranged a treaty whereby Menelik
acknowledged himself under their suzerainty, and assented to
certain boundaries, the exact limits of which were to be arranged by
mutual agreement. North of these the Italians were to establish
their colony of Erythrea, and south of them the Negus was to hold
sway under their protection. So far all seemed to have gone well
for Italy, and Menelik was permitted as a reward to borrow four
million lire in Italy.

Then, however, the elusive nature of the agreement became
evident. The Shoan Commissioners refused to assent to the
boundaries demanded by Italy, and Menelik openly repudiated her
suzerainty, repeatedly asserting that he had never understood the
treaty to imply any idea of protection. And it may indeed be true
enough that he had not understood what article 1 7 of that treaty
(the Treaty of Uccialli) implied. Certain it is that the Amharic
version did not in any way imply the establishment of a protector-
ate. The Italians of course assert that Menelik's interpreters
were responsible for the mistranslation, but Menelik accused the
Italians of having inveigled him into signing a treaty of which he
did not understand the meaning.

96 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

The result was that Antonelli's influence vanished at the court
of Shoa, and was replaced by that of M. Ilg (Swiss) and M. Chefneux
(French), on whose advice Menelik has since then chiefly relied.
His prestige rapidly increased, and soon the whole of Abyssinia
began to turn to him as their representative. Young Mangasha
and Kas Alula, though at first bitterly hostile, were gradually forced
to support his policy. It is undoubtedly the presence of the Italian
invaders that has driven the Ethiopians of every province to forget
their private quarrels and to unite against the white men.

In 1895, when General Baratieri occupied Adowa, it was evident
that war against the whole of Ethiopia was inevitable. Unfortun-
ately for Italy, her financial position was then very uncertain, and
she was unable to make any adequate preparations. In the autumn
of that year Menelik called for volunteers, and 200,000 men flew to
arms. He was well prepared for war. He had imported modern
rifles and modern guns through the French port of Djibouti. Italy,
on the other hand, was far from ready. The result can be easily
imagined. At Amba Alagi, on the 7th of December, 1895, 30,000
Ethiopians under Has Maconnen annihilated, after a gallant resist-
ance, a small force of the Italian native army, about 2,100 strong.
Some six weeks later the hastily collected defenders of the Italian
fort of Macalle were obliged to surrender, though not until they had
consumed their last drop of water and run very short of ammuni-
tion. Then, finally, on the 1st of March, 1896, General Baratieri's
force, about 20,000 strong, was completely routed by Menelik's army
of 120,000 men at the battle of Adowa.

Such is the history of the unification of Ethiopia. There are
some who prophesy fresh civil strife on the death of Menelik, but
this seems, as far as may be judged, to be growing less and less
probable with each succeeding year. Menelik, though he has been
obliged to leave to Italy the three northern provinces of Serae,
Okule-Kusai, and Hamacen, has added to his territory the flourishing
district of Harrar, formerly garrisoned by the Egyptians. He is
building railways and establishing telegraph and telephone service.
He is, in fact, civilising his people as rapidly as possible. The
difficulties are immense, but a beginning has been made.

Others may give a more exhaustive description of modern
Ethiopia, but the aim of this article will have been attained if it has
assisted in pointing out that she is beyond all doubt an important
nation, especially to ourselves who possess such wide interests in all
the surrounding territories. "With the exception of a few travellers
and politicians, there is hardly one Englishman in a hundred who
knows or cares anything about Ethiopia, her interests, or her past
history. It seems, in fact, as if her development was to be left to
the French.

At Menelik's capital, Addis Abeba, there is, to use the expression

1903 THE ABYSSINIAN QUESTION AND ITS HISTORY 97

of M. Hugues le Koux, a silent duel in progress between the repre-
sentatives of the various nationalities. We are represented by
Colonel Harrington. But, although Menelik is wise enough to
extend a friendly greeting to all, there is no reason to suppose that
we should enjoy as great a share of favour as other nations.
Although throughout the war we preserved a strict neutrality, we
are regarded as a powerful and aggressive neighbour, and as the
ally of Italy, whereas the French have been the truest friends of
Abyssinia. TheKussians are also in communication with the Negus,
and their efforts are, of course, seconded by France. As for the
Italians, their position seems now to be as good as that of any Euro-
pean nation — a status which is due partly to the ability of Major Cicco
di Cola, and partly to the fact that, having defeated them, the
Negus is disposed to be their friend.

GEORGE F.-H. BERKELEY.

VOL. LIi:— Xo. 311 H

98 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

THE FINANCIAL FUTURE

IN a ' warning note ' l in this Review, nearly four years ago, I ventured
to call attention to the general rapid conversion of floating capital
into fixed capital, which first became noticeable about 1897 all over
the world; and since that time this tendency has become greatly
intensified. For instance, in that article it was mentioned, with some
apprehension, that in the fourteen months ending the 28th February,
1899, there had been definitely formed in the United States new
industrial combinations having an authorised capital of 400,000,000^.,
and that ' totals of such magnitude carry their own comment, and it
is unnecessary to say anything to add to their force and their
significance.' Looking back now, this 400,000, OOOL looks like a
little cloud no bigger than a man's hand ; for in the interval the
amount has grown until it is now over 1,400,000,000^., and instead
of being a little cloud, it has become a threatening mass darkening
the financial atmosphere.

Attention was also called to Orermany, ' at the same time under-
taking stupendous financial obligations,' and to ' Russia, France,
Japan, India, China, all at work converting floating into fixed capital.'
The paper ended with a glance at the enormous increases in the
Grovernment and municipal expenditure of Great Britain, and at the
lock-up in South Africa.

If we follow the course of the subsequent years, it will be
remembered that Russia, Germany, and Japan have all been passing
through a long and trying process of liquidation ; a process which is
not yet ended, because unfinished railways in Siberia, in Manchuria,
and in the Euphrates valley remain a constant drain; not to
mention huge industrial plants which must be kept running, on
Grovernment or private work, even at a loss — and there are the new
navies which absorb a great deal of cash.

Then we have had our war in South Africa and the troubles in
China, causing a considerable destruction of capital.

Coming to this new year of 1903, we see before us the four
continents — America, Asia, Africa, and Europe (and we may add
Australia) — still competing against one another to obtain the means

1 The Nineteenth Century, May 1899.

1903 THE FINANCIAL FUTURE 99

for their industrial development; and the available means are
necessarily limited in amount.

The American continent, including of course the United States,
Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and the Argentine (and shall we add Vene-
zuela !), has been the most attractive to capital, because it is the best
equipped for the rapid and profitable extension of industries, and
consequently the pressure there continues to be the most powerful
and the most striking.

In another little paper last April,2 I referred incidentally to the
financial position of the United States, and endeavoured to show
that the lately developed increase of their imports of commodities
as well as securities, with the consequent danger of gold exports,
pointed to trouble. Since April there have been magnificent harvests,
showing bountiful records in the production of grain and cotton, the
shipment of which will presently be felt beneficially ; but not even
a succession of good harvests can sustain the ever-increasing strain
that is being put on the financial resources of the country by the
over-capitalisation of new companies.

It is difficult to follow closely the course of transactions on the
other side of the Atlantic, the pace and the constant transformations
are so rapid and so dazzling ; but some figures have been published
within the last month which are certainly very remarkable.

In a paper read by 'Mr. Bidgely, the comptroller of the currency,
before the American Bankers' Association, at New Orleans, on the 1 1th
November, presumably a competent authority on the subject, address-
ing a competent audience, he submitted a statement showing that the
individual deposits in all the banks of the United States amounted
in 1902 to 1,800,000,000^., against 1,000,000,000^. in 1897, and the
loans in 1902 amounted to 1,440,000,000^ against 840,000,000^. in
1897. Putting aside for the moment the question of the danger of
such an unprecedentedly rapid expansion, and putting aside also the
intricate question of the circulation (which consists of a mixture of
gold, silver, and paper, now amounting altogether to 61. per head of
population, or a total of nearly 480,000,000^.), it will probably come
as a surprise to many people in England to learn that the banking
resources of the United States are, broadly speaking, now about double
the banking resources of the United Kingdom ; for we cannot count
the 200,000,OOOL British Savings Bank deposits amongst our banking
resources, as the whole amount is invested in Government securities.

But these increases in six years of the American banks' deposits
and loans are ?o striking that they would almost be incredible if
we had not the further light of the clearing returns, which, at
the same time, illuminate and explain them. These clearings
have been for the past two years at the rate of 23,000,000.000^.
a year, compared with the former maximum of 12,000,000,000^. a
2 The Nineteenth Century and After, April 1902.

H 2

100 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

year, in the greatest previous periods of boom, ten or twelve years
ago. Now, looking at the fact that the deposits have increased in
six years by 800,000,000^., which is nearly the amount of the
deposits in all the joint-stock banks of Great Britain, it seems
to me that two propositions arise on the figures which merit very
serious consideration. The one is that such a pace has never been
approached before, and the other is that such a pace cannot possibly
be maintained. It may therefore be useful for us in England to
look quietly and carefully at the present position, endeavouring to
foresee what the financial consequences are likely to be, not only to
the United States, but also to ourselves.

The feverish activity of the last six years has mainly been in the
direction of industrial extension, just as the previous feverish activity
before 1890 was in the direction of railway extension. We have all
read a great deal lately, in the newspapers, about these frenzied
over-capitalisations of new companies. There is ' too much of water,'
but we must remember that the principle — or want of principle — of
' water ' is not new. It is familiar in South African gold mines, and
it is not unknown even in our virtuous English industrial companies.
It is rotten, but, unfortunately, it is universal, and all we can say
about the Americans is, that they do it, as everything else, on a
bigger scale than other people. In dilating too much on ' water,'
we must be careful not to get ' water ' on the brain. It would be
difficult, for instance, to conceive of any stocks containing, originally,
more 'water' than the 1,000,000,000^ of American railroad stocks,
because the railroads were practically all built with the proceeds of
bonds, and the stocks merely represented the possibility of future
profits. But anyone looking at a price list can see the value of
these ordinary stocks to-day — and the value that they have main-
tained for the last five years — from which it is apparent that every
investor who bought previous to 1898 has had an opportunity of
getting his money back with a good profit. The original ' water '
has consolidated into dividend-paying substance, owing to the
wonderful growth of the country. The finance was unsound, but the
land was sound ; and there seems to be no reason why the future
course of the American industrial stocks should not follow the
course of the railroad stocks in process of time, for, in the ultimate
analysis, they both depend on the land. Let us never forget that
there are 5,000,000 families occupying farms in the United States
to-day, over and above the mighty army engaged in industrial occu-
pations in the cities, and this enables us to understand the breadth
of the home market and the power of consumption as well as of
production. But just as, after each rapid extension of railroad?,
there was a set-back and long years of waiting, such as occurred
between 1873 and 1879, and again between 1893 and 1897, so
there will probably be a set-back and some years of waiting after the

1903 THE FINANCIAL FUTURE 101

industrial extension. Speculators carrying the securities on borrowed
money are bound to have a hard time, because there are likely to
be many sellers and few buyers ; but the point for us to bear in
mind is that the furnaces, the factories, the machinery, and the
hands are all there, and the power of production remains.

What that power of production is may also be gathered from
Mr. Ridgely's address, for he states that the value of manufactured
products during the year 1900 was over 2,600,000,000^ , and
considering that there has been a very great increase since 1900, we
may fairly assume that 2,700,000,000^. will be well under the figure
for 1902. Now twenty-seven hundred million pounds value of pro-
ducts cannot be manufactured out of water ; there must of necessity
be thousands of millions of pounds sterling value of capital in the
businesses, and that is what concerns us vitally. Do we in England
really appreciate what it means, or have we been lulled into false
security by being told, consolingly, that competition with us in
manufactures was practically impossible? The suggestion of an
answer to these questions was given in 1877 in an essay which I
happened to be reading the other day, on 'foreign competition,' by
Sir Robert Griffen.3 I make no apology for quoting his words at
some length, for there is no more enlightening process than
looking backward to learn the power of prediction in the so-called
science of political economy.

The capital sunk in producing annually 140,000,0007. of value [the net income
supposed to be derived from the British exports of 1877J must be immense, at
least several hundred millions. But even 100,GOO,000/. would not be easily found
in the whole civilised world outside of England for the erection of new works to
compete with our manufactories. . . . We see, therefore, what an effort of imagi-
nation is required when the displacement of England as a manufacturer for export
is talked of. ... There is even a more serious difficulty, we believe, in the way
of quickly increased foreign competition. It is the complexity, variety, and
minute subdivision necessary in great manufacturing enterprise, which make dis-
placement almost inconceivable. . . . England is one vast workshop, fitted with
complete appliances of every sort, with a capability of turning on great force in any
given direction unexampled, and not even approached elsewhere. We come, then,
to the question of our home trade. Foreign nations, we are told, are not only
going to do without us, and cease altogether to be our customers ; they are to
send goods here, and cut up our own manufactories. ... If foreign nations are
likely to find it difficult to procure capital which would enable them to take away
a material part of our foreign export trade, how are they to find the capital to
make any impression on our vast manufacturing industry for home consumers?
Here, it is a question not of hundreds, but of thousands of millions of capital, and
of a transfer of labour which fairly takes our breath away. In this respect, foreign
nations would have to begin at the beginning.

To-day it is curious, interesting, and instructive to read this view of
the industrial future of the world, but Sir Robert Giffen merely repre-
sented the common opinion of the Manchester School in the seventies,

1 Essays in finance, 1st Series.

102 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

which was that the only reasonable division of labour was for the
United States (or any other backward country) to supply the food
and the raw materials, and for Great Britain to eat the food and work
up the materials. Yet twenty-five years have scarcely elapsed when
we see the United States with thousands of millions of pounds
invested in industrial enterprise and with the best manufacturing
appliances. If any doubt be entertained as to the accuracy of these
United States census figures, they can be supplemented by some
pieces justificatives from other sources. For instance, in 1870, seven
years before the date of Sir Robert Giffen's essay, Great Britain pro-
duced nearly four times as great a quantity of pig iron as the United
States, whereas in 1902 the United States produced nearly twice
as much as Great Britain : and in 1870 Great Britain's consumption
of cotton in the mills was more than double the consumption of the
United States, whereas in 1901-2 the United States consumed one
third more than Great Britain.

So much for the materials of our two greatest industries — on
which millions of our people depend for their subsistence — and when
we further look at the appliances for manufacturing these materials, we
become even more conscious of the great change that has taken place.
We are indebted to the Times for a notable service in sending out
a commissioner to report on the engineering workshops of the United
States in 1899, and to Mr. Mosely for an equally notable service in
his commission which is now on the way home. A Lancashire
operative on this Mosely Commission summed up in a single
sentence, cabled the other day from New York, the whole gist of one
side of the matter : ' In the Fall River Mills one hand attends to thirty
looms instead of attending to four or six looms as in Lancashire.'

This is a bed-rock fact. If the unit of labour in the United
States can produce more than elsewhere, either by his own handiwork
or by minding machinery, the result must be inevitable in a country
incomparably endowed by nature with available resources and where
the ingenuity of man has developed the best machinery.

This was the case with England during the long years of her
industrial supremacy ; and it is now the case with the United States.
Nothing apparently can prevent it, J ut we may still, by foresight,
prepare to meet certain evil consequences, and my point now is that
we should rouse ourselves to look a little ahead, for there is a serious
problem immediately in front of us — quite independent of the
question whether or not the merits of ' American methods ' have
been exaggerated. I incline to think that they have been, and that
we have got ' Americanisation ' out of perspective, but that is a
question for industrial experts, and may be left to them to decide.

Let us confine ourselves here to looking at the question merely
from the financial side, for it is already pretty evident that our part
in the financial drama is not going to be an easy part.

1903 THE FINANCIAL FUTURE 103

If the trouble in the United States comes to a head, we must
necessarily be affected, for in my judgment there are only two
courses open to that country at the present moment. The one is,
to attempt continued borrowing in Europe, and so to keep on a full
head of steam in constructive work (which apparently aims at
rebuilding all the cities of the Union in steel!), and the other is to
call a halt for a breathing space.

Neither of these courses will be agreeable to Europe, for, in the
first case, so far as we in England are concerned, we shall have a
formidable competitor in the money market for the capital we
require to develop our possessions in South Africa, Canada,
Australia, and elsewhere abroad, and at home — capital flitting
wherever the attraction is greatest ; and in the second case, if the
United States calls a halt, the European markets are certain to be
flooded with American manufactured products. The late lock-up of
millions of capital has unquestionably been carried to a wild excess
(although, looking back, ten years hence, perhaps it will rather appear
as an exaggerated appreciation of events before they occurred), but
we may rest assured that production will go on, the products must
be sold, and if the home consumption cannot be kept up on the
present scale, owing to the lack of floating capital available for
new enterprise, then these products must be shipped abroad.

We saw, only the other day, that the first effect of the German
liquidation was that our markets were becoming embarrassed with
quantities of products, and it was only the American demand that
lightened the load both here and in Germany. But if later on the
Americans become sellers instead of buyers, we are bound to have a
period of serious difficulty. It is not quite an adequate answer to say
' and a very good thing, too, for the consumer,' for, if we look at the
effect of American railroad extension on our agriculture, we have an
object-lesson as to the probable effect of their industrial extension
on our manufactures. Let us beware of the shibboleths that seduced
us into believing that the rents of agricultural land would not fall
in England. Once bitten, twice shy.

It may be asked why the United States are to be shut up within
these two concise alternatives of borrowing money from Europe on
the one hand and calling a halt on the other hand. Here again we
may refer to Mr. Kidgely, who faces the facts with an engaging
candour, for he admits that the United States have been trying to do
too much in too short a time ; and then proceeds : * It seems to be
inevitable that we should have periods of rest and recuperation.
They are apt to be most severe when we have been going too fast.
The pace we have travelled, for the past five or six years, has been a
rapid one. The signs are not lacking that it should be moderated
before we are too far spent. There is yet time, and, with prudence
and care, we should be able to avoid any lasting ill effects. I do not

104 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

believe that the strain is more than we can safely stand, up to this
point, but it is time to pause and consider. We have prices of
materials of all kinds up so high that the cost of living has greatly
increased. We have been consuming our available Liquid capital
at a very great rate, and changing it to fixed capital where it may be
unproductive for a long time. Cost of production has so increased
that our balance of foreign trade is falling off at the rate of hundreds
of millions per year. Our bank reserves are low, and the loans as
highly expanded as is prudent. The situation has lately been so
acute as to render assistance from the Treasury Department necessary
to give some relief.'

That the people of the United States are at last being wakened
up by their own financial authorities to the gravity of their position
is, to my mind, the most reassuring circumstance in the existing
situation. It is an immense safeguard against a sudden catastrophe.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed, although the warning comes a
little late in the day ; it would have been more useful a couple of
years ago, but at that time Mr. Ridgely would no doubt have been
pooh-poohed as a pessimist.

The American people had got into a state of feverish excitement
from the very exuberance of their real prosperity in 1898—9. Their
temperature has now to be reduced, but there is no need for us to
worry ourselves overmuch as to the future of the country. We have
seen that it is capable of producing over 2,700,000,000^. manu-
factured products in one year, and we may add that the value of farm
products in the year 1902 will probably come up to 1,100,000,000^.
These two items form a visible solid asset of nearly four thousand
million pounds sterling, which is a very good backbone, amongst
many other assets. The prodigious power of the country lies in
the diversity of employment in agriculture and manufactures ; a
country with land, improvements, and buildings, in the farming
States, valued in 1900 at 3,300,000,000^. against a value of
2,600,000,000^. in 1890, or an increase of 700,000,000^. in the ten
years, besides an increase in the value of live stock during the same
period of over 150,000,000^. It is this power of production, rather
than the mere interchange of commodities, that increases most rapidly
the wealth of a country.

Let us dwell on these figures, particularly now, when a period of
stress and strain is at hand, for we shall soon be hearing enough and
to spare of the other side of the picture. And may we not also
try to find some profit for ourselves, by laying to heart anything
we can learn for our own guidance in the future ? Here we see a
country with more than our supposed 15,000,000,000^ of capital,
with more than our supposed 1,500,000,000^. a year of income,
which finds that ' it is time to pause and consider.' It will be easy
to lecture the United States, but perhaps it may be wiser to ' reck

1903 THE FINANCIAL FUTURE 105

our own rede.' To say that all this over-capitalisation in America is
merely money going out of one person's pocket into another person's
pocket in the same country, is just about as true, or just about as
unwise, as to say that our war expenditure does not really matter to
us for the like reason. In both countries, there has been an
unhealthy inflation — whether of currency or credit — which has upset
all our normal notions of the right way and the wrong way in finance.
For instance, there cannot be a doubt that if the United States had
an income tax the returns for 1902 would be quite fabulous com-
pared with any other year in its history, but big income returns do
not necessarily prove real stability in financial position, as we may
see by looking back at the returns immediately preceding any crises
in our own country. These incomes may result, as is now apparent,
from a vicious system of inflation — from over-borrowing.

We shall presently have our own statistics of 1902, and we shall
find a record of bank clearings in London (over 10,000,000,000^.) :
probably also a record of excess of imports over exports (about
180,000,000^.) and no doubt many other records. But surely the
experience of the United States will prove to us how value-
less these statistics are, except to show that we have been doing a
very big business ; they do not necessarily show that we have been
doing a very sound business ; and this is the point we ought to
look to while there is time. It would be really useful if the
Board of Trade would attempt a valuation of our ' invisible exports,'
and furnish us with an official estimate of our investments abroad, as
the French have done lately with their investments abroad. We are
constantly told that there is no use troubling about the present
excess of imports, because such excess is nothing new. The simple
answer is, that it is new. In the whole records of our trade, every
five-year period up to 1898 showed a large surplus of the recorded
exports, plus the ' invisible exports,' over our imports ; and it is only
the five-year period 1898-1902 which shows practically no excess.
Wherever there is anything so abnormal as this in the trade figures
there is a certain reason for investigation, and my belief is that the
increased Government and municipal expenditure may throw a good
deal of light on the problem. We have been too extravagant and
have built too many houses and too many ships on borrowed money.
The result is an unprofitable lock-up at home, and we are committed
to a very large lock-up in South Africa. Fortunately, like the
United States, we are very rich, and, more fortunately still, there has
not been lately any great speculation on the Stock Exchange, and
prices, generally speaking, are low.

We want to eliminate the betting and the booming elements, for
they eat into the vitals of the country, and no ' good money ' ever
came from them. Solid trade is far better without booms, for they
always end in crashes. The core of our people is sound, as we have

106 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

seen during the late war, and in the long run there will be plenty of
room in the world for the United States, Germany, and ourselves, but
we may have a difficult period to go through. In one respect we
may take a more hopeful view of our prospects at the beginning of
1903 than we were fairly entitled to take at the beginning of 1899,
because we have learnt a great deal in the interval in regard to
the industrial forces outside of England, and what we really want is to
face the facts.

J. W. CROSS.

1903

THE GROWTH OF THE LOCAL
GOVERNMENT BOARD

A FRIEND of mine, not wholly unintelligent, though little versed in
political matters, expressed to me last summer, in speaking of the
Education Bill, his surprise at the prominent part played in the
matter by the President of the Local Government Board, who not
only was one of the four persons whose names appear on the back of
the Bill, but also was, at that time, frequently taking part in the
debates in the House of Commons. The business of the Local
Government Board was, my friend said, to deal with the Poor Law
and Public Health ; he did not understand what it had to do with
education.

I, of course, pointed out to my friend that, though perhaps the
acts of the Local Government Board in reference to the Poor Law
and Public Health had especially attracted his attention, the essential
function of the Board, as shown by its very name, was to serve as the
central authority for local government in its various developments.
I added that the Education Bill, whatever view might be taken
of its special features, marked a step onwards, and indeed a very
definite step, in the direction of local government, and that therefore
the Local Government Board could not be indifferent to the features
of the scheme of the Bill, not merely as regards local taxation, but
also as regards other matters involved in local government.

The Education Bill, however, is only one, and that by no means
the most striking, of the many tokens which show how strongly the
stream of political development is setting in the direction of local
government. On the one hand, one hears the cry of an overburdened
Parliament hampered in its treatment of national problems by reason
of its energies being so largely taken up in brave but ineffectual
efforts to deal justly with local questions in the absence of adequate
local knowledge. On the other hand one sees spread throughout
the country a stock of local administrative talent which either, sub-
mitting to the situation, lies dormant and unused for lack of
opportunity, or, rebelling against the situation, finds vent in activities
the satisfaction of which tends neither to the local nor to the

107

108 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

general good. In almost every electoral area, for the one man who
is sent to Parliament you may find a score of men at least as well
fitted for legislative and administrative duties. Why should the one
be spoilt by being made to attempt more than he can possibly accom-
plish, and the others left to rust through not being called upon to do
what they are so well fitted to carry out ? Daring these latter years
much, it is true, has been done, if not to relieve the one, at least to
employ the others. And it needs no great political insight to foresee
that in the coming years still further changes of no small magnitude
must take place. Much that Parliament now vainly attempts, or
slowly and imperfectly performs, will before long be done swiftly and
well by means of local governments, and many a member of
Parliament weary with listening to a debate, or still more weary
with waiting to vote on a question of local interest, about which he is
conscious that his local knowledge is of the scantiest or comes from
a tainted source, yearns for such a good time to come with the least
possible delay.

If, however, an increase — a great increase — of local government is
imminent in the near future, the Local Government Board, which is
the central authority for local government, or, at least, for the
mechanism of local government, must share in that development ;
and it may be worth while to pass briefly in review the position and
functions of that Board at the present moment, having regard to
what may be its future duties.

The Local Government Board is not an old institution : it came
into existence in 1871, and hence, though older than the Board of
Agriculture, which was established in 1889, is much younger than
the Board of Trade, which, assuming its present title in 1862,
has existed as a permanent committee of the Privy Council since 1782,
and, indeed, is still such. The Board consists of the Lord President of
Council, the Secretaries of State, the Lord Privy Seal, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, and a President appointed by the King. But, as
Sir William Anson, in his admirable Law and Custom of the Consti-
tution, says, the Board is a phantom Board, its distinguished members
never meet, and it really consists of a President and a Parliamentary
Secretary, with a permanent staff.

The relations of this comparatively young Local Grovernment
Board to the much older institution known as the Home Office,
presided over by one of His Majesty's five Principal Secretaries of
State, are somewhat peculiar ; and the way in which they have come
about affords an interesting illustration of the evolution of the
machinery of government in England, an evolution strikingly like
that of a living being. When, in 1782, the two Secretaries of State,
in charge respectively of the Southern and the Northern depart-
ments, became the Secretary of State for Home Affairs and the

1903 THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD 109

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the former, the Principal
Secretary of State, was placed in charge not only of all home affairs,
but also of Irish and Colonial business, and in a peculiar way of War
matters. By the appointment of a Secretary of State for Colonial
Affairs and a Secretary of State for War, and in consequence of the
Union, his functions were reduced to the charge of home affairs, and so
assumed a character more closely corresponding to his title. He still
remained, however, the first or Principal Secretary of State. With the
growth of the nation, the business coming under the definition of home
affairs increased rapidly in importance and complexity, and part of
the work of the Home Office was by successive steps transferred to
other departments. The transference was in some cases due to the
fact that the matters transferred were special matters, needing special
treatment and special knowledge. We may thus explain the func-
tions of the Board of Trade and the Board of Agriculture. A different
principle, however, guided the establishment of the Local Govern-
ment Board ; it, as its name indicates, was founded to take charge of
those home affairs in which local government is an important factor.

Hence the duties of the Secretary of State for Home Affairs,
limited now entirely (or almost entirely, for there may be found here
and there some obscure remnants of his old multifarious functions)
to home affairs, are largely of a general kind. One of his most
conspicuous functions, that which perhaps especially marks him as
the Principal Secretary, is to act as the means of communication
between the Sovereign and the subject. He is responsible for the
maintenance of peace and order throughout the realm, and hence
has charge of prisons and police, and, by way of prevention, of lunatics
and young offenders. These matters supply a large part of his
duties, but he has also other duties of a very varied kind, prominent
among which is the charge of factories, workshops, and mines, duties
which may be in general terms described as directed to the general
well-being of the people. In all these several duties he may, with
more or less exactness, be regarded as dealing with His Majesty's
subjects as individual members of the whole kingdom.

The Local Government Board was instituted, as we have just said,
to deal with home affairs in which local government is an important
factor. Hence its main duties are concerned with local government,
with the constitution, powers, and area of local authorities, and with
local finance ; these it has taken away from the Home Secretary. It
has, further, charge of the Poor Law, having absorbed in 1871 the
duties of the pre-existing Poor Law Board, and it is entrusted with the
care of Public Health, taking over duties which in an intricate manner
had previously been performed by the Privy Council, the Home Office,
and the Poor Law Board respectively. In both these classes of duties
we recognise the factor of local government.

Seventeen years after its establishment, namely in 1888, the

110 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

Board received what, looking to the future, we must regard as
potentially a vast increase in its powers : the newly constituted
County Councils were then placed under its central control.

Looking back, then, we may see that the Home Office, while its
business may have increased in quantity with the growth of the
nation, has become more and more restricted in its functions ; things
which it used to do have been taken away from it and given to other
bodies. The Local Government Board, on the other hand, even in
the brief period which has elapsed since its establishment, has not
only shared the general increase in the quantity of business to be
performed by Government departments, but has undergone and is
undergoing an expansion of its functions. Looking forward, we may
venture to prophesy that what has already taken place will continue
to take place, and probably at an increased rate. Seeing that the
stream of development sets so strongly towards local government, it
needs no boldness to forecast that the Local Government Board,
important as it is at present, will in the near future become one of
the most important bodies of the State.

It may be urged that, in obedience to the laws of evolution, it
too may, like its progenitor the Home Office, shed some of its duties
on to newly constituted bodies. It may be urged, and indeed has
been urged, that the Public Health, the provisions for which are of
so complex a nature and demand such special knowledge, ought to
be placed in the charge of an independent body, the head of which,
as Minister of Public Health, ought to be able to give undivided
attention to so great a matter, untrammelled by the other responsi-
bilities which now rest on the President of the Local Government
Board. But, without prejudging this question, or even if we
admit the advantages of some such step, we may still conclude
that the future growth of local government will always sustain the
great importance of the Local Government Board, in spite of develop-
ments taking away from it some of its more special duties.

Considerations such as the above, and others which might be
added to them, suggest the question. Seeing how important is the
Local Government Board, even at the present moment, and how
greatly that importance must increase in the not far-off future, is
that importance recognised in the hierarchy of Government depart-
ments ? The answer to this question is most decidedly, No.

No test of the importance of an office is better or more sure than
the amount of salary attached to it, provided that allowance be
made for the influence of historic development. If we apply this
test, we find that, while the Secretary of State for Home Affairs
receives a salary of 5,0001. a year, as do each of the other Secretaries
of State, the salary of the President of the Local Government Board

1903 THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD 111

is not more than 2,0001. Even admitting that, on historic grounds,
the Secretary of State should receive an emolument out of proportion
to what might be called a business remuneration, it can hardly be
contended that this should lead to his salary being more than double
that of a President of a Board. Moreover, and this is perhaps of more
importance, the high salary of the chief carries with it higher salaries
to the subordinate officials. The latter feature cannot be explained
by the principle of historic development; it can only be justified
by the assumption that the duties of the one office are more arduous,
more important, demanding greater ability and higher qualifica-
tions, than those of the other.

This justification has, indeed, been officially put forward in the
House of Commons. In answer to Mr. David Thomas, who on the
2oth of March in the year just ended put the following question :

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether the upper division
officials in his department are recruited by the same examination, and do the same
class of work as corresponding officials in departments presided over by Secretaries
of State, and if so, will he state on what ground they are placed on an inferior
scale of salary ?

Mr. Austen Chamberlain replied :

All clerks of the upper division are recruited by examination in the same sub-
jects. Vacancies in the offices of Secretaries of State are filled by the most
successful candidates, or by the transfer from other departments of officers who
have shown exceptional merit. In the opinion of the Treasury the work in the
offices of Secretaries of State, taken as a whole, requires higher qualifications than
does that of other public departments.

And again on the following 8th of May, in answer to a continuing
question by Mr. David Thomas :

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he will state the grounds upon
which the Treasury formed the opinion that the work done by higher division
clerks in the Secretary of State offices requires higher qualifications than work
done by higher division clerks in the Board of Trade ; and whether a similar con-
clusion has been arrived at in respect to the character of the work done in the
Local Government Department.

Mr. Austen Chamberlain replied :

The opinion is based upon the character of the work done in the different
offices. It applies to the Local Government Board as well as to the Board of
Trade.

The matter at issue in the above questions and answers is not,
however, limited to upper division clerks ; it has to do with the
whole staff. And I venture to submit if there be any truth in the
considerations which I have put forward above, very serious doubts
must be felt as to the validity of the opinion of the Treasury, as reported
by Mr. Austen Chamberlain. Knowing something of the work of
the Local Government Board, I have learnt to value the knowledge,
skill, and judgment demanded of and displayed by the members of

112 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

the staff. And my experience of the other departments of Govern-
ment has not brought to my notice any marked superiority in the
staff of one department over that of another.

The importance of the matter on which I am dwelling reaches,
however, beyond even the whole permanent staff. If there be any
truth in the view, which is not mine alone, but that of many, that
the future welfare of the nation in no small measure depends on the
ample development of local government, on the devolution of power
from the central Parliament to local bodies (whose name, whatever it
be, will not be that of Parliament, since, it is to be hoped, debate
will not be their prominent feature), and on the wise control of a
central authority which shall keep efficient and harmonise local
action, then that central authority, by whatever name it be called,
must become one of the most important, if not the most important,
of Government departments. The Local Government Board is at
present that central authority ; and whatever modifications in the
powers, in the organisation, or in the title of the Board may seem
desirable in the future, it is even to-day of the greatest importance
to the nation that its work should be done by the men best suited for
the task. The work which even now it has in hand is difficult enough
and great enough to demand that the choice neither of the chiefs
nor of the staff should be hampered by the idea that the department
is an inferior one whose needs are not to be considered until those
of other departments have been satisfied ; and this demand must
grow stronger as time goes on.

Nor does the Local Government Board stand alone in this
respect. The time has surely come when the question of some re-
adjustment of our Government machinery ought to be seriously
considered.

M. FOSTEK.

1903

ANOTHER VIEW OF JANE AUSTEN'S
NOVELS

IT is almost an impertinence to add another article to the many that
have been written on Jane Austen. Her merits have been extolled,
her every defect pointed out, until it would seem that criticism had
said its last word. Yet, after all — after Macaulay has compared her
to Shakspere, and Mr. W. D. Ho wells has placed her above ' Scott
and Bulwer and Dickens and Charlotte Bronte and Thackeray and
even George Eliot,' while Charlotte Bronte has found in her work
only the ' accurate daguerrotyped portrait of a commonplace face,'
after a revival of fame which has had few literary parallels, and a
recrudescence of admiration which one must suspect is in some
quarters a mere fashion — after all these, is not Jane Austen's true
position in the world of books as indeterminate as ever ? She has
been placed by enthusiastic votaries on the very pinnacle of literary
achievement ; she has been accused by equally fervent detractors of
being commonplace, monotonous, and, worst of all, feminine ! Mr.
Walter Frewen Lord in the October number of this Eeview so
emphasises against her this last objection that one would think that
a woman should of all things avoid being feminine, and that her
work is only valuable as it apes the characteristics of a man's
mind. The verdict reminds one of a recent remark on a picture by
a gifted woman artist, ' Why, it's so fine, you might think it was
done by a man ! '

This kind of criticism, however, obscures the real points at issue
and contributes nothing to our knowledge or our insight. It is the
function of genius to give us the author's individual point of view ;
a man's view if a man is writing, or a woman's view if a woman's
hand holds the pen ; but whether man or woman, the thing seen, the
very thing seen by that one soul, and perhaps by no other out of all
creation. To say that Miss Austen's work is feminine is indeed its
highest praise. She, and she alone, has given us the womanly
outlook of the time from 1775 to 1817, the time when Scott, who
could depict anything and everything but an actual young lady of
his own day, was enchanting the kind of mind that to-day is

VOL. LIII— No. 311 113 I

114 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

enchanted rather by his great contemporary ; the time when our
great-grandmothers were girls working samplers, and our great-
grandfathers in powdered hair were absorbed in the interest of
' the war with Boney ' ; that old, old time, barely a hundred years
ago, yet so far removed from our world ; the time before railways,
before Catholic Emancipation, before the Reform Bill, when the
Navy was still recruited by the press-gang, and Lord Sidmouth's
Seditious Meetings Act made a public assembly even more dangerous
than was two years ago a pro-Boer meeting in these days of our
enlightenment. Writers of our own epoch with infinite labour of
research have endeavoured to reconstruct for us those vanished days.
She alone has written with full, intimate knowledge, with delicate
satire, with the ease that comes of life-long familiarity, of that old
world in which she lived.

' It must have been a dull world, after all,' says Mr. Lord in the
article already quoted. Indeed it was, for a woman especially, and
what thanks do we not owe Jane Austen for investing this dull world
with the quaint, dainty grace, the delicious humour, and the absolute
humanity that we find in her novels ! Like Wordsworth she

Saw into the depths of human souls,
Souls that appear to have no depth at all
To careless eyes.

Is there, for instance, in literature a character more true to
ordinary life, more humorous, with that true humour that lies so
near to pathos, than that of Miss Bates, the gossiping, good-hearted
old maid, so humble, so cheerful, so forgetful of self, so truly good
yet so ridiculous, and, in spite of her absurdity, so estimable ? The
hand that drew that portrait went with a heart that beat strong with
kindliness and an eye that had a wide range.

For it is not surveying mankind ' from China to Peru ' that
makes the range of the artist's vision. I would not, indeed, make a
remark so obvious were it not that Mr. Lord seems to consider
Miss Austen's range as narrowed and limited by the geographical
boundaries of her experience. ' What was Miss Austen's world ? '
he writes. ' Take the world of to-day and eliminate Japan ; elimi-
nate China and the South Seas — all Asia, in fact, except India. In
Europe, eliminate everything but France. For purposes of polite
conversation you may include the Rhine. ... It is very important
to remember how small Miss Austen's world was. We are thus
saved the annoyance and surprise at finding ourselves called upon
to consider seriously the doings of children of seventeen ivho have
never been outside their village.' *

Clearly this is the note of the superior person. Wordsworth
must be an even greater offender in Mr. Lord's eyes, for Wordsworth

1 The italics are mine.

1903 ANOTHER VIEW OF JANE AUSTEN'S NOVELS 115

asks us 'to consider seriously' the doings of children of five and
eight who have hardly been outside their village, and Shakespeare is
not much better, for does he not ask us through a whole play ' to
consider seriously — surely we must take her seriously ! — the doings
of a girl of fourteen who had probably never been out of her native
Verona ?

If the tender age and limited travels of a heroine cause Mr. Lord
such ' surprise and annoyance,' with what accumulated disgust must
he read of the sixteen-year-old Perdita, the fifteen-year-old Miranda,
and the fourteen-year-old Juliet ! None of them had much
acquaintance with the world; and as regards Miranda we have the
best authority for believing that both her topographical knowledge
and the range of her social intercourse were remarkably narrow.
Yet we do not therefore find her uninteresting.

It is difficult, to take such a criticism seriously. What has the
geographical area known to us to do with the quality of our look at
it ? Robert Burns wrote his sweetest songs and uttered his noblest
thoughts before he had left the seclusion of his farm. Shakspere,
as far as we know, had never been out of England, nor have we any
reason to think he had travelled much within it. Dante's wander-
ings were confined to his native Italy. And to both Dante and
Shakspere the limits of the known world were even more constricted
than they were to Miss Austen. Yet we do not feel obliged to
make allowance for either on the ground of the smallness of his
world. Can anything be more obvious than that it is the mind
which gives the range, not the amount 'of the earth's surface known
to it? The parochial intelligence is not seldom found in globe-
trotters, and the wide outlook which makes the earth look small has
been found in a certain Bedfordshire tinker who had never been a
hundred miles from home.

The subject, what matters the subject ? It is the treatment of
the subject that is significant. The criticism that holds that
because a man writes about an ass he thereby writes himself down
an ass, that if he writes of an idiot he proves himself the hero of the
story, one had thought was dead and gone. And why, pray, is a
girl of seventeen who has never been outside her own village less
interesting than any other theme ? We must not forget that when
we say a subject is not interesting to us we are really expressing not
the defect of that, subject, but our own limitations. We mean that
we have little knowledge of it and less sympathy. And with human
beings, so long a:- they are genuine, not affected, there is hardly one
that would be uninteresting did we know him as he really is. I
think of that wonderful feat of sympathetic insight achieved by the
most cultured woman of the Victorian era when she showed us the
heart and mind of the little dairy-maid Hetty Sorrel. We may not
like the character, but who can say that it is not interesting ?

i 2

116 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

' Come now,' said Thorwaldsen to Hans Andersen, ' write us a
new story. I wonder if you could make up one about a darning
needle ? ' And that is how The Darning Needle came to be written.
Miss Austen has given us stories about very little more than darning
needles, but what has she not worked into them ? She has shows
us the heart and mind of a whole generation of women.

It is a stock remark that Miss Austen's women have no mind and
very little heart, but is it really true ? Their mental interests were
not ours, and compared with ours they had very few. But their
mental powers, wasted as they too often were, seem quite equal
to ours. They are better letter-writers than we. Or perhaps
it is only that Miss Austen is a better 1 etter- writer ? I do not
think many girls of twenty are more witty or more sensible or
more generally interesting than Elizabeth Bennet, and can it be
unimportant to us to recall in these pages the actual lives lived by
our not very remote ancestresses ? I think those of us who have
known charming old ladies who were born in the closing years of
the eighteenth century can trace in them many of the qualities that
we find in Miss Austen's young girls — the refined and slightly
formal speech, the gentle dignity and delicate consideration for
others, of which perhaps Jane Bennet is of all her characters the best
type.

Miss Austen's women indeed are her strong point. They are
genuine types, yet absolutely individual. They express themselves
differently from the women of our generation, but have we not all met
the silly inconsequent Mrs. Bennet, though in our days we find her
in a lower social class ? Is not the delightful Mrs. Elton still among
us, with the 'abundant resources in herself of which she never
tires of talking, and her constant effort to find some new gaiety or
social distraction, her scorn of women, and her constant brag of
being a married woman ? The priggish Mary Bennet, who spends
her life over books and remains a fool — the petulant Mary Musgrove,
who is always feeling slighted by her husband's relations, yet never
happy unless she is with them to have the opportunity of another
quarrel — Mrs. Norris, who has all sorts of contrivances to save
sixpence and who does all her good deeds by proxy — Mrs. Jennings,
with her eternal talk of beaux, the mild, sensible womanly Mrs.
Weston, the coddling mother Isabella with her indispensable doctor,
the little silly Harriet Smith, do we not know every one of them
among our contemporaries in spite of all outward differences ?

The mind of a girl of seventeen — who has shown us that
better than Jane Austen ? The real, essential human creature
hiding there under her immaturity, her small affectations, her
ignorant outlook on a world of which she knows nothing. At the
first glance it would seem that the Poles are not further apart than
the modern high-school girl and Miss Austen's heroines. Indeed, in

1903 ANOTHER VIEW OF JANE AUSTEN'S NOVELS 117

externals it is so. The modern girl in her serge suit and sailor hat
tramping home flushed and eager from the hockey field, is indeed a
different being from the girl of a hundred years ago in her Empire
frock of thin muslin or silk, her dainty stockings and shoes never
meant for outdoor wear — the little coddled heroine who felt half a
mile too far to walk alone, who sprained her ankle if she ran
down a hill, and was thought hoydenish if she walked three miles
through muddy lanes on an autumn morning. Yet just as despite all
differences of dress and bodily habit the woman's frame was the same
organically and potentially as it is to-day, so the womanly mind
peeps out in Miss Austen's heroines the same, in spite of all its queer
wrappings, its quaint diction, its conventional dress, essentially the
eame as it is to-day. As we see sometimes in a picture gallery an
ancestress curiously like her young descendant, so may we not
recognise in many a girl of to-day the modern representative of the
sweet-tempered, witty, wholesome Elizabeth Bennet — the open,
imperious, clever, unpenetrating Emma Woodhouse ; the self-centred
and rather sly Jane Fairfax ; the impetuous, sometimes silly, but
wholly refined and simple Catherine Morland ; and, best picture of
all, Anne Elliot, serious, intellectual, consecrated by the beautiful
endurance of a life-long sorrow — a woman who hides, beneath a
reserved and shrinking exterior, a great heart and an unconquerable
soul.

I claim that in Miss Austen's characters we get the genuine stuff
of womanhood, the stuff that remains the same though the back-
ground, the scenery, the dialogue, the incidents, the costumes vary
from age to age. It must always be remembered that a novelist has
to dress the souls as well as the bodies of his heroines in the costume
of their period. The dress that drapes the minds of Jane Austen's
heroines is reticence as to their deepest feelings — a reticence that is
a, remarkable contrast to the absolute unreserve with which things
matrimonial are discussed in their circle. If ever we find one of
them breaking through this reserve it is either because, as with
Marianne Dashwood, she has fed on romances until she has lost
sight of the actual world in which she lives, or because, as with
Lydia Bennet, she is destitute not merely of conventional modesty, but
of every decent womanly feeling. The normal among them are reticent.
They do not tear a passion to tatters. The finer emotions, the great
stresses of feeling, were not, in their day, things to be openly
discussed. Love scenes were to be hinted at, not detailed. Sir
Walter Scott invariably turned aside from the delineation of passionate
love. He says himself, somewhere, that he could not lift the veil,
feeling too much the impropriety of doing so. And long after his
day this was a convention universally respected. Charlotte Bronte
was perhaps the first to throw it aside, and when her passionate
genius wreaked itself on expression the world was ripe for the newer

118 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

ideal. But we are all the products of our ancestry and our environ-
ment, and it is hardly fair to blame Miss Austen for sharing the
universal feeling of her time as to the indelicacy of revealing the
mysteries of the supreme passion.

Indeed, in the light of many recent novels, we may, not
unreasonably, feel an admiration and an envy of the delicate
reticence that we find in the earlier novels of the nineteenth
century. In our days we have gone to the other extreme : the veil
of the temple has been rent in the midst and there is no longer a
Holy of Holies.

This reserve in Miss Austen's novels is probably the cause of her
being charged with want of passion. ' There is no passion in her
books, it would not be lady-like,' says Mr. Lord. This seems to me
an absolutely mistaken estimate. It is veiled, hidden even from the
woman herself, tremulous, womanly entirely, but it is there. The
passion of love, though in its essentials it may remain the same, yet
modifies itself greatly through the centuries, and the passion in
Jane Austen's day was not the passion of ours ; of what it was on
the man's side, indeed, we are left in almost complete ignorance.
But, as regards the woman, we see her feelings depicted with the
most perfect art, that art which is nature. They love, as they do
everything else, after their kind ; and, if one thing in Miss Austen's
work more than another reveals the master hand, it is, to me, the
gradations and the variations she shows us in the love of her women.
A passion of tragic intensity is as rare in Miss Austen's books as it is
in life. Seldom, very seldom, do we encounter it in either. Once
only — in Persuasion — do we get it from her pen, but that once she
has given it perfectly. In Sense and Sensibility we have the two
sisters, one showing the undisciplined emotion of a passionate
untaught nature, but not the genuine stuff of feeling — the thing
that can wear out life but not itself; the other sister breathing the
calm yet deep affection of a very self-restrained and unselfish charac-
ter. In Pride and Prejudice we again get the contrast of two-
sisters : Elizabeth, who alone, I think, of all Jane Austen's women
feels a longing for companionship of mind, and Jane, who is the per-
fectly ordinary pretty girl attracted by the perfectly ordinary young
man. In Emma we have a girl whose thoughts are mainly of love.,
and whose talk is mainly of marriage, yet who remains undiscovered
even to herself for years, and when she does realise her affection it
is of a calm yet thoroughgoing order which suits well with her
healthy frame, her cheerful temperament, and optimistic outlook.

But in every woman Jane Austen has depicted we see the un-
erring lines of the women of that time with all their charm and
their limitations, their virtues and their defects ; their tenderness,
their ignorance, their devotion to home ties, their want of education,
their absolute dearth of public interests, their concentration upon

1903 ANOTHER VIEW OF JANE AUSTEN'S NOVELS 119

the idea of marriage, as women's minds always will be concentrated
on that when there is nothing else for them to think about, when
they are shut out from the thoughts and the interests of men ; and
in this antiquated mental costume she has painted the face and the
form of the real woman as she knew her, and as we know her.

The whole circle is not rounded. There are types of women
known to us that we do not find in her gallery. There are
omissions that we find it hard to account for. Clergyman's
daughter as she was, living all her life in a country rectory, we find
only a single instance of that habit of 'considering the poor' that
we are accustomed to regard as a prominent trait in women of that
class even more then than now.

And, since I have touched on her clerical surroundings, one
cannot fail to remark the entire absence of spirituality or religious
earnestness in any one of her clergymen. Edmund Bertram feels
that the Church is the right profession for a younger son, particu-
larly as there is a family living. Henry Tilney is mainly occupied
in decorating his house, erecting suitable farm buildings, and getting
the garden in order. Mr. Collins is a most delicious picture of in-
eptitude and pomposity — one is sure that Jane Austen knew Mr.
Collins well ! But in all there is no touch of zeal or religious
emotion.

When Matthew Arnold published his selected edition of Words-
worth he told us in the preface that he could read anything in
Wordsworth with pleasure and profit, anything but Vaudracour and
Julia. Truth compels a similar confession here. I can enjoy all
Jane Austen's women, all but Fanny Price. Fanny is, like Eve,
' too amiably mild ; ' too good, too proper, and too conscious of her
own goodness and propriety. But with what consummate art is
suggested the dead-alive, proper, dull atmosphere in which she
grew up to be what she was ! Fanny would make an admirable
clergywoman when she was Edmund's wife. The slight tincture of
censoriousness which never scolded but only manifested itself in
disapproving mildness was the exact thing for Edmund's rectory.
It suited it to perfection. I can fancy Fanny a few years later,
attired in dove-coloured silk, a Paisley shawl and a coalscuttle bonnet,
demurely sitting in the rectory pew, gazing with eyes of meek reve-
rence at Edmund in gown and bands as he preached the driest
of sermons. I can fancy Fanny's affectionate clasp of her little girl
who has dropped off to sleep, and her glance of mild disapprobation
at the smock-frocked Hodge who is audibly snoring. Yes ! Fanny
was cut out for her fate. But, I confess it with regret, she bores
me exceedingly.

These considerations teach one tolerance. There may be — I do
not know if there are — people who admire Fanny Price as I admire
Anne Elliot or Elizabeth Bennet. After all, it is all a question of

120 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

taste. But how in the world, I ask myself again and again, how
did Jane Austen do it ? It matters nothing whether we should like
or dislike to be limited to her little world. Probably we should all
dislike it intensely. But how did she manage to paint it as she did ?
There they are, full rounded, with all the atmosphere, the half-tones
of real life, quiet, natural, English — fifty people perhaps — and they
have made their creator immortal. There is not one of them that
shows marked originality, there is no new beauty of feeling, no
reaching forth towards something greater than they could express.
We may quite agree with much that has been said against her
work ; some of the talk may be, as has been said, ' the very smallest of
small beer,' yet we read her books again and again and with ever
new pleasure.

There are, however, two more remarks of Mr. Lord's to which I
must take exception ; one is his endorsement of the opinion that
she gives us as her main theme ' the rather uninteresting doings and
very uninteresting sayings of totally uninteresting people.' As to
the doings and sayings in themselves I quite agree ; as to the
people, no. They w&re uninteresting until Miss Austen touched
them. Most of them are not people we should choose as our com-
panions. But they are interesting to us not because they are
clever, or beautiful, or because they do great deeds, or undergo
remarkable adventures, but simply because they are human. She
has shown us the universal in the particular, the beautiful in the
commonplace. We know very little, and it is a great part of her art
that we are kept in ignorance, of their inner life, and what we do
know of it is told us in hints and suggestions. In the real
world people do not draw up their chairs and recount to each other
their history from childhood as they used to do in old-fashioned
plays. We get it by hints, by the expression of the face, the tone
of the voice, the smile, the tear, the flash of a new thought, or the
involuntary laugh.

By these things we, rightly or wrongly, according to our insight
and experience, place them. So with the characters of these novels ;
there they are with all their history behind them, and their little,
pathetically narrow life so unlike ours, but interesting, always
interesting.

The other remark with which I must join issue is that the fact
of Miss Austen's work being feminine in tone ' implies a restricted
range of vision.' Why of course it does ! But had the term been
1 masculine ' instead of ' feminine,' would not that equally have
implied a .restricted range of vision ? Who can claim an unrestricted
range of vision ? All we can see is that very small part which we
are endowed with the faculty of seeing. And if Miss Austen has
given us, as she has, perfect pictures of the women of her time, of
their talk, their doings, their thoughts and feelings, their daily life ;

1903 ANOTHER VIEW OF JANE AUSTEN'S NOVELS 121

if she has given us an admirable background in the landscape of
Charmouth and Lyme Eegis and Portsmouth ; if what she has seen,
she has seen so truly, so delicately, with so womanly a sympathy and
recorded for us with so exquisite a grace as perhaps no other has
done, shall we say of her that her range of vision is restricted ? Her
heroes are, I grant, sometimes lay figures, but are they more so than
the heroines of Scott or of Dickens ? Men's heroines are at least as bad
as women's heroes. And the idea that the masculine outlook is a
truer one than the feminine is, I think, to be combated in the
interests of art. A man's outlook may be wider, it is not deeper or
more delicately discriminating. We have had women novelists who
have tried to write like men and have been great failures. We do
not want women who try to look at things with a man's eyes, or men
who try to look at things with women's eyes. What we want is that
both shall see truly, and truly tell us what they see and how they
see it. We want the woman's touch in the woman's work quite as
much as we want the man's special manly excellence in his.

We read Jane Austen glibly if we do not find beneath all the
gaiety and the externality the sane, strong, sweet nature that
accepted life with all its sorrow, all its deprivations, and cheerfully
made the best of it. I think, after all, Macaulay was not so far
wrong in ranking her next to Shakspere. There was something in
her nature like his — not only the keen observation, the sense of
comedy, the delicate satire, the genial humanity — but also the power
of getting outside her own feeling, and projecting, not itself, but its
interpreted, harmonised result in external form. And she died
at forty-two !

She told us what she saw. But the finest portrait she has given
us reveals, I think, much of her own thought and feeling in the
character of Anne Elliot. Too modest to make a great claim for
herself, she has been acclaimed with more and ever more renown.
While she was writing, the splendid romances of Scott were issuing
from the press, and he was among the first to hail her great
achievement. But to her belongs the honour of showing us what
Scott with all his power could not show us — the charm and the grace
of a perfectly ordinary but sincere and loving woman.

ANNIE GLADSTONE.

122 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan,

THE PRICE OF FOOD IN OUR NEXT
GREAT WAR

THE following resolution has been recently passed by the London
Trades Councfl, a copy of which was kindly furnished to the present
writer by the chairman thereof :

Resolved, that this Trades Council is of opinion that should this country
become involved in a European war bread would rapidly rise to famine prices.
Such a state of affairs, if nothing be done beforehand to guard against it, will
prove a source of the very gravest national danger. The immediate result of
bread rising to such famine prices will be the very greatest possible distress and
misery and semi-starvation amongst the working classes.

Our reasons for this opinion are — (1) The changed industrial conditions of the
present day, and the vast poverty-stricken masses congested in our great cities.
(2) There are nearly 7,000,000 people to-day living in poverty so dire that they
can hardly eke out a bare subsistence, even at present prices. They will not be
able to pay famine prices. (3) The disruption of trade which must accompany a
European war will throw a further very large number, how large cannot be
foreseen, out of work — wageless, they will not be able to purchase food. (4) It is
not necessary for us to point out that the prolongation of the war means the
starvation of the poor and not the rich. And as week by week the pinch of
hunger is felt more and more, we will not picture the consequences, which cannot
fall short of a national calamity. We, therefore, call upon the Government to
institute an inquiry into the present perilous position of this country in regard to
its food supply in consequence of our dependence upon foreign countries, and to
take measures to remedy this dangerous state of affairs.

It is at once apparent that from the point of view of the working
classes, who constitute the majority of the nation, the question of our
food supply, i.e. the price of food in war-time, is one which demands
the deepest consideration.

Upon that supply depends our ' staying power' in the event of a
European war. It may therefore be termed the foundation on which
the whole fabric of Imperial defence is built up, and if in time of
stress the foundation give way, the whole edifice must topple down
into ruin.

The matter is simply this : that in the event of a European war
the price of food will rise beyond the purchasing power of 7,000,000
of our people. What is to be done ? If the poor are not able to

1903 THE PRICE OF FOOD IN OUR NEXT WAR 123

pay the price at which food is sold, it will be to them a case of
starvation or semi-starvation. And the danger of course is, that
after a month or two of such starvation or semi-starvation prices they
may cry out so loudly and violently for peace at any cost, and cheap
food again, as to force the strongest Government to make peace on
humiliating, perhaps ruinous, terms. Or, in the alternative, the
Government of the day would have to put down starving and riotous
mobs by force of arms — a difficult task, a dread alternative. Can
anyone in this country contemplate our soldiers being employed to
shoot down their starving fellow-countrymen? And even so, the
efforts of a nation disunited and torn by internal commotions could
only lead to failure, while failure might mean, in the words of Lord
Salisbury, ' an end to the history of England.'

But why should such a dangerous state of things be allowed
to continue, if it can be remedied ? If the foundation of the
building be insecure, why allow it to remain so till the storm
comes ? Why not strengthen it ? Why wait ? Why not do it now,
at once ?

Either the question of our food supply in the event of a European
war is in a satisfactory state, or it is in an unsatisfactory state.
There should not be much difficulty in settling that matter. The
writer has not yet met anyone who has studied the matter at all,
anyone whose opinion on the matter is worth having, who does not
consider it to be in a thoroughly unsatisfactory state. The only
people who consider it to be in a satisfactory state are those who
manifestly have not taken the trouble to learn anything about it.

It is useless to point to the Napoleonic wars, as some people
do, and say : ' Oh, we got through them all right, though prices
did rise, and the same thing will happen again.' Since then
the industrial conditions of this country have utterly changed, so
much so that the experience of those far-away days is no safe guide
to the future. To begin with, we were then a nation of 18 millions ;
we are now a densely packed people of 41 millions. We were then
practically self-supporting; we now are dependent on foreign sources
for three-fourths of our food supply. The working classes, who will
feel the stress of famine prices most, were then unorganised and
unable to make themselves heard, and had no Parliamentary vote ;
they are now very completely organised, and through their clubs
and unions and Members possess every facility for making their
opinions felt. We were then governed by the aristocracy, who
naturally were not so much influenced by high prices ; we are now
governed by the democracy, by the very class who will feel the pinch
of starvation prices most. We then possessed absolute command of
the sea ; we shall now have a hard fight to obtain it. We were then
the only manufacturers, and the Continent, though at war, could not
do without our goods ; now Europe could do quite well without

124 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

them ; and so on, and so on. Enough has been said to show that it
is useless, that it is delusive, to point to the Napoleonic wars,
because our next war will be fought under totally different condi-
tions, industrial, commercial, financial, political, military and naval.
It is also useless to say, as some thoughtless people do, ' Oh,
we are the richest country in the world ; and as long as we are
ready to pay for it food will come to us all right somehow, from
America, or from the Colonies, or from neutral States, or in neutral
vessels ; it is merely a question of money, and of supply and demand.'
The obvious fallacy of this argument (not to mention that it cheer-
fully overlooks the probability of food being declared contraband of
war) is that it looks at the matter merely from the point of view of
the rich and well-to-do classes, a small minority of the nation, and
totally ignores the point of view of the poor, the great governing
majority — of the democracy. Food will doubtless come, at a price,
as long as we are able to pay the sum demanded. There is no fear
of starvation for the rich. But what about the poor? Food will
come into the country, but at a very high price. But what will be
the use of that to those who cannot afford to pay the increased price ?
It might just as well not be in the country at all. Those who argue
thus are thinking only of themselves ; they don't give a thought to
the poor, to the democracy. Let anybody who cares to understand
this matter, as everybody ought, take Mr. Kowntree's able work,
Poverty : A Study of Town Life, and examine his family budgets to
see how far the poor could afford to pay famine prices for their food.
He will see there demonstrated that 30 per cent, of the nation, or
47 per cent, of the working classes, could not. Take the estimate of
a moderate family's weekly expenditure — a father, mother, and three
children — the food being only equal to that supplied in our prisons,
and worse than the diet given to paupers :

In peace at present prices.

£. s. d. \ r* ( There are about

Food . . . . 0 12 9 ) *7^ee,page
Rent (say) . . . 0 4 0 [ ^ <*^££
Clothing, fuel, light, &c. 0 4 11 C ^ ^^/^

£1 1

and 133.

7,000,000 in
the towns de-
pendent on
wages of 23«. a
v week and under.

In war with price of food doubled.

Food .

£ s. <O
156

Out of wages
- of 23*. a week
and under.

Bent
Clothing, fuel, light, &c.

.040
. 0 4 11

£1 14 5 ,

Or let him take Mr. Charles Booth's monumental work on the
Life and Labour of the People in London, where he estimates that

1903 THE PRICE OF FOOD IN OUR NEXT WAR 125

30'7 per cent, of the total population of London were living in
poverty. (For comparison of London and York, vide Kowntree,
page 298.)

With such facts — demonstrated facts — before us, is it not truly
amazing that any man can be found, in Parliament or out of Parlia-
ment, to say that the increase of the price of food in war-time will
not matter, because we shall somehow get enough food for those who
are able to pay for it ?

Then there are people, who also ought to know better, who say
' Oh, if you once admit that prices of food will rise greatly in war-
time, then the situation becomes serious, but I deny that prices will
rise to famine heights ; I say that the matter is exaggerated. As
for the corn merchants and the meat merchants, who all of them say,
" prices will greatly rise," I don't believe them ; they are working
for their own interests.' To such I can only answer, ' Why do you,
who are an amateur who know practically nothing about either the
corn or the meat trades, venture to put your amateur opinion against
the expert opinion of men who have spent their whole lives in the
study of the probable rise and fall of prices in those two trades ? '

There remains the case of those who say, ' Oh Britannia rules
the waves. The food-supply of the country is safe so long as we
have a supreme Navy. It is an insult to the Navy to even debate
the question. Spend enough money on ships, and we are safe.'

This is the only argument which deserves serious consideration.
To all who hold this view I would say at once that as regards the
necessity to us of a supreme Navy I and all those to whom I have
ever spoken are absolutely with them. That is a matter which
goes without saying.

But wishes and fine phrases and oratorical flourishes do not make
ships, as some people seem to think. The ideal supreme Navy, such
as could give complete protection to our sea-borne commerce, is the
ideal at which we are all aiming ; but that ideal we have not yet
attained — indeed, are very far from having attained. And meantime,
as practical men, we are bound to consider, not only the ideal towards
which we strive, but also the actual state of affairs. For, if war
breaks out, it is the actual and not the ideal that will determine the
decision, the momentous decision.

What, therefore, is the actual, opposed to the ideal, state of affairs ?
For it is upon the actual that we must base ourselves. The actual
state of affairs is this :

(1) On the day after the declaration of war the prices of food
will rise greatly, owing to commercial and financial causes beyond
the power of the Navy to control — such as the preparatory demands
of the belligerent Powers on the visible supply, the demands of
merchants desirous of filling their stocks before prices rise further,
the attempts of capitalists to buy and hold for a rise &c., the

126 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

reluctance of sellers to sell on a rising market, and last, but not
least, the probable operations of the great Trusts &c. These causes
will drive up prices at once beyond the reach of those 7,000,000 of
our unskilled labour class already referred to.

(2) There must inevitably be a great disruption of commerce,
also due to causes beyond naval control, such as the mere loss of the
markets of the hostile countries and their dependencies &c. This will
throw a further large number out of work, wageless and therefore
foodless.

(3) Unless our Navy is sufficiently strong in cruisers to afford
complete protection to our sea-borne trade, there will be a shortage
of raw material, which will still further upset our trade, and the
rates of marine insurance will rise to prohibitive heights, twenty or
thirty times what they are now.

Have we therefore enough cruisers to afford such complete pro-
tection— such as was afforded at the time of the Crimean War ? In
1886 Admiral Sir Geoffrey Hornby laid down that we required
186 cruisers for commerce protection alone. Since then our trade has
largely increased, and the foreign navies to attack it have greatly
increased.

We have now 153 cruisers (Admiralty return) and 30 auxiliaries
= 183, while France and Russia have 98 cruisers and 52 auxiliaries
= 150. Suppose that 50 cruisers on each side are required to
attend the battle-fleets, that leaves us 133 cruisers to defend 6,000
vessels at sea scattered over 100,000 miles of trade routes (Lloyd's
General Report, 1901), exposed to attack from 100 cruisers. That
can by no means be called complete protection. At the most it can
only be called incomplete protection. Therefore the actual state of
affairs is that at the outset of war the Navy will only be able to
afford our commerce incomplete protection.

I had almost forgotten to mention those people who laugh at the
whole question of poverty in our towns, and refuse to consider it at
all in relation to war, who say, ' Oh, the working classes are very
well off; they could well afford to stint a few luxuries and pay more
for food, and they will be all right.' One has heard such statements
— in the House of Commons, too. People who say these things
make the enormous error of lumping the whole of the working
classes, skilled and unskilled, together. Statistics show that in the
towns there are about 12 millions (skilled) in comfort, who could (if
they would) stint luxuries and pay more for food, and about 1\
millions in poverty (unskilled), who earn at present prices a bare
subsistence only, and who could not give up any luxuries (because
they have none to give up) and thus pay more for food.

As regards the statistics of the poor, I quote from the June 1901
number of the Royal United Service Institution Journal the follow-
ing application of Mr. Charles Booth's figures :

1903 THE PRICE OF FOOD IN OUR NEXT WAR 127

The most authoritative work on the condition of the poor is generally admitted
to be Mr. Charles Booth's nine volumes on The Life and Labour of the People,
worked out in the greatest detail for London. I shall, accordingly, work as far
as possible on his figures. I take 25,000,000 of our population to be urban to
such a degree that Mr. Booth's figures for the whole of London will apply to
them.

Mr. Booth divides the population as follows :

A. The lowest class, occasionally labourers, loafers, and semi-criminals.

B. The very poor, earning under 18s. a week, casual labour, hand-to-mouth

existence, chronic want.

C. and D. The poor, including alike those whose earnings are small because

of irregularity of employment, and those whose work, though regular,

is ill-paid. Earnings from 18s. to 23s. a week.
E. and F. The regularly employed and fairly paid working classes of all

grades, earning 23s. and upwards to 50s. a week.
G. and H. Lower and upper middle classes, and all above this level,

including professional classes.

The classes C. and D., whose poverty is similar in degree, but different in
kind, can only be properly separated by information as to employment. It is the
same with E. and F., which cover the various degrees of working-class comfort.
G. and H. are given together for convenience.

The proportion of the various classes given for London are as
follows :

T

A. The lowest . . . 37,610 or -9 per cent.

B. The very poor . . 316,834,, 7'5 „

C. and D. The poor . . 938,293 „ 22-3 „
E. and F. Comfortable work-

ing classes . . . 2,166,503 „ 51 6 „ In comfort

G. and H. Middle and upper f 69'3 per cent.

classes . . . . 749,930 „ 17-8 „

Total . . . 4,209,170 100
These figures applied to 25 millions of our urban population :

A. The lowest ... -9 per cent. = 225,000

B. The very poor . . 7-5 „ = 1,875,000

C. and D. The poor . . 22 3 „ = 5,575,000
E. and F. The comfortable

working classes . . 61-5 „ = 12,876,000
G. and H. The middle and L **• comfort

upper professional classes 17'8 „ = 4,450,000 17,325,000
Total . , .100-0 "25,000,000

Taking all these facts into consideration, it seems to me, as ' the
man in the street ' who has studied the matter for three years, that
there is no possible doubt that, as things are at present, European
war will find us with 7 millions of the unskilled labour class unable
to pay the price to which food will rise ; and that the strongest Navy
(a Navy much stronger than our present) cannot prevent prices
rising beyond the purchasing power of these unskilled 7 million
working men and families.

So far it is all plain sailing. The laborious researches of Mr.

128 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

Charles Booth and Mr. Rowntree, available to us all, with their net
result of thirty per cent. ' in poverty/ together with the ordinary
business motto that ' business is business,' i.e. that business men
will naturally try to make the utmost profit out of favourable cir-
cumstances (on both sides of the Atlantic), are enough to show us
the state of the case. Our knowledge of human nature, our historic
reading of the rage of hungry mobs, is enough to show us the
danger. There are 1 ,000,000 ' in poverty ' within easy reach of the
House of Parliament.

But that is not the worst. An able article appeared in last
month's National Review, entitled ' Will War mean Starvation ? ' by
Mr. Spenser Wilkinson. It is there asserted, on the authority of
Lord George Hamilton, speaking with his experience as First Lord
of the Admiralty, that in war all steamers under twelve knots, i.e.
three-quarters of our Mercantile Marine, will be laid up in port for
fear of capture, owing to our deficiency of commerce-protectors.
Into the absolute accuracy of this forecast I do not propose to enter.
It is controversial. It means that we shall have to face a loss of
three-quarters of our raw material, and that three-quarters of our
working classes will be thrown out of work, wageless. Taking,
however, the most hopeful view — namely, that only a quarter of our
Mercantile Marine are laid up — still even that will mean a shortage
of a quarter of our trade and raw material, or that one quarter of the
skilled labour class, now earning good wages, will be thrown out of
work, wageless, and unable to pay famine prices for food.

So that, apparently, to the 7,000,000 unskilled labour class who
will not be able to pay such prices we must add at least 3,000,000
of the skilled labour class thrown out of work by the inevitable
shortage of trade and raw material. This makes a total of 10,000,000
who will not be able to pay famine prices, as a moderate estimate.
It is too awful to contemplate. When once the reader has realised
the meaning of these figures, I am confident he will never be able
to rest till a remedy is applied. Since I realised the meaning of
these figures, I have had no rest or peace of mind, nor shall have ;
and I am confident that all who think them out — all who realise their
dread possibilities of social, political, and national rain — will feel the
same. For a hungry man is an angry man, a desperate man, a man
careless of consequences. Let us put ourselves in the place of a
man earning 18s. or 21s. a week, with food too dear to buy enough
to keep his wife and children from starvation. How long would we
stand it ? How long will he ? And what may follow ?

Let a workman speak for the workmen, for it is good to know all
points of view. We have heard the optimistic utterances of the rich
and well-off as voiced in that marvellous debate in the House of
Commons last year. Let us hear the other side. In the discussion
before referred to at the Royal United Service Institution of January

(June number 1901), Mr. B. T. Hall, Secretary of the Working Men's
Club and Institute Union, declared

1 am a workman, and am now secretary of a society which comprises over a
quarter of a million of workmen, and can say with confidence that the result of
trehling the price of necessaries would produce results so grave that the people
would insist on the cause being removed at any cost. Here seems to me to lie the
danger. The English workman has, as a class, no reserve of purchase power.
The few who have, dread nothing so much as a depletion of that reserve. Given
a state of semi-starvation consequent on a war, the people would cry out that the
war should be stopped, even to the extinction of Britain as a dominant power in the
world. This would not be at once, of course. Men would muster to the defence
of the country, moved by a patriotism which is largely blind and inherent, not
resolute and informed. But, however just the war, or however necessary, you
would find men who would see only the side of our opponents. After the first
month of starvation workmen would heed these arguments, and resentment with
their terrible lot would grow. The second month the feeling in favour of peace —
of peace at any price — would, under the fearful pressure of starvation, finally force
the strongest Government to the acceptance of humiliating terms. Of this I am
convinced.

No man can read this weighty warning without saying ' Herein
lies a grave national danger.'

I trust that, though limits of space forbid the production of
statistics to prove each point in detail, enough has been said to show
that the whole scheme of Imperial defence rests on an insecure
foundation ; and consequently that, till that insecure foundation be
strengthened, we can have no safety. Of this there can be little
doubt. The only point which remains is, How can the foundation
best be strengthened ?

On this point I am not yet prepared to give a definite opinion,
for all the data are not yet collected.

The subject resolves itself into three headings :

(1) The certain danger that prices will rise beyond the purchas-
ing power of the 7,000,000 unskilled labour population of the towns.
With this the Navy, however strong, cannot interfere. It is a question
of proper ' internal organisation ' for war.

(2) The probable danger, due to the inevitable shortage of trade
and raw material, that another 3,000,000 at least of the skilled labour
class in the towns will be added to the 7,000,000 unskilled. This
is where the Navy comes in, for upon the number of commerce-
protectors which the Navy can supply the extent of the inevitable
shortage of trade and raw material will depend. This is a case of
proper ' external organisation ' for war.

(3) How the inevitable rise in the price of food can best be
minimised and kept within limits. This is a commercial and
financial question.

These are the three factors in the situation which would at once
confront us if we should be involved in European war next year or
the year after. They are, therefore, most urgent, and their urgency

VOL. LIII— No, 311 K

130 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

comes according to the order in which they are here named. They
are of the most pressing importance, and should be taken in hand at
once.

No. 1, the question of a proper 'internal organisation' for war
adapted to the needs of the industrial conditions which have grown
up in these islands since our last great war, comes first in order of
urgency. For it is manifest that the 7,000,000 who won't be able
to pay war prices must be fed somehow while the war lasts. A vast
organisation of relief will be required, an organisation so vast that,
unless it is all carefully prepared beforehand, it is bound to break
down. This organisation would also be able to minimise the effects
of the inevitable shortage of trade and raw material which must
accompany a European war. For though men cannot live without
food, yet if deprived of work they can live, so long as they are in
receipt of relief.

No. 2 is of almost equal, though not quite equal, urgency. A
certain shortage of trade and raw material there must inevitably be —
more or less modified Lancashire cotton-famine conditions all over
the country — due to the loss of the trade markets and material of
the hostile countries. This must be dealt with under No. 1. How
far this shortage can be kept within reasonable limits ; how many
millions will be thrown out of work, wageless, and unable to buy
food, will depend upon the number of cruisers available as commerce-
protectors at the outset of war. At present we have not enough, or
nearly enough, to prevent a very great shortage indeed.

No. 3, as to how the prices of food can best be kept within
reasonable limits, is a commercial question. It appears certain that
they will rise beyond the purchasing power of all families dependent
on wages of 23s. a week and under. As to how far they will affect
the skilled labour class, with wages varying from 23s. to 50s. a week,
will of course depend upon the height to which they rise. Various
proposals have been made by business men by which they say the
rise of prices could be minimised. The question is : Which is the best
and most practicable, and which would involve the least disturbance
of trade conditions ? These have been made by practical business
men, and all deserve most careful consideration, for somehow or
other the prices of food must be kept within limits.

It is not one remedy, but a combination of at least three
remedies, that is required, and such a combination of remedial
measures is a matter of great difficulty. It is also a matter of
great urgency. It is manifest that to collect properly all the
multitudinous data required under each heading is beyond the
power of an individual, be he a man in the street or be he a
Member of Parliament.

Further, it is plain that so many questions come into this
required combination of remedial measures, which are outside the

1903 THE PRICE OF FOOD IN OUR NEXT WAR 131

cognizance of any one particular Government department, that it is
insufficient for the representative of any one particular department —
as, for instance, the Board of Trade — to give an opinion on the.
question as a whole. The value of a departmental opinion is limited
to matters within the cognizance of the permanent officials, and is
of no value at all if given on matters which are plainly outside
their cognizance. And there is no department under whose
cognizance all the data required for the question come. Therefore
it is plain that no opinion given by any single department on the
whole question is of any value.

But the question of the security or insecurity of the foundation
of our whole scheme of Imperial defence is one of pressing and
paramount national importance. There should be no time lost in
dealing with it, for we cannot tell when the storm of European war
will come. Therefore it is plain that Parliament should at once make
itself thoroughly competent to deal with the question. The only way
in which this can be done is by a Government inquiry, either by
Royal Commission or Select Committee, composed of men in whom
the nation will have confidence, and with power to summon before
them the best evidence on all the subjects involved, which the country
can produce. Action must follow, and be based on, knowledge.
When all the data have been thus collected and put into a Blue
Book, and when Parliament has had time to study that Blue Book,
then, and not till then, will it be possible for Parliament, for the
nation, to form an opinion worth having as regards the necessary
combination of remedial measures.

STEWART L. MURRAY.

132 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

III. ITS NIRVANA

IN concluding the preceding article it was stated that Lord Kandolpb
Churchill's undisguised personal ambition had brought an element
of discord into the Fourth Party. There were two alternatives
open to the rest of its members — either to remain loyal to their com-
pact, or to sever their connection with it altogether. Sir Henry
Wolff and Mr. Gorst unhesitatingly chose the former course. It
was clear that the continued support of Lord Eandolph involved
working directly for his personal advancement, and putting, as far
as they themselves were concerned, all the eggs into one basket.
But perfect reliance was placed by them upon the generous assur-
ances of their colleague that what was achieved through their help
should also be shared in common. Mr. Balfour, on the other hand,
had to think of his own career. His association with the Fourth
Party had been of enormous political value to him. It had brought
him into the foreground in the House of Commons, and had mainly
assisted him to achieve a Parliamentary reputation. But at this
point the utility of his colleagues ceased to exist. In the campaign
against Sir Stafford Northcote's leadership of the Party in the
Commons Mr. Balfour had assisted with heart and soul. It was
naturally of vital importance to him that the path of Lord Salisbury
to the paramount position should be cleared. Accordingly he
encouraged Lord Kandolph Churchill to destroy the authority of Sir
Stafford Northcote as leader of the Opposition. But the moment
his colleague appeared to be ambitious, either of supplanting Lord
Salisbury or of acting as his second in command in the House of
Commons, his attitude changed. From the date of the publication
of Lord Randolph's letters to the Times, a couple of weeks before
the unveiling of Lord Beaconsfield's statue, Mr. Balfour's allegiance
to the Fourth Party began to cool. There was no definite rupture,
out a falling off of support ; accompanied, at a later stage of the
estrangement, by efforts to counteract the growing influence of Lord
Eandolph in the councils of the Party.

In the autumn of 1883 Lord Randolph Churchill took the initial

1903 'THE FOURTH PARTY' 133

step in one of the most daring Party intrigues recorded in political
history. He had attained to a triumphant position in the country.
His audacity, and the unguarded fashion in which he spoke out his
ideas just as they occurred to him, regardless of the consequences,
captivated the imagination of the working classes. It was an open
secret that at political meetings his name was more loudly cheered
than that of Lord Salisbury or Sir Stafford Northcote. In fact, even
the Tory press was compelled to acknowledge that in a space of five
years Lord Randolph Churchill had achieved a popularity only
second to that enjoyed by Gladstone himself. In sober Lancashire
his name was a household word, and his influence in the country was
so great that he determined to go to Birmingham and beard the
Caucus in its own stronghold as a Conservative candidate at the
next election. This was, however, only an incidental project in his
career. The intrigue referred to above aimed at a much higher
flight than the representation in Parliament of the most .Radical
constituency in England.

Lord Randolph cherished, in truth, no smaller design than the
wholesale capture of the Conservative Party organisation. It was a
bold scheme that would probably never have entered any head but
his ; but circumstances were not unfavourable to the success of the
attempt. Lord Randolph was already a power in the National
Union of Conservative Associations, and both he and his friends were
fully aware of the disabilities under which that body laboured. At
that time the National Union had no real voice in the management of
the Party, owing to its absolute financial dependence upon the Central
Conservative Committee. The latter had come into existence after the
general election of 1880. It consisted of a number of members of
the Carlton Club who had been appointed by Lord Beaconsfield to
inquire into the organisation of the Conservative Party. The
Committee was never dissolved. It continued to exist, assumed the
direction and management of all Party affairs, and controlled the
very considerable funds subscribed for Party purposes. The
National Union could do little or nothing without the sanction of
the Central Committee, because the money to carry out its schemes
was only obtained by favour of the latter body.

This being the state of affairs, Lord Randolph Churchill had two
difficult tasks to perform in order to carry his project to a successful
issue. In the first place, he had to obtain a controlling voice on the
Council of the National Union. Secondly, to make any effective
use of this position when gained, it was necessary to secure for that
branch of the Conservative organisation its proper share of influence
by getting it placed on a footing of financial independence. The
friends of Lord Randolph were far from suspecting, at this initial
stage of the latter's ambitious scheme, the lengths to which it would
lead them. It was recognised by a considerable number of members

134 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

of the National Union Council that their existence as a body placed
absolutely under the thumb of the Central Committee was more
ornamental than useful. Accordingly, hearty support was given by
them to the proposal that a definite sum of money should be allocated
to the National Union out of the Party funds ; whilst the opposition
to the scheme came from the partisans of the official leaders, who
viewed with suspicion and misgiving the growing influence of Lord
Eandolph Churchill.

At the annual conference of delegates of the National Union,
which was held at Birmingham on the 1st and 2nd of October, 1883,
the member for Woodstock and his friends succeeded in passing a
resolution directing the Council to take steps for securing to the
Union ' its legitimate influence in the Party organisation.' This
prosperous issue was followed up by the election of Lord Kandolph
as Chairman of the National Union in February of the following
year. Strong opposition was made to this move on the part of the
young Tories by the adherents of Lord Salisbury, and the latter states-
man even went so far as to ignore the new chairman by persisting in
corresponding with the Council through the medium of Lord Percy.
Meanwhile no time was lost by Lord Randolph in demanding from
the chiefs of the Party the powers hinted at in the Birmingham
resolution. He entered into confidential negotiations on the subject
with Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford Northcote, both personally and
by letter. The result of these communications was that on the
29th of February Lord Salisbury wrote a letter encouraging the
Union in its aspirations, and pointing out the special directions in
which its activity should be employed. This was a complete victory
for Lord Randolph, of which he was not slow to avail himself. A
report was drawn up recommending, amongst other important matters,
that the Union should claim ' a certain definite allocation ' from the
funds hitherto controlled exclusively by ,the Central Conservative
Committee.

The adoption of the report by a majority of the Council was
immediately followed by the most unexpected consequences. On the
next day a letter was received from Mr. Bartley, the Agent of the
Party and a member of the Central Committee, giving the National
Union notice to quit the premises it had hitherto shared with the latter
body, and informing the Council that Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford
Northcote repudiated any further responsibility for the doings of the
National Union. Upon receiving this open declaration of war, Lord
Randolph wrote a strong letter to Lord Salisbury, which, after full
discussion, received the assent of a majority of the Council. Some
members of the Council who were opposed to the Chairman carried a
motion directing that the letter should be entered on the minutes,
as they thought that it would, if unalterably fixed in its existing
form, prove damaging to Lord Randolph Churchill. There is no

1903 'THE FOURTH PARTY' 135

doubt that the wording of this remarkable political document was the
reverse of conciliatory. The writer thought, in fact, that the time
for amiable negotiation had passed, and that nothing would be
gained unless it were forced at the point of the bayonet. The letter
began by stating that it was quite clear to the Council that they had
hopelessly failed, in their letters and private conversations, to convey
to Lord Salisbury's mind anything like an appreciation of the signi-
ficance of the movement which the National Union had commenced
in the previous autumn at Birmingham, or of the unfortunate effect
which a neglect or a repression of that movement by the Leaders of
the Party would have upon the Conservative cause. Eeference was
then made to the mandate given by the combined Associations to
the Council, to secure for the National Union its legitimate share in
the management of the Party organisation. This Eesolution of the
Conference was interpreted as an expression of dissatisfaction with
the condition of the organisation of the Party, and as showing a
determination on the part of the National Union that it ehould
no longer continue to be a sham, useless, and even hardly
ornamental portion of that organisation. Lord Salisbury was
reminded that these views had then been communicated to him
and to Sir Stafford Northcote, and that he had written a letter
in reply from which it appeared that the two Conservative Leaders
entered fully and sympathetically into the wishes of the Council,
and in which was set forth a clear and definite scheme of labour for
the National Union to undertake. The Council, Lord Kandolph
continued, committed the serious error of imagining that Lord
Salisbury and Sir Stafford Northcote were in earnest in wishing them
to become a real source of usefulness to the Party, and proceeded to
adopt a report in which practical effect was given to this advice.
They did this under the impression that to carry out the objects
embodied in it they would be placed in possession of pecuniary
resources from the Party funds. The letter went on to say that
they had been rudely deceived, and recapitulated the statements
made in Mr. Bartley's communication. Then Lord Kandolph referred
to a letter which he had received from Lord Salisbury on the
previous day, expressing disapproval of the action of the Council,
declining to take notice of the report, and intimating that the
objects at which the Council of the National Union should aim
would be indicated subsequently. He accused Lord Salisbury of
having totally abandoned the precise language of his former letter,
and of having taken refuge in vague, foggy, and utterly intangible
suggestions. Finally, he said, in order that the Council of the
National Union might be completely and for ever reduced to its
ancient condition of dependence upon and servility to certain irre-
sponsible persons who found favour in the eyes of the leaders, the
latter demanded that the Whips of the Party should sit ex officio on

136 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

the Council, with a right of being present at the meetings of all
committees. The Council were further informed, Lord Eandolph
proceeded, that, in the event of their acquiescing in the view of
their functions laid down in Lord Salisbury's letter, they might be
graciously permitted to remain the humble inmates of the premises
which they then occupied. In conclusion, it was declared that Lord
Salisbury's letter and a copy of the writer's reply would be laid
before the Council at its meeting on the morrow, and a motion sub-
mitted that the Council should adhere substantially to the report
already adopted in obedience to the direction of the conference at
Birmingham.

As may be supposed, this answer from the Chainrtan of the
National Union provoked a complete rupture. But Lord Randolph
Churchill's position both in the country and at the Conservative
headquarters was too strong to be ignored. Efforts were made by
partisans on both sides to effect a healing of the breach. Mr. Row-
and Winn, representing the Central Committee, entered into amicable
communication with Sir Henry Wolff, with the result that by the end
of April things were in course of arriving at a satisfactory settlement.
The main point about the financial independence of the National Union
was virtually arranged between them, it being agreed that a certain
annual sum should be allocated to the Union out of the subscriptions
obtained by the Central Committee. At this juncture, when the
quarrels about the Party organisation were on the point of being
made up, an unfortunate occurrence upset the whole affair, and made
confusion worse confounded. It happened that at the ordinary
monthly meeting of the Council, held on the 2nd of May, the majority of
Lord Randolph's friends and supporters were absent. The older Tories
could not resist the opportunity. They proposed a motion practically
reversing the policy inaugurated by the Chairman, and carried it by a
majority. The circumstances were entirely accidental ; but Lord
Randolph Churchill chose to regard the resolution as a vote of want
of confidence in himself, and at once tendered his resignation. A
couple of weeks later he was re-elected. The quarrel had gone too
far, however, to be genuinely patched up. From that moment there
commenced a tacit, but none the less bitter, contest for supremacy in
the National Union. The time was approaching when the annual
election of the Council would take place. The selection of the future
Chairman depended upon which party succeeded in securing the
largest representation on the Council, and therefore the most strenuous
efforts were made to obtain a majority by active canvass. The
struggle lay between Lord Randolph Churchill and Lord Percy, who
was put forward by the Conservative Leaders. Mr. Balfour, although
ostensibly a member of the Fourth Party, and appearing to continue
to act with his colleagues, favoured the candidature of Lord Percy,
and took an active but unostentatious part in canvassing for the

1903 'THE FOURTH PARTY' 137

election of the latter's nominees. Mr. Grorst and Sir Henry Wolff,
on the other hand, gave the most unflinching support to their
political friend ; though it may be mentioned that the former,
having spent the winter in India, returned in the Spring of 1884 to
find the National Union affair at an advanced stage of its develop-
ment.

It was now a case of neck or nothing. Lord Kandolph Churchill's
supporters staked their whole political future upon securing his
personal success. An open struggle for supremacy between the
Conservative leaders and the member for Woodstock had been
entered upon, and the failure of the latter to secure a victory would
mean probable annihilation for him and for his supporters. With
the exception of Mr. Balfour, therefore, the Fourth Party worked
unremittingly for the common cause during the interval before the
National Union Conference at Sheffield. Nor was it entirely by
their labours that success was achieved in the end. There were many
influential members of the Council of the National Union who
cordially supported and assisted to initiate the policy of emancipating
the National Union from the control of the Central Committee.
Without the co-operation of this group, Lord Kandolph Churchill
could never have carried his scheme into effect, and he received their
support because they saw in his dash and energy the chief hope of
regenerating the Party organisation. It must not be supposed,
therefore, that this insurrection in the Conservative Party was solely
due to an intrigue on the part either of Lord Randolph Churchill or
of the Fourth Party. The circumstances were practically ripe for
some revolutionary movement, and Lord Randolph proved to be the
man of the moment to whom the reforming element naturally
turned for leadership and guidance.

The Sheffield Conference was held on the 23rd of July, 1884.
By a coincidence it happened that Lord Salisbury addressed a politi-
cal meeting in that town about the same date ; and it is a significant
fact that, in issuing invitations to Conservative members and others
to be present, he ignored the Fourth Party — with the exception, of
course, of Mr. Balfour — and left its members out in the cold. The
contest between the supporters of Lord Percy and the supporters
of Lord Randolph Churchill for a majority on the Council of the
National Union was now decided. It was virtually, as has been
shown, a struggle between Lord Randolph and the two Conservative
leaders, who were anxious to keep down their popular and ambitious
rival, and to prevent his gaining additional ground by obtaining a
predominant share in the control of the Party machinery. The com-
plete triumph of the central figure of the Fourth Party extinguished
this hope once and for all. A large majority of Lord Randolph's
nominees were returned as members of the Council, and his re-
election as Chairman of that body became consequently assured.

138 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

At this juncture, therefore, Lord Randolph Churchill was placed,
with the loyal assistance of his colleagues, in a position of supreme
influence and power. The Fourth Party had climbed to the top of the
tree. It had asserted its claim to be regarded as the pioneer of a serious
and progressive movement in the Tory Party, and had achieved by its
united efforts such political weight through the rapid advancement of
one of its members, that the Conservative chiefs would now be compelled
to recognise it as a force which could not only be ignored no longer,
but which would have to be accorded a share in the councils of the
Party. This was apparently the situation at the close of the Sheffield
Conference. Within a few days a totally unforeseen contingency
occurred which wrecked the Fourth Party altogether, and virtually
put an end to its existence. Lord Randolph Churchill, apparently
on his own initiative and without consulting his colleagues, made
terms for himself with Lord Salisbury. The first intimation, indeed,
that one of the political allies, who had gone out of town for a few
days, received of this compromise, was to the effect that it had
already taken place. From that moment, although it continued to
exist in the eyes of the uninformed public, the Fourth Party was at
an end. A few days later Lord Salisbury celebrated the concordat by
giving a banquet to the principal officials of the National Union, at
which Lord Randolph Churchill proposed his health, and a complete
public reconciliation was effected. To this banquet the members of
the Fourth Party were all invited ; but one, at least, of them refused
— perhaps injudiciously from the standpoint of political ethics — to
be present after what had taken place.

Probably no better illustration could be given of the new position
of affairs than an incident which took place in the House of
Commons at the beginning of the autumn session of the same year.
Parliament had been summoned after the summer holidays to pass
Gladstone's Reform Bill, extending household suffrage to the
counties and enfranchising the agricultural labourer. The Fourth
Party continued to sit together, but evidence was soon forthcoming
that its members were no longer acting in concord. On the Second
Reading of the Franchise Bill, Mr. Grorst made a speech in accord-
ance with the principles of Tory Democracy that had been consist-
ently adopted by the Fourth Party throughout its career of political
activity. At the time of this debate the political situation was as
follows. The Government had expressed its willingness to deal
comprehensively with the question of Parliamentary reform, and to
bring in a scheme for Redistribution as well as a Franchise Bill.
G-ladstone had announced it to be his intention to give priority to
his plan for the extension of household suffrage, but had solemnly
pledged himself to introduce a Redistribution Bill in the session
following. The Conservative Opposition had at first taken up the
attitude of agreeing to the extended franchise, provided that a readjust-

1903 'THE FOURTH PARTY' 139

ment of the electoral areas were also undertaken. But although
the Government had pledged itself up to the hilt to dispose of both
questions in the immediate future, it had subsequently been decided
to oppose the Second Reading of the Franchise Bill with an amend-
ment to the effect that provisions for a proper arrangement of
electoral areas must accompany any measure purporting to provide
for the better representation of the people in Parliament. Prior to
his surrender to the Conservative leaders, Lord Randolph Churchill
had taken the foremost part in enunciating the Tory Democratic
view of the Government scheme. He now appeared in the House of
Commons as the virtual author of the amendment which Mr. Edward
Stanhope had moved, practically for him, on a day when he was
compelled to be absent from Parliament on account of a domestic
bereavement. What brought him to the Holise on the day following
the moving of the amendment was, as he himself acknowledged,
the express purpose of answering the speech of Mr. Gorst and of
making an attack of the most violent nature upon his former friend
and colleague.

The latter had urged what Lord Randolph himself had been
consistently advocating on past occasions, namely, that the Tory
Party should do nothing to dissimulate their approval of the
extension of household suffrage to the counties, but should cordially
co-operate with the Government in passing such a measure, provided
that satisfactory assurances were given that a fair scheme for the
redistribution of seats would follow in due course. He deprecated
very strongly, although in favour of the amendment as an abstract
motion, that the Conservative leaders should be using the two
millions of capable citizens, whose right to enfranchisement they had
admitted, as a sort of lever to force from the Government a Re-
distribution Bill, when no compulsion was necessary to attain that
object. It was not impossible that the two millions of capable
citizens might resent their rights being made use of in this way, and
all the Conservative Party would accomplish would be to make
enemies of the new voters. That was the essence of his conten-
tion. It was merely giving expression to the principles of Tory
Democracy by which the Fourth Party had always been inspired,
and it may therefore be supposed that when Lord Randolph Churchill
attacked his colleague for giving utterance to views which had only
lately issued from his own lips, the House of Commons began to grasp
something of the real state of affairs. Lord Randolph repudiated
any responsibility for the line taken by his friend, and declared
that the speech was a very painful surprise to him. He called
Mr. Gorst's attitude one of ignominious surrender, and said that
* if there was one thing that could destroy and shatter the hope of
a peaceful settlement it was that speech, because, if the Govern-
ment thought it represented the views of any large portion of the

140 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

Tory Party, they would think they had nothing before them
but a cowardly, vacillating, and disorganised Party.' Speaking
of his late colleague's remark that the latter stood aloof from
the agitation in the Autumn, Lord Eandolph remarked : ' I have yet
to learn that either the traditions of Party warfare or Party etiquette
teach one to desert one's party and stand aloof from and refrain
from giving assistance to it at a moment of crisis and danger, simply
because of the very inadequate and miserable reason that in one's
own poor and very fallible judgment one does not altogether approve
of the course which may have led them into that difficulty.' The
completeness of Lord Eandolph Churchill's recantation may be
gathered from the fact that, early in the year, on the amendment
of Mr. A. Grey fixing a date for the commencement of the Franchise
Bill, he said that the object of Conservatives who were in favour of
reform would be attained by the insertion of the date January, 1886,
as the commencement of the Bill. If that were put into a Keform
Bill, he saw no reason why the Bill should not pass into law, taking
into account the declaration of the Government that they intended
to introduce promptly and to pass a Kedistribution measure. It is
noteworthy that for this expression of opinion Lord Randolph was
at that time taken to task by Mr. Balfour, if with less vehemence,
still very much after the fashion of his own subsequent attack upon
his discarded political ally.

In November 1884, therefore, Lord Randolph Churchill appeared
in the House of Commons in a totally new role. From the begin-
ning of the autumn session he acted completely under the thumb of
the Conservative leaders, until Lord Salisbury's Government of 1885
was formed and he was rewarded with the Secretaryship of State
for India. There was, on that occasion, a week's delay before the
task of forming a Conservative administration was accepted ; and
during the interval Lord Randolph — in a spirit analogous to that
of Disraeli in 1855, when Lord Derby threw away a great chance of
taking office — went about inveighing against Lord Salisbury in no
measured terms. However, he had largely his own way in forming
the government. Sir Stafford Northcote was removed from his
path by being sent up to the House of Lords with an earldom ;
whilst, recognising that he could not yet hope to lead the Conser-
vative Party in the House of Commons, Lord Randolph strongly
supported the nomination to that office of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach,
who practically acted throughout his term of leadership upon the
advice and at the instigation of the Secretary for India. But no
member of the Fourth Party except himself was admitted to the
Cabinet. Mr. Balfour, though made President of the Local Govern-
ment Board, was excluded from the latter distinction; Sir Henry
Drummond Wolff was sent out to Egypt on an important mission ;
and upon Mr. Gorst was conferred the silence of the Solicitor-

1903 'THE FOURTH PARTY' 141

Generalship. It is true that Lord Randolph Churchill offered one
high post in India after the other, both legal and administrative, to
the latter member of the quondam Fourth Party ; but Mr. Grorst
did not wish to throw up his position in English politics or to remove
himself to another sphere of activity, a»d the appointments were
consequently declined. The sequel to Lord Randolph Churchill's
ministerial career is well enough known. In 1886, when the
second Salisbury administration was formed, he became Chancellor
of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. But in the
following year, having quarrelled with the Government on the
question of the estimates, he resigned office and lost a position
which was never afterwards recovered by him. Mr. Groschen
succeeded to the Chancellorship ; many people holding the belief
that the selection had been made some time beforehand, and
that the differences with Lord Randolph were carefully fomented
for the purpose of engineering a quarrel and so getting rid of him
altogether.

The history of the Fourth Party has now been written in its
main outline. It would be affectation to pretend that it came to
anything but an ignoble end. But the reader, in judging the
matter, will do well to bear in mind the fact that the same code of
honour which is applied to private life cannot be made applicable to
the exigencies of politics. The struggle for existence is so severe in
the arena of Parliament that a rigid standard of political morality
can scarcely be observed by those whose first aim is to be successful.
Of course, here and there a man goes into public life for the sake,
not of himself or his own advancement, but of certain principles which
he intends to advocate quite irrespective of personal loss or gain. But
these are exceptional cases that must not be taken into too serious
account. The man who sets the standard of political right and
wrong is he who has his career to make first and his country to
serve afterwards. This is inevitable, and is in all probability merely
an excellent provision in the universal scheme of evolution to secure
the survival of the fittest in the conduct of national affairs. It
would be grossly unfair to measure Mr. Balfour's covert alienation
from his associates, or Lord Randolph Churchill's final act of private
capitulation, by ordinary standards. The former, it must be remem-
bered, was placed in a position of much delicacy ; and being of a
conciliatory rather than of a polemical disposition in regard to politics,
he preferred to remain at least on outwardly cordial terms with those
whose interests appeared ultimately to clash with his own. The
enforced canvass in aid of Lord Percy's candidature for the chairman-
ship of the National Union, whose cause could not be openly espoused
without a rupture with the Fourth Party, illustrates how disagreeable
and complicated the situation must often have been.

It is rather more difficult, perhaps, to do justice to the motives

142 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

that prompted the final act by which Lord Eandolph Churchill
wrecked the surviving remnants of the Fourth Party. Clearly he
thought it the most politic course to take at the moment ; and if
only he had been strong enough to stand alone, his judgment would
not have ultimately proved misleading. The principal aim of Lord
Kandolph was the leadership in the House of Commons. All other
considerations were in the nature of things of but secondary import-
ance to him. It must be assumed that the brilliant Conservative
free-lance made up his mind, after the National Union episode, that
it would be impossible for him to supplant Lord Salisbury. Accord-
ingly the only policy open to him was to come to an immediate
understanding in regard to the political future, and to make a bargain
in regard to the chief object of his ambition. That the interests of
others were sacrificed in putting this resolution into effect was not
a circumstance that could be taken into account at such a critical
juncture. In political life the principle of sauve qui pent is com-
pelled to be subjected to a very extended application. Some crude
individual, who has not digested the A B C of politics, or who has
failed to profit by its elementary axioms, may occasionally commit
the blunder of neglecting or even of despising an opportunity. But
these slips are, as has been already remarked, few and far between,
and neither can nor ought to be expected to serve as rules of con-
duct by which the actions of other, and perhaps wiser, aspirants to
political fame should be governed.

HAROLD E. GORST.

1903

CHKISTMAS 1902 has found the country occupied, just as it was at
Christmas 1895, with the affairs of Venezuela. It is true that there
is all the difference in the world between the circumstances of to-day
and those of seven years ago. In 1895 no one could bring any
reproach against this country, no one but the American politician
who, to gain a paltry advantage for himself and his party, almost
plunged his country into war, and destroyed his own reputation as a
responsible and honourable man. On this occasion at least we have
had no Mr. Cleveland trying to buy votes at the price of his own
honour and the peace of the world. But all the same we have
suddenly found ourselves confronted once more by the spectre of
Venezuela, and now as in 1895 there looms behind it the much
larger and more formidable spectre of our relations with the United
States. The people of Great Britain have hardly as yet recovered
from the surprise with which they found themselves, a week or two
since, involved in this fresh difficulty. They no more expected it
than they expected Cleveland's message seven years ago. Early in
the month there were rumours about some financial transactions that
were to furnish money for the depleted coffers of President Castro,
the gentleman who, for the moment, ' runs ' the legitimate govern-
ment of Venezuela, not greatly, it is to be feared, to the advantage
of the country. There was nothing, however, in these rumours to
suggest what followed, and it was not until some days later that the
world was informed that certain British warships had been sent to
Venezuelan waters on a definite mission. A little later came por-
tentous despatches to the Times from its Washington correspondent.
These despatches gave us the comforting assurance that America did
not object to anything that we were about to do with regard to
Venezuela ; so that if anybody had been simple enough to take the
Times correspondent at his own valuation he must naturally have
felt that all was well. Bit by bit the mystery deepened, and we
learned, from sources on which it was possible to rely, that not only
Great Britain but Germany was on the point of making a naval
demonstration against the little republic. It was not until the
8th of the month that Mr. Balfour stated, in answer to a question in

143

144 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

the House of Commons, that an ultimatum had been addressed to
President Castro, not only by this country but by Germany. People
rubbed their eyes and, like Peterkin in Southey's ballad, asked
what it was all about ; for up to this moment no information on
this essential point had been afforded them by the Government.
Before any reply was given some rather ominous events happened.
The English and German representatives at Caracas delivered their
ultimatum, and then departed in hot haste for La Guayra, leaving
their fellow-countrymen under the protection of the United States
Minister, Mr. Bowen. President Castro's first reply to the ulti-
matum was distinctly characteristic of the ways of South American
Presidents in moments of difficulty. He seized all the English-
men and Germans upon whom he could lay his hands, and
clapped them into prison. Simultaneously the English and German
warships seized the Venezuelan navy, a flotilla for which a
single torpedo-boat would have been more than a match. Two of
these ships were sunk, under circumstances which have still to be
cleared up. English and German troops were landed at La Guayra,
though it does not appear that they remained on shore more than
an hour or two. Then Mr. Bowen, by judicious diplomacy, secured
the release of the imprisoned citizens of this country and Germany.
The next incident in the strange sequence of events was a flaming
manifesto from President Castro, which read like an extract from
one of the numerous novels which have had for their theme the
mixed politics of some South American State. A day or two
later came news of the interference by Venezuelan forces with an
English merchant vessel, and this was quickly followed by the bom-
bardment of the fort at Puerto Cabello. Clearly, without knowing
it, we had become involved in a little war in South America, and
were acting in alliance with Germany.

There was more than enough in this to alarm well-informed and
reasonable politicians. Whatever our grievances against Venezuela
might be, everybody knew that it was not a light thing to resort to
warlike measures against it. The Washington correspondent of the
Times kept up his soothing assurances as to the state of feeling in
the United States, and told us how public opinion in New York and
Washington was entirely on our side in everything that had been
done. But those who decline to take this gentleman as a
witness of authority were naturally filled with apprehension. The
people of the States have, of late years, insisted that the South
American continent comes within the provisions of the Monroe
doctrine, and there is no need to say that, under the influence of the
New York press, public opinion in the States in matters of foreign
affairs has become so fickle that it is impossible to trust it, or to fore-
cast the course which it may take. Englishmen with good reason
repose absolute confidence in the honesty and good sense of President

1903 LAST MONTH 145

Eoosevelt and Mr. Hay, but nobody can tell how soon a campaign in
the American Jingo journals might cause a dangerous storm to
rage from one end of the great Kepublic to the other.

Another unpleasant symptom became apparent. This was the
uneasiness, and even indignation, with which a large portion of the
public in this country regarded our joint action with Germany.
Last month I had to write of the unfortunate suspicion with which
many of our politicians regard every political movement on the part
of the German Government. This suspicion was revived and in-
tensified by the events in Venezuela, and many of those who knew
the dangers which must attend any forcible interference with the
South American republics did not hesitate to express their belief
that Germany, by forcing us into a course of violent action against
Venezuela, was trying to serve its own ends by embroiling us with
the Cabinet at Washington and the people of the United States.
This, too, was the view of the matter which was taken by a con-
siderable section of the European press. Yet our Government kept
silence, and told us nothing of the causes which had led to the
creation of a situation of grave difficulty and delicacy.

It was not until the 16th of December that any real light was
thrown upon the situation. Then a meagre handful of papers was
laid before Parliament by the Foreign Office. From these we learned
that certain wrongs had unquestionably been done to British subjects
by the Venezuelan Government, and that the demands of our repre-
sentative at Caracas for redress had been refused in a high-handed
and almost offensive fashion. Everybody, of course, knows that
President Castro and his ministry have been engaged for months
past in defending themselves against a serious revolutionary move-
ment. Venezuela has, during those months, been little better than
a cock-pit in which sanguinary battles have been fought from time
to time, and all the worst incidents of South American warfare have
been witnessed. Even this fact, however, did not justify the
President's curt rejection of our demands. But when the papers
were published, it was made apparent that the wrongs we had
suffered at the hands of the Venezuelan Government bore no sort
of proportion to the dangers which were necessarily involved in
the measures we had taken to secure redress. Nor can it be said
that public opinion here was reassured when the true character of
those measures was at last revealed to us. It seems that so far back
as the 23rd of July, Lord Lansdowne had addressed a despatch to
our Charge d' Affaires at Berlin, in which he informed him that he
had told the German Ambassador that we were ready to confer with
the German Government with a view to joint action by the two
Powers against Venezuela. What the German claims upon the
Eepublic may be we have not yet been told. It is, however, gene-
rally understood that they are of a different nature from our own,

VOL. LIII— No. 311 L

146 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

and the belief is that they are exclusively financial. In the middle
of August the English and German Governments had practically
arrived at a determination to make a joint naval demonstration on
the Venezuelan coast, and to blockade the ports until satisfaction
was obtained. On the 1 1th of November Lord Lansdowne addressed
to our Charge d' Affaires at Berlin a despatch in which he informed
him that the two Governments were prepared to join in a final
warning to Venezuela. This despatch contained the following
passage, the importance of which it would be difficult to over-
estimate :

As to the joint execution of the measures of coercion, the German Govern-
ment recognised that there was a sharp distinction between the character of the
British and German ' first-line ' claims ; nevertheless, the two claims ought to
stand or to fall together, and we ought to exclude the possibility of a settlement
between Venezuela and one of the two Powers without an equally satisfactory
settlement in the case of the other. Each Government ought, therefore, to come
to an understanding before it embarked upon a project of coercion, that neither
Government should be at liberty to recede except by mutual agreement ; and
before common action was initiated we ought to come to a distinct agreement to
this effect.

The above quotation, though it is not clearly stated in the
despatch, seems to embody the language used by Count Metternich,
the German Ambassador, in a conversation with Lord Lansdowne.
The despatch then proceeds :

I told Count Metternich that it seemed to me only reasonable that if we
agreed to act together in applying coercion, we should also agree that each should
support the other's demands, and should not desist from doing so except by
agreement.

I venture to doubt if the annals of the Foreign Office contain
any other document which is precisely on all fours with the above.
\Ve have certain grievances, none of a very serious character, against
Venezuela. Germany also has claims against the same State, of the
nature of which we are kept in ignorance, but which, admittedly, do
not rank with ours. Germany is not our ally, and repeatedly we
have had occasion to feel aggrieved by the action of her diplomatists.
Even those of us who are most anxious that we should act cordially
together, and that all causes of friction between the two countries
should be removed, are conscious of the fact that in our diplomatic
relations this country has given Germany a good deal more than it
has gained in return. We were not, therefore, under any kind of
obligation to study the interests or consult the wishes of Germany
in this Venezuelan matter in which the claims of this country clearly
stand on a different footing from those of Germany. Yet we have
been bound by our Government in an alliance which deprives us of
our freedom of action, and practically makes the British fleet a
debt-collector for the German people. Even if Venezuela were not

1903 LAST MONTH 147

in South America, and if no complications were possible in our
dealings with her, it would strike most people, I think, that Lord
Lansdowne, in his negotiations with Count Metternich, had made
a monstrously bad bargain.

But of course there is the possibility of complications, of com-
plications so serious that what in other circumstances would merely
have been a bad diplomatic bargain, may become an instrument of
portentous danger and mischief. Our position with regard to the
American continent is absolutely different from that of Germany.
We hold vast territories there, territories not exclusively confined
to North America. "We are the nearest neighbours of the United
States, and the cardinal point of our policy, so far as foreign affairs
are concerned, is the maintenance of a cordial and unbroken friend-
ship with the great Republic. We have made sacrifices of no mean
kind in order to maintain that friendship, for we believe its main-
tenance to be necessary not only in the interests of both countries,
but in those of freedom and civilisation throughout the world. Our
reward for what we have done and borne to attain this end lies in
the fact that we seem at last to have convinced the American people
that we are sincerely their friends, and that, whilst steadfastly main-
taining our own rights, we desire from them absolutely nothing
but their goodwill. Yet, by his agreement with Count Metternich,
Lord Lansdowne has condemned this country to a line of action in
which at any moment she may find herself at variance with American
policy and opinion, and, to make matters worse, he has bound us
hand and foot to Germany, so that before we can abandon a policy
of war, with all its attendant dangers, the ends of Germany must be
secured, and her claims satisfied. To the ordinary man this action
of the Foreign Secretary must seem inexplicable. What possible
benefit can Great Britain derive from it ? And why should we have
chosen Germany, of all the Powers of Europe, as our ally ? The
only suggestion that can be thrown out is that we have not yet
learned the full truth. It is incredible that Lord Lansdowne could
have acted as he did without having previously consulted the United
States Government on a matter which touches so nearly the amour
propre of the American people. The Eepublic has given Europe fair
warning of the relation in which it considers that it stands towards
the South American States. Great Britain, which has possessions in
that part of the world, possessions which she means to hold, and which
give her a locus standi altogether different from that of Germany
or of any of the other great European Powers, has never protested
against the American claim. She has, of course, a right, like any
other Power, to protest against any doctrine which converted South
America into a kind of Alsatia, dwelling securely under the protec-
tion of the Government at Washington. But the United States
Government has never promulgated such a doctrine, and, in his

L 2

148 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

recent message to Congress, President Eoosevelt expressly denounced
it. If Lord Lansdowne felt that our grievances against Venezuela
were of such a nature as to demand instant redress, by force of arms
if necessary, it was not with Count Metternich, but with Mr. Hay,
that he should have negotiated, and no step ought to have been taken
until we had ascertained how it would be regarded by the Washington
Government. Considering the peculiar relations of the United
States with Germany, it seems almost madness to have entered into
an agreement with that particular Power for the coercion of a South
American Eepublic.

As I write, the question is still unsettled and some ominous
symptoms are apparent. Happily, however, public opinion in this
country has not been slow in awaking to a knowledge of the situa-
tion, and it may be hoped that the Government will find some
means of withdrawal from the perilous ground on which it now
stands. Certainly, despite the personal idiosyncrasies of President
Castro, there ought to be no difficulty in arranging a treaty of
arbitration. Yet, even if the question ends as suddenly as it arose,
the problem will remain, how did this strange agreement with
Germany come into existence ? It was so far back as last July thafe
the first discussion of joint action by the two countries was raised.
But apparently it was not until the beginning of November, when
the German Emperor was on a visit to this country, that the proposal
was made that the joint action having once begun should be con-
tinued until Germany was satisfied. If Germany had shown her
hand, and told us precisely what her claims against Venezuela were,
and with what she would be satisfied, the bargain might have been
fair enough in itself, though still a dangerous one for us. But it is
simply intolerable that we should have been bound to the chariot-
wheels of Germany in pursuit of a policy that might at any moment
raise differences between ourselves and the United States, whilst we
were kept in ignorance of those German claims for which we had
undertaken to obtain satisfaction. The mystery is so great that
there are some who profess to find the explanation in the Emperor's
visit to Sandringham, and in the personal influence he exercised there
over the Ministers of the Crown and possibly over the King himself.
Such an explanation cannot be credited, but the very fact that it
should be offered shows the depth of bewilderment into which the
country has been plunged by the extraordinary and ill-starred action
of the Government. Upon one point we are entitled to an explana-
tion from the Prime Minister. Speaking at the Guildhall banquet, he
told his audience not only that no disturbance of the peace was in
his opinion possible, but that all the statements which had been cir-
culated in the press as to some bargain concluded between our
Government and the German Emperor during the stay of the latter
at Sandringham were sheer inventions. Yet at that very moment

1903 LAST MONTH 149

we were on the point of taking warlike measures against Venezuela,
and an agreement had been arrived at between Lord Lansdowne and
the German Ambassador, under which we had placed the British
fleet under certain conditions at the disposal of the Emperor. This
agreement was made at the very time when the Prime Minister, the
Foreign Secretary, Mr. Chamberlain, and the German Ambassador
were members of one or other of the house-parties at Sandringham.
It would be interesting to know how Mr. Balfour reconciles the actual
facts as they have now coine to light with his speech at the Guild-
hall. It is not surprising that men of all parties should have received
a shock, and that their confidence in the Prime Minister's accuracy
should have been disturbed. There has been no incident to compare
with this since Lord Salisbury's denial of the accuracy of the Globe
rendering of his secret treaty with Kussia.

Again, one of Mr. Balfour's statements in the House of Com-
mons when the Venezuelan question was under discussion has
startled everybody. The nature of the German claims has, as I have
said, been concealed from us. Our own grievances against President
Castro have been made known to the whole world in a parliamentary
paper. Xo similar document has been issued from the Foreign Office
at Berlin. But though the British public have thus been kept in the
dark as to the nature of the claims for which we have bound ourselves
to obtain satisfaction, nobody in this country imagined that Ministers,
the men who actually entered into this dangerous and one-sided
agreement, were in a similar state of ignorance. Yet this appears
to have been the case. The Prime Minister, even when the most
explicit questions were put to him with regard to the nature of the
German claims, could only answer in vague terms, and absolutely
declined to commit himself to any definite statement. Never before
has an English Premier been seen in such a plight. It was
fortunate for the Government that the parliamentary session was
within a few hours of its end when the country learned the position
in which it stood. It was fortunate, too, that the Opposition when
the question was raised dealt with it in a singularly feeble and
tactless manner. If there had been time for a full discussion of the
whole affair, and if the case against the Government had been
properly presented to the House, Ministers would have received a
blow that, under ordinary conditions, must have been a mortal one.
As it is, their prestige has once more been seriously hurt, and the
criticism passed upon their lack of statesmanlike foresight has been
even more severe on the part of their supporters than on that of their
opponents.

The parliamentary proceedings of the month have been more
varied and interesting than for some time past. The chief subject
under discussion has been the Education Bill ; but other matters of
importance, such as the London Water Bill and the Uganda railway,

150 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

have been dealt with ; whilst the fact that both Houses have been
sitting, and that the peers have exercised their rights of discussion
in their usual unconventional fashion, has added not a little to the
liveliness of the debates. The session, which began on the 16th of
January, did not come to a close until the 18th of December.
Ministers have unquestionably imposed a heavy strain upon the
loyalty of their followers ; but it has stood the test, and the Govern-
ment can fairly congratulate itself upon the result of the severe
labours of the year. It has not only carried its Education Bill, but
its London Water Bill and the Licensing Bill, and on the very eve
of the prorogation it succeeded in converting the Sessional Orders for
the control of the business of the House into Standing Orders. From
the mere party point of view, therefore, Ministers are entitled to
feel that they have got through the work of the session in an
entirely successful manner. They have certainly at all times been
able to count upon the unvravering docility of their followers, who,
with a few notable exceptions, have made it their rule to vote abso-
lutely in obedience to the directions of the party whip. But if one
looks below the surface the reasons for exultation on the part of
Ministers at the close of the Session will be found to be less solid
than they appear to be. The Education Bill, to begin with, has
not only alienated from them the whole body of Nonconformists, but
has estranged and alarmed many of their own friends. Never has a
Bill, supported in both Houses of Parliament by such large majorities,
been so cordially detested on both sides. Supporters of Ministers in
the House of Commons are only too well aware that the Bill is a
weapon which their opponents will use against them with terrible
effect in most of the urban constituencies, and while they have loyally
voted for the measure, they make no pretence of liking it. The
clerical party, though it has gained so much from the measure, has
clamoured for more, and its extreme members, such as Lord Hugh
Cecil, are so bitterly incensed by the rejection of their most audacious-
claims for freedom from State control, that they have even threatened
to wreck the measure if they can. As for the Nonconformists, they
make no secret of the fact that in their eyes the measure is one of
flagrant injustice, and they at least seem determined to fight
against it to the bitter end. One has only to read the ministerial
newspapers in order to see how difficult it is for anybody out-
side the pale of Nonconformity to realise the feelings of this section
of the community. Yet when one knows, upon the admission
of no less an authority than Cardinal Vaughan, that the Bill
will crush the Dissenters, it ought not to be so difficult as it
appears to be to understand the intensity of their opposition to it.
From the clerical point of view the whole purpose of the Bill is
to entrench the parish priest in perpetuity in the village schools.
He is no longer to be required to provide anything towards the cost

1903 LAST MONTH 151

of tuition. So long as he keeps the school building in repair he and
his majority on the committee of management will exercise control
without having to put their hands into their own pockets. The one
point on which the clerical party has failed to get everything that it
wanted is the personal supremacy of the priest in the religious
teaching that is to be given. By the Kenyon-Slaney amendment,
which has passed through the ordeal of the House of Lords' debates
practically unharmed, the ' one-man ' power of the clergyman in
matters of religious teaching is to a certain extent limited. His
committee of management will have the right to make themselves
felt in the direction of religious as well as secular instruc-
tion. It is this provision which the ultra-clericals regard as the
great blot on the measure. In every other respect the bargain they
have made with the Government is not only a very good one, but
immensely better than any that they could have hoped to make at
any previous moment during the last thirty years.

To the Nonconformist, on the other hand, this Bill is virtually a
measure for endowing afresh the Established Church. He believes
that in the villages of England, where Dissent already labours under
so many unfair disadvantages, it will suffer more severely than it has
ever yet done from the establishment of the permanent supremacy
of the Church. Not only as a Nonconformist but as a citizen he
resents the provisions of the measure under which money contributed
by himself will be spent without any adequate public control, for
purposes with which he is not in sympathy. How he will take
the working of the Act remains to be seen. He has not minced his
words on the subject. Lord Eosebery has fallen under the ban of
the more stupid of the ministerial newspapers for having warned the
whole Nonconformist body that if they do not make their influence
felt now they will cease to be a factor in the public life of
the country. It is difficult to know how anybody can con-
test an axiom which is really self-evident. Everybody knows
that for more than one generation the Nonconformist element
has been one of the greatest powers in the land. Nobody could
afford to trample upon it. No Minister dared to defy it — until
to-day. It has now been flouted and cast aside chiefly because it
has become divided, and divisions have bred among its members
an indifference to public affairs which was unknown in the strenuous
days from 1830 to 1870. Whether it will gird up its loins and
again come forward to play its old part in the political arena cannot
as yet be said. Its leaders seem to have declared in favour of a
policy of passive resistance to the measure which they regard as
unjust and iniquitous. They will refuse to pay the rates by which
the schools are fed, as their fathers before them refused to pay the
Church rate. They are being hotly denounced in many different
quarters because of this threat. If, instead of merely declaring that

152 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

the rate -collector must get his money as best he can from their
household goods, they had declared their intention of rearing
barricades in the streets and taking their stand in a life-and-death
struggle, they could hardly have been lectured more severely by
their smug critics in the press. One need not share the views or
intentions of the militant Nonconformists in order to realise the
absurdity of these attacks upon them. The old Dissenters who
allowed the tax-gatherer to enter their houses and seize their furniture
in order to satisfy the demand for the Church rate were no violent
disturbers of the peace. As a rule they were the meekest of men.
They fulfilled every duty of citizenship which they recognised ; but
they declined at the bidding of Parliament to pay voluntarily for
the support of an institution which they regarded as an abomination
in the sight of the Lord. They made no attempt to prevent the
agent of the State from entering their doors, they struck no blow in
defence of their own property. They simply stood aside, and took
cheerfully the spoiling of their goods in vindication of a principle
which was precious to them. No struggle could have seemed more
unequal than that which was thus waged between a handful of
inconspicuous Dissenters on the one side and all the forces of the
Church and the State on the other. Yet the conflict ended in the
victory of the weak and the overthrow of the strong. One cannot
wonder that, remembering this fact, the Nonconformists of to-day
are attracted by the idea of a similar policy of passive resistance.
For my own part I trust that they will resist the temptation, and fight
their battles on the ordinary lines of political welfare. But no one
can deny that they will be strictly within their rights if they choose
to adopt a different course.

The rest of the world, the great middle body of men who as a
rule look with indifferent eyes upon the squabbles of rival Churches,
now that the parliamentary battle on the Education Bill is at an
end, desire nothing better than that the Act should be tried from an
educational point of view. It is in the view of most of these people
a bad Bill for many different reasons, but at least we cannot afford
to let our educational system fall to pieces, and this measure is all
that now stands between our school system and destruction. For
this reason the Bishop of Hereford — whose courage in opposing the
measure in the House of Lords recalls the action of the Bishop of
St. Davids when the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill was under
consideration in the same assembly — has won general approval by his
declaration of his intention to accept the Bill and make the best of
it. The most moving incident in the debate on the measure in the
House of Lords was the appeal which the Archbishop of Canterbury
made to the same effect. It was the illustrious Prelate's swan-song,
his last utterance from the bishops' bench ; and even those of us who
differ widely from him with regard to the merits of the Education

1903 LAST MONTE 153

Bill will readily acknowledge the value and dignity of his final
speech. For his sake, for the country's sake, and, above all, for the
sake of the children, it is to be hoped that in practice this Act will not
be found to be so mischievous from the educational point of view as its
critics have feared. That it must long continue to stir up strife all
over England, and that Ministers will have to pay a heavy price for
the victory they have won, can hardly be doubted.

The London Water Bill was hurriedly carried in the closing weeks
of the session by the same methods as those which were applied to
the Education Bill. One must suppose that it is impossible to carry
an ideal scheme for the supply of water to London. The vested
interests at stake are so powerful that even the strongest Ministry is
unable to override them. But at least some good reason ought to
be shown why the greatest city in the world should not enjoy the
right which every other great town in England possesses of having
its water supply under its own control. Even the most fanatical
opponents of ' Municipal Socialism/ so-called, have always admitted
that water is one of the articles in which a community has a right to
trade. Ministers in the Bill which has just become law have done
their best to hamper and restrict this right. Their fear of the
County Council has followed them at every step, and they have done
their best to make their own scheme unworkable by dividing the
authority over the water-supply of a great community among all
manner of weak and conflicting bodies instead of concentrating it in
the hands of one strong representative chamber. It is hardly in this
fashion that we are likely to attain a satisfactory solution of one of
the greatest problems of our social life.

The discussions on the construction of the Uganda railway,
which occupied a part of the time of Parliament during the month,
raised once more the old question of 'efficiency' in the public
service. The Uganda railway is a political rather than a commercial
speculation, and is therefore not to be judged by a strictly business
standard. But certainly nothing could have been less efficient than
the financial check upon its construction. It was estimated that
the work would cost two millions and a half. The actual outlay
exceeded that amount by no less than three millions. To say that
such a discrepancy is discreditable to the department responsible for
it is to put the matter very mildly. For some occult reason the
Foreign Office undertook this engineering job, and the work was
done under the superintendence and management of a Foreign
Office Committee. It might have been entrusted to contractors who
would at least have been compelled to bring their contract into a
reasonable relationship to their original estimate. But the Foreign
Office chose to keep the whole business in its own hands, with the
result that I have stated. There does not seem to be any intention
of finding out who is responsible for the shameful excess of expendi-

154 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

ture over the estimate. The money has been spent, and there
apparently is to be an end of the matter. The British taxpayer
must pay three millions sterling for the utter lack of business
methods on the part of the Foreign Office. Truly the taxpayer,
like Issachar, is a strong ass whose back is supposed to be equal to
any burden.

One notable feature of last month in the proceedings in Parlia-
ment has been the part played by the Irish members in connection
with the Education Bill. At the beginning of the autumn session,
Mr. John Eedmond, the parliamentary leader of the party, was in
the United States, and, as is well known, most of the members
stayed away from the division lobbies, with the result that on
several occasions the Government majority was very seriously
reduced. The Irish Catholic bishops were made very angry by this
withdrawal of the Nationalist members from a struggle in which the
question of priestly supremacy in education was involved, and Mr.
Eedmond's policy was hotly assailed. He is an able and in ordinary
circumstances a courageous man ; but that he is not strong enough
to stand against the priests was proved by the fact that almost
immediately after his return from the States he found himself com-
pelled to submit to the bishops. In the last stages of the Bill his
party was recalled to Westminster to support the Government, and
they voted to a man for the most reactionary clauses and amend-
ments that were proposed. On one occasion it was only by their
votes that an amendment intensely obnoxious to the Nonconformists
and to a considerable section of the Unionists was carried. Yet we
are told that the old alliance between Liberals and Irishmen must,
as a matter of necessity, be renewed ! I do not suppose that Mr.
Kedmond himself agrees with this view of the situation. His own
sympathies are unmistakably with the Conservatives, and it is well
known that he and his associates are at this moment happy in the
belief that a large measure in the direction of ' step by step ' Home
Rule is now contemplated by the Government. This and a great
scheme of Land Eeform, such as Mr. Wyndham has foreshadowed,
and which is promised for next year, will do much to put an end to
the dreams of those Eadicals who still cling to the belief that they
may, with the assistance of Irish votes, succeed in ousting the
present Government and establishing themselves in their place. In
this connection it is pleasant, for all who desire to see the Irish
question permanently settled, to note the success with which the
Lord Lieutenant, Lord Dudley, seems to be cultivating the favour
of all classes in Ireland. His active campaign has been stayed
during the month by the serious illness of Lady Dudley ; but now
that her Excellency is happily recovering we may rest assured that
he will resume his gallant attempt to make Castle government
popular among Irishmen.

1903 LAST MONTH 155

An ominous incident has marked our relations with Eussia
during the month. It will be remembered that some time ago,
when our hands were still tied by the South African war, questions
were asked in the House of Commons concerning a report that
Russia, in direct opposition to the understanding between the
Governments of the two countries with regard to Afghanistan, had
expressed her desire to enter into direct relations with the Ameer.
The reply of the Ministry to these questions was that Russia had com-
municated her wishes to His Majesty's Government, but that, as yet,
no reply had been made on our part to the communication. On
Saturday, the 20th of December, our newspapers contained a tele-
gram from St. Petersburg which gave the purport of an official com-
munication on Central African affairs, emanating from the Russian
Foreign Office, that had been published on the previous day. The
communication dealt with various questions, those of Manchuria,
Persia, and Korea included. Not the least significant part of this
official statement had reference to Afghanistan. ' The frontier
settlement with Afghanistan,' it declared, ' was effected before the
Boer war. When Russia in 1895 consented to the cession of a
portion of the territory between the upper reaches of the Amur Daria
and India, she at the same time obtained from England an under-
taking not to incorporate this territory with her possessions. As
regards Russia's relations with Afghanistan, it is necessary to declare
that Russia addressed no request of any sort to the British Cabinet,
but simply notified it of her desire and purpose to enter into direct
relations with Afghanistan in the future. No further declarations
were made on this subject.' It thus appears that Russia, without
regard to understandings and agreements, and in her usual high-
handed fashion, has taken another step forward, and confronted us
in a fashion that can hardly be described as friendly, at what
Anglo-Indian statesmen regard as our most vulnerable point. Nor
is the gravity of this declaration, in which the claims of England are
put aside in a manner that is almost insulting, lessened by the
rest of this official communication. The Russian Foreign Office
denies that the Czar's Government cancelled its first treaty with China
regarding Manchuria, and states that the evacuation of Manchuria
must depend ' upon the re-establishment of tranquillity in the country,
and upon the conduct of other Powers.' With regard to Persia
it is declared that Russia's relations with that country are con-
tinually improving, and whilst a denial is given to the fable that
England has occupied the south-eastern portion of Persia, it is signifi-
cantly added that ' if she has made some attempts to cross the Persian
frontier, these attempts have latterly been frustrated in time by the
intervention of Russia.' Finally, the Russian public are assured by
the Foreign Office that ' after England and Japan had concluded an
alliance, Russia and France showed signs of close co-operation in

156 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

Eastern Asia. This,' the official statement adds, ' is the best denial
to the assertion that in Chinese affairs England and Japan occupy a
leading position.'

There is no need to comment upon the gravity of this declaration,
so unfriendly in all its references to this country, and so insolent in
its flaunting of the Franco-Russian alliance as a menace to England
and Japan. Parliament had been prorogued before it appeared in
print. No doubt the Russian Foreign Office was careful to see to this.
We have not consequently had any light thrown upon this document
by means of questions and replies in the House of Commons. But
our Government has had a heavy task imposed upon it by the
delivery of the Russian defiance which challenges our whole policy
in the Far East. And the statesman who has to deal with this
tangled problem, and to represent the claims of England at a critical
moment, is Lord Lansdowne, to whom we owe the agreement with
Germany on the question of Venezuela !

The opening of the great dam at Assouan marks the successful
termination of the most important of all the material enterprises
undertaken by English skill and energy for the improvement of Egypt.
It is a comfort, when the sky is dark in so many other directions, to
recall all that the English occupation of the Nile Valley has meant for
the Egyptian people. The Duke and Duchess of Connaught represented
His Majesty at the opening of the dam, and England, as a matter of
right, held the chief place in the ceremonial. Mr. Chamberlain's
journey to South Africa has not yet entered upon its political phase.
He has been in Egypt, and has seen the Pyramids, and since then
he has visited Uganda and made a trip on the railway to within sixty
miles of Lake Victoria. He has made some speeches, but they have
been confined to expressions of the wonder and pleasure with which
he has witnessed the work that has been accomplished by his fellow-
countrymen in regions which, but a few years ago, were given over
to barbarism.

The capture of the Humbert family, whose gigantic swindling
operations have engaged the attention of the world for some months
past, is a triumph for justice. How they evaded pursuit so long,
when everybody in France professed to be desirous of securing their
arrest, it is difficult to understand. They themselves threaten all
manner of startling revelations involving the reputations of many
distinguished persons, and it is not impossible that the Humbert
case may grow to proportions as alarming as those which the affaire
Dreyfus at one time assumed. A much more pleasing incident of
the month has been the success of Signor Marconi in transmitting
a message by wireless telegraphy from Cape Breton on the west side
of the Atlantic to his station in Cornwall on its east side. It seems
as though we were on the eve of another astounding development of

1903 LAST MONTH 157

the forces which science is gradually bringing under the control of
mankind. In the course of a few months Signor Marconi hopes to
be able to place his great invention at the service of the commercial
world.

Among minor incidents of the month must be mentioned the
action brought by the Taff Vale Eailway Company against the
Amalgamated Society of Kailway Servants, for damages sustained by
the Company during the strike on its line in August 1900. The
verdict was in favour of the Company, and another heavy blow has
in consequence been struck at the Trades Unions. That further
legislation is needed to make the position of these Unions clear, and
to settle the respective rights of employers and employed upon an
equitable basis, may be regarded as reasonably certain. Without
entering into any discussion of the merits of the Taff Vale case, one
may say that it would be a bad day for England when working-men
found that the right to combine in defence of their own interests
had been withdrawn from them. With wrong-doing on the part of
the men, such as the verdict of the jury indicates that there was in
the Taff Vale case, no one can have any sympathy ; but the time
seems to have come when the law must at least be more clearly
denned than it has been hitherto. Of another case which has
greatly occupied public attention during the past month little need
be said. The futile attempt of Sir Charles Hartopp to obtain a
divorce from his wife, and the equally futile attempt of that lady to
divorce her husband, has thrown a most unpleasant light upon the
life of the idle rich in our midst. Existence without any serious
occupation, with no nobler motive than that of boundless self-
indulgence and constant excitement, must at all times be an
unhealthy mode of life. How unhealthy and even repulsive it may
be made was shown only too clearly in the thirteen days spent over
this case in the Divorce Court.

I have already mentioned the illness of the Archbishop of Canter-
bury, of which the first symptoms appeared when he was speaking
in the House of Lords on the Education Bill. Like Chatham, he
lingered for a week or two after his collapse in the Upper Chamber,
but on the 23rd of December he passed peacefully away. When it
became known that he was suffering from no passing indisposition,
but that his recovery was beyond hope, there was a great outburst
of sympathy with the distinguished Prelate, coming from all classes
in the community. His life of strenuous labour and self-denial,
sustained by a rugged and unfailing devotion to duty, is in happy
contrast to such lives as those of which I have just spoken.
Curiously enough, the most notable death beside that of the Arch-
bishop that has occurred since I last wrote was that of another
great religious leader, Dr. Parker, of the City Temple. Dr. Parker

158 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

was a man of many peculiarities, but of great gifts and blameless
personal character. He was one of the most eloquent preachers
of the day, and for many years attracted vast congregations, repre-
senting all classes and creeds, to the services in the great building
on the Holborn Viaduct, which had been raised chiefly by his own
efforts.

WEMYSS EEID.

1903

THE SEARCH-LIGHT^

A PLAY IN ONE ACT

DRAMATIS PERSONS

MAJOR TRA.YERS, Indian Staff Corps.
JOHN RIGBY, a S.A. millionaire.,
Miss WILLIAMSON.
LADT ILFIELD.
VIOLET, her daughter.
MRS. FENNING, newly married.
MBS. LAWSOH", Aunt to Miss Williamson.
(All visitors at Zell-am-Zee.)

TIME. — Present.

SCENE. — The garden of an hotel at Zell-am-Zee (a station on the
Austrian main line}. Trees in foreground and a few seats.
On L. side of Hotel seen — i.e. windows with balconies and
a wide door with steps leading down to stage. Flowers
in profusion. Background — a narrow lake with mountains
beyond. Trees at edge of lake on near side (a cloth). The
garden stretches along beside the lake with exits jR. and L. :
it must be shady and adapted for quiet talks. To the B.
there is evidently a path leading down to lake. In fore-
ground, extreme corner L., a little signpost with * Station '
on it.

A. July evening. Tivilight beginning. Lights gradually appear
in hotel windows, &c.

PIIGBY (rather a stout man of thirty -eight] discovered, half -dozing.
He is good-natured and rather second-rate.

Enter MAJOR TRAVEES, tall, reserved, good-looking (thirty-four),
gets along with a stick. RIGBY rouses himself , jumps up, pulls
out matchbox and cigarette-case. TRAVERS sits down as if
tired, a little way off, nods rather distantly to EIGBY ; evidently
does not want to talk.

RIGBY (looks at watcJt). Only 8.30 now. (Sits down.) They
are too previous in these foreign places ; 6.30 would be a little late
for breakfast, but for dinner — why, one doesn't know what to do
with the rest of the day. Don'fc you think so, Major ?

1 Copyright in the United States of America. All dramatic rights secured.

159

160 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

TRAVERS (distantly). It is too early. (Pause.)

EIGBY. Been for a walk ?

TRAVERS. A hobble. (Pause.)

EIGBY. I think you are on the Indian Staff Corps.

TRAVERS. Yes.

EIGBY. Home on leave, I suppose ?

TRAVERS. Yes.

EIGBY. Well, I have been in South Africa for three years ; got
back in May — come out here to shake off the effects of hard work.

TRAVERS (without being interested). Made a fortune ?

EIGBY. Nothing to complain of — can afford to take it easy.

TRAVERS. That's satisfactory. (Pause.)

EIGBY. When do you go back, Major ?

TRAVERS. In October.

EIGBY. Oh — going to England again first ?

TRAVERS. No, I think not.

EIGBY. You've been here a fortnight, haven't you ?

TRAVERS. Yes — a fortnight.

EIGBY. Well, they told me to go to a cure up at Grastein near
here — but I've been at this place three days, and about had enough
of it.

TRAVERS. I meant to stay one, but I sprained my foot and
couldn't move.

EIGBY. You get about a good deal for a cripple.

TRAVERS. It's better.

EIGBY. Found it rather pleasant here, perhaps ?

TRAVERS. It's quiet.

EIGBY. I don't think much of the people — in the hotel, I mean.

TRAVERS, I don't think about them.

EIGBY. That Lady Ilfield — she's an old campaigner, you bet;
anxious to get her girl married — perhaps slangs her because she
doesn't. I saw her trying to make up to that good-looking Austrian
chap who left yesterday — the old woman, I mean. She is rather
civil to me, too; probably knows I'm Eigby the millionaire — I'm
bound to say the girl is pretty distant.

TRAVERS (obviously a little disgusted). She's rather a nice girl.

EIGBY. Not at all bad. Then the Fennings — they're too newly
married to suit my taste. (Pause.) The best-looking woman in the
place is Miss Williamson. I believe that's your opinion ?

TRAVERS. I don't express opinions.

EIGBY. Quite right — nothing like a little caution. She and you
are great friends. Came the same day, I hear ?

TRAVERS. Yes, the same day.

EiGBr. Not together, I presume?

TRAVERS (quickly). No, sir ; not together. If it is of any interest
to you, I was getting out of the train — I meant to break the journey

1903 THE SEARCH-LIGHT 161

here for a night on my way to Salzburg — when I slipped and
sprained my ankle. Miss Williamson saw it, and was the only
person kind enough to help me.

EIGBY. Very good business. (Pause.) Anything coming of it ?

TRAVERS. You must allow me to say that I think you are
impertinent.

EIGBY (with frank good-humour). Beg your pardon. When you
see two people, each of 'em travelling alone, who have been in the
same hotel for some time, and hear that they are great friends, you
are apt to put two and two — or, rather, one and one — together.
And of course you can't help people talking rot.

TRAVERS. If you don't mind we'll change the subject.

EIGBY. Certainly. (Pause.} The Austrian women are not bad-
looking ?

TRAVERS. I don't want to talk about women.

EIGBY. All right — I seem to be rather unlucky ; but when there
are only two or three Englishmen about, and you find yourself one of
them, you generally try to be a little chummy, don't you know.

TRAVERS. I'm afraid I am not a very chummy person, so you
must excuse me.

EIGBY (rather amused, and not at all offended). Certainly.
(Pause.) This place isn't bad — in spite of its dulness.

TRAVERS. No.

EIGBY. It's got some sky over it ?

TRAVERS. Yes.

BIGBY. Hotel's rather too near the station ? (Gets up.)

TRAVERS. There are not many trains.

EIGBY. Still, now and then one stops at it. You mayn't know
it, but as a matter of fact there are a good many — seven or eight a
day.

TRAVERS. They never bother me — I don't even notice them now.

EIGBY. Well, you see, the best rooms are on the lake side —
shouldn't like to sleep on the station side. (Saunters towards back
of stage ) Not a bad sort of view. (Pause.) [Exit R.

TRAVERS (alone). What an ass I am ! I've come a cropper for
a woman I'd not set eyes on a fortnight ago. She is never out of
my thoughts. (Smokes.) If I only knew something about her. I
am certain she has had a bad time of it somewhere — I should like to
give her a good one.

Enter at back, on R., Miss WILLIAMSOX. She comes forward half hesi-
tating, appears to be nervous. She looks about eight-and-tiuenty ;
thin and pale, rather strange in her manner, but not gloomy- —
noiv and then cynically cheerful.

TRAVERS (eagerly). Miss Williamson ? — You were not at dinner ?
I was afraid you were ill ?

VOL. LIU— No. 311 M

162 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

Miss W. No, I am quite well ; but dinner is such a long
business here — the service is bad. Besides, I was too busy.

TRAVERS. Too busy ? (She nods.) I have been hoping you would
come out.

Miss W. I came out half an hour ago — and walked nearly a mile,
I think. (Looks R.) The little waitress, Marie, told me you had
gone down to that end of the lake. Ought you to walk so far ?

TRAVERS (eagerly). Did you go to look for me ?

Miss W. Yes — but do sit down. Your foot can't be strong yet.

TRAVERS. It is getting on. (They sit half-concealed from vieiu
of hotel windows by trees, &c.)

Miss W. I thought perhaps I shouldn't see you in the morning
— I'm going away.

TRAVERS (startled). Going away — not to-morrow ?

Miss W. Yes.

TRAVERS. In the morning ?

Miss W. By the early train — I have been packing. I should
have gone to-night, but I thought I should like to see you again.

TRAVERS. Why didn't you tell me before ?

Miss W. I didn't want to tell people in the hotel — besides, I only
made up my mind this afternoon.

TRAVERS. I hoped I wasn't ' people.'

Miss W. Oh no, I didn't mean you. But I dislike making state-
ments or being asked questions — by Lady Ilfield, for instance. She
delights in asking questions. I never answer them.

TRAVERS. Then it doesn't matter.

Miss W. No, it doesn't matter.

TRAVERS. I can't stand the lady myself, I must confess — though,
after all, she isn't a bad sort. I think she is on the money quest for
her girl — she is trying to get hold of that man Kigby; he is a
millionaire, you know.

Miss W. (with a little shudder). I'm so sorry for that girl.

TRAVERS. She'll marry

Miss W. The first man who asks her, perhaps, and be miserable —
though Mr. Rigby doesn't look cruel (as if she ^cere thinking of
something else), or drunken, or any of the awful things a man
can be. (Looks over her shmdder nervously.)

TRAVERS. No, he doesn't.

Miss W. And if no one asks her she'll have to live with that
mother all the days of that mother's life. The world is horribly hard
on women.

TRAVERS. Have you found it hard ?

Miss W. Yes, I have found it hard, I suppose. Tell me about
your foot. It's nearly well ? I saw you walk a little way without a
stick.

TRAVERS. Never mind my foot — I'm all right.

1903 THE SEARCH-LIGHT 163

Miss W. You'll be able to go on soon. Shall you go to Salzburg ?
Are your friends still there ?

TRAVERS. They went on to Bayreuth ten days ago. I was
going with them •

Miss W. Only ten days ago. You might have gone with a
stick even then. If you had tickets for Bayreuth you must have
lost them ?

TRAVERS. It doesn't matter.

Miss W. The station is so near ; the journey is almost direct —
you could have gone.

TRAVERS. I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay here. (Pause.}
Why did you come to this place ? — I have always been going to ask
you that.

Miss W. I don't know — it didn't matter where I went.

TRAVERS. You were on your way to Vienna ?

Miss W. Yes — but it didn't matter when I got there. (Pause.)
I was going to an old friend of my mother's — she is badly off, and
keeps a pension.

TRAVERS. Shall you stay there long ?

Miss W. I don't know. All my life perhaps. (Quickly?) I
want to travel — I have been nowhere, and I want to see everything.
I love everything in the world except the people and the misery
they cause. It is my own world, and I have been cheated of it —
held back till now. I want to see it all.

TRAVERS. I couldn't be content with a small slice of it myself. . .
But it seems odd that you should be going about alone in this way
— perhaps it's impertinent of me to say it — but — but we have said
a good many things to each other.

Miss W. I'm so glad to be alone — so thankful.

[Looks over her shoulder again.

TRAVERS (puzzled}. You seem to be afraid of something.

Miss W. I'm afraid of all manner of things — of shadows. I
think dead people lurk in them.

TRAVERS (mystified). Ghosts ? (She draws back.) You're aw-
fully strange, you know. I don't understand you a bit.

Miss W. How should you ? We are strangers.

TRAVERS. And yet a week at sea, or in a country house in bad
weather, is enough to make people intimate friends for life. We
have been a fortnight in this hotel — in good weather, it's true ; but a
garden. That was all that Adam and Eve had.

Miss W. (half ruefully, half tenderly). And I have come to
know you pretty well.

TRAVERS. We've talked about everything on earth except each
other

Miss W. And human life. That is, we have talked about scenery

M 2

164 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

and poetry and books and music, and all the things that people
can talk about without knowing each other.

TRAVERS. It's been awfully pleasant — for me, I mean.

Miss W. Yes, and peaceful — in spite of the people. I hate
people.

TRAVERS. I don't love them. You didn't tell me why you came
here, you know.

Miss W. The train passes a long bit of the lake before it stops —
(looking towards if) — the long narrow lake with the line of trees on
this side and the range of mountains on that (nodding towards
them). I felt as if it were calling me. I stood up in the railway
carriage and said : ' I am coming.' It seemed to make me promises.
I got out, and then (Looks up with a little smile.}

TRAVERS. An unlucky beggar fell sprawling at your feet.

Miss W. I was sorry for him.

TRAVERS (eagerly). Why have you stayed so long ?

Miss W. I wanted to stay. It's very beautiful. I never saw
beautiful places till lately. It makes me thankful to be alive, now
and then — in the odd moments when I forget that there are other
places, other ways of life.

TRAVERS. I wish you would tell me something about yourself.

Miss W. I don't want to talk about myself.

TRAVERS. But why did you never go away before ? You told me
that this was the, first time.

Miss W. Oh, I don't know. We were poor. I had no time to go
about, and no money. I used to teach my little sisters. They had
no one else to care for them — they needed me.

Enter EIGBY, R.

EIGBY. Oh ! beg pardon, Miss Williamson ; I didn't see you. I
was wondering if Major Travers could get as far as that summer-
house — (looking towards R.) — there's a bit of sky left by the sunset
that beats anything he's seen in India, I believe. Won't you come
too?

Enter, from L,, MRS. LAWSON (45), thin, unpleasant-looking. She
hesitates on seeing Miss W., ivho goes towards her hastily.

Miss W. (to EIGBY). No, thank you. (Very formally to MRS.
LAWSON) Are you tired with your journey, Mrs. Lawson ?

MRS. L. (stiffly). Yes — very tired.

Miss W. (to EIGBY). Major Travers likes sunsets ; I don't.

TRAVERS. Oh, all right. , [Exit, evidently bored, with EIGBY.

Miss W. (when they have gone). Now, Aunt Caroline, I am
ready. I see you want to speak to me. I hope I was discreet (in
a cold, cutting voice}.

1903 THE SEARCH-LIGHT 165

MRS. L. I wished never to speak to you again. What do you
mean by being here ? How dare you cross our path — your uncle's
and mine ? I nearly staggered when I saw you in the hall.

Miss W. How was I to know that you would come here, of all
places ? I had to go somewhere.

MRS. L. You should have gone somewhere else, where you were
not likely to be discovered ; it is infamous of you to throw yourself
in our way.

Miss W. How could I imagine that you would turn up here, I
ask — a little place in Austria ?

MRS. L. On the border of a lake. People always go to places on
the border of a lake, or to mountains, or the sea. You might have
known that.

Miss W. In fact I ought to have kept on a dead level, inland ?

MRS. L. You are impertinent, as usual.

Miss W. (unmoved). I had no idea you were even abroad. I
know nothing of any of my relations.

MRS. L. Of course not — they shudder even at your name. To
come to this hotel, too !

Miss W. I did it on purpose. I thought being so near the
station I could escape unseen if it were necessary. I have watched
every train in since I arrived — except the one that brought you
this afternoon. If I had seen you I should have hidden, and fled
before you discovered me. To-morrow I am going — I went and packed
directly. I would have gone to-night — but I wanted to stay till
the morning. I would not even afflict you by appearing at dinner.

MRS. L. The least you could do was to stay away. I should
have thought you would have had the sense to hide yourself in some
big city.

Miss W. I was going to Vienna. I thought I should be safe
there. Then at Innsbruck, where I stayed a night on the way, I
saw some letters waiting for Dr. Salford. On one of them was written a
direction that, if he had been and gone, it was to be sent on to Vienna ;
so I knew that he was coming to Innsbruck, and where he was going
from there. I was just leaving for Vienna when I saw it. I was
afraid to stay at Innsbruck, lest he should come — or to go on, lest he
should be at Vienna. I had my ticket, and could not afford to
throw it away. I knew it allowed me to break my journey. I
started, but in the carriage I racked my brain, wondering what I
could do —where I could go. After a time I saw this lake —
suddenly — the other end of it, beside the line. It is such a little
place it seemed unlikely that anyone who had ever known me would
come here. I thought no English did, and that for a time I might be
safe. I tried to hide myself, you see — let that appease you.

MRS. L. You owe it to us never to cross our paths again.
Think of the publicity — the disgrace — into which you dragged us.

166 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

You have even obliged us to call ourselves ' Lawson,' because we were
mentioned in the reports as being related to you. We shall have to
drop the Emerson Lawson for ever.

Miss W. (ironically). How terrible for you.

MRS. L. We thought the only thing we could do was to come
abroad ; that then we should be safe. The first place we venture to
stop at we find you — Oh ! it is simply infamous.

Miss W. I have tried to show you that it is not my fault. A
search-light seems to be thrown on every place in which I try to
hide.

MRS. L. It is part of your punishment.

Miss W. You seem to take it for granted that I did it.

MRS. L. I firmly believe you did.

Miss W. (losing control for a minute). Then you did it too —
you too

MRS. L. I ? You are mad !

Miss W. No, not mad. The receiver is as bad as the thief.
The tempter is worse than the tempted. Think — think of the life
you led us after our mother died, when by an infamous will — a trick
on your part — our grandfather's money had gone to you. You fed
us and clothed us after a fashion, because people would have cried
out if you hadn't ; but you taunted us with being poor, with being
dependent upon you. You made our lives a misery and a crime to
us. We only breathed freely when you were out of the house, or we
had hidden ourselves out of it and away from you. We used to
shudder when we saw you coming back round the curve of the
drive. . . . And when that man — a man whose character you knew
well enough — offered me a way of escape I took it — for their sakes
more than my own. . . . Minnie died — poor Minnie, for whose sake
it was chiefly done — and Emily had the luck to marry a man she
loved

MRS. L. Who thinks of you as I do, let me tell you.

Miss W. What does it matter ? She is happy. But think of the
life 1 led — the life to which you had driven me with that lash, your
tongue. Think of the five long years I spent — the best years of my
life — with that man, shuddering at his touch, dreading the sound of
his step and voice — a man who insulted me when he was sober and
ill-treated me when he was drunk. I went to him because I was
driven, frightened, forced, and ignorant of what he was. You knew.
He had broken one woman's heart ; but it didn't matter, so that you
got rid of me and, as you hoped, of the other two as well. That deed
— if I did do it in a moment of madness — is one of which you as
well as I should pay the penalty, for through long sane years of
cruelty you drove me to the fate that became mine on the awful day
of my marriage, and is mine now. So many crimes are committed
by proxy, and the proxy alone pays the penalty.

1903 THE SEARCH-LIGHT 167

MRS. L. This is a very fine tirade. Perhaps you will say next
that you were not even present when it was done, and that I was.

Miss W. I was not present — in a sense. The woman you had
made me into by the life you deliberately sent me to live — a life
that made the state of mind possible in which I could do it — was
not the girl you took from the little home in which my mother died,
the home where three scared, penniless children waited, dry-eyed,
wondering what would happen — and you came. You put me into
conditions in which I was tortured, maddened, till anything became
possible. And if in one awful moment I could not hold the rein over
the ghastly impulse that meant, after all, no suffering for him and
freedom for me, it was you who had taken my strength from me, by
the life you had made me accept — the unbearable, impossible life
you had forced upon me — and it is you, no less than I, who should
have been found guilty

MRS. L. If you dare to say another word I will expose you to
these people who have tolerated you

Miss W. (cynically). It would give them a sensation, and be
quite pleasant for you and — Mr. Lawson. ... To think that, in this
God's world, such women as you and I should live ! Neither of us
ever did any good thing in our lives. I thought I was doing one
for those I loved when I gave in to you and went to him, but I only

did my worst

[Sounds of laughter. Down the hotel steps come LADY
ILFIELD (50 and fashionable), her daughter* VIOLET
(20 and pretty}, and MRS. PENNING (a young married
woman).

MRS. L. I shall repeat every word of this to your uncle.

Miss W. Eepeat it — oh ! repeat it. Let it burn itself on to your
heart — call it the script of the woman whose soul you threw to the
flames.

MRS. KENNING (gaily to Violet). George has gone on the lake
with the Herr Doctor ; I suppose he will be back soon.

(MRS. LAWSON goes past them up the steps and indoors.
Miss W. strolls off L.)

VIOLET. It is getting quite dark.

(Someone strums for a moment on the piano in the hotel ;
then it stops.)

LADY I. (looking after MRS. LAWSON). I wonder who that
woman is.

VIOLET. She looks horrid. (They sit down.}

LADY I. Miss Williamson was talking to her.

Enter EIGBY, L. Exit Miss WILLIAMSON, R.
RIGBY. I didn't frighten the lady away, I hope ?

168 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

LADY I. Oh no — (following ike direction of his eyes) — I hear she
is going in the morning.

Enter TKAVERS, who has evidently lagged behind EIGBY. He stands
a little aloof from the group, but joins it after a minute.

EIGBY. Going away ? I hadn't heard that — did she tell you ?

LADY I. I saw her luggage — her room is next ours — ready to be
carried down.

MES. F. I wonder who she is. I often think I have seen her
face somewhere.

EIGBY. It's odd you should say that, for I felt it the moment I
saw her. I asked her if she was at Brighton last month ; thought I'd
seen her there.

MRS. F. And was she ?

EIGBY. Never went to Brighton in her life.

LADY I. I should like to know who her people are ? She is very
distant in her manner, as if she thought herself too good for ordinary
mortals. And why is she travelling alone ? She can't be more than
eight- or nine-and-twenty.

MRS. F. Oh, she's not that. She's quite young when you look
into her. She is almost a girl.

LADY I. (significantly). That makes it very strange, then.

VIOLET. But she's so nice — I like her.

TRAVERS (leaning on his stick). So do I, Miss Ilfield. (To IADY
I.) Miss Williamson is on her way to a friend of her mother's at
Vienna. It is quite an easy journey to take alone — for anyone.

LADY I. (to EIGBY). She and Major Travers are great friends.

EIGBY. Unbends a little for him, eh ?

VIOLET. I think she is very pretty — don't you, Major Travers?

TRAVERS (slowly). I don't think 'pretty' is the .right word some-
how. (As if going.)

EIGBY. Mot descriptive enough, eh ? Well, I quite agree.

VIOLET (to TRAVERS). Oh, don't go in. It is so lovely out here.

TRAVERS. Yes, it is. (Lingers near her.)

LADY I. (to MRS. FENNING). There can't have been any reason
why she should stay here a fortnight on her way to a friend.

EIGBY (to VIOLET). I wish you would come and look at a bit of
red sky the sunset has left, Miss Ilfield. I took the Major to see it
just now — it's like a bit of an African sky strajed away on a trip to-
Europe. Makes me think of the veldt.

Re-enter Miss WILLIAMSON at lack. She looks at the group and
hesitates, then stands looking at the lake.

LADY I. She would like to go and see it — wouldn't you, Violet ?
VIOLET. No, thank you. (To EIGBY) I want to sit here till the
last train comes in.

1903 THE SEARCH-LIGHT 169

TRAVERS. Expecting anyone ?

(Through the open window the sound of a 'piano is heard
again.)

VIOLET. Oh no — but it's always exciting to see who comes by it,
or if anyone goes away. It's awfully nice being able just to walk
into the station. Is anything the matter, Major Travers ?

TRAVERS (looking iip). It gave me a start to hear that tune.

VIOLET. Do you know what it is ?

TRAVERS. We used to call it ' The Long Indian Day ' at Simla.

KIGBY. Takes you back a bit, eh ?

VIOLET. It's ' Den Langen Ganzen Tag.'

TKAVERS. It makes me think of the Waylett case last year.

[Miss WILLIAMSON turns and comes slouiy nearer.

MRS. F. The \Vaylett case ?

TRAVERS. My uncle was the Judge who tried it.

LADY I. Oh, do tell us what he said. We used to think of nothing
else while it was going on.

EIGBY. I believe that case was talked of all over the world.

MRS. F. I wonder if she did it. Dr. Talford thought she did.
Do you remember his evidence ?

LADY I. Of course she did it. She was a dreadful woman,
in my opinion. (To TRAVERS) What did the Judge say about
her?

TRAVERS. He said she looked so young and pathetic — as if she
couldn't have done it.

Miss W. (coming a step forward). What had ' Den Langen
Ganzen Tag ' to do with it ?

TRAVERS. A brass band was playing it in the square when the
telegram came — he always telegraphs his big verdicts home — I
happened to be there.

LADY I. Those brass bands ought to be suppressed.

MRS. F. (to TRAVERS). Oh, do go on.

TRAVERS. Ten minutes later he returned

MRS. F. What did he say ?

] TRAVERS. He had summed up in her favour-

LADY I. It was always a puzzle to me why he did. I am certain
she was guilty.

TRAVERS. Well, but he said that even if she had done it the man
was such a brute he deserved it.

Miss W. Besides, as a rule we might spare ourselves the trouble
of setting out pains and penalties for criminals. Greater punishment
is generally attached to the crime than any that can be invented
beyond it.

TRAVERS (rather shocked). Oh! well, but we must have laws
and things, you know.

Miss W. (ivearily). Oh yes, we must have laws and things.

170 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

RIGBY. I thought he was a mean cuss myself. You can bet she
had a time of it.

TEAVERS. I expect the world is better without such men.

Miss W. (quietly, but with a note of passion in her voice). And
if she killed him she lost her soul in doing a righteous deed.

LADY I. I don't think murder can be a righteous deed.

TRAVERS. He treated her shamefully, you know — that was
proved.

MRS. F. Oh yes — and grudged every penny she spent or cost,
and any moment's peace that was possible.

LADY I. That was no excuse.

Miss W. No — no excuse at all, and no reason why she should
not be hanged by the neck till she was dead — (bitterly) — or why the
Lord should not have mercy on her soul.

EIGBY. Well said, Miss Williamson.

LADY I. Quite dramatic. (Turns away.) But it doesn't alter
my opinion — she was a horrid woman.

MRS. F. Did you hear where she went afterwards, Major Travers?

TRAVERS. No.

MRS. F. She must be very unhappy.

LADY I. Oh, she may find somebody else to marry her — you
never can tell.

RIGBY. Well, I'm very sorry for her. But I shouldn't like to
be the gentleman. (To TRAVERS) Should you ?

TRAVERS (after a moment's hesitation and with a shudder). No.

VIOLET. I wonder if she was pretty.

RIGBY. I believe she was. There was a portrait of her in the
Illustrated London News, I remember

MRS. F. What was she like ?

RIGBY. Let me see (Gives a little start as he looks at Miss

WILLIAMSON, hesitates, but no one else notices it. She makes a
little sign to him, half supplicating ; he nods.) I forget what she
was like.

LADY I. In the Illustrated London News ?

MRS. F. We will look it up — there are some bound-up volumes
in the reading-room. Don't you remember what sort of woman she
was ?

RIGBY. I think she was stout, with frizzy hair, rather a long
nose — that sort of thing. (Looks significantly at Miss WILLIAMSON,
and then at the hotel door. She goes sloidy towards it, iip the steps,
and exit.)

LADY I. We will see if it's there when we go in. (Looking after
Miss WILLIAMSON.) Miss Williamson has very odd notions.

RIGBY. Has evidently thought about things — great mistake in
a woman.

1903 THE SEARCH-LIGHT 171

TRAVERS. It is one that few women make. (Turns towards the
lake.)

LADY I. (drily). I think she takes drugs or something. I
heard the manager complaining that she kept the electric light on all
night.

VIOLET. I do like her so. This morning we sat by the lake
and she talked about books

LADY I. Perhaps she writes books.

VIOLET. She told me to read St. Augustine — that it might help
me some day.

LADY I. What nonsense ! A very unhealthy mind. I would
rather you didn't talk to her, Violet dear. Don't you agree with me,
Mr. Rigby ? Luckily she's going to-morrow.

VIOLET. I am very sorry.

EIGBY (to VIOLET). Twenty minutes before the train is due,
Miss Ilfield. Shall we go and see if that bit of sky has been drawn
back to the veldt ?

LADY I. (aside to VIOLET). Say * Yes.'

VIOLET. I think I want to go in — I don't really care about the
train.

LADY I. (to RIGBY). She is afraid of taking cold.

MRS. F. (who has been looking at the lake with TRAVERS, and not
heard the Devious conversation to VIOLET). I am going to see if
there is any sign of Greorge and the Herr Doctor. Will you come a
little way, Violet ?

VIOLET. Yes. I should like to go. [Exit with MRS. F.

RIGBY (chagrined). Humph ! That isn't one to me, is it ?

LADY I. Girls like chattering together when they are very young.
Are you going in, Mr. Rigby ?

RIGBY. Yes. (Aside to TRAVERS) I shall get there first.

[Exit RIGBY.

LADY I. (going up steps). You mean to stay out a little longer,
Major Travers ?

TRAVERS. Yes, I think so.

LADY I. You must take care of that poor foot. [Exit.

TRAVERS (left alone). What the deuce did he mean — 'there
first ' ? (After business and a pause) Wonder if she will come
out again — I have half a mind to go and pack too. On to Vienna —
over the Semmering and down to Fiume — take the little steamer
to Abbazia — by Jove !

(Miss W. comes doivn the steps in a cloak, a hat in her
hand. Sees TRAVERS. Hesitates, puts hat d<nvn near
steps on seat, goes towards him as if unable to help it.)

Miss W. Major Travers? (Hesitates.) Do you want me?
(Doubtfully, almost suspiciously) Shall I come ?

172 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

TRAVERS (starting). Oh, I was half afraid I shouldn't see you again
to-night. Want you! (With a little smile) I was thinking of you
then. Were you coming to look for me ?

Miss W. I was going into the station. I like to see the last
train arrive, too. But it's too soon yet.

TBAVERS. Not due for a quarter of an hour. Come and sit down
for a bit — it's a wonderful night, and your last one here.

Miss W. A wonderful night ! (Looking round half wondering,
half cautious — then, as her eyes rest on the lake) The lake looks so
tender — yet even that could be cruel.

TRAVEKS. Don't think of cruelty — there are other things in
the world too. (Pause.) (They saunter down stage to a seat on R.,
where trees screen them from observation.) Are you really going
to-morrow ? (She nods.) This is perhaps the last talk we may
get?

Miss W. The very last. (Still looking towards lake.) How,
how lovely it all is ! (Pause.)

TRAVEKS. I want to go on with you.

Miss W. To go on ?

TRAVERS. To Vienna.

Miss W. It is impossible.

TRAVERS. Why?

Miss W. (coldly and firmly). It is quite impossible. (Pause.)

TRAVERS. You were telling me about your sisters when that
good lady came along and interrupted us. Tell me some more now
— have you only just left them ?

Miss W. (coldly and still on her guard). I left them when
I was nineteen — years ago now. I was twenty-seven last week.
I went away from them — because I wanted to help them.

TRAVERS. I understand, so many girls go out to fight the world
now. (Puts his hand on hers.) I always feel that you have done
fine things.

Miss W. It wasn't very fine, I am afraid.

TRAVERS. Where are the sisters now ?

Miss W. One of them married a man she loved, and the other
died. (Pause. Then, in a hard voice) Major Travers, three weeks
ago you and I were strangers ; in a few hours we shall be strangers
again. I don't want to confide any more of my family history to your
keeping. I prefer to be silent.

TRAVERS (passionately). I can't feel that we are strangers ; I
never shall — even if we never meet again. And you look so
unhappy

Miss W. Why should I look anything else ? I have never had
any happiness — never in my life — and I have longed for it so much.
(Then, ^dth a queer jerk in her voice) They were speaking of the

1903 THE SEARCH-LIGHT 173

Waylett case just now. I — I knew that woman, and I have longed
for happiness just as she did.

TRAVERS (startled). You knew her !
Miss W. (calmly}. Yes, I knew her very well.
TRAVERS. Do you think she did it ?

Miss W. I can't tell you that. But — if she did— it was her
desperate hunger for happiness that maddened her.
TRAVERS. What has become of her ?
Miss W. She disappeared.

TRAVERS. Well, guilty or not guilty, she hasn't gained happiness
yet.

Miss W. People never gain it — they only pursue it.
TRAVERS. By Heaven ! what an awful thing to be that woman
— if she did do it.

Miss W. But there are so many awful things in the world. It's
just a chance which variety we draw.

TRAVERS (looking at her uneasily). You must have suffered
horribly.

Miss W. Most women have.

TRAVERS. Anyhow, you are not as badly off as she is, probably — •
I mean, you have nothing on your mind.

Miss W. I have done nothing that I would not do over again.
But women often do desperate things to gain happiness — only to
lose its possibility. They are like slaves who make a desperate
struggle for freedom, only to find their captivity worse.
TRAVERS. Why do you harp so much on happiness ?
Miss W. Because I have longed for it — dreamt of it — hungered
for it, too — starved for it — just as she did.

(He puts out his hand, but she draius back.*)
TRAVERS. Let me try to give it you — I think I understand. (She
looks nervously over her shoulder towards the shadows • then makes
a little sound of dissent.} Is it that you have cared for some-
one?

Miss W. (in a low voice). No — never for anyone — in the way you
mean — in my whole life. No one ever came into it who could be
cared for. Perhaps that is the real tragedy of it.

TRAVERS. Then won't you trust me ? We have only known each
other two or three weeks, but we've hurried years into them — I
feel towards you as I never yet felt towards mortal woman ; but when
I reach out to you in my thoughts it is into the unknown — or the
darkness.

Miss W. Into the darkness — (she echoes his words ^vith an
odd laugh, and looks furtively over her shoulder.) Oh, the darknes? .
(In a low voice) I hate it so — it frightens me.

TE AVERS. Let me take you into the light. (Passionately putting

174 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan.

his arms round her, and draining her to him.} Trust me with your
whole life. Tell me you will. It is such a little while since we met
— but we are not strangers — and never have been or can be. I feel
as if we had started out from opposite ends of the world to meet each
other.

Miss W. (as if against her will, draiving closer to him). I have
felt it too.

TKAVERS. There is often more design in things, you know, than
appears on the surface. It couldn't be for nothing — to separate and
never see each other again — that I fell sprawling before you — that we
have spent all these days together. I love you — I swear I love you
(passionately). And you — and you ? Speak to me — speak to me,
dearest.

( A little sound comes from her lips, almost of pain, and
as if unconsciously her arms go round his neck.)

TRAVERS (tenderly). What is it ? You care ? Say you care for
me.

Miss W. I think it is killing me.

TRAVERS. No, no — it is life, and happiness — happiness at last.
I will go on with you to-morrow — we will be married at Vienna •

Miss W. (hesitating). At Vienna — you would marry me ?

TRAVERS. At the Embassy ; and then we'll go down to the shores
of the Adriatic, to Abbazia — the divinest place on earth for a honej-
moon — and stay there till it is time to go to India in October.

Miss W. And never go back to England — never go back ? You
would marry me out of hand and take me away — trust me with your
life ? You don't know who I am or what I am.

TRAVERS (looking at her doubtfully for one moment). I do know ;
I feel that you are a woman of whom anything is possible.

Miss W. Grood or ill — and which, is a fluke.

TRAVERS. My darling, I love you ; and it shall be good — as my
love is good.

Miss W. (looking at him in wonder). I feel as if I stood by
Heaven's open door — but I can never enter

TRAVERS. You shall — we will walk Heaven's whole length ^to-
gether— my beloved woman whom Grod has given me.

Miss W. (with a shudder). God will take me from you.

TRAVERS. Why should He be so cruel ?

Miss W. (as if she had not heard him, almost desperately).
Say you love me — it goes through me — I want to hear it once again.

TRAVERS. I love you — I love you.

(A footstep is heard. She draws back, almost trembling
with fright.)

Miss W. Someone is there — (looking behind) — listening.

TRAVERS (tenderly). Nonsense; it is only a man going round

1903 THE SEARCH-LIGHT 175

the corner into the station. I suppose the train is coming. How
easily you are startled !

Miss W. (recovering and recollecting). I must go — (drawing
bade) — I must go this minute. (Holds out her hands. He takes
them, and is about to draw her to him, but she resists.) No — no
(passionately}. Not now. But I love you — I love you — and I want
to tell you again that I have never loved anyone in my whole life
before — I mean in this way. It has changed everything. (As he
makes a movement towards her.) No — no. (He kisses her hands,
and draws back with an air of puzzled, but happy submission.
She hurries towards her hat, takes it up, and hesitates. ( Den Langen
Ganzen Tag ' is heard again.)

Enter, from back, MRS. PENNING and VIOLET, laughing. They go

toivards hotel.

VIOLET. It was exquisite.

MRS. F. Why, there's Major Travers still — and someone is playing
' Den Langen Ganzen Tag ' again. (Looking back at him.) Are
you waiting for another verdict? (RiGBY appears L., comes down
steps.) We are just going in to look for that portrait, Mr. Rigby.

RIGBY. Ah ! I forget what she was like. (To TRAVERS in a low
kindly voice) I got there first and tore it out. I didn't want to
see her given away to those women.

TRAVERS (as if a horrible suspicion were daivning upon him).
What — what do you mean ?

[MRS. F. and VIOLET go up steps into hotel. Exit RIGBY
at back.

Miss W. (as TRAVERS goes towards her). I am going now — it's
the end of it all. I told you I stood by Heaven's open door — I am
closing it on myself for ever.

TRAVERS. Going — the end ?

Miss W. (starting). There is the train — I must go — I shall
be too late. (Turns towards path leading to station, then faces
TRAVERS ) You said it was an awful thing to be that woman. Only
I know what it is. To think that I should say it to you ! For I
love you — God knows I do. Perhaps that is why He has turned
His search-light here. No — no — you mustn't come ; you mustn't
move. It's the last thing you can do for me. It is only for a
moment. (Then, with an odd, desperate smile) Oh! don't you
understand ? I — I am Mrs. Waylett !

TRAVERS (drawing back, astounded). You ? — you !

Miss W. Yes ! And I did it — I did it. And I am not even
sorry (shuddering). I am glad — I am glad !

[Exit towards station.

176 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Jan. 1903

Enter EIGBY, R. (puts his hand on TRAVERS'S arm}.

TRAVERS (shaking him off}. You knew !

RIGBY. Recognised her just now, when they were all out here.
There goes the train. (TRAVERS makes a step towards it.} She had
only just time to catch it.

TRAVERS. Mrs. Waylett !

CURTAIN.

LUCY CLIFFORD.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake
to return unaccepted MSS.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTUEY

AND AFTER

XX

No. CCCXII— FEBRUARY 1903

OUR CHANGING CONSTITUTION:
KING IN COUNCIL'

IN no country in the world is so much attention paid to the prac-
tical, and so little to the theoretical, side of politics as in England.
Our interest seems to be absorbed by the affairs of the moment and
the personality of a few conspicuous public men. A gigantic
audience can be collected anywhere and at any time to listen to
a speech by a popular, or even an unpopular, party leader ; and
the Press and the platform will rage furiously for months or weeks
over the details of the measure which happens to 'fill the bill'
for the time being. Meanwhile the large changes and organic modi-
fications which the Constitution is undergoing from day to day
pass almost unnoticed. It is, no doubt, all part of that supremely
practical instinct which we assume to be one of our national charac-
teristics. The British motto, alike in public and private life, is
VOL. LIII— No. 312 N

178 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

' Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' We go on with the
business of the hour, doing that which seems necessary, and making
our precedents as we want them, leaving principles and theories to
take care of themselves. There is a great deal to be said for this
method, and assuredly it is the only one which is likely to be adopted
in the management of our national, and even our imperial, concerns.
Yet it is worth while occasionally to cast a plummet into the depths,
and to ascertain how we stand and, if possible, whither we are drift-
ing. Our Constitution is in a continual state of flux and change.
It is not the same to-day as it was in the reign of George the Third, or
in the earlier decades of Queen Victoria, or even in the later Ministries
of Mr. Gladstone. And the process of modification has been going
on with unexpected, or at any rate unmarked, rapidity during the
period which lies immediately behind us.

Some years ago, the present writer endeavoured to draw attention
to certain aspects of the subject in the pages of this Review. In
December 1894 an article was published which bore the title ' If
the House of Commons were Abolished?' It was not, of course,
the intention to suggest that the House of Commons either could,
should, or ought to be done out of existence. My purpose was
merely to point out how largely the functions of the Representative
Chamber, which is popularly supposed to exercise supreme control
over legislation and over executive government, had been superseded
by various agencies. It was, for instance, shown that the House
had practically forfeited its command over Supply, which has passed
absolutely into the hands of the Cabinet; and that] its power to
supervise legislation has also been made over to the same all-
absorbing Committee. Again, the old constitutional privilege of
the Commons to insist on the redress of grievances has partly fallen
into desuetude, and partly it has been transferred to other quarters.
As a ' ventilating chamber ' the Lower House finds its duties
much less cumbrously performed by the Press and the platform,
and, I may perhaps add, by the leading periodical publications.
Then, if one carries the matter further, it is not difficult to
demonstrate that the mere power of choosing a Ministry — the
greatest and most valued of all the prerogatives of Parliament — has
been encroached upon by the party organisations in the constituen-
cies and by intangible but very genuine social influences of various
kinds.

The most serious and noticeable of these changes is undoubtedly
the increase in the power of the Cabinet. I venture to think that
•everything I wrote on this subject eight years ago has been
warranted by subsequent experience. It was said in the paper
already mentioned that legislation, to all intents and purposes,
has become the work of the Ministry in office. I am not referring
merely to the well-recognised fact that the private member has

1903 OUR CHANGING CONSTITUTION 179

little more power to pass a Bill, against the will, or contrary to the
inclination, of the Cabinet, than the man in the street. That, of
course, is by this time thoroughly understood, and the hackneyed
grievance of the unofficial M.P. has now ceased to be regarded as an
abuse, and is accepted as little more than a rather poor joke. But
as things stand, the majority of the House, with the exception of
its operative Committee, is almost equally powerless. The Cabi-
net draws up its legislative programme without consulting its
three or four hundred rank-and-file supporters, and without any
particular regard to their wishes and susceptibilities. It carries as
much of the catalogue as it can find time for, or as it thinks public
opinion Iwill stand, and that is virtually the end of the matter.
Even the discussion in the House of Commons has become little
more than formal. In the ' flood of verbiage ' and the torrential
congestion of public business, there is no time to read through all
the debates, nor has any newspaper the space to report them in
extenso. The argumentative^combat is a sort of two-handed,) or six-
handed, duel between selected front-bench champions, who might
just as well be delivering their harangues on the platform, or writing
them in the newspapers, as discharging them to an array of packed
or half-empty green benches at Westminster. Very often they
do adopt these other alternatives. A speech at a great provincial
meeting by Lord Eosebery or Mr. Balfour, by Mr. Chamberlain, Sir
William Harcourt, or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, may prove a
far more efficient factor in the public controversy — a more valuable
card in the party game — than any display of oratory in either House
of Parliament. And we have known occasions when at least as much
effect has been produced by an article from an eminent statesman in
a monthly review, or a long letter addressed to the editor of a great
London daily journal. As a discussion chamber, and even as a
debating society, the House of Commons has largely lost its utility
and meaning.

It would occupy too much space to go into all the causes of
this remarkable development. The facts, I think, are recognised
more widely than was the case in 1894. Ministerial omnipotence
has become almost an accepted phenomenon. The situation is
regarded with ' sombre acquiescence ' in some quarters, with irrita-
tion and anxiety in others ; but that it exists is generally admitted.
It is seen, among other things, that a general election is now as a
rule a mixture of Referendum and Plebiscite. The electorate are
asked not so much to choose between rival sets of principles as
to vote for a Measure or to vote for a Man. If there are two com-
manding personalities before the nation, which was the case, as a rule,
during the greater part of the half-century that divided the Reform
Bill Ministry from the retirement of Lord Beaconsfield, the con-
stituencies are practically solicited to exercise their option in favour

N 2

180 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb,

of the one or the other. If there is no such striking personal element
in the problem, the decision is for or against a particular act of policy.
The last general election was simply a test of public opinion on the
South African war. The general question of Conservative and
Liberal doctrine hardly entered into consideration. The contest
was fought, openly and necessarily, by both sides on South Africa,
and on nothing else. Do you or do you not approve of the minis-
terial policy towards the Dutch Kepublics, and of their conduct of
the war ? Nine electors out of ten were solely concerned to answer
those questions to their own satisfaction, when they cast their votes
in the autumn of 1900. It is also true that, when a Ministry has
got the plebiscite recorded in its favour, it can use its power to enact
what legislation it pleases, subject only to the necessity of not
alienating public opinion so deeply as to injure its chance of a
farther tenure of office at some future date. To this extent the
criticisms of the Opposition on the introduction of the Education
Bill have a basis of argument. I am one of those who regard with
general approval the provisions of this very able piece of constructive
legislation ; nor can I see that the Government deserve anything
but commendation for endeavouring to deal, in a large and states-
manlike fashion, with a pressing problem of domestic reform. But
no doubt it is true that a Ministry, elected on a single limited issue,
vvras able to obtain legislation, which had never been definitely
placed before the constituencies, and to which, so far as they knew,
their own supporters had not committed themselves. This is
not said by way of censure. It is the duty of a Cabinet to bring-
forward those measures which are required in the interests of the
country, whether these happen to have figured conspicuously on
their electioneering broad-sheets or not. But, as a matter of
history, the fact is as I have stated it. The War Ministry of 1900
decided — very properly — to reconstruct the educational system of
the country, and so far as the House of Commons was concerned it
had only to issue its fiat and in due course its scheme became part
of the law of the land. The proceedings in connection with the
measure in the House confirm this view of the matter. As long as
the Bill was purely a parliamentary affair, that is to say, in the
earlier months of the Session of 1902, Ministerialists and Opposition
alike regarded it almost with indifference. It was accepted as a
foregone conclusion that it would go through, because the Cabinet
intended it to pass, and therefore it hardly seemed worth while to
take much trouble over it. The Liberals began with the tamest and
most perfunctory display of feeble opposition, and the Ministerialists
knew that when the time came they would, in any case, go into the
lobbies en masse to uphold their chiefs. It was not until the Non-
conformist caucus in the country had worked up an agitation that
any strong feeling was aroused. As far as parliamentary action

1903 OUR CHANGING CONSTITUTION 181

went, the Cabinet might just as well have published the clauses of
the Bill through the newspapers in February, and announced that,
after due discussion in the press and on the platform for, say, six
months, it would be carried with such modifications as they them-
selves might choose to introduce or accept.

Nothing can be more curious than the manner in which Parlia-
ment, as it were, stood aside, and allowed the question to be fought
out between the Ministry and its supporters in the press, on the one
hand, and the opponents of the Bill in the country and their news-
paper adherents, on the other. Parliament palpably realised its
own inability to exert an effective control over legislation in the
face of a strong and united Ministry. And this may be said to be
the normal condition of things in the present stage of our con-
stitutional evolution. It may be urged that the projects of the
Cabinet might be defeated, or materially altered, at any moment, by
a hostile vote in the Commons, produced by a numerous secession of
their own followers. It is true that this might occur, but it is
equally true that it does not. From time to time there is vague
talk about a ministerial cave, but nothing ever comes of it. It
may be regarded as a fixed principle of English politics — if there
are any fixed principles at all in such an empirical business — that
members of a majority party in Parliament obey orders. For a
member to cross from one side to the other, or even to vote in
the wrong lobby on any vital question — on any question, that is,
which might involve a change of Government — is so rare that the
contingency need not be taken into account. These things, as
somebody says in one of Ibsen's plays, 'are not done.' Perhaps
twice or three times during the existence of a Parliament some
bewildered or supra-conscientious legislator will trek across the
floor of the House, or will go back to his constituents for a fresh
mandate, because he has changed his mind. But the general
proposition holds true. Members are sent to Westminster to
support a particular combination of leaders, and they do so. The
most of them would no more think of joining the other side, or even
helping passively to bring about the downfall of their own, than a
player in the Oxford Eleven at Lord's would suddenly doff his
colours and assume the rival Blue. There are many reasons —
practical and sentimental — which have conduced to this result,
and the present writer has endeavoured to set forth some of them
on previous occasions.1 Here it is enough to note that, once placed
in power, a Ministry can carry all those measures which it chooses
to regard as involving a question of confidence, until such time as
its majority has either disappeared, through a long series of hostile

1 See The Nineteenth Century, ' The Decline of the House of Commons,' April
1895, and ' A Foreign Affairs Committee,' September 1895.

182 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

by-elections, or until it has itself decided to retire from office or
to risk the chances of another appeal to the constituencies.

Nor is the position of the Cabinet less autocratic, but indeed
much more so, in regard to the conduct of administration. It has
become a commonplace to say that the control of Parliament
over the Executive has been reduced to nullity. In matters of
colonial and foreign policy, the most important decisions may be
arrived at, and the country committed to action of the utmost
seriousness, without even the pretence of consulting the repre-
sentatives of the people. Take the cases of the alleged Anglo-
Italian understanding, of the Anglo-German agreement in China,
of the treaty with Japan, and of the recent alliance with Germany
in reference to Venezuela. What had Parliament to do with any of
these arrangements, until they were irrevocably concluded? It
reserved, of course, its right to punish the authors of them ; but this
would be a futile proceeding, even if our system any longer rendered
it practicable, since the effects of what had been done could not have
been recalled. The Venezuela agreement seems to have attracted
an unusual amount of attention, though in itself it is of considerably
less consequence than some other transactions which have passed
almost unnoticed. But it is easy to understand the kind of shock
which many observers must have experienced, when it came home
to them that, even while Parliament was sitting, the country could
be engaged, by the mere act of a Ministry, in an | alliance with a
foreign State, involving the employment of British fleets, and con-
ceivably even leading to complications with another great Power.
I do not here enter into the policy of this Venezuela convention ;
but it is certain that no autocratic Sovereign with his Imperial
Chancellor could have committed his country more absolutely, or
more silently, than our own Executive to a striking new departure
in international policy. When one considers an operation of thi&
character, it is difficult indeed to subscribe to the theories of those
writers on the Constitution, who tell us that the Ministers are
nothing but the servants and delegates of the House of Commons,
which is itself responsible to the Nation. What had the House of
Commons, what had the Nation, to do with the Venezuela arrange-
ment ?

Nor is Cabinet responsibility quite the same thing, in other
respects, as it was only a quarter of a century ago. The most
significant constitutional change of the last few years is the growth
of the Inner Cabinet. This is a body which has no formal or
recognised existence, any more than the Cabinet itself possessed
until towards the middle of the eighteenth century. It has grown
by a natural process of development, somewhat resembling that by
which the actual governing council of the State was segregated from
the general assembly of the Privy Council. Many causes have

1903 OUR CHANGING CONSTITUTION 183

conduced to its rise, of which the most obvious has been the com-
paratively recent practice of increasing the size of the Cabinet.
A Council of nineteen or twenty is obviously too large for efficient
executive functions. It tends to become a debating society rather
than a working Committee ; and the Cabinet meetings, which
were supposed to be confidential discussions between a small
knot of high officials, all of whom were intimately acquainted
with each other's views and feelings, must now partake to some
extent of the procedure of a public assembly. You can hardly
have a really private talk in the presence of twenty people.
There must be speeches rather than conversations ; and one would
not be surprised to learn that something like informal divisions
occasionally occur. Moreover, with so numerous a body, there
cannot be that substantial equality of status and capacity which
was part of the essence of the Cabinet system as formerly understood.
Every recent Cabinet has had a noticeable ' tail,' consisting of highly
respectable and rather inconspicuous politicians, on whom the
public verdict would be accurately expressed by Pope's famous lines
about the flies in amber :

The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there.

It would appear that there is very little distinction nowadays
between some of the Ministers within the Cabinet and those who are
outside the circle. Cabinet rank seems to be regarded as little more
than a titular distinction, conferred on a capable partisan, who
has served his time in a minor office with credit ; and there are
in every Ministry two or three, at least, of these nominally sub-
ordinate functionaries, who exercise much more real influence
than some heads of departments within the Cabinet. One would
be surprised to learn that Mr. George Wyndham, for instance, or
Mr. Austen Chamberlain, while they were still excluded from the
Cabinet meetings, were not quite as important members of the
Government as several of their colleagues who had already obtained
their promotion.

Too large and too miscellaneous for joint united action, the
Cabinet naturally intrusts the shaping of its policy to a small
sub-committee ; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that
the sub-committee itself assumes the'task.

i

The real Government of England consists of the Prime Minister,
aided or directed by three or four colleagues, who are in close and
constant touch with him. By this small Junta or Cabal, as it
would have been called in the reign of Charles the Second, the vital
questions are decided. The remainder of the official Cabinet have
little voice in the matter, till the decision is reached. They might
be more correctly described as ' Cabinet Officers,' which is the

184 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

designation often applied to the President's ministerial advisers in
the United States. They look after their bureaus, and are naturally
consulted when the special work of the departments is involved ; but
one Minister scarcely knows what another is doing, nor — unless he
belongs to the Inner King — does he become acquainted with the
conclusions and resolutions of the Junta till they are laid before him
for ratification. As the House of Commons majority is to the
Cabinet, so is the Cabinet as a whole to the Governing Committee.
The business is not done at the formal and comparatively infrequent
' Councils,' which attract the attention of the newspapers, and rouse
the curiosity of loiterers in Whitehall ; but at the quiet, unnoticed
consultations, in libraries, offices, and country-houses, between the
men who are the actual masters of the nation's fate. We seem
to have reached the condition of things against which the
constitutionalists of the eighteenth century so often apprehen-
sively protested. We have our ' Venetian oligarchy,' more compact
than that of the 'great Whig houses' and much smaller. And
it is irresponsible, because its members work in the dark, and
have no recognised status beyond that connected with their depart-
mental duties, which are sometimes the least weighty of their func-
tions. It is impossible to say, at any given moment, who form the
real Government, and which of the Ministers are admitted to the
Premier's innermost confidence. The conclave can always shelter
itself behind the collective responsibility of the whole Cabinet, which
sometimes has no more opportunity to deflect or defeat Ministerial
action than the voting horde in the House of Commons.

Such is the state of affairs which leads some acute observers to
recognise a point already dwelt upon in these pages — that the
Grovernment of England is in reality presidential rather than
responsible. Mr. Sidney Lee, fresh from his constitutional studies
into the history of the Victorian age, goes so far as to say : 2 ' The
Prime Minister has been trained in a school which identifies his
office with practically absolute political power.' If for ' the Prime
Minister ' we substitute ' the Prime Minister and certain of his
associates in the Cabinet,' the statement may be admitted, though
with some reserves. I do not think there is any ' school ' which con-
sciously accepts this definition of the ministerial office. We deal with
results, as so often in English politics, without clearly acknowledging
the causes. But it is interesting to observe that the biographer of
Queen Victoria, an inquirer so competent, learned, and judicious as
Mr. Lee, emphatically endorses this theory of Cabinet omnipotence.
Of course the Junta cannot really act without limitations, though
it is no longer under the effective control of the elected repre-
sentatives of the People. There are other restraining influences,

2 See his letter on ' The Prime Minister and the Crown,' in the Spectator \
January 3, 1903.

1903 OUR CHANGING CONSTITUTION 185

some of them new, some as old as our Constitution itself. One
most effective check is analogous to that which prevents the
President of the United States trom becoming, as he might otherwise
be, something like an autocrat during his term of office. The Prime
Minister, like the President, is a party man and a party leader. He
has the interests of his own connection to consider, the fear of the
managers and wire-pullers before his eyes. Even if he is not
ambitious of a further term of office for himself, he cannot be
indifferent to the prospects of his friends, and the chances of the
faction to which he owes his ascendency. He will naturally
endeavour to satisfy public opinion, and to earn for himself and
his associates that species of gratitude which can be paid in current
electoral coin at the ballot-boxes. Moreover, if he cannot be defeated
— speaking generally — till the close of a Parliament or a dissolution,
he can be criticised. He may lose prestige and authority, and may
go before the electorate, when the time for the supreme test comes,
as a statesman who has incurred ridicule, who has misunderstood the
interests of the country, who has involved it in disastrous errors.
This, patriotism and integrity apart, is a real check upon carelessness,
levity, and hasty adventure. Never, perhaps, was there a time when
Ministers were more sensitive to the attitude of the press and the
platform. They are watched, they know, by keen and jealous eyes,
and assailed by trenchant tongues, which speak to a wider audience
than their critics in the House of Commons, and with rather more
knowledge and weight of authority.

But is there not another restraining influence, in addition to the
caucus, the newspapers, and the party agents ? Has the Crown lost the
whole of its functions as one of the ' checks and balances ' in our
constitutional machinery ? The question has been raised, not, one
must imagine, quite gratuitously or willingly, in connection with
recent events. It has been hinted, or rather not hinted but openly
stated in print, that the intervention of the Crown has been employed
to override or bias the judgment of Ministers. This is the indiscreet
assertion which has provoked Mr. Lee's Letter, and the substance of the
rumours may be reproduced in his very explicit summary. ' It has
been/ he says, ' seriously argued that Court influence, rather than
the deliberate judgment of the Ministry, is the efficient cause of the
co-operation of our own fleet with the German fleet off the Venezuelan
coast. In plain terms, we are invited to believe that the English
Sovereign, of his own motion, has successfully importuned his
Ministers to entangle this country in an alliance with a foreign
Power. It is taken for granted that the policy did not present
itself to the Ministers before it was brought to their notice by the
King, and that it failed very strongly to recommend itself to the
Ministry when royal pressure secured its adoption at their hands.'
It is in order to repudiate this allegation that Mr. Lee formulates

186 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

the doctrine of ministerial power and royal weakness, and has
couched it in terms of such uncompromising directness as may
appear in some quarters extravagant. ' The Sovereign can, under
the Constitution, no more initiate a policy for Ministers to follow,
or impose upon them, by the urgency of his appeal, a policy of his
own devising, than he can by his sole authority promulgate a new
law.' And again : ' In no conceivable circumstances can the
Grovernment's action in high matters of policy originate suddenly
and unprovokedly with the King.' This seems, at first sight, over-
stated ; yet there can be no question that it is technically correct.
The Sovereign could not possibly send for the Prime Minister or the
Foreign Secretary and suggest the conclusion of a treaty of alliance
with an alien Gfovernment, or tell the Home Secretary to bring in
a Factory Bill. But though things are not done in that way, perhaps
more is done, and can be done, than Mr. Lee allows. I do not enter
upon the Venezuela question, or upon the singularly delicate con-
troversy which has been initiated over a matter upon which the
public at large is in no position to know anything beyond gossip and
rumour. But the general question of the relations of the Crown
to the Cabinet Junta is undoubtedly a matter of legitimate interest.
Mr. Lee assures us that the correct constitutional practice is for
the Sovereign to be treated as a nonentity. He may criticise the
ministerial proposals, as any of the Premier's colleagues may do, or
any man reading a halfpenny newspaper on the top of an omnibus.
The sole advantage enjoyed by the most august Personage in the
Realm is that of getting in his criticism at an earlier date. ' Custom
requires the Minister to acquaint the occupant of the throne with
his intentions, particularly in the domain of foreign affairs, before
carrying them into effect.' Having been seised of the ministerial
project, the Sovereign may, if he pleases, criticise. But then ' usage
forbids the Minister to attach to the royal criticisms any paramount
force.' The Minister 'invariably treats them as unauthoritative
suggestions.' And he is ' entitled to ignore them altogether,' while
his Sovereign has not even a constitutional right to feel offended.

If this is the case, our ' Venetian oligarchy ' may leave the
Crown out of account. A King or Queen must have a saint-like
temper to frame criticisms which are invariably treated as ' unauthori-
tative,' and frequently waved contemptuously aside. In such cir-
cumstances would a monarch, with any sense of personal dignity,
care to criticise at all ? Yet we know, from Mr. Lee's pages and
from other sources, that criticisms and suggestions were frequently
made by Queen Victoria, and that it was by no means the rule for
them to be inoperative. In this, as in so many matters, the con-
stitutional theory is one thing and the constitutional practice another.
Who can say what the Sovereign can or cannot do ' under the Con-
stitution ' ? Undoubtedly, ' under the Constitution,' |the Prime

1903 OUR CHANGING CONSTITUTION 187

Minister should not be an irresponsible autocrat ; but this is what
Mr. Lee tells us he is. The English Constitution is not fixed or
crystallised ; it varies from year to year ; rights and prerogatives differ
not only with circumstances, but with personalities. The privilege of
criticism, which even according to the most limited construction the
Sovereign enjoys, may be quite unauthoritative, or it may be some-
thing which would have a very large and real influence on policy.
The situation has never been better stated than it was by Walter
Bagehot more than thirty years ago :

To state the matter shortly, the Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy
such as ours, three rights — the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the
right to warn. And a King of great sense and sagacity would want no others.
He would find that his having no others would enable him to use these with
singular effect. He would say to his Minister: 'The responsibility of these
measures is upon you. Whatever you think best must be done. Whatever you
think best shall have my full and effectual support. But you will observe that for
this reason and that reason what you propose to do is bad ; for this reason and that
reason what you do not propose is better. I do not oppose, it is my duty not to
oppose ; but observe that I warn.' ... In the course of a long reign a sagacious King
would acquire an experience with which few Ministers could contend. The King
could say : ' Have you referred to the transactions which happened during such
and such an administration, I think about fourteen years ago ? They afford an
instructive example of the bad results which are sure to attend the policy you pro-
pose. You did not at that time take so prominent a part in public life as you do
now, and it is possible you do not fully remember all the events. I should recom-
mend you to recur to them, and to discuss them with your older colleagues who
took part in them. It is unwise to recommence a policy which so lately worked
so ill.' . . . Even under our present Constitution a monarch like George the Third,
with high abilities, would possess the greatest influence. It is known to all
Europe that in Belgium King Leopold has exercised immense power by the use
of such means. — Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution, chap. iii.

There have been many changes since Bagehot wrote, but they are
not such as to make the functions here attributed to the Crown less
valuable. When it is said that the Prime Minister wields ' practically
absolute power,' it does not necessarily follow that he ought to do so.
An irresponsible Junta, working in the dark, stands in need of
restraining, as well as critical, influences of various kinds ; and with
the proved inability of Parliament to exercise an effective supervision
over the Executive, there is not, perhaps, very much danger of a
revival of that jealousy of the interference of the Throne with the
Cabinet, which was exhibited during the first portion of the late
Queen's reign. There may even be a feeling that the constitutional
theory of government by ' the King in Council ' might well become
more of a reality, since it is obvious that the ' Council ' is itself only
becoming a name for an irresponsible Committee.

And there is another contingency which cannot be left entirely out
of consideration. The whole edifice of ministerial absolutism, and of
the despotic independence of the Cabinet oligarchy, is based upon

188 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

the existing party system. It would fall to pieces if there were not two
separate well-defined parties, or if there were more than two. Without
a safe, assured majority, as the result of a general election, it could
scarcely be maintained. But the dualism of parties, itself the happy
' accident of an accident,' has been conserved by largely accidental
causes. The differences of principle which divided the two his-
torical factions have been blurred and confused. There is nothing

o

fantastic in the anticipation that within the next few years
Conservatives and Liberals may be split up into a number of minor
and disconnected groups. In that event the Ministers might
become, in much more than a formal sense, the King's servants,
authorised by the Sovereign to remain in office and to carry on the
government, with the help of a shifting and heterogeneous
Parliamentary majority, or perhaps even without any majority at all.
This has happened in countries like Austria, where, with the best
intentions in the world, it has been found impossible to maintain the
Cabinet system, on the supposed English model, because of the lack
of a stable division of parties. The Sovereign, with every desire to be
strictly ' constitutional,' has had to make his Ministers his clerks in
a Parliament permanently broken up into groups. One would not
like to predict [that this is the direction towards which we are
tending in England ; and indeed it is highly unsafe to prophesy
about anything so baffling and uncertain as the course of political
evolutions in England. Much depends on chance, more on purely
personal factors. We shall adapt our ethics and our practices to the
exigencies as they arise, and concern ourselves very little about
symmetry or system. But an increase of the formal, as well as the
actual, participation of the Crown in the business of the Government
is not deemed unlikely by some observers of events : especially when
it is considered that such an extension of activity would no longer be
a derogation from the power of Parliament, but rather a mitigation
of the uncontrolled authority of the Cabinet Committee.

SIDNEY Low.

[P.S. While these pages were passing through the press a speech
was delivered by Lord Eosebery at Ply mouth, whiclicontained a passage
of some interest in connection with the subject discussed above.
Lord Eosebery urged that it would have been wise to appoint Lord
Kitchener Secretary of State for War, with ' large and almost dicta-
torial powers,' so that he might have a ' free hand ' to deal with Army
administration. It might, no'doubt, be objected that if Lord Kitchener
had become Secretary of State he would be a member of the Cabinet,
and as such responsible for the acts of the Cabinet. ' But,' added
Lord Eosebery, ' is there necessity for that ? As Secretary of State
he might only be summoned to the meetings of the Cabinet which

1903 OUR CHANGING CONSTITUTION 189

had to do with his department ; and he might be definitely cut off
from the collective responsibility of the Cabinet. It is <\m, the power
of the Sovereign to summon any Privy Councillor to any Cabinet
for any particular purpose, and there is no reason why he should
not have adopted that course im, the case of Lord Kitchener.' The
words I have italicised are worthy of the closest attention. Here we
have, from one of the only three men now living who have filled
the office of Prime Minister in Great Britain, the remarkable
suggestion that it is competent for the Sovereign to nominate an
individual Minister with almost dictatorial powers, and to make him
a member of the Cabinet ad hoc, while releasing him from the joint
responsibility which lies upon his colleagues. We are to assume
that Lord Eosebery would see nothing unconstitutional in this
reversion to a former practice, and that he would regard with
approval the appointment of a | Secretary of State responsible, not to
the Premier and the general body of his colleagues, or to the majority
of the House of Commons, but directly to the Crown. For it is clear
that, in the situation imagined, the military Secretary of State must
be, in more than a formal sense, ' the King's servant,' since he is to
be expressly released from all dependence on that governing Committee
of the dominant party in Parliament which is known as the Cabinet.
I need not discuss this interesting proposition at present. But the
distinguished Liberal statesman who uttered it would obviously not
accept the theory that the Prime Minister's office is one of ' absolute
political power,' with the Sovereign's function limited to that of
unauthoritative criticism. On the contrary, it would appear that he
is prepared to accord to the Crown a share in the actual conduct of
administration, such as few champions of royal prerogative during
the past century would have ventured to claim. — S. L.]

190 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

THE
POLITICAL TESTAMENT OF FUAD PASHA l

(ADDRESSED TO THE SULTAN ABDUL AZIZ IN 1869, ONE
BEFORE THE DEATH OF ITS AUTHOR)

SIKE, — I have only a few more days, maybe only a few more hours,
to live, and I desire to consecrate these last moments to the accom-
plishment of a sacred duty. I wish to lay before your august
Majesty my last thoughts — thoughts full of sadness, the bitter fruit
of a long and unfortunate career. When your Majesty receives these
words, I shall no longer be of this world. You may, therefore, listen
to me now without mistrust, for the voice which speaks from the grave
is always sincere.

God has charged you with a mission as glorious as it is perilous
In order to fulfil this mission worthily, your Majesty should
endeavour to realise a great and painful truth. The Empire of
the Ottomans is in danger. The rapid progress made by our
neighbours and the inconceivable mistakes of our ancestors have
placed us in a very critical position to-day. To avert a terrible
calamity, your Majesty will be forced to break with the past, and
to lead us to a new destiny.

A few ignorant patriots seek to make you believe that with our
old resources we could re-establish our former greatness. Fatal
mistake ! Unpardonable delusion ! Doubtless, if our neighbours
were at the present time in the same position they were in the days
of our fathers, our former means would have sufficed to make your
Majesty the Arbitrator of Europe. But alas ! our neighbours are far
from being where they were two centuries ago. They have all gone
on ahead, and have left us far behind. True enough, we ourselves
have made some advance.

1 [This document, translated from an authentic copy and never before published
in English, throws light upon the manner in which the Turkish Reform Party of
the present day still view the aft'airs of their country. To its author, who was for
so many years alternately Grand Vizier and Minister of Foreign Affairs, it is said,
Turkey mainly owes the celebrated Haiti Humayun of 1856, which proclaimed equal
civil rights to all the races and creeds of the Turkish Dominions. — ED. Nineteenth
Century and After, .]

1903 TEE POLITICAL TESTAMENT OF FUAD PASHA 191

Your present Government is much more enlightened and has
more means at its disposal than that of your ancestors. Unfortu-
nately, however, this state of comparative prosperity is far from being
sufficient for the needs of the time. To maintain a position in
Europe at the present day, you must be able not only to equal or
even to surpass your predecessors, but to equal and defy your
present neighbours. To express my idea more clearly, I assert that
your empire is forced, under penalty of death, to have as much money
as England, as much intelligence as France, and as many soldiers as
Russia.

As far as we are concerned, it is no longer merely a question of
making rapid progress ; it is simply and entirely a question of making
as great progress as the other nations of Europe.

Your magnificent empire has furnished you amply with every
element necessary to surpass any and every other European Power.
But to arrive at this one thing is necessary, absolutely necessary. All
our political, all our civil institutions must be changed. Many laws,
beneficial enough in the past, have become injurious to our Society
as it exists at present.

Man, himself capable of advancing towards perfection, must con-
tinually strive to improve and make perfect his achievements.
Happily this first law of our nature is perfectly in accordance with
the spirit of our Mohammedan religion. For Islamism comprehends
all those true doctrines which acknowledge their essential object to
be the progress of the world and of humanity. Those who pretend
in the name of this religion to impede the progress of our State are
certainly not Mohammedans but insensate believers. Every other
religion is fettered by dogmas and fixed principles which are so many
barriers to the progress of human thought. Islamism alone, un-
fettered by mysteries, free from all infallible rules, holds it a sacred
duty incumbent on us to advance with the world, to develop as much
as possible all our intellectual faculties, and to seek for enlighten-
ment and knowledge not only in Arabia, not only among Moham-
medans, but in foreign countries, in China, in the ends of the earth.

We must not for an instant think that Mohammedan science
differs from that of other countries. Science is everywhere one and
the same. The same sun illumines the whole world of Intellect.
And as, according to our belief, Islamism is the universal expression
of all truth and all knowledge, so every useful discovery, every new
advance, wherever the place and among whatever people it may be
made manifest, among the Pagans or among the Mohammedans, at
Medina or at Paris, it nevertheless belongs to Mohammedans.
There is therefore nothing whatever to prevent us from copying the
laws and other new methods introduced by Europeans. I have
studied our religion sufficiently well to understand its true spirit ;
my head is still clear enough to comprehend the relative importance

192 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

of my ideas ; and I could not think of betraying my Sovereign, my
country, and my religion at a moment when I am preparing to leave
the world and present myself before the supreme Judge of the
Universe.

I assert then, with the deepest conviction, that in all the new
institutions which Europe offers to us there is nothing, absolutely
nothing, which is contrary to the spirit of our religion. I declare
solemnly that the salvation of Islamism demands that without delay
we adopt these new institutions without which no nation can con-
tinue to exist in Europe. I declare further that in thus changing
our empire, far from doing anything contrary to the sacredness of
our religion, you would be rendering the most lawful, the most
legitimate service to all Mohammedans, a service more meritorious,
more glorious than has ever been dreamed of by your most illustrious
ancestors. This great work of regeneration embraces a host of
questions the consideration of which would be beyond the limit of
my strength and the few remaining moments of my life. But your
Majesty will still have the services of that eminent man whose
friend and adviser it has been my privilege to be. May the
Almighty long preserve him to you, for he understands better
than anyone else the means of salvation of your empire. On no
occasion have I ever given advice to your Majesty without having first
made sure that it had the approval of his wisdom, the fruit of his
experience. Continue to give him your confidence, your entire
confidence, for the confidence of a great Sovereign makes the
strength of a great Minister. Above all, I urge you never to permit
that this devoted servant, whose talents are so essential to your
Majesty, should be hampered by ignorant colleagues. Nothing
would discourage him more than the necessity of being obliged to
act with men incapable of understanding him.

Now for a few words about our foreign relations, for it is in this
respect that the task of our Government becomes really hopeless.
Not being strong enough of ourselves to fight our enemies, we are
obliged to seek assistance from foreign friends and allies. Their
jealous, hostile, and at the same time powerful interests have placed
us in a position which is impossible to describe. To defend the
least of our rights we are forced to display more strength, more
cleverness, more courage than it has cost our ancestors to conquer
kingdoms. Amongst our foreign allies you will find England always
in the front rank. Her policy and her friendship are as solid as are
her institutions. She has rendered us immense service in the past,
and it will be impossible for us to dispense with what help she may
give us in the future. Whatever may come to pass, the English
people, the most reliable and most wonderful in the world, will be the
first and the last of our allies. I would rather be the loser of several
provinces than see the Sublime Porte abandoned by England.

1903 THE POLITICAL TESTAMENT OF FUAD PASHA 193

France is an ally that we must always treat with the greatest con-
sideration, not only because she is able to give us the most efficient
help, but also because she is able to inflict on us the most deadly
injury. This chivalrous nation indulges more in sentiment than in
calculation. She has a passion for glory and grand ideas, even when
manifested by her enemies. The best means of preserving the
alliance of this generous people is to keep pace with her ideas and
to show advance which may appeal to her imagination as much as
to her intellect. If ever France should forsake our cause she will
make hostile combinations and be the means of completing our ruin.

Austria, hampered by her European interests, has been obliged so
far to restrain her role in the East! She committed a great blunder
during the Crimean War. Cast off by Germany, she will in future
better understand the danger of the North — and this danger is as
serious for her empire as it is for ours. As long as Vienna exercises
an enlightened and consistent policy, she will be the most natural
ally of the Sublime Porte. The greatest evil, this encroaching evil
which has been troubling the East for more than a century, can only
be definitely warded off by the active support of Austria backed by
all our allies in the East.

As to Prussia, up to the present moment she has preserved
almost total indifference with regard to the Eastern Question. It is
quite possible that, in her precipitated policy, she may sacrifice us
in favour of her project of the Union of Germany. But once this
Union accomplished, Germany will not be slow in perceiving that
she has at least as many interests at stake in the Eastern question as
any other European country. However, Heaven grant that she may
not have bought the spoils of Austria by forcing our enemies to take
irrevocable possession of our European provinces.

Lastly I come to Kussia, the natural enemy of our empire. The
expansion of this Power towards the East is a fatal law of Muscovite
destiny, and if I were a Eussian Minister I should myself convulse
the world to conquer Constantinople. We must therefore neither be
surprised at, nor complain of, aggressive dealings of Kussia. They
treat us now, though under new conditions, in the same manner as
we ourselves formerly treated the Greeks of the Bas-Empire. It
would be puerile to trust solely to our rights to be able to defend
ourselves against Muscovite invasion. What we need is force, not
the used-up force of history, which we might try in vain to revive,
but the new and irresistible force which science and modern prin-
ciples have placed in the hands of all the peoples of Europe. From
the time of Peter the Great, Eussia has made enormous strides. In
a short time her railways will increase her power tenfold. What
alarms me most is that the greater number of nations in Europe
appear to be gradually resigning themselves to the future aggression
of Eussia.

VOL. LIII— No. 312 O

194 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

The indifference of England with regard to affairs in Central
Asia both astonishes and alarms me. What, however, alarms me
still more is the great change in the position of Russia brought
about by pacification of the Caucasian Provinces. It is my firm
opinion that in future the most serious attacks of Russia will be
directed against our Asia Minor. May your Majesty work unceas-
ingly towards the reorganisation of our forces. Who knows if our
allies will always have their hands free and be able to come to our
help in time ? A domestic quarrel in Europe, a Bismarck in Russia,
might change the face of the world.

I know that there have been many foolish mistakes on the part
of every Government — these mistakes are one of their most important
rights. But I must confess that I have totally failed to understand
that profound wisdom of the European Government which can with
such strange indifference permit the most appalling despotism of
the world to put itself at the head of 100,000,000 barbarians, arm
them with all the means of civilisation, that they absorb at every
step provinces and kingdoms as large as France. Further, that
whilst on the one hand surrounding Asia with troops, on the other
undermining Europe with Panslavism, this State should, notwith-
standing, come forward periodically with protestations of her love of
peace, and her sincere determination not to seek new conquests.

Russia leads me on to say a few words about Persia. The
Grovernment of this turbulent country, always under the domination
of Schiite fanaticism, has at all times been the ally of our enemies.
During the Crimean War she made common cause with Russia, and
if she has failed in the realisation of her hostile projects it is thanks
to the vigilance of Eastern diplomacy. The throne of the Shah
at this present moment is entirely dependent on the Cabinet of
St. Petersburg. Therefore, when the Sublime Porte has its hands
free, the Government of the Shah, weak and ignorant, without credit
and without initiative, will never have the courage to seek such an
occasion of quarrel with us. But from the moment that we become
embroiled with Russia, however great may be our caution with
regard to Persia, her political dependence, and still more her blind
jealousy, will of necessity put her among the ranks of our most
determined enemies. Fortunately the Sublime Porte, besides her
material strength, is possessed of moral means more than sufficient
to keep in awe a country crushed by barbarous despotism, disputed
by several pretenders, and surrounded on all sides by Sunnites. We
must not forget Greece, a country insignificant in itself, but a tire-
some tool in the hands of a hostile Power. European poets, in
suddenly setting up this phantom of a kingdom, did so in the belief
that they could bring back to life a nation that had been dead for
more than two thousand years. In seeking to restore the country
of Homer and Aristotle they have only succeeded in creating a seat

1903 THE POLITICAL TESTAMENT OF FUAD PASHA 195

of intrigue, anarchy, and brigandage. The Sublime Porte might
possibly find some intelligent servants amongst the Greeks, but the
spirit of the Hellenic race will always be hostile to our cause. The
remembrances of a glorious past history, although severed by centuries
of corruption, ignorance, and bastardy from the Greek of to-day,
will sustain this egoistic people for a long time to come with the
hope of being able to pilfer for a second time the Empire of the
East which she so completely degraded in forming the Byzantine
Empire, or, as it has been well named, the Bas-Empire. Our best
safeguard against the encroachment of this deceitful and malicious
people is its revolting vanity and exclusiveness, which make it daily
more odious and unbearable to all our Eastern nations. The object
of our policy should be to isolate the Greeks as much as possible
from our other Christians. Above all, we must withdraw the
Bulgarians from the domination of the Greek Church, without
attaching them either to the Russian or to the Eoman clergy.

The Sublime Porte should never tolerate any intrigue which has
as its object the union of the Armenian with the Orthodox Church.
It may perhaps be wise to encourage among our Christians the
philosophical spirit so useful in drawing men together by alienating
them from clerical influence. I must add that as regards ourselves
there is not the least doubt that the best policy will be that which
will place the State above all religious questions.

With respect to internal affairs, all our efforts must tend towards
one sole object : the fusion of our races. Without such fusion the
unity of your empire appears to me an impossibility. Henceforth
this great empire could belong neither to the Greek nor to the Slav,
neither to this religion nor that race. The Eastern Empire can
only exist by the union of all the Orientals.

A great Germany, a France of 40,000,000 men, an England
strongly fortified by nature — all these nationalities may preserve
their powerful and useful individualities for a time. But a Monte-
negro, a Serbian Principality, a kingdom of Armenia, possessing
neither the smallest advantage for themselves nor for the world
at large, can only be States more or less chimerical — unfortunate
remains of ancient rendings of humanity, the inevitable prey of every
new conqueror — injurious to the progress of man, dangerous to the
peace of the world.

In the constitution of modern States the only lasting theory is
that of large agglomerations. The means, therefore, of preventing
the ruin of our State will be reconstitution upon a new, broad, and
solid basis which shall embrace every different element, without
distinction of race or of religion. This principle of equality will
naturally qualify our Christian subjects for public offices, and this
will involve us in a position of considerable difficulty. For these
subjects, suddenly set free from the yoke which has kept them in

o 2

196 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

subjection, seem too anxious to replace their former masters. The
Armenians especially have displayed an inclination towards encroach-
ment, and it will be wise to moderate their ardour by opening a career
only to those who have honestly accepted the unitary principle of
our empire.

All our Christian peoples have generally two distinct religions, the
one moral, the other political. Their moral religion must be entirely
ignored by our Government ; but, on the other hand, our Government
must pay great attention to everything that has to do with their
political religion, as this often involves theories incompatible with
our existence. Whether a Pasha worships God either according to
the law of Moses or after the manner of the Christians, there is no
reason why we should deprive ourselves of his services. But should
this same Pasha, not recognising the unity of our country, dream
that he can found a Byzantine Empire, or aspire to serve a kingdom
of Cilicia, he must be removed, as he will cease to be a loyal servant.

Unity of the State and the Fatherland, based on equality of all
men, is the only dogma that I should require from every public
officer. In order, however, to show how great are the marvels of
this fertile dogma, your Majesty must first endeavour to organise
justice. The task is one of difficulty, but it is urgent and indispens-
able. When the life and goods of all our citizens have been legally
guaranteed, the first measure that your Majesty ought to consider as
an imperial duty is the construction of our roads. The day when
we shall have as many railroads as the rest of Europe your Majesty
will be at the head of the first empire of the world. But there is
still another question the supreme importance of which, as affecting
us, cannot be over-estimated. I mean the question of public
instruction, the sole basis of all social progress, without which no
greatness, either moral or material, can exist. It includes Army,
Navy, and Administration. Without this essential basis we have
neither strength nor independence, neither a government nor a
future. Notwithstanding the spirit of our religion, which is in itself
highly instructive, education has so far, owing to many different
reasons, remained in a very backward condition. Our innumerable
' medresses ' and the vast resources which these consume to so little
profit furnish us with ready elements for a great system of national
instruction. If I have failed myself in realising this great scheme,
it is owing to the fact of my attention having been continually
diverted from it by unfortunate circumstances. I bequeath this
project to my successors — the most fruitful and glorious project
they can conceive of. I know well that a certain number of
Mussulmans will curse me as an enemy of their religion. I pardon
their indignation, knowing full well that they understand neither my
ideas nor my speech. But the day will come when they will understand
that* I, the impious reformer, have been more religious, a better

1903 THE POLITICAL TESTAMENT OF FUAD PASHA 197

Mussulman, than all those ignorant zealots who have covered me with
their curses. They will understand, but unfortunately too late, that
I have fought more than any other martyr to save both their State
and their religion, which they themselves would have brought to
sure and certain ruin. The first law of every institution, Divine or
human, is the law of self-preservation. Has not the preservation of
Islamism been my sole thought in every reform ? Only, instead of
seeking this in blind submission to ancient prejudices, I have con-
strained myself to find it in the enlightened paths which the God of
Islam has put before us, as well as before every other nation on the
face of the earth.

My weak, trembling hand refuses further service. In bringing
these lines to a close I beg that your Majesty will give your con-
sideration to these last words of an unfortunate servant, who in the
midst of all human weakness has always loved his fellow-men, has
laboured unremittingly to do all the good that lay in his power, and
who, bowed down by the weight of a heavy burden, leaves the world
without regret, dies a submissive Mussulman, yielding up his soul to
the Supreme Judge, Judge full of compassion and mercy.

FUAD.

198 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

BRITISH PHILISTINISM AND INDIAN ART

ONE of the greatest of Greek philosophers in a few memorable
sentences has indicated the proper place of art in an ideal educa-
tional system :

To use the beauties of earth as steps along which he mounts upwards, going
from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair
actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at
the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.1

The Greeks, whose religious and philosophical ideas were founded
on the closest observation of Nature, were deeply impressed by the
invariable correlation between perfect beauty and perfect fitness,
which is found in all of Nature's handiwork. The study of this
universal law led them to regard the aesthetic faculty as part of that
divine nature which lifts mankind above the brute creation, and
must be cherished as the most precious endowment. Art, or the
science of the beautiful, was to them a second religion ; it became
the daily bread of their intellectual life. To respect art was a national
as well as an individual duty, because its influence tends to develop
the best moral virtues in a citizen. It teaches patience and honesty,
for no good art is produced without them. It teaches reverence, for
admiration of the beautiful is the mainspring of the aesthetic faculty.
It begets unselfishness, for aesthetic enjoyment is not obtained, like
so many other of men's pleasures, at other people's expense, and it is
increased when others share in it. It tends to elevate the mind and
to create a dislike for all that is mean, dirty, and sordid.

English higher education in the nineteenth century was based
theoretically on Greek traditions. But if one seeks in the national
life for the effect of so-called classic education the difference
between theory and practice can be seen too plainly. If the poetical
inspiration of Shakespeare and Milton is often a hidden mystery to
the Indian student who knows all his text and notes by heart, just
as often the English schoolboy, who pores over his Greek idioms and
syntax, remains in sublime ignorance of the ideas and impulses
which brought the Greek nation to the highest summit of civilisa-
tion. The classic ideal in the modern English educational system

1 Plato's Republic, Jowett's translation.

1903 PHILISTINISM AND INDIAN ART 199

lost the quickening influence it possessed in the sixteenth century,
not because Greek literature and art are any less fresh and beautiful,
but because the system ignored the motives and ideas, contained in
Greek civilisation, of which Greek literature and art were the expres-
sion. The sixteenth century, when the influence of Greek literature
and art was so powerfully felt in Europe, was the crest of a great
intellectual and artistic wave which passed over the whole civilised
world, affecting India, Persia, China, and Japan, almost as much
as it did Italy and other European countries. Even in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the literature and art of Greece
were an influence only, not the source of inspiration. They were
the quickening influence in the Kenaissance in Italy, because the
intellectual and social conditions of the time were ia many ways
analogous to those which had given them birth in ancient Greece,
not from an inherent creative power contained in themselves, as
modern pedagogy would have us believe. But the educational
traditions of the pseudo-classic school have still many followers,
and the English public-school boy is too often fed on the husks of
Greek literature, in the belief that style is the only end of literary
expression. The usual art teaching in English public schools is
just as remote from the spirit of Greek philosophy. Art, according
to modern pedagogy, is merely a fashionable taste for water-colour
landscape painting, and with more or less skill in this elegant
accomplishment most Englishmen are ready to decide all artistic
questions. In the schoolboy's after-life this rigid adherence to
forms without principles, and fashions without motives, degraded
nineteenth-century art as much as it degraded social life. The
training of the artist and architect was based on a slavish imitation
of effete schools and defunct styles. The living art of the Greeks
applied to practical life the principles of perfect order, perfect
arrangement, perfect workmanship, and perfect fitness for use, which
are always found in Nature's work and regulate all healthy styles of
art. Beauty was sought after not merely for its own sake, but
because to the Greeks absolute beauty was absolute perfection. But
the nineteenth century forsook the cult of the beautiful for the cult
of the golden calf. So much of the art of the greater part of the
nineteenth century as really entered into the life of the nation, and
was not relegated to museums and picture galleries, was generally
devoid of reality and life ; it was vulgar ostentation when it was not
rampant ugliness, insipidity and inanity when it was not a cloak for
stupid construction or dishonest workmanship.

It is the supreme merit of the new movement in art (by which
I do not mean any particular sect or clique, but the general revolt
against dead academic formulae) that, in spite of the eccentricities
and extravagances which attend all great transitions, it has brought
life and sincerity into the teaching and practice of art. It has

200 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

taught that style in art is the exoteric expression of an esoteric
meaning, and that to separate the one from the other is to divorce
the body from the soul. It has taught that neither the Greeks nor
the Komans nor the master-minds of the middle ages have exhausted
all the resources of art, which must always seek the form of expression
best adapted to the thoughts and necessities of the times. And,
above all, it has taught that art is not a curiosity for museums,
but a beneficent influence in public and private life ; not a fashion,
but a faculty; not the privilege of a caste, but a divine gift to
humanity.

India, unfortunately, affords another example of the difference
between theory and practice, for the conditions which exist in India
are in every way favourable for putting into practice the theories of
Greek philosophy which English higher education professes to take
for its gospel. India is the only part of the British Empire where the
aesthetic sense of the people, in spite of all that British philistinism
has done to suppress it, strongly influences their everyday life. It
is pitiful to find, even in semi-European cities like Bombay and Cal-
cutta— where nine out of ten of the imposing public buildings built
for the official administration flaunt before the native gaze the
banalities and vulgarities of the worst English nineteenth-century
architecture — that one may go into a back slum and see a modern
Mahomedan mosque or Hindu temple, in which the native work-
man, in naive admiration, has borrowed the details from these Grothic
or Classic atrocities, and contrived by the unconscious exercise of his
inner aesthetic consciousness to build something which defies all the
musty canons of scholastic architectural law, but yet reveals some-
thing of 'that essential spirit of beauty which all living art possesses.
In places more remote from European influence, the houses, mosques
and temples built by native workmen of the present day, who have
had no other education than the traditions of their fathers, are hardly
less eloquent than the nobler monuments of the past in their silent
protest against the stupid materialism and the false classicism with
which the art of the W&st would instruct the art of the East.

Perhaps the greatest fault to be found with our educational
methods in India is in their lack of imagination. Following the
traditions of the English public school we have always regarded the
schoolboy as an animal in which the imaginative faculties should
be sternly repressed. Build a barrack in the heart of a dirty, over-
crowded city, pack it with students — that is a college. Cram the
students with Shakespeare and Milton before they can express their
own ideas in tolerable modern English — that is culture. It would
appear from the evidence given before Lord Curzon's Universities'
Commission that there are still many exponents of this kind of
education flourishing under the shelter of our Indian universities.
Greatly concerned for the lack of moral principle in the generation

1903 PHILISTINISM AND INDIAN ART 201

newly fledged under their own protection, some Indian educational
authorities have for manj years been seeking a moral text-book as a
remedy for the evil. They are still vainly looking for that text-book,
though India has a very old one and a very good one, which has
served the world for many ages. Plato found it twenty-three cen-
turies ago — ' To use the beauties of earth as steps along which he
mounts upwards.' Our forefathers knew it when they built the
most famous of our seats of learning and joined the resources of art
to the richest of Nature's endowments. Darwin, in the nineteenth
century, proclaimed the scientific truth contained in it, when he
taught the influence of environment upon the development
of species.

It is not perhaps astonishing to find that many educationists in
India, both native and European, have not risen higher in their
conception of education than the routine of instruction which for
many generations has been considered the only one suitable for an
English gentleman. We have taught English to the Indian school-
boy just as Greek is taught to the English schoolboy. All the
accidence, prosody and etymology, which to the average English
schoolmaster represent Greek literature and thought, stand for
Shakespeare's ' native wood-notes wild ' in the mind of the average
Indian teacher. And the attitude of Indian educationists towards
art only reflects the universal ideas of the greater part of the nine-
teenth century not only in England but in the greater part of
Europe. But the vital difference between the conditions prevailing
in Europe and in India make the consequences of our educational
deficiencies and mistakes far more serious to the Indian social system
than they are to our own. The Englishman's school career is only
one of the many influences which help to form his character and
mental development. He has endless opportunities — both during
his schooldays and afterwards — of supplying for himself the wants
of his individual aptitudes and tendencies which his school-training
leaves unsatisfied. The public-school system, with all its short-
comings, at least leaves him with a mens sana in corpore sano,
free and eager to fight the battle of life. The same cannot always
be said for higher education in India. The ordinary Indian
schoolboy, directly he leaves his vernacular studies and enters upon
his University course, finds himself in an entirely artificial environ-
ment of ideas in which even his teachers are often helpless to guide
him. Certainly there is a small proportion of students whose
families for several generations have lived in close intercourse with
European society and have adopted more or less English ways of
living. Such students begin their regular English studies under
much more favourable conditions, for they have learnt to speak
English and to imbibe English ideas almost from childhood. But
the great majority of Indian students have little or nothing outside

202 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

the four walls of their schoolhouse or college to aid them in finding
their way along the bewildering paths of European thought. Less
resourceful and less active than their English fellows, as Indian
schoolboys generally are, it is not surprising, when they discover
so little food for their reflective and imaginative faculties in the
mental fare provided for them, that they should be quite content
to let the most precious part of their intellectual possessions lie
fallow and only cultivate that which promises the surest and easiest
way of obtaining their academic diplomas — namely, a retentive
memory. Spending the best part of their schooldays in dingy and
dirty class-rooms and in the squalor of even dingier and dirtier
lodgings, with little or nothing of the distractions which help to
make the English boy's schooldays the happiest time of his life,
their brains constantly racked in the endeavour to assimilate what
the incompetence or indifference of their teachers often reduces to
a meaningless jargon of words, there need be little wonder that so
many finish their school career with no other ambition and no other
hope than to find at last some comfortable harbour for cerebral
inertia in a Government or private office.

Yet, however much some of our educational methods may be open
to criticism, it must always be allowed that in the introduction of a
system of higher education, based upon the teaching of a language
and ideas entirely foreign to the people, there have been extraordinary
difficulties. The intellectual gifts which make a really great teacher
are as rare as a four-leaved shamrock, and it is hardly the fault of
the Indian Education Department, with its huge organisation, that
it has not been able to grow enough for its requirements. Its
weakest points, perhaps, have been those which are the common
failings of all Government departments — too great reliance on cut
and dried systems and too little attention to the quality and training
of its executive officers. But I fear that history will not judge the
treatment of the artistic side of education in India with the same indul-
gence, for on the one hand we have neglected the most magnificent
opportunity, and on the other hand countenanced and encouraged
the most ruthless barbarity. Even the Goths and Vandals in their most
ferocious iconoclasm did less injury to art than that which we have
done and continue to do in the name of European civilisation. If
the Goths and Vandals destroyed, they brought with them the
genius to reconstruct. But we, a nation whose aesthetic understand-
ing has been deadened by generations of pedantry and false teaching,
have done all that indifference and active philistinism could do to
suppress the lively inborn artistic sense of the Indian peoples. All
that recent Indian administrations have done to support and en-
courage art is but a feather in the scale against the destructive
counter-influences, originating in times less sympathetic to Indian
art, which have been allowed to continue under their authority.

1903 PHILISTINISM AND INDIAN ART 203

Schools of art have been established in the four chief Presidency
cities, but they have been left so much to their own devices- that for
thirty years the teaching in two of them ignored the very existence
of any indigenous art. For several years past one of the largest has
devoted itself almost entirely to the manufacture of aluminium
cooking- vessels, and this year another new enterprise in the applica-
tion of art to modern life evoked from the controlling authority of
this school the expression of a pious doubt as to whether experiment-
ing in flying machines was the proper function of a school of art !
Government subsidies have been given to art exhibitions, but with
so little discrimination or definite purpose that, instead of encoura-
ging the highest possible standard of design and workmanship — the
only justification of State aid — they have helped to degrade Indian
art, and in the long run to injure it commercially, by advertising
the inferior productions manufactured only for the European and
American markets. Though large sums have been spent in building
and maintaining them, there is hardly an art museum in India which
has had qualified artistic advice in the purchase of its collections.
These, however, are merely ordinary symptoms of nineteenth-century
incapacity to deal seriously and sanely with art questions ; and how-
ever well managed they might be, four schools of art, a half dozen
museums, and an occasional exhibition could not affect very deeply
the artistic sense of three hundred million people. If art had ever
been considered of sufficient importance in India to engage the
serious attention of responsible administrators, we should never have
placed any great reliance upon the artificial stimulants which , the
low vitality of our aesthetic constitutions renders necessary in
Europe. For the one conspicuous fact which must force itself upon
the attention of any one who seriously studies the artistic condition
of India is that in the real India, which exists outside the semi-
Europeanised society we have created, art belongs as much to the
everyday life of the people as it did in ancient Greece. In Europe
we play with art as a child plays with a toy, not knowing its use
except as a plaything. The artist is a specialist who is called in by
those who can afford to pay for the amusement ; but art is always
more or less a frivolity which serious and sensible people dispense
with as much as possible, except when it happens to be fashionable.
In the Hindu social organisation there are no schools of art, no art
museums, but art lives and is felt as much by the ryot as by the
maharajah. In the typical Hindu village every carpenter, mason,
potter, blacksmith, brass-smith, and weaver is an artist, and the making
of cooking-pots is as much an artistic and religious work as the
building of the village temple. So throughout our vast Indian
Empire there is a most marvellous store of artistic material available
for educational and economic purposes, such as exists nowhere in
Europe.

204 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

How have we used this extraordinary opportunity for restoring
the real classic ideal of education which the youth of England fondly
regard as their own ? The answer given by the schools, public
buildings and streets of Anglo- Indian towns and cities should make
us ashamed of nineteenth-century civilisation.

The great national educator in art, that which brings art home to
us and makes it live with us — namely, the architecture of the country
— we have practically converted in India into a Government monopoly.
Thus, for the last fifty years at least, we have had at hand a really
effective instrument by which, without spending an extra rupee, with-
out schools of art, without art museums, and without exhibitions, we
could have stimulated the whole artistic intelligence of the people and
brought prosperity to the principal art industries. This instrument we
have deliberately thrown away. Let us examine this point carefully.
In European architecture of the last few centuries there has gradually
grown up a hard and fast distinction between architecture and building
— the same false distinction which is commonly made between artistic
work and useful work. The natural consequence was that the builder
became less and less an architect, and the architect less and less a
builder. Gradually the builder became an unintelligent tool in the
hands of the architect, and the architect, instead of evolving artistic
ideas from structural necessities, came to regard his art either as a screen
for concealing the ugliness of construction or as a means of forcing
construction into certain conventional moulds which he wrongly
called ' styles.' With the total loss of artistic expression in building
which we reached in the middle of the nineteenth century, European
architecture degenerated into a confused jumble of archaeological
ideas borrowed from the buildings of former times. In India, on
the other hand, architecture has continued to be a living art down
to the present day, because there building and architecture are always
one. The master-mason is both builder and architect, just as he was
in Europe in the middle ages. Over a great part of Northern India
there still exist descendants of the master-builders of the Mogul
period, practising their art as it was practised in the days of Akbar,
Jehangir, and Shah Jehan. If they do not now produce anything to
compare with the masterpieces of those days, how could it be expected
under the conditions which our shortsighted policy imposes upon
them ? For ever since we have created a Government monopoly in
architecture, we have totally ignored these men, who could teach us
more of the art of building than we could teach them ; we have
boycotted them and the art industries dependent upon them, and
have foisted upon India the falsest of our nineteenth-century art,
which means nothing and teaches nothing, and is utterly unworthy
of the dignity and intelligence of the English nation.

What Fergusson wrote nearly thirty years ago in his History of
Indian and Eastern Architecture is almost as true now as it was then :

1903 PHILISTINISM AND INDIAN ART 205

Architecture in India is still a living art, practised on the principles which
caused its wonderful development in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, and there consequently, and there alone, the student of architecture has a
chance of seeing the real principles of the art in action. In Europe, at the present
day, architecture is practised in a manner so anomalous and so abnormal that
few, if any, have hitherto been able to shake off the influence of a false system
and see that the art of ornamental building can be based on principles of common
sense, and that when so practised the result not only is, but must be, satisfactory.

What a tremendous impetus we should have given to Indian art
had we only made a sensible use of the men who thus carry on the
living traditions of architecture when we spent the many crores of
rupees which have been sunk in the so-called imposing public
buildings of Bombay and Calcutta ! What an object-lesson those
cities might have been both to ourselves and to the rest of the
Empire ! Are these indigenous styles of India all unsuitable for our
requirements in building ? No one will imagine that who tries to
appreciate the essential difference between a living and an academic
style of architecture. The modern European architect, when he is
designing, holds up to his mind, either consciously or unconsciously,
some ancient building or buildings as patterns to imitate. This is
why we so often see theatres like Greek temples, hospitals like
churches, and suburban villas like mediaeval castles. The original
designers of these pattern buildings very rarely thought of imitating
anything else. They were taught how to build, and having learnt,
they made their buildings suitable for the purposes for which they
were intended, without any thought of the buildings their ancestors
had made for their own purposes. It is exactly the same with the
modern Indian architect. It is unreasonable to suppose that such
past masters in the art of building as the Moguls showed themselves
to be, could not have designed a hospital, police station, railway
station, or any other accessory of modern life, as well as they built a
palace, mosque, or mausoleum. No one can suppose that they would
have been so stupid as we are and make a hospital like a mosque or
a town-hall like a mausoleum. Neither is it reasonable to assume
that the descendants of these men, who still carry on their traditions,
could not understand our requirements if we attempted to teach
them or gave them the opportunity of learning. But the Indian
Public Works engineers, with a few exceptions, have never attempted
to study the architecture of the country and have always worked on
the blind assumption that the native architects have only built
temples and mosques, forgetting that we ourselves have destroyed, or
allowed to decay, most of the civil buildings which the Mogul and
other Indian architects constructed.

But how, it may be asked, does this architectural question affect
the problem of general education ? Because, until the art education
of India is put upon a sane and practical basis, art can never take

206 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

the place it ought to take in a thorough system of general education.
As long as the great Grovernment building department in India uses
its whole influence to stifle the artistic sentiments of the people, it
stultifies all that is being done or might be done educationally in a
different direction. For every one who knows India is aware what a
powerful influence Grovernment initiative has upon popular feeling.
In England, if the Grovernment were to adopt ancient Egyptian or
Babylonian architectural ideas in the designs of public offices, it is
highly improbable that the Eoyal Institute of British Architects
would make the practice of these styles compulsory on its members,
or that the general public would follow official example. But in
India official authority controls the fashion in architecture, as in
many other things, especially in the more advanced or more
Europeanised provinces. The Engineering Colleges in India follow
the example of Coopers Hill in teaching only European styles, and
even European architects who are not in Grovernment service are
obliged by force of circumstances to adopt the official fashion. So
the native hereditary builder has been deprived of all official and a
great deal of non- official patronage unless he has forsaken the art
of his forefathers and blindly followed his blind European leaders.
Consequently also the wood-carvers, stone -carvers, painters, and all the
other craftsmen connected directly or indirectly with architecture
(a category which includes nearly all the industrial arts), find the
principal source of employment cut off from them. Thus do we, in
the name of European culture and civilisation, crush out the artistic
feeling of the Indian peoples.

What then are the necessary steps to take in order to put the
Indian educational system on a better footing with regard to art
teaching ? For if we really believe in the teaching of Greek philosophy
and Grreek civilisation we must be convinced that it is no real educa-
tion which does not help to develop all the higher imaginative
faculties. First we must accept the principle which the Grreeks
acted upon, that which has been acknowledged more or less in every
country, though in the nineteenth century we tried to ignore it —
namely, the influence of environment on the development of mind
and character. The greatness or meanness of men's motives is
reflected in the surroundings they make for themselves ; and inversely,
if we educate young India to mean and ignoble surroundings we
must not expect great things from them, either respect for us or
respect for themselves. Who can doubt that the situation of Eton
College, with all its noble surroundings in that lovely part of the
Thames Valley which is the delight of every artist, has had a
great influence for good — not the less profound because it cannot be
gauged by examinations — on the mind and character of those who
have had the advantage of learning in the most famous of English
schools ! Eton is not an isolated example ; most of the old English

1903 PHILISTINISM AND INDIAN ART 207

schools and colleges are distinguished both by architectural beauty
and by the beauty of their surroundings. Though it cannot be
stated in definite terms or calculated by statistics, the whole
English nation benefits spiritually, morally, and intellectually by
the wisdom and loving care of our forefathers when they built
the old schools and colleges of which we are justly proud. If we
had shown more of the same wisdom and care in our educational
efforts in India, the feeble shoot of Western culture which we have
been trying to graft upon the ancient civilisation of the country
might by now have been a more vigorous branch. There are many
colleges and schools connected with Indian universities in which the
most ordinary necessities and decencies of school life are hardly
attended to. A short time ago the Vice-Chancellor of the Bombay
University referred in a lecture to certain schools in Upper India in
which, he said, everything was fitted to depress the minds of the
students : the rooms that were there were destitute of proper light,
destitute of every kind of reasonable appliances, and yet these
institutions rejoiced in a high-sounding title and were recognised
by the University. I think every one will agree with the Vice-
Chancellor's view that it would be better to conduct a high school
under the shadow of a banyan tree than in such places as these, for
much of the ancient culture of India has grown up under banyan
trees. Such cases as these may be extreme, but hardly anywhere in
India — certainly not in Bengal — has it yet been accepted as an axiom
that education has a great concern in choosing or arranging har-
monious surroundings for schools and colleges.

When we have attended to the surroundings of schools, let us turn
our attention to the buildings and try to free our minds from the
popular fallacy that art is an expensive luxury. Art is a luxury
with us, only because we in our foolishness have made it so. In
India art is no luxury ; it is the common property of the poorest and
the richest. The art of the peasant is just as real and just as true as
the art of the greatest maharajah. We practise no economy, but the
most reckless wastefulness, when we check the natural development
of Indian art and architecture and surround Indian students with all
the ugliness Europe produced in the nineteenth century. Set Indian
art free to follow its natural channel, remove the impediments we
have placed in its course, and it can minister to the spiritual and
intellectual needs of India and at the same time increase the
prosperity of the people and add to the resources of the State. And
when we have provided Indian students with an environment which
will help to elevate their moral and intellectual faculties, let us try
in every way to stimulate their love for what is beautiful in nature
and in art. The Government of India and some of the local Grovern-
ments publish from time to time many excellent illustrations of

208 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

Indian art and architecture, which in India, at least, serve no other
purpose than to help to fill the almirahs of Government offices.
Such illustrations might be used to brighten the class-rooms and
corridors of Indian schools and colleges, and to accustom the eyes of
students to beautiful things. Let us get rid of that false culture
which reduces education to a dull system of mental gymnastics,
which crams an Indian undergraduate with Shakespeare's plays, but
leaves him ignorant of everything in heaven and earth that Shake-
speare included in his philosophy. It is not education, but the
most pernicious pedantry, which uses Western culture to blind the
eyes and stop the ears of Indian youth to all that the nature, the art,
and the culture of their own country have to teach them.

With regard to methods of direct art teaching, an intelligent
system of instruction in drawing should not only develop the powers of
observation but teach students to appreciate beauty of form and line.
We should by all means avoid in India the mistake so frequently
made in English public schools through which art education comes
to mean amateur picture-painting. Picture-painting holds precisely
the same place in art that novel-writing and poetry hold in litera-
ture. I imagine that no serious educationist would ever propose to
make practice in writing novels or poems the principal part of
literary exercise in public schools. The increase in the number of
minor novelists and minor poets which such a system would produce
is too alarming to contemplate. It is only another proof of the
incapacity of our generation to take art seriously that we should
have ever adopted such a method of art teaching as a part of
general education.

When students have been taught to observe and their hands
have been practised in drawing, I know of no better way of develop-
ing their artistic perception than the practice of elementary design.
Design is the foundation of all art practice, and, properly taught, it
is not only a very fascinating study, but it tends to healthier and
wider views of art than sketching in oils and water-colours.

The Indian student has a great natural aptitude for ornamental
design which can be easily developed. I have always made a point
of including elementary design in the course for the native drawing
teachers trained under me in the Madras and Calcutta Schools of
Art, and I have seen some excellent work done by the pupils of these
teachers in some of the Madras colleges.

I believe that work of this kind is educationally valuable, even
though the students' after- vocation may be only to fill up official
forms or to write objection statements.

To understand beauty, to enjoy it and feel that it is necessary for
us, is surely not merely idle gratification. The whole history of
mankind shows how generation after generation of every race strive,

ia03 PHILISTINISM AND INDIAN ART 209

consciously or unconsciously, to understand beauty. It is a struggle
to lift ourselves into a higher plane of intelligence, to obtain in this
life some dim knowledge of one of the eternal laws on which the
universe is constructed, a presentiment of that Nirvana of perfect
beauty of which Plato wrote, on which all the hopes of humanity are
fixed.

E. B. HAVELL.

(Principal, Government School of Art, Calcutta.)

VOL LIU — No, 312

210 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

THE STUDY OF GREEK

THE vote of the Oxford Congregation retaining Greek as a com-
pulsory subject for a pass degree is not likely to be permanent. The
majority was not large, and it is seldom that great universities adopt
serious changes in a hurry. But modern Oxford is full of the
intellectual restlessness which mental vigour begets and is more
liable than it ever was before to the pressure of the outer world.
Now the outer world are only too apt to agree with the opinion of
Bismarck, recorded by Busch, that Russian is quite as difficult as
Greek, and much more useful. The question might well be left
to practical educationalists, as instructors of youth are now called, if
only they were unanimous. But when we find the Headmaster of
Eton and the Headmaster of Marlborough taking diametrically
opposite views, an ordinary citizen who has conjugated the verb 'to
teach ' only in its passive mood is emboldened to express his views.
I venture, therefore, to say that I do not believe the study of Greek
would suffer if it were made voluntary. When Bishop Thirlwall was
told that at Cambridge, of which he was so illustrious an ornament, the
choice lay between compulsory religion and no religion at all,he replied,
' The distinction is too subtle for my mental grasp.' It is, no doubt,
true that Greek has been well and effectively taught to unwilling
pupils. But it may also be true that the amount of Greek acquired
by a passman at Oxford, or a passman at Cambridge, is not worth
the time bestowed upon the acquisition. On the other hand, the
removal of compulsion would not leave Greek to stand upon its own
merits and the disinterested enthusiasm of heaven-born students.
It would still lead to posts of honour and emolument even in this
world. There would still be classical scholarships and classical
fellowships, and similar incentives to those who had not the sacred
thirst of Browning's Grammarian. Latin, like French, is a necessity.
Greek, like German, is a luxury. The late Lord Coleridge used to
say that if mankind were sharply divided into an educated and an un-
educated class, he supposed he should be in the educated one.
He was an accomplished scholar in the old-fashioned sense of the
word. Total ignorance of French, or of Latin, is hardly compatible
with education as now understood. They belong to the common

1903 THE STUDY OF GREEK 211

knowledge of cultivated persons in all civilised communities. Almost
every word in the last sentence is Latin in its origin. Of course,
a eulogy of the electric telegraph is as Greek, good or bad, as a
prophylactic against dyspepsia, a diatribe against anarchy, as the
hypothesis of amnesty, as a political panacea, the thesis that philo-
sophic despotism is Utopian, the hydrostatic paradox, the poly-
gamous prophet. But Latin words are a natural element in even ver-
nacular English, and Greek words, though acclimatised, are intruders.
Grote's endeavour to appropriate them was unsuccessful. As
Macaulay said before the days of Newnham and Girton, if a youDg
lady were to read that Alcibiades won the favour of the Athenian
people by the novelty of his theories and the expensiveness of his
liturgies, she would get a very inaccurate idea of Greek history.
Nowadays she would, of course, know that a theory in this connexion
was an embassy, and a liturgy a public office. A knowledge of Latin is
essential for every lawyer, for every doctor, for every man of letters,
of science, or of affairs. Latin has been, since the days of the
Eoman Republic, a sort of universal language. It never entirely
died out, even in the dark ages. Greek for several centuries
absolutely disappeared from the world. Dante could not read
Aristotle, ' the master of them that know,' in the original tongue.
Petrarch knew nothing and could know nothing of Theocritus.
Erasmus in the sixteenth century was denounced as a heretic for
editing the New Testament in the language with which almost the
whole of it was composed. Omne ignotum pro hceretico. Latin was
always orthodox because it never had to be rediscovered.

The Renaissance, a beautiful name for a beautiful thing, not
harsh and pedantic like Renascence, was the revival or new birth of
learning which succeeded the obscurity of the Middle Ages, when
ignorant armies clashed by night. Perhaps the best account ever
given of that wonderful movement which has never died out, because
it permanently reconnected the ancient with the modern world, is
Sir Richard Jebb's chapter in the first volume of the Cambridge
Modern History. The ease, grace, and purity of Sir Richard's style
are not more excellent, though they may be more attractive, than
the masterly condensation and artistic proportion of the narrative.
It is a fortunate accident that this exhaustive essay should have
appeared just when the place of Greek in education had come
within the range of practical debate. The Renaissance exhibited
Greek once for all as the fount and origin of Western culture, the
' force and potency,' to adopt Tyndall's words, of every form of
intellectual life. Latin, on the other hand, occupied then, as it
occupies now, a different position. The elegant trifles in which
such scholars as Cardinal Bembo indulged, the tortured Ciceronianism
which Erasmus, most Ciceronian of writers, afterwards turned into
ridicule, did not represent the real value of Latin. Even the

p 2

212 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

beautiful verses of Petrarch in the fourteenth and of Politian in the
fifteenth century were froth on the surface of modern Latinity.
Latin was then an instrument of government, the language of affairs,
the recognised means of communication between the educated classes
of Europe. Of course it is not that now. But it is embedded in
history, the records of the past can scarcely be understood without
it ; it is the foundation of French and Spanish, as well as of Italian, and
to write English prose without the use of Latin words is a mis-
directed effort of ingenuity. Sir Richard Jebb tells us that the
classical Eenaissance had two aspects. ' In one,' he says, ' it is the
recovery of a lost culture ; in another, of even higher and wider signifi-
cance, it is the renewed diffusion of a liberal spirit which for
centuries had been dead or sleeping.' Two aspects, not two parts ; for
parts are separable, and aspects are not. The culture lost and
regained included the spiritual freedom which had been buried with
it. If one may say so without irreverence, where the spirit of the
Greeks is, there is liberty. ' To be free, to understand, to enjoy ' were
declared by an acute and original philosopher, Thomas Hill Green,
to be the claims of modern thought. No words could better express the
attitude of Greek mind and character in the palmy days of Athens.
The great men of the Renaissance found something more, something
higher, than literary beauty in the Greek manuscripts which they
deciphered, collated, and edited. They discovered the passionate
enthusiasm for freedom, not for the mere absence of outward
restraint which may leave men inwardly slaves, but for the conscious
exercise of the mental faculties upon the problems of life and mind.
Liberty has always by some persons been abused. If it could not be
abused, it would not be liberty. The abuse was copied as well as the
use, and there is a side of the Renaissance almost wholly evil.
The exemplaria Grceca are vitiis imitabUia. You may reproduce the
faults, and only the faults, of the Greek models. But do not blame
the Greeks, though they be not as blameless as the Ethiopians. As
well complain of writing because it enables men to forge cheques, or
of arithmetic because without it they could not cook accounts.

The Renaissance succeeded to the scholastic philosophy, upon
which minds of the highest order had wasted their strength. By
applying Aristotelian logic to patristic theology they had put the
match to the magazine and blown the entire structure into the air.
Humanism went back to nature and truth, to knowledge, to cul-
ture, and to instinct. It took the course which is taken in actual
education at the present day, by approaching Greek through Latin,
by going, like Alice, behind the looking-glass. If we abstract from
Latin poetry of the first class that which is not Greek in its origin,
we shall be left with little except the Satires of Juvenal. It is
otherwise, no doubt, with Latin prose. Yet Cicero's philosophical
treatises are avowed imitations of Plato, and his letters teem with

1903 THE STUDY OF GREEK 213

scraps of Greek at which Plato would have stared in amazement.
That was the Greek of Cicero's own time, and Cicero quoted it as we
should quote French. But he would have been proud, not ashamed,
of the fact that he adopted the Athenians as his masters. That
Greece conquered her Roman conquerors is the tritest of Horatian
commonplaces, and one of the few really musical hexameters
Horace ever wrote describes the long duel in which Greece
was engaged with barbarism.1 The early and the late Renaissance
are respectively typified by Petrarch and Politian. Petrarch was
born in 1304, and died in 1374. He was an orthodox member
of the Catholic Church, and one proof among many that the
Renaissance is not as such pagan. An accomplished writer of
Virgilian poetry, and in a less degree of Ciceronian prose, he studied
hard, but unsuccessfully, to learn Greek. As Sir Richard Jebb
points out, Greek could not then be acquired through Latin or
Italian. A Greek teacher was necessary, and the Greek teachers of
Constantinople had not in the time of Petrarch come to Florence.
When they came they introduced Greek scholarship, which was also
fostered by the visits of Italian students to Constantinople. Twenty
years after Petrarch's death, Manuel Chrysoloras arrived in Florence
and gave lectures on the classical authors of Greece. Boccaccio
knew a little Greek, and would have thoroughly appreciated Lucian,
who endeavoured to reproduce in the decline of literature the Attic
Greek of the past days. But Politian, whose short life was more
than covered by the latter half of the fifteenth century, is the finest
flower of the Renaissance. He translated four books of the Iliad
into Latin when he was sixteen, and when he was eighteen he
brought out an edition of Catullus, who is almost as Greek as
Homer. The rhetorical genius of his Latin hexameters is highly
praised by Sir Richard Jebb, a consummate judge. Yet even
Politian was much better acquainted with Latin than with Greek,
and was inclined to indulge in the paradox of putting Virgil above
Homer. Not till the age of Erasmus and the great Venetian
publisher Aldo, when the fifteenth century was passing into the
sixteenth, did Greek acquire the position it has ever since maintained.
The Aldine editions of the Greek classics began in 1493 and were
continued till 1513, when they reached their climax in the famous
Plato, dedicated to Pope Leo the Tenth. Sir Richard Jebb
mentions the curious and interesting circumstance that the Aldine
type was cast from the handwriting of a Cretan named Musurus, as
Person in the eighteenth century furnished a model for the
Cambridge type identical with the printed Greek of the present day.
The Aldine editions were as cheap as they were splendid, and
from their appearance dates the general diffusion of Greek litera-
ture among the educated classes. The influence of Erasmus, first
1 ' Graecia barbarize lento collisa duello.'

214 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

and greatest of Broad Churchmen, was powerfully exerted on the
side of Christian humanism as opposed to monkish ignorance and to
the prohibition of free inquiry. The modern scholar, with his luxurious
apparatus of commentaries and lexicons, can but dimly imagine the
poverty of the materials with which his predecessors in the time
of Erasmus, or even in the time of Bentley, had to do their
work. The prejudice against Greek as dangerous and unorthodox
was finally dispelled by the wit and the irony, the piety and the
learning of the Epistolce Obscurorum Virorum. The Kenaissance
in its largest and fullest sense was represented by Eabelais,
Cervantes, and Shakespeare. The learning of Rabelais was as
colossal as his humour, in which he is akin with Aristophanes.
Cervantes embodies the triumph of the modern spirit over
medisevalism. Shakespeare, if one may safely say anything of him
except that he is universal, expressed the full and complete glory of
intellectual freedom before the Puritan reaction set in.

Latin is a practical language, and a little of it sometimes goes a
long way. No one who remembers the story of the apparition which
Rab Tull, the Town Clerk of Fairport, saw in the Antiquary's Green
Room will be disposed to undervalue even a smattering of that
tongue. ' Aweel,' said Ghrizel Old buck, ' Rab was a just-living man
for a country writer, and he was less fear'd than maybe might just
hae been expected ; and he asked in the name o' goodness what the
apparition wanted — and the spirit answered in an unknown tongue.
Then Rab said he tried him wi' Erse, for he cam in his youth frae
the braes of Grlenlivat — but it wadna do. Aweel, in this strait, he
bethought him of the twa or three words o' Latin that he used in
making out the town's deeds, and he had nae sooner tried the spirit
wi' that, than out cam sic a blatter o' Latin about his lugs, that
poor Rab Tull, wha was nae great scholar, was clean overwhelmed.'
But he heard the word which, such was his erudition, he knew to
be the Latin for paper, and the ghost of Aldobrand Oldenbuck
guided him to the lost deed of which he was in search. This is the
modern test of education. Will it be of use to you in after life ?
Let Latin then by all means be compulsory, for other reasons, and
for that. After the age of academic honours and emoluments Greek,
like good sense, is its own reward. No deed was ever discovered, no
fortune was ever made, by means of a Platonic Dialogue. The
pursuit of truth is not lucrative. Indeed it has a tendency to draw
men away from their proper business of making money. The
teaching of Socrates was worth infinitely more than all the gold then
or now existing in the bowels of the earth, and he died in poverty
by the hand of the public executioner. In the Athens of the fifth
century, which was what we mean by Greece, there were doubtless men
of great practical wisdom. There was Pericles. There was Thucy-
dides. There was Aristophanes. But intellectual versatility, not

1903 THE STUDY OF GREEK 215

common sense, was the strong point of the Athenians. The Romans
founded a vast empire, which has long since crumbled into dust.
The Greeks produced a literature not very large in quantity, but
infinitely precious in quality, which exercises at this moment a
commanding influence over the thoughts and speculations of man-
kind. ' What is the glory of Csesar and Alexander to that ? ' It is the
Latin writers who primarily testify to the intellectual supremacy of
Greece. That such a man as Virgil, perhaps the most musical of all
poets, should have been content to imitate first Theocritus, secondly
Hesiod, and finally Homer, is a phenomenon without a parallel
from the dawn of letters to our own time. Frederic Myers in his
beautiful essay on the Mantuan poet, the finest tribute to him
that I know except Tennyson's poem, shows how continuous through
the ages have been the charm and power of Virgilian phrases and
Virgilian melodies over the human heart and soul. John Henry
Newman, imparting to the idea a Christian turn, speaks of the
pathetic half-lines, giving utterance, like the voice of Nature
herself, to that pain and weariness, yet hope of better things, which
is the inheritance of her children in every clime. A greater than
Newman, one of the three or four supreme poets vouchsafed by
Providence to man, made Virgil the object of profound and reverent
study. Yet Virgil, with all the matchless charm of his exqui-
site and inimitable verse, was no more an original poet than Cicero
was an original philosopher, or Terence was an original playwright.
Greece, to quote his own mighty line, had breathed on him with
the winds of her lightning, and touched him with the finger of
flame.2 Terence, most graceful and elegant comedian, is now
supposed to have simply translated Menander, unless, indeed, as
some say, he was a mere amanuensis of the real translator, Scipio
Africanus. Plautus, who wrote the purest and raciest vernacular, as
became a slave born in the house,3 is believed to have copied
Diphilus and other Greeks as faithfully as Moliere in the Amphi-
tryon copied him. We think of Horace as the type of a Roman
gentleman, and so he was. But his metres, his subjects, even the
perfect style, of his Odes were Greek. That Catullus translated a
poem of Sappho and a poem of Callimachus we know. How
many other Greek poems he translated we do not know, but in all
probability they were numerous. This sort of literary imitation is
common enough, and in ordinary circumstances is hardly worth
pointing out. But the peculiarity in this case is that the imitators
and copyists were poets of the highest, or almost the highest, order,
not mere versifiers, but men of genius. Yet so complete was the
ascendency of Greek poetry over their minds, that they copied it as a
painter copies nature, and would have been equally at a loss without
it. Virgil carried this form of devotion to quite a touching extreme.
2 ' Fulminis afflavit ventis, et contigit igni.' 3 Verna.

216 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

There is a line in one of his Eclogues which makes perfect nonsense,
because he misunderstood the corresponding passage in Theocritus,
and yet never doubted that, as it was Theocritus, it must be all right.
People who learn Latin cannot help learning Greek too. Eichard
Person, as is well known, desired, and was content, to be remembered,
as one who had done something for the text of Euripides. Yet
Person was much more than a merely learned man. His natural
powers of mind were probably not inferior to Gibbon's or to Burke's.
His wit was celebrated in a witty age, and he was almost as great a
master of irony as Pascal. Every reader of the Letters to Arch-
deacon Travis, most luckless of archdeacons, will admit that there
have been few such writers of English as Porson. Painful and
tragic circumstances obstructed the full development of his
literary genius. He did not follow the example of the Greeks in
putting water with his wine. But, though fully conscious of his
intellectual strength, he did not consider that he wasted it in
collating the manuscripts of one Greek author. The suggestion that
* your Persons stain the purple they would fold,' is preposterous as
applied to Porson himself, whose reverence for the classics was as
profound as his knowledge of their meaning, and his appreciation of
their beauties. It cannot, of course, be proved that Porson was no
product of compulsory Greek. He may have acquired his style and his
handwriting in Long Chamber. But compulsion does not usually
beget enthusiasm. There can be no 1 scholars like Porson, though there
can be many like Travis. It was compulsion which turned out that
consummate philologist, the compiler of the Eton Greek Grammar,
with his OTTWS gaudet optativo, justly described as the most striking
instance of self-denial on record, inasmuch as that Greek preposition
is almost always found in the company of the future indicative. The
quantity and quality of the Greek required for a pass degree are respon-
sible for such precious compounds as ' sociology,' and ' automobile,' for
the notion that ' Anglophobe ' means one who hates England, and
' Turcophile ' one who loves Turkey ; for the theory that a ' Sympo-
sium' is a number of articles on the same subject, and for the belief,
which seems to be widely prevalent, that Maranatha is a Greek
adjective qualifying the Greek substantive Anathema.

When Sir Henry Maine said that 'except the blind forces
of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its
origin,' he is thought to have forgotten the Christian religion. But
he might have replied, if the objection had been put to him, that
at least the earliest forms of Christianity are Greek. He probably had
in his mind Homer, the father of poetry ; Herodotus, or, as I should
rather say, Thucydides, the father of history ; Plato, the father of
philosophy, and Aristotle, the father of science. The influence of
.Aristotle, as may be gathered from Dante, was predominant when
all knowledge of the language in which he wrote had disappeared

1903 TEE STUDY OF GREEK 217

from Western Europe. If the same cannot be said of Plato, it is
nevertheless true that there would no more have been an Aristotle
without a Plato than a Plato without a Socrates. By some odd and
perverse mischance there has been formed from Plato's name the
most unmeaning of English epithets, and a prime favourite with bad
writers in search of a word. But when Dr. Arnold said that he could
understand Coleridge better if Coleridge would write Platonic Greek,
he expressed, half unconsciously, the permanent power of an author
who had been dead for 2,300 years. He also illustrated the manner
in which it is worth while to know Greek. A very slight knowledge
of Latin is better than none. But to acquire a mere smattering of
Greek is simply waste of time, and results in nothing, or in absurd
derivations, of which ' pancake ' from irav KO.KOV is scarcely a caricature.
There is not the slightest danger of Greek dying out when it be-
comes a voluntary subject. Greek scholarship was never more exact
or more profound in the English Universities than it is to-day,
and certainly pass examinations, which alone are compulsory, have
nothing to do with the matter. In the eighteenth century, a
curious and not unlearned age, Greek was at rather a low ebb. Dr.
Johnson's Latin scholarship, if not elegant, was sound, thorough, and
robust. His Greek would scarcely carry him in these days through
Smalls or the Little Go. Whatever Pope may have translated Homer
from, it was not from the original. Voltaire loved the literature of
Eome, and especially the Bucolics of Virgil. But to compare these
with the Idylls of Theocritus was beyond his capacity. Carteret's
acquaintance with Greek was considered portentous, even stranger
than his faculty of talking German. Lady Mary Wortley was con-
spicuous not only among her sex, but in her age, for her familiarity
with the Greek as well as the Roman classics. Gibbon taught him-
self Greek, as he taught himself everything. But he was a miracle,
for which the ordinary chain of sequences will not account. The
vastness of Bentley's erudition cannot be denied, whatever may be
thought of his taste. Yet Bentley himself seemed even more gigantic
than he was when Boyle, and Atterbury, and Temple took an
ostensibly serious part in a classical dispute. The range of Burke's
reading, the amount of his acquirements, went far beyond Peel's, and
were equal to Gladstone's. But his Greek scholarship was childish com-
pared with Gladstone's or Peel's. Robert Lowe, who loved to depreciate
classical learning, knew more Greek than all the unprofessional
scholars of the eighteenth century, except Fielding and Gray. The
poets have done more than the doctors to stimulate and perpetuate
interest in the glory which was Greece, the grandeur which was Rome.
Some of the attempts which have been made to convert ancient
into modern poetry are indeed fanciful enough. A brilliant scholar
and delightful essayist, Professor Sellar, amused himself and fasci-
nated his readers by drawing an elaborate parallel between Catullus

218 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

and Burns. It would be hard to say which was the greater genius
of the two. For while the humour of Burns is infinitely above the
coarse scurrility of the Eoman poet, there is nothing in the love-songs
of the Ayrshire peasant, exquisite as they are, to be set beside the
intensity of passion and of despair which makes the verse of Catullus
glow and scorch with unquenchable fire. Burns owed nothing to the
classics nor to anyone except the author of the Gentle Shepherd. So
far as originality is possible to man, he was original, while Catullus
would have considered originality a sign or note of barbarism. He
believed, as all Eomans, including Veronese, of his time believed,
in the verbal inspiration of Hellenic poetry. It is improbable that
Burns had ever heard of Cynthia or of Sirmio. But yet it is easy
to understand how Sellar came to think of them together. The re-
semblance between them, if resemblance there be, lies less in their
sentiment, which with all its depth and fervour belongs also to
other men of other times, than in the peculiar pathos, to be felt, not
to be described, of such poems as that whose opening words are Si
qua recordanti, and that whose closing lines are :

Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly,
Never met, or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Tennyson found for Catullus an even more illustrious similitude.
With the instinct of critical genius he discovered an amplification
of Catullus's noblest couplet 3 in one of Shakespeare's most glorious
sonnets.

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long-since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight.

Of Catullus we may certainly say that whatever he wrote, except
mere expressions of personal love or hatred, was Greek in its origin.
A great poet of the next generation after Burns, the author of the
Ode to a Grecian Urn, which Wordsworth thought improper, was
equally innocent of the languages foolishly called dead. But Keats,
as all the world knows through his famous sonnet, fell in with one of
those rare translations which preserve the spirit without neglecting
the letter. There is not in English a finer rendering of Greek poetry
than Chapman's Homer, and the full, proud sail of his great verse
carried Keats away. Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in the cleverest, because
the most imaginative, of all his stories, tells how a modern English
clerk addicted to scribbling trash is suddenly visited by the spirit of
dvdfjLvijcris, or reminiscence, and describes a naval battle of the
Peloponnesian war, in which as a galley-slave he had been engaged.

3 ' Quo desiderio veteres revocamus amores,
Atque olim amissas flemus amicitias.'

1903 THE STUDY OF GREEK 219

The soul of our grandam may haply have inhabited a bird, and many
things, including the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare, are less
likely than that Keats was once a Greek poet whose works have
perished.

The scholars of the Italian Kenaissance have been not unjustly
accused of neglecting substance for style. No one, said Erasmus,
would have felt, more contempt for that brood of little Ciceronians
than Cicero himself. The leading men, such as Politian, are not
touched by this sarcasm, which may have suggested the brilliant
picture of a learned squabble drawn by George Eliot in Romola.
Erasmus was a true child of the Kenaissance, though as a Christian,
a scholar, and a man of fastidious literary taste, he saw all its defects.
Perhaps he was not sufficiently grateful to the men who, with all
their faults, relit the extinct torch of Greek scholarship, handed
down in uninterrupted succession, through Scaliger, Casaubon,
Bentley, Person, to our own day. ' The greatest intellect that ever
spent itself in the search for knowledge' is the judgment of
Casaubon's biographer, Mark Pattison, upon a greater than Casaubon,
the French or Italian Bentley, Scaliger. Bentley was a big man full
of small foibles, and they may be seen set forth at large in the fasci-
nating pages of his Life by Monk. His foibles are conspicuous in his
reckless emendations of Horace (though some display real genius), his
outrages upon the text of Milton, and his twenty years' war with
the Fellows of Trinity. His full stature appears in the immortal
treatise on the Epistles of Phalaris, and may be seen at a glance
by everyone who takes the slight trouble of reading his short
letter on Joshua Barnes's Homer. If the lives of the victims of
great men ever find a chronicler, a place beside Chelsum, and Davies,
and Travis, and Goezman, and Kobert Montgomery must be given
on account of Bentley to Boyle and Barnes. Barnes was a very good
example of superficial scholarship. He was by no means an ignorant
man. He knew enough to make blunders quite beyond the reach of
a dunce, and to destroy the possibility of restoring a text by changes
which were not merely absurd in themselves, but would, if adopted,
have removed all chance of finding the proper emendation. It is
not for a desultory amateur to affect contempt of sciolism, unless
sciolism occupies the professorial chair. But as Barnes was to
Bentley, so are the mechanical products of compulsory Greek to
Barnes. If they were asked in the witness-box, as the Claimant was,
what Greek they had read at school, they would probably not say
' Caesar.' They would remember that Caesar wrote a book for beginners
in Latin. But an aversion from the sight of the Greek alphabet is
the most definite result in many cases of ramming Greek syntax
into unsympathetic minds. It is the same with mathematics.
Mathematicians, like musicians, are born, not made, and are scarcely
less to be envied. Astronomy is their plaything, and they have the

220 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

instinct of exactitude. But the attempt to hammer mathematics
into unmathematical brains is useless torture, far worse than waste
of time. Arithmetic is, no doubt, essential, and comes, more or less,
by nature. But geometry is a mystery to thousands, and they can
derive no benefit from it, except a slight improvement of the memory
from learning Euclid by heart. There are certain beggarly elements,
as St. Paul calls them, which must be common to all education
worthy of the name. When they have been mastered, the sooner
the literary and the scientific portions of the human race are allowed
to separate, the better for both. If there is no water to which a horse
cannot be brought, there is none which he can be made to drink.

That most learned and excellent scholar, the Eector of Exeter,
defending his recent vote in Congregation against compulsory Greek,
declared the knowledge of it acquired by candidates for pass degrees
to be absolutely worthless. Of course there is the remedy of raising
the standard, and some would go so far as to abolish pass degrees
altogether. But, on the whole, it seems more reasonable to recognise
that Greek is an accomplishment, not an elementary subject, and
that the noblest of all languages is degraded by administration in
homoeopathic doses to recalcitrant schoolboys. From a merely philo-
logical point of view such smattering is useless, and it is even more
remote from literature than from philology. That classical authors
should be bandied with reverence is, to put it no higher, a respectable
superstition. But, on the other hand, the study of Greek is time
thrown away unless it results in a familiarity with the style and idiom
of the Greek writers from Homer to Theocritus, at least equal to an
educated Englishman's acquaintance with French. Mr. Gilbert
Murray's Euripides, the third volume of Mr. George Allen's Athenian
Drama, is a good example of the way in which a Greek author may
be treated by a real master of his subject, who can appreciate for
himself, and present to others, the inward and spiritual meaning of
ancient tragedy and comedy, Mr. Murray has adopted the unusual
and rather startling plan of combining The Bacchanals and The
Hippolytus, two of the greatest extant plays Euripides produced, with
that marvellous comedy The Frogs, in which Aristophanes made fun
of Euripides and everything Euripidean. ' To some readers,' he says
in his Preface, 'there may appear to be something irreverent in
allowing two noble tragedies to be so closely followed by a hostile
burlesque.' But The Frogs is far more than a burlesque. It is the
work of a poet as well as a satirist, of a man who, though fall of what the
French call I' esprit Gaulois, was steeped in all the culture of a highly
cultivated age, and it contains more good literary criticism than many
accredited treatises on the art. Mr. Murray calls it ' preposterously
unfair.' A burlesque can hardly be fair, and when Aristophanes
began to use his powers of sarcasm, he was apt to let himself
go. The defence of Euripides is well worth undertaking, and

1903 THE STUDY OF GREEK 221

few men are so well qualified to undertake it as Mr. Murray. But
Aristophanes is not responsible for the dull pedants, mostly German,
who have assumed that Euripides was a bad poet because the
greatest of all parodists made game of his peculiarities. Aristophanes
appreciated Euripides, if Schlegel did not, and Mr. Murray's brilliant
translations will show even the unclassical reader the absurdity of
the view that Euripides represents a dramatic decadence. Aristo-
phanes was a ferocious Conservative, and he has lampooned Socrates
as fiercely as Euripides, both being guilty of innovation, in his eyes
the worst of crimes. But Aristophanes was not a man who would
have wasted his strength on bad philosophers or bad poets. It
was a battle of giants in which he fought, and his audacious
satire did not spare ^Eschylus, whom, even on his own principles,
he was bound to revere. No dramatist has raised more problems, or
been the subject of more controversy, than Euripides. Mr. Verrall's
paradoxical and almost supernaturally clever pamphlet, Euripides
the Rationalist, attributes to ' sad Electra's poet ' a Machiavellian
subtlety not suspected by Aristophanes or Aristotle. The Bac-
chanals or BacchcB, translated by Mr. Murray, contains an un-
equalled representation of religious enthusiasm passing into religious
madness. Yet it is equally possible to hold that Euripides meant
to exalt the Bacchic frenzy, that he meant to decry it, or that
his object was purely dramatic. The abiding interest of Euripides
for critics of all nations and schools is a sufficient answer to the theory
that he fell away from the standard of ^Eschylus and Sophocles.
Which of the three was the greatest is a question that may be argued
for ever. That they all belonged to the highest order of dramatic
literature is a certain and incontestable truth. They differed, as
Cicero says, in quality not in degree, and it is strange that modern
critics should have selected for ignorant disparagement the most
modern of that mighty trio. Aristophanes' Apology contains an
eloquent and passionate defence of the tragic against the comic poet,
put into the mouth of an Athenian lady who has endured the moral
torture of sitting through a representation of the Lysistrata. Her
reminiscences are expressed with vigour, though with the prolixity of
Browning's later style, which makes consecutive quotation impossible.

Waves, said to wash pollution from the world,
Take that plague-memory, cure that pustule caught,
As, past escape, I sat and saw the piece
By one appalled at Phaidra's fate.

. that bestiality —
So beyond all brute-beast imagining,
That when, to point the moral at the close,
Poor Salabaccho, just to show how fair
Was ' Reconciliation,' stripped her charms,

222 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

That exhibition simply bade us breathe,
Seemed something healthy and commendable
After obscenity grotesqued so much
It slunk away revolted at itself.

Browning did not know Greek as Mr. Murray knows it. He was
not a professional scholar nor a deeply learned man. But he had a
robust and manly grasp of Greek literature, the fruit of voluntary
study, which was always a labour of love. His estimate of Aristo-
phanes was out of proportion because he put the accidental on a
level with the essential, the coarseness which is on the surface with
the poetry and humour which it sometimes overlays. Most English
critics, with the great and signal exception of Coleridge, have made a
similar mistake about Kabelais. The Lysistrata was certainly not
a play for women to go and see. The Adventures of Pantagruel is
perhaps not a book for them to read. Yet the real objects are in each
case noble. With Aristophanes, it was the establishment of peace and
good-will among men. With Kabelais it was the emancipation of
the human intellect from the trammels of monkish tyranny. But if
Browning's love of Euripides made him unjust to the author of The
Frogs and The Clouds, it led him to a spirited vindication of his
favourite poet against criticism often captious and sometimes absurd.
His own poetry was not exactly Greek in finish, or in restraint. Yet the
beautiful fragment which he called Artemis Prologises is strictly
classical both in form and in substance. Dearly as Browning loved
Euripides, he could not love him more than Milton did. Euripides
was to Milton what Virgil was to Dante, and the admiration
of Milton is conclusive for the English-speaking race. Milton's
Greek and Latin verses are not distinguished for accuracy, elegance,
or ease. But they are quite intelligible, and it illustrates the scholar-
ship of the eighteenth century that to four Archilochian iambics in-
scribed by Milton under a bad portrait of himself, Warton
appended the note, ' a satire on the engraver, but happily concealed
in an unknown tongue.' The lines are not a satire at all, but plain,
downright abuse of the unlucky artist, in remarkably bad Greek.
Milton's Greek is most perceptible in his English ; for instance, in that
fine passage which Macaulay quotes as after the manner of Euri-
pides :

But wherefore thou alone ? Wherefore with thee

Came not all hell broke loose ?

It does not fall within Mr. Murray's province, more's the pity, to
trace the influence of Euripides upon succeeding ages, from his own
to the fall of the Western Empire and from the Kenaissance to the
present day. ' Our Euripides, the human/ wrote a gifted lady, who
might have been a great poet if she could have made or avoided
rhymes. ' No one in modern times,' says Mr. Verrall, ' since Greek

1903 THE STUDY OF GREEK 223

has been well understood, has said that his dearest desire beyond the
grave would be to meet Euripides ; not this nor anything like it,'
as, for example, that his dearest desire was to meet Euripides beyond
the grave. But if no one has said this, Euripides has found modern
admirers as competent and as diverse as Milton and Fox. The
structure of his plays is faulty enough, unless we adopt the ingenious
hypothesis of Mr. Verrall, and assume that ridicule of the super-
natural is his secret purpose. But they abound in felicitous phrases, in
lovely songs, in exquisite descriptions of natural beauty, in maxims
of civic wisdom and political prudence. And there is something
more in them than that. Among the causes of sudden and
impressive influence upon sceptical minds enumerated by Bishop
Blougram, coupled with

A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
is

A chorus-ending from Euripides.

Perhaps Browning was thinking of those wonderful lines put into
the mouth of the Muse in the Hippolytus :

But if any far-off state there be,
Dearer than life to mortality ;
The hand of the Dark hath hold thereof;
And mist is under and mist above.
And so we are sick for life and cling
On earth to this nameless and shining thing.
For other life is a fountain sealed
And the deeps below are unrevealed,
And we drift on legends for ever.

The greatest of England's classical scholars, Eichard Bentley,
was not a man who undervalued his own countrymen, or even, that
last infirmity of noble mind, his own contemporaries. It was he who
wrote, and it was to Bishop Pearson he applied, the fine and striking
phrase, 'The dust of his writings is gold.' When his favourite
daughter, 'Jug,' lamented that her father's powers should be ex-
clusively devoted to work which was not original, he acknowledged
the justice of the complaint. ' But,' he added, with a simplicity and
a modesty he did not often show, ' the wit and genius of those old.
heathens beguiled me : and as I despaired of raising myself up to
their standard on fair ground, I thought the only chance I had of
looking over their heads was to get upon their shoulders.' And upon
their shoulders, he stands. If one may reverse Person's caustic
judgment of South ey, Bentley 's works will cease to be read when
Homer and Virgil are forgotten. Monk, who was a college tutor
before he became a dean and a bishop, tells us that pupils whom he
referred to the Dissertation on Phalaris for some particular point of
prosody or syntax, almost always read the book through. The native
force of that powerful mind dealt with the vast learning it had

224 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

accumulated as Adam Smith dealt with economic science, and
Gladstone with financial policy. A little learning makes a pedant.
It was not a real scholar who, preaching upon the subject of a new
organ, told his congregation that the Greeks called the instrument
TO opyavov. George Eliot used to cite Dean Milman, author, by the
way, of some of the most beautiful hymns in the English language,
as a man to whom intimate acquaintance with the classics had not
given good style, and Dean Merivale, known as ' Gibbon in slippers,'
would be a better instance still. But these examples are cited
because they are rare. They prove the existence of the rule.
There have been acknowledged masters of English prose who were
wholly innocent of Greek. Shakespeare's prose is inferior only to his
verse; the names of Bunyan and of Goldsmith will at once occur
to everyone. There is Cobbett, whom a famous scholar com-
pared with Cleon, and the letters of Burns have a fiery eloquence
of their own. Johnson, Byron, and Scott knew Greek chiefly, if
not wholly, through Latin. Jane Austen and Charles Dickens did
not know it at all. It is a commonplace that original genius can
dispense with extraneous aid. If Fielding is to be reckoned above
Kichardson as a novelist, it is because he had a sense of humour, and
not because his acquaintance with the Iliad enabled him to describe
the battle in the churchyard. Fielding's English is so idiomatic, so
stately, and so pure, that it seems to come straight from his own
brain and soul ; yet he himself confesses his debt to Lucian, who was
not a real classic, but a conscious and deliberate imitator of a style
which had not been written for hundreds of years. Since the loss
of Athenian independence every institution then existing in the
Western world has passed away; Greek literature itself perished,
and had to be rediscovered. It fell under the ban of the Church
as something outlandish, heretical, impious. Yet its influence upon
the culture of civilised communities is greater now than it has ever
been before, and if the study ceases to be compulsory, it will be
because no compulsion is needed, because Greek is a sixth sense.

HERBERT PAUL.

1903

PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL

4 PORT EOYAL ' as a name does not arouse any deep feeling of interest
in the average reader. I do not mean that anyone with some pre-
tence to education or with the faintest tinge of literary culture
would choose in the present day to acknowledge the ignorance which
a well-known Oxford man once confessed, when he owned that he
satisfactorily accounted for the name by referring to the history of the
town of Port Koyal in Jamaica. But, short of this ingenuous admission,
it is excusable, if one has no liking for religious controversy, and has
not read Sainte-Beuve's delightful history, that he should pause
before further inquiry. An unpleasant feeling of expectation, and
a sense of apprehension of what may be our fate, cause us to fear
that we shall be deafened by the confused din of religious dispute
in the atmosphere of the French Port Royal, and this stirs up a
spirit of disinclination against investigating too closely the causes
and circumstances of these once famous quarrels. Yet it is
necessary to glance at some of the historical facts, so that the actors
in the drama of the destruction of Port Royal may take their right
place, and keep the picture in due perspective before the more
important personages enter upon the scene.

L'Abbaye de Port-Royal, a convent of women near Chevrente and
Versailles, was founded in the thirteenth century in a wild and
swampy valley, and was under the rule of St. Bernard. The strict-
ness of that rule, however, became relaxed, as was the case in all
religious houses of that age. In 1608 twelve pious ladies made
there a kind of worldly retreat, under an abbess but eleven years
old, who, at the age of sixteen, revolutionised the government of the
community. If it were not of the first importance in a study of the
present kind to keep to the main lines of our subject — the relation
of Pascal to Port Royal — there would be great temptation to pause
a moment and contemplate the character of the great M&re
Angelique. Her brother, ' Le grand Arnauld,' and herself were the
two members of a family so distinguished that they could truly be
called great. She was born a great ruler, and, with a force which
never weakened into exaggeration, she compelled worldly women to
VOL, LI1L— No. 312 225 Q

226 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

take their vows seriously. ' Douce a force d'energie,' she developed
that indispensable quality in a ruler of observing everything, at the
same time being very reticent in reproof and mingling gentleness
with firmness in enforcing discipline.

I forget which of the celebrated beauties — was it Madame de la
Sabliere ? — was not unlikely to undermine her health by her fierce
enthusiasm for cleaning and scouring fireplaces. ' Ne pouvant plus
etre la premiere,' said the young reverend Mother gently, ' vous
voulez, ma soeur, etre la derniere,' and she gradually led her charge
back to the ways of religious humility.

But Mere Angelique's work in Port Royal was more important
than that of a directrice, however well inspired. In 1626 the com-
munity was established under her care in Paris, Rue St. Jacques.
There the influence of St. Cyran, the head of the Jansenists, pre-
pared the soil for the reception of the Augustinian doctrine of pre-
destination and grace, and the fanatical ardour with which the nuns
embraced these condemned doctrines gradually inspired the grave
Solitaires with the same enthusiasm. Mere Angelique, Jacqueline
Pascal, and the most gifted of the nuns led the way ; and when, in
1635, Port Royal des Champs was established, the goodly array of
learned men with the great Arnauld at their head, and later on with
Pascal as their champion, presented a brave front to the enemy.
But that enemy was the Pope and the Catholic Church, and the new
band of thinkers was crushed, as was inevitable. Yet, if outward
submission had been shown, this catastrophe would probably have
been averted in the same way as Quietisme was gently suppressed in
spite of the imposing personality of Fenelon. For, after all, St.
Augustine was not to be ignored as an obscure Father of the Church.
The Solitaires were not ignorant men ; they were trained to discern
every turn in the controversial fight that he waged against the
Pelagian heresy. They knew that in spite of the leaning of St.
Thomas and the Schoolmen in favour of reason and free-will, the
reverence for St. Augustine as the acknowledged and orthodox
defender of the opposite doctrine was never withheld for a moment.
It is well to keep this in sight, for in the perception by the greatest
divines and by the deepest philosophers, that truth lies in the firm
apprehension of opposites is to be found the key to the mystery
of Pascal's genius. The raging bitterness of controversy between
the advocates of predestination and grace, of philosophic hair-
splitting in the quarrel between free-will and necessity, seem to fade
before this enforced yielding of each side to the other. In tracing
this perception, which gradually made itself felt, a gleam of bright-
ness unexpectedly illuminates the gloomy writings of the most
dogmatic theologians. Luther opposes grace to works, but some-
times falters in the positiveness of his conclusions. From the
Council of Trent, which enjoined that the doctrine of grace and the

1903 PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL 227

freedom of the will should be held together, on through countless
instances of the ' foreshadowing of the modern doctrine of monism,
we reach Pascal, whose grasp of the identity of contradictories seems
more comprehensive even than Hegel's. His eloquent expression of
the idee mere makes all other attempts at an exposition fall in a dull
and listless tone on the ear.

It is this consideration which gives the study of Pascal's career
its peculiar interest. The endeavour to bring life into old con-
troversies would be as futile as it would be uninteresting. There
may be — no doubt there are — some thinkers to whom the funda-
mental contention at the root of these controversies is fraught with
meaning ; but the attempt to put this motive forward to the world
in general as an inducement to study the life of Pascal would defeat
its own object. Nor is it the keen appreciation of the different
aspects of Pascal's character that should lead to the narrow course of
considering one of these aspects to the exclusion of the others. It
is not as a philosopher or a scientist or a devout believer that Pascal
should be judged. He was all this, but he was much more. The
things he dealt with are not of yesterday, of to-day, or of to-morrow.
They are as high and real as Eternity and as fathomless as space,
and when in detail the mysteries of life, death, and destiny are
dealt with, we must rejoice in being under the spell of genius — the
genius of Pascal.

At this point I feel induced to quote a modern appreciation of
Pascal by one of the most subtle of French critics : l

That a man should profess the most intolerant Catholicism that has ever fired
any human soul, should abhor irreligion not as an error but as a crime, should
degrade human nature by reducing it to a mere gulf of folly or perversity, should
preach Faith imposed by Force, should curse liberty, should deny the existence of
progress, should even insult literature after having dragged through the mire
philosophy, science, morality, all the splendid spangles of the show that is called
human society — that he should do all this, and yet see his glory only the greater
at the very time when the most stainless fames are drifting to forgetfulness, and
yet be admired by atheists, worshipped by sceptics, almost venerated by a genera-
tion fanatical for free thought, progress, and tolerance — that is assuredly a strange
paradox, and such was the fate of the great Pascal.

The feeling and colour in this sympathetic passage recall, from
sheer contrast, the critical notices of the same man by Englishmen
that have appeared from time to time, and revive in the present
writer the acute sense of disappointment and discontent which found
expression at the moment in a few words of protest. This protest
seems to receive fresh life from the consolatory hope that the French
and not the English interpretation of Pascal is the true one.

Only a decade ago realistic novelists and analytical physiologists
seemed inclined to make a complete surrender of every aspiration
and of every faculty to the most hopelessly pessimistic philosophy
1 Etudi-s et Portraits, par Paul Bourget.

Q 2

228 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

with which poor humanity has jet been threatened. But at the
present time there seems to be growing up silently and very slowly
a school in the note of whose teaching may be detected an under-
tone of rebellion — not very accentuated, and dealing more in
suggestion than in statement — against this surrender. The para-
graph just quoted from M. Bourget is an indication of this reaction.
Whether it has any chance of making way against the scientific
determinism of the day cannot here be considered. The strength
of the fatalist position must be acknowledged, but it need not crush
the expression of the opposite school of thought. That determinism
is far less dogmatic in the beginning of the twentieth century
than it was in the last quarter of the nineteenth is indisputable.
But even then the greater men — Huxley, Spencer, Darwin, and
such like — were unwilling to crystallise their negations into hard,
unbending axiomatic dogmatism. It perhaps did not occur to them
that the course of time might bring alterations in the treatment of
the elementary principles of science ; they defended these principles
against the onslaughts of the ignorant and the superstitious ; but
they paused before the unknown. Recent psychological speculations
in this country would seem to indicate that the treatment of the
unknown shows signs of revolt against the reverence of the past, and
to a real admirer of Pascal there is genuine pleasure in realising in
the most distinct way that the greater the advance of speculative
thought, the closer we feel to him, and the wildest speculations seem
but faint echoes of the utterances of the master mind. His latest
biographer2 insists on the point that Pascal's reasoning demonstrated
200 years before Darwin the theory of evolution. Can anything be
more in accordance with the most modern thought than Pascal's
refusal to regard human nature as a complete entity obeying im-
mutable laws, and to those who study it aright offering no contra-
diction ? Nothing can be falser, he says, than this glorification of
what is simply the work of our own imagination, our own inherited
habits of mind, our individual prejudices built up by the actions of
the mind of man acting upon what surrounds him. Interpreted by
Mr. Lanson 3 he says :

Quelle est done cette nature sujette a etre efface'e ? La coutume est une seconde
nature qui de"truit la premiere. Pourquoi la coutume n'est-elle point naturelle ?
J'ai peur que cette nature ne soit elle-meme qu'une premiere coutume, comme la
coutume est une seconde nature. Ce que nous appelons nature aujourd'hui dans
tous les etres, formes et proprie'te's ou instincts, n'est-ce pas une collection d'acquisi-
tions successires fixe'es par 1'habitude ?

This brings to one's mind in a crystalline and refined form
Nietzsche's sajings on ' the value of the valuations of the past.'

In the same way, if we are arrested by the speculations of the

2 Grands Ecrlvains Franqais (Boutroux).

3 Litt&rature Franqaise (Lanson).

1903 PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL 229

new positivism,4 in the perfectly justifiable paradoxes of the
scientific Catholics, in the vain attempt of modern dreamers to graft
Christian on Eastern mysticism, we suddenly feel that Pascal has
said all this, but much better ; that with his irresistible force in
welding together contrary terms so as to grasp through science
and its opposite pure idealism, the actual and the real, he seems
impelled by the blending of contradictions in his character to drive
through all obstacles to the very heart of the problem. These con-
tradictions have been well described as including the gift of scientific
observation and reasoning, yet with a penetrating sense of things
pertaining to heart and soul ; the thirst for knowledge, but also the
longing for love ; the inclination for the inner life, together with the
ardent desire to influence other men. His ambition is as striking
as his simplicity. His simplicity is in no way impaired by his
subtlety, nor his subtlety by his frankness. Armed with a power of
abstraction counterbalancing an intense power of 'imagination,
urged by irresistible passion and force of will often expressed
in terms of generous impulse and tender compassion, there
is nothing apparently to check his course. But now he pauses.
He cannot, it seems, get nearer to ' the thing in itself that lies
behind these knowable phenomena.' He is face to face with the
inconnaissable, and he bows crushed by the inaccessibility of the
infinite and the terror of annihilation. Then is it that Pascal reveals
himself as a poet. It seems as if we had been groping for the
key to his genius and have at last found it. Now we see that not
only did he wring the essence of their meaning out of opposite
phenomena, but out of opposite mysteries — the mystery of life
and the mystery of death, the mystery of thought and the mystery
of consciousness. We know that no poet has deserved to be called
one who had not a subtle sense of mystery. M. Paul Adam says of
Baudelaire :

II sut re"tablir les donne"es des impressions qui m&nent vers le mystere et par
«fles evoquer ce qui dans la vie decele le contraire du counu.

Pascal's biographer strikes, as is fitting, a higher note of praise :

L'originalite" de Pascal c'est le caractere, si je puis dire, me'taphysique des inquie"-
tudes et des images qui jettent ces flammes intenses dans son style. Jainais il
n'est plus poete plus largement, plus douloureusement, ou plus terriblement pocte
que lorsqu'il se place en face de 1'inconnaissable.

It is rather distasteful to leave the larger aspect of our subject,
and turn to the depressing task of analysing and comparing French
and English criticism. This, however, is a necessary duty, in order
to refute the imputation of dealing with a foregone conclusion. It
brings us face to face with facts, with positive statements, and
each of these must be carefully weighed, so that this historical
fragment may be judged by the light of unfavourable criticism
4 Roberty, Flammarion, Paul Adam, W. Ward.

230 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

before we produce the counteracting force of French appreciation to
restore the balance.

It is no light task to follow the fluctuations and caprices of
criticism. We should soon find ourselves in a hornets' nest if we
were presumptuous enough to deal out praise and blame generally,
and neglect the homely rule of keeping the main line of our argu-
ment clear of irrelevant controversy without shirking the task of
putting a right valuation on each adverse opinion touching the
subject of this study. Even ten years ago we should not
have had to contend with some of the difficulties which now lie
in our path. One characteristic of the present day was not so
clearly discernible then, i.e. the absence of all deference to the
works of the greatest metaphysicians and thinkers of the past. One
and all are considered surannt, so that scarcely a name formerly
in high repute receives the honour of a quotation or of a moment's
consideration. Two exceptions prove the rule, Spinoza and Pascal.
Spinoza's name ever raises appreciative recognition amounting to
enthusiasm in England ; but Pascal remains ignored, and although
time softens the rough edge of unpardonable neglect, vet the extent
of that neglect in the past should be traced to the really responsible
creators of an erroneous popular judgment which should even now
be combated lest such an evil should again rise up and baffle us.

To begin, therefore, with our English critics. It is desirable to
go to the root of the matter and deal only with the most important
of these. One on the first line led the way a few years ago, and the
tone of his essay on Pascal gave the key-note to other English
attempts to judge the great Frenchman, until Pater's ringing passage,
in his study of the same man, almost redeemed the whole situation.
And here let me remind the reader of the necessity of remarking
that the use of the word ( sceptic ' in its secondary or acquired sense
is unpardonable ; but, strange to say, this writer is actually affected
by the common conventional significance, as adopted by the vulgar;
and it is one of the many instances of the mischief done by the
educated — and there is no doubt of the high position of this critic in
the literary world — to the illiterate when the former are not careful
to keep clear of the misuse of a term and so attach a label to a man's
name that is wholly inappropriate.

Even if we grant that this term ' sceptic ' may not be applied in
a consciously unfair sense, yet our contention is that Pascal first
instituted the inquiry and then disbelieved. Inquiry being the
supposed pivot on which all philosophical thought turns, it is need-
less for the critic to make the distinction and to assure us that Pascal
was no sceptic in religion. He disbelieved in systems of philosophy
after searching inquiry, and this is so obvious that friend and foe
must indeed need attentive guidance in their study of Pascal, if
these explanations are necessary. Sceptic, Pascal may be called ;

1903 PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL 231

but what kind of sceptic? Fanatic; yes again, but what kind of
fanatic ? Madman, ' fou sublime,' as Voltaire called him ; mad as
Dante was thought mad ; mad as Shakespeare imagines madness in
Hamlet, but surely not a madman, fanatically narrow, to be treated
with compassion, tempered with a little wholesome severity. A
Frenchman has said that a hero or a saint greatly disturbs the
Teutonic mind, and it may be that the Teutonic element in our
English race makes us strangely impervious to the fact that heroes
and saints are, in fact, geniuses.

The faculty of being possessed more or less by an idea [says Professor Huxley]
is probably the fundamental condition of what is called genius ; whether it shows
itself in the saint, the artist, or the man of science. One calls it faith, another
calls it inspiration, a third insight ; but the ' intending, of the mind,' to borrow
Newton's well-known phrase, the concentration of all the rays of intellectual
energy on some one point until it glows and colours the whole cast of thought
with its peculiar light, is common to all.5

To multiply quotations appreciative of genius would seem to
disprove the charge of indifference ; but the contrast between the
exceptional and the average judgment is more marked among the
English than elsewhere ; the recognition of genius in conduct, i.e.
of heroism, is slower.

To find Voltaire and Condorcet cordially allowing Pascal to be a
' genie,' to hear Victor Hugo granting to Torquemada G a sublime
vision of universal love, does not surprise us, but where shall we find
parallel instances among ourselves ? What was Gordon ? — both a
hero and a saint ; yet such was the lack of intellectual sympathy
among his countrymen that, to say nothing of the official obtuseness
which pigeon-holed him as a madman, the great mass of his com-
patriots were content to account for his high failure by reference to
his religious fancies, and to acquiesce somewhat coldly in the deep
note of sympathy that vibrated from China to France when the hero
fell. Now and again a voice was raised in protest,7 but these excep-
tions prove the conclusion to be inevitable that if in ' the sense of
quality in action,' as Greorge Eliot puts it, lies the secret of wringing
out the essence of the problems of life, such a sense is missing in
the ordinary Englishman.

This may be the reason that, if we attempt a comparative
study of English and French utterances on Pascal, we find so vast a

5 ' Great wit and madness are both of them divergencies from the common
standard ; but the study of genius may have as much to teach us of the mind's
evolution as the study of insanity has to teach us of its decay.' — (F. Myers.)

B ' Et 1'infini farouche a travers tous ces cribles ne laisse rien passer que ces deux
mots terribles : Jamais ! Toujours 1 Mon Dieu, qui done aura piti6 ? Moi, e viens
sauver 1'homme ou 1'homme amnistie ; j'ai cette obsession : en moi 1'amour sublime
cree, et je combattrai 1'ablme par 1'ablme ! — Torquemada (V. Hugo).

7 ' Men will think and feel about him more or less deeply according to the depth
of their own nature.' — (Jowett.)

232 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

difference between the two. To begin with words, if the criticisms
of Pascal proceeding from Frenchmen be examined, not one of the
epithets which Englishmen so freely apply to those whom they fail
to understand are to be found, with the exception of ' fou ' from
Voltaire, surely tempered by the ' sublime.' We have alluded
before to the one bright and strong exception which makes us
perhaps indifferent to the defects of the less gifted of the critics.
But this admirer often goes over the heads of his readers, and the
reiteration of humbler protests may reach those who refuse to bow
to his authority. These few words of Mr. Pater, for he is the excep-
tion we wish to quote, seem to separate Pascal for ever from the
herd of theologians with whom on account of his religious side he is
often grouped. ' What might have passed with all its fiery ways for
an esprit de se.cte et de cabale is now revealed, amid the disputes not
of a single generation but of eternal ones, by the light of a phenomenal
storm of blinding and blasting inspiration.' 8

Sainte-Beuve, in the most perfect work from his pen, Histoire
de Port-Royal, stands at the head of French authorities on Pascal.
It is impossible for anyone acquainted with this book, and also with
the various allusions made in the Causeries, not to quote Sainte-
Beuve unconsciously ; it is difficult even to keep clear of other
plagiarisms, haunted, as one must be, by expressions concerning
Pascal to be found in almost every French writer of note. What
would Sainte-Beuve and his friends have thought of an astounding
sentence at the beginning of an article by one of the English critics ? —
' The Pensees are only the mouth-piece of such mediocre thinkers as
Etienne Perier and the Due de Eoannez.' What does this mean ?
M. Cousin's work in restoring the original text of the Pensees is of
no value if it has failed to show that, in every instance where the
original was tampered with, weakness was substituted for strength,
and something like jargon for the uncompromising vigour of Pascal's
terse and vibrating language. M. Cousin, while himself bitterly
regretting the almost defiant tone adopted by Pascal towards all
human systems of philosophy, has too keen a perception of the
masterly use in the Pensees of that supreme engine of analytic
thought, the French language, to abstain from demonstrating how
superior the original manuscript is to the emasculated edition we
owe to the scruples of the Solitaires.

Let us first look at Les Provinciates ; as a model of style, in power
of irony, in dialectical and rhetorical skill they are unsurpassed.

It is certain that the judgment formed by Pascal's contempo-
raries of the revolution in French prose, which dates from the
Provinciates and the Pensees, has not been reversed by later critics ;
but still the Provinciates are polemical, and modern readers do not
feel in sympathy with the unravelling of distinctions in doctrine.
8 Miscellaneous Essays (Pater).

1903 PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL 233

It is when Pascal puts aside subtleties, and inveighs, with all the
strength of his genius, on the stupidity and baseness of the Jesuit
code of morality, that his words ring with an accent which reaches
far beyond the domain of controversy. The character of his attack,
and his passionate appeal in the defence of honesty, truth and justice
at any cost, arrested even Joseph de Maistre (the best defender the
Jesuits can boast of), and will ever arrest those who, in reading Les
Lettres Provinciates, discern, apart from his rhetorical skill and
subtle wit, Pascal's sense of the momentous importance of this
defence. In his finest moments he abruptly casts controversy aside
and deals with the general question of the good of humanity, and
with words of swift and piercing condemnation attacks every doc-
trine, Jesuit and other, which may tamper with the liberty, freedom,
and independence of individual judgment. Strange to say, it is at
the very moment when he is strongest in the fight that Pascal
asserts the supremacy of reason, the absolute authority of con-
science ; and the question forces itself upon us, Can this be he who
later, in his perplexity and despair at the relative quality in morality,
says : ' Trois degres d'elevation du pole renversent toute la juris-
prudence; un meridien decide de la verite . . . plaisante justice
qu'une riviere borne : verite" en depa des Pyrenees, erreur au dela ' ?

Was it that he may have foreseen the dilemma, and inveighed
against the Jesuits all the more bitterly because he feared that the
compromise which they clumsily inaugurated foreshadowed a much
more powerful and destructive attack from the opposite camp upon
absolute morality ? Logic and natural science, he may have per-
ceived, would enter in by the breach thus made, and destroy both
religious creeds and philosophical systems at one blow. It might
very well be so, for who so capable as Pascal of seizing contrary
aspects of abstract questions ? a capacity he himself describes thus :
' On ne montre pas sa grandeur pour etre en une extremite, mais
bien en touchant deux a la fois et remplissant tout 1'entre-deux.'

Shall we imitate the amiable weakness of the pious Solitaires of
Port Royal, and fear to demonstrate that it was the very force of his
philosophical scepticism as to the power of mankind to apprehend
absolute truth of any kind that made him fling himself with all the
impetuosity and passion of which his great nature was capable into
the Christian faith ? Unconsciously we are finding oar way back
from the Provinciates to the Pensees, which English critics seem to
thiii k scarcely worth considering in comparison with the former.
Certainly, for brilliant satire, for logical and dialectical skill, it is
not easy to find in any language an indictment so powerful and
conclusive against a religious sect. Still, if we except the passages
in which the conflict is based on first principles, the interest lies
mainly in a religious controversy, and that interest is difficult to
sustain if the reader is indifferent to the result from a sectarian

234 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

point of view. As a matter of pure polemics, Pascal's adversaries
may have had something to urge worthy of attention when they
averred that there were unfairness and exaggeration in his attacks.
They declared that some of the weapons he employed might be
turned against himself, and made to tell against any religious
system whatever. He who would follow the intricacies of the
Jesuit and Jansenist disputes should study the refutation of the
Provinciates by Bourdaloue, who had no difficulty in demon-
strating that the force of the attack lost some of its vigour by being
too rancorous. Bourdaloue's denunciations of La Medisance seemed
directed against Les Provinciates. Without doubt Bourdaloue's
own life and teaching redeemed his order, and blunted the force of
the accusation levelled at the Jesuits by Pascal. If, on the one
hand, Pascal showed the weak uncertainty of the Jesuit code of
morality, Bourdaloue was not far wrong when he attacked the narrow
dogmatism of the extreme Jansenists, and the spirit of compromise
that prevailed among those living the life of the world, but who were
' Jansenistes par raffinement et en theorie,' and whose ultimate
state was one of polite indifference ; ' ou tout ou rien, dit-on, mais
bien entendu qu'on s'en tiendra toujours au rien, et qu'on aura garde
de se charger jamais du tout.' M. Havet in his account of the
Provinciales points out that, to a modern reader, the note struck
is not that which emanates from the spirit of piety, but is dis-
tinctly the outcome of the spirit of independence. Can we
wonder, therefore, that the Jesuits should turn his own weapons
against Pascal, and prophesy that his arguments would hereafter be
used by the free-thinker and the unbeliever ? The modern reader,
for whom, as M. Havet remarks, this result has no terror, is simply
impressed with the breadth of view that, almost unwillingly, breaks
away in the most unexpected manner from the technically theo-
logical presentment of the controversy. And we may easily suppose
it was this abstract merit which attracted the attention of the
thinkers of that day, who were most opposed to Pascal's religious
ideas. So, in the present day and for the same reason, he stands
out from the midst of metaphysicians and theologians, and is the
only thinker of past days except, as has been already said, Spinoza,
who obtains a hearing. His name comes upon you unexpectedly,
and seems to stare at you strangely but distinctly from a background
intensely modern, as in the page of a Daudet or of a Bourget. It
is this double aspect of Pascal's mode of thought which makes the
analysis of his works so subtly difficult. If one side of his mental
state is clearly apprehended, it seems as if, in grasping it, the
other escapes the critic. What can be said of a method of criticism
that, especially in one instance, ignores everything from first to last,
except the most commonplace dissertations on the supposed varia-
tions in the mind of an ordinary fanatic ? The nervous terrors

1903 PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL 230

caused by his illness cannot be brought to bear on his religious
convictions, or made to prove or disprove, as is sometimes attempted,
their strength and reality.

According to Sainte-Beuve, the Provinciales were first put
together bit by bit, as reminiscences of conversations between Pascal,
M. de Saci, and M. Sioglin ; in the fear which the latter expressed
that De Saci would be dazzled — ' ebloui de tout ce brillant qui
charmait neanmoins et enlevait tout le monde ' — we get a glimpse
of the estimation in which Pascal was held as a man of the world
by the then ' enfants du siecle.' He was known to frequent the
salon of Madame de Sable and to be an ardent admirer of Montaigne ;
and it seems clear that the good Solitaires were aware that the
snares of the intellect were not the only dangers which threatened
the completeness of Pascal's conversion.

We are told that M. de Saci's method as directeur at Port Eoyal
was to find the subject upon which the penitent was most strongly
interested, and to close with him upon that point ; the subject, what-
ever it might be, providing the confessor with the necessary argu-
ments whereby he would endeavour to convince the disciple. Hence
the famous chapter on Epictetus and Montaigne, whom the confessor,
true to the line he had traced for his dealings with Pascal, declared
he knew so imperfectly as authors that he begged his friend to
explain their meaning. And now appears the first instance of the
garbling of the original text, that was to be followed afterwards by
the inept parings and diluting of the remainder of the Pensees by
Etienne Perier and the Due de Roannez.

The dialogue between Pascal and De Saci must have been, as
Sainte-Beuve remarks, full of ' le mouvement, le naif, le familier,'
and, even with all the mutilations in the Port Royal edition of the
Pensees, the true Pascal asserts himself, for it was impossible to
quote a single phrase without producing the impression of faultless
epigrammatic and veracious expression. Pascal himself, speaking of
style, said, 'II y en a des ecrivains qui masquent toute la Nature ;
il n'y a pas de rois parmi eux, mais un auguste monarque ; point de
Paris, mais la capitale du royaume ' ; he also adds ; ' II y a de ces
mots determinants qui font juger d'un homme.' To a student of
the French language these determining words in the Pensees prevent
the destructive effect which the suppression of whole paragraphs and
the rounding-off of others would otherwise have. In this vivacious
dialogue between Pascal and De Saci each was strongly impressed by
his own author, Pascal strengthening his assertions with lore from
Montaigne, while De Saci's replies are saturated with the spirit of
St. Augustine. The entretien, which was in fact, as it were, Pascal's
certificate of admission into Port Royal, was the foundation of the
whole book of Pensees. The demolition of the systems of Epictetus
and Montaigne, as the representatives of the opposite tendencies of

236 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

the Stoic and Epicurean schools, loses much of its force by the
omission of the swing of the dialogue and by cutting up the con-
versations. In spite of this and of the alteration and the weakening
of the invective, the ring of some of the well-known paragraphs makes
itself heard through every meditation. In the summing-up of his
indictment against Epictetus and all those who have unduly exalted
human nature, as well as for Montaigne and the ancient and modern
sceptics who have railed at poor humanity, Pascal seems to have
traversed the whole cycle of thought, and it would be a hopeless
undertaking to attempt to explain how and where his mind was in
touch with, or in antagonism to, the many and various systems of
philosophy that have harassed mankind before and since his time.
A better way would be to dwell for a moment on the connection
between Pascal's intelligence and Montaigne's, and for this purpose
we return to the entretien.

It is obvious the dispute would have assumed the aspect of a
duel between rationalism and religious fatalism, had not both sides
been one at heart ; but, as it stands in the corrected form (i.e. the
form of a dialogue), it gives the reader some insight into the influence
which Montaigne exercised over Pascal. Sainte-Beuve observes
that, in the very act of demonstrating how deeply rooted was
Montaigne's scepticism, Pascal shows more than once a keen
sympathy for that bright, witty and daring spirit. This did not
escape the keen eye of the confessor, who sa} s gently :

Je vous suis oblige", monsieur ; je suis sur que, si j'avais lu longtemps Mon-
taigne, je ne le connaitrais pas autant que je le connais par 1'entretien que je
viens d'avoir avec vous. Je crois assur6ment que cet homme avait de 1'esprit,
mais je ne sais si vous ne lui en pretez pas un peu plus qu'il n'en a eu, par cet
enchainement si juste que vous faites de ses principes.

And further on he remarks of Montaigne's words that ' elles ren-
versent les fondements de toute connaissance, et par consequent de
la religion meme.' This universal scepticism, the doubt sapping
the foundations of all philosophy, of even every process of reason-
ing, was in fact what attracted Pascal, and, strangely enough,
forges the link which binds him to the modern Agnostic school of
destructive criticism.

Yet it would be stretching the analogy far more than it can bear
to ignore the innately religious temper of Pascal, who is as truly and
passionately devoted to the Man-God of his creed as was ever
Thomas a Kempis, or Dante. It is in the dual aspect of this great
mind that lies the interest which must attach itself to one whose
scientific instinct was on a level with that of the masters of to-day,
whose trenchant logic and impetuous dialectic force made his
orthodox friends tremble as they beheld the fearlessness with which
he plunged into the fray, and yet whose religiousness gave a charm
and persuasiveness to the expression of his belief. In our analysis

1903 PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL 237

of these religious expressions we again perceive the double force
which tne union of impetuosity and tenderness, of awful fear and
touching self-surrender, gives to his words. If we find in his ring-
ing accents a note akin to despair, if the impenetrable mystery of the
universe seems to crush him, if the author of the incomparable picture
ofman, placed, as he is, bet ween infinite greatness and infinite littleness,
has notes which mark him out to be of the family of Dante, of Milton,
of Hamlet, of those ' qui cherchent en gemissant,' and, if terror seems
sometimes to possess his soul — ' Le silence eternel de ces espaces
infinis m'effraie' — then let us turn and rest for awhile on the gentle-
ness and power in the pathetic dialogue between master and disciple,
beginning thus : ' Console-toi, tu ne me chercherais pas si tu ne
m'avais trouve ; ne t'inquiete done pas ; je pensais a toi dans mon
agonie. J'ai verse telles gouttes de sang pour toi. Veux-tu
qu'il me coute toujours du sang de mon humanite sans que tu
donnes des larmes ? '

M. Cousin, moved by this appeal, says, ' C'est dans ces pages
brulantes et passionnees ou on respire dans 1'amour divin la charite
humaine que Pascal a prise sur nous plus qu'aucun apologiste de son
temps.' M. Havet dwells rather on his disinterested passion for truth
and the general impression of nobleness which even Condorcet, perhaps
the most vehemently anti-religious man of his age, acknowledged.
It will be objected, perhaps, that we are but recapitulating the
leading points of the well-worn controversy between religion and
science, but the religious and scientific aspect of the question pales
before the interest roused by the study of this strange mind and
character. It would be easy to point to more systematic meta-
physicians than Pascal. Indeed, as a specialist, he probably might
be placed below Kant or Hegel, and, as a theologian, it might be
shown that he lacked subtlety. To arrive at the truth, the weight
of his stupendous individuality should be grasped, rather than any
special manifestation of brain power. Also the single-minded
quality underlying the duality of the intelligence must be carefully
observed. He is as genuine when he lashes 9 ' ce faux sens commun
qui n'en est pas un ' as in the religious feeling of his definition of
faith : ' Le coaur a ses raisons que la raison ne comprend pas.
Voila la foi, Dieu sensible au coeur.'

This sincerity of thought is noted by Sainte-Beuve :

Pascal n'a point un double role ; ce n'est point monsieur le theologal d'un
cote" et le disciple de Se"neque et de Montaigne de 1'autre. En lui 1'apologiste et
rhomme ne font qu'un ; il y est tout entier, corps et ame. Dans ce drame que
nous ddvoilent ses pense"es 1'acteur est le meme que le he'ros, et 1'un et 1'autre ne
sont que 1'homme souffrant, cherchant, desirant, et quand il a trouve criant aux
autres : Suivez-moi. . . . tel est, le talent aidant, le secret pour nous de sa puis-
sance, de sa haute et religieuse beaute".

9 ' The false metaphysics of so-called common sense. . . .' — (Huxley.)

238 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

M. Havet and Sainte-Beuve, in their dispassionate method of
criticism, indicate in many ways their appreciation of the double
aspect of the mind of Pascal. To dwell upon this, Sainte-Beuve
(as we have seen before) is struck by the religious side from the
force of contrast ; he speaks of ' charite veritable et tendresse dans
la parole imperieuse en apparence et despotique de Pascal : ' and in
a comparison which he makes between Pascal and Massillon we find
an expression which marks this perception. Speaking of Le Petit
Careme, he says : ' II y manque peut-etre vers la fin dans 1'ordre de
la foi je ne sais quelle flamme et quelle pointe de glaive non con-
traire pourtant a la charite, et a laquelle on ne se meprend pas.
Voltaire sentait cette pointe de glaive chez Pascal, chez Bossuet ; il
la sentait moins chez Massillon.' M. Havet, on his part, dwells on
the dislike Pascal showed for so-called proofs of the existence of God
from the works of Nature. The Port Royalists, afraid of this line of
thought, attempted to soften the impression by casting such expres-
sions in the third person instead of the first, as they did in the
entretien with De Saci. But the original form has been restored to
us by M. Cousin :

J'admire [says Pascal ironically] avec quelle hardiesse ces personnes [the
preachers of natural religion] entreprennent de parler de Dieu en adressant leur
discours aux impies. Leur premier chapitre est de prouver la Divinite par les
ouvrages de la nature. . . . quant aux autres, aux indiffe'rents, & ceux qui sont
destitue"s de foi vive et de grace, dire a ceux-la qu'ils n'ont qu'a voir la moindre
des choses qui les environnent et qu'ils verront Dieu & de"couvert, et leur donner
pour toute preuve de ce grand et important sujet le cours de la lune ou des
planetes et pre"tendre avoir acheve" sa preuve avec un tel discours c'est leur donner
sujet de croire que les preuves de notre religion sont bien faibles, et je vois par
raison et par experience que rien n'est plus propre a leur en faire naitre le m6pris.

It is perhaps idle to consider how far this same sincerity would
have led Pascal away from religion, and what hold the more rigorous
and exacting spirit of modern scientific research would have had
upon him, had he belonged to this age. Such considerations are
frequently misleading, but, in spite of the complexity of the
question, they forcibly present themselves to the mind. It may be
true that the spirit of the seventeenth century, when it was not
licentious, was distinctly religious, and that, therefore, to compare
the influences which prevailed then with those which predominate
now seems impossible ; but Pascal was less influenced by the spirit
of the age than were most of his contemporaries. The sceptical
note is sounded from within and not from without, and it is probable
that, as he succeeded in silencing this note when the inexorable
logic of its persistent sound haunted him, he would have been found
in the present day among the disciples of Newman, rather than
following the lead of Huxley. As it is, to be claimed by both
sides is a tribute to his greatness, and the fact that no amount of
analysis will shake the belief in his truthful fearlessness is sufficient

1903 PORT R07AL AND PASCAL 239

to place him in the very first line of not only his contemporaries
and compatriots, but of men of genius of all time. Haunted by the
insoluble problem which now as then unnerves the strongest minds,
the problem at the root of the conflict between predestination and
free-will, or, in words of to-day, between determinism and spontaneous
action, Pascal's mind never lost its lucidity.10 M. Havet, in whose
study of Pascal we find perhaps the most searching criticism and the
deepest insight, says with regard to this lucidity :

Ce besoin de nettete" et de lumiere qu'il porte jusque dans la thSologie, cette
inde"pendance a l'e"gard de 1'autorite meme spirituelle, ce sentiment si vif du ridi-
cule et cette antipathie a l'e"gard de la sottise et de la bassesse, cet amour profond
du vrai et de 1'honnete, voila ce qui a fait des Provinciates un chef-d'oeuvre tout a
fait a part, et une 6poque dans notre litte'rature. Pascal se place au premier rang
parmi les pre"parateurs de 1'avenir. ' La foi de Pascal a des racines dans le
moyen age ; un mot nous en fait souvenir de temps a autre, mais 1'ense mble de son
lirre est plein de Fesprit moderne et tourne" vers 1'avenir.

As there lies deep truth in the saying that Voltaire showed the
strength of Loyola, and Loyola of Voltaire, so Pascal's mathematical
insight and intensely logical mind double the force of his religious
idealism, and vice versa.

But his versatility is met by many of his English critics in a
hostile spirit, and by demonstrations of Pascal's supposed incon-
sistencies. It would appear to those who have studied not only
Pascal's nature a little closely, but human nature generally, that
both his Christian fervour and his scientific insight gain rather than
lose by the fact, which has been glanced at before, that in the Salons
of Madame de Sable and Madame de Longueville he forgot his role
d'homme serieux. He was in love with the sister of the Due de
Roannez, and had been seen (a still greater enormity) in the
company of a beautiful but frail savante who was to be found at
Clermont. If it be true ' qu'il n'y ait pas d'honnete femme qui
n'ait vu le vice de pres,' it may be allowed, one would think, to
apply the saying to the other sex, and it is scarcely to be regretted
that, in his onslaught on immorality and on frivolity, Pascal knew
very well of what he was speaking.

There remains the question of style ; here a foreigner should
pause. The analysis of that finely tempered instrument, the French

10 Of this there is clear evidence in the following sentences, which could be
paralleled by hundreds equally brilliant :

1 La chose la plus importante a toute la vie c'est le choix du metier, le hasard en
dispose I '

' La justice et la v^rite sont deux pointes si subtiles que nos instruments sont
trop mousses pour y toucher exactement. C'est sortir de l'humanit£ que de sortir du
milieu : la grandeur de 1'ame humaine consiste a savoir s'y tenir : . . .'

' Cette superbe puissance [imagination] ennemie de la raison combien toutes les
richesses de la terre sont insuffisantes sans son consentement . . . elle fait la
beaute, la justice et le bonheur qui est le tout du monde. L'imagination dispose
de tout.'

240 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

language, presents difficulties enough to French students, but inept
tampering therewith may be resented even by a foreign student, and
such literary criticism on Pascal as has found its way into the English
language seems incredibly bald and ludicrously inadequate.

Pascal was a cause in literature rather than an effect ; strong
nervous thought was conveyed in strong nervous words, ' un style qui
se grave a la pointe da compas.' The great service he rendered
to his mother tongue was to clear it of all redundance, to strengthen
and to purify it.

In order to avoid irritation, let us remember how unanimous is
the judgment of his compatriot?, from P. L. Courier, who said, ' La
moindre lettre de Pascal etait plus mal-aisee a faire que toute 1'En-
cyclopedie,' to the later estimate of Paul Bourget, not the least able
of his critics. Bearing this in mind, the English judgment that in
style Pascal was a plagiarist, that in morals we need not despair of
him because he once gave alms without boasting to a poor serving-
girl, seems monstrous. The climax of depreciation has here been
reached ; this judgment and the blunting effect of such unsym-
pathetic treatment may well be borne with equanimity, after the
stirring words of love and admiration from France that we have been
considering.

MARY E. POXSOXBY.

1903

THE RAVEN

IT may be remembered that, in a former number of this Keview,
I have written somewhat at length upon the owl, and have expressed
an opinion that there is no bird which is of so great interest in itself
and which it is so important and so imperative for us to preserve.
Owls apart, there is, I think, no class of birds which, in view of their
high physical and mental development, of their powers of imitation,
of their curiously alternating sociability and shyness, of their
drolleries and their delicious aptitude, when domesticated, for fun
and mischief, of their influence, through all the earlier centuries and
earlier civilisations — an influence which has not quite gone by even
now and here — over the thoughts, the hopes and the fears of man, is
equal in interest to the crow or corvine tribe. That tribe, it should
be remarked for the sake of the general reader, includes the crow
itself, carrion and hooded, the rook, the magpie, the jackdaw, the
jay, and, perhaps, the Cornish chough. Each one of these birds has
noteworthy characteristics of its own, and at the head of them all —
as much, perhaps, above them as their genus stands above all other
genera — stands the subject of this paper, the raven.

The raven (Corvus corax) is the biggest, the strongest, the
boldest, the most wary, the cleverest, the most amusing, the most
voracious — I am afraid I must also add, by far the rarest, and that in
an ever-accelerating degree — of its kind. In the opinion of some of
the most observant of hill-and-field naturalists, like Macgillivray and
Waterton, and of some of the most recent and most strictly scientific
of ornithologists, Professor Foster and Professor A. Newton, he takes
his place, for reasons which they give, not only at the head of his
own corvine family, but of all birds whatsoever. In other words, in
their judgment — though it is impossible to record it without regret
and without demur — he has dethroned the king of birds himself, the
bird of Jupiter, the royal eagle, from his immemorial pride of place.

Glance for a moment at his history. His connection with man
goes back to the most dim and distant traditions of the race. He
plays a characteristic part as a weather-wise bird —

Imbrium divina avis imminentum —

who did not always do what he ought to do, in the earliest

records of the most sacred and venerable book in the world, the

VOL. LIII — No. 312 241 K

242 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

Bible. In a later record of the same book, he plays a part which
is equally characteristic in the career of the prophet Elijah. He
was placed at the head of the birds of omen, the ' oscines ' (os
cano), as they were called : birds, that is, which by their weird and
startling cries possessed the curious and enviable privilege of pre-
scribing every detail of the public and social life — commanding
this or forbidding that — of the severely practical ancient Romans.
He was the sacred bird of the supreme divinity of all the Teutonic
and Scandinavian race?, our own ancestors, of course, among them.
He was the travelling companion, sometimes in person, always in
effigy, of the ' hardy Norseman,' wherever the winds or waves could
carry his adventurous bark. More than any other bird — if we
include along with him his nearest ally the crow, which is in many
languages confused with him — he attracted the attention of Shake-
speare. It is worth noting that while the swan, which

With arched neck,

Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet,

so often and so exquisitely referred to by Milton, and the ' wakeful
nightingale,' an equal favourite of his, for the most pathetic of all
reasons, that, like himself, she

Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid '
Tunes her nocturnal note,

have, each of them, to be content with being mentioned only a
modest ten times by Shakespeare, the swallow and the owl may
pride themselves on being referred to some twenty, the dove some
thirty, the eagle some forty, while the raven has the unique distinc-
tion of being mentioned over fifty times.

In the rich and wide region of fable — of books, that is, some
of which have been translated into more languages, ancient and
modern, Eastern and Western, and have had a greater influence, alike
as cause, picture, and effect, upon current morality than any other
book except the Bible — the raven, as was to be expected from a bird
of his marked character, takes a prominent place. In fable, the
raven is among birds pretty much what the fox is among animals,
the most adroit, the most knowing, the most ubiquitous among
them all. In Pilpay as in ^Esop, in Babrius as in Phsedrus, in
La Fontaine and L'Estrange as in Gay, he serves to point many
a moral and adorn many a tale.

A bird whose literary history begins with Noah and with Elijah,
and who gave his name to the Midianite chieftain Oreb ; whose every
action and cry was observed and noted down, alike by the descendants
of Romulus and the ancestors of Rolf the Granger ; who occurs in
every second play of Shakespeare ; who forms the subject of one
of the most eery poems of Edgar Allan Poe, and enlivens the pages

1903 THE RAVEN 243

of the Roderick Random of Smollett, of the Rookwood of Ainsworth,
of the Barnaby Rudge of Dickens, is a bird whose historical and
literary pre-eminence is unapproached ; while, to the mind of the
patriotic English naturalist, he carries with him also something of
the pathetic interest which always attaches to a lost or losing cause,
to a state of things, to a phase of thought or feeling, to a people or
to an individual, whether man or beast, who is slowly passing away.
The raven is passing away ; not yet, I am glad to say, from the
world at large — he is much too widespread and much too wide awake
for that — nor even from the British Islands as a whole, but he is pass-
ing away from the whole of the interior districts of England, where,
a generation or two ago, his solemn croak could so often be heard.

I will premise two things : first, I pretend to no strictly scientific
knowledge of the subject. Science, nay, one single subdivision of
one single branch of science nowadays, demands and deserves, if the
study is to be fruitful of positive results, the devotion of a lifetime.
But the observations — even if they should be somewhat ' random
and desultory ' — of anyone who has loved birds with a passionate love
all his life, may have some little value of their own. They may
rouse a general interest in the subject which purely scientific details
may fail to do. They may add to the enjoyment of country life, and
they may tend, as I have good reason to hope my paper on owls has
already begun to tend, towards the preservation of fascinating birds
which, even if they are guilty of an occasional depredation on game
or on the flock, surely do more than atone for it, by the oddities of
their habits, by the beauty of their movements, and by their sonorous
cries, so admirably harmonising with those clumps of Scotch firs and
those expanses of wild moorland in which they may still occasionally
be found.

Secondly, my chief field of observation has, as in the case of the
owls, been not the county of Middlesex in which my working life
has been passed — for no wild raven has been heard or seen for
many years past, or ever will, I fear, be heard or seen again within
some fifty or more miles of London — but the county of Dorset, a
county which, with its breezy downs, its flint-bestrewn uplands, its
dark fir plantations, its limpid streams, its stretches of bog and marsh
and heather, its splendid coast-line, possesses nearly every variety of
soil and climate suitable for bird -life. In Dorset, I may add that I
have had quite exceptional opportunities, as will be seen hereafter, of
studying the raven ' at home.' The habits of a bird so ' shy and
sly ' as a raven can be observed at anything like close quarters only
during the breeding season, when the natural affection of the parent
for its young does so much to transform its shyness into familiarity
and its slyness into dauntless courage.

The raven is as nearly cosmopolitan as any bird can well be.
Roughly speaking, he is to be found scattered at intervals over much

B 2

244 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

the greater part of the northern hemisphere — the hemisphere, that
is, which contains two-thirds of all the land of the world. To put it
more clearly, while he is not found in South America, in Central and
Southern Africa, in Australia, in New Zealand or in Polynesia, he is
found over the whole of North America, over the whole of Europe,
over the north of Africa and over more than three-fourths of Asia,
He penetrates as far northward as land itself appears to stretch —
well, that is, into the Polar circle — where he seems positively to
revel in its extreme cold. He is still comparatively common in the
Outer Hebrides, in the Orkney, the Shetland, and the Faroe Islands,
where a price is often set upon his head. He is commoner still in
Iceland and throughout Scandinavia. It is interesting to note that
in nearly all the regions in which the cult of Odin once held supreme
sway, and where it may well be that some lingering relics of the
vanished cult still survive, Odin's sacred bird still holds his own.
He ranges throughout Kussia in Europe and Russia in Asia to the
remote Corea and the still more remote Kurile Islands. He gives
some life, and deals, perhaps, as much death, amidst the thinly-
peopled wastes of Central Asia. A much-travelled friend of mine,
Mr. Kobert Hayne, just returned from the Thian Shan mountains,
tells me that he is the commonest of all birds there. His croak is
to be heard on the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush, on the Suliman
mountains and on Mount Elbruz, on the Taurus, the Caucasus, and
the Lebanon, on the Balkans, the Alps and the Pyrenees, through-
out the whole range of the Atlas, on Mount Sinai, and — as the dawn
of history and tradition and the continuity of bird-life seem to
demand — on that ' huge boundary-stone ' where the three empires,
Russian, Turkish, and Persian, still meet, Mount Ararat.

To come nearer home : on the mainland of Scotland and Ireland,
in spite of incessant persecution, the raven maintains a precarious
existence amongst the wild deer forests and the grander of the
mountain peaks. In England, though, as I have remarked, he has
vanished or is vanishing fast from the midland districts, he still breeds
on many of the rifted rocks and the precipitous headlands which mark
its coast-line. Till lately — I do not know whether he does so still —
he bred on Flamborough and on Beachy Head, on Bolt Tail in
Devonshire, and on the Freshwater Cliffs in the Isle of Wight. But
he seems to cling most fondly of all to the coasts of Cornwall and of
Dorset. In a walk of a moderate length along the Cornish coast
from the Lizard, I have watched three pairs of ravens busy about
their nests ; while in a rather longer walk along the coast of Dorset,
from Whitenose Cliff to St. Alban's Head, I have known at least
four pairs of ravens rearing or trying to rear their young. Swyre
Head would hardly be Swyre Head, Gad Cliff would hardly be
Gad Cliff — Studland, where they are strictly preserved by its owner,
would hardly be Studland — without its pair of ravens, and without

]903 THE RAVEN 245

also, I am glad to add. the hereditary friends or foes of the ravens,
a pair of peregrine falcons.

I say they try to rear their young ; for while the old birds
generally take good enough care of themselves and keep just out of
the range of shot, the heavy-bodied young, when at last they begin
to bestir themselves, often flutter down from their nest, hidden as it
is beneath an overhanging rock, on to the more accessible ledges, or
even to the beach below, where they may easily be captured. The
price they fetch, owing to their unique attractions as pets, from the
bird dealers in Leadenhall Market, is so high — some ten or fifteen
shillings each — that a brood is rarely reared in safety. But it is
probable that the high price paid for the young birds may help to
secure the safety of the old ; for the expert cragsman, carrying his
rope and his life in his hand, who is to be found at the neighbouring
villages of Chaldon or West Lulworth, is too much alive to his own
interest to kill the goose that lays for him the golden eggs.

What is the raven like ? He is highly symmetrical in form. In
bearing he is grave, dignified, and sedate. No one would suspect the
fun, the perennial fund of humour, conscious or unconscious — chiefly,
I am convinced, the former — which lies behind. His walk is, like
himself, stately and deliberate, especially when he is searching the
sea-shore and prying into every nook and corner for any food which
may have been thrown up upon it, never so well described as in one
line of Virgil, remarkable alike for its rhythm and its alliteration :

Et sola in sicca secum spatiatur arena.

[And stalks in stately solitude along the dry sea-sand.]

His eyes are exceptionally bright, but of small size, as also are his
nostrils, for what they have to do. It is probable that both nostrils
and eyes help him in discovering, at an amazing distance, any offal
that has been thrown into the ditch, any sickly lamb that could
'never live to be turned into mutton,' any sheep that has been
rendered helpless by being ' cast ' upon his back.

With the exception of his eyes, which are dark grey or brown,
and the graceful and pointed feathers of his neck, which, in certain
lights, seem to be shot with purple, he is black all over — feathers,
legs, claws and toes. The stiff bristles which cover half the beak are
jet black; so is the beak itself; and it is strange but true — though
I have never seen any mention of the fact — that the inside of his
mouth and his tongue itself are also black. It is easy to see how
many country folk, struck by the completeness and intensity of his
sable coat, might well conclude that he must be black inside as well
as out — be black, that is, at heart ; while others, charmed by the gloss
and brilliancy of his colouring, might well regard him as almost an
ideal of beauty, to which it would be a delicate compliment to
compare the dark eyes or hair of their beloved. What says the

246 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

bride of her lover in the Song of Solomon ? ' His head is like fine
gold ; his locks are bushy, and black as a raven.' Or read the
exquisite description of Ellen in The Lady of the Lake :

And seldom was a snood amid
Such wild luxuriant ringlets hid,
Whose elossy black to shame might bring
The lumagrf of the raven's wing.

A pathetic story is told by Ovid of the way in which the raven
— like the Black Stone in the Kaaba at Mecca, which was once of
dazzling whiteness, but since then has been turned black by the
kisses of sinful mortals — acquired his sable hue. Apollo thought
himself happy in the love of the nymph Coronis. But his ignorance
was his bliss, and the raven, his favourite bird and messenger, which
was then white as snow, always prying into secrets and ready to
prate about them, discovered that her heart was elsewhere, and
informed the god of it. Infuriated by jealousy, Apollo shot a far-
reaching arrow into her bosom, and repented only when it was too
late. In vain did he have recourse to his own healing arts ; in vain

did he shed

tears such as angels weep.

His last office was reverently to place the body of his beloved on the
funeral pyre ; then he turned upon the chatterbox and changed him
from white to black :

Inter aves albas vetuit consistere corvum.

The raven once in snowy plumes was dressed,
White as the whitest dove's unsullied breast ;
His tongue, his prating tongue, had changed him quite
To sooty blackness from the purest white.

Another legend, not very creditable to the raven, but interesting,
as showing the character for cunning and impudence, for malingering
and for greed, which he had, even in those early times, acquired, and
which he has not got rid of since, is also told by Ovid. Apollo sent
him with a bowl to fetch some lustral water from the spring, in
honour of a festival to Jupiter. The bird started on his errand as
he was ordered ; but some fine figs hanging over the spring took his
fancy, and finding that they were green and hard, he determined to
wait till they were ripe. When he had eaten them, he killed a big
snake, and carrying it back to his master — bowl and lustral water
and all — held it up in triumph and said, ' See, here is the foe who
has been fighting me off all this time from the spring and from my
duty.' The prophet Elisha could hardly have rebuked the greed
and falsehood of his servant Grehazi with more severity, than that
with which the god of prophecy now turned upon his guilty mes-
senger. ' Went not my heart with thee ? Dost thou dare to add a
lie to thy guilt ? Never henceforward, so long as the figs are hang-

1903 THE EAVEN 247

ing green upon the trees, shalt thou taste of water from the spring.'
The incident was closed; but, according to Ovid, a strange memorial
of it, half punishment, it would seem, and half reward, remained.
The raven, the snake, and the bowl have ever since been seen in
the heavens side by side, and the constellation which contains them
all was long called by astronomers the Corvus or Raven.

Influenced by such legends and by some of the undoubted
characteristics of the raven, Shakespeare is fond of contrasting his
' black arts ' with the whiteness and innocence of the dove.

Not Hermia but Helena I love :

Who will not change a raven for a dove ?

cries Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream. So too, the Duke
of Illyria, in Twelfth Night, says :

I'll sacrifice the lamb that I do love,
To spite a raven's heart within a dove.

So again the violent outburst of Queen Margaret against the ' good
Duke Humphrey ' of Gloucester, in whom her husband still has
implicit trust :

Seems he a dove ? His feathers are but borrowed,
For he's disposed as the hateful raven.
Is he a lamb ? His skin is surely lent him,
For he's inclin'd as are the ravenous wolves.

And, once more, read the impassioned utterances, the contradictions
in terms of the love-lorn Juliet, when she hears of the deed which
may separate her from her Romeo :

Beautiful tyrant ! Fiend angelical !
Dove-featured raven, wolfish ravening lamb !

A white raven was supposed by the ancients to be as much an
impossibility, a contravention of the order of nature, as a black
swan. Phalanthus, when besieged in a town of Rhodes, having re-
ceived an oracle that he would remain master of the town 'till
ravens became white,' felt as secure as Macbeth did in his castle, till
' Birnam wood ' began to ' move towards Dunsinane.' But the com-
mander of the besieging army, hearing of the oracle, rubbed some
ravens with gypsum and let them loose. Phalanthus, on seeing them,
abandoned the town in despair. Both white ravens and black swans
are now known to exist. Black swans are common enough in Western
Australia, and pied and even white varieties of the raven have
been observed in the Outer Hebrides, in the Faroes, and in Iceland.
' I have seen,' says Boyle, in his book On Colour — published before
Dr. Johnson wrote his dictionary, and described the raven, which he
might often have seen, had he cared to see it, in his Tour in the
Hebrides, as ' a large black fowl, said to be remarkably voracious, and
whose cry is pretended to be ominous' — ' I have seen a perfectly white

248 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

raven as to bill, as well as feathers ' ; and there is, if I mistake not,
just such a white raven in the Albino Case in the British Museum.

How is it, we may well ask, that the raven, whose croak is one
of the most awe-inspiring and sepulchral sounds in nature, has
not, according to the rule which generally holds good in such cases,
received in all languages a name which is onomatopoeic — expres-
sive, that is, of the cry ? The Greek name corax is admirably
imitative. The Latin coitus, the French corbeau, the Italian corbo,
the Highland corbie, the English words crow and croak, connected
with him, will pass muster. The strange thing is that the names
given him by the Teutonic and Scandinavian nations, among whom
he was best known and most honoured, though they are said by
Professor Skeat to be derived from a root ' krap,' Latin ' crepare,' ' to
make a sound,' are anything but imitative of any one of the many
remarkable sounds he makes. Such are the Anglo-Saxon ' hrsefu ' or
' href u,' the Icelandic ' hrafu,' the Old High German ' hraban,' the
Dutch ' raaf,' the Danish ' ravn,' the German ' rabe,' the English
' raven,' and, perhaps, ' Ralph.' I only note the fact ; I cannot offer
any explanation of it.

What about the food of the raven ? — a somewhat unsavoury but
interesting part of the subject, and highly illustrative of his strength,
his sagacity, his adaptability to circumstances. Like most of his
tribe, the raven is, in the strictest sense of the word, omnivorous.
His dietary ranges from a worm to a whale. During certain months
of the year, he feeds largely on grubs and insects, and then he does
unmixed good. Sometimes, he takes to berries, fruits and grain.
Snakes and frogs and moles never come amiss to him. Of rats he is
passionately fond; and when, after the thrashing of a rick, the usual
massacre of rats has taken place, the raven, if they are within the
wide range of his scent or his sight, is sure to present himself and
claim his share. If the word ' ravenous ' is not derived from ' raven '
— as Professor Skeat tells us it is not, and I suppose we must believe
him — it might well be so, for it exactly expresses what the raven
ever has been, ever is, and ever will be ; and when, in addition to his
own voracity, he has to supply that of the five or six ' young ravens
that cry,' he is bound to fly at higher game, and will ' lift ' without
scruple a nest of partridge's eggs, a rabbit, or a leveret. When his
nest is built, as it generally is, beneath some overhanging rock which
quite conceals it from view from above, its position may sometimes
be discovered by the remains of rabbits neatly laid in the short grass
on the top of the cliff, in what I was going to call his ' larder.' But
a larder implies an amount of economy and self-restraint which it is
not in the raven to practise. ' Consider the ravens : for they neither
sow nor reap ; which neither have storehouse nor barn ; and God
feedeth them.' A rabbit warren is, generally, not far distant from
the eyrie ; and the young rabbits, as they sun themselves in front of

1903 THE RAVEN 249

their burrows, fall an easy prey. On one occasion the old warrener
at Whitenose Cliff told me that he had counted the parent birds
bringing as many as five rabbits within an hour to their clamorous
brood. As the season gets on, the raven varies the diet of his nurs-
lings by giving them the eggs of the cormorant or the seagull which
are laid on the adjoining ledges. He will spike them with his bill
and carry them off in triumph ; he will even, at times, enter the
burrow of the puffin, and a battle-royal will take place for the
possession of her eggs, beneath the surface of the earth. The puffin
is a small bird, but it is armed with a huge razor-like bill which, if
it does not beat the intruder off, will at least give him a squeeze
which he will remember for a long time to come.

All this on occasion ; but at other times a sort of * truce of
God' seems to be established between the raven and his nearest
neighbours. There is, apparently, an honourable understanding
between them that, being his neighbours, they are free of the guild,
and he will leave their eggs, exposed as they are, quite unmolested,
while he carries off those which are more remote. In like manner,
a hill fox in Scotland will often leave the poultry and the geese and
the turkeys which are near his ' earth ' severely alone, and will travel
past them for miles by night, to get others which he will have to
carry toilfully home. He wishes, no doubt from motives of self-
preservation, to be on good terms with those who, if they are so
minded, can do him most harm. So too, again, a pair of ravens
watched by Professor Newton, from year to year, at their inland
breeding-place in Norfolk, carefully abstained from molesting the
sheep and lambs and game which abounded within their sight, and
lived almost entirely upon the moles whose burrows were further away.

In moorland districts, where food is scarce, the ravens will attack
without scruple a newly-born lamb or even a sheep that has been
' cast.' His method is always the same, and has been noticed to be
so from the earliest times. He goes straight at the eye, which one
blow of his powerful beak will destroy. ' The eye that mocketh at
his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley
shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.' Cornicum oculos
configere, 'to dig out the eyes of the ravens,' was a proverbial
expression used by Cicero, equivalent to our proverb ' the biter bit.'
Another English proverb, true enough as a general statement of fact
in Natural History, tells us that ' hawks don't pick out hawks' een,' but
Mr. Ealph Bankes of Kingston Lacy, in Dorset, a great protector of
raven?, was the eye-witness of a curious exception to the rule, in the
case of his favourite bird. ' In 1885,' he say?,' I saw one morning, on
the lawn here, a fine old raven. Immediately afterwards a second one
pitched down and a battle-royal took place. One of the birds, I could
not discover whether it was cock or hen, was pecked in the eye and
killed on the spot.' It was a case of the ' biter bit ' with a vengeance.

250 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

The phrase pasce corvos, 'be food for the ravens', among the Komans,
like Wi ss Kopaicas, ' go to the ravens,' or /3aXV ss Kopa/cas, ' fling him
to the ravens,' among the Greeks, were curses imprecating utter dis-
grace and ruin. They involved death, mutilation by a bird of evil
omen, want of burial. And want of burial carried with it disagree-
able consequences in the other world. Charon would not ferry the
soul over the Styx.

But what the raven loves most of all is carrion, and thereby, like
the vulture in the desert, or like the kite in mediaeval cities, or the
adjutant in Eastern cities now, he, no doubt, plays his appointed
part in creation. The carcase of any animal lying on hill or valley,
or anything and everything thrown up by the tide, from a mollusc or
a shellfish to a shark or a whale, he claims as his own. A shellfish,
when it proves too hard a nut for him to crack with his bill, he has
been seen to carry high in air and drop upon the rocks. The islands
round the west and north of Scotland still afford one of the best fields
for the observation of the raven when he is at work. And Macgillivray,
who, some sixty years ago, used to watch them with a telescope from
huts he had put up for the purpose, has given a graphic description
of their modus operandi, the gist of which I reproduce.

When a raven discovers a dead sheep he always first alights at a
considerable distance from it, looks carefully around, and utters a low
croak. He then advances nearer, in his queer sidelong fashion, eyes
his prey wistfully, and then, plucking up his courage, leaps upon him
and makes a closer examination. Discovering no cause of alarm — no
suspicion, that is, of a trap or poison — he gives a louder croak, pecks
out an eye and part of the tongue, and devours them. By this time,
another raven, and another, and another will have arrived, when they
dig out together the intestines and continue to feed on the carcase
till they are sated or disturbed. Sometimes a greater black-backed
gull, a skua, a fox, or even a dog, will have a ' look in ' and be
allowed to join in the feast. Feris convivialis, ' he will banquet with
wild beasts/ says Linnaeus tersely of the raven. He was probably
describing what he had himself often seen in Sweden ; and one of
the names by which the raven or corbie crow is known in the
Highlands, ' biadhtach,' is said to have much the same meaning.1

If a whale be thrown ashore, the good news spreads, no one
quite knows how, along

Island and promontory, creek and bay,

throughout the Hebrides. The raven is, in no sense of the word,
gregarious ; on the contrary, he has a passion for solitude. He will
tolerate no rival, not even his own offspring, in the neighbourhood of
his ancestral throne. He drives them ruthlessly away, as soon as
they are able to shift for themselves. But, on an occasion like this,
his voracity overpowers his wish to be alone. Other ravens drop in

1 Macgillivray 's British Birds, i.'498 seq.

1903 THE RAVEN 251

by twos and threes till they have been counted by hundreds. There
they take up their abode for weeks and even months, till the huge
carcase has been picked clean. On one occasion, the inhabitants of
a small island feared that the prolonged stay of the ravens might end
in an attack on the barley crop which was soon to ripen and to supply
their illicit whisky stills. Something must be done. A crafty
cragsman managed to capture some of the ravens on the ledge
on which they roosted at night, heavy with sleep and food. He
plucked off all their feathers, except those of their wings and tails,
and turned them adrift in the morning. The other ravens, either
failing, with all their acuteness, to recognise their uncanny piebald
comrades, or reading in them their own future fate, left the island,
not to return.

I have said that the raven is a very solitary bird, except when the
cry of ' carrion afield ' on a colossal scale, causes him to put up for a
time with the society of his kind. But two exceptions to the rule,
one of which came under my brother's, the other under my own
notice, are worth recording. Colonel Walter Marriott Smith, R.A.,
tells me that in winter the raven becomes gregarious on the margin
of the hills and plains in Northern India.

I have seen them by hundreds on a vacated barrack near Peshawur, during
the last Afghan war. I have also watched one of them, when no other human
being was visible, regularly stationing himself opposite to the fowls' big wire
enclosure at Peshawur, and setting to work to systematically imitate their sounds,
and ridiculing them with an air of contemptuous superiority.

My own experience was at Athens, in January 1898. The green
slopes of Lycabettus, the hill outside the city which so dwarfs the
Acropolis and the Areopagus within it, were dotted with ravens,
walking about in groups of threes or fours, and, anon, congregating
together, to the number of about seventy. They were not there for
purposes of carrion — there was none about. It was a more serious
business. No clerical convocation could have looked more sober and
sedate, nor, so far as appearances went, could have more weighty
matters to discuss. What were they there for ? My theory is that
the convocation consisted of the young birds of the previous year
which had recently been ^ent about their business by their parents,
and, by a curious coincidence, had met from all the adjoining parts of
Greece at the metropolis, and were now about to take the most far-
reaching step in their career. They were about to choose a mate,
not for a year, or term of years, but for a lifetime ; and a raven, it
is to be remembered to his credit, is never false to his choice.

One other interesting experience of a raven abroad should be
mentioned here. I was on a visit to the site of Carthage and went
out to view the Eoman aqueduct, several arches of which, nearly as high
as those of the Pont du Grard, still march across a remote plain in
stately procession. On the top of one of these a big owl had built her

252 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

nest ; on the other side of it, a raven had built hers ; a curious mix-
ture of associations, archaeological and religious, the bird of Pallas and
the bird of Odin nestling together in amity, on a building reared by
the Roman worshippers of Jupiter and Juno, and supplying the wants
of the descendants of the Phoenicians, who still clung to their ancestral
worship of Baal and of Ashtaroth.

The bill of the raven is a formidable weapon, strong, stout, sharp
at the edges, curved towards the tip. It is his one weapon of offence,
but it answers the purpose of two or three. Like the dirk of the
Highlanders, among whom he is still so often found, it is equally
available as a dagger or as a carving knife. It can also be used as
a pair of pincers. It can kill a rat at one blow, crush its head into
pulp with one squeeze, and then, with its powerful pull, can tear
the muscles asunder, or strip off the flesh in small morsels from the
bones. It can drive its beak right through the spines of a hedgehog
and deal it a death-blow. It is said that it will never attack a man.
If this be true, it is, I think, not so much from any defect of courage
as from his keen intellectual perception of what will pay and what
will not. A raven, and still more a pair of them, will beat off and
mob the formidable skua gull, the Iceland falcon, the sea or the golden
eagle itself. It will even engage in a not wholly unequal combat,
on the ground, with the long-necked heron, one direct blow of whose
spear-like beak would kill him on the spot.

Three striking compliments paid by the Romans, the masters
of the art of war, to the strength and formidable nature of the
raven's beak may be mentioned here.

First, it was nothing but the help, as the story goes, of a raven
which, perching on the helmet of the Roman champion, Valerius,
and striking with beak and wings against the gigantic Gaul opposed
to him, secured the victory for Rome and gave to Valerius, in con-
sequence, his own name of Corvus, which he bore as a name of
honour ever afterwards.

Secondly, it was nothing but the spike fixed at the end of the
mast and drawbridge invented by Duillius, in the first Punic war,
and called, from its resemblance to a raven's beak, the Corvus or
Corax, which, when it fell on the deck of a Carthaginian vessel,
pinned it to itself in fatal embrace, and so, changing the sea into a
land battle, gave to Rome her first naval victory over the masters of
the sea.

And, once more, the same terrible name of destiny was given to
the grappling-hook or engine which now tore down stones from the
walls of a besieged city, and, now, again, when planted on the walls
of the besieged, would, by a sudden swing, whip up one of the
besiegers from the ground and fling him far into the city.

R. Bos WORTH SMITH.

(2"y be concluded.)

1903

AN AGRICULTURAL PARCEL POST

THE object of the writer of this article is not so much to entertain
the reader as to attempt to show how the income of the United
Kingdom may be immediately increased by at least 60 millions
sterling, distributed among a class of men who are admitted to be
the backbone of the community, but whose fate it seems to be to
suffer from the prosperity of their fellows. There is but one class
which can be thus described — the agricultural. There is but one
remedy suggested for its misfortunes— an Agricultural Parcel Post.

Not that the Post Office can do all that is required. The official
Hercules will certainly expect the depressed cultivator to put a
shoulder to the wheel. The Postmaster-General is nowise respon-
sible for the enterprise of Transatlantic farmers or the cutting
of Transatlantic freights. So long as the British farmer acts on the
heory that his land will produce only one thing, which he cannot
sell at a profit, nobody, not even Hercules, can help him. For, as
against stupidity, ' the gods themselves contend in vain.' But if
he will grow that which is highly profitable, and which the Post
Office alone (without injury to its revenue) can bring to market,
then it is clearly the duty of the Post Office to place its machinery
at his service. It is worth while to examine with an impartial
mind the facts and arguments for and against postal intervention.

WHAT WE ARE LOSING — IN ACRES

There are in the United Kingdom 77,677,959 acres, of which
29,917,374 acres are uncultivated. Of the uncultivated portion,
1,225,000 acres were cultivated eleven years ago, when I brought
the matter before Mr. Raikes; 806,872 have been laid down in
pasture, while 418,473 have become primeval desert.

WHAT WE ARE LOSING — IN MEN

While our fields have been thus abandoned to weeds, those who
tilled them have emigrated to lands where their services are
valued. In the last ten years 1,603,523 persons have left our

253

254 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

shores. Whole villages are deserted as in the time of plague ; and
all we get in return for our country is the barren title, Officina
Gentium.

IN MONEY

It may be urged that the emigrants are not wanted here, nor the
abandoned acres either. A most eloquent protest against this
assertion is furnished by the following return of dairy and garden
produce imported last year (on which The Times remarks : — ' Every
article in it is easily producible at home ') :

Butter £20,527,934

Margarine 2,569,453

Cheese 6,412,420

Eggs 6,299,934

Apples 1,923,482

Lard 4,118,990

Milk (condensed) 587,930

Potatoes 1,589,583

Flowers . ... 267,281

Bacon and hams . . . . . 17,285,969

Total £61,582,976

IS IT INEVITABLE ?

It appears that we consume yearly 60,000,000^. worth of dairy
and similar garden produce not raised on our own soil.

Could it be raised here? High authorities like Mr. Chaplin,
Mr. Hanbury, and Mr. C. S. Head, say there is no difficulty. Experts
tell us that British soil is as rich as any in the salts and fertilising
elements required. Public opinion, built up of individual ex-
periences, pronounces British eggs, cheese, butter, and apples to
possess unapproachable flavour. Common-sense teaches us that
where pigs or fowls or cows are fattened on one farm, they may be
fattened on a neighbouring farm, lying on the same strata and
having similar physical conditions. Yet we continue to import
more and more agricultural produce and to export more and more
agricultural labourers.

NO LINK BETWEEN GROWER AND BUYER

The sterilising influence, the fatal objection, is the want of some
means of getting the produce in question quickly and cheaply to the
market. A man farming a thousand acres contracts with dealers in
town, and delivers his produce daily, from his own van or cart, at
the nearest railway station. But the tens of thousands who occupy
from one to twenty acres own no vans, and, in order to secure lower rent,
they live far away from the railway. And the situation of a farm is

1903 AN AGRICULTURAL PARCEL POST 255

everything. We cannot say of the modern British farmer, as Horace
wrote of the Eoman, ' Beatus ille qui procul negotiis.'

THE DRUGGIST CALLED IN

When dealing with ' perishable ' produce, as it is called, it is
obvious that speed of transmission from grower to consumer is the
vital factor. No sooner has the apple fallen, or the egg been laid, or
the butter been made, than predatory bacteria begin to pollute it and
destroy its pristine and peculiar savour. A certain Scottish angler
and epicure has a fire kindled on the bank of the Tweed, and into a
pot boiling on that fire the first salmon he kills is thrown. Another
palmon, caught within the hour, and cooked in London twenty-four
hours later, would have a different and inferior flavour because the
oil in the flesh would be slightly rancid. Thomson the poet ate
peaches growing on the tree, just as writers of prose eat (if bold
enough) the oyster — alive. Dr. Johnson, who doubtless, in those
days of bad roads and slow waggons, spoke feelingly, declared that
no man was ' satisfied with a moderately fresh egg.' If we except
Chinamen this is true ; but very few inhabitants of our towns can
secure ' new-laid ' eggs. As to butter, cheese, and milk, it is
notorious that our foreign friends thoughtfully save our noses from
being offended by a liberal use of chemical preservatives, with which
the British stomach is supposed to deal. One dares not calculate
how many kegs of Belgian borax and French acid the British
middle-class baby must assimilate at the most critical period of its
existence.

A PROPOSAL

This state of things has prevailed for many years. So long ago
as 1891 it seemed possible that the Post Office, by reducing its
charges for the conveyance of dairy and garden produce, might
bridge the gap between producer and consumer.

A deputation accordingly waited on the late Mr. Eaikes, then
Postmaster-General, on the llth of April, 1891. The late Sir Henry
Selwyn-Ibbetson (in the writer's absence through illness) represented
the cultivators, and laid the case fully before the Minister, who said
in the course of his reply :

The deputation urged that a great development of the industry -would result if
the charges on perishable articles were reduced. And he thought that there was
a yery strong case indeed for the Post Office taking upon itself the special charge
of these perishables, when really speed of conveyance was everything. In this
matter he promised to go again to the Treasury to see if anything could be done
generally in the direction of the proposals that had bean made.

This promise to consult the inexorable Jorkins was not very

256 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

encouraging; and not long afterwards Mr. Eaikes died without
having been able to carry into effect views which did him so much
honour.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS

It may be instructive to append later official declarations on
the subject, exhibiting the effect of persistent agitation.

On the 17th of February, 1896, Mr. Hanbury (in reply to the
Member for Canterbury) said :

The Postmaster- General is aware of the interest which the late Mr. Raikes
took in the subject of the transmission of agricultural produce by Parcel Post ; but
it is a mistake to suppose that Mr. Raikes ever advocated specially low rates in
favour of this particular class of produce. Mr. Henniker Heaton asked what
objection there was to an Agricultural Parcel Post. Mr. Hanbury said there was
no objection to an Agricultural Parcel Post, but to one at reduced rates, because
the Postmaster-General had no opportunity of judging how far each individual
parcel contained agricultural produce. (In other words, the centre of resistance
had shifted from the Treasury to a departmental committee which is probably
still sitting, with intervals for rest and refreshment — a company of venerable
white-haired men.)

November 1902. Mr. Austen Chamberlain. — The question of instituting a
special Parcel Post for agricultural products has been considered on more than
one occasion, but the difficulties surrounding it are so great that it has not hitherto
been found possible to adopt any such scheme. This is, however, one of the
questions which I propose to examine afresh as soon as I have leisure to do so.

And so the decision no longer rests with an irresponsible
committee, but with a Minister of much promise, and directly re-
sponsible to Parliament.

APPEALS FKOM THE COUNTRY

The reader will perhaps welcome direct evidence from the class
which it is proposed to help. The following are extracts from
large masses of correspondence which have reached me on the
subject :

Miss Emily FitzGerald, Glanlearn, Valencia Island, Ireland. — We send off a
considerable quantity of butter by Parcel Post as it is, and, were the rate lower,
could get more orders.

Eggs have been tried, and a good deal might be done in this line ; but when
to the cost of boxes and chances of breakage the postage, coming as it does to
%d. per egg, is added, it is not worth while. If the postage were halved it would
just make the difference. Flowers and vegetables 1 am most anxious about. I
and others are at present trying to work up the cultivation of spring flowers and
early vegetables in Kerry through the machinery of a ' Garden Guild.' I believe
that, with the absence of frost that we enjoy, we could, with due care, shelter from
wind, and proper cultivation, compete successfully with the South of France.
And to this industry an Agricultural Parcel Post would be an immense benefit.

I was much struck, only a few days ago, to find that the postage on a little
box of flowers forwarded to a neighbouring county from here was 15 per cent.

1903 AN AGRICULTURAL PARCEL POST 257

over the postage that had freed it from Italy. The rearing and fattening of
poultry is another industry that would be much helped if the post were more
available.

Mrs. M. E. Lawrie, 30 Albert Gate, S. W. — I most cordially agree with you
as to the Agricultural Parcel Post. It would be an immense boon to the farmer
by bringing him into direct touch with the consumer ; and to the town house-
keeper by ensuring the freshness of eggs, butter, cream, and flowers.

The Rev. T. Priestly Foster, Paulton Vicarage, Fairford. — As a country
clergyman I feel sure an Agricultural Parcel Post, such as you suggest, would be
an unspeakable boon to farmers and others living in the country ; it would bring
producer and consumer into immediate connection. I suppose the chief difficulty
would be the extra burden it would lay upon the rural postman ; but the proviso
might be that all parcels sent by the Agricultural Post should be given in at a
railway station.

P.S. — Some time ago, on behalf of a parishioner, I advertised in the Morning
Post for recipients of country butter, but found the postal charges were pro-
hibitory. I had many answers showing that such a plan as yours would be a
great boon.

Mr. W. J. Elives, Preston House, Cirencester. — I believe that, if properly
worked, it (an Agricultural Parcel Post) would do more than anything to make the
cultivation of small holdings profitable. It seems to me that, as under our so-
called free-trade system it is impossible to give any encouragement directly to the
production of fruit, vegetables, poultry, rabbits, &c., in small holdings, and that
their increase can never be great as long as they are only profitable, as at present,
in the neighbourhood of towns, the Government might give some small advantage
of this sort to occupiers in the country, who undoubtedly pay a larger proportion
of rates and taxes than the richer occupiers of urban and suburban houses. By
carrying their produce through the post at cost, or less than cost price, you would
benefit both classes to an extent that few can realise. ... I may add that I
occupy nearly 4,000 acres myself in this county and Hampshire. . . . It is a fact
that in neither of these counties is there the least evidence of any desire on the
part of the better class of labourers to occupy large allotments or small farms for
themselves, the reason being that they cannot make it pay, even when the rent is
as low as 10s. to I/, an acre. The result is that both counties are becoming rapidly
depopulated as regards their rural and remote districts, and large quantities of
what used to be fairly productive land are lying waste.

Rev. S. F. Newman, Vicar of Morton, Easingwold. — I gathered a few sticks o*
rhubarb and sent them (to my sister-in-law) by Parcel Post. But here is the
point — it cost me 6d., and so I have sent no more.

Miss H. E. Keane, Glenshelane, Coppoquin, Ireland. — Being much interested
in your efforts to get us an Agricultural Post, I thought I should like to let you
see a specimen of my industry. I therefore sent by yesterday evening's Parcel
Post a box of flowers which I hope you will accept.

With a mild climate in winter and spring like ours, it appeared to me we
wasted our opportunities, so I started this flower farm and am advancing rapidly
towards success. I need not say what an impetus the Parcel Agricultural Post
you propose would give to this kind of trade. I am trying to get a Parcel Post
from the South of Ireland by Milford, which would shorten the arrival of parcels
in London by twelve hours.

De S. Crawshay, Esq., Rosefield, Sevenoaks, Kent. — Personally I frequently
do not send flowers to friends on account of the cost at present. Were the rates
Id. per pound, I could send a strong box with a full-length orchid spike, that now
only goes as a single bloom, and I know many others who would do the same.

Miss Fanny W. Currey, The Mall House, Lismore, Ireland. — Many ladies are
engaged in cultivating flowers for the cut-flower market, and I think you will be

VOL. LIII — No. 312 S

258 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

interested to know that, with a little protection and care (of almost the same kind
in vogue in the South of France) beautiful flowers can he grown here in the open
air during winter and early spring and sold in England at remunerative prices —
that is, Christmas roses, snowdrops, primroses, primulas, and anemones (St.
Bridget, French, the Bride, and other favourite varieties imported from the South
of Europe), and narcissus of every kind.

With regard to the latter, we are scarcely later than the Scilly Isles, and the
most delicate white varieties grow splendidly here ; and all the Incomparabilis
sorts, and hyacinths, tulips, irises of every kind, gladioli, lilies, &c. It is really
hard to feel how this flower industry is starved by high carriage rates and slow
delivery. In order to secure high departmental profits the Post Office compels
the people of large tracts of country to abstain from the sort of cultivation their
climate and circumstances favour. It is an absurd sort of indirect taxation which
compels hands to be idle and lands uncultivated and foreign things imported, all
for Post Office balance-sheet?. The high railway rates affect us as badly. They
simply prohibit the small growers from going into the fruit and vegetable business.
There is a great scarcity of vegetables in England now, and we have abundance,
but the high rates make our exporting so unprofitable at ordinary times no one
is doing anything at it. In the South of Ireland the first beginning of improve-
ment must come through petite culture. . . . Poultry farming would also be aided
by your proposal, and also the butter and egg traffic.

Bev. W. If. Dalton, Seagrave Rectory, Loughborough. — The only difficulty
which occurs to me is the distance which postmen in the country have to carry
parcels. This might be obviated were parcels sent at a specially low rate
received at Post Offices near a railway station only.

Canon Cromwell, Stisted Rectory, Braintree. — In this parish we grow
myriads of roses in summer, that cannot be now sent to a market, and are
wasted.

Mr. S. O. Gray, 71 Belsize Park Gardens, South Hampstead. — I have a small
farm just forty miles distant from London, on the L. B. & S. C. Railway, and I
have the produce — butter, eggs, cream, poultry, vegetables, and occasionally a
few flowers, and rarely fruit — sent up for my consumption in Lotfdon. My
town residence is unfortunately somewhat beyond the two and a half mile
radius within which goods are delivered free by the railway companies, and
I have accordingly to pay for delivery about the same rate that I pay for car-
riage from the farm to London. This arrangement makes the passenger train
parcel rate prohibitive, and I have to send my produce by goods train, which
entails a delay of a day, and even then the double rate — for railway and delivery
— frequently amounts to twenty-five per cent, or thirty per cent, of the value of
the produce, and much more in the case of vegetables. The difficulty arises in my
case from the high charge for delivery, which in the case of a Parcel Post such
as you propose would not be made.

Mr. Charles Whitehead (ex-President of the Royal Agricultural Society},
Barming House, Maidstone. — Having seen what an admirable means of distribution
the Parcel Post might be if the rates were lowered, I hail with great satisfac-
tion your proposed action. Under Mr. Collings's Small Holdings Act, fruit,
vegetables, flower and herb growing, honey, egg and poultry raising, must form
the leading features of the produce of the occupiers thus created.

You may, if you please, cite my opinion as to the great advantages to the
agricultural community from a cheap Parcel Post service, and especially to small
holders.

Mrs. John Munnings, Mendham Mill, Harleston, Norfolk. — I supply some
families in London with butter, and it costs me a shilling to send six pounds, in
paper only. The prices in this district are about lid. and Is. a pound, and butter
cannot be made for that ; but if we send it away, carriage absorbs the extra profit.

1903 AN AGRICULTURAL PARCEL POST 259

I had a sitting of eggs in a small box, by Great Eastern Railway, and the carriage
was ninepence. The Company takes a large consignment by goods train at a
reasonable rate, but the charge on small parcels is too large to leave any profit ;
and here the Post could help us greatly.

Mrs. M. A. E. Parsons, Ashurst Place, Langton, Tunbridge Wells, — Consider
your suggestion one of greater importance than to many minds it might at first
appear, involving as it does the interest both of the producer and consumer.

Mr. G. Bence Lambert, Hotel Splendide, Lugano, Switzerland. — Only yesterday
I sent several roots I dug up on the Alps to England at a very small rate, which
will be delivered at my place in Suffolk (Thornington Hall) on Tuesday morning.
It would be a great thing for the agricultural interest.

Mr. James Hepher, 49 Surney Street, Greemcich. — Fresh butter, eggs, and
other dairy produce for Id. per Ib. for carriage. The very thought of it makes
one long for it. ... Thousands of town dwellers, like myself, were born and
brought up in the country. Our lot is cast in London, but we often sigh for pure
country butter, pure new milk, fresh (new-laid) eggs, &c. Except, however, on
rare occasions, we cannot have them. The carriage is too expensive. But the
Post Office Parcel Post is at present very uncertain. A very important package
of medicine (marked as such, and 'Deliver immediately') was on the 4th inst.
posted early in the morning at Stoke Newington, addressed to me at Greenwich.
I got it on the morning of the 6th. This was not all ; the carriage was Is., exactly
double what Carter, Paterson & Co. or the London Parcels Delivery would have
brought it for in much quicker time.

The Hon. A. Talbot, 74 Cadogan Gardens, S. W. — I think that it would be a
very great benefit to all the community if greater facilities were given for sending
small parcels. I have a large market garden myself, and it would make the
greatest difference in disposing of the produce if the present prohibitive rates were
altered.

A DETAILED PLAN

It remains to suggest a workable plan for the desired operation
of the Post Office. And here it becomes an outsider who is not an
official and knows nothing experimentally of la petite culture to
observe all due modesty. The aim in this article is to promote
discussion of the subject ; and it will of course be a subject of
congratulation to the writer if a far better system than his can be
brought forward.

THE PRIME NEED

In the first place, the Post Office should undertake the work of
collection. In every rural district mapped out there should be
local depots, say a mile apart, along the roads to which parcels of
produce would be brought by a certain hour from the neighbouring
farms and cottages. A postal van hired in the locality would
collect from these depots and the village Post Offices, and convey the
parcels to the nearest railway station. The trifling expense of main-
taining such a depot might fairly be undertaken by the farmers
benefited.

Motor cars should be employed if possible. Let us suppose that

s 2

2GO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

a district is ten miles from a Post Office, and is inhabited by a
hundred cottagers, raising (as all would) produce. Clearly the rural
postman who now accepts parcels would (even if trained by Sandow)
be unequal to the task. But the postal van, or motor car, would
convey everything to the station in time for the appointed train to
the town of destination. On reaching that town the parcels would
be delivered (if so addressed) to the depot to be established there, or
(if so addressed) to individual purchasers. In this way eggs, milk,
butter, poultry, fruit, and flowers might be placed on our tables
within four or five hours of leaving the farm of origin.

REGISTER OF CULTIVATORS

"We may here deal with the objection formulated by Mr. Hanbury,
that ' the Postmaster-General has no opportunity of judging how far
each individual parcel contains agricultural produce.' The official
mind evidently contemplates a kind of severe inspection, such as
the Turkish Customs maintain for caricatures of the Sultan, and the
Prussian Customs for Socialistic literature. It would be sufficient,
however, to register the cultivators, each of whom would undertake
in writing, under a penalty, to send only specified produce. He
should then be supplied with books of printed and gummed labels
with counterfoils giving a list of different articles of produce some-
thing like the following :

No. on Register . . 5,318 T

No. of Book . . 97,561 m, T j TT ^ n

XT * T> i ' _ The Lord Hardcastle,

No. of Parcel . . 16 ir.c „ , 0 '

-P f x T u r> 11 105 Belgrave Square,

From (name) . . John Bull T °, 0 \,T

* jj nr • .1. TIT t. London. S.W.
Address . JMoreton-m-tne-JMarsn

Fowls .... 2

Eggs . —

Butter . . . . —

Fruit . . . . —

Clotted cream . . . —

Rabbits . . . . —

Honey . . . . —

Price to be collected
2s. 6d.

RATES

And now with respect to rates. The writer would recommend
one penny per pound for the cash- on-deli very parcels, with a
minimum of twopence for anything not over two pounds ; and one
halfpenny per pound, with a penny minimum, for parcels consigned
to depots, where the postal work is simply collection. These charges
should be paid in adhesive stamps.

1903 AN AGRICULTURAL PARCEL POST 261

The maximum weight should be raised to one hundredweight
(as in Germany), to be ultimately higher still. And here one should
entreat the Post Office to have as few charges as possible, and to give
the ' zone ' system, so successful on the Continent, at least a fair trial.
Unfortunately, the Post Office, as we know, has to pay fifty-five per
cent, of the postage on railway-borne parcels to the companies.
That bargain, however, comes to an end next year ; and meanwhile
the Post Office would pocket all the postage on the parcels sent to
the nearest depot by its motor-car service.

THE MODUS OPERAND]

It would be the duty of the keeper of a road depot to stamp the
date on label and counterfoil after seeing that they were similarly
inscribed, in this case with (1) the figure 2 after the printed words
' fowls,' the figures 2s. Qd. opposite ' collected,' and the name and
address of Lord Hardcastle (all the rest would be printed). The
counterfoil would be retained by the sender of the parcel, the corre-
sponding label being on the parcel. It would now be sufficient if the
postal collector, the depot keeper, and any other official whom it is
advisable to check, should simply sign on a printed form for ' 1 '
parcel of register ' 5318.' The parcel could thus be traced through-
out its course without elaborate book-keeping. At stated intervals
the depot managers would remit by post payment, on production of
counterfoils, for all parcels received, to each cultivator credited in
their delivery books.

TWO KINDS OF BUYERS

As to collecting the price, it is well to observe that only a com-
paratively small class of well-to-do people would at first give orders
directly to the cultivators. The masses in our great towns at present
prefer to buy goods as required from the shop. There is also the
middleman to be reckoned with ; the long-established shopkeeper,
who has a clan of children and first, second, and other cousins all
married and settled near him. It would be advisable to institute
the cash-on-delivery system, as extensively used on the Continent
and in India, for the small class of direct purchasers. The postman
bringing the parcel would receive the price, and this would be
remitted by the Post Office to the sender.

With reference to other purchasers, it would be necessary to
establish distributing depots from which the shopkeepers would
supply themselves, as they do from the markets.

Such depots could be cheaply improvised from existing buildings.

262 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

Here, then, is a suggested tariff to begin with :
Inland Parcel Post.

Depot.

Cash on Delivery.

2 Ibs

. Irf.

2 Ibs

2<£

6 Ibs.

.

.

. 3d.

Gibs.

.

.

.

. 6d.

11 Ibs.

. .

.

. 5d.

11 Ibs.

.

.

.

. Wd.

Not exceediug 112

Ibs.

. 2s.

NO CHEMICALS; LESS PIANO

Now for the part the farmers have to play individually. They
must see that the produce is perfectly fresh, of prime quality, and
both carefully and honestly packed. A friend has made inquiries
for me at Covent Garden and Leadenhall Market, and is assured that
trickery is as rife among English as among foreign growers. On
the other hand, there are cultivators with an established reputation
whose produce commands an immediate sale and a higher price.
Above all, let them eschew borax and similar abominations, which the
swift working of the postal organisation will render superfluous.
Success depends largely on the co-operation of their wives and
daughters. I was much struck by what the late Joseph Arch once
said to me in the Lobby. ' Why, sir, when I was a boy the farmers'
wives and daughters used to come to the market or fair at Leaming-
ton once or twice a week with their butter, eggs, poultry, or vege-
tables for sale. Now you never see them. They are too stuck-up,
and give themselves to the piano, and such like.'

MONEY FOR THE DEPOTS

One essential thing is for the farmers (or small cultivators) to
establish the town depots to which the Post Office would convey
their produce, and which would purchase all they could send. As
we have seen, 60,000,OOOZ. sterling worth of foreign produce has to be
replaced by British produce, so that an enormous profit can be secured
with common prudence. It would perhaps be advisable for the
Royal Agricultural Society to call a conference on the subject with a
view to promote the adhesion of the class concerned, as well as to
collect data as to the districts to be worked, and the land still
available for occupation. In my opinion, the County and Borough
Councils might be confidently appealed to, to rent or build and staff
the depots out of the rates.

The Antrim County Council has just established the first model
poultry farm in Ireland. It must not be forgotten that the residents
in towns are only less interested than the country people. By
resettling on the land the thousands of country people who now
swarm into the towns the urban rates would be sensibly relieved.

1903 AN AGRICULTURAL PARCEL POST 263

PERSONAL

Let me here confess that serious difficulties exist; I should be
the last to ignore them. I was, however, responsible for the
promulgation and discussion of the idea of an Agricultural Parcel
Post some eleven years ago, and have never ceased to advocate it, in
and out of Parliament (more than once in the pages of this Review).

Now that the Postmaster-General has definitely undertaken to
examine the question, it is perhaps convenient that I should lay
before him and the public my mature convictions as to the nature of
the problem and the means of its solution. I will only add that, if
the remark quoted from the Times be correct, the rejection of my
proposal by the Postal officials, in 1891, has already cost the
country 660,000,000^.

J. HENNIKER HEATON.

264 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

THE EFFECT OF CORN LAWS— A REPLY

IN the December number of this Review, Sir Gruilford Molesworth
contends that our grandfathers in abolishing the Corn Laws were
the victims of a colossal delusion. To prove this point he reproduces
with extraoi dinar j naivete every statement made by protectionist
speakers, while by parading quotations and statistics he creates in
the mind of the casual reader the impression of profound research.
As I shall presently show, his research, though it may have been
deep, has not been very wide. He has failed to notice the frank
confessions made by his protectionist friends in their more candid
moments ; he has ignored facts of fundamental importance, and in
some cases has so limited the range of his research as to exclude
from a quotation sentences which would have greatly altered the
meaning of those which he has quoted.

Before dealing, however, with this quasi-historical portion of his
article, I wish to direct attention to the theoretic basis of his
argument. This basis is so absolutely unsound that even if all the
statements in his article were true, and all the figures accurate, they
would have no practical value.

The basis of his whole economic argument in favour of protection
is contained in the following paragraph :

The money which is spent abroad in purchasing foreign produce ought to
furnish employment for our working classes, and to circulate amongst our butchers
and haters and retail traders ; but under our present policy it furnishes capital to
the foreigner to arm him for successful competition -with us.

Evidently Mr. Seddon's visit to his native land was not wasted.
His mantle, woven in cloth of gold with eighteenth-century mer-
cantile fallacies, has fallen upon the shoulders of a worthy successor.
Sir Guilford Moleswoith comes forth to bar the passage of those
160 million golden sovereigns, whose flight to foreign lands caused
such deep- sorrow to our greatest colonial statesman. In sober
earnest, will Sir Gruilford Molesworth or any other protectionist
kindly tell the world how we can pay for the goods we buy from
abroad except with our own goods ? In the daily course of business
British importers pay for foreign goods with bills. These bills
ultimately represent British goods of equal value. Even in the

1903 THE EFFECT OF CORN LAWS— A REPLY 265

small minority of cases where an international transaction is settled
by the transmission of gold, a moment's reflection -will show that
before we could send that gold out of the country we had to get it
in. Golden sovereigns do not grow — as Mr. Seddon's picturesque
imagination appears to suggest — on English gooseberry bushes.
Every ounce of gold in the United Kingdom has been paid for at
one time or another by the export of British goods worth
31. 17s. lO^cZ. Therefore, whether our international trade is con-
ducted with bullion or conducted with bills, it equally represents
an exchange of goods for goods.

This fundamental truth is in no way affected by the fact that in
no country do the imports and exports for a single year exactly
balance one another. International transactions are not conducted
on a cash basis, with all the accounts squared up to midnight on the
31st of December. They run on from year to year, and they com-
prise loans of capital, followed by payment of interest. They com-
prise charges for sea freight, payments for services rendered abroad,
and payments for pensions enjojed at home. All these elements,
and some others, come into the account. Many of them represent
transactions extending over a long period of years. In no case does
accurate information exist to enable us to measure the total values
involved. The Board of Trade returns deal only with a part of these
transactions, and are for the most part based on information contri-
buted by junior clerks who have no motive for accuracy. The
utmost that can be said is : That an excess of imports over exports,
such as this country enjoys, is prima facie evidence of growing
prosperity.

On this point an examination of the trade of Continental
countries is very instructive. In France and Germany there is a
large and growing excess of imports ; in Kussia and Spain it is the
exports that are in excess. Is it necessary to point out that France
and Germany are immensely more prosperous than either Russia or
Spain ?

There is, however, a remote possibility that this prima facie
evidence may be misleading. It is just possible that we may be
paying for our excess of imports by selling our foreign securities.
In other words, we may be dissipating, like spendthrifts, the capital
that our fathers accumulated.

But surely the burden of proof rests upon the persons who make
this astounding assumption. If it were really true that we were
dissipating our capital at the rate of a hundred or two hundred
millions a year, some outward evidence of the hastening decay
of the nation would force itself upon us. Instead, we see on every
side and in every class of society palpable evidence of rapidly-
increasing wealth. The traffic on the railways, the growth of the
public revenue, the increase in savings-bank deposits, the expanding

266 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

business of banks and the expanding consumption of staple com-
modities, the yield of the income-tax and the yield of the death
duties, all tell one tale. I will quote only one fact : In the last five
years the yield of the income-tax per penny in the pound has
increased from 2 millions to 2^ millions. Does that look as if our
capital were disappearing ?

A further study of the income-tax returns enables us to form
some estimate of the rate at which we are increasing our investments
abroad. In 1885 the income returned as due to foreign investments
was 35 millions; in 1900 this had risen to 60 millions. If we
assume an average rate of interest of 5 per cent., this means an
increase in our capital invested abroad of 500 millions in fifteen
years. Thus, so far from dissipating our capital, we are increasing
our foreign investments at the rate of about 30 millions a year.

This examination of how we pay for our imports goes to the root
of Sir Guilford Moles worth's fallacies. He bases his argument for
protection on the assumption that we have in this country an
unlimited supply of something called ' money,' and that if we cease
to buy foreign goods this ' money ' will remain at home. When
once it is clearly understood that goods pay for goods, and have done
since the world began and will do till the world ends, it becomes
manifest that we cannot cease to buy foreign goods without also
ceasing to sell British goods. If, for example, we cease to buy
foreign wheat, we must cease to sell some British commodity. What
is it to be ?

Nobody, of course, can answer that question, because nobody can
tell what will be the precise effect of a particular interruption to
trade. All we can be certain of is, that if British importers are de-
barred from buying foreign corn, some British exporter will feel the
pinch.

Starting from that point, it becomes possible to ask another ques-
tion which protectionists ought to be able to answer.

Why corn ?

What is there sacred about corn, that corn-growing alone is to be
protected at the expense of all other British industries ? Protec-
tionists constantly talk as if corn -growing and agriculture were con-
vertible terms. A more unwarrantable confusion of words it is hard
to imagine. There are hundreds of farmers in the British Isles who
grow no corn at all, and there are thousands who buy more than
they grow. There are millions of acres of land absolutely unsuited
to the production of corn. Why, then, should corn-growing alone be
protected ?

The answer usually given is that there is a great deal of land
that is suitable for corn-growing and for nothing else, and that
unless the nation is taxed to make the production of corn on this
land profitable it will go out of cultivation altogether. Such tales,

1903 THE EFFECT OF CORN LAWS— A EEPLY 267

told by interested persons, are always suspicious. We used to be
told a few years ago that the stiff lands of Essex fell into this cate-
gory, and Mr. Hunter Pringle drew a terrible picture of the black
desolation that had fallen upon Essex because corn-growing no
longer paid. Yet I find the following passage in the issue of
Country Life for the 10th of January, 1903 :

Anyone who takes the trouble to make a pilgrimage through Essex will find
that deplorable county presenting a very different picture from that given in the
notable report made to Government by Mr. Hunter Pringle. Land which was
coloured black in the map accompanying his remarks is now not only cultivated,
but cultivated extensively, and in a manner to yield the most abundant crops.
"Where waste and desolation lay all round, the land is now smiling with orchard
trees and berry-bearing bushes. In other places dairies have been established,
and men are deriving a comfortable, if not a luxurious, livelihood by producing
milk for London consumption.

In other parts of England a similar story can be told. Local
circumstances of course differ, but everywhere rents of agricultural
land are rising, and landlords are withdrawing the abatements
which they previously offered. And yet the price of corn continues
low.

A still more striking illustration of the advantage to farmers
themselves of leaving them free to grow what they find most
profitable is furnished by Denmark. This little country lives upon
agriculture. Practically its only profitable industry is the export of
agricultural produce. Is this the result of protection ? Not in the
least ! Danish agriculture has been built up on an entirely free-
trade basis, and not a single agricultural product is in any way
protected. The splendid results achieved are due to freedom and to
enterprise. The Danish farmers have been left free to make the
best use they could of their somewhat poor soil and chilly climate,
and their enterprise has taught them how to do it. The acreage
under cultivation increases every year, and every year issues forth
from this little country an increasing stream of such agricultural
produce as bacon, butter, eggs, and meat.

Contrast the case of the Grerman farmer, whose industry has been
blighted by the curse of protection, He began in 1879 with a
protective duty on wheat and rye of 6d. per ewt., and corresponding
duties on other grains. This tariff was to secure prosperity for
agriculture, and check the flow of labour to the towns. In 1885 the
duties were increased threefold. In 1888 they were again raised,
this time to 2s. 6d. per cwt., and by the Act of 1902 they were
further raised to 3s. 3c£. At the same time taxes of 15s. a cwt. have
been imposed on butter, cheese, meat, and bacon, and 3s. a cwt. on
eggs. In a word, the protected German farmer finds it every year
more difficult to retain his own home market, while the unprotected
Danish farmer, relying solely on his own brains and his own energy,

268 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

boldly faces the world and sells his produce at a profit hundreds of
miles away from his farm.

This comparison between Germany and Denmark only confirms
the conclusions which our grandfathers drew from their practical
observation of the working of Corn Laws in our own country. In
order to arrive at an opposite conclusion, Sir Guilford Molesworth
has ignored fundamental facts and misrepresented others.

His first sin of omission is certainly remarkable as coming from
a man who professes to treat economic facts in a scientific spirit.
A very large part of his article is taken up with statistics of the
prices of corn in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These
prices are throughout treated as if they were absolute data, and as if
such a phenomenon as a change in the value of money had never
been known. Yet, during the period with which he deals, the country
passed from a silver standard to a gold standard, with an intervening
period of forced paper currency. It might even have occurred to
him on a priori grounds that it was ridiculous to base an argument
on corn prices taken over a long period, without any reference to
changes in the rates of wages and the standard of living. It might
also have occurred to him that wheat itself is not of unchanging
value. There is good wheat and bad wheat, and a rainy harvest will
— apart from any other cause — take many shillings a quarter off the.
selling value of the crop.

Nor does he take the most elementary precaution to compare
like with like. Thus he wants to prove that a removal of some of
the old import duties on corn in the year 1765 was followed by arise
in price, and he says 'after- the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1765 the
price of wheat rose-from an average of 33s. 3d. to 48s. 4cZ. for the
eight years succeeding their repeal.' The ordinary reader would
infer from this sentence that 33s. 3cZ. was either the actual price at
the date referred to, or was the average price for the preceding eight
years. As a matter of fact this 33s. 3cZ. is copied from a parliamen-
tary report and represents the average of 68 years preceding 1765.
I do not wish for a moment to suggest that Sir Guilford Moles-
worth intended to mislead his readers. The illustration merely
shows the careless way in which his piles of figures have been pitched
together.

An even more serious defect in his long statistical argument is
the complete ignoring of the fact that during the greater part of the
eighteenth century Great Britain was an exporter and not an
importer of corn. It was only when the home harvest was deficient
that there was any appreciable importation of foreign corn, and in
most years, down to the year 1792, the exports exceeded the imports.
Under such conditions it is obvious that the question of protective
duties was relatively unimportant. Yet Sir Guilford Molesworth
skips merrily from one century to another and back again, as if the

1903 THE EFFECT OF CORN LAWS— A REPLY 269

nineteenth century, with its enormously increased population de-
pendent upon manufactures for a livelihood, could possibly be
compared to the eighteenth century, with a much smaller popu-
lation, mainly rural, and for a large part of the century almost
stationary.

On small points of fact, too, he is astoundingly inaccurate. Thus
he says : 'In 1773 an endeavour was made to re-enact the Corn
Laws, but prices were so high or so close to the margin of free
import as to amount virtually, though not nominally, to free import.'
As a matter of fact the Act referred to established an almost pro-
hibitive duty on imported wheat until the price reached 48s. During
the following fourteen years the yearly price was only above 48s. in
four years, so that during the greater part of this period the heavy
protective duty was fully operative.

He further ignores the fact that the trade in corn in the
eighteenth century was harassed not merely by import duties but
also by export bounties, and at other times by import bounties.
In fact, every possible experiment in interference with the corn
trade seems to have been tried, and these experiments were modi-
fied almost every year. A valuable analysis of these Corn Laws
will be found in an historical survey of the customs tariffs of the
United Kingdom issued as a Blue-book in 1897 (c, 8706). This
analysis covers the period from the restoration of Charles the
Second to the final repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. During that
period the following Acts were passed :

Thirty-six Acts to regulate importation and to impose import
duties.

Sixteen Acts to permit importation temporarily at low duties or
free.

Three Acts to authorise the King to permit such importation
when necessary.

Five Acts to suspend the operation of the Corn Law of 1815.

Three Acts to give bounties on importation.

Eight Acts to regulate exportation.

Fourteen Acts to prohibit exportation temporarily.

Three Acts to authorise the King to prohibit exportation when
necessary.

Seven Acts to grant bounties on exportation.

Seven Acts to suspend bounties on exportation.

One Act to abolish bounties on exportation.

One Act to abolish export duties.

Fifteen Acts for ascertaining the average price of corn.

Two Acts to allow flour and biscuits to be substituted for wheat.

One Act to repeal the Corn Laws.

In addition to this long list of statutes there were Orders in
Council and Treasury Minutes and numerous renewal Acts passed

270 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

year by year. Is this the weary road that the protectionists wish
Parliament to begin to tread again ?

Sir Guilford Molesworth's quotations are as misleading as his
statistics. He says : — ' Adam Smith predicted that " if the free
importation of foreign manufactures were permitted several of the
manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them perhaps go
to ruin altogether." This prediction has been fulfilled.' Anyone
reading this passage would naturally infer that Adam Smith was
warning his countrymen against the danger of permitting the free
importation of foreign manufactures. Yet the passage is taken from
a chapter l entirely devoted to the eloquent advocacy of free trade
in manufactures, as well as in corn. In the passage quoted Adam
Smith was merely drawing a contrast between the case of a protected
manufacturer and the case of a protected landlord, and was arguing
that, of the two, the manufacturer would run most risk by the intro-
duction of free trade. To use such a passage, in the way in which
Sir Guilford Molesworth has used it, is a little unfair to readers
who do not happen to have a copy of the Wealth of Nations at their
elbow. Another quotation follows, which — after skilful muti-
lation— is made to do service in favour of the very Corn Laws which
Adam Smith so strenuously condemned.

These methods of quotation are followed by Sir Guilford
Molesworth even when he comes to deal with the parliamentary
reports upon which he relies for his main argument. That argu-
ment is that the Corn Law of 1815 was passed with the sole object of
making the country independent of foreign corn by encouraging the
home growth, and that the legislature, so far from intending that
the price should be raised, expected that it would be lowered. To
prove this paradox he quotes from the reports of the Select
Committees appointed to consider the Corn Laws in 1813 and 1814.
He accurately represents the opinions of the Committee of 1813, but
it was not on their report that the law was based.

The Corn Law of 1815, which was known by our grandfathers as
the Corn Law par excellence, was a direct embodiment of the report of
the Committee of 1814. The price of wheat, which had risen to a
fabulous figure during the long struggle with Napoleon, came down
with a run upon the overthrow of his power at the battle of Leipsic
(October 1813). The average price for the year 1812 had risen to
126s. 6cZ. ; for the year 1813 the average fell to 109s. 9d., and for
1814 to 74s. 4d. It was this fall of prices with which the Committee
of 1814 was called upon to deal. It is perfectly true that the
Committee, in the small fragment of their report quoted by Sir
Guilford Molesworth, lay stress upon the risk of dependence on
foreign corn ; but that is a mere incident in their argument. The
report begins by calling attention to the ' very rapid and extensive

1 Book iv. ch. ii.

1903 THE EFFECT OF CORN LAWS- -A REPLY 271

progress of the agriculture of the United Kingdom within the last
twenty years.' The Committee attribute this progress principally
' to the increasing population and growing opulence of the United
Kingdom,' but they add ' that these causes have been incidentally
but considerably aided by those events which during the continuance
of the war operated to check the importations of foreign corn. The
sudden removal of these impediments appears to have created among
the occupiers of land a certain degree of alarm, which, if not allayed,
would tend &c.' Therefore a new impediment to importation must
be created. The Committee proceed to consider what that is to be,
and the first question they ask themselves is ' what price is necessary
to remunerate the grower of corn ? ' After quoting one witness who
thought 72s. was high enough, they continue : ' It is the con-
current opinion of most of the other witnesses that 80s. per quarter
is the lowest price which would afford to the British grower an
adequate remuneration.'

Upon this report Parliament in the following year passed an
Act prohibiting the importation of corn until the price had reached
80s. a quarter.

Only one conclusion is possible — that it was the intention of the
legislature to keep up the price of corn to 80s. a quarter.

It is true that some of the advocates of this measure, in their
speeches in the House of Commons, called God to witness that
nothing was further from their thoughts than to raise the price of
corn; but those protestations are followed, after a very few inter-
mediate sentences, with an assertion that at present prices the
British farmer cannot afford to grow corn. One of these pious
orators, after arguing that the law could not possibly raise the price
of corn, went on to quote with approval Montesquieu's contention
that it was a very bad thing for the poor to be able to buy food too
cheaply. A still more incautious speaker let the cat out of the bag
by insisting on the debt which the country owed to the landlords :
' They made and preserved the highways ; they maintained the
clergy ; they supported the poor, even the manufacturing poor ; and
they kept the soldiers' wives.'

The minority, on the other hand, bluntly denounced the measure
as a claim for keeping up the rents of the landowners at the expense
of the nation. It is difficult to see that any other inference is
possible from the facts. Eents had been doubled, and more than
doubled, during the continuance of the war, and the sudden fall of
prices that followed the establishment of peace produced a panic
among tenant farmers and landowners. If foreign corn were ad-
mitted freely when the price was moderate, a great deal of the
inferior land that had been broken up for corn would have to go out
of cultivation. There would consequently be a diminished demand
for land, with a resulting fall in the incomes of the owners of land.

272 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

If, on the other hand, foreign wheat were excluded until a high price
was reached, the farmer would continue to raise all the wheat he
could in the expectation of obtaining that high price, and the rent
of land would be maintained.

This is exactly what happened. The price for the admission of
foreign wheat being fixed at 80s., farmers made their arrangements
on that basis and continued to pay the inflated rents of the war
period. This answered well enough, for farmers as well as for land-
lords, in the years of scarcity that followed the war. Prices con-
tinued high, and high rents could be paid, although labourers and
artisans were starving. But bumper harvests followed, and then not
even an Act of Parliament could keep up the price of corn. From
all parts of the country petitions went up to Parliament complaining
of the distressed state of agriculture.

In 1820 a Select Committee of the House of Commons was
appointed to consider these petitions, but was instructed to confine
its attention to the modes of ascertaining the average price of corn.
In 1821 another Committee was appointed to inquire into the
' several petitions which have been presented to the House in this
session of Parliament complaining of the depressed state of the
agriculture of the United Kingdom.'

The Committee reported :

It is with deep regret that they have to commence their report by stating that
in their judgment the complaints of the petitioners are founded on fact, in so far
as they represent that at the present price of corn the returns to the occupier of
an arable farm, after allowing for the interest on his investment, are by no means
adequate to the charges and outgoings, of which a considerable proportion can be
paid only out of the capital and not from the profits of the tenantry,

So that six years after the passing of the Corn Law, which was
to guarantee permanent prosperity to British agriculture, farmers
had to meet charges and outgoings out of capital.

This Committee of 1821 was evidently not happy about the law
of 1815 and suggested certain small amendments, but the report was
careful to state that any reforms must be cautious, for the following
reasons :

Looking to the possible contingencies of war, your committee are not insensible
to the importance of securing the country from a state of dependence upon other
and possibly hostile countries. Looking to the institutions of the country, in
their several bearings and importance in the practice of our Constitution, they
are still more anxious to preserve to the landed interest the weight, station, and
ascendency which it has enjoyed so long and used so beneficially.

' Still more .anxious ! '

I commend these words to Sir Gruilford Molesworth's study before
he next undertakes to argue that the sole object of the Corn Laws was
to make this country independent of foreign corn.

1903 THE EFFECT OF CORN LAWS— A REPLY 273

In 1822 another Committee was appointed to inquire into the
petitions ' complaining of the distressed state of the agriculture of
the United Kingdom ' ; and in the same year an Act was passed
amending the Act of 1815. It never came, however, into effective
operation. Other amending Acts were passed in 1824, 1825, 1826,
and 1827, and in the year 1828 the original Act was replaced by a
new Act establishing a sliding scale of duties.

These successive tinkerings left the root evil unremoved. The
country wanted foreign corn, for the simple reason that we could not
raise enough from our own soil to satisfy the wants of a growing
population. When there was a bumper harvest the supply of home-
grown corn was almost sufficient for the consumption of the country ;
when the home harvest failed it was absolutely imperative to import
corn from abroad.

The idea of making the country independent of foreign corn had
thus proved to be a complete delusion. From 1815 onwards there
was never a year in which the country did not import corn on
balance. Our net import in 1828 rose to 1,334,000 quarters; in
1829 to 2,115,000 quarters; in 1830 to 2,169,000 quarters; in 1831
to 2,801,000 quarters.

The population of the United Kingdom was then 24,000,000, or
not much more than half what it now is. British corn-growers had
the advantage of the latest parliamentary device for the protection
of agriculture, and yet it was necessary to import nearly 3,000,000
quarters of foreign wheat.

Even before this date the complete failure of the Corn Laws was
beginning to dawn upon the nation, and prominent men, who had
been most active in supporting them, came out openly on the other
side.

Sir Guilford Molesworth makes a strong point of a letter written
by Mr. Huskisson soon after the war, in which that distinguished
statesman expressed an opinion in favour of the Corn Laws. It would
have been well if Sir Gruilford Molesworth had carried his investiga-
tions into Mr. Huskisson's opinions a little further. Speaking in
the House of Commons on the 25th of March, 1830, after the
country had had fifteen years' experience of the Corn Laws, Mr.
Huskisson said :

If relief was granted to the operative industry of the country — to the millions
of consumers — the landed interest would at once experience the good effects of
the benefits which would accrue. In Birmingham alone it was ascertained that
the consumption of meat had diminished hy one-third. ... It was his unalterable
conviction that we could not uphold the Corn Laws now in existence, together
with the taxation, and increase the national prosperity or preserve public con-
tentment. That these laws could be repealed without affecting the landed
interest, whilst the people would be relieved from their distress, he had never had
any doubt whatever.

The bad harvests of 1828 to 1831 were succeeded by good harvests.

VOL. LIII— No. 312 T

274 THE NINETEENTH CENTUR7 Feb.

Again prices fell, and again the cry went up from the farmers that
they were ruined.

In 1833 a Committee of the House of Commons was again
appointed to inquire into the state of agriculture. In their report
they refer frequently to the report of the Committee of 1821 and
declare emphatically that the position of the farmers had grown
distinctly worse in the interval. ' The difficulties alone remain
unchanged, but the savings are either gone or greatly diminished,
the credit failing and the resources being gradually exhausted.'

That is the picture painted by a protectionist Committee of a
protectionist House of Commons, after seventeen years' experience of
the Corn Laws. In view of such facts it is not surprising to find the
Committee losing faith in the saving efficacy of Acts of Parliament.
They concluded their report by saying that in their opinion ' hopes
of melioration in the condition of the landed interest rest rather on
the cautious forbearance than on the active interposition of Parlia-
ment.'

It is needless to pursue any further this examination of Sir
Gruilford Molesworth's peculiar treatment of the history of the Corn
Laws. I will only add, as a final comment on his extraordinary
theory, the following quotation from a speech by one of the minor
champions of Corn Laws. Speaking in 1843 in the House of
Commons on a motion to inquire into the distress of the country,
Mr. Cochrane said : ' He would appeal to any man whether the
average rents could bear any further reduction consistent with the
existence of an aristocracy.'

Happily the country has since learnt how to reconcile the
existence of an aristocracy with the well-being of the mass of the
nation. It has done so by adopting the salutary principle that the
interest of the consumer is the first interest that every government
should consider, and that industries which cannot preserve themselves
are not worth preserving. Acting upon those principles, we have
bidden good-bye to the days when grown men were paid 6s. a week
for trying to raise a crop of corn off unsuitable land ; and though there
is still plenty of poverty to be found in England, it is as nothing com-
pared to the misery suffered by the mass of the population in the
dark days of the Corn Laws.

HAROLD Cox.

Cob den Club.

1903

WASHINGTON, D.C.

YEAR by year America creeps nearer and nearer to England by
means of the accelerated speed of steamers, the shipping combine,
and, above all, the influx of American thought and method. What
has been in working order some time in the States is slowly but
surely taking grasp of the British intellect. It may be therefore of
some interest to those who have not already visited the capital of
the United States to hear some slight notes of its characteristics and
the manner of life there as it is to-day.

The enigmatical letters D.C. added to its address mean District
of Columbia. When one hundred years ago General Washington
determined on making a Federal capital and moving Congress from
Philadelphia, the question of a choice of site arose. Each State was
naturally desirous of being chosen, and after much discussion it was
finally settled in 1791, so as to avoid jealousies, that sixty-four miles
should be ceded by Maryland and Virginia, to be called the District
of Columbia, and not to be represented in Congress.

Could the great President see his city now, how charmed would
he be with it, for at that time it was merely unreclaimed flats and
thickly wooded country !

Among the pleasant posts where the nomadic diplomat has to
cast his lot, Washington is certainly one of the pleasantest, with
its clear blue sky, lovely winter climate, and agreeable hospitable
society.

It was planned and laid out by a Frenchman, Major L'Enfant, and
it is chiefly due to his taste and to the breadth and largeness of
his ideas that to-day, more than one hundred years after its founda-
tion, it takes rank among the most beautiful cities of the world. It
has been aptly called the City of Magnificent Distances ; it is still
growing on his plans, and when the empty spaces are filled up it will
be indeed magnificent.

The main design is that of a chess-board on a gigantic scale, with
straight streets crossing each other at right angles. Those running
across the plan are designated by the letters of the alphabet — viz.
K., L., and M. Street, and so forth ; those running up and down are
designated by numbers, as 14th, 15th, and 16th Street. These

275 T2

276 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

lines run the entire length and breadth of the city and can be pro-
longed indefinitely. This produces blocks of houses in squares,
which in itself is an ugly arrangement from its monotony, as is the
case in New York, where the configuration — a long narrow strip of
land — permits of nothing else to modify it.

But one hundred years ago land in the District of Columbia was
both plentiful and cheap, so Major L'Enfant diagonally intersected
his chess-board with avenues broken here and there by open spaces
called Circles, equivalent to our ' squares.' The streets are very wide,
the avenues wider still (not unlike the width of Portland Place),
lined with shady trees on each side and backed by red brick houses.
It is a red brick town, and, as there are no manufactory chimneys,
nothing gets dirty — all is bright red, white, and green. In the
middle of each circle is a statue of some hero or celebrity, at the
base of which flower-beds are beautifully laid out. It is not unusual
for its rich men to give a statue to ornament the town. The spring
in Washington is a time of joy ! The whole town becomes a garden,
with its numerous beflowered circles, and many of the private houses,
which all stand back from the pavement on a grass plot, also have
borders of tulips, crocuses, hyacinths, and rose bushes. Standing in
any one of the circles, the straight shady streets radiate as from a
star. With the first fine tracery of green lacework it grows greener
and greener till the town is a leafy bower. Washington is on the same
parallel with Lisbon and Smyrna, and close on what at the time of
the Civil War was called the Mason and Dixon line, dividing the
North from the South. English travellers are always surprised at
the Negroes, forgetting how far south it is. The reason of the
immense gaps between buildings in the best streets, which give an
unfinished, untidy impression, is that many years ago Negroes
' squatted ' in what are now the choicest situations. The law
regarding ' squatters' ' rights seems to be uncertain — at any rate, the
titles are not valid under a number of years. Hence people are
unwilling to buy out the Negroes. It must be owned that this is a
serious blot, as next to fine residences or shops one finds a shanty
overflowing with chocolate-coloured babies, or else an empty space
which for years cannot be built upon.

Negroes are a distinct feature of the country and have for some
people a weird charm. They like to be called the ' coloured people,'
the words ' nigger ' and * blacks ' being odious and painful to their
feelings, though occasionally they speak of each other as ' dat ole
nigger.' The greater number of servants employed in Washington
are naturally Negroes employed by those who can manage and
understand them ; but it is not all Americans who can do so. With
a few brilliant exceptions they are like grown-up children. The
large Central Market is very amusing, especially at Christmas, when
many wild birds are brought in on sale. All round the outside of

1903 WASHINGTON, D.C. 277

the building old Negresses sit, and sell eggs, flowers, holly, mistletoe,
herbs, and ail sorts of growing things. These fascinating old ladies
come in from the country and are great fun, usually addressing their
customers as ' Honey ' and ' Dearie.' Unhappily, they have ceased
to wear their becoming bandanna turbans and prefer dilapidated
hats.

The surrounding country is very picturesque, well-wooded and
hilly, watered by the splendid Potomac Eiver, and also by a lovely
little stream called Eock Creek. Curiously enough, the water of
both streams is during the winter and always after heavy rain very
muddy, and of a deep yellow ochre colour; very disagreeable for
baths and worse for drinking purposes. It is merely gravel earth,
but nevertheless very unpleasant. The great falls of the Potomac,
about eighteen miles from Washington, are remarkably grand and
quite worth an excursion.

On one occasion, a great cyclone having blown away the very
shaky bridge, the only means of reaching the island from which the
falls are seen was by a frail-looking boat. In mid-stream, when the
boat containing some young people was whirling about on the
swollen current, one of the party inquired of the boatman if many
persons ventured in the boat. ' The last party is now drying in the
inn,' was the encouraging answer, delivered with the dry humour
and immovable countenance which adds so much to all American
wit. This regular countryman, as he is called, is a delightful type.

Of all the squares, perhaps Lafayette Square is the most
beautifully laid out ; therein is to be found a specimen of every
flowering shrub and tree — tulip trees, Judas trees, acacias, magno-
lias, as well as flower-beds. All the squares are open all round (as a
London square might be), with splendid trees, no railings, and open
paths leading to the four corners.

The reason given for the removal of the railings is that a
romantic couple of the society of former days found themselves locked
in. There was nothing for it but to climb over the fence ; they were
of course seen, and this act gave rise to so much merriment that hence-
forth all squares were opened and Love now laughs in Lafayette
Square untrammelled by locks and gates.

The White House, the official residence of the President, is on
the south side of the square. It is an Inigo Jones-like country-
house, or what in America is known as the ' Colonial Style,' oblong,
painted white, with a large high portico supported on pillars under
which one drives. At the back there is a delightful oval balcony
giving on the sloping garden, and a splendid view of the river
and the Virginian hills, also of the great obelisk, 555 feet high,
erected in memory of the founder of his country.

The WThite House is re-painted every year, which gives it a fresh
and smiling appearance very unlike the dingy houses of Europe. It

278 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

is a small house for the President of so big a country, and had
become inadequate to receive the yearly increasing crowds of
citizens out of a population of seventy-five millions. There was a
talk of adding wings to it, but happily a much better addition has
just been effected without altering the style, which will improve
matters immensely.

From the front of the White House one has a fine view across
the square to 16th Street, a very wide residential street. Early in
the history of the growth of the town each country sending a
representative was offered by the United States Government a
large plot of land on either side of 16th Street provided thej would
each build a suitable Legation House. The penny wise, pound
foolish refused this grant for a Legation Street, and now they
have all had to buy at vast expense. Germany, Austria, and Mexico
have already bought houses, and Italy purchased a fine Embassy the
other day, during last year. France and Russia are about to build.
Happily, England usually provides a suitable residence for her
representatives, and the Embassy at Washington will for many years
to come hold its own with the new mansions which are yearly rising
up. It was built twenty-five years ago with great judgment and
foresight by Sir Edward Thornton.

Sir Edward reflected on the advisability of building a smaller
house with a garden, or a large house with just a little ground
round it. His knowledge of American progress proved him right, for
during all this time the house has held its own in importance, and
the land he bought, which was then in the country, is now the most
fashionable part of the town. Connecticut Avenue is the promenade
and afternoon drive of Society. At that time land cost 2s. a foot,
and now fetches 36s. a foot. Society in Washington to-day
contains from 800 to 1,000 persons who have to be entertained,
proving how wise was Sir Edward's judgment. His house was
always spoken of as ' the Legation ' and now as ' the Embassy,'
much to the surprise of other representatives. ' The Embassy ' has
been mentioned on the stage, and people have been corrected by
cabmen on giving the full address ' British Embassy.' ' Don't know
it.' ' British Embassy on Connecticut Avenue.' ' Oh, the Lega-
tion.'

The public buildings are very fine, especially the Treasury,
which is simple and severe in architecture. The White House is
flanked by the Treasury on the right and an enormous building on
the left which comprises War Office, Admiralty, and State Department
(Foreign Office).

At the end of Pennsylvania Avenue, raised on an eminence,
dominating the city, stands the Capitol, a remarkably beautiful
building in the Classic style. Unfortunately, the centre and its
surmounting cupola are of stucco, but the newer side wings, the

1903 WASHINGTON, D.C. 279

Senate Chamber on one side and the House of Kepresentatives on
the other, are of marble. In the central part the Supreme Court
holds its sessions.

A curious instance of how cities almost always grow to the west
is that the statue of Freedom on the top of the Capitol turns her
back on the White House and the town. It was intended that the
town should go eastward, so she was placed looking east. However,
the holders of land demanded such preposterous prices that the
building of the city went the other way, and all is, therefore, behind
the Capitol instead of in front of it.

A splendid Congressional Library has lately been completed. It
is enormous, and is built on the most modern principles of ventila-
tion, heating, and labour-saving, and, as far as possible, is fire-proof.

The Washington Monument has been called ' the World's
greatest cenotaph.' It is a gigantic pyramid, built of enormous
blocks of white marble, and cost one million two hundred thousand
dollars. Inside is a spiral staircase winding round the elevator,
which takes seven minutes to carry passengers to the top, which has
been floored in to make a room. There are four small windows
unseen from below through which a panorama of the town and the
surrounding country is visible, men and horses appearing like
insects.

One striking characteristic of Washington life is the ease with
which an interview can be held with the President, the members of
the Cabinet, and the holders of office. How they get through their
current work with all these interruptions is a mystery, but they do.
It is undoubtedly better that a subject should be discussed de vive
voix with the chief than that it should filter through many
channels, to arrive, as a more or less garbled version, at head-quarters.
The result bears good fruit, for things are often settled offhand
which take weeks and mouths in another country. Also it is human
nature to take more interest in a personality than in a int re name.

Washington is an immensely social centre, hospitality is un-
bounded, and from the first Monday in December, when Congress
assembles, till the late spring, entertainments are unceasing. Very
few of the inhabitants are indigenous, except such families as the
Blairs, Lees, Beales, and some others — names associated with the
place for several generations. Nearly everybody comes from other
parts of the Union. Political, Army and Navy, or diplomatic life
constantly imports men and their families into Washington, to
remain usually for such time as the appointment lasts. Latterly
many wealthy people who have made their fortunes elsewhere come
and settle there. Every year more visitors come to the hotels,
and are charmed with the winter climate and a life combining the
freedom of country out-door exercise with plenty of society for
the evening and the added interest of politics and acquaintance with

280 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

distinguished personages. This often results in their buying land,
building magnificent houses, and so adding to the solid phalanx of
Washington] an s ; all of which makes it the more agreeable, as
hitherto society was so constantly changing. With the new President
every four years a new Cabinet is formed and nearly all the Federal
appointments change. Officers of both Army and Navy never
remain stationary long, nor do diplomatists.

There is a joke descriptive of the different cities, showing how
people in Washington neither have root nor take root. To the
question, ' How are strangers received in New York ? ' the answer is,
' How much have you got ? ' In Boston, ' How much do you know ? '
In Philadelphia, ' How many grandfathers have you ? ' In Washing-
ton, ' How do you do ? ' The fact of cosmopolitanism makes it far
more interesting than where people are on one pattern. Western
people are as different from Eastern and Northerners from
Southerners as Italians and Eussians or Spaniards and Germans.

In England there is still a vague notion that Americans are
almost English. If that impression were thoroughly eradicated
we should comprehend the American nation much better.

Every country has sent her thousands, who, while assimilating to
a certain degree, do not lose the traits of their ancestors. The
Dutch descendants are justly proud of Holland and naturally do not
care a rap for England. Many customs in New York which are
foreign to English minds are found at the Hague. The Germans
are overwhelming in numbers. They abound all over the middle
West. Chicago is the second biggest German city after Berlin.
Even in New York there is a German theatre and several news-
papers piinted in German. Not only are there so many Germans
in Chicago, but all street signs have to be written in several
languages to enable the new-comer to understand.

The mixture of races and the give-and-take of ideas has produced
the cleverness and charm of the American people. The language,
most of the law, and some of the religion are what remains of our
thirteen colonies, but these after all have formed the rock on which
the nation has built itself up. The Episcopal Church is still the lead-
ing one, though there are many sects, and the Puritan conscience is
said still to exist. The Roman Catholic Church makes immense strides,
as nearly all foreign-speaking and Irish citizens are of that faith.

The scale of life in Washington has increased during the last
decade and almost doubled. From the size and character of a
village where everyone was known to everyone and each carriage
was recognised, a luxurious town has grown up. Parties are no
longer simple affairs. Nowadays, dinners are superb, French
chefs, good wines, &c., are no longer the exception. Competent
judges maintain that for the size of Society the quantity of dinner-
parties is unequalled elsewhere. Certainly the number of invitations

1903 WASHINGTON, D.C. 281

for all is in excess of the capabilities of one evening. There are
fewer balls than in other places ; this arises partly from the scarcity
of young men, for as there is no business in Washington the sons,
once grown up, are off to the centres where they can work, and the
daughters remain. It is decidedly the American Elysium for
elderly people, who elsewhere give up all going out to the young.
Outside the town, however, are several Golf Clubs; and what with
automobiling, riding, and driving, the younger people are not to be
pitied. They also have frequent young dinner-parties for them-
selves, and except for the lack of dancing have no cause for
complaint.

When a young girl comes out she is called a ' Bud,' and, to in-
troduce her, the parents give an afternoon tea, and invite their entire
acquaintance. The friends have the charming custom of sending
bouquets to the ' Bud,' and it is quite pretty to see the 'Bud' at
her first party dressed in white muslin and surrounded by these
trophies arranged behind her on a screen and on all available spaces.
There is much sensible freedom allowed in the intercourse from the
boy and girl period onwards. Walking, riding, and driving together
are permissible. A young man may visit a young lady in the
absence of her mother. Her absence is got over in a very ingenious
way by asking at the door, ' Are the ladies receiving ? ' The reply
probably being 'Miss Mary is in'; though Mrs. Smith may be
upstairs or out. This sensible plan, being the custom of the country,
saves the mother a great deal of waste of time in having to be
present when she would probably rather be reading, and it gives
much greater opportunity of realising character on the part of both
the ' Beau and the Belle ' as they are still called.

Visiting has reached a great pitch in Washington, as everyone,
both great and small, has a day. If the after-dinner visit is not
made personally on the at-home day, the hostess regards her guest
as very impolite. Whole streets are at home on certain days, which
is very convenient, as one can pop into one house after another so
quickly. Nearly every day of the week from December to Lent is
taken up by official receptions, which almost anybody and every-
body attends once during the season. Owing to the crowds the
wives of Cabinet Ministers, &c., are obliged to ask several ladies of
their acquaintance to come and help them — that is, to stand
about and talk to the strangers and to invite them to take tea.
When invited for such purpose the lady comes very smartly dressed
and without her hat, so that the stranger may see who are of the
receiving party. If a hatted or bonneted lady began a conversation
without an introduction, perhaps the stranger might not like it.
Travellers come from all States to Washington and make it their
business to call on their Senator's wife, the Congressman's wife and
all the Cabinet, so that among the receiving party they probably

282 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

find people from their own town or State, and do not feel lonely. In
a new country these customs are all founded on common-sense and
have important reasons. American women are very quick to take
hints to improve themselves. Take, for instance, a woman from the
West or South, who has had no social training and who has become
better off with time. She arrives at a hotel for a week and is
permitted by custom to pay all these visits. She then probably for
the first time sees afternoon tea, watches the manners and dress of
the different ladies and looks at the pictures and different objets
d'art, for most of the hostesses are exceedingly rich. She goes
home to ' Idaho ' with a much wider horizon than she had on
arriving at Washington, and probably puts what is possible into
practice at once. Supposing her husband eventually goes to
Congress, it will be her turn to receive the stranger. In this land
of possibilities a man may become a millionaire, a Senator, or even
be elected President, and it is this which makes this wonderful people
always on the look-out to improve and learn; their secret is that
they are never satisfied. Though Washington is the capital of the
United States, it is a place with a ' season/ for after June the heat
becomes so great that every person who can leave goes away. After
the first frost is considered early enough to return. By the end of
June the population has grown black, for nearly every white person
has left, the intervening months are so inexpressibly hot and
unhealthy as to prevent any desire to remain. The thermometer is
always in the nineties, and frequently goes up to 106° in the shade,
with great humidity — a very depleting climate. However, since the
era of bicycles, electric cars, and automobiles, the first hot weather
has lost somewhat of its horror. Nowadays the poorer classes can go
seven miles into the country in almost every direction for 2^d. in
the open car, as well as all over the town. This means of con-
veyance, so quick, so clean, so cheap, has enabled the builder to
wave Aladdin's lamp over the hills — and rows of houses now stand
where a few years ago forest trees brought Nature almost to the
confines of the city.

Three Commissioners govern the town, one always being an
engineer officer. They have plans for sweeping away, what is now
a squalid quarter, extending from the Capitol down to the river. It
is intended to make an immensely wide avenue starting from the
Capitol, taking in the ' Monument ' as a centre or rond point and
leading to the proposed new bridge to Arlington Cemetery ; that
lovely spot made sacred by its historical association, as well as by
its present use. When completed it will beautify the place
enormously. These Commissioners have already saved ' Rock Creek '
from the builder by laying out miles of roads for a National Park
embracing a Zoological Gardens. It has been done in the cleverest
possible way without spoiling the natural scenery, merely by cutting

1903 WASHINGTON, D.C. 283

and tidying. In the Zoo the animals' houses are built among the
trees or down by the water, as is most desirable. The bears, for
instance, are in natural rocky caves, while the buffalo and the deer
roam about the hillside with plenty of room. The surrounding
country is delightful and picturesque, and under that ' blue dome of
air ' everything looks dazzling and radiant and gives the feeling de-
scribed as the joie de vivre.

When after the long afternoon the sun sets in its golden
southern glory, illuminating all, and best of all painting the pure
white Monument with iridescent colour, Washington is a place to
dream of, and never to forget.

MAUD PAUNCEFOTE.

284 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

MISTRESS AND MAID

A PARTY of old-fashioned folk were discussing at lunch the other
day the ever-bewildering rush of social innovation, and at last they
took to wondering what things they would be able to boast of having
seen in London if each of them lived to be seventy. ' I shall say
that I once lived in a whole house of my own/ said one ; ' I shall
say that I once drove a carriage drawn by my own horses,' said
another ; ' I shall tell how I wrote my own letters with a pen,' said
a third ; ' But I shall boast that I was served by my own servants,'
said the hostess : and all felt that her reminiscences would have a
special value.

It seems almost certain that London will go the way of most
cities on the Continent, and that its large private houses, those
castles so dear to the Englishman, with all their waste of space and
extravagant cost, must give way to flats. It seems probable, too,
that London will improve upon the Continental practice and combine
restaurants with flats. We may see that this plan has already been
tried with excellent results in certain flats of the more luxurious
order. But the system is extending rapidly, and there are now
flats or sets of rooms, of an entirely unpretentious kind, where
lunches and dinners are served in the public dining-room at a
cost of from $d. for lunch to Is. or Is. 3d. for dinner. The food
is simple, but well cooked, and can be nicely served at a sum
just over cost price. We have all heard, too, of the wonderful
traiteur who would seem to have stepped out of the Arabian
Nights, and who provides dinner, with table linen, flowers, silver,
the whole accompanied by a deft attendant, who waits, washes
up, and disappears. The whole for a moderate sum. The system
appears to work well, and we are assured that it affords infinite relief
to the undomestic married couple, to the bachelor, or to the woman
with a profession. In any case, these facts would seem to suggest
that the domestic difficulty is a real one, and that many people's lives
are made a burden to them by their inability to train and to keep their
servants, or to make a comfortable home ; let us add, by the reluctance
of young girls to enter service, and their incapacity very often for
domestic duties.

1903 MISTRESS AND MAID 285

The writer of this paper believes that there are some very serious
evils and injustices which might easily be set right in connection
with domestic service, and that perhaps, on the whole, though it is
a hard saying, we all of us get the servants we deserve.

To begin at the beginning, it is obvious that young people are
greatly influenced in the choice of a profession by the opinion of
their fellows, and it must be admitted that service is not now in
favour. Domesticity, and by that word I wish to mean the care of
a house, and of all things appertaining to the comfort of its inmates,
is not in fashion even amongst young ladies. We must remember
that fashion is not confined to one class. The girl who in London
announces her intention of becoming a servant has to go through a
perfect hailstorm of chaff and banter ; her brothers and their friends
call her ' slavey/ and suggest all manner of horrors in store for her ;
her sisters, on the other hand, tell her she will wear a cap, and never
get a holiday or an hour out. In truth, it requires no little
character and determination to take so unpopular a course. The
writer remembers a most interesting debate at a large girls' club on
this very question in which she took part, and how she tried to
prove to the meeting that everyone at some time or other employed
domestic helps, whether as washerwomen to come and help wash or
as charwomen on occasions of sickness or other emergency. The
debate clearly showed that it was not a want of liberty that was
complained of so much as the loss of social status, and a sort of
feeling that domestic work was not of so high and honourable a kind
as bookfolding, dressmaking, jam-making, or any of the other
trades by which girls earn a starvation wage. The meeting was
brought to a close by the reading of Stevenson's verses to his old
nurse, and there seemed to be a dawning sense that to be a good
nurse to a little child, to cook, and manage the expenditure of a
family on food, were, after all, difficult and honourable professions,
which perhaps exacted higher qualities than the making one part of
a pin, or a life spent on button-holes.

The writer, however, felt that to raise the consideration in which
servants were held, and to secure a good start in the profession, were
first steps to be taken towards a better state of things. It is the
first start which is so difficult and which destroys the chances of so
many girls, and disgusts others with their work. The first start is
nearly always made in a tradesman's family, where the girl is not
expected to have any special knowledge, but is to help a little with
everything. Such homes may be, and often are, among the most
comfortable in service, if the mistress is a good-hearted, sensible
woman who knows how to train her little maid. There is a sense
of home, especially if there are children, often sadly wanting in
larger establishments. But, on the other hand, the temptation to
overwork the young servant, to make her do all, while the mistress

286 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

does nothing, is a serious one, and there is often wanting that touch
of sympathy which helps a young girl in her first year away from
home in a strange family. It is very much like being at school,
only there is less playtime. Many girls detest the eating alone, and
their meals doubtless become strange affairs of queer and ill-
digested food ; but here, again, in many families the little nurse
dines with the children and her mistress, and gets a further sense of
being at home.

It would be well if mistresses could realise how very often the
beginnings of a young servant have been in such situations as these,
and how the change to a well-appointed, well-ordered house is an
overwhelming one, and one which the ' between girl,' the kitchenmaid
or young housemaid, does not always find to her advantage.

This brings us to one of the great evils which beset domestic
service as it is organised to-day. There can be little doubt that the
under servants, the young apprentices we may call them, are not
considered as they should be, and have far too much given them
to do. They are often ill fed, with insufficient time for meals ; their
work is never done. The writer believes this evil to exist more
especially in the large middle-class house which keeps ' between ' girls,
or young kitchenmaids and under-housemaids. The manners of the
servants' hall in very large establishments have become the fashion
in numberless houses which were never intended for such artificiali-
ties, manners which may be in place in his Grace's establishments,
in the counties, but are entirely out of reason in an ordinary London
house in a London street. The upper servants practically do no
work — they expect to eat and live apart — the whole work of the
house is often left to an unfortunate ' tweeny ' girl who naturally
becomes overworked and anaemic. The writer knows of one un-
fortunate little maid called home to see a dying father, who, on her
return after a three days' absence, found that every plate, dish, cup
or saucer, pot or pan which had been used in the kitchen in her
absence, had been piled round the scullery in all their malodorous
grease for her to wash. She sat up half the night to get through the
odious business. Such a girl will probably, besides her own definite
work which is hers of right before breakfast, have to make early tea
and serve it, for all the upper servants, wherever they may choose to
take it ; besides laying the fires, she will have to deposit a match
box and a few choice sticks of wood before the principal grates, in
order to keep up the fiction that the upper servants ' see to ' the
fires in the sitting-rooms. The kitchenmaid has often to cook two
dinners, for the ' Room,' for the ' Hall,' besides very often cooking
the lunch for the dining-room, in all cases helping the cook to do so.
Such artificial arrangements give double work, and it is obvious that,
unless in a very large house with a large staff, they throw a vast
amount of unnecessary work upon the youngest members of the

1903 MISTRESS AND MAID 287

household. We may remember Mr. Weller's friend, Mr. Muzzle, and
his explanation of why the young servants dined in the ' washus ' —
' the juniors is always so very savage.' But Mr. Muzzle had not
invented a separate table with different meals for the upper and
under servants. Now these habits get known and frighten young
servants, who are willing enough to work for their employers, but
who resent the arbitrary behaviour of the upper servants. It is, of
course, asking a great deal of every mistress of a household that she
should know what goes on in her own house ; but a little good sense
and kindly feeling would in the long run be respected by the entire
household, and would put an end to a condition of things which
bears very hardly upon the young servant. A very stiff examination
paper might be set to mistresses of households thus :

(1) Given three staircases above stairs, one oak, one stone, and
one ordinary wood. What servant cleans which staircase ? and if
there are steps to the cellar who cleans these ?

(2) Who lays tea in the housekeeper's room ?

(3) Who cleans the cook's boots ?

The number of conundrums might be indefinitely extended, and
few householders could satisfy the examiners. The answers would
depend on the number of servants kept, whether there are men
servants, whether the house is in town or country. In old days
the upper servants took a fair share of the work themselves ; now it is
all left to the juniors, who have not yet learned their business, are
always in a muddle, are too often overworked, and do not get proper
leisure for their meals. I say nothing of the overcrowding which
the increase of servants in a small house involves. If the mistress
will make each servant understand that she will tolerate no in-
justice, if she will define the duties of each servant after careful
consideration, and let every servant feel that all may find in her a
friend, and establish personal relations with them individually, she
can easily arrange for a comfortable dinner in common, and, without
undue interference, can yet see that one and all get a reasonable
share of comfort and leisure.

But there is a more serious matter behind. The question of
character. Is an employer bound to give a character of a servant,
and how should he give it, and how often should he give it ? It is
commonly assumed that every employer gives a character as a
matter of course, but it is not so. One of the best known of the
London Eegistry Offices recently took a test case into court, with
the result that it appears that the employer is not so bound ; it is
certain that some employers consistently refuse to give characters at
all, and that others are exceedingly careless and negligent of the
interests of the servant. If we consider the matter, the whole
system of character-giving is a piece of most delicate machinery : the
character is usually in the air, and is often lost altogether, or changed

288 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

and damaged in transference. Characters, as we all know, are most
often given by word of mouth from one person to another, in private,
and are privileged. Let us suppose a case in which a servant has a
satisfactory character of three years ; she leaves for no fault, and her
employer gives a good character of the three years to another lady, who
engages her. The servant leaves her new situation at the end of her
month, from no fault very likely ; perhaps she does not like new
ways ; perhaps she does not agree well with the servants, but she
leaves. Now there is a tradition of service that the servant carries out
of her situation at her month the character she took in. But in the
present case where is that character ? obviously in the air ; she is
completely at the mercy of her employer of a month, who if she is
vexed may not unlikely allow her vexation to appear in her rehearsal
of the character. Nor is that all ; the servant might conceivably go
back to her old employer and ask for a second character. This she
sometimes gets, but one may very often hear employers say that
they make it a rule never to give a second character. In such a
case, therefore, which is of every-day occurrence, the servant loses
a good character and is very seriously injured. Let us take another
case. Let us suppose that in the month something serious has
taken place, which should be mentioned in any character, yet very
often the employer, to save annoyance to herself, will give the
character she received, and say nothing about the just cause of
complaint that she may have. In this case the injustice is to the
public. Then there are the cases of employers who would gladly
befriend their servants, but who have gone abroad, gone to India
perhaps, or the colonies, and who have forgotten to leave the
character of a servant in some obtainable form. Then do we not all
know of the employer who, when written to for a character, answers
in the hastiest of notes, answers one question and quietly ignores
the others ? What conclusion to draw is a constantly recurring puzzle.
Now it seems to the writer that in other countries they have a more
businesslike and satisfactory system. The young man or woman
intending service buys a book — let us call it a ' service book,' in
which his name, birthplace, parentage, are entered. There may
then very likely come a recommendation from the schoolmaster,
and so he or she gets his first situation. At every change the
character is written in the book and visaed by the consul, who
affixes a stamp. It is thus possible to see the ' ensemble ' of some
years of service, and if the record is good it ensures work to every
industrious man or woman ; the characters are more serious and more
carefully set down than is commonly the case with us, and the system
prevents hasty statements, as ' Frau Buchholtz ' has told us in her inimi-
table way. The writer has now one such book before her, and is greatly
struck with the simplicity of the plan and the value to employer
and employed of such careful testimony. The system is in vogue in

1903 MISTRESS AND MAID 289

Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and probably in many other
countries.

We know that in all classes in England there is a horror of
organisation, or interference with the liberty of the subject, and it is
possible that objections might be raised to the ' service book ' even
if it could be bought at the nearest post office, and the character
stamp affixed by the post-master. We are inclined to think that
the best servants would welcome the innovation, which would
inevitably bring the rank and file into line. Such a system would
greatly facilitate the opening of public bureaux where employers and
employed could register their wants, instead of as now employing
expensive registry offices and advertising in the public prints. It is
commonly supposed that these are safeguards, but the little ' service
book ' would be a far more efficient safeguard, and would, we believe,
greatly assist the modern housewife as well as the modern servant.
The writer has been urged to put together these suggestions by the
complaints of many servants as to the unsatisfactory nature of their
position ; she believes that they would welcome the service book ;
but, book or no book, is it beyond the skill of the law to give some
kind of sanction to the domestic contracts on which the comfort
and happiness of every household depend, and so to guarantee that
justice shall be done to the large and ever-growing class of domestic
servants, who, as a class, render most admirable and efficient service
to our commonwealth? It is quite impossible to exaggerate the
heedlessness, the careless indifference with which characters of
human beings are tossed about and flung to chance as it were. Can
nothing be done to compel an employer to give a character to the
man or woman who has served him, and eaten his bread ? We must
remember that the credit, happiness, nay the very chance of an
honest livelihood, depends for thousands of our fellow-subjects upon
the momentous question, character or no character?

E. B. HARRISON.

VOL. LIU— No. 312

290 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

A WORKING MAN'S VIEW OF TRADE-
UNIONS

THERE is no phase of the present-day industrial problem which is
so fraught with possibilities for good or ill to the working classes
as the attitude of the trade-unions towards labour questions. Not
that the unions are numerically so strong as to warrant this con-
clusion ; on the contrary their membership forms but a comparatively
small fraction of those who live by labour ; but, being practically
the only aggressive influence, they can, and do to all intents and
purposes, dominate the industrial relations of the employed with
their employers in this country.1

It may be asked why the non-unionists with such a prepon-
derating majority submit to be ruled in this high-handed and
autocratic way by such a comparative few in point of numbers.

The answer is not far to seek. For, although the British work-
man on this point — as in matters political — is strangely apathetic,
there are other and more potent influences at work than indifference,
which affect the general question. For instance, we have in this
country, in both urban and suburban communities, considerable
bodies of working men and women who are engaged in the smaller
industries • whose numbers in each occupation are too few to admit of
their being effectively banded together in union ; who have neverthe-
less been able to obtain and maintain a fair rate of wages in the aggre-
gate. And it is certainly not surprising to find that many of these
work-people, whose continuity of employment depends in a great
measure on the prosperity of the other trades, are more inclined to
curse than to bless the trade -unions when a strike or lock-out in the
larger industries leads to dislocation in their own business, with its
consequent diminution in work and wages. There is also another
example which leads us practically to the same conclusion. There
are, as is well known, scattered throughout rural England, large
numbers of villages and small towns, many of them miles remote
from the screech of the locomotive, where the necessary work of
the hamlet or district is carried on in small workshops and factories ;

1 To give the proportions roughly, there are about seven non-unionists to one
unionist workman.

1903 A WORKING MAN'S VIEW OF TRADE-UNIONS 291

many of these works employ but two or three men, while others
would be called capitalist employers by the economists, inasmuch
as they provide both the money and the labour for their own single-
handed business. Much of this work is done under the old con-
ditions, as it has been for many a long generation ; the same tools
and appliances and methods of work, having been handed down from
father to son, are still followed and deemed sufficient, without raising
a single disquieting thought that they are falling behind^the times.2
The men who take part in these occupations, both masters and
workmen, pursue the even tenor of their way unmindful alike of
either trade organisations on the workman's part, or the mad race
for money-getting which is characteristic of the employers in the
large towns. Each knows in his own sphere, and they are not wide
apart, that the reward of the day's labour will bring in sufficient for
the day's requirements, and even that, with a little abstinence, it
will permit of some saving for the proverbial rainy day. What
wonder then that these men — and their number in the aggregate is
considerable — should regard with indifference, not to say positive
aversion, any effort made by trade-union agitators to draw them
away from their almost idyllic mode of life ? They know full well,
those of them who read, that after all the industrial upheavals of
the last half-century the workman's life in the towns, as a work-
man, has not been made better or brighter or more full of hope
than their own. They have gathered from their reading, if not
from actual observation, that the advent of so much machinery, and
consequent subdivision of labour, in the large workshops and factories,
have not tended so markedly to the social amelioration of the masses
of the people as they should have done, were the machines but used
as the helpmate and not the master of the workman. They are
convinced that the machines and the subdivision of labour have,
between them, robbed the craftsman of half the pleasure and pride
he formerly had in the exercise of his calling ; and well-nigh
deprived him of all incentive to exertion except such as he must needs
give to keep his place and earn his money. Further, they believe
that the workman in the big towns, if he does his duty, must give an
equivalent return in labour for his enhanced wages ; they are sure
that his life is much more intense than their own ; and that his
manly vitality will be sooner used up, even if his life is not really
shortened, by the keener struggle for existence which he must
undergo. And when, as it frequently happens, through pressure
of circumstances any of these artisans or labourers are forced
into the large towns, there is little need for wonder that they
fight shy of, and turn a deaf ear to, the blandishments of the

2 It is no unusual occurrence in a walk through the villages to come across a
sawpit, with its pair of sawyers cutting timber into boards, exactly as in medieval
times.

u 2

292 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

promulgators of trade-unionism. Another thorn in the side of the
unionists which rankles deeply is the considerable body of town
bred and reared workmen with whom they have to deal who, while
not in positive opposition, refrain from participation in either the
conduct or membership of the societies ; not because they do not
approve of many of the objects of the associations, but because they
do not care for the indiscriminate methods used in putting them
into practice. It is an often- remarked and regrettable fact that the
abstention of these men is a direct loss to trade-unionism and also
to the cause of industrial progress ; as their example and teaching
would raise the discussion of trade questions to a higher level, as
well as tend to restrain the more hot-headed partisans of the
societies from proceeding to extreme measures without due con-
sideration, and only then for an adequate cause. As the
trade-unions are at present conducted, they will not join, to be
swept forward whether they will or not by the careless irre-
sponsibles who too often form the rank and file of the union
forces. Still, the majority of these men, as I have known, will not
in a time of stress desert their comrades, but loyally abstain from
work in their support, even though they do not agree with them as
regards the matters in dispute ; and this, even, at considerable loss
and deprivation to themselves and their families, esprit de corps
impelling them to this sacrifice. Then, again, there are the drunken
and improvident, to whom the payment of the necessary contribu-
tions acts as a bar to their inclusion in the ranks of the societies ;
they will not, however they are tried, exercise the requisite self-
denial to enable them to afford the money. Everything else may go
by the board, but their self-indulgence must not be curtailed, even
for the benefit of their wives and children, not to speak of their
fellow-men, they still believing, with unreasoning faith and cheerful
optimism, that they will come out all right in the end. Another
undesirable type which has to be reckoned with is the man who plays
for his own hand alone ; a man with so little compunction in his
nature that he does not care who sinks if only he swims. This
egregious egotist, who hides behind the hedge while the conflict is
in progress, is always among the first to claim a share in the spoils
after the victory is won.

With such a heterogeneous body of unorganised labour to contend
with as is here depicted, the general reader will see some of the
difficulties the trade-unions must encounter when trying to extend
their borders, and also estimate how far open dislike, diffidence,
and carelessness on the part of the non-unionists contribute to
make the unions, though in so decided a minority, withal so
powerful as an effective militant industrial combination. Looked at
from the friendly society aspect, the unions are worthy of all com-
mendation, and have proved of immense service to the members.

1903 A WORKING MAN'S VIEW OF TRADE-UNIONS 293

But we will not dilate on this point, as it is with their attributes
as trade organisations for the betterment of working rules and
wages that we are at present more closely concerned.

The general principles of trade-unionism — with which I have had
a practical acquaintance for over thirty years, first as a unionist,
and in after years as a non-unionist artisan — were in their inception
eminently calculated to help forward the social and material progress
of the working classes. That they have failed so signally in winning
the adherence of the workers in a much more marked degree than
they have yet achieved, is deplored alike by thoughtful workmen
and students of social economy. Nor can this failure to extend
their sphere of influence be attributed to want of definiteness in the
rules of the societies ; they are as plain as a pikestaff as regards
both rights and duties. There is no room for ambiguity on this
point. And although there is not, as has been lately argued, in
words, any rule to restrain the diligence of the members as workmen,
it is clear that as an organisation they have not resolutely dis-
countenanced the ' go easy ' practice, but rather sought to palliate
the proceeding. This laxity on the part of the unions, in not
urging upon their followers to give of their best in this connection, is
eating the heart out of our industrial life, and is, in view of the increas-
ing intensity of foreign competition, deplorable in the extreme, as is
also the mistaken notion that by limiting the output the work will
go further round indefinitely, and thus provide labour and wages for
an increased number of workmen. It is, to my mind, a distinct falling
away from the best influences of the mediaeval guilds, as they are
exemplified in the fine morality of the inscription on the banner of the
glovers of Perth : ' The perfect honour of a craft or beauty of a trade
is not in wealthe but in moral worth, whereby virtue gains renowne.'

Though the trade-unionists have been generally held responsible
for this degeneracy in British labour, the suggestions I wish to make
with the view of raising the status of the societies are also in a
great measure applicable to the non-unionists.

One of the first alterations I should press forward, were I still a
trade-unionist, would be the removal of the club-rooms from the
licensed public houses in every instance ; and this reform I should
advocate in season and out of season until I had carried my point.
That there would be little difficulty in effecting this transference
will be agreed; as in every town which had a sufficient working
population to permit of the establishment of a branch society, there
would be rooms in connection with either church, chapel, mechanics
institute, or workmen's club, which would be suitable and available
for club-rooms ; while in some of the large towns there are trades'
halls, with committee-rooms and a lecture hall, for aggregate
meetings of the trades. This reform once established would clear
away an objection of many workmen as regards the place and manner

294 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

of conducting the affairs of the societies. That this is not a fanciful
objection, or the view of an extreme faddist, may be brought to the
test by picturing to the imagination the discussion in the public-
house club-room, with its inevitable concomitants of pipe and glass,
of questions of such vital importance to both employers and workmen
as a projected strike or other serious dislocation of trade. How can a
question so momentous to a working man as the stoppage of his
work and wages be debated, with the calm deliberation essential
before arriving at a decision, amidst an atmosphere reeking with the
fumes of drink and tobacco ? Again, is it probable that the condition
of the auditors, who will in the end decide by their votes the question
at issue, will be sufficiently clear to enable them to give a deliberately
formed and sensible decision ? Another objection which should have
great weight with the older workmen who are fathers of families is
the effect that the temptations and associations of the public house
are likely to have on the young and impressionable members of their
order. Clearly, it is a vital question to the cause of good government
in the unions to uplift the deliberation and decision of important
trade matters out of the category of topics which are only deemed
suitable for the talk of a ' free-and-easy.'

Having cleared away the ' free-and-easy ' character from the
societies' meetings, it will be necessary to reorganise the methods of
conducting the business. Men who are fitted by education and
training to take a practical and common-sense view of questions
which more immediately concern their own trades should be selected
as leaders. They ought also to have a good general knowledge of
trade matters as they affect the welfare of their own country ; and
also an eye to discern the effects of foreign competition in its bearing
on proposed changes in rates of wages and conditions of labour.
As leaders, they must be men who, believing in the wastefulness
and barbarity of strikes, will not resort to this expedient until after
all the resources of conciliation and arbitration have been tried and
failed; men who recognise that by strikes and lock-outs both
masters and workmen in a busy time, reckless of the consequences
of their action, frequently hand over to our foreign rivals work which
is never regained. And if, after all, it has not been possible to
avert the threatened dislocation of labour, they should be men who
will unceasingly watch for the right moment for ending the dispute ;
not forgetting that strikes are a two-edged weapon with which both
sides can play, and that the ' money-bags ' of the employer — stored-up
labour if you will — have at times, when the struggle has been a pro-
tracted one, prevailed over the bare cupboard of the workman. It
is hardly necessary to say they should be men who are familiar with
every phase of the labour question, not only from the labourer's
standpoint, but from the point of view, as well, of the employer ;
and also the effect any proposed changes will be likely to have upon

1903 A WORKING MAN'S VIEW OF TRADE-UNIONS 295

the consumer, who must in the end bear the brunt of it. It would
be futile to expect that masters and workmen will, even under the
best possible arrangements, be content to ' bury the hatchet ' ; but
it is possible, with less mutual distrust, to establish more cordial
relations between the two. And this desirable consummation the
leaders of trade-unions can help forward through a policy of tactful
forbearance if they will ; and, without trenching on any law of their
constitution or derogation of dignity, uplift their cause in public
esteem.

There is another phase of the question which calls for special
comment in connection with the administration of the societies.
It has been a subject of complaint for years that men who are not
competent workmen in their trades can, with comparative ease,
join the ranks of a trade-union ; although it is expressly enjoined
by rule that candidates for admission shall be ' in good health, be
good workmen, of steady habits, and good moral character ' ; and
were this rule carried out in its integrity it would have an excellent
effect in raising the tone of the societies. But the contrary is too
often the case, the zeal of the members to obtain recruits leading
them to propose men for membership with whose qualifications they
have only a superficial acquaintance. And when, after the pro-
bationary period, the men come before the members for initiation,
the necessary questions of eligibility are gone through in a most
perfunctory way. Now, this is obviously not as it should be, nor
in the best interest of the societies ; as the fact of a man being a
trade-unionist lends an air of approval to his character as a work-
man, and proves often his passport to employment as an efficient
craftsman. Whereas under the prevailing conditions he frequently
turns out a failure as a workman, and a continual source of complaint
to the employers, as well as an element of weakness to the societies,
inasmuch as his incompetence leads to a pretty constant drain on
the union funds in out-of-work donation. That this is a matter
which ought to be taken into consideration by the General Federa-
tion of Trade-Unions, with a view to amendment, will be agreed ;
as, independent of any opinion on the part of the employers, it is
a weak link in the chain that holds the organisations together, and
one which can only be strengthened by the elimination of the
undesirables ; and, in future, only electing men who will by their
labour add to its prestige.

But the most helpful method, to my mind, for raising the status
of the trade-unions is education ; not only book-learning, but the
wisdom which can only be gained by experience. There is not any-
thing more likely to benefit the workman in the future than better
scholastic and workshop training. If he is made more competent
and reliable, he will be able to command increased wages, and his
work will be better worth the money to his employer.

296 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

Although, as a workman, I am sorry to make the admission, still,
I must in candour — for it is not creditable to the English working
classes, considering the facilities we have had during the last thirty
years — say that we are poorly educated. That we are careless as
regards the value of education, even as a help to winning an easier
and a better livelihood, will probably account for this remissness.
Within my own recollection — and I am not an old man — if the
parents of a son or daughter belonging to my class sent them to
school much beyond the half-time period, it was at once presumed
they were intending to make them either a school master or mistress,
or at least a book-keeper or clerk. And this idea has not even yet
died out, for many parents cannot see that it is requisite to give
their sons a good education to fit them to take positions as foremen
in the mechanical trades, although such a berth would bring them
better pay and more regular employment.

There will be little doubt that the trade-unionists — the aristocracy
of labour — could do much to awaken the workers to a sense of their
responsibilities on this point. Let them, as the advance guard of
the industrial army, see to it that their own children during school-
age attend the classes regularly, and that they are being taught a
thoroughly good and comprehensive elementary education, such a
training as will assist them in the work of their life, and conduce to
their entertainment when at leisure; leaving until their minds
are more matured the further advanced subjects of study, and
particularly those of a technical or scientific nature to an age when
they can be understood and their usefulness appreciated. By this
plan of procedure much valuable time which is now wasted in the
attempt to teach abstruse subjects could be utilised in preparing
such an educational foundation as would carry any subsequent
additions to the store of learning. That the trade-unions, equally
with the co- operative societies, could establish an educational
propaganda to help forward this advanced work will be generally
conceded. This could be done by starting classes in connection
with the club-rooms where there are at least a dozen members ; and
further, by lectures and discussions on trade and other cognate
questions. The classes should be staffed by practical and well-
educated men, workmen for choice, and be strictly confined to the
instruction of the members in the technicalities of their special
trades, and the elucidation of the many little workshop difficulties
which no one can explain so clearly and well as an actual craftsman.
There should also be classes for geometry, freehand, mechanical and
architectural drawing, as the case might require. The lectures need
not necessarily be of a dry uninviting nature, but such as would
tend to inspire the youths and young men to a noble endeavour to
improve their position ; while the discussions would help to broaden
their views and elevate their general character. The lectures would,

1903 A. WORKING MAN'S VIEW OF TRADE-UNIONS 297

of course, be delivered in convenient centres for the attendance of
the members of several branches ; and this gathering of the clans
would be beneficial in cultivating a spirit of emulation and comrade-
ship in the societies. As regards the cost : that the money would be
well spent, if the work was carried out in the spirit proposed, there
cannot be two opinions, though it need not be excessive or pro-
hibitory on that account. The most costly item would be the teacher's
fees, and as the tuition should be of the best, the teachers would
require to be paid well. And, in truth, the best in this connection
would be the cheapest, as I can show from the experience of a workman
friend of my own. He was a journeyman joiner employed in a village
workshop, and being of an inquiring mind, with an ambition to lift
himself above the common ruck, he, with a view to improving
himself, entered as a student the School of Art in a neighbouring
manufacturing town. He took up three subjects for study,
geometry, freehand, and architectural drawing; 'pegging away,' to
use the expressive phrase of President Lincoln, for three evenings a
week for a whole year, and, when the examinations came round, he
sat for his three subjects and passed in them all, receiving a
prize for geometry. With a view to extending his studies and
bringing into practical use his recently acquired knowledge, he
entered himself for a second term at the school. Being, as I have
said, of a practical turn of mind, he wished to apply his geometry to
some of the problems of his trade. There is one piece of work that
every joiner with any ambition is anxious to master, that is, making
the twisted parts of a continued staircase handrail. My friend
knew that the ' lines ' for this job were got out on a geometrical
plan, and naturally wished to apply his geometry to this useful
purpose. He was but a young man, though with good ideas for his
years, but the application of his knowledge was beyond him without
assistance, so he asked first the assistant-master and afterwards the
headmaster to explain the matter. But the problem was a sealed
book to both of them. They were first-class teachers of art, but
they were not practical men who could apply their knowledge to
practical purposes, and thus proved the rock on which my friend was
stranded. He got his information in the end from an old rule-of-
thumb workman ; but the moral of it is that our technical teachers,
if not actual workmen, must have spent some time in the shops, and
gained sufficient actual knowledge of workshop practice to apply
their learning to solve the problems of everyday work ; otherwise
they will only prove blind leaders of the blind, as in my friend's
experience.

That there are not any insuperable difficulties to prevent such
improvements in trade-union tactics as I have detailed from being
put into practice is obvious. That there is a distinct need for trade-
union institutes, with such a curriculum as I have indicated, spread

298 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

over the country in order to keep our workmen abreast with the wants
of the times, is made manifest every day. We are being taunted day
after day, and told that we are not doing our duty. Let us stop this,
and provide facilities where our workmen in battalions may study and
learn, what some of us have found out already, that the sweat of the
brow can be lessened by the co-operation of hand and brain ; and
further, where we may be taught, that it is those qualities which are
fostered by education, sound judgment, self-reliance, promptness,
and shrewdness, which are in most demand, rather than great powers
of physical endurance.

As I have already said, the most serious difficulty to surmount is
the cost, and while this might be met by fees from the students, I
firmly believe it would be a policy that would pay were the societies
to make a grant from the union funds for the purpose ; anyhow, the
expense need not be prohibitive, and would prove a mere flea-bite
compared with the disbursements for some labour conflicts of recent
years.

Trade-unions have done good work in the past, and by taking
part in the training of our young men as suggested, can achieve
greater success in the future ; while, by making drastic changes in
the management as indicated, we shall do much towards reducing
labour troubles with their attendant industrial anarchy to a minimum.
Further, the unions can be made more popular and influential among
the working classes by making them more free ; the unionists and
non-unionists being allowed to work together, without unnecessary
friction, would tend to remove some of the acerbities which exist
between employers and employed. Finally, we ought not to forget,
even when we have attained all the education we desire, that it is
upon the strenuous industrial life, each man giving of his best for
the best wages — that the greatness of our industries has been built
up, and by which it will be maintained in the coming years.

JAMES Or. HUTCHINSON.

1903

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WIRELESS
TELEGRAPHY

WE have of late had very definite proof that wireless telegraphy is
not by way of standing still; indeed, so rapid is its rate of progress
that any remarks one may make as to its position can only be taken
as applying at the moment. Mr. Marconi's recent transatlantic
achievement cannot fail to attract general admiration, and there
should be no stinting of congratulation here. He has now fully
established the possibility of sending clearly understood signals
across the Atlantic. These complimentary messages are an advance
well worthy of a year's work on the doubtful, or at any rate doubted,
S signals at the end of 1901. Five years ago no one could have
foreseen that Marconi would have made such advances ; and only ten
years have elapsed since the first experiments were made in the
application of Hertzian waves to telegraphy. Marconi's work only
covers six years, and the young Anglo-Italian has not been daunted
or deterred by difficulties or adverse criticism. All great inventions
have taken time to become matured and developed ; but with energy
and dogged determination, such as appear to exist here, the desired
goal should be ultimately reached.

It would in these days be rash to set any limit to the
extension of electrical science, and the scientific possibility of
to-day becomes the every-day routine of to-morrow. The period of
partial failure is almost bound to occur with any great invention ;
but it may certainly be said that wireless telegraphy has passed the
laboratory stage.

That there are difficulties to be overcome, it would be folly to
deny. The main requirements of an efficient system of telegraphy
are : (a) Certainty of transmission and reception ; (6) accuracy ;
(c) speed ; (d) secrecy. The last condition is largely met in present-
day cable practice by the employment of codes, cipher and other-
wise. From a strategic standpoint, however, the prudence of solely
reiving upon their non-decipherment may be doubted. Experience
has shown the advisability of laying all-British cables for the express
purpose of avoiding this risk. It may also be questioned whether

299

300 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

any existing system of wireless telegraphy could successfully cope
with a code if it is to meet the other conditions named. It would
seem, too, that a cable may always be conceded superiority as a
secret messenger to any system which launches forth signals into
space without any guiding line to ensure against straying on the road.1
Though it may not be very easy to read from tuned receivers without
knowing the 'pitch' in advance, laborious trials could presumably
effect this end, if the inducement be sufficiently strong. It seems,
however, that a more serious and frequent failing of the new tele-
graphy may be under conditions (a) and (6), owing to non-security
against interference. The chance of a message being rendered
unintelligible by a third party is not a pleasing prospect to anyone
in the habit of using the telegraph. Cables can be cut and, if cut,
they can be ' tapped ' ; but here we have a distinct violation of the law
under normal conditions, besides attracting too much attention to
be worth the attempt. On the other hand, as things stand at
present — with no one holding a monopoly of the atmosphere for
telegraphic purposes — there does not appear to be anything to
prevent the use of electric waves more or less in the vicinity of a
' wireless ' apparatus sufficiently powerful to entirely upset its
equilibrium. This would be a comparatively simple matter and
need not be observable, even if a meteorological disturbance were
not equal to the occasion. This brings us to the broad question of
patent rights. The most important exclusive privilege in connection
with wireless telegraphy would certainly be that of sole rights for the
use of the aether of the atmosphere ; and if no one can secure this
on the ground of being first in the field, it would seem that the
prospect of a perfect jumble of setheric circuits is considerable. This
all points to serious disturbance to the eminently useful ship-to-ship
and ship-to-shore wireless systems ; and, from the public point of
view, the sooner we get our wireless telegraphy under single — or at
any rate responsible — control and subject to proper regulations, the
better. The proposed international agreements may tend to meet
this end ; and the early reservation by Government — or by definite
parties under Government licence — of the various prominent points
along our coast would also be advisable.

Let us turn now to condition (c). Here we have some discre-
pancy of evidence, though the working speed of cables is fairly well
known and can be readily checked. The working speed of a modern

1 Certainly the method of transmission in the wireless system contains the
elements of novelty. That is clearly indicated by the Times correspondent at Halifax
where he says : — ' The lay observer has, however, ample proof of the great strength
of the current used, in the lightning-flash which accompanies each movement of the
operator's hand and in the sharp and continued concussion that follows, only to be
compared to the rapid firing of a Maxim gun.'

This makes one wonder what will be the effect of a constant stream of very
powerful Hertzian waves wafted into the atmosphere.

1903 PRESENT POSITION OF WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY 301

Atlantic cable with all the latest apparatus, including the duplex
system, closely approaches one hundred words per minute, and is
practically only limited by the size of the conductor and its insulator
to meet the estimated traffic requirements. Thus it is not unusual
to get a cablegram through from the London Stock Exchange to
Wall Street within a minute ; again, to send a message, to, and
obtain a reply from, New York in the course of ten minutes is a
matter of everyday occurrence. The speed by the Marconi system
is said to be practically unaffected by the intervening distance
between the transmitter and receiver. On the other hand it appears
to be at present a comparatively slow-working affair, even when
compared with a cable of great length such as an Atlantic line.2 This
inferiority in speed points to the necessity of a large number of
circuits between given spots, if the setheric system is to form an
active commercial competitor with our cables ; and it remains to be
seen whether a multiplication of wireless instruments between given
spots will interfere with their independent working.

But just as the strength of a chain is that of its weakest link,
so really the message-carrying capacity, or service, of a telegraph
system is largely governed by its working arrangements with con-
necting systems. These usually take time to develop and improve.
They depend very much upon local conditions ; but the long-stand-
ing service afforded by most of the cable companies is now brought
to a fairly high state of efficiency. Circumstances over which the
cable companies have no control prevent the connecting service
between London and this end of the Atlantic cables (as well as of the
Eastern lines) being all that could be desired ; but on the other side
the connections in the United States and British North America
are admirable from a commercial point of view. The Marconi
Company are said to have entered into arrangements for a good
' feeding ' system on that side ; but so far they do not appear to
have been able to induce the Post Office to enter into similar
working arrangements over here such as they (the Post Office)
have already with the cable companies. Possibly this is due to the
fact that the officials of the Telegraph Department do not consider
the system has proved itself to be sufficiently reliable as yet for
regular service purposes ; and certainly the general public and the
lay press who readily criticise this conservative attitude are forgetful
sometimes that they are not in a position to judge of the soundness
or otherwise of the policy adopted, for the reason that they do not
know or understand what constitutes an efficient telegraph service,
and what are the nature of the requirements. Neither do they
appear to remember that our existing telegraph facilities are not
altogether wanting ; and that in these circumstances it is better to

2 Here, again, however, it must be remembered that the speed on the Atlantic
cable was at first considerably below the speed Mr. Marconi already claims.

302 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

be behindhand than ' too previous ' in taking up a new system —
thereby availing ourselves of the experience of others. On the
other hand, the proverbial slowness which our country has shown in
recognising great inventions is certainly noticeable here, in contrast
with the line taken by the Canadian Government in the matter.
We are reminded of what took place in regard to the establishment
of the first Dover-Calais telegraph. On the 23rd of July, 1845, the
brothers Brett addressed themselves to Sir Robert Peel, as Prime
Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, relative to a proposal of
theirs for establishing a general system of oceanic telegraphic com-
munication. They were referred to the Admiralty, Foreign Office,
&c., and gradually became immersed in a departmental correspon-
dence— more academic than useful — in which they were passed
backwards and forwards from one Government office to another. It
was a considerable time before landing rights were granted for the
first Channel line (ultimately laid in 1850), though the French
showed enthusiasm from the first. In the case of the new telegraphy
our Post Office have, it is alleged, refused to receive messages for
subsequent transmission by the Marconi system. They have not,
however, defended their State monopoly to the extent of confisca-
tion, as the French Government have in the case of another setheric
system near Cherbourg — where, indeed, it is only experimental work
that is being conducted ! One thing is quite certain, however, and
that is that the working arrangements which the Marconi Company
have entered into on the other side of their transatlantic system
will be of little avail without similar agreements with the Post Office
over here.

But probably none of these difficulties are insurmountable ; and
all may be overcome by anyone showing the undaunted, indomitable
perseverance that Mr. Marconi has in solving various problems one
by one. Marconi has age, too, on his side; he is only twenty-seven.
Thus, curiously enough, he has effected transatlantic wireless tele-
graphy at a period of life within a few months of that at which the
late Sir Charles Bright laid the first Atlantic cable. The incredulity
in, and the opposition to, the Atlantic cable was, as most of us know,
very considerable. Men of science, engineers, and sailors were all
prejudiced against the line. Moreover, scores of difficult problems
had to be surmounted before the complete success of to-day was
ultimately achieved. So, too, in the new telegraphy ; and when once
the requirements of an efficient service are shown to be sufficiently
met, so soon will such a means be in immediate demand for com-
mercial purposes.

Though we may have a little time to wait for this condition of
things, the enormous utility of the setheric system for maritime
and meteorological purposes is already beyond question.

For all normal navigation purposes, for signalling for pilots, for

1903 PRESENT POSITION OF WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY 303

notification between ships of their positions, &c., the setheric tele-
graphy should be invaluable, and prove a boon and a blessing to the
shipping fraternity. It should also prove of incalculable benefit to
ships in distress, for avoiding collisions in a fog, and also for the
issue of weather reports some time in advance of what is at present
possible. There will no doubt come a time, too, when before start-
ing on a sea voyage, we shall have to decide between a boat in
telegraphic touch with the world, or one on which we can ensure
leaving the world behind us. Already we hear talk of a mid- Atlantic
newspaper and of one vessel having actually taken 40£. for despatch
of messages by the Marconi system. The flashing of time signals
has also been suggested. In a strategic sense it would seem as
though the new method of rapid communication would be especially
applicable to ballooning; and the writer has already pointed to
the setheric system as especially adaptable for putting all our
coast stations into communication with one another, and, moreover,
with various inland centres and military stations. So far as
lightship and rock-lighthouse communication is concerned, con-
sidering the length of time that has elapsed since this method
was recommended for the purpose by a Committee appointed to
consider and report on the whole subject, it is to be hoped that
this work has been largely effected by now.

In the midst of all these fields for setheric telegraphy, one may
perhaps stop to wonder whether ten years hence the air will still be
fresh in the early morning before the usual contamination has
taken place. Shall we still be able to enjoy our pre-prandial ride, or
will the air be prejudicially charged with aerograms ?

Turning once more to the question of between-country tele-
graphy, what is now required is an extension of our telegraphic
facilities in all directions, partly for national and strategic reasons,
and partly for commercial use. As regards the former need, it is
suggested that all parts of the Empire should be in direct telegraphic
touch with each other, and that at least one circuit should be all-
British in character. As regards the latter need, healthy competition
for producing an immediate reduction of rates is the main con-
sideration. It is comparatively unimportant who effects this,
provided that it is successfully effected ; and if the aetheric system
can show itself to be equal to the occasion, so much the better, for
— partly on account of the much lower initial outlay involved — we
have evidence that wireless telegraphy is at any rate -likely to be
cheap and enterprising.

The main object of this article is to establish the great service
which can be performed by 33 th eric telegraphy in connection with
purely social messages such as have received no encouragement from
the cable companies until the moment — possibly a coincidence —
when wireless telegraphy began to be at all ' dangerous,' and then

304 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

only by a proposed ' social code.' This is a class of message — as
well as some commercial messages — which should be transmitted at
' deferred rates,' as proposed by Sir Edward Sassoon and others
(including the writer) to the Cable Communications Committee.
By deferred rates is meant : rates suitable for messages of a non-urgent
— indeed, comparatively unimportant — character, such as can be
held over till night if necessary. The scope for messages of this class
is open to wide extension, as the writer pointed out in a recent
address to the London Chamber of Commerce. If, after attracting
their customers, the Marconi Company adhere to the low rates they
have already announced, they should indeed receive a wide measure
of support.

But with the present condition of between-country telegraphy
increased facilities will, in the main, merely increase the demand ;
and there is nothing in the scientific advancement of aetheric
telegraphy such as justifies the parting with valuable investments in
cable stocks. So far from the annihilation of the cable companies
being imminent, and our cables becoming obsolete, it would be as
ill-advised to sell out of cable shares as it was of those who passed
gas shares into wiser pockets on the introduction of the electric
light in the early eighties. The threatened competition of wireless
telegraphy bids nothing but good for the general public by ' waking
up ' the cable companies and forcing them to reduce their rates, just
as the electric light was the means of producing the incandescent
gas mantle. It is questionable whether any of the improvements
which have of late years taken place in gas-lighting would ever
have been known but for the introduction of electricity for lighting
purposes. At the same time it would be absurd to imagine that
such an effect spells disaster for these companies. Improvements
in our cable service, in the way of reduced rates, &c., have only
been accomplished as a rule at the instance of competition ; but
as often as not the companies have in the long run benefited,
though they have not been sufficiently far-seeing or courageous to
reduce the rates until practically bound to. The panic-stricken
country widow owning cable shares has unfortunately already parted
with her property. This is largely due to the inflamed statements
in certain portions of the lay press which are untempered by a proper
acquaintance with the subject, or its problems. A recent news-
paper article foretold not only the immediate sale of all the cables
at the price of old iron, but announced that the Atlantic Mail
Service would shortly be rendered unnecessary, and might at once
be abolished. It would seem that those interested in either system
are not able to treat the existing state of things in a temperate
spirit. Consciously or otherwise, exaggeration is liable to creep in,
and especially by unofficial repetition at the hands of the Press.
One of the difficulties the public have to contend with, in fact, is

1903 PRESENT POSITION OF WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY 305

that of obtaining reliable information on which, an opinion may be
formed; for in nearly every newspaper reference to wireless tele-
graphy we see signs of an inspired brief, by the system being
-definitely ' written up ' or ' written down.'

It seems a vast pity that this should be so. It should surely be
possible to appoint a jury of independent experts to test the value of
the new telegraphy and give a report for the benefit alike of the
Government and the people. Such a jury need not necessarily be
composed of gentlemen whose connection with setheric methods has
lacked expansion either through insufficient personal belief or
insufficient public support.

Even apart from purely mercenary considerations, there is per-
haps a tendency for those connected with the present methods of
telegraphy to view unfavourably any new system, and to rather
conclude that it is unequal to the object aimed at. Though such
experts have the advantage of being fully acquainted with the
requirements, they do not always recognise that these can be satis-
factorily met in different ways — off the somewhat beaten track that
they are used to and know so well.

CHARLES BRIGHT.

VOL. LIII — No. 312 X

306 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

' How did the idea of a University Settlement arise ? ' ' What was
the beginning ? ' are questions so often asked by Americans,
Frenchmen, Belgians, or the younger generation of earnest English
people, that it seems worth while to reply in print, and to turn
one's mind back to those early days of effort and loneliness before
so many bore the burden and shared the anxiety. The fear is that
in putting pen to paper on matters which are so closely bound up
with our own lives, the sin of egotism will be committed, or that a
social plant, which is still growing, may be damaged, as even weeds
are if their roots are looked at. And yet in the tale which has to
be told there is so much that is gladdening and strengthening to
those who are fighting apparently forlorn causes that I venture to tell
it in the belief that to some our experiences will give hope.

In the year 1869, Mr. Edward Dennison took up his abode in
East London. He did not stay long nor accomplish much, but as
he breathed the air of the people he absorbed something of their
sufferings, saw things from their standpoint, and, as his letters in his
memoirs show, made pregnant suggestions for social remedies. He
was the first settler, and was followed by the late Mr. Edmund Hollond,
to whom my husband and I owe our life in Whitechapel. He was
ever on the look-out for men and women who cared for the people, and
hearing that we wished to come eastward, wrote to Dr. Jackson,
then Bishop of London, when the living of St. Jude's fell vacant in the
autumn of 1872, and asked that it might be offered to Mr. Barnett,
who was at that time working as curate at St. Mary's, Bryanston
Square, with Mr. Fremantle, now the Dean of Eipon. I have the
Bishop's letter, wise, kind, and fatherly, the letter of a general
sending a young captain to a difficult outpost. ' Do not hurry in your
decision,' he wrote ; ' it is the worst parish in my diocese, inhabited
mainly by a criminal population, and one which has, I fear, been
much corrupted by doles.'

How well I remember the day Mr. Barnett and I first came to
see it! — a sulky sort of drizzle filled the atmosphere; the streets,
dirty and ill-kept, were crowded with vicious and bedraggled people,

1903 THE BEGINNING OF TOTNBEE HALL 307

neglected children, and overdriven cattle. The whole parish was a
network of courts and alleys, many houses being let out in single
furnished rooms for 8d. a night — a bad system, which lent itself to
every form of evil, to thriftless habits, to untidiness, to loss of self-
respect, to unruly living, to vicious courses.

We did not ' hurry in our decision,' but just before Christmas,
1872, Mr. Barnett became vicar. A month later we were married,
and took up our lives' work on the 6th of March, 1873, accompanied
by our friend Edward Leonard, who joined us ' to do what he could ' ;
his ' could ' being ultimately the establishment of the Whitechapel
committee of the Charity Organisation Society, and a change in
the lives and ideals of a large number of young people, whom he
gathered round him to hear of the Christ he worshipped.

It would sound like exaggeration if I told my memories of those
times. The previous vicar had had a long and disabling illness, and
all was out of order. The church, unserved either by curate, choir,
or officials, was empty, dirty, unwarmed. Once the platform of
popular preachers, Mr. Hugh Allen and Mr. (now Bishop) Thornton,
it had had huge galleries built to accommodate the crowds who
came from all parts of London to hear them — galleries which blocked
the light, and made the subsequent emptiness additionally oppressive.
The schools were closed, the school-rooms all but devoid of furni-
ture, the parish organisation nil ; no mothers' meeting, no Sunday
school, no communicants' class, no library, no guilds, no music, no
classes, nothing alive. Around this barren, empty shell surged the
people, here to-day, gone to-morrow. Thieves and worse, receivers
of stolen goods, hawkers, casual dock labourers, every sort of
unskilled low-class cadger congregated in the parish. There was an
Irish quarter and a Jew quarter, while whole streets were given over
to the hangers-on of a vicious population, people whose conduct was
brutal, whose ideal was idleness, whose habits were disgusting, and
among whom goodness was laughed at, the honest man and the
right-living woman being scorned as unpractical. Bobberies,
assaults, and fights in the streets were frequent ; and to me, a
born coward, it grew into a matter of distress when we became
sufficiently well known in the parish for our presence to stop, or at
least to moderate, a fight ; for then it seemed a duty to join the
crowd, and not to follow one's nervous instincts and pass by on the other
side. I recall one breakfast being disturbed by three fights outside the
Vicarage. We each went to one, and the third was hindered by a
hawker friend who had turned verger, and who fetched the distant
policeman, though he evidently remained doubtful as to the value
of interference.

We began our work very quietly and simply : opened the church
(the first congregation was made up of six or seven old women,
all expecting doles for coming), restarted the schools, began Bible

x 2

308 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

Classes, established relief committees, organised parish machinery, and
tried to cauterise, if not to cure, the deep cancer of dependence
which was embedded in all our parishioners alike, lowering the best
among them and degrading the worst. At all hours, on all days,
and with every possible pretext, the people came and begged. To
them we were nothing but the source from which to obtain tickets,
money, or food ; and so confident were they that help would be forth-
coming that they would allow themselves to get into circumstances of
suffering or distress easily foreseen, and then send round to demand
assistance.

I can still recall my emotions when summoned to a sick woman
in Castle Alley, an alley long since pulled down, where the houses,
three storeys high, were hardly six feet apart ; the sanitary accommo-
dation pits in the cellars; and the whole place only fit for the
condemnation it got directly Cross's Act was passed. This Alley,
by the way, was in part the cause of Cross's Act, so great an impression
did it make on Lord Cross, then Sir Richard Cross, when Mr. Barnett
induced him to come down and see it one hot summer's day.

In this stinking alley, in a tiny, dirty room, all the windows broken
and stuffed up, lay the woman who had sent for me. There were
no bed-clothes ; she lay on a sacking covered with rags.

' I do not know you,' said I, ' but I hear you want to see me.'
' No, ma'am ! ' replied a fat, beer-sodden woman by the side
of the bed, producing a wee, new-born baby ; ' we don't know yer, but
'ere's the babby, and in course she wants clothes and the mother
comforts like. So we jist sent round to the church.'

This was a compliment to the organisation which represented
Christ, but one which showed how sunken was the character which
could not make even the simplest provision for an event which
must have been expected for months, and which even the poorest
among the respectable counts sacred.

The refusal of the demanded doles made the people very angry.
Once the Vicarage windows were broken ; once we were stoned by an
angry crowd, who also hurled curses at us as we walked down a
criminal-haunted street, and howled out, as a climax of their wrongs,
' And it's us as pays 'em.' But we lived all this down, and as the
years went by, reaped a harvest of love and gratitude which is one
of the gladdest possessions of our lives, and is quite disproportionate
to the service we have rendered. But that is the end of the story,
and I must go back to the beginning.

In a parish, which occupies only 109,500 square yards and was
inhabited by 8,000 persons, we were confronted by some of the hardest
problems of city life. The housing of the people, the superfluity of
unskilled labour, the enforcement of resented education, the liberty
of the criminal classes to congregate and create a low public opinion,
the administration of the Poor Law, the amusements of the ignorant,

1903 THE BEGINNING OF TOYNBEE HALL 309

the hindrances to local government (in a neighbourhood devoid of
the leisured and cultured), the difficulty of uniting the unskilled
men and women in trade unions, the necessity for stricter Factory
Acts, the joylessness of the masses, the hopelessness of the young —
all represented difficult problems, each waiting for a solution and
made more complicated by the apathy of the poor, who were
content with an unrighteous contentment, and patient with a
Grodless patience. These were not the questions to be replied to by
doles, nor could the problems be solved by kind acts to individuals,
nor by the healing of the suffering, which was but the symptom of
the disease.

In those days these difficulties were being dealt with mainly by
good kind women, generally elderly ; few men, with the exception of
the clergy and noted philanthropists, such as Lord Shaftesbury, were
interested in the welfare of the poor, and economists rarely joined
close experience with their theories.

' If men, cultivated, young, thinking men, could only know of
those things they would be altered,' I used to say, with girlish
faith in human good- will — a faith which years has not shaken ; and
in the spring of 1875 we went^to Oxford, partly to tell about the poor,
partly to enjoy 'eights week' with a group of young friends. Our
party was planned by Miss Toynbee, whom I had met when at
school, and whose brother Arnold was then an undergraduate at
Ealliol. Our days were filled by the hospitality with which Oxford
still rejoices its guests ; but in the evenings we used to drop quietly
down the river with two or three earnest men, or sit long and late
in our lodgings in the Turl, and discuss the mighty problems of
poverty and the people. How vividly Canon Barnett and I can
recall each and all of that first group of ' thinking men/ so ready
to take up enthusiasms in their boyish strength — Arnold Toynbee,
Arthur Hoare, Leonard Montefiore, Alfred Milner, Philip Gell, John
Falk, GK E. Underbill, Ealph Whitehead, Lewis Nettleship ! Some
of these are still here and caring for the people, but others have
passed behind the veil, where perhaps earth's sufferings are explicable.

We used to ask each undergraduate as he developed interest to come
and stay in Whitechapel, and see for himself. And they came,
some to spend a few weeks, some for the long vacation, while others,
as they left the University and began their life's work, took lodgings
in East London, and felt all the fascination of its strong pulse of
life, hearing, as those who listen always may, the hushed unceasing
moans underlying the cry which ever and anon makes itself heard by
an unheeding public.

From that visit to Oxford in the 'eights week' of 1875 date
many visits to both the Universities. Rarely a term passed without
our going to Oxford, where the men who had been down to East
London introduced us to others who might do as they had done.

310 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

Sometimes we stayed with Dr. Jowett, the immortal Master of Balliol,
sometimes we were the guests of the undergraduates, who would
get up meetings in their rooms, and arrange innumerable breakfasts,
teas, river excursions, and other opportunities for introducing the
subject of the duty of the cultured to the poor and degraded.

No organisation was started, no committee, society, nor club
founded. We met men, told them of the needs of the out-of-sight
poor ; many came to see Whitechapel and stayed to help it.
And so eight years went by — our Oxford friends laughingly terming
my husband the ' unpaid professor of social philosophy.'

In June 1883 we were told by Mr. Moore Smith that some men
at St. John's College at Cambridge were wishful to do something for
the poor, but that they were not quite prepared to start an ordinary
College Mission. Mr. Barnett was asked to suggest some other
possible and more excellent way. The letter came as we were
leaving for Oxford, and was slipped with others in my husband's
pocket. Soon something went wrong with the engine and delayed
the train so long that the passengers were allowed to get out. We
seated ourselves on the railway bank, just then glorified by masses
of large ox-eyed daisies, and there he wrote a letter suggesting
that men might hire a house, where they could come for short
or long periods, and, living in an industrial quarter, learn to ' sup
sorrow with the poor.' The letter pointed out that close personal
knowledge of individuals among the poor must precede wise legisla-
tion for remedying their needs, and that as English local government
was based on the assumption of a leisured cultivated class, it was
necessary to provide it artificially in those regions where the line of
leisure was drawn just above sleeping hours, and where the education
ended at thirteen years of age and with the three K's.

That letter founded Toynbee Hall. Insomnia had sapped my
health for a long time, and later, in the autumn of that year, we were
sent to Eaux Bonnes for me to try a water cure. During that
period the Cambridge letter was expanded into a paper, which my
husband read at a College meeting at St. John's College, Oxford,
in November of the same year, where, to quote the Bishop of
Stepney's words, ' there were present a number of men who have
since become well known. Mr. Arthur Acland, Mr. Michael Sadler,
Mr. Anthony Hawkins, better known as "Anthony Hope," Mr. Spender
of the Westminster Gazette, and myself.' Mr. Arthur Sidgwick was
also present, and it is largely due to his practical vigour that the
idea of University Settlements in the industrial working-class
quarters of large towns fell not only on sympathetic ears, but was
guided until it came to fruition. Soon after the meeting, a small
but earnest committee was formed ; later it grew in size and
importance, money was obtained on debenture bonds, and a head

1903 TEE BEGINNING OF TOTNBEE HALL 311

sought who would turn the idea into a fact. Here was the difficulty.
Such men as had been pictured in the paper which Mr. Knowles had
published in this Keview of February, 1884,1 are not met with every
day; and no inquiries seemed to discover the wanted man, who
would be called upon to give all and expect nothing.

Mr. Barnett and I had spent eleven years of life and work in
Whitechapel. We were weary. My health stores were limited
and often exhausted, and family circumstances had given us larger
means and opportunities for travel. We were therefore desirous to
turn our backs on the strain, the pain, the passion, and the poverty
of East London, at least for a year or two, and take repose after work
which had both aged and weakened us. But no other man was to be
found who would and could do the work ; and, if this child-thought
was not to die, it looked as if we must undertake to try to rear it.

We went to the Mediterranean to consider the matter, and
solemnly, on a Sunday morning, made our decision. How well I
recall the scene as we sat at the end of the quaint harbour-pier at
Mentone, the blue waves dancing at our feet, everything around
scintillating with light and movement in contrast with the dull and
dulling squalor of the neighbourhood which had been our home for
eleven years, and which our new decision would make our home for
another indefinite spell of labour and effort. ' Grod help us ! ' we said
to each other ; and then we telegraphed home to obtain the refusal of
the big Industrial School next to St. Jude's Vicarage, which had
recently been vacated, and which we thought to be a good site for
the first Settlement, and returned to try to live up to the standard
which we had unwittingly set for ourselves in describing in the
article the unknown man who was wanted for Warden.

The rest of the story is soon told. The committee did the work,
bought the land, engaged the architect (Mr. Elijah Hoole), raised
the money, and interested more and more men, who came for vary-
ing periods either to live, to visit, or to see what was being done.

On the 10th of March, 1883, Arnold Toynbee had died. He had
been our beloved and faithful friend ever since, as a lad of eighteen,
his own mind then being chiefly concerned with military interests and
ideals, he had heard, with the close interest of one treading untrodden
paths, facts about the toiling ignorant multitude, whose lives were
stunted by labour, clouded by poverty and degraded by ignorance.
He had frequently been to see us at St. Jude's, staying sometimes a few
nights, often er tempting us to go a day or two with him into the
country ; and ever wooing us with persistent hospitality to Oxford.
Once, in 1879, he had taken rooms over the Charity Organisation
office in Commercial Eoad, hoping to spend part of the long vacation,
learning of the people ; but his health, often weakly, could not
1 ' The Universities of the Poor ' by Samuel A. Barnett.

312 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

stand the noise of the traffic, the sullenness of the aspect, nor the pain
which stands waiting at every corner ; and at the end of some two
or three weeks he gave up the plan and left East London, never to
return excepting as our welcome guest. His share of the movement
was at Oxford, where with a subtle force of personality he attracted
original or earnest minds of all degrees, and turned their thoughts or
faces towards the East End and its problems. The personality of
Arnold Toynbee was remarkable. To use Lord Milner's words in his
recent Reminiscence, 'No man has ever had for me the same
fascination or made me realise the secret of prophetic power — the
kind of influence exercised in all ages by the men of religious and
moral inspiration.' Through him many men came to work with us,
while others were stirred by the meetings held in Oxford or by the
pamphlet called the ' Bitter Cry/ which, in spite of its exaggerations,
aroused people to think of the poor ; by the stimulating teaching of
Professor T. H. Green, and by the constant kindly sympathy of the
late Master of Balliol, who once startled some of his hearers, who had
not plumbed the depths of his wide wise sympathy, by publicly
advising all young men, whatever their career, 'to make some of
their friends among the poor.'

The 10th of March, 1884, was a Sunday, and on the afternoon of that
day Balliol chapel was filled with a splendid body of men who had
come together from all parts of England in loving memory of Arnold
Toynbee, on the anniversary of his death. Professor Jowett had asked
my husband to preach to them, and they listened, separating almost
silently at the chapel porch, filled, one could almost feel, by the
aspiration to copy him in caring much, if not doing much, for those
who had fallen by the way or were ' ignorant of our glorious gains.'

"We had often chatted, those of us who were busy planning the
new Settlement, as to what to call it. We did not mean the name
to be descriptive ; it should, we thought, be free from every possible
savour of a Mission, and yet it should, in itself, be suggestive of a
noble aim. As I sat on that Sunday afternoon in the chapel, one of
the few women among the crowd of strong-brained, straight-living men
assembled in reverent affection for one man, the thought flashed to
me, 'Let us call the Settlement Toynbee Hall.' To Mr. Bolton
King, the honorary secretary of the committee, had come the same
idea, and it, finding favour with the committee, was so decided, and
our new Settlement received its name before a brick was laid or the
plans concluded.

On the 1st of July, 1884, the workmen began to pull down the
old Industrial School, and to adapt such of it as was possible for the
new uses ; and on Christmas Eve, 1884, the first settlers, Mr. H. IX
Leigh, of Corpus, and Mr. C. H. Grinling, of Hertford, slept in Toynbee
Hall, quickly followed by thirteen residents, most of whom had been

1903 THE BEGINNING OF TOYNBEE HALL 313

living in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel, some for a considerable
length of time, either singly or in groups, one party inhabiting a
small disused public-house, others in model dwellings or in lodgings,
habitations unsuitable both for their own welfare as well as the needs
of those whom they would serve. Those men had, as our fellow
workers, become settlers before the Settlement scheme was conceived,
and as such were conversant with the questions in the air. It was
an advantage, also, that they were of different ages, friends of more
than one University generation, and linked together by a common
friendship to us.

The present Dean of Bipon had for many years lent his house at
No. 3 Ship Street for our use, and so had enabled us to spend some
consecutive weeks of each summer at Oxford ; and during those years
we had learnt to know the flower of the University, counting, as boy
friends, some men who have since become world- widely known ;
some who have done the finest work and ' scorned to blot it with a
name ; ' and others who, as civil servants, lawyers, doctors, country
gentlemen, business men, have in the more humdrum walks of life
carried into practice the same spirit of thoughtful sympathy which
first brought them to inquire concerning those less endowed and
deprived of life's joys, or those who, handicapped by birth, training,
and environment, had fallen by the way .

As to what Toynbee Hall has done and now is doing, it is
difficult for anyone, and impossible for me, to speak. Perhaps I
cannot be expected to see the wood for the trees. Those who have
cared to come and see for themselves what is being done, to stay in
the house and join in its work, know that Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel,
is a place where twenty University men live in order to work for, to
teach, and to learn of the poor. And for eighteen years the succes-
sion of residents has never failed. Men of varied opinions and many
views, both political and religious, have lived harmoniously together,
some staying as long as fifteen years, others remaining shorter periods.
All have left behind them marks of their residence ; sometimes in
the policy of the local Boards, of which they have become members ;
or in relation to the Student Residences, to the Antiquarian, Natural
History, or Travelling Clubs which individuals among them have
founded ; or by busying themselves with Boys' or Men's Clubs, classes,
debates, conferences, discussions. Their activities have been unceasing
and manifold, but looking over many years and many men, it seems to
my inferior womanly mind that the best work has been done by those
men who have cared most deeply for individuals among the poor. Out
of such deep care has grown intimate knowledge of their lives and in-
dustrial position, and from knowledge has come improvement in laws,
conditions or administration. It is such care that has awakened in the
people the desire to seek what is best. It is the care of those who,
loving God, have taught others to know Him. It is the care of those

314 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

who, pursuing knowledge and rejoicing in learning, have spread it
among the ignorant more effectively than books, classes, or lectures
could have done. It is the care for the degraded which alone arouses
them to care for themselves. It is the care for the sickly, the weak,
the oppressed, the rich, the powerful, the happy, the teacher and
taught, the employed and the employer, which enables introduction
to be made and interpretation of each other to be offered and accepted.
From this seed of deep individual care has grown a large crop of
friendship, and many flowers of graceful acts.

It is the duty of Toynbee Hall, situated as it is at the gate of
East London, to play the part of a skilful host and introduce the
East to the West ; but all the guests must be intimate friends, or
there will be social blunders. To quote some words out of this year's
Eeport, just written by Canon Barnett, Toynbee Hall is ' an association
of persons, with different opinions and different tastes ; its unity is
that of variety ; its methods are spiritual rather than material ; it
aims at permeation rather than at conversion ; and its trust is in
friends linked to friends rather than in organisation.'

It was a crowded meeting of the Universities Settlements Associa-
tion that was held inBalliol Hall in March 1892, it being known that
Professor Jowett, who had recently been dangerously ill, would take
the chair. He spoke falteringly (for he was still weakly) and once there
came an awful pause that paled the hearers who loved him, in fear
for his well-being. He told something of his own connection with the
movement ; of how he had twice stayed with us in Whitechapel, and
had seen men's efforts to lift this dead weight of ignorance and pain.
He referred to Arnold Toynbee, one of ' the purest minded of men,'
and one who ' troubled himself greatly over the unequal positions of
mankind.' He told of the force of friendship which was to him
sacred, and ' some of which should be offered to the poor.' He dwelt
on his own hopes for Toynbee Hall, of its uses to Oxford, as well as
to Whitechapel ; and he spoke also of us and our work, which he
said were the foundation of it all ; but those words were conceived by
his friendship for and his faith in us, and hardly represented the
facts. They left out of sight what the Master of Balliol could only
imperfectly know — the countless acts of kindness, the silent gifts of
patient service, and the unobtrusive lives of many men ; their re-
verence before weakness and poverty, their patience with misunder-
standing, their faith in the power of the best, their tenderness to
children and their boldness against vice. These are the foundations
on which Toynbee Hall has been built, and on which it stands aiming
to raise the ideals of human life, and to strengthen faith in God
Almighty, whose Christian name is Love.

HENRIETTA 0. BARNETT.

1903

THE DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION

EDUCATION, after having been more or less neglected for a long time
in Great Britain, has now become an all-powerful panacea in the eyes
of the British public and of the British politician. As the alchemists
of the dark ages expected to be able to turn any base metal into
gold with the help of the philosopher's stone, even so the politicians
of the present day expect education to work wonders in Grreat Britain
and to benefit the nation most marvellously in every direction. And,
as in the Middle Ages unenlightened princes often subjected their
entire States to the fantastic experiments of astrologers and alchemists,
half crack-brained mystics not entirely innocent of fraud, half
nebulous scientists full of extravagant superstitions, in the hope
of benefiting their people thereby, even so the patient British nation
is to be experimented upon by the schoolmaster at the bidding of
the politician, and education is to work wonders in every way. The
stagnation of British commerce is to be converted into commercial
triumphs by commercial education. Our former industrial supremacy
is to return at the hand of technical education, improved military
education is to endow us with capable officers — in fact, the whole
nation will have to put its nose in a book. But may not the nation
become shortsighted, in the literal and in the metaphorical sense,
from too much study, and may not the promised blessings of the
schoolmaster's activity prove largely an illusion ? At present it
seems as if we were going to fall from the Scylla of under-education
into the perhaps more dangerous Charybdis of over-education.

Whilst educational enthusiasts in and out of politics are strenu-
ously advocating the ' training ' of leaders of men in every field of
human activity, it is useful to consider occasionally the limitations
of education, and to remember how few of the leaders of men have
been ' trained ' to their leadership by third parties either in schools
or otherwise.

It is an old experience that the most prominent men in nearly
every province of human activity have been amateurs, and that is
one of the reasons why amateurs, and not professionals, are selected
to rule our great public departments. Our great administrators have
nearly all been amateurs and autodidacts. To take a few of the

315

316 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

best known examples : Cromwell was a farmer, Warren Hastings and
Clive were clerks, Mr. Chamberlain was brought up for trade, Lord
Goschen for commerce, and Lord Cromer for the army. Other
countries have had the same experience with self-taught amateurs.
Prince Bismarck was brought up for law, failed twice to pass his
examination, became a country squire, and drifted without any train-
ing into the Prussian diplomatic service and the cabinet, and founded
the German Empire. George Washington was a surveyor, Benjamin
Franklin a printer, Abraham Lincoln a lumberman, M. de Witte a
railway official.

In a less exalted sphere we meet with the same phenomenon.
Sir William Herschell was a musician, Faraday a bookbinder, Scott
a lawyer's clerk, Murat a student of theology, Ney a notary's clerk,
Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning machine and the first cotton
manufacturer, a barber, Spinoza a glass-blower, Adam Smith a clergy-
man, Lord Armstrong an attorney, Herbert Spencer an engineer,
Pasteur, the father of modern medicine and chirurgy, a chemist,
Edison a newsvendor ; George Stephenson and most of the great
inventors and creators of industry of his time were ordinary working
men.

When we look round we find not only that many leaders of men
were devoid of a highly specialised training in that particular branch
of human activity in which they excel, that they were self-taught
amateurs, but that many of the ablest politicians and of the most
successful business men have not even had the advantage of a fair
general education. Abraham Lincoln had learned at school only the
three K's, and those very incompletely, President Garfield worked
with a boatman when only ten years old, President Jackson was a
saddler and never spelled correctly, President Benjamin Harrison
started life as a farmer, and President Andrew Johnson, a former
tailor, visited no school, and learned reading only from his wife.
George Peabody started work when only eleven years old, the late
Sir Edward Harland was apprenticed at the age of fifteen years,
Andrew Carnegie began his commercial career when twelve years old
as a factory hand, Charles Schwab, president of the United States
Steel Corporation, drove a coach as a boy, and then became a stake-
driver at an iron works. Josiah Wedgwood started work when only
eleven years old ; Arkwright, the father of our cotton industry, was
never at school, Edison was engaged in selling papers when twelve
years of age, and Sir Hiram Maxim was with a carriage builder when
he was fourteen. ' Commodore ' Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railway
king, who left more than a hundred million dollars, started as a
ferryman at a tender age ; the founder of the wealth of the Astors
was a butcher's boy, Baron Amsel Mayer von Kothschild a pedlar,
Alfred Krupp a smith, Rockefeller, the head of the Standard Oil
Trust, a clerk. All these most successful men were autodidacts.

1903 THE DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 317

People well acquainted with the City can name a goodly number of
millionaires who occasionally drop an ' h,' the only evidence left of
an arduous career from the bottom rung of the ladder.

Why have so few eminently successful men been school-trained ?
Because the acceptance of ready-made opinions kills the original
thinking power and unbiassed resourcefulness of the mind, and
paramount success cannot be achieved by docile scholars and
imitators, but only by pioneers. Besides, the independent spirits
who are predestined for future greatness are usually impatient of
the restraint of schools, and of their formal and largely unpractical
tuition, and wish to be free to follow their own instincts towards
success.

In view of these numerous well-known instances of greatness
achieved by men unaided, but also unspoiled by education, who
taught themselves what they found necessary to learn, which
instances might be multiplied ad infrnitum, it is only natural to
find a strong opposition to education among the unlearned men
whose native shrewd common-sense has not been affected by the
reading of books. But even the learned begin to waver and to ask
themselves whether the much-vaunted benefits of learning have not
been largely over-estimated, and whether the undoubted advantages
of education are not more than counterbalanced by corresponding
disadvantages.

The doubts as to the advantages of education have been con-
siderably strengthened by our experiences in the South African war.
Many observers have been struck by the curious phenomenon that
our most highly educated officers had on the whole so little success
against the Boer officers, who were not only quite unlearned in the
science of war, but also mostly uneducated, and sometimes grossly
ignorant in elementary knowledge, peasants who had perhaps not
even heard the names of Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Moltke,
whose every battle our erudite officers had at their fingers' ends.

The highest military school in Great Britain is the Staff College.
The officers who have succeeded in passing through that institution
are considered to be the most intellectual, and are marked out for
future employment in the most responsible positions. They are
our most scientific soldiers and represent the flower of learning in
the army. Consequently it might be expected that our most
distinguished generals should be Staff College men. However, if we
look through the Army List, it appears that our most successful
officers in the Boer war — Lord Koberts, Lord Kitchener, Sir John
French, Sir George White, Sir Archibald Hunter, Sir Ian Hamilton,
Lord Dundonald, Sir Hector Macdonald, and General Baden-Powell —
have not passed the Staff College. On the other hand, we find that
the late General Colley, who lost Majuba, was a prominent military
scientist and Staff College professor, and that General Gatacre, who

318 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

was defeated at Stormberg, and Generals Kelly-Kenny, Hildyard,
Hart, and Barton, who also took part in the South African war,
though not with conspicuous success, have the much-coveted P.S.C.
(passed Staff College) printed before their names. In the South
African war it came to pass, as some crusty old colonels had pro-
phesied, that the officers who were brimful of scientific military
knowledge, and who could talk so learnedly on strategy and tactics,
achieved nothing on the field of battle. Those who achieved some-
thing had not been 'trained' to generalship in the Staff College,
and had not had their natural thinking power, their common-sense,
crowded out of existence by the absorption of a huge store of book-
learning.

After some of our initial defeats a distinguished general was sent
out, and it was reported that wherever he went a large library of
military works, strategical, tactical, and historical, went with him.
He and his library went to Africa to save the situation, but not many
months after that distinguished scientific general returned in disgrace
to England, together with his library. His imposing book knowledge,
with which he could talk down any mere fighting officer, had availed
him nothing in the field.

Our ' highly trained ' professional intelligence officers proved also
of very little value until they had unlearned in Africa what they had
been taught at home, whilst quite unlearned Transvaal peasants made
splendid intelligence officers. On the other hand, ' Colonel ' Wools-
Sampson, by far our best intelligence officer, was a civilian.

Our politicians have unfortunately not yet learned the lessons of
the South African war. Instead of investigating why the unlearned
peasant officers defeated so often the flower of our military scientists,
who were fortified with the most profound military education, and
who had a most extensive knowledge of the battles, the strategy and
tactics of all periods, from the time of Hannibal onwards, a committee
of gentlemen innocent of war was deputed to inquire into the edu-
cation of our officers. Naturally enough their verdict was con-
demnatory of the present system, and various suggestions were made
by it how to improve the education of our officers. Lord Kitchener,
General French, Christian de "Wet, and Louis Botha, fighting officers
who are no doubt the most competent judges of the qualifications
required in an officer for war, were, unfortunately, not asked for their
opinion on such a vital matter. It would have been interesting to
learn how much or how little weight practical authorities of unrivalled
weight, such as these, attach to school education of officers as
practised in Great Britain, and what, according to their opinion, the
effect of that school education is upon their common-sense.

In view of these few examples, which are universally known, and
many more which are less familiar, it is not to be wondered at that
thoughtful men begin to question the efficacy of education altogether.

1903 THE DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 319

Hence the danger seems impending that after a spell of over-educa-
tion the swing of the pendulum should bring us back again to under-
education. Consequently it seems opportune to consider what the
object of education should be, what the advantages and the dis-
advantages of education are, how the disadvantages of education are
caused, and how they may be obviated, so that only the advantages
of education should remain.

The object of education has been laid down by the great thinkers
of all times. King Solomon recommends education in order ' to give
subtility to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion '
(Prov. i. 3), and though he frequently recommends knowledge, he
considers it as subsidiary to understanding, and wisely emphasises
'Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom, and with all
thy getting get understanding ' (Prov. iv. 7).

The advantages of a proper education are too generally known to
be enlarged upon, consequently we may turn at once to the dis-
advantages inherent to education.

No great thinker believes in the indiscriminate and uncritical
acquisition, the mere storage of dead book-knowledge, to the con-
fusion of the intellect, a result which is usually arrived at by the
cramming in preparation for examinations, as practised by our present-
day education. Learning by rote was probably in former ages as
popular among schoolmasters as it is now, because it shows quickest
some tangible results of education. Aware of this danger Solomon
urges again and again in his proverbs ' Get wisdom,' ' Get under-
standing,' { Get discretion.' He evidently thought an actively
working and intelligent brain more valuable than one filled with
knowledge.

No doubt the object of education should be to enlighten the
understanding, cultivate the taste, correct the temper, form the
manners and habits of youth, and, especially, to fit them for useful-
ness in their future stations by preparing them for the battle of life.
Is this object attained to any degree by our present education, or
does it chiefly endow us with a show of motley knowledge, mostly
useless in after life, to the detriment of our natural thinking powers
and of our common-sense ?

The danger inherent to the possession of a store of undigested
knowledge is that it shackles, stifles, and often kills the free working
of the brain. That great danger of education has been clear to
many great men, from Solomon onwards, who have given the matter
a thought. Of the numerous epigrams which have been coined to
warn against the danger of substituting a dead weight of undigested
and therefore useless knowledge for an active unprejudiced and clear
brain, endowed with common-sense, I should like to mention only
two : Goethe's ' The greater the knowledge the greater the doubt,'
and Hazlitt's ' The most learned are often the most narrow-minded

320 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

men.' The truth of these sayings is absolutely clear to every one ;
only this truth, though instinctively felt, has not sufficiently been
taken to heart by those who direct the education of the nation.

It has been truly said • Knowledge is power,' but knowledge in
itself is not power, only applied knowledge is power. Knowledge is
like money, not valuable in itself, but only valuable for what it will
buy. Knowledge is like a strong weapon, but the best weapon is
useless to a man who does not know how to wield it. Knowledge is
an elementary power, but the power of the Niagara, or of steam, or
of electricity, would be useless to mankind unless intelligence directs
that power to some practical purpose. The Chinese knew magnetic
iron long before the Europeans knew it. To them it was a piece of
iron and nothing more. Handled by European intelligence, magnetic
iron became a useful power in the compass, which gave Europe the
rule of the seas. The Chinese knew also gunpowder before the
Europeans knew it, but to them it was only a plaything used in
fireworks. A man who has read endless treatises on boxing, and
who has studied the fights of all great boxers, gets knocked out
whilst he is reflecting how Jackson or Fitzsimmons would have
behaved. The officer whose mind is soaked in military literature
and who can tell why Napoleon won the battle of Austerlitz and why
Frederick the Great lost the battle of Hochkirch has lost in nine
cases out of ten his common-sense, the buoyancy, resourcefulness
and impartiality of mind with which a less erudite officer would
tackle a difficult question.

A learned officer whose intelligence has been swallowed up by his
military studies will not immediately fit his tactics to the case in
point, as his free common-sense would suggest, but tries often to
make the case in point fit the theories which he has imbibed, or the
historical precedents ^nd parallels, which his memory, not his judg-
ment, suggests to him. An example : On the 15th of December, 1899,
General Buller telegraphed to Lord Lansdowne from Chieveley Camp :

. . . My view is that I ought to let Ladysmith go and keep good position
for the defence of South Natal, and let time help us. ... The best thing I can
suggest is that I should keep defensive position and fight it out in a country
better suited to our tactics.

Instead of looking at the position of the enemy and his tactics
with an unbiassed mind, and fitting his tactics to the ground and
circumstances, General Buller evidently wished to fit the ground and
circumstances to his unsuitable book tactics and proposed to retire
to South Natal in the vain hope that the enemy would oblige him
by following after, and thus enable him to fight there according to
the book. • Other generals complained that the Boers ' bolted ' before
an attack with the bayonet could be ' brought home.' They seemed
to consider that the Boers did not play the game squarely in deviat-
ing from the tactics taught in the text-books.

1903 THE DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 321

Amongst statesmen also we find that, on the whole, the com-
paratively unlearned have a great advantage over the very learned
and bookish. Our two most capable living statesmen, Lord Cromer
and Mr. Chamberlain, were brought up for the army and for business
respectively. They are hard workers and practical men, singularly
free from useless book learning, and have never been known to rely
for an argument on a text-book or a professorial dictum. Their
learning has been chiefly derived from intelligent observation in
practical life, and they have fortunately not had time for lengthy
theoretical studies. Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, was a great
scholar. His mind was a perfect encyclopaedia of classical and other
knowledge. He could look at every question from so many sides
and could enlarge on its countless minor aspects and possibilities
with such a wonderful brilliancy and intellectual subtlety that after
considering all the arguments which might be raised for or against,
he did at the end often no longer know himself what side to take. He
illustrated Bacon's saying, that it is not so important to know what
might be said as what ought to be done. Mr. Gladstone's unwieldy
store of book knowledge was a millstone round his neck, and dis-
qualified him from being a statesman of the first rank. Instead
of looking at essentials, his kaleidoscopic mind became involved
and entangled by the spinning out of his topic, and after straying
through a confusing maze of arguments, he was apt to let slip the
thread and to lose himself in trifles.

Of English statesmen of the second rank, few are more thoroughly
forgotten than those of the greatest and most subtle intellect, and
of nearly unequalled learning, such as Edward Gibbon, Macaulay,
Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Kobert Lowe, and the late Duke of
Argyll. They are hardly remembered as statesmen.

Compared with the men named above, the two greatest states-
men of modern times, Bismarck and Abraham Lincoln, might be
called uncultured. Bismarck was comparatively unlearned and
certainly not bookish. In fact, he expressed more than once his
contempt of political and of economical theorists, and relied solely
on his broad untrammelled common-sense, taking no notice of
professorial theories and protestations. Unhampered by the super-
fluous knowledge and the aesthetic feelings of a Gladstone, and quite
free from the theories of political scientists and political economists,
he brushed the hair-splitting arguments of over-culture aside, kept
his eyes steadfastly on the main issue, and rapidly led his country
from triumph to triumph, to greatness, unity, and wealth. Again,
that great statesman Abraham Lincoln, the former lumberman,
brought the sturdy practical sober common-sense and the fearless
determination which he had acquired in his intercourse with nature
from the backwoods into office, and saved America from disruption.

VOL. UII— No. 312 Y

322 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb

No bookish men of science would have been able to replace either
Bismarck or Lincoln.

Of our rulers, unpolished Henry the Eighth, Queen Elizabeth,
and Cromwell are among the greatest. On the other hand, of our
polished rulers, James the First, ' the wisest fool in Christendom,'
and Charles the Second, ' who never said a foolish thing, and never
did a wise one,' confirm that people who have filled themselves with
undigested learning can talk most wisely in drawing upon their
store, but cannot act wisely in applying their accumulated know-
ledge to practical issues, because with them knowledge has taken
the place of common-sense.

What applies to military matters and to business of state applies
with equal force to trade and commerce. None of our successful
generals in the South African war have passed through the Staff
College, and no business man of the first rank in Great Britain,
America, or Germany has, as far as is known, come from commercial
high schools. On the contrary, it seems that Mr. Carnegie's advice
to ' start young and broom in hand ' is most excellent counsel.
While great fortunes and great industries have almost invariably
been created by uneducated men, parvenus unembarrassed with
learning, who taught themselves what they found necessary to know,
we find on the other hand that those men who have made commercial
science, political economy, their study, have not shown any success
in business and have remained theorists. Most political economists
have had to live on their pen. Mr. Cobden went bankrupt in busi-
ness. It is true that Ricardo was well off, but he was a stockbroker
by trade, and with him political economy was only a hobby, not a
serious pursuit. It is strange how few business men of the first
rank have a good word to say of political economy.

If we look at the masses of the people we find that, owing to
education, nearly everybody can read, and does read copiously.
Every labourer and his wife read regularly their paper, free public
libraries are to be found everywhere, the best books can be bought
at sixpence or less a volume, and there is hardly a family, howsoever
poor it may be, without a library of much-read books. It might be
assumed that with the opening of the intellectual world of books, the
intellect of the people would also have been opened correspondingly,
and that the people should be more enlightened. However, it seems
very doubtful whether that is the case. Perhaps at no time
have uncritical credulousness and crass superstition been greater.
Perhaps at no time have swindlers, quacks, and charlatans of all
kinds found a larger and more gullible clientele. Cheiromancy and
clairvoyance flourish everywhere and find countless patrons, from
titled ladies to mill-hands. The belief in ghosts is strong, and
spiritualism is fashionable. Millions believe in the faith cure and
similar extraordinary gospels. The wildest schemes floated on the

1903 THE DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 323

Stock Exchange find the millions of the public ready, and the
thousands are raked in by missing-word competitions, bucket-shops,
and other transparent frauds. Throughout the country we have
large parties of convinced vaccinationists and anti-vaccinationists, of
Imperialists and of Little Englanders, of Free-traders and of Pro-
tectionists, &c. However, if the average much-reading voter is asked
why he is a convinced supporter of one or the other movement, he
will not be able to adduce any intelligent reasons for his ' convinced '
attitude from his enlightened common-sense, notwithstanding his
copious readings. As a matter of fact, he has had his belief
drummed into his brain, which has been dulled by over-reading.
His common-sense and his intellect have been smothered in paper
and printer's ink. He does not reason, but believes and follows
blindly.

The average man reads not for information, but for amusement.
Divorces, murders, cricket, betting, &c., are the most popular items,
as a glance at the evening papers, or a visit to the public libraries,
will show, and popular magazines and books are filled with extra-
vagant stories of the love and murder type, which only serve to
distort the people's ideas of life, and may also be responsible for the
creation of the hooligan. Even the short story begins to tire the
flaccid brain and the staled palate of the multitude. Its place is
rapidly being taken by papers of the Scraps, Bits, and Chips style.

In spite of the universal education of the people the stage is
steadily degenerating. The masses are no longer able to follow a
drama, notwithstanding universal education, and can only concen-
trate their minds sufficiently to follow performances of the Scraps
style, composed of comic songs, ballets, acrobatic feats, and buffoonery.
The brain of the people has evidently not been sharpened, but been
dulled and softened, by too much reading.

Public opinion is ready-made by the newspapers, and is assimi-
lated without criticism by their readers. Common-sense is getting
more and more uncommon, and is being rapidly replaced by a useless
store of miscellaneous odds and ends of information. In fact, the
mind of the multitude is beginning to resemble the contents of a
number of Tit-Bits, with its scrappy heterogeneous and incoherent
information. In consequence of this passive state of the public
brain, any movement which is undertaken by people disposing of a
sufficient store of money has a good chance of success. Whatever
the gospel may be, if there is money enough to drum it loudly and
continuously into the public ear, the public is sure to adopt it. For
a nation whose policy is based upon the will of the masses, and for a
Government which often waits for a lead from the electorate before
acting, a state of affairs which supplants the native common-sense
and the judgment of the people by a confused mass of useless
unassimilated knowledge seems distinctly dangerous.

324 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

It might be objected that common-sense is not a subject that
can be taught in schools, like writing or languages. That is true
to some extent, but common-sense can either be developed and
strengthened in schools, or can be neglected and stifled. The
tendency of schools constantly to prpvide for the scholar authorita-
tive ready-made opinions which he has to learn by heart, and which
he need not trouble to question or investigate, is no doubt fatal to
his common-sense. Instead of exercising and stimulating the power
of judgment and criticism in the tender brain, and encouraging it
to work independently, schools work almost exclusively upon the
memory, which has to assimilate a bewildering heterogeneous mass of
chiefly ornamental facts and data, which more often than not prove
utterly useless in after-life.

Instead of filling the pupil's head with knowledge regardless of
his judgment, schools should, before all, awaken the mental initiative
and invigorate the independent thinking power of their pupils, and
encourage them to use their common-sense, in order to give ' sub-
tility to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.'
However, instead of thus equipping their pupils for life, they cram
the youthful brains so choke-full with chiefly ornamental, and there-
fore futile, knowledge, that their common-sense becomes stunted.
Of what use is a smattering of history, botany, and a few words of
French to a workman's daughter who, from lack of common-sense,
cannot cook or cannot keep house for a future husband, or bring up
her children sensibly ? Of what use are the vague hazy memories
of science, which he has been taught, to a working-man who ruins
his trade and loses his employment because he believes in the
' scientific ' restriction of labour, who goes idly on strike at the
advice of a loud-mouthed agitator, or who thoughtlessly gambles his
money away, owing to the lack of that common-sense which has
been stifled at school, and which has been replaced by a smattering
of vain book knowledge ? Again, of what use are the higher studies
to the merchant, the doctor, the solicitor, the engineer, &c., if,
owing to stifled common-sense, they can make as little use of
their learning as did our highly trained officers in South Africa ?

As the possession of knowledge without understanding is not only
useless, but as its acquisition also deprives the learners of much
valuable time which might more advantageously have been employed
in a different way, it is quite clear that the schools should first of all
try to develop the native intelligence, the common-sense, of their
pupils, instead of ignoring its presence 'and weakening its force.
Furthermore, schoolmasters should constantly bear in mind that
knowledge can only be usefully acquired in proportion to the
common-sense possessed by the learner, that learning must be sub-
ordinate to understanding, and that, though common-sense can
make excellent use of knowledge, knowledge can never replace

1903 THE DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 325

common-sense. Tuition should, therefore, always look to the intel-
lectual power of the scholar, as the engineer looks to the pressure
gauge, and regulate accordingly the rate of progress in learning,
instead of mechanically filling the learner's brain to the full capacity
of the memory, and thereby crowding out the common-sense.

A thorough investigation of the art of teaching is needed, and
such an investigation may show the necessity of abandoning alto-
gether competitive examinations of the present type, which rather
go to show the strength of the pupil's memory than the far more
important soundness of his judgment.

However, more will be required than strengthening the judg-
ment of the pupil and regulating the quantity of learning to be taught
by the assimilative, not the retentive, power of the individual. It
will be the duty of our statesmen to discover whether the present
practice of education and the topics taught are most conducive to
tit the youth of the nation for their future stations in practical life.
To the solution of that most important question every true patriot,
and especially every practical man, can materially contribute, for it
is essentially a practical man's question, and not an educationalist's,
as has hitherto been usually assumed.

That our present education, primary, secondary, and tertiary, is
on the whole so little practical that it treats the critical faculties of
the pupil with sublime disregard, that it consequently tends to
deprive the nation of its common-sense, and thereby not fits but
unfits the youth of the nation for practical life, cannot be wondered
at. The reason is that our whole educational system is unfortunately
schoolmaster-made.

No doubt the fittest educators for any walk of life are those men
who have achieved conspicuous success in it. Lord Kitchener would
probably be able to train officers of distinction, Sir Edward Clarke
would probably be able to educate lawyers of prominence, and
Mr. Carnegie would very likely raise successful business men. Not
schools but great men have always been the trainers of great men
whenever great men have not trained themselves unaided. In proof
of this I would cite the pupils of Plato, the schools of the great
Italian painters during the Renaissance, the excellent officers trained
by Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Nelson. Successful men are
most competent to teach others how to attain success. Schoolmasters
are most competent to train schoolmasters. Therefore unless a
wholesome influence from outside supplies the leaven and brings on
practical reforms, primary education will remain what it is, classical
education will continue to be forced on young men to whom it
is absolutely useless in after-life, and tertiary education will not be
brought up to the practical requirements of the nation.

It is unlikely that the services of Mr. Carnegie will be secured
by a commercial academy, or those of Lord Kitchener by the Staff

326 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

College, and it is equally unlikely that able soldiers, chemists,
engineers, business men, &c., will throw away their unlimited
chances in exchange for a tedious professorship that gives them a
precarious, 'or at the best a moderate, income, and a mediocre
position. But, even assuming that first-class practical men could be
secured for teaching practical matters, they would be too much
wrapped up in teaching to keep up to date in practice, and they
would soon fall behind in their teaching. Besides, a practical man
rapidly becomes professorial when he is put in the lecturer's chair.
A Virchow, a Treves, or a Marconi could probably teach a few
intelligent, self-chosen assistants, more in the laboratory during a
month, without taking any trouble, and without interupting his
work, than he could teach an audience in two years by carefully
prepared lectures.

The triumphs of German science and industry are unjustly
attributed to the numerous universities and technical and other
schools which exist in Germany. Those institutions have been
instrumental in turning out an immense host of professors, medical
men, lawyers, &c., of medium ability, of whom the vast majority is
only partly occupied or unoccupied. Men of great ability are
raised not by the superficial education of the many, but by the
intensive culture of the few, and Germany's successes in science and
industry are traceable to the intensive, not the extensive tuition,
that has been provided by her. The ability of the best German
scientists, engineers, soldiers, &c., has wisely been utilised towards
intensive education. Moltke was at the same time the commander
of the army and the chief of the staff, and in his latter quality he
trained the staff officers in the art of organisation and of war,
especially those who showed most talent, such as his successor,
von Waldersee, who acted for a long time as his assistant. Germany's
successes in chemistry are directly traceable to Justus von Liebig
and his assistants in the laboratory, her electrical paramountcy was
created by W. von Siemens and his pupils. In fact, most of the
leading men of science and industry in Germany were trained by a
few very able men of the type of Moltke, Liebig, and Siemens, whose
assistants they have been.

Schoolmasters are too far removed from the turmoil of the world
to be able to train young men and fit them for the battle of life if
left to themselves. The training of the young cannot safely be left
to the unguided schoolmaster. To improve education the practical
men of the nation, the men who do things and who can take a com-
prehensive view of the requirements of education, manufacturers,
merchants, bankers, lawyers, doctors, officers, &c., must take an
active part, not only a sympathetic interest, in education and assist
in the mapping out of an up-to-date educational programme of real
practical utility.

1903 THE DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 327

The shortcomings of the schools are not of modern date. As
long as human records exist schools have had a distinctly conservative
strain in their character. The schools of Judea and Egypt were
ecclesiastical — that is to say, conservative — and the earliest and
mediaeval Christian schools were monastic. From mediaeval monastic
times the present schools have faithfully preserved their classic pro-
gramme and their exaggerated veneration of the studio, humaniora.
They have preserved their somewhat monastic character and
programme, partly owing to the dead weight of tradition, which has
ever been very powerful in schools, partly owing to the influence of
clergymen upon education. No doubt the blending of ecclesiastical
and scholastic influences has greatly improved the morals of the
nation, and has made it high-minded ; but these influences, which
have been excellent for the ideal equipment of Great Britain, have
not worked as satisfactorily for the practical and scientific advancement
of the country. Generally speaking, clergymen cannot be considered
to be the fittest exponents of science.

With few exceptions, schoolmasters of every type form an
extremely conservative self-centred and somewhat self-important
body. Speaking always with the voice of authority to their classes,
they tend to become autocratic in their views, and, having themselves
studied the classics, they believe the study of the classics to be the
best preparation for any and every career. Abeunt studio, in mores.

New ideas have hardly ever come from schools. On the contrary,
schools have ever proved reactionary and inimical to new ideas.
Great minds have ever been persecuted owing to the narrow-
mindedness and the jealousy of the schools from Socrates onwards.
Galileo, Columbus, and many other great discoverers were imprisoned
and treated like criminals with the approval, and largely at the
instigation, of schools of science because their discoveries threatened
the tenets of accepted learning. Even the heavy artillery of theology
has been advanced by the universities of the Middle Ages, and also
of later days, against geological and astronomical discoveries.
Newton and Darwin were laughed at by the faculties, and in Eoman
Catholic universities Darwin is still ostracised, according to report.
Kant became a professor only when he was forty-six years old, after
fifteen years' lecturing ; Schopenhauer never became a professor
owing to the jealousy of the universities. Liebig and Pasteur were
jeered at by the profession, vaccination and homoeopathy had to fight
for decades against the envy of the medical schools. David Strauss
and Eenan were compelled to leave their universities ; Beethoven and
Wagner were persecuted by the schools of music, and were treated
like madmen because they did not conform with musical traditions.
Millet was neglected by the Salon in Paris, and Whistler snubbed by
the Royal Academy in London. The inventions of Edison, Marconi,
Eontgen, Koch, could not be explained away by modern science

328 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

schools, but their discoveries have been greeted by the universities
with personal attacks full of animosity, and these men have been
pictured as the commercially successful exploiters of other people's
ideas. A late correspondence in the Tvmes with regard to the
discoveries of Mr. Marconi is typical in that respect.

Wherever we look we find the schools somewhat inclined towards
reaction. That being their character, not only in Great Britain, but
everywhere, it seems clear that it would be unreasonable to expect
that the schools should reform themselves. Therefore reforms must
come from outside unless education is to remain what it is — an
elaborate sham, with science in its mouth, but in reality a course of
cramming, destructive of common-sense.

To improve education, education may have to be individualised ;
that is to say, the present uniformity of the schools may have to
give way to schools catering directly for the practical needs of the
various classes of the population. Why should a number of pupils
who wish to follow different occupations, which require the most
diversified qualifications of mind and body, and of knowledge, and
therefore also a diversified course of preparatory study, all be classed
together, treated alike, and be compelled to learn the same subjects ?
Already pupils are enabled to some extent to choose subjects for
instruction, but specialisation has not by any means been carried far
enough. In future we shall very likely not so much require schools
which exclusively aim at mechanically cramming their pupils for
certain examinations, which are for show but otherwise of doubtful
value, but we shall require intelligently worked institutions which
cater directly for boys who intend to become lawyers, or doctors, or
business men, &c. The various classes of the community are bound
to feel, in course of time, the absolute necessity of a more practical
and more directly useful tuition for their children, they are bound to
recognise the absolute futility of measuring ability by examinations,
which show only the retentive, not the intellectual, capacity of the
brain, and the commercial instinct of schoolmasters will supply the
demand for individualised schools of a more practical type adapted
to give a thorough businesslike preparation to their pupils.

Why should a boy who is interested in a certain science or
pursuit be forced to waste a number of precious years in studying
various subjects which are distinctly unsympathetic to him, and to
receive at the same time during all these years but a scant and superficial
tuition in the one subject which he ardently wishes to study, and to
which he would like to devote his life ?

A modest beginning to provide competent and efficient tuition in
special subjects is already being made by practical men in a tentative
way. Certain trades — as, for instance, the gunmakers in Sheffield —
have established technical schools of their own, which are doing
excellent work, and which, on the whole, should prove more com-

1903 THE DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 329

petent and more businesslike than technical schools established by
outside agencies, such as the government, corporations, or universities.
Let us hope that the spirit of combination which seems to be growing,
though somewhat slowly, within the community, will in due course
dot the whole country with technical schools founded and supervised
by the various industries themselves, and planted under the very
eye of these industries in their business centre. The application of
science to industry will then become a very powerful factor and an
established fact where it is now only a pious wish. Let us hope,
besides, that the direct active interest in education, which practical
men are beginning to take, will cause in course of time the mapping
out of specialised school programmes by competent experts for all
schools from elementary schools to universities throughout the coun-
try ; for, after all, practical men, not tradition-bound schoolmasters and
well-meaning clergymen, can determine the practical requirements
of education.

0. ELTZBACHER.

330 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

WHO WAS CAIN'S WIFE?

THIS well-known question has been propounded so frequently, that
when it is now mentioned in support of views as to the population of
the world and of the creation of mankind, there is a tendency to
turn it off with a light scoff, as though it were a question that was
unanswerable. Nevertheless, the writer ventures to bring it forward
once more because he believes that the answer to this question affords
a strong, but not a solitary, proof of the truth of the theory of
evolution as indicating the method pursued by the Creator.

Not the only proof certainly, but one taken from that record
which alone presents, or claims to present, the truth as to the
Creation and man's place therein.

The view to which the theory of evolution and natural selection
inclines is, that what is recorded in these Scriptures as the creative
act of the latter part of the sixth day, was not the actual beginning
of the existence of the human animal upon the earth ; that this
origin is rather to be found in the record of the earlier work of the
sixth day, where we read :

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature [Hebrew,
" animal living form "] after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the
earth [Hebrew, " living thing "] after his kind : and it was so. ... and God saw
that it was good.'

The vision thus recorded details what to the seer was the first
appearance of animal life on the dry land. All the forms of life
which he saw, all the animal species and varieties, were perfect after
their kind, and man as the human animal was among them, sharing
their common earth origin under the creative action of Grod.

The later part of the sixth day vision tells how a man was made
distinct from the other animals, but it does not say that all the
human animals were similarly acted upon. And the natural inference
is that from that time there were co-existing a specially modified
strain of the human race, and all the varieties of the human species,
which a long process of natural selection had evolved under the
guiding creative power of Grod.

Premising then that, subject to certain literary reservations of
secondary importance, the book called Genesis, in which this narrative
of the creation is found, represents the actual truth, the writer claims
that its real explanation is to be found in the theory of evolution.

1903 WHO WAS CAIN'S WIFE? 331

There is no doubt but that 'the narrative as we have it in the
Hebrew consists of a compilation of various traditional material.
Critics, as we know, have recognised three main strands of this cord
that connects man with his Maker. They have arbitrarily called
them the Priest's Code, the Elohistic Narrative, and the Jehovistic
Narrative. But as the streams which go to form a mighty river are
themselves but aggregations of brooks and brooklets, so each of these
main sources in all probability depends for its material on many and
various traditions concerning one and the same event. Such, at
least, must be the case with regard to the facts which are recorded
as being within the reach of human experience. But it may be said,
events there are in this book recorded which are beyond the reach
of any such. How could any man see or know what happened before
man was created ? Whence, then, this tradition ?

It is not the intention of the writer to define what is meant by
Inspiration. But the result of inspiration as regards such matters as
these is, to the individual man, what is called revelation ; and the
answer to the above questions is that the record of these pre-human
events is and has been obtained by means of tradition of such
revelation. That such is the case is borne out by the peculiar
manner in which this revelation is here presented to us. It is in the
form of a series of visions — visions which the seer has taken care to
explain came to him at night time ("iip''n?l SpJprV.1, and it was even-
ing and it was morning, a first, second, and third &c. day). When in
the Hebrew it is desired to specialise the daytime the phrase used
means from the morning to the evening (any ny ">i23P) (Heb. Exod.
xviii. 13 ; Job iv. 20), and as in the phrase in question this order is
reversed, it can only be to emphasise the period of time to which
allusion is made as that which passed between the evening and the
morning, i.e. the night. In these night visions the seer beheld or had
revealed to him the progressive order of the creation. This he describes
as such would appear comprehensible to his mind and to the minds
of his audience. But although he for this reason colours the revela-
tion with the appearance of successive separate acts of creation, such
appearance is in reality only due to the way in which he interpreted
or related what he saw. Moreover we must recollect that the object
of the Giver of the vision was emphatically dogmatic, and intended
to show the real origin of all things, not necessarily the method of
the creative operations. It is only when the result is carefully studied
with a view to try and discover the How? of creation, that glimpses
of the method or methods employed are obtained. Such effort at
discovery was naturally entirely absent from the mind of the seer or
seers whose records we have in the Bible.

Their object was rather to discover, and the object of God rather
to reveal, the Why ? of creation.

But the marvellous thing is that when the revelation to the one
is compared with the discovery (equally a revelation) of the other,

332 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

they are found to harmonise. And in spite of supposed disagree-
ments as to a few minor details, the mutual truths support and
assist each other. De minimis non curat lex, and the apparent
differences are too insignificant to affect the main fact. The revela-
tion which is thus shown makes clear the great truth that creation
has not proceeded by leaps, but has been gradual and progressive,
from the lowest to the highest, from the general chaotic nothing
through the varying types of animal life to man. But many of the
grades and links in the chain have been lost sight of, leaving only
embryological evidence of their existence.

Science views the vital process best as represented by a photographic
negative of a great tree from which the main trunk has to a large
extent been smudged or blurred away, leaving the root fast bedded
in the earth, and only the terminal or peripheral portions of the
branches, which have started from the trunk at different parts, still
left. The trunk will represent the archetypical or typical modifica-
tions evolved in living matter, and the branches will stand for the
different species of living forms with their varieties. These all repre-
sent what we call higher or lower forms of life according as they have
sprung originally from the inferior or superior portions of the main
trunk. Thus we may have, as representing what we call the protozoa,
the suckers which arise directly from the root, or perhaps the twigs
which spring from the trunk at the instant that it leaves the ground ;
while we believe that the very ultimate subdivisions of the trunk
itself at its highest part represent the tribes and families of the
human animal. As the seer of the vision would describe this tree,
these ultimate peripheral divisions of the branches, the animal species,
appeared to him in the early part of the sixth vision of the series he
describes.

All he sees appears originally to him to spring from the earth,
c And the earth brought forth,' &c. , and as the final earth production he
mentions ' living ones of the earth,' ' beasts ' as our versions have it.
But they were not only ' beasts ' as we now understand the word,
for there was among them a living being, who, though as yet only
animal, was capable of higher development into something ultra-
animal. This appears if we study the original account of the work
of the sixth day as it is called, of what the seer beholds in the sixth
vision. This is not announced as an act of creation, specially so
called. A different word is used to express the intention. It is not
' N"Q = to create ' as in the earlier verses, but ' n"B>y = to make,' and
that further modified in its meaning by the use of the preposition
' in,' ' into,' or ' as ' in connection with the following words.

Thus, exactly translated, the words mean, ' Let us make a man in
(into or as) our image, in (into or as) our likeness.' Human beings
were not to be created, they were part of the already existing animal
kingdom. But one of these animals was to be taken and ' made in
or into ' the likeness of (rod, a veritable conversion. Although this

1903 WHO WAS CAIN'S WIFE? 333

act did not imply the creation of another animal, still in reality it
was a creative act, and the result is thus thereafter recorded : ' And
God proceeded to create (N^?) the man,' &c., and the narrative informs
us in what the act consisted. A living being was taken, and a special
form of vital force was inspired into him. No longer does he live
simply in virtue of the animal vital force (^33), but now he has
also the Divine vital force (nDKO) (Heb. Genesis, ii. 7), and thus the
man appears, animal in mere outward form, however beautiful, but
also possessed of spiritual vitality far transcending the mere material
vital force of the other living forms which the seer beheld.

Thus The Man became the ' Ben Elohim,' the son of God, and
thus in the after narrative he and his descendants are distinguished
from the other human animals which are there called the ' Beni
Adam,' the sons of the earth.

There has arisen in some minds a confusion at this point. No
doubt exists as to the meaning of the Hebrew words D'nbtf ^3 (Beni
Elohim) being the ' sons of God.' But as the name of the first man
is given as being Adam, in order to impress his material, earthy, and
natural origin upon him, the words D1K '33 (Beni Adam) have been
too readily accepted as meaning the sons of Adam, whereas they
really mean the sons of the earth, the earth-born, the human animal.

By this act of inspiration the man, as we have seen, became
possessed of pre-eminent vitality. The result of this could only be to
enhance what powers he already possessed in virtue of the perfection
(for God saw that it was good) of his animal nature.

Of these powers that which was the ultimate effort of the
material forces to which he owed his development, was mental
power. It was not until the animal, by gradual process of evolution,
gave evidence of the possession of mental powers, capable of appre-
ciating and understanding the gift, that the Creator bestowed the
final factor — the spiritual life.

This mental power then would, in common with his other powers,
receive a benefit by the increased vital stimulation. The man thus
endowed would be a real ava% avbpwv as regarded his relatives with
only earth-born powers. So far as the world around was concerned,
he and his descendants would own undoubted sway, and so the record
shows him to do, telling as it does of his high-handed method of
taking all that he chose of the daughters of the earth (Genesis vi. 2).

But with the gift there entered in another element in his develop-
ment, and that a disturbing one.

At this point in his history man was still not the perfect image
of Himself which the Creator intended him to be. He was as the
young David with an untried sword. He had yet to face the facts
of his nature, and among these facts was a question which had to be
answered. Which side of him, which nature, the animal or the
spiritual, was to be the motive, guiding, ruling power of the ego ?

Was he, so to speak, ' to sit tight,' to remain stationary, to make

334 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

no use of his new weapon ? In that case where was the gain ? Of
course it was not so intended. The weapon was to be used, and its
proper uses thoroughly learnt, and its powers not slighted or abused.

But he is unaccustomed to his new weapon ; he finds that a rival
weapon presents itself more naturally to his hand. This is an old
friend, one to which long ages of use have habituated him and his.
He must use one or the other if he is not to remain stationary ; the
Goliaths of life must be overcome either with the splendid weapon of
his animal nature, or with the still more beautiful one, the Word of
God. And this ' Word,' this sword untried as yet, could only be used
in one way, that is, as the supreme power in his existence, and must
be abandoned, must fall from his hand, if he still preferred his old
weapon, the power of his animal life. Thus at the outset, it will be
seen, the further progress of the man must be a question of strife,
and each individual had to decide for himself whether he would
accept the glorious power and use it well, or whether he would let
it fall from him. For the inferior or animal nature would constantly
be exerting itself to obtain the supremacy, and such exertion means
constant strife. Again, in either case he would still have the struggle
for existence with the outside world, but in the one he would have
to back him the co-ordination of his twofold nature, and in the other
would necessarily more and more fall back to the condition of those
who were his merely animal relatives and of the earth, earthy.
Then he would finally fail to attain that perfection, that likeness to
his Creator which was the ultimate object of that Creator's efforts.

The Bible narrative, looking upon mankind and the world from
this standpoint, proceeds to record the history of the progress of the
race. Not many words are therein devoted to the early history
thereof. The narrative relates two or three salient facts which have
an evident effect or influence in this struggle ; and the evidence on
which the evolutionist must rely is rather such as incidentally is
met with in the more dramatic portions of the narratives, called by
critics the Jehovistic and Elohistic. The history, for instance, of
Cain himself affords in this incidental manner evidence of the
existence of other human beings besides the Adamic family. Of
whom was he, before the birth of Adam's third child, Seth, so afraid
that they would take his life? What was the land of Nod or
Wandering, and who gave it that name ? Against whom was he
protected by the Divine mark ?

But perhaps the passage most pregnant for our purpose is that
found at the beginning of Chapter VI. :

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth,
and daughters were born unto them,

(2) That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair ; and
they took them wives of all which they chose.

(3) And the LOED said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he
also is flesh : yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

(4) There were giants in the earth in those days ; and also after that, when

1903 WHO WAS CAIN'S WIFE? 335

the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to
them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

It is here that we find a definite distinction made between two races,
the sons of God and the sons of Adam, or earth-born, and their
distinction emphasised by the record of their intermarrying. Here
also is shown the result of such intermarriage, ' mighty men and
men of renown.' Certainly, if careful selection of the parents with
a view to this result had been made, no more likely choice could
have been. The dams representing the perfection of the human
animal form, and the sires equally beautiful in form, with, in
addition, higher powers of intelligence, because of their spiritual
vital force, derived direct from the Creator. What wonder that the
children were mighty ! In this passage there is a significant
comment on the passing events which are recorded — the way the
great Creator regarded the general trend to evil of the human
animals and of those sons of God who preferred to trust rather to their
animal than to their spiritual power. The A.V. scarcely does this
clause justice ; and the alternative reading given in the K.V/margin
indicates a doubt as to the rendering given in that text. Literally
translated, the clause to which allusion is made reads as follows :
' But, said Jehovah, my spirit shall not always strive with mankind
in their going astray. This is flesh.'

The words ' going astray ' sufficiently indicate the view taken by
the Deity, and the attribution of the error to the action of the 'flesh'
also indicates the existence of another agency.

The words, ' There were giants in the earth in those days,' are
also misleading and not a fair rendering. To translate and point
the word D^5>3 ' Nephilim ' as giants (following the LXX) obliterates
the connection of this with the preceding sentence. The Hebrew
word can only come from one of two Hebrew root- words. The one
(7S3) means ' to fall,' and in that case Nephilim would mean ' the
fallen ones.' But the other root from which it can be derived
(NPB or n?D) means ' to separate,' ' to distinguish,' ' to consecrate,'
' to be great or extraordinary,' and this meaning lends itself well to
the general sense of the passage, which would thus read as a whole :

And it came to pass that mankind increased on the face of the ground, and
daughters were born to them. And the sons of God beheld the daughters of
mankind, that they were beautiful, so they took to themselves wives of all that
they chose. But, said Jehovah, My spirit shall not always strive with mankind
in their going astray, this is flesh. And their days were an hundred and twenty
years. There were in those days the consecrated ones (DvD3) on the earth, yea
even after the sons of God went in unto the daughters of man, and these bore
unto them heroes that were of old, men of renown.1

1 This rendering involves some slight alteration of the Massoretic punctuation.
Thus verse 3 :

s-in

Thus putting the main stop of the clause on 'astray ' (DJIKQ) instead of on ' ever

\ T * ;

336 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

The meaning given in this passage to the word D^BJ (Niphlim)
= consecrated ones, is borne out by the use of the same word in
another verbal form in the fourth Psalm, verse 3 :

ft Tpn mrp rftDrr1'?

'For Jehovah hath consecrated the godly man to Himself.' See
also Exod. xxxiii. 16: 'We shall be separated' (-I^DJ); Psalm
cxxxix. 14: 'I have been wonderfully made' ('distinguished')

Here then in definite words we have the answer to the question
which forms the title to this paper.

Cain, as descended from the man into whom God breathed the
spiritual life, was one of the Beni Elohim or sons of God. He took
him a wife from among the daughters of the earth-born. In all
probability Seth did the same. If this were not the case, if there
were on the face of the world none other human beings than the
Adamic family, then these men must have married their sisters, and
this does not seem consistent with the teachings of the law given in
later ages. Moreover, as a definite physiological fact, such in-
breeding would have been far from producing the progeny described ;
rather would it have resulted in physical degeneration. The real
difference between the families, say of Seth and Cain, which thus
would grow up, would be that the wife or wives and children of the
one would be under the influence of the Spirit of God, would in their
struggle for existence use the better weapon ; while the family of
such a man as Cain would tend to develop earthwards. That there
was really such distinction is shown by the special fact being men-
tioned in the passage above quoted, that even in those days there were
beings separated, consecrated, or distinguished, from the general ruck
of mankind that went astray.2 Thus it will be seen that science in
putting forward the theory of evolution and natural selection as the
means whereby the Creator has been, and is still working, is not
without support from the Scriptures which claim to be His Word.

This paper is concerned with but one small point bearing on the
question, but a study of these Scriptures brings out clearly that the
object of the Creator in creating most certainly may have been, and
apparently is even now being carried by this process of evolution
and selection, here called consecration, the ultimate effect of which
will be, as Paul points out, the attainment of mankind ' to the
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.'

W. HENRY KESTEVEN, M.K.C.S.

2 The word only occurs once more as meaning 'giants.' This is in Numbers
xiii. 33, and there it should be rendered ' wonderful men.' Quite another word is
generally used in the Hebrew scriptures for ' giant.'

1903

LAST MONTH

THE most vivid impression which the month of January has left
behind it in most minds is that of the magnificent ceremonial which
was witnessed at Delhi on the first day of the new year. To the
outer world this spectacle must have been somewhat bewildering. No
other Empire, no other nation, could have presented its counterpart.
In the most striking fashion it differentiates the throne of King
Edward from that of any other Sovereign. We hear a great deal
about the Emperor of Russia, the vastness of the territory over
which he reigns, and the innumerable hosts of whom he is the lord ;
but not even the Czar at the height of his glory could draw together
such a gathering as that which surrounded the Viceroy at the
great Durbar. Intelligent foreigners cannot have failed to be
struck by this gorgeous scene, so remarkable in itself, but so much
more remarkable in all that it symbolises. To the people of
these islands, however, the spectacle was not merely striking and
magnificent, but profoundly suggestive. It brought back, as in a
lightning flash, those long years of Indian history in which the
British Raj has grown from small things to great, until the throne at
Delhi, even if it stood alone and had no connection with any other
Empire, would still represent one of the greatest of the world's States.
It is to be feared that Indian history is not taught as fully and care-
fully as it should be in our schools. Yet the lessons to be drawn
from it are at least as significant and important as any that can be
gathered from the historical domain. They show what the dominant
qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race are, and how they can be best
applied. All are able to do justice to the unflinching determination,
the resolute perseverance, in face of overwhelming difficulties, which
enabled a handful of British merchants to lay the foundations of the
Empire of to-day. That they also illustrate most wonderfully the
militant courage of our race need not be said. Courage, happily, is
not the monopoly of any nationality. But that which they teach
most emphatically is the power of the Englishman to govern alien
races successfully by a free use of their own traditions and ideas. The
story of the Delhi Durbar as it was told in the Times, for instance,
at the beginning of last month, is a story that might have been cut
VOL. LIII— No. 312 337 Z

338 . THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

from the pages of the Arabian Nights or of some other Oriental
chronicle. The opulent magnificence of the stage and the scenery
on which the historical drama was played out is something wholly
foreign to our national tastes. Barbaric pomp seems to have been
the key-note of the ceremonial. Gilded thrones, gorgeous dresses,
flashing jewels of priceless value, huge elephants with trappings such
as the Great Mogul never saw, contributed to the splendour of the
scene. It is impossible for the stay-at-home Englishman to realise
these Eastern splendours. All that he knows is that they are some-
thing absolutely alien from the spirit of the West and of modern
civilisation. But to the Oriental mind all these things have their
deep significance, and whilst one readily subscribes to the doctrine
that the real foundations of our Eastern Empire are, and for ever
must be, based upon our sense of justice, it is impossible to forget
that it is precisely because Englishmen have known how to assimilate
Eastern ideas and traditions, and how to use them at the right time
with good effect, that they have succeeded where everybody else had
failed, and have made the English Kaj in India a wonderful and
substantial reality.

But along with this reflection comes another that is almost
whimsical. It is the thought of the immeasurable contrast between
the ways by which we hold and rule India, and those by means of
which we maintain our Empire in other directions. Think of the
contrast between Lord Curzon on the throne at Delhi, surrounded by
splendours that outvie the glories of Belshazzar on his throne, and
the English Ambassador in his modest villa at Washington ; and
think of the mean little thoroughfare called Downing Street,
which has to keep its hand upon both these extremes, and to guide
both in the right direction. I suppose that at this moment there is
no position under the English Crown which is equal in real im-
portance to that of our Ambassador to the United States. No one
can tell to how large a degree the man who holds that post has in his
grasp the future of liberty and civilisation throughout the world.
Yet he has to go about his business with no more of pomp or
circumstance than that which accompanies a merchant on his way
to the City. And in his performance of his duties he has not only
to lay aside all those pomps and vanities which, from time im-
memorial, have been substantial realities in Eastern statecraft, but
to remember by day and by night that his intelligence is perpetually
being pitted against that of the most acute, and at the same time
the most sensitive, nation in the world. We have long been taught
to respect and fear the subtlety of the East, and, whenever we have
forgotten to do so, we have suffered loss. But I think that even
Lord Curzon would admit that his task among the hundred feudatory
Princes of India, and all the perplexing divisions of race and creed
and caste, are not so great as those of the man who has to sail on an

1903 LAST MONTH 339

even keel in the always troubled waters of American politics. One
need not enlarge the picture further, but certainly nothing is better
calculated to enable the Englishman to realise the unparalleled
immensity of the Empire to which he belongs, and the titanic task
which is laid upon those whose duty it is to carry forward the
destinies of that Empire, than such a contrast as that at which
I have hinted between the throne at Delhi and the Embassy at
Washington.

That the Durbar passed over with complete success must be a
matter of satisfaction to everybody. To those of us, indeed, who
can recall the dark days of 1857, when it was only by the self-
sacrificing valour of a handful of heroes that India was saved to the
British Crown, there is something almost wonderful in the peace and
loyalty which now pervades the land, from Cape Comorin to Cashmir.
We have better reason to be proud of the present state of India than
of anything else that we have achieved during the last half-century.
But amid the loud demonstrations of loyalty with which the great
theatre at Delhi rang on New Year's Day, it is well to be mindful of
the fact that the fee, the only fee, which enables us to hold the
gorgeous East, is a stern and unbending determination to deal justly
by its peoples. The high-minded statesmen who have in turn
occupied the throne of the Viceroy have, I think, in no single
instance been unmindful of this fact. Not seldom, from the days of
' Clemency ' Canning onwards, they have had to face unpopularity at
home, because of their determination to do their duty by India. If
it had been otherwise, the Durbar of last month would hardly have
been the thing it was. As it is, in the King's message to the Indian
people, and in Lord Curzon's excellent speech, we have fresh and.
happy assurance of the fact that the Indian Government is more than
ever resolved that India shall be governed for the benefit of its own
races. So long as this resolution guides this country in its dealings
with our great tributary empire, we may fairly rest secure in the
allegiance and loyalty of the three hundred millions who acknow-
ledge King Edward's sway. But if that determination should ever
fail us, the precious jewel of India will be lost to the Crown of
England.

Amid all the ceremonial splendours of the Durbar, two incidents
stand out in special prominence. The first was the signal honour
paid to the scant remnants of the men who stood on our side at the
time of the great Mutiny — the survivors of Delhi, and Lucknow,
and Cawnpore, and of many a scattered station, where, during the hot
months of 1857, a few isolated Englishmen, with a handful of loyal
natives, kept the flag of England flying in face of a sea of enemies.
Nothing could be more pathetic than the account given by the
correspondents of the appearance of these brave veterans as they
marched into the arena at the Durbar, to witness a scene which gave

z 2

340 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.,

them the assurance that they had not fought and bled for naught.
The other incident is the presence of the Duke of Connaught at the
ceremonial. The King could have chosen no one in his own family
who was better qualified to represent him at the august ceremonial.
The Duke of Connaught knows India well, and during his official
residence there he made himself generally beloved. Striking proofs
of his popularity were given at the Durbar, both by natives and
Britons. Like the keen soldier that he is, when the Duke quitted
Delhi, it wasjiot to indulge in the gaieties of the capital, but to visit
those spots on the frontier which have in recent years been the
scene of hard fighting. There can be no doubt that his visit to
India will prove of real benefit in many ways.

But one must come back from the shining Orient to gloomy
prosaic Downing Street, where the difficulties in the way of the
Government are not lessening, nor its prospects improving. Perhaps
it would be unfair to say that, like Alexander Selkirk, ' we dwell in
the midst of alarms ' ; but certainly every new month has brought
us of late some new cause for apprehension. In December it was
Venezuela, and the extraordinary action of the Government in
binding us hand and foot to Germany in an enterprise which might
at any moment have involved us in difficulties with the American
people. At the beginning of this month we had a new scare con-
nected with Russia and the Dardanelles. Some months ago it was
generally known that Russia had applied to the Porte for permission
to send certain unarmed gunboats through the Bosphorus into the
Black Sea — a clear violation of the provisions of the Treaty of Paris.
A Conservative free-lance asked a question in Parliament on the
subject last Session, but got no intelligible answer. A few weeks
ago, however, the Foreign Office allowed it to be made known that
the British Government had made a formal protest against the
action of Russia. Lord Lansdowne was entirely within his rights
in doing so. Whatever may be the merits of the Treaty of Paris,
with its subsequent modifications, it is at least one of the great
documents upon which the policy of the European States has been
based during the last fifty years ; and nothing could be more
dangerous than for Europe to acquiesce in its violation by any single
Power. But if Lord Lansdowne expected to get any outside support
for his protest, he was doomed to^disappointment. The Press of
Vienna, notoriously inspired from Berlin, made haste to explain that
the Treaty of Paris did not affect German interests, and that its
violation called for no action on the part of the German Government.
Co-operation with England in Venezuela clearly does not imply
German co-operation in any other part of the world. Yet one may
remark in passing that when Lord Lansdowne made his ill-starred
agreement with Germany over Venezuela, by which we gave so*
much more than we took, he must have been fully aware of the

LAST MONTH 341

action of Kussia in the matter of the Dardanelles. The incident
after a temporary flutter in the Press, has been allowed to pass, and
Kussia is understood to have got her gunboats safely through the
Bosphorus. The chief importance of the affair is, of course, the
fresh light which it throws upon the determination of the Russian
Government to observe no treaty or agreement which conflicts with
what it regards as its own interests. I called attention last month
to the remarkable document in which this doctrine was set forth by
the Russian Foreign Office with respect to Asiatic affairs. Curiously
enough, neither Ministers nor the newspapers have taken any notice
of that document, and we shall probably have to wait for half a
year before Lord Lansdowne acknowledges its existence. In the
meantime, his protest on the question of the Dardanelles leaves us in
the usual unpleasant predicament after a passage at arms with the
Ministry at St. Petersburg. We have asserted a principle and
claimed a right. Russia has accomplished a fact. The reader can
readily form his own opinion as to the country which has come off
best in this encounter.

The unpleasant impression made by the agreement with
Oermany on the subject of Venezuela has hardly subsided during
the past month. It is true that the situation has to a certain extent
been relieved by the acquiescence of President Castro in the proposal
that the questions in dispute shall be submitted to arbitration.
What form the arbitration is to take is not yet clear. The litigants
themselves have conditionally agreed that The Hague tribunal shall
deal with the matter, since the President of the United States has
formally refused the office of arbitrator. But there is still the
possibility that the difficulty will be removed before the dispute
reaches the arbitration court. This would be the happiest termina-
tion of the incident. But no solution, however satisfactory, can
remove from the public mind the deep impression which was made
when the policy of the Foreign Office was first revealed to us. The
supporters of Mr. Balfour's Administration have been loudest in
condemnation of Lord Lansdowne's blunder. They resent even more
strongly than the ordinary Liberal does, the action of the Grovern-
ment in committing us to an absurd alliance with Germany. That
Ministers took this step before they had consulted the Cabinet at
Washington is not to be believed. But whatever may be the truth
on this point, the facts of the case show that they fell into two grave
blunders of the most serious kind — blunders which go far to dis-
credit their capacity for the management of our foreign affairs. The
first was their miscalculation of the state of public opinion in the
United States. They allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by the
irresponsible journalists who assured them that American feeling
was so completely on the side of England that there would be no
opposition to any steps that this country might take for the coercion

342 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb

of Venezuela. They had a rude awakening when the Jingo Press of
New York took up the easy cry that the Monroe doctrine was
imperilled, and insisted that Great Britain and Germany should stay
their hands. How it was that they did not foresee this it i&
impossible to understand. The greatest danger which Europe has
to face in its diplomatic relations with the United States lies in the
fact that the strongest of Ministers or Cabinets at Washington
becomes, in certain circumstances, nothing more than a puppet
tossed about on the waves of public opinion. Lord Lansdowne
does not seem to have understood this elementary fact, and accord-
ingly he set his foot in a trap from which he had the narrowest of
escapes. His second blunder was in under-estimating the strength
of the anti-German feeling among his own following. That feeling
may be without substantial reason ; it may be based upon the
blackest ignorance or the most besotted prejudice ; but it exists, and
no far-sighted statesman could have failed to take it into his account.
The outburst of almost passionate indignation with which the
German agreement was received by the Tory party and its journals
ought not to have been a surprise to the Foreign Secretary and his
colleagues. That it was, and that they suddenly found themselves
face to face with a storm to which they were compelled to yield, says
little for their knowledge of the mind of the country or their capacity
for dealing with public affairs. It is probable that we shall ' scrape
through ' the Venezuelan business in a more or less unsatisfactory
manner. But the Government will emerge from it seriously
damaged in reputation ; for no Ministry can involve the country in
such humiliations as have already been imposed upon us in this
wretched dispute without having to suffer for its heedless folly.

The bombardment of the fort of San Carlos by the German men-
of-war is one of those incidents that any intelligent person might have
foreseen as probable, and from which the gravest complications may
arise. Why the Panther fired upon the fort is not clearly apparent ;
though the latest German version is that the first firing was from
the fortress upon the vessel. But in any case the incident has
made a deep impression upon the American public, and has not
increased the favour with which the United States Government and
Press regard the present situation. Fortunately, so far as this country
is concerned, we seem to have regained the confidence and good will
of our, excitable kinsmen across the water, and even the yellow
journals draw a clear line of distinction between our mode of proceed-
ing towards Venezuela and that of Germany. But we are committed
to an alliance with the latter country in Venezuelan waters, and until
we are free of that alliance we shall not be secure against the possi-
bility of difficulties of the most serious kind with the United States.

But if Great Britain, by accident rather than statesmanship, seems-
likely to be extricated from those difficulties, the case of Germany-

1903 LAST MONTH 343

is different. Early in the month it was announced that the German
Ambassador at Washington had obtained leave of absence from his
post on the ground of ill-health. Immediately afterwards the
gossips of the Press conveyed to us the information that Dr. Von
Holleben's illness was wholly diplomatic in its character. He had
been recalled from his post in something like disgrace. His manner
of quitting Washington did much to confirm this report. He did not
trouble himself to pay a farewell call upon the President, and he
refused to allow any ceremonial to attend his embarkation on the
vessel which bore him back to the Fatherland. The charges brought
against him by the newspaper correspondents are of a threefold
character. He is said to have given offence to the German Emperor,
first, by his failure to inform him as to the real state of American
feeling on the Venezuelan question, and secondly, by his want of
success in an attempt to estrange the United States from Great
Britain. These two charges are followed by a third, dealing with
the miserable intrigue which was concocted twelve months ago at
Washington for the purpose of discrediting Lord Pauncefote. In
that intrigue it is generally understood that Dr. Von Holleben had
a leading part. If this is indeed the case, the deposed Ambas-
sador can hardly expect either the sympathy or the respect of the
British public. But the charges made against him with regard to
his conduct towards his own master are of a more practical and
serious character. So far as his failure to inform his Majesty of
the true state of American feeling on the subject of Venezuela, he
only failed as Lord Lansdowne did, and as did the correspondents of
the London Press. These gentlemen were all in the same boat with
Dr. Von Holleben. As to the other business in which he failed, his
attempt to bring about an estrangement between the United States
and Great Britain by which Germany was to profit, it is difficult to
believe that the charge can be well founded. No one can blame
the Emperor William for his desire to cultivate good relations with
the Great Republic. But if in order to secure the friendship of the
United States he deliberately plotted to deprive us of her good will,
the discovery of his Machiavelian policy would reveal him to us as
a dangerous foe whom it would be our duty to meet and to oppose
at every possible point. Whatever the supporters of the Government
may think about the dangers of an alliance with Germany, it is to
be hoped that they will require better proof than has yet been forth-
coming, before they accept this particular reason for the recall of
Dr. Von Holleben as being authentic.

Whatever may be the truth as to this alleged plot for supplanting
Great Britain in the favour of the United States, there is no doubt
as to the desperate anxiety of the German Emperor to stand well
with the American people. There is no need to recall the efforts he
has made during the last twelve months in this direction, the most

344 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

important being the visit of Prince Henry to New York and
Washington. He has had the mortification of seeing for how little
all his effusive proffers of friendship counted when a question of
politics like that of Venezuela came upon the carpet. Yet he still
persists in his ardent courtship. The successor of the unfortunate
Dr. Von Holleben is a certain Baron Von Sternberg, who is already
favourably known at the Washington Embassy, who is English by
birth and by maternal blood, and who has lived long enough in the
United States to be able to understand the modes of thought of the
people, and the influences by which the policy of American Cabinets
is affected. This gentleman, in defiance of diplomatic precedent, but
most assuredly not without the sanction of his august master, on the
eve of starting for his new post took an American newspaper corre-
spondent in Berlin into his confidence, and practically gave him a
message for delivery to the people of the United States. It was a
message not only of the most affectionate but of the most flattering
character. It told how the Emperor ' thoroughly appreciated the
capabilities of the Americans, their fair and brilliant women, their
genius, their liveliness of disposition, the ease with which they do
immense things,' and so forth. It told how it was to be the Ambas-
sador's business to extend the friendship between the two countries,
and incidentally it paid homage to the sacrosanct character of the
Monroe doctrine. If fine words and sugared compliments are
relished by the public of the United States, then clearly Baron Von
Sternberg is likely to prove a more successful Minister than his
predecessor.

In domestic politics the question of the Education Act still holds
the first place. It is not usual when a great administrative measure
has been placed upon the Statute Book that the controversy which
attended its passage through Parliament continues to be carried on.
But the Education Act is in many respects exceptional. So far as it
is possible to judge, it does not really satisfy anybody. One need
only refer to Mr. Lathbury's paper in the January number of this
Review in order to show how far it is from satisfying an important
section of the Church party. A thousand witnesses bear testimony
to the bitterness of Nonconformist hostility to it. The County
Councils, though prepared to do their duty under its provisions, have
in many cases, notably in that of the Council for the West Riding, not
concealed their strong dislike of the measure, and their belief that it
will work badly and must, in the very nature of things, have a short
life. Curiously enough, the most cordial acceptance of the measure,
now that it is an accepted fact, has fallen from the lips of Lord
Spencer. Lord Spencer's patriotism is of the finest temper, and this is
not the first occasion on which he has striven to find the soul of good
in things which, from the political point of view, are to him evil.
But it may be questioned whether he is so fully competent to form

1903 LAST MONTH 345

an opinion as to the prospects and possibilities of the measure as are
the experts in educational management and local government by
whom it has been condemned. It is clear therefore that the con-
tinuance of controversy regarding it is not a matter which can cause
surprise. There is another reason why the disputation is main-
tained. In the approaching Session the most difficult of all the
cases involved in the problem of national education — that of London
— will have to be tackled. Already the teachers of London have
passed a strong resolution insisting that the control of the London
schools should be placed in the hands of a central authority specially
elected for the purpose. The choice seems to lie between this
course and that of transferring the educational control of the metro-
polis to the County Council, already staggering under the load of its
multifarious duties. A belief prevails that it is the latter course
which is favoured by Ministers. The question will undoubtedly be
fought out in Parliament, and fought out to the bitter end. No
one can wonder in these circumstances that those who opposed the
original measure, and who still detest it, are resolved to keep alive
the controversy which has raged ever since the Government pro-
visions were first made known. Ministers can only blame themselves
for the position in which they are placed. If they had followed the
wise example of the Government of 1870, and, taking all parties
into their confidence, had arrived at a compromise satisfactory to all
but the extreme sections on either side, they might have carried
a measure which the overwhelming majority of the nation would
have accepted, and which would have given us a permanent and
efficient scheme of national education. As it is, they have chosen to
take a different course, with the result that they have satisfied few,
and have aroused the bitter anger and hostility of numbers in both
the rival educational camps. A great opportunity has been lost, and
no man can say if we shall ever again have another like it.

Mr. Chamberlain has been spending a busy month in South
Africa, and so far as persons at a distance can judge, he has accom-
plished good work on behalf of the Empire. Wherever he has gone
he has been received with enthusiasm ; nowhere does that enthusiasm
seem to have been greater than at Pretoria and Johannesburg. At
both places he has been hospitably entertained, whilst at both he has
wisely taken advantage of his visit in order to enter into personal
conferences with the leading citizens of both nationalities. It is
satisfactory to know that he has been able to bear public testimony
to the good feeling which has been shown by the representative
burghers with whom he has come in contact. But the chief
measure of business he had to settle in the Transvaal was of a
strictly practical character. It was the amount of the contribution
to be exacted from the country, in other words, from the mines,
towards the cost of the late war, and the amount of the loan that is

346 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

to be raised for reproductive works in the colony. The final solution
arrived at, announced by Mr. Chamberlain himself in a speech at
Johannesburg, may not be an ideal one, but it is probably the best
that it was possible for him to secure. The contribution of the new
colonies to the cost of the war is fixed at the sum of 30 millions,
to be payable in three annual instalments, the first of which the
mine-owners propose to pay at once. The loan guaranteed by this
country for reproductive purposes, chiefly the purchase and extension
of the railway system, amounts to 35 millions. Most Englishmen
will probably feel that the contribution of the conquered country to
the cost of the war is disappointing. It is certainly very different
from the prospects held out to us in former days. On the other
hand, it is clear that the people of the Transvaal of both races do not
regard the loan of 35 millions as being in any degree liberal.

The truth is that Mr. Chamberlain was compelled, in the very
nature of things, to make a compromise. To have laid the new
colonies under the burden of an enormous tribute would have been
a most unwise and suicidal policy. On the other hand, it is
absolutely necessary that the people of the Transvaal should feel the
burden of responsibility for their own future, and should learn to
rely upon themselves rather than upon the Imperial exchequer for
the development of their resources. Upon the whole, therefore,
Mr. Chamberlain seems to have done well, and is to be congratulated
upon the result he has secured. The question of labour for the mines
is not yet settled. It was rumoured, indeed, that Mr. Chamberlain
had been induced to agree to the importation of Chinese labour,
but to this rumour he gave an indignant denial, and pointed to the
urgent necessity of bringing the black population of the country
into its industrial life. How this is to be done is one of the hardest
problems that our statesmen have now to face.

The Admiralty Memorandum on the training of officers for the
fleet, which was made public at the end of the old year, has attracted
much attention and has been received, upon the whole, with great
favour. That it is an effort in the direction of ' efficiency ' cannot
be doubted. Its first effect will be to put an end to the grievances
from which the engineering staff in the Navy have long been suffer-
ing. Now that a battleship is neither more nor less than a com-
plicated piece of machinery carrying scores of engines of all descrip-
tions in its womb, the attempt to keep the engineers themselves,
the scientific branch of the staff, in a position of marked inferiority
to the fighting staff has become manifestly absurd. The engineers
are in all respects qualified to take their place on an equality with
the other branches of the Service, and the prejudices of other depart-
ments can no longer be allowed to prevent them from doing so.
This object at least will be attained by the new system inaugurated
under Lord Selborne. But the scheme aims at something much

1903 LAST MONTH 347

wider than this. It will revolutionise the whole system of the
training of naval officers, and though experience alone can test its
merits, there is every reason to hope that it will prove successful.
Upon one point only does it seem open to question. This is in its
extension and confirmation of the system of nomination. Surely the
Navy, of all the public Services, ought to be that which is most
democratic in its constitution. The nation which pays so heavily
for the maintenance of its fleet has a right to insist that the way
into the naval Service shall be kept open as far as possible to all
classes in the community. Open competition, subject of course to
all necessary checks as regards health and personal character, is in
the long run that which is most likely to secure for us the best
results, and it is to be hoped that in this matter at least the scheme
may yet be amended. In the meantime, as I have said, it distinctly
makes for increased efficiency in the most important branch of our
defensive Services.

Efficiency was the theme and burden of the most important
political utterance of the month. This was Lord Rosebery's speech
to a great gathering of Liberals at Plymouth. Lord Eosebery once
more disappointed the Tory Press by the boldness with which he
attacked the present Government for its shortcomings, and the
earnestness with which he defended the principles of historic
Liberalism. He made it clear that he is not to be deterred by the
sneers of the Tadpoles and Tapers of the official Opposition from the
task which he has set himself, that of opening up for Liberals of all
sections a line upon which they can unite, and upon which in due
time they will be able to secure the confidence not only of the
electors of the United Kingdom but of that wider constituency, our
fellow-countrymen in the Colonies. But his watchword throughout
his speech was ' efficiency.' Once more he pointed out the hopeless
confusion into which our military system had been plunged, con-
fusion which has only been made worse confounded by Mr. Brodrick's
abortive attempts at reform, and he repeated his declaration that to
Lord Kitchener, as the one man fitted for such a position, should be
entrusted the great task of creating a proper£system of Army
administration in Pall Mall, in place of that which has failed so
signally. Once more, as a matter of course, he had to face the
criticisms of those who refuse to open their eyes to the fact that the
time for tinkering has gone by, and that nothing less than a bold
scheme of root-and-branch reconstruction can now meet the emer-
gency by which we are confronted. Possibly there are some who do
not share his robust faith in the ability and the moral courage of
Lord Kitchener. But those who do, and they are, I imagine, a
majority of the nation, can hardly fail to agree with him as to the
remedy which he proposes for the existing evils. One has only to
imagine what would happen in like circumstances in Berlin. If,.

.348 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

as by common consent all agree, Lord Kitchener is our greatest
living soldier, would the German Emperor have hesitated to assign
to him the most important military work which has now to be
performed ? Let those acquainted with the history of the German
Staff answer the question. No one underrates the importance of
the post of Command er-in-Chief in India. But to pretend that it
is of greater importance than that of Secretary for War would be
absurd. In Lord Kitchener, Lord Rosebery and many others believe
that we have the ideal man who is needed in Pall Mall at the present
hour; and though all the vested interests that are trying to stave off
any real reform of our military system may continue to clamour
against a step which would mean the destruction of so much that is
evil in the organisation of the Army, there is no doubt that Lord
Rosebery 's pregnant suggestion will in due time bear fruit. At all
events, we may reasonably believe that, if it should ever fall to his lot
to form a new Administration, Lord Kitchener will be invited to take
part in it as the head of the national army.

The ' Irish Land Conference,' which was formed last autumn for
the purpose of bringing together the representatives of landlords
and tenants with a view to the discovery of some method of finally
settling the land question upon amicable and mutually satisfactory
terms, ended its proceedings and issued its report early in the month.
It is a remarkable and far-reaching document, and it is not surprising
that as yet the commentaries upon it have been few and far between.
That it has certain features which ought to commend it to the favour
of the public cannot be denied. Of these by far the most important
is the fact that it represents a genuine attempt on the part of the
two great hostile bodies in Ireland to come to terms on the basis of
a friendly settlement. It was Mr. George Wyndham who first officially
threw out the suggestion that it was only in this way that the vexed
problem of Irish land could be settled. In the next place, the report
of the Conference has been received with warm approval not only by
the tenants but by the representatives of the landlord class. It is
said that, when the document was signed, one of the Irish Nationalist
leaders exclaimed, ' For the first time in my life I can cry " God save
the King." ' We are promised that if the proposed scheme should
be adopted, there will be an end of agrarian trouble in Ireland and
it will be possible to reduce the Irish Constabulary by one-half. On
the other hand, if the scheme should be rejected we are openly threat-
ened with a renewal of agitation on a scale never known before.
This being the case, the proposals of the Land Conference are not
lightly to be dismissed. But when we come to examine them in
detail it is impossible not to see that their chief merit in the eyes
of landlords and tenants alike lies in the fact that they provide a
remedy for existing evils at the expense of the Imperial Exchequer.
Briefly stated the recommendations of the Conference are that the

1903 LAST MONTH

holdings should be bought wherever possible by mutual agreement
between owners and tenants, and, where that is impossible, by com-
pulsory State purchase ; that the landlords should be bought out at
a figure which will give them their present net income from their
estates, mansion-houses, demesnes, and sporting rights being reserved
to them, and that the tenants should be able to obtain fall owner-
ship after a certain term of years by the annual payment of a sum
of money representing a reduction on their present rents of not less
than fifteen and not more than twenty-five per cent. The State is
to be called upon to guarantee the payments to the landlords, and
to provide whatever sum may be required to make up the difference
between the payments due to the owners and the contributions of
the tenants. It is not surprising that such a scheme as this should
have found favour in the eyes of those for whose benefit it is in-
tended. In what light it will be viewed by the British taxpayer when
its full significance and cost are explained to him remains to be seen.
So far no official calculation has been made of the amount of the
contribution that would have to be levied upon the Treasury before
effect could be given to the proposed scheme, but one unofficial
estimate fixes the amount at fifty millions. One begins to wonder
whether there is to be any limit to the demands upon the pocket of
the unhappy British taxpayer.

The election for the Newmarket division of Cambridgeshire came
as an unwelcome surprise to Ministers and their supporters. The
late Colonel McCalmont was returned at the last election by a
majority of more than a thousand votes. The Liberal candidate on
that occasion, as on this, was Mr. Kose. In 1 900 the calumny that
every vote given to a Liberal was one given to the Boers was used
against Mr. Kose in the most cruel and unscrupulous fashion. It
was used against him in spite of the fact that he was known to be
altogether opposed to ' pro-Boer ' sentiments, and that he had lost
two sons on the South African battlefields. In the recent election he
had his revenge. He was returned by more than five hundred votes
over his Conservative opponent. It is true that the latter was placed
at a disadvantage during the contest, owing to his illness, and it is
equally true that Mr. Rose is a popular favourite in the Newmarket
district. But he was personally just as popular in 1900 when he
met with a severe defeat. There can be no doubt that his victory
was due in part to the opposition to the Education Act, and in part
to the reaction of the public from the disgraceful and cowardly
tactics pursued against him at the previous election. It is worthy
of note that, like most of the Liberal candidates who have been
successful in recent elections, Mr. Rose belongs to the wing of the
party which regards Lord Rosebery as its leader.

The result of the election for the West Derby division of Liver-
pool was strikingly different. Here the Conservative candidate,

•350 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb.

Mr. Rutherford, was elected, by a reduced majority it is true, but
still by one of a very substantial kind. His opponent, Mr. Holt,
belongs to a family long identified with Liberal principles ; but in
spite of his personal popularity he failed to make any impression
upon the electorate. This seems to have been due in part to the
broadly democratic nature of Mr. Rutherford's Conservatism, and to
his identification of himself with the Anti- Ritualist party, and in
part to Mr. Holt's refusal to move from the platform of official
Liberalism. It is difficult to draw any clear moral from the result
of a contest in which neither of the candidates fully represented the
principles of the parties to which they belonged.

One curious electoral episode has been that connected with the
representation of London University. The sitting member, Sir
Michael Foster, is not only an eminent scientific man, but a gentle-
man universally respected for his high personal character. Apparently,
however, he has a constitutional difficulty in making up his mind
on any given question. Many months ago he expressed a wish to
retire from Parliament, and finally, not approving of the Education
Act, he declared his resolve to do so at the end of last Session. When
this was made known three candidates were brought forward to
contest the seat which was presumably about to be vacated. One
of these was an independent scientific candidate, the others repre-
sented respectively the Liberal and the Liberal Unionist parties.
Their Committees set to work in the usual manner, and all the
preparations had been made for the election when a hitch occurred.
Sir Michael Foster did not resign, and instead of doing so it was
announced on his behalf that he proposed to solve the difficulty by
changing his seat from the Ministerial to the Opposition benches.
A hot controversy arose, and it was pointed out that when a member
of Parliament changed sides in this fashion it was his duty to consult
his constituents. Sir Michael Foster so far acquiesced in this view
that he took a sort of plebiscite by postcard in order to learn
whether his constituents wished him to resign or not. The result
of this experiment satisfied him that there was no general wish on
the part of the electors of the University of London for his retire-
ment. Accordingly he remains member, though in future he will
sit on the Liberal instead of the Conservative benches. It is an
amusing story that could only be told of a University constituency.

Affairs in Morocco have during the past month been very dis-
quieting. The Sultan has more than once suffered defeat at the
hands of the Pretender who has sprung up so mysteriously and
whose very identity is a secret. It has been necessary to bring the
British residents in the interior of the country down to the coast.
There has even been .fighting in the neighbourhood of Tangier,
almost within sight of the guns of Gibraltar. All this keeps alive
the anxiety as to the future of Morocco in the Foreign Offices of

1903 LAST MONTH 351

the European States. Happily there seems to be every wish on the
part of the great Powers to avoid any step that might lead to un-
welcome complications. In Eussia, the Emperor has appointed a
commission to inquire into the question of local administration,
with a view to the removal of the prevailing discontent among
the masses. In China the censors, with unusual boldness, have
addressed a minute to the Dowager Empress advising her to abdi-
cate in favour of the Emperor, and pointing out in unmistakable
terms some of the blunders of which she has been recently guilty.
We are not yet told how the headstrong ruler has received this
blunt remonstrance. In Germany public opinion has been much
exercised by the presence of the Emperor at a lecture given by
Professor Delitzsch on what is known as the ' higher Biblical criti-
cism/ at which opinions abhorrent to the orthodox were expressed.
The Reichstag has been the scene of stormy and important debates
in which both the home and the foreign policy of the Government
have been strenuously attacked by different parties. But the most
significant feature of these debates has been the freedom with which
the speeches and actions of the Emperor have been criticised by the
representatives of the Social Democrats. The old restraints have
been laid aside, and the Emperor, no longer regarded as the voice of
all Germany, has been treated as though he were nothing more than
a party leader. It is what might have been expected. If monarchs
choose to make themselves the champions of any particular policy
they cannot hope to escape altogether the attacks of the opponents
of that policy. What the Emperor William's reply to the almost
savage criticism of the Reichstag will be it is too soon to say.
Already, however, Count Ballestrem, the President of that body, has
had to resign his high office, because an indiscreet attempt to
prevent the free discussion of one of the Emperor's speeches has cast
doubts upon his impartiality. In the United States President
Roosevelt has had the courage to face the passionate indignation of
the whole South by a ppointinga negro as port-collector at Charleston,
whilst he has punished a small town which had persecuted a black
postmistress by closing the post-office. In Saxony the lamentable
scandal of the elopement of the Crown Princess with the tutor of
her sons has naturally eclipsed every other topic. It is one of those
disasters which almost forbid comment. In our own country one of
the important events of the month has been the appointment of
Dr. Davidson, Bishop of Winchester, to succeed Dr. Temple in the
Archbishopric of Canterbury. The choice of Dr. Davidson for this
high office was none the less welcome because it had been generally
foreseen. The trial of Mr. Lynch, the member for the borough of
Galway, on a charge of high treason, has ended in his conviction and
in his being sentenced to death. Of his guilt there cannot be any
possible doubt. He served in the Boer army against our forces, and

352 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Feb. 1903

on more than one occasion took a prominent part in the resistance
to our arms. Having done this, he had the effrontery to allow
himself to be elected as member for Gal way, and came over to this
country from his safe exile in Paris, in order to take his seat and the
oath of allegiance ! No Government worthy of the name could treat
such conduct with indifference — not even with the indifference of
contempt. Mr. Lynch brought his fate upon his own head ; and
though the death penalty will undoubtedly be commuted, his trial
ought to do good service by reminding the more loose-thinking
section of the public that high treason is in this, as in every civilised
country, the gravest offence known to the law.

The death-list of the month is longer than usual. It includes
the names of Sagasta, the eminent Spanish statesman ; of Cardinal
Parocchi, in whom the world believed that it saw the destined
successor to the present Pope; of Lord Pirbright, the Bishop of
St. Albans, the Dean of St. Davids, Mr. H. T. Wells, K.A., Mr.
Augustus Hare, the well-known traveller and writer, and Mr.
Quintin Hogg, the genuine and unselfish philanthropist to whom
London is indebted for its noble polytechnic system. Perhaps more
remarkable than any of these names is that of M. de Blowitz, for
thirty years the Paris correspondent of the Times, a man who, with
many weaknesses, foibles, and follies, was at the same time one of
the most capable publicists and one of the most entertaining writers
in Europe.

WEMYSS REID.

ERRATUM. — For ' Introduction to the Temple Bible ' at the foot of pages 37 and 38
of Mr. Cassels' article on ' The Ripon Episode ' in the January issue, -read ' Contentio
Veritatis.'

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTUKY cannot undertake
to return unaccepted MSS

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTUEY

AND AFTER

XX

No. CCCXIII— MARCH 1903

THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAND'S

POWER

I

WE frequently notice in everyday life that particularly fortunate
persons who have succeeded in accomplishing something special
become a thorn in the eye of their less favoured neighbours, and
have to bear much ill-will and malice on this account, frequently
without any provocation on their part. We see the same in the politi-
cal life of nations. When in the course of historical events, through
geographical conditions and exceptional ethnical endowments, one
nation has distinguished itself above others, this very distinction
and more elevated standpoint is sure to provoke the envy and malice
of surrounding nations. So long as these neighbour States are weak
or not in a position to check the rapid progress and growing power

VOL. mi— No. 313 353 A A

354 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

of their rival, they look on with cold indifference, sometimes even
with platonic admiration ; but as they themselves begin to grow in
political importance, their envy and hatred against the rival who has
got the start of them grow apace. They mean not only to overtake
him, but at any price to surpass, overthrow, and utterly annihilate
him. Whether the other who reached the goal under more favour-
able auspices has always been mindful of the interests of those
following in his track, whether he was at all inclined to be malicious,
is not so much the question here. The facts we have to consider are
these : N.N. is great and mighty ; he must be humbled and brought
low, no matter whether it profits his rivals or not, no matter whether
the sacred interests of humanity will be furthered by it or hindered.
The phenomenon here described is actually displayed before our
eyes, as we witness the storm which has lately burst over England, and
which rages with exceptional vehemence and persistency all along
the line of the Asiatic continent. Wherever we look, the three great
European Powers, Russia, France, and Germany, stand armed and
ready for the attack. No means are left untried, no sacrifice is
thought too great to strike the opponent, to attack him in his moral
and material position, and the greatest efforts are made to bring him
to ruin. This is in every respect a remarkable phenomenon, and
of comparatively recent date, for although prosperity, power, and
greatness have at all times called forth envy and ill-will, it is only
lately, during the last ten years, that the storm has actually broken
out. Fifty years ago England was still an object of admiration and
emulation, a State whose successful operations in old, decrepit Asia
were looked upon with pride, who was praised and extolled as the
standard-bearer of Western culture. Did not Prince Bismarck, who
was not particularly enamoured of England, say : ' If England were
to lose all her great thinkers and intellectual heroes, that which she
has done for India would make her name immortal for ever'?
Prominent Frenchmen and many others have expressed themselves
in a similar manner. We have but to read what is said on this sub-
ject by Garcin de Tassy, Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Baron Hiibner, and
others. Never or very rarely had the shrill voice of hatred and
contempt made itself heard, and the present sudden revolution and
sharp contrast must surprise even those who take into account the
ambition and rivalry of the different Governments wrestling for
supremacy, and in whose eyes any means which lead to the attain-
ment of this object are justifiable. Fifty years ago England's rivals
were not in a position to put forth the sting of their envy, even if
they had one. Germany was then only a geographical conception,
and had neither the means nor the desire to cast longing glances away
from Central Europe on to the Far East. Theoretical speculations
on scientific grounds were the only things which made the German
mind at all interested in the doings of the old world. In France,

903 THE AGITA TION A GAINST ENGLAND'S POWER 355

Napoleon the Third made it his chief care to be on good terms with
the arch-enemy of his great uncle on the other side of the Channel.
The French contemplated the consolidation of their power in Algiers,
and were content as long as England did not interfere with the ex-
pansion-politics of the Empire in Indo-China. We have even seen
the French and English colours marching together against China or to
block the way to the Bosporus for the Northern Colossus. As for
Kussia, although her plans for the autocracy in Asia were quite
formed, she hesitated to come forward, and only advanced stealthily
and with great caution, for the road was not yet clear, the means not
all at hand, and, in order not to rouse suspicion, kept quiet, and let
many an insult pass by unnoticed.

IE

The ways and the means by which the change of scene has been
effected are extremely interesting to note, and we begin with the
Czar's dominions as being decidedly the greatest and most formidable
opponent of British power in India. When in the Crimea the wings
of the Russian eagle had been clipped and his flight weakened (but
only in appearance) we see how the Neva- politics on the one hand
contemplated a passage through the Kirghiz-steppe to the Khanates,
and on the other, by the overthrow of Sheikh Shamil and the final
conquest of the Caucasus, meditated a nearer advance towards Persia
and the northern frontiers of Anatolia. In both these objects their
intention was not so much the annihilation of the already languish-
ing and internally rotten Asiatic dominions, but rather to have a
chance of throttling the British leopard who was growing suspicious
of the secret dealings of the Russians. As long as the lances of the
Cossacks were only seen from time to time in the far background,
they took all manner of trouble at St. Petersburg to pacify John
Bull by assurances of friendship and protestations of innocence, and
even by small kindly actions to lull him to sleep. They sang lul-
labies which would have frightened anyone else, but were strangely
pleasing to the English ear. In the long run, however, this game of
hide and seek could not be kept up without having its effect upon
the hard-skinned optimism of the English. Every step which Russia
took southward was responded to by a more or less forward move-
ment in a northern direction. The incorporation of the Central Asiatic
Khanates was followed by the English taking possession of Beluchi-
stan, and the extension of the Pishin-line till close to the gates of
Kandahar; and when the Russians had made an end of subjugating
the Turkomans, and finished the construction of the Transcaspian
railway, the English were compelled to uphold the suzerain relation-
ships between Afghanistan and India by considerable sacrifices in
subsidies and arms, and to make the so-called buffer between the

A A 2

356 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

Suleiman range and the Oxus as sure as they could. For many
years, ever since 1880, this problem has been running on always under
the mask of a feigned friendship, but the opponents keep a watchful
eye upon one another, and endeavour to hide their movements behind
honeyed speeches. Even now this comedy goes on incessantly.
St. Petersburg and London are to all appearances bosom friends ;
on the shores of the Neva and the Thames the songs of peace are
for ever being sung to new tunes, but in the frontier districts of the
two rival States this didce jubilceum is but faintly discernible, for
since Russia has extended its railway-net as far as Kushk, ten geo-
graphical miles distant from Herat, thereby securing this important
station on the way to India, and also keeping a permanent garrison
stationed at Fort Murgabski on the Pamir, the English have pushed
on in a north-western direction towards the Persian frontiers and are
about to construct a railway from Quetta via Nushki to Persia,
ostensibly to promote the commerce between India and Turkestan,
but more correctly to cut off the way the Russians have planned
from Khorasan to Bender Abbas on the Persian Gulf.

Evidently, therefore, the relations between the two rival Powers in
the interior of Asia are somewhat different from what the official
reports would have us believe. Both are on the qui vive, both are
arming, and both are waiting for the moment when a collision
between their relative interests will bring about the long-dreaded
catastrophe. The only difference between the two is, that whereas
England has completed her possessions in India, has conquered all
she wants, and is now chiefly engaged in protecting and securing her
acquisitions, Russia has not yet reached the goal of her ambition, and
by making Afghanistan the highway on her way to the south tries to
induce and to hasten an encounter with her formidable rival.

Official Russia emphatically denies such a state of affairs, and
all the evidences brought to bear upon the matter are simply dis-
credited. But facts are more eloquent than any amount of solemn
denials and diplomatic documents. All that has recently been
brought to light of Russian activity on the southern frontiers of
their Central Asiatic possessions tells in favour of our assertion.
In the first place we would refer to the flanking -movement in
Persia, by which Russian politics, in a comparatively short time,
have made astonishing progress ; and, not content with their ex-
ceptional position in the northern portion of Iran, they now cast
hungry glances southward, and seem determined at any price to
establish themselves on the Persian Gulf. So far this movement
has not been manifested by any official action. It was principally
Russian newspapers which, with rare effrontery, declared that Russia
had the right to occupy a harbour on the Persian Gulf, and announced
urbi et orbi that the Government of St. Petersburg, considering
the great sacrifices which Persia had cost it, could under no

1 903 THE A GIT A T10N A GAINST ENGLAND'S PO WER 357

conditions whatever permit any Power but Russia to exercise any
influence in the land of the Shah; also that Russia, for the further-
ance of her political-economic interests, could no longer do without
an outlet in the southern sea, and that her power henceforth should
extend not only over the northern but also over the southern portion
of Iran. To accentuate this necessity an intercourse was forcibly
established some years ago by means of the steamer Korniloff,
and although from a business point of view this undertaking is
nil and without value — for the import is limited to wooden cases for
packing dates, and to kerosene, while the export is hardly worth
mentioning — the government continues to subsidise this line Odessa-
Bender- Bushir, simply and solely to keep a pied a terre there and to
be able to show ad oculos the existence of Russian commercial
interests on the Persian Gulf. As already stated, so far this new
departure has not assumed a diplomatic character of any importance
as between London and St. Petersburg. In London and in Calcutta
they have closed one eye, but the other has all the more keenly watched
the movements of the Russians, and the ground is duly prepared.
In case the gentlemen on the Neva should make their intentions
publicly known, it may, to judge from the parliamentary speech of
the English Minister, come to a very serious controversy between the
two governments. Objectively, England is perfectly right in trying
to prevent the establishment of any other Power on the Indian Ocean.
Since the deposition of the Portuguese and the Dutch, England has
been sole ruler in the Persian Gulf; she gave the stimulus to trade
and traffic, and put a stop to the piratic encroachments of the Arab
coasters, at the cost of much bloodshed and money ; with the
Persian south coast as starting-point, she established commercial
relations with the neighbouring provinces of Persia ; and all this was
done to make sure her position in the north-west of India. Is it
likely, then, that England will remain indifferent when her rival and
bitter adversary makes her appearance on these waters, and will quietly
sit down and watch the Russians make their preparations ?

Can those of my readers who know something of the brisk com-
mercial intercourse between India and South Persia and Mesopotamia,
who estimate the influence of British culture in these parts at its right
value, and who are aware of the contemplated construction of an
overland route from India via Beluchistan in connection with the
Bagdad railway (eventually a separate line) — can they believe it
possible that the English will quietly acquiesce in the Russians
establishing themselves on the Persian Gulf? But more serious and
dangerous than this are Russia's latest plans with regard to Afghani-
stan. It is a well-known fact that ever since the Russian operations
in Turkestan the English have been increasingly anxious about the
future development of affairs in the north-west of the Indian Empire.
They have tried to comfort themselves with the well-known saying

358 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

of Disraeli, that Asia is big enough to serve both European powers
as wrestling place for their ambition, but secretly they have not
neglected to take precautions and to provide for eventualities. They
sounded Kussia with reference to the future march to the south, and
in 1873 the St. Petersburg Cabinet gave the assurance that Afghani-
stan was altogether beyond the reach of Russia's aspirations, and
that they left the English free scope there. Two years later they
had changed their mind on the Neva. Prince Gortchakoff offered
the suggestion that, although Russia had nothing to gain in
Afghanistan, it would be better if this land were also independent of
the English and formed a kind of buffer State — which of course
would give the wandering rouble an open road. At that time
Russia was not yet firmly established on the northern border of
Persia, the Turkomans were still free, and the Transcaspian railway
not even planned, so the English took courage and rejected the pro-
posal of the Russians. Russia accepted the rejection, but although
acknowledging the English sovereignty, General Kauffman, the then
Governor-General of Turkestan, sent in 1877 General Stolyetoff on
a secret mission to Shir Ali Khan at Kabul for the purpose of pre-
judicing that prince against England, which he succeeded in doing.
The Emir sided with the Russians, slipped, and lost throne and life.
Soon after, in 1880, Abdurrahman Khan ascended the throne; the
Russians had set him on his legs in the hope that he would show
himself grateful and side with the Russians against England. This
time, however, the deceiver was deceived. Abdurrahman, a shrewd
and cunning Oriental, instead of an enemy became a friend of the
English, but a friend cold to the backbone, who would sell his
affection to the highest bidder, and as his sharp eye soon discovered
that England was the less dangerous opponent, he clung to England
during the whole of his life and quietly pocketed subsidies of money
and arms from Calcutta. During the twenty years that this able
prince reigned, he brought order into the mountainous districts of
Afghanistan and enriched the land and the army with 50,000 men.
Russia kept pretty quiet during that time, if we do not take into
account the forcible occupation on the Pamir, the Murgab, and Heri-
rud, and make no mention of the friendly overtures to Ishak Khan,
the vanquished pretender to the Afghan throne. Russia's quietude
during this period was partly the result of circumstances, and partly
because there was no necessity for anything else, for her position all
along the line of the disputed States was a highly favourable one ;
her plans had been laid so cleverly that their realisation might take
place at any time. After the death of Abdurrahman there was a
notable change in the Russian tactics. Habibullah, Abdurrahman's
successor, has not by any means inherited the intellectual qualities
of his father. He is a prince of a quiet temperament, who strictly
follows his father's advice, contained in the well-known autobiography

1 903 THE A GIT A TION A GAINST ENGLAND'S POWER 359

published in London, which above all recommends him to keep
the peace in the family. Up to now he has succeeded in this, for
both Prince Nassrullah and Omar, a son of the intriguing, imperious
widow of Abdurrahman, have kept the peace, and, conscious of the
dangers which might proceed from a fraternal quarrel, but more still
in consequence of the advice given on the part of Lord Curzon, they
wisely refrain from giving any trouble to their brother on the throne.
Habibullah gives them a reasonable share in the government, and
of the downfall of the newly-founded Afghan State, so generally
expected, and more especially by Kussia, there has been as yet no sign.

Kussia's expectations of fishing in troubled waters have thus been
frustrated ; nay, more, their tool, Ishak Khan, the great-uncle of
Habibullah, through whom they had hoped to complicate matters
in Samarkand, has failed them, for we hear that the Afghans in his
suite have left Kussian Turkestan, retired to the left shore of the
Oxus, and have been kindly received by the Kuler of Kabul.

In the face of these failures the politicians on the Neva have been
obliged to take refuge in diplomatic chicanery, and for this purpose
the Cabinet of St. Petersburg again expressed the wish to appoint at
Kabul a diplomatic agent of the Czar, who should be arbitrator in any
differences which might arise between the Eussian frontier authori-
ties and the government of the Emir at Kabul, and also clear away any
obstructions which, through the frontier difficulties of Afghanistan,
might interfere with the traffic. Now as England has always — -but
especially since the conclusion of the so-called Durand agreement in
1893 — protested against Afghan representatives abroad, and has
therefore also objected to the presence of an Afghan representative
in London, it is only natural that both on the Thames and the
Hooghli a firm stand should be and must be taken against these
Russian demands. In the first place, the very fact of permitting
Russia to carry out this intention would be to open a wide door to
all sorts of intrigues in Afghanistan, and the consequence would be
that the Afghan suzerain State, which England has established and
protects as a wall of defence on the north-western frontier of her
Indian empire, would soon fall under Russian influence and seriously
damage the prestige of the English. If Russia intends thus to
promote her commercial interests in the neighbouring Afghan State,
it should be borne in mind that the English have greater and far
more deeply-rooted commercial interests on the other side of the
Khyber Pass, but that so far they have never yet had a born English-
man accredited as ambassador at Kabul, and that for the promotion
of Anglo-Indian commerce with North Persia and Turkestan they
are compelled to go round Afghanistan, and to construct the route
already mentioned via Quetta-Nushki and Sistan, simply to pacify
the suspicions of the Afghans, and to avoid possible unpleasantness.
The privileges which England is not able to procure for herself she is

360 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

not likely to allow the Russians to obtain. We are therefore per-
fectly justified in stating that England will not and cannot accede
to the Bussian scheme of having an official representative at the
Court of Kabul.

Ill

Russia, swooping down at high pressure from the north and
north-west upon India, finds no mean accomplice in France, her
zealous and faithful ally, for when we consider the progress of French
colonial politics in Indo-China a little more carefully we shall
see that the underlying thought is a gradual approach to the
English possessions in India. It seems that the cruel slight which
the Court of Versailles at the time inflicted upon Dupleix is now
going to be revenged by a forward movement from the east. The
French power at Tonking has visions of a commercial route to
Yunnan, and political influence in that province of China, but since
the last Franco-Chinese war the politicians on the Seine have made
their relations with Siam their chief object. They are always
advancing further into that land, and from time to time push
forward the frontiers of Anam and Kambodjia, at the expense of
Siam. In the year 1885 the upper river-bed of the Mekong was still
Siamese territory, and Gamier, the real founder of the French power
in Indo-China, as also Lanessan, both agree that the eastern frontier
of Siam extends from the Mekong to from 50 to 200 English
miles as far as the frontier range of Anam, while the present
frontiers of the French protectorate have not only been transferred
from the left to the right shore of the Mekong, but the French have
established themselves in Luang-Prabang, they have obtained
influence in the formerly Siamese provinces of Malu-Prei and Bassac,
and, according to the latest agreement between Siam and the French
Republic, the territory between the rivers Rolnas and Prekompong,
i.e. as far as the 15° latitude, falls under French jurisdiction ; to which
we would add that the long-promised evacuation of the important
harbour of Tchantabun, on the part of the French, has not yet
taken place. Siam is shrinking perceptibly, and through the lust of
conquest of its neighbours it has, in the course of a few decades, lost
more than half of its former property.

Of late years Siam has abundantly proved that it has waked up
from the lethargy which characterises other Asiatic States, and that
it intends to advance on the road of modern culture. Otherwise it
would have fared no better than other sister-States in the East, which,
one after the other, have slipped from the loose hold of China into
the firm grasp of France.

Their instruction in the ways of Western civilisation naturally
fell to the share of England, not of France, for after the English

1903 THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAND'S POWER 361

borders in the north and north-west of Siam had been firmly settled,
England was not only friendly towards Siam, but saw in it one of
those desirable neutral States whose independence is to be secured,
and which must act as a buffer between the English and French
possessions. For this purpose the present regeneration of Siam came
in useful to the English. King Chulalangkorn and the princes of his
house have had an English education, and during their various travels
in Europe they have behaved everywhere, as far as their manners,
customs, and conversation are concerned, as perfect English gentle-
men ; nay, more, according to the American ambassador in Bangkok,
Mr. J. Barret,1 almost all leading men in Siam speak English as
fluently and correctly as their own mother tongue. The progress
made by Siam in the ways of civilisation, although not nearly so
great as that of Japan, is nevertheless very marked, and promises
much for the future. In this respect, England has done really good
service. With the exception of the navy, for which the Danes have
done most, it is in the first place the English who have made them-
selves useful in bringing about administrative reforms. The finances
have been put in order by an Englishman ; in the system of education,
Englishmen have made many improvements in various departments,
and the first railway has been built by the English.

Lately German labour has also been turned to good account, as,
for instance, in post and telegraph offices, in public buildings, &c. ;
but England always keeps the first place, and accordingly her share
of the profits also surpasses that of her rival. According to the
American ambassador just mentioned, 80 per cent, of the trade
of Bangkok is in the hands of the English, and about 80 or 90
per cent, of the imports are landed under the English flag. It is
therefore quite out of the question that the predominating influence
of England could ever be supplanted by any other Western Power.
Besides, this would be no advantage to Siam, for the American
ambassador was perfectly right when he said :

The seed sown is now beginning to take root, and will in good time yield its
harvest. But it must be kept in mind that Siam depends chiefly on the position
and the politics of England. With all its self-esteem, Siam has to acknowledge
that its future would be hopeless if England were to remove her protecting arm,
or if Great Britain, neglecting the proffered opportunity, should fail to see that
her power in South-Eastern Asia depends upon the preservation of Siani's integrity .-

Naturally this view of the American diplomatist does not please
the French. They want Siam to be anything but a buffer State ;
they have a vague idea of doing with Siam as they have done with
Tongking, Anam, and Kambodjia, for the final aim and object of
all Indo-Chinese politics is and always will be a united attack
on India, and the detriment of British commercial interests in

1 See Asiatic Quarterly Review, July 1899, p. 85. 2 Ibid. p. 90.

362 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

South- Western China. Following this principle, the republic also
performs a true act of charity towards its Kussian allies, as England,
considering the French activity in East India, has to keep a watchful
eye in two directions. Kussia of course encourages France in this
line of politics; for every English dilemma, in the first place,
benefits the Russians, and Prince Uchtomsky, who accompanied the
present Czar on his journey round the world, in the account which
he has published of his travels, says the following about the position
of the French in In do -China :

If the French Republic desires to occupy in East Asia her proper place as
one of the great Powers, she can straightway distinguish herself, by not pushing
the Siamese into England's arms, but by drawing them into her own loving
embrace. To annex and annihilate this almost defenceless nation is unjustifiable
even if it be done in the name of the glorious Franco-Indian Empire of the
future, which will surely not care to owe its success to a policy of violence and
bloodshed, but rather to the magic of her reasonable unselfishness. Thus only
will the inhabitants of Western countries win the Orientalist over to their side,
and, working hand in hand with him, produce rich and important fruits of
civilisation.'

IV

The third Power, which has only of late years come forward as an
opponent of England's influence in Asia, is Germany, a factor which
hitherto has only appeared in the peaceful garb of a commercial
competitor, which, it is said, only cultivates its trade and industry
and does not trouble itself about the pursuit of politics. But this
third factor in the alliance against British power in Asia occupies
a quite exceptional position. On the one hand we hear the
Government of the German Empire is in perfect harmony with the
English — the existence of a secret treaty between the two nations
is even suggested ; and on the other hand we find that public opinion
in Germany is full of hatred against England, a hatred deeper and
more passionate than that of Russia, where the opposition is already
more than a hundred years old. This sharp contrast between the
official and non-official world some try to explain by saying that the
friendship of the Government is hypocritical, and that it will only be
maintained until the German flag shall have got a foothold in
certain places, and until Germany has a fleet at her disposal, with
which to accentuate her claims, and boldly cast off her reserve.
Referring to the German Emperor's words, that the future of the
empire is on the ocean, the latter suggestion assumes a certain
amount of truth, and as the modern disease called kilometritis has
become endemic here as everywhere, it would be puerile indeed to
nurse any further illusions with regard to the harmlessness of

8 See Asien, Organ der Deutseh-axiatischen Geselhchaft, 1902, Oct., vol. ii.,
No. 1, p. 17.

German politics in Asia. The saying, ' bales of goods precede balls
of cannons,' is also true for the colonial politics of Germany in Asia,
only it still appears to us that Germany's intentions in Asia have
not yet reached that point of unconquerable hatred against England,
and that the two might walk, if not with one another, at any rate
side by side without coming into collision, each pursuing its own
interests. For the present the Germans have their eye only upon
Western Asia, or more correctly Anatolia, where, since the appoint-
ment of German officers and officials and the construction of the
Anatolian railway in Turkey, Germany has secured a predominant
influence, and after the completion of the Bagdad line this influence
will doubtless increase considerably. They who know the beginning
of the relationship between Germany and Turkey will not be sur-
prised at this intimacy. The Turks, a military nation par excellence,
have always been admirers of the Prussian army, as is expressed
in the reports of Ali Kesmi Efendi, sent as ambassador to Frederick
the Great. This admiration was naturally enhanced by the
victorious campaign of 1870, and as Prussia or Germany, of all the
European Powers, was the only one which so far had not been in
hostile opposition to the Turks, had never annexed one inch of
Ottoman ground, and had moreover tacitly admitted her sympathy
with Islam, it was an easy matter for Sultan Abdul Hamid to see
in Germany his true and only friend, and without more ado to
throw himself into her arms.

What the skilful hand of Bismarck had begun, the busy, active
mind of the Emperor William the Second has brought to a satisfactory
conclusion. German influence on the Bosporus and in Anatolia is
now as great as that of the English under the embassy of Stratford
Canning, greater perhaps, and with more practical results, for
England was never, even at the zenith of her position, particularly
lavish in her protestations of love for Turkey, while the Emperor pays
visits to the Sultan without expecting any return, compliments him
in public, glorifies the Caliphate, and in friendly conversation describes
the Grand Seigneur as one of the ablest rulers. These German
effusions have not had much effect on the foreign politics of Turkey,
as is sufficiently proved by current events — for instance, the cession of
Crete ; but when one meets with nothing but hostility, even a dearly
bought platonic affection is welcome. England, of course, had not
the very slightest cause to complain of the loss of her influence on
the Bosporus, as both the Government and public opinion, in judging
of the Turkish question, have contradicted themselves, and have fallen
into gross errors.

In the intercourse between East and West, one can hardly
imagine a more striking contrast than is seen between the time of
the Crimean war and the appearance of Urquhart's pamphlet The
Spirit of the East, and between the period of the ' Atrocity Meetings '

364 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

and the ' Armenian Massacres.' The fact that England thus runs
from one extreme into the other is chiefly due to the political party-
spirit and the far too powerful influence of the Church. Fanaticism,
an evil counsellor, was in both instances the spi/ritus movens, and
while at first they blindly rushed into worshipping everything
Turkish, they were afterwards equally unjust in their condemnation
of the Turks, because they were not suddenly changed into Euro-
peans, and from their many centuries of old Asiatic civilisation did
not, like a deus ex machvna, emerge as civilised Westerners. With-
out considering the impossibility of such a saltuM mortalis, the friend
of yesterday is changed into a bitter enemy, and one can hardly
blame the Turks that the crusade of Mr. Gladstone during the last
Kusso- Turkish war and the assistance rendered to the Armenian
revolutionaries shook their confidence in the good will of their
old friends, and drove the most faithful Turkish adherents of
England to despair. This action of prominent English politicians
against the Porte was as short-sighted as it was unjust : short-
sighted because England lacked the means of preventing the Porte
from punishing its rebellious subjects, while an armed intervention
would have called forth undoubted opposition on the part of Kussia,
and possibly other Powers as well ; and unjust because as a matter
of fact the Armenian committees in Europe and America had set
flame to the fuel of revolution in the Armenian mountains, so
that the Turkish officials were compelled to interfere. The fact
that the real mischief lay in the Turkish mismanagement and
disorder in those parts, and that the means for suppressing the
rebellion were very badly chosen by the Turkish Government — all
this will and can be denied by no one ; but the intervention of one
individual State was in itself madness, especially as Kussia, fearing
that the combustibles largely present in her own dominions might
catch fire, approved of the Turkish massacres, and Germany, as is
well known, prevented the bringing about of a united action.

Insults and attacks of this kind no State, however weak and
diseased, will bear from another, and Sultan Abdul Hamid, always
suspicious and diffident with regard to the St. James's Cabinet,
easily broke with England, and unconditionally went over to
Grermany, at the same time doing all in his power to reconcile the
arch-enemy of his country by side glances. Inter duos litigantes
the German Empire has now become tertius gaudens, and since the
active, skilful politicians on the Spree neglected no opportunity to
profit in every possible way by their advantageous position, Germany
has grown to be the sole and dictatorial factor in Turkey. The
former a la franca is now superseded by the watchword Aleman
(German) in the official world of the Ottoman Empire. Alemans
give the keynote in the various branches of administration, the
army, the finances, and particularly in commercial intercourse.

1903 THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAND'S POWER 3

German manufacturers and merchants have the preference every-
where, and, instead of Paris or London, Berlin is now the place
where Turkish officials and functionaries are preferably sent to
finish their education ; for, apart from the thoroughness of German
instruction, it is the rigour of the Prussian regime which appeals
to the absolutism of the Sultan. As may be supposed, this
privileged position has in the first place benefited the economic
interests of Germany. This is proved by relative statistical data.
According to the report of the Bureau of Commercial Statistics at
Hamburg in 1901, German imports into European Turkey have
risen from 1,000,000 marks in 1890 to 10,000,000 marks in 1901,
consisting chiefly in iron bars, fancy articles, woollen goods, cotton
goods, &c., while the imports into Asiatic Turkey in the course of
the same period of time have risen from 300,000 to 10,000,000
marks. The German export trade has grown in the same manner.
Between 1890 and 1901 German exports from European Turkey have
increased from 130,000 to 700,000, and are chiefly confined to raw
material and carpets. As years go on, and with the progressive
extension of railways in Asia Minor, one naturally expects to see a
decided increase in trade ; but the question is how far this increase of
German economic interests will affect the advancement and prefer-
ment of the political and refining influence of the German Empire
in Turkey — this question cannot for the present be categorically
answered.

In the political circles of Germany the future plans regarding
German colonisation in Anatolia have been carefully kept in the
background, and Dr. Eudolph Fitzner 4 warns his countrymen against
the making of a propaganda for such an unpromising colonisation,
as this would only disturb the friendly relations with Turkey. He
is perfectly right : we would only suggest that the Germans who
have settled down near the great railway stations of Asia Minor, who
have bought farms, and with true German industry apply themselves
to agriculture, are of quite another opinion, and that, in spite of his
weighty words, public opinion is eager for a German colonisation of
Anatolia, and in its heated fancy sees in the near future German
towns and villages rising and flourishing on the Bagdad line. These
enthusiasts will be grievously disappointed, for Anatolia can no more
become German than the Caucasus, after a hundred years and more of
(Russian) occupation, has become Russian in the ethnical sense. To
this day the Russian population is at most 2 per cent., and that in
spite of many attempts at a forcible Russification. It is the same in
India, where the English have been in possession for fully 200 years,
where a railway-net extends over the entire peninsula, and where,
not counting the army, with a population of 300 millions there are
scarcely 100,000 British.

4 See Anatulien- Wirtschaftgeographie, pp. 63-65.

366 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

Taking into account the perseverance, industry, and well-grounded
knowledge of the Germans, the extension of the Bagdad and Persian
Gulf line may possibly leave its mark upon the intellectual develop-
ment of these regions, which in older times attained to a compara-
tively high standard of civilisation. But modern ethnical innovations
are absolutely excluded, and political transformations are also out of
the question, considering the existing keen rivalry among the Con-
tinental Powers. We may justly ask what ethnical changes have
taken place since the opening of the Ottoman Smyrna and Aidin
Railway Company's line, nearly fifty years ago ? The line is 5,042 kilo-
metres long, and the concession was granted in 1856. Let this
serve as an example for the future Germanisation of Asia Minor.
No one at all acquainted with the national characteristics of the
Orient, and especially of the Mohammedan population, will harbour
any illusions on this point.

It is true that in times past Russia managed to influence the
Slavonic element in the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and the
Crimea, at the expense of Moslem Turkeyism, and some fragmentary
remains of Ugrian heathenism. But the absorption was only possible,
in the first place because those districts were very thinly populated
and had no means of opposing the Russians, with their superior
tactics of war and general civilisation; and in the second place,
because these almost entirely nomadic Tartars did not possess the
spirit of Islamic unity, and with the exception of the Crimea, which
also resisted a little longer, the remainder of the once Golden
Hord was not in touch with their, at that time, still powerful kins-
men, the Ottomans. In the Anatolia of to-day the conditions are
quite different. The Turkish Islam preponderates, and is, moreover,
supported by its Aryan and Semitic fellow-believers ; and considering
the strong national feeling existing among the Osmanlis, and the
great progress made by the heads of society in modern culture, it is
impossible to believe that either Germans or Slavs will ever succeed
in supplanting or absorbing the Turkish national element.

A political or ethnical conquest by Germany in Asia Minor is
therefore out of the question, even allowing for the possibility of a
total collapse of the rotten throne of the Osmanlis, and great political
changes. Under the best conditions, Germany's success can only be
of a strictly administrative and intellectual nature, always provided
the Northern bear, goaded on by mad jealousy, does not interfere.
Under German supervision and instruction, agriculture, commerce,
and industry will flourish. Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Greeks, and
Armenians have a better future before them, and, even assuming
that Germany suitably compensates herself by administrative financial
advantages, improving her commerce and finding a large sale for
her industrial products, I cannot see why these advantages, wrested
from a hitherto barren ground, should stir up hostile feelings in her

1903 THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAND'S POWER 367

competitors who have carefully kept aloof from this field of action.
One can understand that England will not easily get over the loss of
such a rich market as Anatolia, nor can she be quite indifferent in
watching the building of the Bagdad line undertaken by Germany.
It is a well-known fact that the idea of an overland route from India
via Bagdad had been suggested long ago, somewhere in the thirties
of last century, by General Chesney, but found no favour with the
English statesmen of that period. It is the same with the Suez
Canal, the practicability of which was also put forward by Chesney,
long before De Lesseps' time. And now that England has com-
mitted the gross mistake of not taking her chance when her
influence with the Porte was supreme, I do not see why the more
active and energetic Germans should be blamed for the realisation
of the project. We may yet see the day when the business of the
Suez Canal will repeat itself in the Bagdad line, and even if not, is it
likely that English commerce will be crippled on this line ? In a
word, exaggerated as Germany's sanguine notions are regarding the
high flight and unlimited power of German commercial interests in
West Asia, equally unjustifiable are England's fears of being driven off
the market in Asia Minor and of losing her supremacy in the Persian
Gulf. On either side the waves of passion rise too high, and the
roar of the pen has embittered the mind unreasonably. Instead of
opposing one another and damaging each other's interests, would it
not be wiser and more to the point to keep an eye on that other
Power, equally dangerous to both, who is preparing to make an
armed stand against the aims and objects of both parties ; a Power
who will not easily let the fat morsels pass her lips, and who, as
regards the future of Asia, will never share with her rivals ?

Looking at it from this point of view, every prudent and un-
prejudiced politician will acknowledge that the working together of
Germany and England is the best guarantee for the success and the
peaceful development of civilising influences in the neighbouring East.
If appearances do not lie, the governments of both countries have long
since been convinced of the necessity of following this track, and, in
spite of the unpleasant utterances on either side, will arrange their
future politics accordingly. The contrary seems absolutely im-
possible ; but if in spite of all our expectations it should turn out
otherwise — that is, should the Germans, blinded by the brilliancy of
their rising sun in West Asia, and misguided by the game of decep-
tive illusions, venture on speculations of too risky a nature — their
politics may turn out detrimental to their future position in Asia,
for alone, in spite of the youthful vigour of which they boast, they
are not equal to the gigantic task before them, while their natural
allies are quite able, with or without assistance, to maintain and to
raise their position in the world.

368 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

V

After thus briefly referring to the Powers who oppose English
authority in Asia, either openly or by secretly preparing for the
attack, we will now first of all consider the questions : (1) How far
the might of these Powers reaches to injure British interests, or to
defeat their rivals ? (2) Can they do this in the near future, or only
in the far distance ?

In considering these questions we necessarily think first of Russia ;
Russia, who in all her thoughts and speculations, in all her attempts
and aspirations, always sees in England her greatest obstacle, and
who leaves no means untried to remove her from the scene. Starting
from this point of view, let us glance over the single dominions
of the long-stretched line of the antagonist, and we shall see that
the Anglo-Russian rivalry in Turkey, by the appearance of Germany,
has become objectless. Russia has now to face the new wrestler
who has entered the lists, and in the place of the lately retired old
enemy, he finds a not-to-be-despised new rival, with closed visor, on
the scene of action. In Germany this state of affairs is persistently
denied ; public opinion is silent on this point ; but the official world
abounds in amiabilities towards the Eastern neighbour ; everything
Russian is flattered and cherished. On the other side all these
declarations of love do not seem to take ; for the prevailing influence
of Germany on the Bosporus, the concession of the Bagdad line, and
the preponderance of Germans in Anatolia, are a thorn in the eye of
the Russian bear. She sees in these a mighty bulwark against her
advance towards the Euphrates, and it is not surprising that her
equanimity should be disturbed when she can no longer with the same
confidence cast her eyes from cold Armenia to the rich sunny regions
of Mesopotamia. The ravenous politicians on the Neva are suddenly
disillusioned, for, judging by the feelers which were put out as early
as the beginning of last century, the advantages gained at Diadin
and Erzerum during the last Turko- Russian War must be looked
upon as a step on the march southward ; a step, it was confidently
thought, which would insure steady progress in that direction. Since
these beautiful plans have now been frustrated, the Russian Press has
poured its poisoned vial over the Germans, while the official world,
especially the Russian Legation in Constantinople, is busily employed
in casting all sorts of difficulties in Germany's way, and amongst
other things hindering the Germans in procuring the means necessary
for the carrying out of their intentions. Consequently the Rouvier
project for the unifying of the Turkish State debt with the
proceeds of which the construction of the Bagdad line was to be
started, has not yet been carried out. Whether Russia in the long
run will succeed in frustrating the undertaking, her French allies

1903 THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAND'S POWER 369

taking a 40 per cent, share in the matter, is difficult to believe, but
we would only remark here that the Anglo-Russian rivalry in Turkey,
and especially in Anatolia, is for the present kept in abeyance, for
Russo-Grerman antipathy occupies the foreground, and is bound to
increase in bitterness in the near future.

In discussing the 'Middle Oriental Question,' i.e. Persia and
Central Asia, the position is quite different. Here Russia has de-
cidedly the start, for, as the relations stand at present, the indefatig-
able activity of the gentlemen on the Neva has obtained advantages
over the disputed district which will weigh heavily in the balance,
and cost the defensive English many serious sacrifices in the coming
strife. The question whether England has acted wisely in vacating
her once influential position in Persia and leaving her rivals free
scope there has been much discussed of late, with various results.
The activity of English diplomacy at the Court of Teheran during
the first half of the nineteenth century is conspicuously dispropor-
tionate 'to the negligence and laisser aller during the second half
of that century. On the Thames the excuse is made that, on account
of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus, the situation on the northern
borders of Persia and in Central Asia became such that an active
opposition of Russia's power and influence was useless. Attention
is drawn to Russia's important strategic advantages in the north
of Iran, and it is thought quite natural that the terribly intimidated
Shah should comply with the Russian demands ; that Russian com-
merce, monopolising the northern portion of .Persia, also wants to
get hold of the south; and finally Englishmen have lately been
heard to declare that there will be no harm in Russia acquiring a
harbour in the Persian Grulf on the supposition that this concession
would restore the harmony between the two rival. Powers. The
deceptiveness and illusiveness of these expectations must be patent
to all who, keeping in mind the persistency of Russian politics,
realise that this is not merely a question of competition but of
weighty political matters, that the desired outlet into the South Sea
is an empty phrase, a mere pretext behind which the insatiable
greed for land and the desire to injure their rivals in every possible
way seek to hide themselves. The complaisance of England with
regard to the plans of Russia on the Persian Gulf is equivalent to
political suicide, and when English statesmen like Lord Curzon and
Lord Cranborne express a similar opinion, England should no longer
rest satisfied with a policy of empty threats and hands in pocket,
but active and energetic measures should be resorted to.

It will be much harder now than it was ten or fifteen years ago
to redress the mistake made in Persia. The complaisance and
trustfulness of the Thames politicians has done infinite harm to the
English prestige in the East, and, as the writer of this article has
heard in personal contact with the leading Persian statesmen, the

VOL. LIII-No. 313 B B

370 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

Shah has been literally forced into the Kussian embrace. Both
Nassreddin and his successor Muzaffareddin were throughout
animated by English sympathies ; they have implored English assist-
ance, and when the latter-named Shah, in his extremity as it is
said, but more correctly to indulge in a pleasure trip to Europe,
had borrowed already nearly five million pounds sterling from Russia,
it is difficult to understand why English financiers did not advance
this sum. When the Conservative Grovernment refused to take a
guarantee, as was generally expected, England seems to have acted
simply on the principle that the destitute condition of Persia and
Russia's fatal polyp-like embrace did not bode well for a State security,
and that, even if England had given financial support, matters would
not have turned out favourably to English interests. If this was
really the motive which animated Britain's statesmen, as we are led
to believe, she has therewith, so to speak, put the first penstroke to
the act of resignation ; she has quietly acquiesced in the Russian
absorption of Iran, and the natural consequence may be in time to
come a complete evacuation of the land. But it has not yet come
to this. England has not yet quite given up Persia : she will not
and cannot give it up; and the reason for the lukewarm, sleepy
interest hitherto taken in this matter is really to be sought in the
negligence and nonchalance which have lately characterised England's
actions in other parts of Asia.

England is far too busy just now, her sphere of action is too wide,
and the ten fingers of her hands are not sufficient to enclose the
great extensive dominion of her colonies ; but they who say so
forget that restmg and rusting are very closely connected, that the
slightest loosening of her hold will be taken advantage of by her
ever-watchful adversary, and that voluntary renunciation is the first
step towards destruction.

And as far as Persia is concerned England's retirement cannot be
justified either from an economic or from a political point of view.
It is true that British commerce has suffered considerably, not only
in the northern portion but throughout the Persian dominions,
through the competition of Russia, and may expect still more serious
losses. This is proved by the enormous exertions Russia has lately
been making to promote her commercial interests not only in the
north but also in the south of Persia.

The steamer Korniloff, subsidised by the Grovernment, plies
incessantly between Odessa and Bender Bushir, although so far
working at a loss. There are Russian consulates at Isfahan, Jezd,
Kerman, and even at Ahwaz, to control the Karun trade of
England, and the custom-house administration under Belgian
management is certainly worked to suit Russian interests, for
Mr. Naus, the director of this department, knows quite well which
way the wind blows and tries to be agreeable to the Russians. The

1903 THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAND'S POWER 371

English may make up their minds that their commerce in South
Persia also, where their influence for 200 years has been paramount,
is falling into disrepute. As regards quality Eussian industry
cannot compete with that of England ; but the Persian people are
poor, and as the Russian goods, because of the facilities of com-
munication with the mother country and lower wages at home, can
be brought to the market at far more reasonable prices than the
productions of English industry, a steady decline of British trade is
hardly avoidable. This loss also strongly affects the Anglo-Indian
trade in South Persia, and it is indeed surprising how the London
politicians can preserve their equanimity when this vital question,
from a national point of view, is at stake. Lord Curzon, the capable
English Viceroy of India, well up in all Asiatic affairs, has certainly
endeavoured to ward off the Russian attack by a flank thrust, in that
he has projected a railway connection from Quetta also via Nushki
to the eastern borders of Persia, in order by this route, avoiding
Afghanistan, to facilitate British trade in Persia and Russian
Turkestan. But the ground is not particularly favourable ; the road
leads through waterless and grassless steppes. The Russian officials
in Khorasan will trouble and annoy the Indian traders with their
chicaneries, and as the poverty and lawlessness in East Persia are much
greater even than in the southern and western portions of the land,
this English railway scheme will remain problematic for some time to
come, at any rate until the connection via Kerman with the Bagdad
line has been established — a period of time which can hardly be
estimated yet.

And therefore, as things are at present, the prognostication for
England's authority in Persia cannot be very favourable. The
losses already sustained are considerable, and the mistakes made are
greater still. But redress is still possible if only an active line ol
politics be taken up, and that spirit which animated Malcolm,
MaeNeil, and Rawlinson, and benefited both English and Persian
interests, were once more to be seen at the Court of Teheran. I do
not mean to say that if these energetic politics had been pursued
Russia's advance towards the borders of Iran and the omnipotence
of Russian influence could have been prevented. No! brt this
eventuality could have been considerably delayed. If every nerve
had been strained to help Persia on its legs again, this highly-gifted
people — thanks to the riches yet hidden in its soil, and strengthened
by the prestige of its historical past — would have been far easier to
rouse out of the wiarasmus of Asiatic existence than many other
nations of the Moslemic East. Since England has accomplished the
difficult task of establishing order, peace, and comfort in so many
feudal States of India, where anarchy, despotism, and dissolution pre-
vailed to a far greater extent than in Persia — and since this has been
done not by force of arms, but simply by means of reasonable, well-
it B 2

372 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

meant advice — I cannot understand why similar measures should
have failed in Persia. Nobody will attempt to ignore or to excuse
the awful condition of the Persian Government, but it would be
most unjust to accuse the Shah and his Ministers of a voluntary
leaning towards Eussia. It was only the pressure of extreme
necessity, only the fear of the close neighbourhood of the mighty
Empire of All the Eussias, always ready to make conquests, which
forced the dynasty of the Kadjars to seek protection with their
arch-enemies, and to submit to the all-prevailing influence of the
Court of St. Petersburg. England has always appeared in the field
with platonic protestations of affection, and has incited Persia to re-
sist the Northern Power without revealing her sympathies by deeds.
And this was a terrible pity ; for, from what is known to us of the
feelings and aspirations of Persian statesmen and the Persian people,
there have been many influential Persians wholly devoted to England,
and so it is still to-day; and they know full well that England
would not rob them of one inch of ground, while Eussia has
already taken from them their most beautiful provinces and the
Caspian Sea. I am personally acquainted with eminent Persians,
in close connection with the King, who have been brought up in
England, have gained their doctor's degree at English Universities,
and would gladly see their country in alliance with England if they
could have obtained support from London or Calcutta. The present
King and his father have told me the same thing, and we can surely
not be called too sanguine when we maintain that a little encourage-
ment on the part of England and a stirring up of English proclivities
would still be able to effect a change for the better. The danger is
in sight, but England has yet enough means at her disposal to ward
off the attacks of her adversaries, as we shall point out more fully
presently.

Unfortunately, England has never devoted to Persia that amount
of attention which it deserves with a view to the security of India
and because of the great commercial interests which England has at
stake. Content with the temporary and problematic success of free
navigation on the Karun, and the opening of a route between Ahwaz
and Isfahan, it has been quite overlooked that these promising con-
cessions can only bear fruit when the Government interferes ener-
getically ; and as this has not been the case so far, the highly extolled
project has resulted in a miserable caravan -route, and commerce, for
want of a highway suitable for transport, is impeded as before.
This is the more to be regretted as the route from the Persian Gulf
to Isfahan is 530 English miles long, while the route from Ahwaz
has only a length of 277 English miles. The Eussians have shown
themselves far more practical and energetic in this matter than the
English, for on the route concessioned by Eussia, and running
between Enzeli and Kazvin, a lively traffic has lately been developed,

1903 THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAND'S POWER 373

which has considerably increased the influence of Russia. It is very
much the same between the so-called Imperial Bank of Persia and
the Russian Escompte Bank, for whereas the former, through the
failure of various undertakings, has sunk in the estimation of the
people, the latter has made itself ever more prominent and is now
indispensable to the Persian State. The Russians are more than a
match for the English in their intercourse with the people of the
East ; they are better experts in tying and deceiving, they have fewer
qualms of conscience, and consequently more success. This is best
proved by the skilfulness displayed by Colonel Kossagoff in organis-
ing the Persian Kosack regiments, which, well-armed, well-dressed,
and regularly paid, form the only regular troops of the Shah.
Before this, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Austrians have attempted
as military instructors to render service to the Persian King, but
none of them have succeeded as well as the Russians. In Persia, as
elsewhere in the Orient, firm determination, and if need be intimi-
dation, not in word but in deed, act successfully. England has yet
plenty of time to follow Russia's example in South and South-Western
Persia. And the construction of a road from the coast to the in-
terior of the land should be a first consideration and be carried out as
soon as possible. The ground is certainly much more difficult than
in the north, but British commercial interests, which are here at
stake, are surely worth a great sacrifice, and in politics also England
cannot allow another Power to supplant her on the Persian littoral.

VI

Looking upon India as the Achilles' heel of English power in
Asia, and upon Persia and Afghanistan as important bulwarks for the
defence of the precious possession, we must first of all mention that
the precautions for securing England's safety have been much more
successful in Afghanistan than in Persia. By raising the so-called
' scientific frontier,' and by the consolidation of the internal condition
of Afghanistan, Russian aspirations have received a serious check.
They form a bulwark, in fact, in the face of which the famous
Skobeleff scheme, an inroad a la Timur, would now no longer be
practicable, and by which the hot-blooded Russian strategists have
been considerably cooled down. These measures for the defensive
have caused Russia to fix her attention in the east on Pamir, and in
the west on Persia, in order to guard the Russian threatened chief line
for the offensive. But after all the Russians will not be much bene-
fited thereby, for the feeling in Afghanistan has in the course of the
last decades changed considerably in favour of Britain at the cost of
Russia. Formerly — I am speaking now of the time of my travels in
Northern Afghanistan — every European was, in the eyes of the Afghan,

374 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

the most hateful being in all the world, who, in the blindness of
fanaticism, inspired him with the most malignant feelings of revenge,
and whom to kill he considered his sacred, religious duty. "We see a
different state of things now. In the Englishman the Afghan sees
his true and faithful friend, with whom he has interests in common ;
but in the .Russian he only sees a treacherous and dangerous oppo-
nent, who aims at the subjugation of his native land, with whom
he can never make peace, and with whom one day it will have to
come to a settling of accounts. The Russians stationed on the
Afghan frontiers could tell many a story of this deep-rooted hatred ;
it will never disappear, and the only wonder is how Russia — after the
bitter experiences of Shir AH Khan at the friendly hand of the
Russians — still manages to decoy the Afghan people with all sorts of
promises. The old price of blood of the English has long since been
squared by the handsome assistance rendered lately to the Emir, and
by the support of England in the building up and consolidating of
their authority ; but the Afghan blood shed in 1885 near Pendjdeh
by the Russians cannot be atoned for, and the less so as the branch
line from Merw to Kushk rises as a permanent threat against Herat,
and therefore against the independence of Afghanistan. England
has left the Afghans free play in the conquest of Kafiristan, and in
the Durand agreement of 1893 concessions have been made which
will internally strengthen the young kingdom, and also defend it
against outside attacks.

With the exception of the Lezghians in the North-Eastern
Caucasus, whose desperate death-struggle with Russia, lasting from
1832 to 1859, will no doubt be remembered by the older generation,
we do not know any Asiatic nation so ready to sacrifice life and limb
for the good of their native land as these Afghan mountaineers.
The subjugation of such a people, therefore, is no easy task, especially
as the frontier-line in the North- West of India, nearly 1,000 miles
long, is thoroughly fortified and safe against any unforeseen attack.

Russian firebrands may speak lightly of a march against India,
but Russian politicians and strategists know better, as is proved by
the great caution and circumspection exercised both in diplomatic
and military circles when it comes to advancing towards the Indian
frontiers. In circles hostile to England it is said : ' British rule in
India is built on a crater and in constant danger of an eruption, and
the frontier regions are like powder mills, where a hostile spark may
at any time cause a serious explosion.' Such used to be the case,
but of late years there has been marked improvement in this respect.
Where 300 million natives are ruled and governed by a handful of
foreigners there will always be malcontents, especially as the highly-
advanced modern education in India has produced an intellectual
proletariat ; and the Anglo-Indian Government cannot present all
the natives educated in the higher and middle-class schools with rich

1903 THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLANV8 POWER 375

appointments. Add to this that the once mighty Moslem element
hardly brooks the loss of its influence, is always sulky, and often acts
the irreconcilable.

But how infinitely small and powerless are these few discontented
ones compared with the vast' majority of natives who live happily
under the shelter of the British rule, enjoying a hitherto unknown
rest and peace ! Nothing speaks more eloquently for the rock-like
stability of England's position in India than the readiness with which
both private persons and feudal princes offer their services whenever
the British realm is threatened with danger. During the wars in China,
in South Africa, on the Somali coast, everywhere, Hindustanees have
gladly offered and sacrificed life and goods for the well-being of Great
Britain, and if we want to make comparisons we would ask, Where are
the Mohammedan and Buddhist subjects of the Czar who of their own
free will have taken part in Eussia's wars against Turkey or China,
and proved their sympathies for the Czar's realms by energetic
deeds ?

We have to acknowledge that England's confidence in the
stability of the Afghan bulwark is exposed to violent tests, for
Habibullah Khan has not inherited his father's abilities and virtues,
and although the eventuality is not excluded that Nassrullah Khan,
Omar Khan, or some other pretender to the throne, encouraged or
supported by Kussia, should light the torch of civil war on the other
side of the Khyber Pass, this would not necessarily mean any danger
to the continuance of English rule in India. By the construction of
the Transcaspian railway and the branch line to Kushk the Eussian
offensive has gained in strength, and will do so increasingly in years
to come when the Orenburg-Tashkend railway shall be established;
and the Turkestan possession brought into direct communication
with the centre of the Czar's dominions. But the English outworks
for the defence of India, from Chitral to Quetta, have also gained in
strength, and while the Eussians on their terminus at Kushk hold
in readiness the necessary material for the extension of the railway
to Herat, the English have long ago made similar preparations on
the Sibi line at the northern exit of the Khodsha-Amran Pass, not far
from Kandahar. Here as there all possible protective measures have
been taken. Every advance by one of the rivals from north to south
is answered by a forward movement from south to north, and not-
withstanding all the honeyed diplomatic speeches on either side,
they have so far not succeeded in weakening the rivalry or banishing
the mutual suspicion. Optimistic Englishmen have tried in vain to
convince the world that the Eussians have never thought of conquer-
ing India, or that they are not strong enough to do it, or that the
two Powers can quite well live in unity and peace together in the
vastness of Asia. To-day no one believes such illusive statements.
There is no doubt about the final aim and object of Eussia, only it is

376 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

a long way off yet, and I still hold to the same opinion which I
expressed eighteen years ago in this Keview. I said then :

Nor is this — the conquest of India by Russia — by any means the work of a lus-
trum; it cannot be conjured up, as it were, by a deus ex machina, and seeing that
the English have time and leisure enough left to consolidate their power in India
during the intervening period and to prepare effectual safeguards against the
designs of their rival, we are constrained to admit that, as yet, the plan of a Russian
conquest of India belongs to the land of Utopia, and to add that, in this sense, we
agree with Professor Seeley in his saying that ' the end of our Indian Empire is
perhaps almost as much beyond calculation as the beginning of it.'

VII

A more minute and careful consideration of the relative position
of the two competitors, and a full appreciation of the powerful
means at the disposal of either, will lead us to conclude that the
expected encounter and the final settling of the great question will
not be just yet. The period of time yet to elapse may be longer or
shorter, but it certainly offers fewer advantages to the English than
to the liussians, for while the latter have left no ways or means
untried for the accomplishment of their long-cherished plans of the
offensive, and consequently have long since been ready armed on the
field, the former have never realised the necessity of resistance until
the middle of last century, and the full consciousness of the threat-
ening danger has only come to them during the last decades-
In the first place we must remark that the means so far employed
by England for the founding of her enormous empire, and the
security of her gigantic commercial interests all over the world, never
were equal to the greatness and importance of her conquests, nor to
the magnitude of her national qualities, nor to the means at her
disposal. Whichever way we look, whatever example we may bring
forward, experience will teach us that it has most often been a small
company of courageous men, animated by ambition, patriotism, or
desire for adventure, who on their own account and regardless of
danger undertook the most daring enterprise and planted the flag of
the mother country in regions thousands of miles away from their
island home, and amid a hundred times superior forces of foreign
elements have held out until the Government had time to interfere and
make their personal matter an affair of the State. Why should we
deny it ? England has never possessed a military force equal to the
exigencies of her extensive Transatlantic possessions and the number
of her subjects. Confident in the virtue of her flag dominating all
waters, respected, and feared everywhere, she has so far never
realised the necessity for a large standing army. The fact that
England, without being a military State and without forcing her

peaceful citizens to take up arms, has nevertheless played such a
notorious part in the history of the world, and has been the standard-
bearer of Western culture into remote districts, has been the pride
of humanitarians and lovers of peace in the nineteenth century. But,
unfortunately, times have changed. New conditions have arisen, and
in this age of keen competition and diplomatic emulation England
will be bound to alter her tactics, and, without in any way touching
the spirit of national freedom, she will have to organise a military
force in keeping with her political status. As long as England
monopolised the market in the conquered regions for her own
industries, or had but little to fear from the competition of
European rivals, so long the intellectual forces at her disposal were
sufficient ; but now, since other Western nations, instigated by the
wealth and prosperity of England, are trying to compete with her,
more material means have become an absolute necessity for the
protection of the advantages gained and for the maintenance of her
prestige abroad.

VIII

The new condition of affairs, however, demands not only an
increase of military power and a keen watch over the intentions of
other Powers in Asia, but it compels England to look round for an
ally, as, by herself, she is no longer a match for the opposing forces.
She will have to ally herself with another State, a State whose political
and national interests will, for the present at any rate, not collide
with her own ; one who, notwithstanding the forces and the energy
at her disposal, still feels the need of friendly support, and who has
much to bear from the opposition of an antagonist she has in common
with England. Of course, the State referred to is Germany. As
relations are at present, this suggestion may appear monstrous and
absurd, for a more bitter and hostile feeling than that which now
divides these two Teutonic sister nations can hardly be imagined.
And yet this is the only alternative for both. Fortunately, the
arbiters of fate in both nations have wisely taken no notice of these
wild effusions of public opinion ; they have kept cool and unperturbed,
and, instead of being infected by the petty jealousies and quarrels of
the masses, have quietly laid the foundations for this great bond
which, sooner or later, if not actually uniting the two, will neverthe-
less enable them to walk together in peace. Nothing but an under-
standing between Great Britain and Germany will ever restore the
balance of European Power in Asia, and before considering the
details of such an eventuality we will first throw some light upon
the feasibility and the serviceableness of such an understanding.

The question of the hostile feeling between Germany and England
has often been discussed of late, and it seems to us that the intense

378 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

agitation on either side increases the difficulty of finding the correct
answer. National pride and material interests have stood in the way
of impartial judgment and rendered it difficult on either side to
obtain a sober and unbiassed view of the matter. In a little book
entitled The Enemies of England, by George Peel, we read that
neither racial hatred, religion, customs, commerce, nor jealousy
have produced this animosity, but that wounded ambition because
of England's meddling in all European affairs during the last eight
hundred years is at the bottom of all the antagonism. We find it
difficult to share this view.

A third party, neither English nor German, may perhaps be more
fortunate in finding the solution, and such a neutral person will in
the first instance come to the conclusion that there is fault on either
side, that both have been carried away in the whirl of their excite-
ment, and did not properly know why they were at daggers drawn,
and certainly never realised that all this quarrelling and wrangling
leads to their own harm and the benefit of the common enemy. Yes,
the Kussian tertius gaudens is laughing in his sleeve, and neither
Germany nor England has realised it. When the Anglophobia in
Germany is discussed here, the arguments which are brought forward
always point to its being caused by the present state of irritability in
Germany, rather than as the just retribution for any offence or injury
on the part of the English towards the German people. Some would
trace back this hostility to the events of the eighteenth century.
Others, again, are of opinion that the English sympathies with
Denmark during the German-Danish war, or the fact that English
firms supplied the French with arms in 1870, caused all this hatred
in Germany, which came to an outburst during the Boer war.
Possibly and far more likely the cause of it lies in the fact that
Germany has begun to realise her own fitness, her strength and
hidden power, and partly to gain popularity abroad, partly also on
economic grounds, has waked up to the necessity of developing her
national interests. Now, as this desire could not be gratified without
the acquisition of colonies and a corresponding naval force, Germany
began to look upon England, whose flag governs the seas and whose
colonies encompass the globe, not always justly, as her hidden
adversary and the arch-enemy of German national aspirations. A
nation aware of its creative power, able to turn to account for the
good of the nation many excellent advantages and virtues, may be
excused if in the fire of its youthful enthusiasm it endeavours to
break the bonds which thus far fettered its motions, and when in
this zeal for national expansion it looks with envy and hatred upon
its neighbours, whom fortune favoured before it. We do not blame
the Germans for this mistrust, but we doubt whether this wild out-
burst of national hatred, this endless ridiculing and insulting of
England, will disarm the real or supposed antagonism, and whether

1903 THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAND'S POWER 379

Anglophobia is quite the correct medium by which to acquire new
colonies and deprive England of her old possessions. It needs other
expedients to effect this. Germany is much hampered as regards
her colonial politics, for, as the proverb says, Tarde venientibus ossa
— others have long since snapped up the best bits, and although no
doubt many a dainty morsel may yet be found in this wide world,
we cannot help feeling that the carrying out of this object will
require more foresight and more circumspection than has hitherto-
been displayed by Germany.

But equally unjustifiable and purposeless appears to us the
Germanophobia which during the last few years has taken hold of
the English people, and like wild-fire has seized upon all classes of
English society : smouldering in the breast of even the most sober-
minded and coldly-calculating Britisher. It has taken a whole
century to bring the bond of friendship, sealed on the field of
Waterloo, down to the freezing-point it has now reached, and which
manifests itself amongst other things in the cry, ' Made in Germany : *
evidently influenced rather by economic industrial than by political
motives. When a thoroughly practical people like the English
resent the harm done to their material interests by the successful
competition of German industry and commerce in the world's
market, and are determined to defeat this rival who has taken them
by surprise and is injuring their trade, we cannot honestly blame
them. But any unbiassed spectator must acknowledge that, if the
Germans have erred in their means of attack, the English means of
defence have been equally clumsy and unjustifiable. It is incom-
prehensible that England, the professed advocate of fair ^lay, does-
not realise that a people like the Germans cannot be prevented from
turning to good account their highly scientific education and
thorough knowledge in all departments of modern learning, more
especially in the application of technical science, to which they owe
the growth of their industry. The numerous tall chimneys which
in modern times have arisen on German soil are a result of German
culture, German zeal, and German strength, just as the many
English factories are the natural outcome of the English spirit of
enterprise, and the strong individuality and high culture of the
considerably earlier developed and privileged British nation. When
the seed has fallen into good ground the growth may be retarded
through lack of light and heat, but it cannot be forcibly repressed.
Only on the field of competition can England find protection against
her rival, and for the present she is safe enough, for she is better
known on the Asiatic market, and the products of her industry are
thought more of and fetch a better price than those of Germany —
advantages which, if properly turned to account, would be far more
useful to the English merchant and manufacturer than these out-
bursts of Germanophobia, and the superscription 'Made in Ger-

380 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

many,' with which they try to discredit the products of German
industry.

And surely, when we keep before us the supreme interests of
universal peace, and then look objectively and without partiality
upon the discord now existing between England and Germany, we
must acknowledge that this spirit of antagonism is one of the saddest
phenomena on the political horizon. For are not these two Teutonic
sister-nations, on account of their striking and superior national
characteristics, on account of their religious and ethical tendencies,
and also on account of the geographical position of their homes, as it
were made for one another ? They complete each other, and united
are the best guarantee for the successful operation of our Western
culture in the East. If the English, on the strength of their ancient,
free institutions, reveal a greater feeling of independence and a more
enterprising spirit, the Germans, on the other hand, have a more
intimate knowledge, a keener insight into details, and unparalleled
zeal and perseverance. The Englishman is at times foolhardy, and
blindly rushes into all kinds of dangers ; but the German is cautious,
he advances carefully, and only exerts all his strength when the
result seems certain. The Englishman is animated by eminently
practical sentiments ; he can only be enthusiastic about matters
of fact, while the German, enthusiastically inclined, pursues after
ideals, the realisation of which often only exists in the dim realms of
his fancy. The patriotism and self-esteem of the English and the
preference for their own tribe remain unaltered in all climes
amongst the masses of the most varied nationalities, while the
Germans strongly incline towards cosmopolitanism, and have only
commenced to manifest any national pride since the consolidation of
the German Empire.

The Englishman, brought up with ideas of a universal Empire
and the glories of his historical past, sometimes meets the foreigner
with arrogance and offensive pride, while the German comports him-
self in foreign parts with a diffidence almost akin to servility, and
therefore does not impress the Asiatic mind nearly as much as the
Englishman. On the strength of their greater national riches and
older status and repute, the English like to play the grand seigneur
and act it well, while the Germans in many respects are smalt-
minded, mean, and over-careful ; and although this characteristic
commends itself to the thoughtful mind, it misses its purpose
with the people of the East, delighting in show and luxury. And
finally we would draw attention to one circumstance which, con-
sidering the strongly conservative character of the Orientals, weighs
heavily in the balance. The name Inglis or Ingiliz is in Turkey,
and in the whole southern portion of the East, one of the best known
representative names of the West, and much more familiar to the
Asiatics than the comparatively modern Aleman (German).

It would be easy enough to enumerate the various points of
difference in the characteristics of the two nations, but these few
remarks will suffice to show the reader how both could be benefited
if they would, together or side by side, in peaceful harmony pursue
one common interest in their dealings with the ancient world.

IX

He who some years ago ventured to speak in England of the
advantages of alliances in general was always met with the ' splendid
isolation ' view. There were even politicians in whose opinion
Great Britain was sufficient unto herself and treaties were not to be
depended on at all. Since the offensive and defensive compact
lately made between England and Japan, this shibboleth has lost
its meaning. England has paid her tribute to the exigencies of
the times, and, without fear of damaging her political dignity by
an alliance with the young Asiatic State, the peremptory demands
of mutual interests have called forth this union with the rising
Power in the Far East. Now what has been deemed necessary and
possible in the Far East may also prove practicable in the nearer East,
and, in spite of the possible objection that strong mercantile interests
and a deeply-rooted rivalry make any approach between English
and Germans impossible, we dare not lose sight of the fact that
Japanese industry is also beginning in China and even in India to
establish itself as a not-to-be-despised rival of the English, and that
the political appearance of Japan in China cannot be looked upon
as an altogether harmless factor for the future of England's interests
in the Middle Empire. But necessity knows no law, and the
step taken by England with regard to Japan recommends itself
all the more in the case of Germany, because by so doing England
would benefit her other political interests ; for Eussia's angry glare
fixed on the ever-growing influence of Germany in Asia Minor and
on the progress of German commerce in Persia must of necessity
benefit the English on the Indian frontiers.

The Czar, be he ever so powerful, cannot always play the part of
the hundred-armed monster, and the price paid by England for the
new bulwark to stop the advance of her adversary into Western Asia
no one can call exorbitant. In the first place, England has voluntarily
relinquished her commercial and political influence over the Near
East by removing the centre of gravity of her power to India and the
Far East. Secondly, it will be long enough yet, if possible at all,
before Germany can take up that threatening position with regard
to India which Kussia has already attained. Thirdly, the com-
mercial damage incurred by England through the all-pervading
influence of Germany in the north of Asia Minor is not by any means
so great as to justify the lamentations of the British merchant.

382 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

Judging from statistical evidence, English imports in Turkey are still
at the top of the list, and in spite of occasional losses, as against her
competitors, are likely to retain this position for some time to come.
According to a statistical statement of the year 1897-98 English
imports into Turkey amounted to 987,303,572 piasters, and the
exports to 592,907,444 piasters, while Germany in the same period of
time imported goods to the value of 33,023,682 piasters, and exported
to the value of 45,513,112 piasters. But, supposing that the un-
paralleled growth of German industry were to injure English trade
in Anatolia and Western Persia, is it likely that this flight of German
commerce could be forcibly repressed, and would it be wise to overlook
the advantages which might accrue for England's power in India and the
Far East from the German-Russian rivalry in Turkey ? The whipped-
up antagonism between the two Teutonic sister -nations has unfortu-
nately assumed such dimensions that certain politicians in England
have hit upon the curious idea that it will be better to make up to
Russia, i.e. to throw themselves voluntarily into the hungry mouth
of the Bear, than to try to come to terms with Germany. This idea,
current in England for some time past, has lately been promulgated
with great persistency. The National Review has expressed itself very
strongly on this point, and Sir Rowland Blennerhassett suggests, for-
sooth, to appease the anger and the hunger of the Northern Colossus,
the giving him an entrance into the Persian Gulf. Such a remedy
must inevitably accelerate the downfall of England. Russia cannot
and must not be allowed to proceed on her southward course. All
the excuses proffered to justify this aggressive policy are null and
void, and can only deceive those who willingly close their eyes.
First the parole was the stability of the frontiers against restless
nomads and unruly countries ; then came the watchword, admit-
tance to the Persian Gulf ; and now lately it is a larger market for
Russian industry. As experience in Central Asia has proved, Russia
very soon desisted from firmly fixing her frontiers, and proceeded
to make fresh conquests and fresh frontiers. The outlet into the
Southern Ocean will create an appetite for the acquisition of southern
territory ; and lastly, as regards the inevitable necessity for a larger
market, it is a remarkable fact that Russian industry cannot even on
native soil contend with foreign competition.

These and similar excuses can only deceive those who, not taking
into consideration the spirit of Russian statesmanship, will not see
that Russia is a military State par excellence, and is goaded on to
this policy of conquest by many and various circumstances.
Militarism, the indispensable outcome of strict despotism, can only
be enticed and upheld by war and the prospect of decorations, pro-
motions, and increased pay. Human flesh, moreover, is cheaper in
the Czar's dominions than in the West, and in view of the declared
complaisance of our Cabinets, almost verging upon submissiveness, as

1903 THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAND'S POWER 383

regards Kussian politics, it is not surprising that Kussia is encouraged
in her aggressive plans and has not yet appeased her hunger and will
not be satisfied for a good while to come. Under these conditions
treaties with Russia cannot be taken in earnest ; she breaks them as
soon as they become troublesome, and if anyone has had an oppor-
tunity of convincing himself of this unreliableness, it surely is
England. For the rest the Russophile politicians on the Thames
vainly endeavour by their solicitations to bring about the long-
desired understanding, for the Eussian Press has point-blank refused
it. In the course of the nineteenth century St. Petersburg has
more than once approached the St. James's Cabinet with amicable
overtures, but at present Russia acts the proud and haughty rival,
puffed up with success, and in the arrogant consciousness of her
superiority she is not amenable to any proposals.

In Germany great cautiousness has been observed as regards the
relation between the two great rival Powers, and even the most
enraged enemies of England have not yet committed themselves so
far as to desire the destruction of England and the promotion of their
own plans in Western Asia, with the alternative of an alliance with
Russia. The German Government occupies quite a different stand-
point from that of public opinion. The friendly feelings of the German
Emperor towards the English Court may, to a certain extent, be due
to the close family tie which unites them, but the tendency of the
Imperial politics during the time of England's difficulties in South
Africa, and the sharp contest between the monarch and his people
ensuing, amply prove that his sympathies are more with England
than with Russia. The German public will not hear a word of this,
but in Russia they cannot be deceived ; hence in the Russian Press
the growing animosity against everything German, and particularly
against the Bagdad line and the almighty German influence on
the Golden Horn. The question is now : Will Germany be able
and willing to overcome alone this opposition of the Russian Colossus
in Asia, or will she deem it more advantageous to join that other
Power who, in consequence of their common interest, has the same
enemy to fight, and in order to avert the threatening danger is
bound to find an ally ? Of course, as in England, so also in Germany,
there are those who in their national pride and self-confidence fancy
they can stand alone. They do not realise the gravity of the position,
and do not consider the ways and means which the enemy has at his
disposal. Let them nurse their fanciful illusions ; a deeper insight
and a fuller appreciation of existing difficulties will show the un-
tenableness of this policy. From the German point of view, the
fact may not be lost sight of that the preponderance of Germany in
Turkey is not by any means so firmly grounded as to form a sure
foundation for the building of further plans. For the present it is
merely the Sultan and his Court who foster and promulgate these

384 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

German sympathies; to the Turkish people, strong conservatives
like all Orientals, the name Aleman has still too foreign a sound,
while they are quite familiar with the names of Fransiz (French) and
Ingiliz (English). Moreover, we must not forget that Sultan Abdul
Hamid, a man of great ability, is, on account of his absolutism, not
nearly so beloved by the Osmanlis as Germany would have us
believe. And the old Oriental saying, ' El nas ala dini mulukuhum,'
i.e. ' The people follow the faith of their ruler,' has in Turkey and
Persia lost much of its ancient charm. It is not only the organs
of Young Turkey which keep up a constant brisk war against the
Turko-German alliance and the increase of German influences, but
the greater part of the official world and the educated people
look upon the friendly Germanised politics of the Sultan with
displeasure. A superficial knowledge of the Turkey of to-day
may contradict the existence of public opinion in the Ottoman
Empire, but this view is incorrect, for in the present-day Turkey
the Press is a factor not to be despised ; the people are beginning to
think for themselves, and whether, in the event of a change of ruler,
German influence may not grow less or even suffer a total reverse
is still an open question. For such and similar eventualities an
understanding between Germany and England would be highly
advisable. England still possesses in a great measure the sympathies
of the Ottoman people, and two-thirds of the Efendi world in Con-
stantinople look even now expectantly towards the shores of the
Thames, as is proved by the flight of the Great Vizier Kiitch.uk Said
Pasha to the palace of the English Embassy, and by the temporary
Turkish deputation also taking refuge in the English Embassy at
Constantin ople.

But, apart from these circumstances, does Germany really think
that Russia will so easily put up with the frustration of her plans in
Asia Minor, which must result in damage to her most vital interests ?
These interests are partly of a commercial, partly of a political
nature, and date not from to-day or yesterday, but from a political
and military activity a hundred years back. As is well known,
Russia, in 1768, under Catherine the Second, reminded the Catholicos
Simon that her predecessors on the Russian throne, Peter the Great
and Catherine, had granted their imperial protection to the Ar-
menians in Turkey. Paul the First also was in correspondence with
the prelates of the Armenian Church, Ghukas and Arguthianz ; and
when Russia, after the incorporation of Georgia, had entered upon
wars with both Persia and Turkey, the Armenians especially sym-
pathised with Russia. Even at that time Russia had already sown the
seed which germinated in the latest Armenian movement, and only
the fear lest the encouragements and the instigations of the Ar-
menians under Turkish dominion should lead to a liberty movement
among their fellow-believers and tribesmen in the Caucasus, restrained

1903 THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAND'S POWER 385

the Court of St. Petersburg from rendering any active support to the
rebels in Turkish Armenia. The empty speeches and endless decep-
tions of the Kussians have already disillusioned the Armenians ; but
on the Neva it is still believed that Kussia has a hold on the
Armenian Christians for the realisation of her own purposes.

The propagandism of the Russian Church has only lately enticed
the Nestorians of the Kurdish mountains within the net of her
intrigues ; and, in the hope of some time making its way across the
Armenian heights into southern parts, Eussian diplomacy has ex-
tracted from the Sultan the promise that in the north of Asia Minor
no foreign Power except Russia shall receive any railway concession.
One must have an intimate knowledge of the chicaneries of the
Russian consuls and agents in Asia Minor to be convinced that the
gentlemen on the Neva will not so easily relinquish to anyone, and
least of all to Germany, the long-cherished plan of occupying an
influential position in Anatolia. Russia looks upon this portion of
the Ottoman States as already under her thumb, a prize which can-
not escape her. Now when Germany, as may be foreseen, through
the Bagdad line, blocks the way southward to commercial Russia, is
it likely that they on the Neva will quietly acquiesce and perhaps
withdraw ? Russia retracing her footsteps and going in an opposite
direction, i.e. from south to north ? Such a thing has not been known
in modern history except at Kuldja in Chinese Turkestan, where
Russia went back to take a better start for the conquering of Kash-
gar ; and since a Russian retreat in Asia Minor cannot be anticipated,
and the peaceful living together of two rivals is also impossible for
any length of time, it becomes absolutely impossible to prevent a
collision between Russia and Grermany in Anatolia.

It is therefore no empty speech when we maintain that the struggle
between Slavs and Germans will not come to an outbreak on the Vistula
or on the Memel, but in Asia Minor ; and since the German Empire,
in spite of the great and mighty army at her disposal and in spite of
her present exceptionally favourable position, will try to put off the
evil moment as long as possible, one cannot fail to recognise that an
alliance with England in Asia becomes an absolute necessity.

X

When once England has realised that, in order to maintain the
integrity of her power, she will have in future to take a different
course from the one hitherto pursued ; that her dominion over the
seas is not sufficient by itself to render her Transatlantic possessions
the necessary assistance and protection ; and moreover that her
political and commercial interests absolutely demand her association
with some other strong and healthy State, who shares her hopes and
aspirations and has the same ultimate end in view, then the question

VOL. LIII— No. 313 CO

386 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

of her integrity in Asia will easily be settled. At no time, and least
of all now that the contest for commercial advantages occupies
the first place, can a nation, through isolation, obtain permanent
advantages. The proud self-consciousness of entering the much-
desired arena alone and unattended, and maintaining the struggle
without support, without co-operation — this feeling must be con-
quered in England, and the record of her glorious past and the
brilliant results obtained until now without any alliance will save
Albion's banner from any blame or blemish. But there are internal
changes needed as well as external ones. The time demands
transformations and improvements which so far the nation's insular
pride has discarded, because hitherto without these England's politics,
commerce, and ethics have reached a height of perfection not vouch-
safed to any other country. This fact has made England pre-
sumptuous and egotistic, which is annoying to her neighbours and
harmful to herself. The sun which never sets upon the British
King's dominions has dazzled her eyes, and the proverb, Tempora
mutantur, nos et mulamur in illis, is often forgotten. England has
rendered inestimable service to Western culture in the East, the
liberal ideas of her people have had a stimulating and energising
influence upon the development of Western institutions ; but in the
rapid growth of civilisation in the nineteenth century many of her
neighbours have overtaken, nay, even got in advance of her. England's
customary depreciation of 'foreigners' is no longer justified, and
the deficiencies and discrepancies resulting from the rigidly con-
servative spirit of the islanders need thorough and speedy attention.
So, for instance, education has been sadly neglected in England, and
the mediaeval system still in vogue at the Universities has crippled
many a branch of modern learning. The instruction in geography
and ethnography, as also the study of modern languages, is at a very
low standard, and an infinitesimally small percentage of the young
men from Oxford, Cambridge, Harrow, &c. are able to converse and
write fluently in a foreign language ; very few of them have an
accurate knowledge of the ethnographical and ethnological conditions
of the various nationalities subject to England, and to whom in after
life they are often called to be leaders and masters. In my many
wanderings in all directions through the United Kingdom, I have
been astonished to notice the gross ignorance and cold indifference,
even in the very centres of industry and commerce, regarding the land
and the people of the British colonies and possessions. These things
have often saddened me, and I ask myself 'How will these people ever
be able to protect the realm founded by the strength and perseverance
and patriotism of their forefathers, in the coming struggle against
their rivals ? '

When Englishmen complain that Americans and Germans are
dangerous rivals in the world's market-place, and do considerable

1903 THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAN&S POWEtt 387

harm to the once proverbially flourishing trade of Great Britain,
they seem to forget that with those people the study of chemistry
and mechanics, with a view to their practical application, has been
far more thoroughly and universally pursued than in England.
Also the manners and customs, the needs and the tastes of the
inhabitants of far-distant places, where trade finds markets, have
been studied far more keenly by the Continental commercial
travellers than by the English. The latter take things far too easily,
and, trusting too much to their own supremacy, many an advantage
has been lost ; the pupils have outstripped their master, and anger and
envy are of little avail now. Nothing but an energetic pulling of
oneself together, a thorough clearance of all the old system of educa-
tion, can render assistance here. The exaggerated preponderance of
sport and athletics at the English Universities will hardly maintain
the political and commercial position of the land, and Eudyard Kipling
is perfectly right when he says in his poem, ' The Islanders ' :

And ye vaunted your fathomless power and flaunted your iron pride,

Ere ye fawned on the younger nations for the men who, could shoot and ride,

Then ye returned to your trinkets, then ye contented your-souls

With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals.

They who estimate England's historical calling at its true value
must acknowledge that her general level of scientific proficiency does
not occupy the height which might be expected from her noble deeds
in the past, and that the number of experts does not compare favour-
ably with the total of her population, as for instance in Germany.
This want is particularly noticeable with regard to the countries and
peoples of the Moslemic East. Men like Sir Henry Eawlinsoo,
Lord Strangford, Sir Richard Burton, and others who have combined
a thorough knowledge of the literatures, languages, and history of
Asia with a careful practical knowledge of each people in particular,
and who are acquainted with the political questions of the day, are
difficult to find nowadays ; and the want of their advioe, founded
on the experience of many years, is grievously felt by the Govern-
ment. A more general and lively interest in Asiatic events in all
circles of English society would induce Parliament also to forego
that tardiness and indifference which the representatives of the
people have of late years shown in the discussion of the most serious
questions, and which, as the chief cause of the sleepiness and in-
decision of the Government, imperil the interests of the State. The
fact that Eussia, without a strong constitutional and parliamentary
government, has become great and mighty is not at all conclusive ;
for a patriotic, impartial representation of the people is far more likely
to act satisfactorily on the constitution of a mighty empire than the
will of an absolute, autocratic ruler. The creations of the free man
rest on a far more solid basis than those of the slave who works

e c 2

388 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

under coercion and oppression, and the means and the spirit which
have helped to make England great will also be able to uphold her.

The many losses under which England smarts can, unfortunately,
not be ignored, and a transformation is all the more imperatively
necessary as now there are still time and opportunity to turn over a
new leaf ; for the star of Great Britain has not yet sunk so low as
her ill-wishers and enemies try to make out. Wealth, prosperity,
and national greatness have been, and always will be, displeasing
to the neighbouring States; and the dark prognostication of the
adversary, Fimis Britannice, is unjustifiable. When England's
many enemies and ill-wishers made, as they thought, the happy
discovery that the South African thorn had burst the soap-bubble of
British power and laid bare the deceitful game of Great Albion, we
might have asked : Why then did they not make a better use of the
.powerlessness of the enemy, why did they not take advantage of this
alleged weakness and helplessness ? England's military forces were
two thousand miles distant from their base, and yet Russia, ready-
armed to the teeth on the frontiers of the English sphere of interest,
never made one move to further the realisation of her heartfelt
desire. And France also wisely hid her revengeful feelings about
Fashoda, not out of humanity or kindness, but in the full conscious-
ness that the lion who had had his mane somewhat crumpled was
still a lion, and that a coming to close quarters with the enraged
animal would not be advisable. No, no, England's flag is not yet
down on the ground ; John Bull still stands firm on his feet, and
along the whole line of the disputed territory in Asia he can with
confidence undertake the campaign against his adversaries.

When thus cursorily glancing over the state of affairs it would
be idle to speculate as to the ultimate downfall of England in Asia ;
and as regards the Russian side of the question it is equally
unprofitable to prognosticate from the feelers which have been sent
out, as to the unavoidable despotic power of the Czar over the greater
part of Asia. On the old-world stage transformation scenes are
slowly and heavily enacted, and the exorbitant zeal of the money-
loving, grasping West cannot so easily alter this. The delay may
cool the ardour of some of the combatants, but it will enable
England to procure the means for securing her position and
warding off the threatening danger. The enemies and ill-wishers of
England are mistaken when they declare that the extraordinary
exertions of the British Empire in Africa are made in the conscious-
ness of her unavoidable downfall in Asia, and that the conquests
made in the Dark Continent are to replace the lost position in Asia.

No, it has not come to this yet ! Such an eventuality would be
fatal not only for England but for all our cultural interests in
Asia. In Western lands people have got the erroneous notion that
the Russians are more competent to educate and to raise the people of

1903 THE AGITATION AGAINST ENGLAND 8 POWER 389

Asia than are the English, because the former have so many attributes
of an Asiatic nature, while the latter are animated by purely Western
ideas. In everyday life this is quite true, but it does not necessarily
apply to the final results of education and refinement. At best Eussia
can only make out of Asiatics semi-Asiatics, i.e. Kussians, while
England kneads the foreign material into quite another shape,
and changes Asiatics into regular Europeans. In spite of nearly
forty years of Kussian influence, Bokhara and China have lost little
if any of the raw, barbarous customs of their former anarchic and
despotic government, while, for instance, the feudal States of India
continually increase in order, peace, and obedience to the law. In
the States of the Nizam, Baroda, Bhopal and others, the formerly
servile population breathes freely, and when one reads the annual
reports of the Government of the small Gondal State, whose ruler, for
the benefit of his subjects, studied medicine in Edinburgh, one almost
seems to be reading the administrative report of some civilised
European State. I do not even refer here to the gigantic strides made
by Asiatics under the immediate management of England, i.e. of the
mighty progress of public instruction, literature, and liberal ideas
among the native Hindoos, for such a height the Asiatic subjects of
the Czar will never attain to. After more than three hundred years
of Russian dominion, the education of Bashkirs, Kazanis, and other
Tartars shows hardly any growth. England as torch-bearer of our
culture in Asia could not easily be replaced, and the sovereignty of
Russia over the old world would be a misfortune not only for Asia
but also for Europe.

A. VAMBERY.

Budapest' University : February 15th, 1903.

390 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN
MAN UFA CTURERS

SOME time ago I held conversation with a Spanish gentleman who
had been making a tour of England. ' Yes,' he said, in reply to an
inviting question of mine, ' I have seen many things that have filled
me with wonder : the rush of business in London, the magnificence
of your buildings, the keenness in trade. I have seen your great
steelworks in Sheffield, your busy Black Country about Birmingham,
your shipbuilding yards on the Clyde-side, and your great cotton-
factories in Lancashire, It is all marvellous. But I wouldn't like
to be an Englishman. I am glad to be going back to my own sunny
Spain. We're a poor people, but we get some brightness out of life.
We've got no great commerce to be proud of ; but then we've got no
country bleached of all beauty, as I've seen in your Black Country ;
we've got no crowds of young men and women in consumption from
working in mills, as in Yorkshire andLancashire. You're a great people,
a mighty industrial nation. But what a price you are paying for it !
I'm going back to my orange trees and sunshine and happiness.'

At the time I thought little of my friend's outburst. Eecently I
have been recalling it every day. For I have returned from a mission
of inquiry into industrial conditions prevailing in the United States.
I have been coming in contact with many British manufacturers, and
the reply they have invariably given, when I have pictured to them
the dash, the sweeping success of industrial America, has been, f Oh,
yes, the Americans are a great people. But we in England don't
live to work : we work to live. What is the good of being alive if
you have to slave from morning till night as those Yanks do ? Look
at the price they are paying ! They are old men before they are
forty. They are all anxious and careworn. They can talk about
nothing but money-making. We've no city of suicides, as Allegheny
is, outside Pittsburg — where the life is sapped out of the workpeople —
and, thank God, we have no hustling commercialism as in Chicago.
We can do without the rush the Americans think so necessary.
We haven't got so ' many millionaires, but we've got healthy men.
Old England is good enough for us.'

1903 THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS 391

As I have heard something like this from manufacturers in all
parts of Great Britain, my recollection has skipped back to what the
Spaniard said. The thought has crept into my mind that the
Spaniard was a little envious of England's commercial greatness, and
yet made himself quite happy by giving a modern turn to the old
story of the fox and the grapes. And, honestly, I have not yet
convinced myself that the average British manufacturer — in his
inclination to suggest that he could do as well as the American if he
were disposed, but that he does not simply because he doesn't think
it worth while — is not taking up a point of view regarding America
the same as the Spaniard took regarding England.

It is a happy but a dangerous point of view, because it is so
plausible, because it produces a placid contentment and a serene,
superior smile that the Englishman is not such a fool as the American.
At the best, however, it is a little bit of ingenious self-deception.

What we British people have first to get rid of in considering
industrial America is the Spanish attitude. We have only to look
round our own country to admit in our minds, if we hesitate to
express it with our lips, that the reason British manufacturers do
not commercially go the pace is not because they do not want to, but
because they cannot.

As the result of my investigations in the United States two
things came out most prominently : first, that the British artisan is
superior to the American workman ; and, secondly, that the American
manufacturer, the employer, the director of labour, is infinitely
superior to his British prototype. The chief reason America is
bounding ahead as an industrial nation is not excellence of workman-
ship, but ability in administration, in control, in being adaptable to
the necessities of the day.

We in England must go back thirty or sixty years to find the
origin of most of the huge manufacturing concerns in Great Britain.
They began in small, insignificant ways, and they climbed to emin-
ence in far less than a generation. Their founders were, in the
main, superior artisans ; long-sighted, industrious men, having
little concern for anything outside their own trade ; concentrating all
their physical and mental energies; tumbling back, year after year,
all their earnings into the business, and so rearing firms famed the
world over not only for capacity but for the excellence of work.
Those men sprang from a robust, unpampered common people.
Their grammar might have been shaky, but they knew everything
about every department of their works. They had rather a contempt
for the tinsel life of society. They gave body and soul to business.

Such men, builders-up of Great Britain's industrial greatness,
belong to a past generation. Their works are now under the control
of their sons or their grandsons, excellent men, but lacking the grit
of the man whose portrait, in oils, hangs in the main office. It is

392 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

not in any reason to be expected they should have that grit.
They have lacked the essential that spurred the founder of the
business to success — necessity. They were born into success. They
have spent several years following academic courses at a university ;
they have developed cultured tastes ; their range of interests has
been widened ; the calls of public life have induced them to give a
portion of their time to educational, philanthropic, municipal, or
political affairs ; the demands of society have not infrequently led
them to sporting with time in a way which must make ' the old
gentleman' whose portrait is in the office positively spin in his-
grave with wrath. They are charming men, the heads of Great
Britain's industrial concerns ; they play golf and they entertain well.
But they would never have been as wealthy as they are if it hadn't
been for their fathers or grandfathers. They are touched with the
inertia consequent on riches. The reputation of their firms has
been so high for a quarter of a century that they think it as solid
as the British Constitution. They have had no incentive to slog and
slave like the Americans. They belong to the second or the third
generation.

All this is, of course, a generalisation, and, like most general-
isations, cannot be made to apply to particular cases. But it is, I
believe, a generalisation which accurately represents the position of
the mass of British manufacturers.

The American manufacturers of the present day are of the first
generation. They are the kind of men, with differences, such as we
had in England half a century ago creating mighty industrial con-
cerns. Take up a catalogue of big American firms, and you will be
surprised at the tiny percentage that did not start from practical
nothings, and whose heads did not launch first into business with the
proverbial shilling. Once I was talking to a millionaire, and in reply
to an airy question of mine what was the first ingredient to make a
man as wealthy as himself he replied, ' Poverty ! '

Here, then, is one of the foundations of the colossal success
attained by so many American firms : that their directors came from
rough stock, many of them immigrants or the children of immi-
grants— men who had the initial courage to break with the old tie&
in Europe, to forsake their homeland, their friends, and go into a
strange world with a healthy determination as their only asset; men,,
indeed, who have had to shift for themselves, who have not sunk
because they have been obliged to put forth all their energies to-
swim, who have had the whole world to combat, and who/ by the
necessities of the struggle, have been obliged to put every ounce of
brain into their work.

The American has had the best of incentives — ' Had to ' — and
his brain has been strained, often to snapping, to gain all points that
mean advantage. These men are often loud-mannered and bragging-

1903 THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS 393

tongued ; they display a lack of refinement which makes a cold
shiver run down one's back in talking to them. But probably the
fathers and grandfathers of our present-day British manufacturers
had like failings. The point, however, to be considered in this
matter of comparison is that the Americans have been through the
mill : their whole life is absorbed in their business ; their conversa-
tion hardly ever gets beyond the radius of how more dollars can be
made. You can never forget that here are men who give every
moment of their life to their work. I do not put it forward as a
noble life, but it is the life that makes successful business men.

The American is a polyglot composition. We British folk chaff
him on his habit of ' blowing,' of always making out his firm as
twice as successful as it really is, and of declaring his machine will
do three times as much as it can actually do. Still, we have a fond-
ness for the American. But the fondness is not returned. Am-
bassadors, I know, say agreeable things in after-dinner speeches at
Fourth of July celebrations. Go, however, among the common
people and read the ' Yellow Press ' — and if the common people and
the Yellow Press don't represent educated America they do represent
American feeling and sentiment and antipathy — and there you will
find a resentment toward the nations of Europe. There is nothing
of this to be seen in the pleasant social circles to which the average
visiting Briton is introduced. It exists strongly, undeniably, among
the masses, and these are the people, more than in any other
country, who count in America. The reason is not far to seek.
The majority of Americans are not more than a single generation
removed from being Europeans themselves. They left the old
countries with no love in their hearts. For a long time they have
been the butt of ridicule to polite society in Europe. They have felt
as the new rich always feel — that in manners they are not standing
on safe ground ; they have resented the contemptuous smile of the
other countries, and they have convinced themselves that European
countries ' are back-numbers anyhow, and don't cut no ice ! '

It has not been the paupers of Europe who have gone to make
the American people, but rather men determined, and maybe a little
rancorous under a sense of curbed ambition, who have thrown off old
ties. The immigrant races are mixed by marriage. So a new race
— not a branch of the Anglo-Saxon at all — has sprung into existence
with that alertness of brain you invariably find in the offspring of
mixed peoples. They start fresh, with no local customs, with no
traditions, with nothing but the feeling they are a new nation, some-
what sneered at by the other nations of which they have to get abreast.
Not quite confident where they are exactly, the Americans make a
bold shot and declare they are first. This, indeed, is the perpetual
song of the newspapers. In England we constantly tell one another
Great Britain is going to the devil. Americans always tell one

394 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

another America is the leading nation on the face of the earth.
An English manufacturer receives a big order and is not at all
-desirous other firms in the same line should know it. When an
American manufacturer receives an order it is blared to the world,
-and he is interviewed. The English manufacturer has ideas about
' reserve ' and ' dignity.' The American sticks all his goods in his
shop-window for the world to gape at. He is cocksure ; he is
buoyant ; he is absolutely certain of success. So, breezily, with slap-
dash rush, * joshing' — not being accurate in his facts — he pushes
ahead in a way that startles the Englishman.

Therefore, in considering America at work there are these im-
portant factors not to be lost sight of: that the American is always
•enthusiastic ; that he is the son of a virile race, with a quickness,
an adroitness of intellect that is the result of mixed breeding; and
that the heads of firms are mostly men who sprang from the people,
are the makers of their own lives, and know their business through
and through.

It is within the reach of every American .to be a landed proprietor
for himself ; at least, to own sufficient ground to provide for himself
and his family. It is this bottom fact which accounts for high
wages in the United States. Where every man can work for himself,
extra pay, compared with what he could get in other countries, must
be offered to induce him to work for another man. Therefore wages
are much higher than in Great Britain. Wages, however, are only
comparable when you take into account their purchasing power.
To the rude immigrant, the Irishman, the Swede, the German, the
Hungarian, the Italian, the French-Canadian, American wages are
phenomenal. To the British working man, however, the wage is
only large as a figure. Wages both in England and America are on
the upward trend. But while wages in America have, within the
last ten years, increased 2 per cent., the cost of living in the Eastern
States has increased 10 per cent., and westward, in a place like Chicago,
it has gone up 40 per cent. So the real wages of the American worker
are considerably lower than they were ten years ago. I know that in
many industries the increase of wages has been 10 per cent. ; but in
striking an average it has to be borne in mind that in all work not
actually physical — that is, in all work that is clerical, administrative,
supervisory — the wage has decreased. And here we get just a glimpse
of a state of things coming about in America that we are very
familiar with in Britain — a fondness of the new generation for the
towns rather than for the country, a distaste for labour that means
grimy hands and mucky clothes, and a flocking to work which gives
a clean collar and passable cuffs, but a wage inferior to that of a
mechanic.

Wages vary in different parts of the continent, and the extra-
ordinary fact is that where the wages are largest in cash they are the

1903 THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS 395

smallest in value, because the purchasing power is less. For instance,
wages are lower in Massachusetts than in Illinois. But the working
man, if he keeps a bank-book, would have a better balance to show
at the end of a year were he in Boston than if he lived exactly the
same way in Chicago. Speaking in the aggregate, however, I may
say that whilst the working man in America earns quite half as much
again as the Briton, he has to pay three times as much for rent,
twice as much for clothes, whilst the food, roughly speaking, comes
to about the same. Having gone carefully into this question I find
that the working man in the East is better off than his British friend,
whilst the working man in the West is less well off, despite the fact
that he receives excellent wages in cash.

The great fact to be reckoned with is that the American
manufacturer has to pay big wages in producing an article which
is going to compete in cash value with a similar article produced
in countries where wages are comparatively low. In the home
market he has largely resisted foreign competition by means of
excessive tariffs. His woollen goods are rather beneath contempt,
not because he cannot produce a much better article — he did that
when the tariff was lower and English cloth was a thing to be
considered — but because he has no competition from the outside.
A curious point is that, in those industries which are most fully
protected by tariff, Americans do not at all show that adaptiveness
remarkable in all other industries where there is fierce competition
— the iron trade and shoe industry are random instances — chiefly
because there are no circumstances of competition to which they are
called upon to adapt themselves.

The line of progress in adaptability has been in those trades that
have had to grapple with European competition. On one side of the
Atlantic there have been low wages, on the other side high wages.
But manufacturers who have paid and are paying high wages are
frequently wresting trade from those who pay low by producing a
similar article at a lesser price. Labour-saving machinery has given
them the power.

Cause and effect are at work in all things, and labour-saving
machinery has been brought into existence in America, not because
the American happens to have the inventive faculty more largely
developed than has the European — indeed, all who have considered
this matter scientifically know that the American mind is not
creative : it is adaptive, appreciative of the value of invention —
but because that stumbling-block of high wages, which stood in
the way of competition with cheaply produced European goods met
in the open market, had to be overcome.

If you are in New York, take a walk along Broadway — or, indeed,
any of the main streets — and glance at the names of the shopkeepers.
It is rather the exception to see a name with a British flavour. Go,

396 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

however, to the Patent Office at Washington, and run your eye along
the lists of inventors, and you are amazed at the vast majority of
names being British. Not by any means are they all of Americans
who come from a British stock ; but a great many of them are of
men with a British domicile who have patented their inventions in
the United States because the American Patent Office is infinitely
superior to our own, and because the American manufacturer is keen
after anything and everything that is novel and an improvement.
In England, when a man thinks he has invented something, and has
patented it, and has possibly leased it to a manufacturing firm, there
is the likelihood of an action at law for infringement put forward
by some other inventor or firm. Having it decided in the Law
Courts, whether a thing is a patent or not, is expensive. I can well
understand British manufacturers hesitating to make a mighty
plunge with a new idea, because of the dread of having to defend
an action for infringement. There is, however, no such trouble in
America. The administration of the law in the United States is
almost as dilatory as in Turkey — and there are other points of resem-
blance— but as regards the law on patents it is effective and decisive.
A man sends his invention to the Patent Office at Washington. It
will take anything from six months to two years to get it through.
It is the staff of the Patent Office which finds out whether there is
an infringement or not. If it decides it is a new idea — that, indeed,
it is a patent — a document to that effect is issued, and then no small
firm which takes up the idea need be in any dread of having to
fight a big firm in the Law Courts.

Neither the British employer nor the British workman is so alive
as the American to the practicability of an invention. The British
manufacturer is sometimes suspicious of a new invention brought to
him. In considering it he focuses his criticism on possible draw-
backs ; he says he will think about it ; that perhaps he will give it
a trial; that he will see how some other firm prospers before he
spends any money on it ! When there is a mishap he rather prides
himself on his sapience, and reminds you of his original opinion
with 'I told you so.' The American manufacturer is hardly ever an
adverse critic to a new idea simply because it is a new idea. He
doesn't want to see how other firms get on with it before he ventures :
if there is anything in it, he wants to get right away ahead before
anybody else has a chance. He sees quickly enough where faults are.
He doesn't, however, throw a thing on one side because of the faults.
He sets about trying to put them right. It is the idea he is after,
and, as a practical man, he will work out the ideas. Let rne give a
remarkable instance. Nikola Tesla is regarded by many electricians
as a visionary, a flamboyant expounder of the impracticable. They do
not see beyond his theatrical posing. But Mr. George Westinghouse,
head of the Westinghouse Electrical Works at East Pittsburg, has

1903 THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS 397

seen beyond. Through much vapour he has discerned germs of
genius. As placed before him by Nikola Tesla many ideas were
unworkable. But there were the ideas, the suggestion of possi-
bilities, and Mr. Westinghouse himself is a practical man and he
has practical engineers in his service. Much has been discarded ;
yet some of the most valuable inventions belonging to the Westing-
house Company were, I am informed, the outcome originally of
Nikola Tesla's brain.

Many inventions in active use in America to-day are the creations
of Englishmen which no manufacturer in England thought well
to take up. In the first state they were probably not worth taking
up. But it was the American who grasped the thing, who altered,
adapted, and improved the invention, and made it valuable.
It is to be noted how many are the inventions respecting railway
engineering, brought out by Englishmen, not used in Great Britain,
but in general adoption in America.

The most striking recent instance of an English invention not
being appreciated in England, but being adapted in America, is the
Northrop loom. Here is an ingenious loom invented by a Yorkshire-
man, which automatically, when a warp breaks, stops the machine
instantly, and does not go on weaving defective cloth. It requires
an English girl of experience to look after three or four ordinary
looms, being ready to run to a machine the moment her quick eye
discerns a break, to stop it and repair the warp ; and she is not
always successful in avoiding a stretch with a missing thread
because, while she is repairing one machine, another may go wrong.
With the Northrop loom, however, a little girl, fresh from school, with
not more than a fortnight's experience, can look after twenty looms.

When I went through the cotton -mills at Fall River last autumn
I saw thousands of the Northrop looms at work. Until quite recently
there was not, I believe, a single Northrop loom in all Lancashire —
the centre of the cotton industry of the world — and even now, I under-
stand, only one firm has adopted them to any extent. The criticism
of Lancashire manufacturers against the loom was that the English
warp was so fine it would not bear the strain of the automatic
mechanism, and the reason its use has been possible in the States is
that the warp is rough and stronger. But it should not be forgotten
that when the loom was first taken to America it was by no means
perfect, even for rough and strong warp. There was no doubt,
however, about the invention being of use the moment it was
adapted. English manufacturers hung back from any attempt at
adaptation, and only now, when improvements have been effected by
the Americans, are our own manufacturers waking to the possibility —
probability, maybe, very likely — that the Northrop loom can be made
serviceable in the Lancashire mills.

Now, whatever trade-union leaders say to the contrary, there

398 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

is in the mind of the British workman an objection to labour-
saving machinery. The motive of resistance, from his limited point
of view, is not altogether unworthy. He has a wife and children to
keep, and increased machinery may throw him out of work.
Certainly it will reduce the number of workmen, and if he himself
does not suffer, then his fellows are likely to be dismissed. It is the
same feeling which causes him to ' ca' canny,' to work much slower
than he can work. If he does twice as much work as he has been
doing, that implies, to his mind, he is keeping some other chap
out of a job. ' Live and let live ' is his easy philosophy. Trade
unions have laws which absolutely restrict the output, most
pernicious in effect on trade and bad for the good worker, because
they make him set his pace to that of the slow man, and keep his
earnings down though they help up the wages of the incompetent.

Already in America there are signs of the trade unions urging
restriction of output. But there is no animosity to labour-saving
machinery.

The British workman is the most intelligent of his class in the
world. Give him time, and he will turn out a better article than
anybody else. Send him to America, and, when he has got rid of his
sluggishness, the American worker becomes but a boastful second-
rater alongside him. But the American is alert, and does not feel
that new machinery is going to displace him. It is exceptional
indeed for a British employer to get an improvement on machinery
suggested by a workman. In the first place, the British workman has
not that zest for his work which the American has ; in the second place,
it is none of his business to invent ; in the third, even if he thought
of an improvement, he has a shyness about approaching the em-
ployer ; fourthly, the chances are he might be snubbed for his
trouble.

Nothing like this exists in America. There is a much closer
relationship between employer and workman. The one calls the
other ' boss,' but it is only a term, and is no admission the employer
is his master. He gives good work for good dollars. On how a
thing should be done he will ' cheek ' back his employer. There is
no ' Yes, sir,' and doing the thing the wrong way simply because the
employer proposed that way. Tbe workman knows if he strikes an
improvement it is going to be a good thing for him. personally. If
he thinks of some alteration whereby he can turn out twice as
much, he knows the employer won't expect him to turn out twice as
much for the same pay. They are partners, and the workman will
get at least half the advantage. So there is an incentive to all the
mechanics of America to adapt. They make it their business to
improve, and it is by this wholesale adoption of labour-saving
machinery that the difficulty of high wages has been largely over-
come.

But there is another result. With almost everything being done
by machinery there is no need for skilled artisanship. The brains
are in the machine, and all the manufacturer requires is somebody to
look after the machine. That is often a simple matter. So what a
British workman learns to do after seven years' apprenticeship is, in-
America, done by a machine looked after by a lad who has had only
a fortnight's tuition.

That is why as the Englishman walks through American work-
shops he is startled to see so few middle-aged men. What is done
by a man of forty in England is done by a lad of twenty in America,,
and where we would employ lads the Americans employ girls. Gro
into the Westinghouse works at East Pittsburg, and you will see a
thousand girls engaged in making delicate electrical appliances. Gro
into any of the big shoe manufactories at Brockton or Lynn, near
Boston, and again you will see thousands of girls. The increase in
the employment of women and childen is altogether out of pro-
portion to the increase in the employment of men in the States.

Here, then, you have the American manufacturer equipping him-
self for commercial competition by getting the brains into the
machines and getting cheap labour to work them — cheap labour^
that is, in comparison with what he would have to pay were his
workmen skilled artisans, as they are in a British workshop. But he
goes further. He specialises. He does not try to make twenty things
in engineering. He makes one thing, be it bridges or locomotives,
or reapers, or machine-tools. He focuses on one thing, makes hi&
splash in advertising that one thing, gets a reputation for that one
thing. Bat in it there may be a hundred parts. He specialises
his workpeople in making those separate parts. They have one
little thing to do, and they do that, and nothing else, year in
and year out. It may be the punching of a hole. I have seen
an American workman do a monotonous thing a thousand times a
day — a thing which you cannot get out of your mind as positively
deadening to the intellect, and which you would think would drive a
man of intelligence to madness in a fortnight. It is all done with a
speed that is amazing, and which I fancy no English workman would
continue for a week. But the American finds fascination in his
adroitness, in the very clatter of multitudinous repetition. He i&
unequalled as a worker ; but put him alongside an English artisan
and you find that in excellence he is far surpassed. Yet over
all that specialisation is the marvellous administration of the em-
ployer, so that parts meet parts and, like the action of a beautifu)
piece of clockwork, the article is brought to completion.

Here arises a very legitimate criticism, often heard in Great
Britain, that in wear and tear the American article does not last as
long as the British. That is correct. But the American tells you,
with a smile, that he doesn't make things to last an eternity. He

400 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

makes them to last only sufficiently long. Take the manufacture of
boots, about which we have lately heard a great deal. The American
manufacturer has invaded the British market, and while the sale of
British boots has decreased in our colonies, that of American boots
has increased. This is not because the American boot wears better
than the British. It does not. A finely made British boot is the
best in the world. But in the average boot, the boot which the
average person wears, which he buys ready-made in a shop at from
12s. Qd. to 25s. a pair, the American article is more popular. It
looks neater ; there are so many different widths and half sizes that
it fits at the start ; you have not to be satisfied with it being ' all
right in a few days, sir.' The British boot manufacturers tried to
laugh American competition out of existence. Then they took to
American methods, and to-day all the largest British boot manu-
factories are fitted with American machinery. Indeed, all the most
ingenious devices in the manufacture of a shoe came from the other
side of the Atlantic. It is not enough to tell the public the
British shoe wears longer than the American. We don't buy our
boots and shoes to wear to the last eighth of an inch. We buy them
to fit us and serve us for a time, wanting them to look neat and not
be heavy and clumsy. There the American showed the way.

Take railway locomotives. Several of our big lines have tried
American-built engines. Generally speaking, they have been
pronounced a failure : they consume more coal than English engines,
and they spend too much of their time in the repairing-sheds.
But there are several things to be borne in mind. The American
builds a locomotive to last ten years. The British maker takes
pride in pointing out engines in this country that have run forty
years. The American engine is built to drag immense loads. It
has an enormous haulage power; it consequently consumes much
coal. In England or the States it uses the same amount of fuel.
But whilst in the States it has a giant's work to do in haulage,
in England it has only an infant's work by comparison. * Put the
same weight behind our engine in England,' says the American
maker, ' as we do in America, and then you will find while it consumes
more coal it earns more money by the increased haulage capacity.'

It is by the adoption of enormous cars and having locomotives
of great haulage power that the cost of conveying freight in America,
which formerly was the same as in England, is now less than one-third
per average ton. One sees American locomotives all over the world.
So one does British, but not in the same proportion. British
makers have recently been getting big orders from abroad. This is
not because the American engine is being discarded. It is because
America is so prosperous — there is such a boom in the home trade
that American makers have no opening to fulfil new contracts for
two or three years yet. The point, however, is that the American

1903 THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS 401

railroad companies have for a number of years been solving the
question of freight charges by the adoption of engines of huge
haulage power and cars of thirty-ton capacity. Only recently have
the British railways made a move in the same direction.

The American manufacturer has vim and something of the
gambler in him. He is thirsty for new ideas ; he is daring.
Where the Englishman would hesitate and think and calculate, the
American will plunge, neck or nothing, at a venture. He can see
ahead further than the Englishman. In British works new
machinery is fitted up when the old has begun to wear out or when
nearly everybody else has it and it is necessary to have it also if trade
is to be held. Those are not considerations which weigh with the
American manufacturer. His constant criticism against his cousin
on this side of the Atlantic is that the Britisher doesn't know the
value of a scrap-heap. An American will spend, say, 30,000£. in
putting in the latest machinery. Six months later some fresh
appliance which will do more work and quicker is invented. He
does not wait till the machinery he has put in is worn out before
adopting the new invention. The machinery fitted six months back
may hardly have got into proper working order. But he rips the
lot out, he ' scrap-heaps ' it, and has the very latest machinery. He
sees ahead. He sees how he has practically thrown away 30,000^. ;
but he also sees the gaining of 100,000^

We, in this country, set much store by experience. The
American sets more store by youthful enterprise. We think a man
who has been in a business for thirty years is the one who ought to
know most about it. The American thinks that a man who has
been at it so long is certain to have fossilised ideas, and therefore
not likely to keep abreast of the needs of the times. We think a
youth thrown into responsibility will, likely as not, make a mess of
things. The American thinks that responsibility brings ballast and
with all the fire of his young manhood a youth will strive night and
day to prove the confidence placed in him is well placed. And here
the American is right. Time and time again, as I have gone
through the workshops of the United States, I have almost been
staggered at the mere boys who are managers and heads of depart-
ments ; not the sons of proprietors, but young fellows who have
started at the bottom, proved their grit, shown their energy, and
been pushed on to high positions. It is not at all unusual to find
a man of twenty-four years having the control of several thousand
men. And the fact that a man is young and unmarried is no reason,
in the employer's mind, why he should receive comparatively small
salary. The question of how cheap you can get such men is not
considered. No price is too big to give a lad who has brains and
adaptiveness. It is recognised that by paying him well, appreciating
him, you fire his enthusiasm.

VOL, LIII — No. 313 D D

402 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

The tendency within the next decade will be to pay lower wages
in America for mere physical labour. The trend is to pay more,
never mind what, for brains. Every young American knows this.
That is why there is a positive rage for technical instruction and why
the technical schools are ever crowded. We have nothing like the
same eagerness in Great Britain. After being in America, seeing
young mechanics almost starve themselves to pay for a university
course — filling in their vacations by acting as waiters in hotels, or
tram conductors or bath-chair men — it brings a chill to the heart of a
Briton to come home and see hardly any such desire among the
British youth, and to see our excellent technical schools appreciated
only in a lukewarm way.

I readily recognise there is a stress and a strain in American
industrial life which suggest the inquiry, whether, after all, the
prize is worth the struggle ? I have often shuddered at the thought
of what is likely to be the effect on the race of making millions of
workers little other than machines. Now and then I have been
unable to restrain an open smile at the tremendous conceit of the
American manufacturer and his colossal ignorance about things
European. But it is not by pooh-poohing his braggadocio, nor by
moralising about the grinding conditions of labour, nor by com-
placently saying British ways are good enough for us, that British
manufacturers will stem the tide of American industrial success,
which is already more than threatening fields of commerce we
had considered exclusively our own. It is not sufficient to point
to the fact that British trade is increasing, and so dismiss foreign
competition as the nightmare of pessimists. Increase of trade can
only be considered comparatively. And while we crawl, America
bounds.

JOHN FOSTER FRASER

(Author of ' America at Work ').

1903

THE NEW EDUCATION AUTHORITY
FOR LONDON

WHETHER we like or dislike the educational legislation of last
Session, we must admit that the general principles of that Act will
be applied to London.

Thus it is waste of time to complain of the imposing on the rate-
payers the obligation to maintain schools which they do not manage,
the maintenance of tests on teachers, in schools supported entirely at
the public expense, and many other glaring defects both of principle
and administration in the Act of last Session. The injustice and
crudity of that legislation will become more and more patent as years
go by, and after much friction will probably lead to the downfall of
the denominational schools which the Grovernment have sought to fix
permanently on public funds.

For the present let us consider what is inevitable and what may
reasonably be modified.

It may be taken as of the essence of the Grovernment policy
(1) That privately managed schools shall be supported at the public
expense with the minimum of interference which the Act of last
year gives to the new authority. (2) That elementary education
shall be limited and defined, not as in Scotland with a generous
upward extension and with liberal Parliamentary aid, but reaching to
about fifteen and a half and limited to day schools ; the work of
evening schools and of training of pupil teachers passing to the new
authority under the head of education other than elementary.
(3) That there shall be one authority for primary and other
education.

Another point which many persons will consider to have been
decided by last year's struggle is that the new authority shall be the
authority having charge of other general matters, and not a body
charged with education alone.

On this point I would say that the vast extent of London, and
the importance and variety of its educational responsibilities, both

403 D D 2

404 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

existing and prospective, do not make it a consequence necessarily
following from the precedent of last year that the general secular
authority for London should also take charge of education. The
enormous expenditure of the School Board, the new charges and
duties resulting from financing the voluntary schools, the existing
work of the Technical Board, the expansion of secondary and higher
education and the further training of teachers, furnish ample scope
for the energies of a body chosen for the work and with no other
work to do.

The School Board for London, therefore, in their memorial to the
Government urged that a new body should be created, mainly the
result of direct election, chosen from the present Parliamentary and
County Council constituencies and elected on the same day as the
County Council.

Such a course would avoid that multiplicity of elections which
has been complained of, and, by leaving the qualifications of
candidates open, it would allow the electors the free choice they
now have among residents and non-residents, clergy and laity, men
and women, which secures such a widely representative character to
their School Board members.

It has been urged that the duplication or multiplication of
elections on one day will, if it saves trouble to the electors, at the
same time diminish their responsibility and interest, and that in the
United States this system of voting at once for many offices gives
undue power to party organisations. It may be admitted that this
is to some extent the case, and that the more issues presented, the
greater the number of candidates voted for, the greater would be the
risk of this consequence ; but for the electors of a Parliamentary
division once in three years to have before them the double issue of
whom they shall choose on the County Council to manage their
larger municipal concerns, whom they shall choose to manage their
education, does not seem an undue burden.

It is to be regretted that in any change we must lose the School
Board suffrage — far the simplest and fairest of all our local suffrages
— the rate-book, automatic and immediate in its operation. It is
to be hoped that though for a time this simple register may
disappear, it may shortly be re-enacte.d with a wider range for
municipal and Parliamentary elections. We shall then escape the
vexation and injustice resulting from disfranchisement on removal,
and the long interval between the first occupation and the effective
voting power. The School Board proposed that this education
authority mainly elected by this direct process should be strengthened
by twenty added members from the County Council in consideration
of their giving up their present powers under the Technical Acts,
and that the new authority should co-opt fifteen more members

1903 NEW EDUCATION AUTHORITY FOR LONDON 405

specially qualified to discharge educational functions ; and, in order to
bring home a sense of responsibility, the local authority should
report to the Board of Education the grounds on which each person
was co-opted.

I believe that such a board as this would be the best fitted to
discharge the duties which would be imposed on it. It would be
anxious to promote education, and therefore the friends of de-
nominational schools, whose interests would be safeguarded by law,
would find in such a body an authority likely to do their utmost to
raise the standard of efficiency in aided schools to the level of the
public schools taken over from the School Board. The power of
co-opting would bring in men and women familiar hitherto with the
quieter paths of education who might be unwilling to face an
electorate. At the same time the predominantly elective character
of the new authority would give the electors the power of directly
impressing their views on those who would determine the expendi-
ture of their money.

It may be, however, that party exigencies make this scheme
quite unacceptable to the Government. In that case, as a second
best course, what are the essentials to be secured for London educa-
tion?

The cost and administration must be one for London as a whole.
It seems hardly necessary to prove this. Still one or two reasons
may be given.

The wealthier parts of London, such as the City, Westminster,
Marylebone, Kensington, Paddington, have comparatively few board
schools, but help to share the burden of the schools in such poor and
crowded districts as Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Walworth, Deptford,
St. Luke's, Lambeth, Fulham, and other parts of London. That
the wealth of London by concentration in special districts should
escape its share of the common cost of education would be unfair
if now introduced for the first time, but to make such a change
after thirty-two years of a common rate would be an impossible
proposal.

But if the cost is to be borne by London as a whole, London as a
whole must have the power to determine the cost. It would be
unfair to allow an area like the school division of Hackney, made up
of the three municipal divisions of Hackney, Bethnal Green, and
Shoreditch, where the board schools are attended by 61,000 children
in average attendance, as compared with 11,600 in voluntary schools,
or 84 per cent, of all the children, to fix its own scale of salaries,
staff, buildings, equipment, &c., and throw the cost on the rest of
London. It is as obviously just that the whole of London should
control the rates to be levied in London as a whole as that London
as a whole should bear the common charge of the education of
London. But apart from this consideration of justice it is clearly

406 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

reasonable that the one London authority should have the effective
management of the whole expenditure. A local subordinate
authority with independent power to spend would tend to extrava-
gance. Each district, finding that in any case it had to bear the
burden of the expenditure of other districts, would say, ' as in any
ease we must pay for others, we may as well get the full benefit of
the money spent in our own division.'

Among the various schemes which rumour has attributed to the
Government, the scheme of local municipal management of schools
by some thirty authorities may be dismissed as too absurd to have
done more than attract the passing attention of a Minister con-
versant neither with education nor London, but accessible to the
solicitations of the wire-pullers of the old vestries.

Still, even when the recognition of a central authority has im-
posed itself on Ministerial policy, it is clear that there has been a
hankering after some recognition of the local borough authorities as
entitled to some corporate recognition in the constitution of the new
authority.

This may be done in one of two ways : either by the devolution
of some power of local management to them, or by their recognition
as the sources of authority for the new administrative body.

And first, let us consider how far a scheme of local devolution is
practicable or desirable. No one will say that such a thing is possible
for the higher education. The relation of the London authority
with university teaching, with the training of teachers, with the
establishment of higher technological institutes, must be the relation
of one authority for all London. The local boroughs of London
range from such units as Islington with about 335,000 inhabitants
to Stoke Newington with 51,000.

If we come to secondary education, the subdivision of the adminis-
tration of London would be most undesirable and inconvenient.
The scholarship system of the London County Council is adminis-
tered by one examination for all London, and the increase of cost
with diminished fairness and efficiency resulting from breaking up
the area of examination and award would be most injurious. It is
only those who are familiar with the working who can fully realise
how impracticable and wasteful such a subdivision would be, and
to set out in detail the objections would go beyond the space of this
article.

Again, secondary schools are aided, and where necessary will be
founded, by the education authority in various parts of London.
These schools are not limited in their usefulness or area of supply
to any one division, and if their relations of aid and supervision
were with the local borough councils, not only would there be waste
of effort and a loss of intelligence, but the schools themselves would

1903 NEW EDUCATION AUTHORITY FOR LONDON 407

deeply regret the changed character of the body with which they
would come in immediate contact. Not that the various borough
councils might not be well represented on the governing bodies of
the various secondary schools. But in questions of general principle
and of financial aid and educational suggestion the authority should
be one for all London, co-ordinating its needs and collecting the
experience derived from relations with all the secondary schools.

Let us now turn to the elementary work of the new authority,
and examine whether any material part of it can be usefully
delegated either to the borough councils or to committees formed
by them.

The work of the School Board falls under the following impor-
tant heads, assigned to various permanent committees and sub-
committees : finance, works, school attendance and accommodation,
industrial schools, school management, general purposes, evening
continuation schools.

Clearly the finance committee's work must with a common rate
remain in the hands of the one authority for London.

The finance committee has under it a store sub- committee, which
deals with the purchase and distribution of books and material to
the schools. The turnover of this store is about 100,OOOL a year, and
not only is the board enabled to buy more cheaply by the wholesale
character of its transactions, but it is also able more effectively to
check the quality of the goods than if they were sent direct to the
schools. Moreover, in connection with the supply and delivery of
material, it is necessary that one central authority should check the
amount of material to be allowed to each school, and not leave to
local discretion the amount that may be used. This will become
still more necessary when the private aided schools are entitled to be
maintained in books and apparatus ; they will retain their inde-
pendent managers, and therefore a central control over expenditure,
and that of a somewhat strict character, will be imperative.

The works department is mainly responsible for building and
keeping in repair the various schools of the Board. How large its
operations are may be seen by the fact that of late years the total
amount borrowed has exceeded 500,000£. a year for purchase of
land and erection or permanent improvement of buildings.

Clearly the central authority which pays for the buildings must
settle their plan and design ; it would neither be advantageous to
education to have a large number of bodies designing schools inde-
pendently, nor would it be reasonable that those who pay should not
determine the plan and type of school. Again, the planning of a
school must depend on the conduct of the school. The size of the
class-rooms will depend on the size of the classes and on the staff
allowed and the proper number of scholars to a teacher. Many

408 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

questions of planning are intimately connected with questions of
school management, such as the question of the size of schools,,
whether they shall be mixed or for boys and for girls, the provision of
special rooms available for more than one school, such as centres for
woodwork, practical science, laundry, cookery, &c. ; again, the site of
a new school must be determined by the homes of the children
who will attend, who may reside in different boroughs and whose
attendance is determined by crowded thoroughfares, not by municipal
boundaries.

Special schools for the deaf, the mentally and physically defec-
tive, and others, supply the needs of large areas quite independent of
municipal boundaries ; and numerous other considerations might be
submitted which would prove that the work of buying sites, planning,
erecting, repairing, and improving schools must be controlled by the
one authority answerable for the cost.

In the case of industrial schools, these must be managed by one
authority. The industrial schools committee have to deal with cases
from week to week ; children must be taken at once and found a
school when charged before a magistrate ; these children turn up by
ones and twos, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another j
a place has to be found at once in a school willing to receive the
child — it may be a Roman Catholic child in a Roman Catholic school,
or a young child in a school willing to take a young child — and the
knowledge concentrated in one office is necessary for prompt ad-
ministrative dealing with the cases as they present themselves ; more-
over, the industrial schools of the Board — ordinary, truant, and day —
are for London as a whole, and could not be administered in con-
nection with any devolution of powers to local committees.

As to school attendance and accommodation, the provision of
school places depends not on the arbitrary boundaries of boroughs,
but on the subdivision of London by main thoroughfares ; and the
need for school places is determined largely by an annual census of
the child population taken for London as a whole. The selection of
sites must be governed by two considerations: (1) The convenience of
the site and its accessibility to the children, (2) its light and airy
situation, and its cheapness compared with any alternative site.

The authority which has to present the case to the Board of
Education and to promote the subsequent provisional order must be
responsible for this selection.

In reference to the enforcement of attendance, a mixture of
local administration and central authority has been found convenient,
but the central authority must be supreme. London is divided for
the enforcement of compulsory attendance into ten districts, each
under a superintendent with a local office, but the superintendents and
the attendance officers are under the direction of the general London.

1903 NEW EDUCATION AUTHORITY FOR LONDON 409

authority and subject to removal by it. The exact area and
population suitable for administrative subdivision is not, of course,
a matter of mathematical ascertainment. But I have no hesitation
in saying that units corresponding with the borough councils would
be too numerous, would be costly in multiplying staff and local offices,
and would diminish efficiency. Already the School Board has amal-
gamated the City and Westminster for by-law purposes, and made
one or two minor readjustments of the boundaries of Southwark and
Lambeth, and these readjustments might be carried further. One
important work in enforcing the by-laws is the habitual assembling
of the visitors at a common centre to exchange notes of absentees
with a view to prompt visitation. If the groups of visitors were too
small, there would be a margin of scholars concerning whom infor-
mation would have to be forwarded by letter, and it may be taken
that the best unit of local administration is one which allows a
sufficient number of visitors to be assembled at a common centre,
and this number, allowing for certain geographical considerations, is
about thirty. But any attempt to work the by-laws through
borough councils — for instance, to have four local centres of adminis-
tration for the present School Board division of Chelsea — would be
inexpedient, costly, and less effective.

The general purposes committee has mainly to do with litigation.
Clearly this must be the affair of the authority which if unsuccessful
must bear the cost; no one could suggest that local subordinate
authorities should have the power to involve the superior authority
in a lawsuit.

I now come to the principal work of the School Board — that of
school management. Could any part of this be delegated to
subordinate authorities ? Here we must distinguish between such
delegation as is under the control of the chief authority, like the
present delegation to local managers under the London School
Board, and compulsory delegation which gives absolute rights to
those who receive the delegation.

I have no doubt that any authority charged with the work of
London education will continue to rely on the services of local
managers and to use their help in many details of the work. A
valuable memorial, of the representative managers was lately
presented to the Board of Education urging that their past services
should be borne in mind in the coming legislation.

I am in general accord and sympathy with the views expressed
in that memorial, and regret that want of space prevents my quoting
it. Persons interested could, however, obtain a copy by applying to
William Bousfield, Esq., Chairman of Eepresentative Managers,
20 Hyde Park Grate, S.W.

I would, however, quote this passage : ' It has been found that

410 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

the experience of some years is required before managers are able to
do their work efficiently, as it necessitates not only knowledge of the
regulations of the schools, but of the teachers and the habits of
the parents and children.'

Two or three things are necessary to make a good manager.
{!) Interest in the work, (2) education, (3) leisure. In some parts
of London the social conditions do not supply enough persons
combining these qualities, and it has been found that some of the
best managers are those who are willing to come from a distance
It has been suggested that the local management should be
delegated to the borough councils, who should, perhaps, in the larger
boroughs group the schools into subdivisions.

But for effective management small groups are necessary. The
School Board after long experience have come to the conclusion that
a group of three schools is as many as one set of managers can
properly look after, and it is clear that such a number would not
correspond with the idea of local management through borough
councils.

Take Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and Hackney. These three local
areas have sixty-one board schools, and it is clear that local manage-
ment of fifteen to twenty schools would lose all the advantages of the
local management which the School Board now secures. It may be a
very good thing to associate local municipal activity with some
knowledge of the schools, and in a group of twelve or fifteen managers
the local municipal authority might be invited to nominate three ;
but it is of the greatest importance that the essentially local
character of the management be maintained, and also that the final
voice of the London authority be paramount. Of all matters con-
cerned with school management, the two most important in this
respect are the appointment of teachers and disciplinary action over
them. If anything were done to entrust patronage to local muni-
cipalities a serious blow would be struck at the self-respect and the
efficiency of the teaching staff.

The School Board have a strict rule against canvassing. This
rule is often broken, but while the final appointment rests with a
body far removed from local influence canvassing is less effective and
comparatively harmless. But if patronage were vested in the
borough councils there is a great danger that the teaching staff
would be drawn into local politics, and that there would be a close
relation between political support and promotion. In disciplinary
matters, too, serious offences might be condoned where the offender
was closely connected politically with a leading member of the local
school management committee. I am confident that the best
teachers must value the independence and impersonality of the
action of the London School Board in questions of promotion and

1903 NEW EDUCATION AUTHORITY FOR LONDON 411

discipline, and though no doubt there is a leaning to leniency on the
part of the professional colleagues of an offender, yet they would suffer
most as a profession if the standard of professional and personal
honour were lowered by the retention on the staff of the black
sheep of the service.

The same remarks that have been made on the day schools apply
to the evening schools. Effective direct control and management in a
central body are necessary to efficiency in the working of the schools.

Assuming that such considerations as the above have weight in
preventing the attempt to mix subordinate authorities with the
general educational authority for London, there has been another
plan largely talked of — that of constituting an effective central
authority, but building it up out of the borough councils by repre-
sentation. This, in fact, would be turning over the education of
London to a Water Board. Such a scheme would be objectionable
for several reasons. It would, indeed, give us a board ad hoc with
independent rating power, but it would give us a board at two
degrees removed from the effective influence of the electorate, who
could hardly consider in the choosing of their borough councillors
the subsequent choice these would make of some one person to
represent them on an education authority.

It would be objectionable because it would confer the power of
taxing on persons who did not represent the ratepayers. No doubt
the representatives of the borough councils would indirectly repre-
sent the ratepayers, but the added elements representing educational
interests would in no way give effect to the principle of taxation
accompanying representation, and it might well be that these added
elements might determine a rate against the wishes of a majority of
the elected representatives. There is something to be said for the
presence of educational experts on a committee if the supreme power
is in the County Council, but to create a body largely removed from
the influence of the electorate and confer on it taxing power is too
great a departure from the modern recognition of the rights of the
electorate.

Moreover, an education authority far removed from the popular
forces of election will not have sufficient energy or force to do the
work required, if our education is to be brought up to the mark, and
having regard to the large aid to be given to privately managed
schools, it is not desirable that persons representing the interests to
be aided should have a final voice in determining how much public
money they should have.

If the London hospitals were to be aided from the rates we should
not think it equitable that the Asylums Board should vote the
money and that the representatives of the hospitals should sit on the
Asylums Board.

412 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

The last device by which the borough councils may be gratified
is to make the education committee a committee of the County
Council with final financial control reserved to the latter, but to
make the committee not mainly representative of the County
Council. As there are twenty-nine borough councils, the presence
of twenty-nine borough council representatives, especially if forti-
fied by some fifteen experts, would require the County Council
to nominate some fifty of its own members on the committee to keep
the statutory majority. I am not prepared to say that such a body
would be too large to do the work of education. There will be a
great deal to do and much new work, which for some time will tax
the time and ability of the members ; but the question is whether
this is the best kind of body to do the work.

If a paramount authority is not sufficiently represented on its
committee, which is composed very largely not by it, but for it,
there will be a tendency for the higher educational authority not to
accept the recommendations of its committee. A common feeling
and unity of purpose between the authority and its committee
are essential to the good working of the scheme.

Again, what is to be gained by this large representation of the
borough councils? The County Council itself presumably would
take care that all parts of London were represented by the members
of the Council, and after that has been secured, undoubtedly the work
will best be helped by the co-optation of persons who will be able
and willing to give much time to the work. But borough councils
will probably put their own members on the education committee —
that is, as a rule, people in business and who by their activity on the
borough council have secured a leading position there. Such
people will not have much time for the added work, nor probably
much inclination to master its details.

There is a danger, therefore, that the due consideration of the im-
portant matters which will demand an early decision will be hurried
over or left to the permanent officials. Few people realise how
exceptionally troublesome will be the financial relations between the
public authority and the aided schools, the former having no
effective way of enforcing its requirements but by appeal to the
Board of Education, with the one Draconian sanction of closing the
school. The relations of the various States of the United States
under the old constitution, of the United Provinces of the Netherlands,
and of the Swiss Federation in the eighteenth century, will give
illustrations of the difficulties of the task before the new authority
And the body now under consideration would combine the maximum
of inexperience, want of leisure, and want of interest ; the borough
council element, I fear, would introduce an element, if not of
jobbery, at any rate of excessive desire to look on patronage as
an important part of their public functions.

1903 NEW EDUCATION AUTHORITY FOR LONDON 413

The accumulated experience of the members of the School
Board is discarded. Fortunately the able staff of School Board
officials will remain, and unless the County Council treat them as
mere underlings, subordinate to existing County Council officials, they
will do much to help the new authority in the first trying years of
their work. I wish, however, that I could look forward more hope-
fully to the intentions and practical ability of the Government in the
scheme which they are planning, I fear after consultation not with
those who know the educational needs of London, but with wire-
pullers of the local Tory party.

E. LYULPH STANLEY.

414 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

IN 1856 the integrity of the Ottoman Empire was solemnly accepted
as an article of political faith, and guaranteed by the delegates of the
European Powers, assembled in Paris. The same year gave birth to
a movement which has robbed that Empire of province after province,
and which, under the name of the Macedonian Question, threatens
sooner or later to rob it of its very existence. It was on the morrow
of the Treaty of Paris that the Bulgarians of Macedonia, instigated
by the apostles of Panslavism, began to recover the national con-
sciousness, which in the course of ages of dependence and darkness
had completely died out. At the conquest of Constantinople
Mohammed II. conferred on the Greek Patriarch the title of Head
of the Roman Nation, a comprehensive term including all the
Christian subjects in his dominions without distinction of speech or
race. During the ensuing four centuries the Bulgarians, in common
with the rest of Eastern Christians, continued under the segis of the
(Ecumenical Patriarch, unambitious and inconscient, or rather proud
of the appellation of Eoman, which in the East means Greek. Bat
they were not allowed to remain for ever in this theological stage of
development. Soon after the Crimean War the emissaries of the
Panslavic societies of the North, henceforth to be considered as
unofficial interpreters of Russia's official policy, entered upon their
nationalist work in the Balkans. The Greek language was gradually
banished from the schools and churches in the districts inhabited by
Slavs. Books printed in Russia were distributed broadcast among
the inhabitants, and the young Bulgars of Macedonia were taught
to look upon the Greek Church as an institution foreign to them,
upon their former teachers as tyrants, upon themselves as the
legitimate heirs of the Byzantine Emperors, upon the Greeks as their
natural foes, and, last but not least, upon Alexander the Great as a
national hero, and upon Aristotle as a national philosopher, usurped
by the unscrupulous Greeks. The animosity which this new teach-
ing implanted and fostered in the Slavonic mind, just awakening
from its sleep of centuries, reached its maturity in 1860, when a
deputation of Orthodox Bulgarians astonished the Sublime Porte by
submitting to it their desire to establish an independent commucity,

1903 THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION 415

as they no longer recognised the authority of the (Ecumenical
Patriarchate. The demand gave rise to a long and furious politico-
religious storm, which culminated in the secession of the Bulgarians
from the ' Eoman ' fold. Kussian diplomacy, ably piloted by Count
Ignatieff, availed itself of the unpopularity into which the Greeks
had fallen with the Porte owing to the Cretan rebellion of 1869, and
in the following year obtained an Imperial firman authorising the
establishment of a rival Exarchate. The Greek Patriarch, finding
his protests ignored by the Porte and his promises by the Bulgarians,
convoked a General Council, consisting of representatives of nearly
all the Eastern Churches, and therein pronounced the rebel Exarchate
schismatic. This measure has definitely divided the Orthodox
Christians of Macedonia into two sects, which have ever since
maintained a mutual attitude recalling that of the Jews and
Samaritans of old : the Greeks have no dealings with the Bul-
garians.

But the creation of the Exarchate was far from satisfying the
aspirations of the Bulgarians. On the contrary, the latter regarded
it as only a first step towards further national expansion, and the
last thirty years have witnessed a vigorous propaganda for the
acquisition of proselytes, carried on on the principle that the end
justifies the means. The Porte's traditional policy of playing
off one subject race against another favours the efforts of the
Bulgarian propaganda and minimises the opposition of Eussia, which
since the coup d'etat of 1885 has discovered that the Servians
rather than the Bulgarians are the chosen vessel of Panslavism.
But the latter do not limit their activity to a diplomatic warfare.
When the Bulgarian patriots found that the erection of schools
and churches, the purchase of official connivance, and the peaceful
conversion of peasant souls were methods as costly as they were slow,
they adopted more drastic expedients. The Committee which was
originally formed at Sofia for the purpose of conducting the
nationalist campaign among the Macedonians has been the dominant
factor in the later developments of the Macedonian problem, and is
directly responsible for all the periodical outbreaks which students
of Eastern politics have been accustomed to look for at the approach
of spring during the last few years. The nature of this Society will
be clearly appreciated from the following document, which sets forth
in unequivocal terms both the Committee's mission and the means
resorted to for its fulfilment.1

1 This document was seized on the Bulgarian conspirators who in the spring of
1901 were arrested at Salonica, tried, sentenced to fifteen years' incarceration at
Rhodes, and permitted to escape a few months after. I obtained a literal translation
of it from an official source at the time, and but for a brief abstract, which has since
appeared in the Gaulois of Paris and been translated into the Hellenismos of Athens
(May 1901), I believe it has never been published before.

416 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

Each armed band to consist of Bulgarians belonging to each particular district.
Their duty is to carry out secretly the orders g^ven by the president of the
committee. /

The bands are armed with weapons furnished by the Committee. These
bands are formed by the revolutionary committees of each district or village, and
receive the military training necessary for their purpose.

These bands depend on the committees, and in their turn distribute arms
among those whom they enrol or gain over to the cause.

These bands are charged by the presidents of the revolutionary committees to
find ammunition, which they are to keep hid, and as these bands obey the presidents
of the revolutionary committees the responsibility of their acts falls on the latter.

The revolutionary committees are bound to observe the following rules :

(1) Wherever there is a propaganda committee, it must work toward the
formation of plots against the State, and make sure, by means of inspections and
examinations, that the instructions of the committees have been Well understood.

(2) Where there are no revolutionary partisans, efforts must be made to rouse
the natives or to form armed bands according to the regulations. In case of
success the president of the Central Committee (at Sofia) is informed, in order to
enlarge the limits of the propaganda, so as to include the new band.

(3) The local committees must endeavour to spread revolutionary ideas among
the natives by means of speeches and enticing promises. The revolutionary agents
employed for this purpose must act in the name of the committee of the district.

The armed bands are placed under the command of the local committees in
accordance with the following rules :

(1) To obey received instructions.

(2) By means of persuasion or intimidation to place new recruits at the com-
mittees' disposal.

(3) To put to death the persons indicated by the committees.

(4) To transfer arms from one place to another so as to enable the committees
to fulfil their mission without fear of being seen, or of attracting the attention of
the local authorities.

(5) Each band, under the command of the revolutionary committee established
in the district, to be ready to raise the standard of revolt on being so ordered by
the local committee, which cannot act except by the order of the president of the
Sofia committee.

(6) The bands, in order to succeed in rousing the natives to rebellion, must con-
form to the following rules :

(a) To draw the people toward them by their good conduct, so that the people
may be ready to submit to sacrifices in time of need.

(6) To drill it into the heads of the people that revolutions always lead to good
results, and in a word to act promptly, and by all means to win over public
opinion to the cause.

(7) To study all the chains of mountains, the passes, and the places which can
offer shelter, and to force by all means the villagers to inform them of what is
going on, and of what they hear around them.

(8) The bands shall also commit political crimes : that is to say, they shall
kill and put out of the way any person who will attempt to hinder them from
attaining their ends, and shall immediately inform the Sofia committee of the
crimes committed.

(9) The instructions of the bands must be kept quite secret, as the least indis-
cretion may lead to great disaster.

(10) The measures taken toward corruption should not be divulged.

(11) The decisions of the committees should be communicated to the bands
through inspectors, who will serve as intermediaries between the bands and the
committees.

1903 THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION 417

(12) Great care must be taken not to let children and women hear anything ;
for these are not equal to the persecution and punishment which the Government
would inflict upon them.

(13) Young partisans have no right to ask indiscreet questions.

(14) In negotiating a difficult question or in repelling the attack of the enemy
two bands may unite, and in the event of such a union the chief of the united
forces will be the chief of the local band. But in any case the order for union
must be given by the president of the committee.

(15) No band is allowed to cross the frontier of its district without the presi-
dent's order, except in case it is pursued or trying to elude the Government forces,
or is engaged in some important and urgent effort to buy over partisans. In
ordinary circumstances no band is allowed to overstep its limits. It is likewise
forbidden to members of various bands to correspond with each other.

(16) Acts of personal vengeance, attacks on villages, and generally all kinds of
unauthorised attempts to raise a revolution are strictly forbidden, and those who
are guilty of such acts will be sentenced to death.

(17) No murder shall be committed by the bands without a previous decision
taken by the committee, except those which are inevitable in an accidental
encounter.

Relations between committees and bands :

(1) The bands carry out the orders of the presidents of the local committees,
and also obey any agent sent by the Central Committee. In the latter case they
must inform the local president of all they have been instructed to do by this agent.

(2) The committees of the various districts carry out the orders given by the
president of the Central Committee at Sofia, and report to him at the end of each
month the doings of the bands under them.

(3) The president of each local committee is obliged to supply with clothes,
arms, provisions, and whatever is necessary, the band under his command. He
must also indicate to it the places of retreat, where it can hide, and he has a right
to order it to do whatever is needful for the accomplishment of the end.

(4) The bands require guides, and, as the presidents of the committees as a rule
reside in villages and hamlets, it is they who must persuade the peasants to help
the bands.

(5) Communications between a band and the president of the local committee
to be carried on either by word of mouth or by writing, according to the special
regulation of the committee.

(6) For the perpetration of murder a written order from the president is
necessary.

(7) The bands must not keep documents about them. They must destroy
them, except the most important, which should be kept in the archives of the
committee.

(8) The local committee settles all disputes that may arise between the chief
of a band and his followers. As for the differences between the committees and
the bands, they are settled by the Central Committee at Sofia, and, if it is only a
simple divergence of opinion, an agent is sent by the Central Committee.

(9) The bands can change place by the order of the respective committees,
but in no case are they allowed to do so without order. As for orders to disperse
and break up, they cannot be given except by the Central Committee.

Composition and administration of the bands :

(1) The bands to consist of five or six persons each.

(2) Each band to have its chief and its secretary, who are nominated by the
Central Committee at Sofia.

(3) The men who compose a band to be young and seasoned to mountain hard-
ships, accustomed to a life of seclusion, and brave, so that they may be able to
perform their tasks.

VOL. UII— No. 313 E E

418 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

(4) They must be intelligent and enthusiastic, that they may be ready to carry
out the orders received.

(6) The youths -who are enrolled in a band to be nominated by the local com-
mittee with the sanction of the Central Committee.

(6) Bands are removed by the local committees.

(7) The bands kill or let off those who fall into their hands after an under-
standing with the local committees.

(8) The bands must not estrange the villagers with wanton exactions. They
must maintain a quiet attitude in the places where they are received.

(9) They must do all they can to gain the confidence of the people and live at
peace with them.

(10) Those who will look after their own personal interests, or who will desert
in case of an encounter, shall be excluded from the band.

(11) Those who may prove guilty of intrigues or ruses will be publicly repri-
manded for their breach of the sacred contract into which they have entered.

(12) In everything the rights of the members of the band are equal.

(13) The conspirators have no right to go and see their relatives or friends
without an order from the presidents of the respective local committees.

(14) They must always keep secret their names, the places they come from, or
those they are going to.

(15) No one^.can leave his band under pretext of joining another, or enlist in
another, without permission from the president of the local committee.

(16) In the event of disobedience the delinquent will be disarmed and put under
restraint.

(17) The arms of the bands belong to the committees, and in case of anyone
quitting his band without an adequate motive, his arms must be delivered to the
committee by the chief.

(18) The secretary directs the correspondence between the bands and the com-
mittees, but always by the order of the chief.

(19) The secretary has also the right to inspect the bands with the chief, and
it is his duty to disseminate revolutionary ideas and to distribute arms among the
people.

(20) All differencesfarising between the people and the bands to be settled in a
friendly manner. Harsh measures must not be employed.

(21) For serious ofiences, such as refusal to mount guard, disobedience to
received orders, insubordination towards the chief, the penalties vary. In certain
cases the punishment is a mission entailing danger of death.

Sentence of death to be pronounced in the following cases :

(1) When one is guilty of disclosure of the intentions of the committee, or of
treason for private ends.

(2) When one deserts during action.
These sentences are carried out on the spot.

The sentence is pronounced by the local committee and confirmed by the
Central Committee. In urgent cases the culprit can be executed without waiting
for confirmation by the Sofia Committee.

A document of this kind needs no comment. But, were a
commentary called for, the Press of Europe and America would
supply abundant material for purposes of illustration. The reports
of the action of the Committee in Macedonia during the last twelve
months alone form a dossier which leaves little doubt to the reader
of average candour that the regulations printed above are not allowed
to remain a dead letter, but that practice goes hand in hand with,
or rather outstrips, precept. The exploits of the Committee and its

1903 THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION 419

brigands in the country may be classed under three heads : extor-
tion, intimidation, provocation.

Under the first head falls the levy of blackmail from wealthy
inhabitants, as well as the collection of a special insurrection-tax from
those who consent to pay and the assassination of those who refuse.
This form of oppression is chiefly directed against the Bulgarian
peasants, who, logically enough, are thus made to pay in advance for
the blessings of independence promised by their would-be liberators.
Another form of extortion practised is the forcing of the villagers to
buy Grras rifles, of which the Committee in some mysterious manner
seems to possess an inexhaustible stock. The alternative, as usual,
is death. Nor are these two considerations the only factors in the
problem with which the hapless peasant is confronted. After having
sold his cattle in order to satisfy the demands of the Committee, he,
as often as not, is pounced upon by the local authorities, who accuse
him of being in league with the agitators ; the result being that he
has to part with more of his property in order to prove his innocence
in a tangible way, which is the only way understood by Turkish
justice. In one word, the Macedonian peasant, who has the mis-
fortune to regard himself as a Bulgarian, finds himself continually
between two equally formidable forces, the Revolutionary Committee
and the Ottoman Government :

Both are mighty;

Each can torture if derided,

Each claims worship undivided.

Whenever the funds derived from these sources fall short of the
requirements of the propaganda, the organs of the latter have
recourse to open brigandage. A victim is selected and, when the
opportunity offers itself, is kidnapped and held to ransom. Miss
Stone, the American missionary of recent fame, was the most illus-
trious of these unconscious martyrs to the cause. Revelations by
prominent members of the Committee itself have since established
the fact, never doubted by those acquainted with the circumstances
of the case and with the eccentricities and the necessities of Slavo-
Macedonian patriotism, that her capture had been planned by the
chief of the secret organisation in Macedonia, who received 2,000^.
out of the ransom, and was carried out by another Macedonian
revolutionary, both acting under the auspices of the Central Com-
mittee at Sofia. A humorous feature was added to the incident by
the fact that, as the plot was carried out on Turkish territory, the
Sultan was expected to be held responsible by the American
Government for the lady's capture and to be made to refund the
ransom ; thus helping to replenish the coffers of an association whose
object it is to overthrow him.

I made Miss Stone's acquaintance at Salonica a few months
before the occurrence, and, as I had just returned from a tour of

420 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

exploration in the interior, I was deeply impressed by her intrepidity
in travelling through districts which I knew to be seething with
agitation and crime. Some of the members of the American
Mission, however, cheerfully assured me that the Bulgarians, their
cherished lambs, were really too nice to be dangerous, and that they
had never molested them ; but, on the contrary, were grateful for
the benefits of Transatlantic culture and evangelical teaching which
the mission bestowed upon them. Experience has proved that this
psychological estimate was somewhat too optimistic.

Since that time several other cases of a similar type have
occurred. The first victim of whose misfortune I received a trust-
worthy report was a Jewish cattle-dealer, kidnapped near Salonica,
the principal city of Macedonia. The brigands demanded an
exorbitant ransom, and, on being disappointed, cut off the prisoner's
head. As the latter was a mere Jew, his death excited no great
sensation. Quite lately (the 29th of September) a Turkish Bey was
carried off from his estate near Vodena, and a ransom of three
thousand pounds is demanded for his release, while some time ago
the capture of an influential foreign vice-consul was planned, but,
fortunately, failed. Thus patriotism is made to support itself.

The Committee, besides trying to maintain its activity by the
methods already described, aims at extending its sphere of influence
by the enrolment of recruits and the extermination of opponents.
Lukewarm Bulgarians, or people who refuse to call themselves
Bulgarians, and generally speaking all Orthodox Christians in
Macedonia, are liable to be pressed into the service, the Com-
mittee displaying a marvellous impartiality as to race, speech, sex,
or age. According to information published in our newspapers
there have recently been many assassinations of such Christians
by the agents of the Committee, in various parts of the vilayets
of Monastir and Salonica, on account of refusals to join the revolu-
tionary rank?, while at Dibra the Bulgarian bishop himself was
obliged for a long time to remain indoors for fear of assassination.
Among this class of victims an attempt is usually made to buy them
over to the cause, and their life is only endangered on their refusal
to be converted. At Petritz I met a highly respectable tradesman
to whom an offer of a monthly pension of six pounds had been made
by the emissaries of the Committee. He declined to accept the
bribe and thenceforth lived in constant fear about his life. But the
greatest sufferers are the Greeks. In the district of Castoria, for
instance, a district mainly inhabited by Greeks, the energies of the
Committee are almost entirely directed against representatives of that
race, priests and teachers being the favourite objects of attack, so that
many of the inhabitants last March were described as having fled
from their homes and flocked into the chief towns of the district.
At Monastir, again, not only the Greek bishop but also the Greek

1903 THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION 421

vice-consul have been threatened with death for lending their
assistance to the authorities in suppressing the agitation. I myself
in the spring of 1901 was introduced to a Greek doctor of Gumendja,
named Sakellariou, who was just recovering from a severe revolver
wound which he had received a short time before. As he was a Hellenic
subject, the authorities exerted themselves, and it was in consequence
of the arrests made on that occasion that an extensive plot was
brought to light, and the important document published above was
seized, among other papers, arms, and revolutionary implements.
Briefly, no prominent Greek, be he physician, schoolmaster, clergy-
man, or merchant, is safe in Macedonia. The scale on which
terrorism is exercised is clearly shown by the fact that the Greek
Legation at Constantinople has not long since informed the Porte
that 150 Greek notables had been murdered by Bulgarians in the
districts of Monastir and Salonica during the last two months.

Cases of wanton massacre, though not so numerous as the atroci-
ties committed with a material object in view, are not uncommon.
The victims in these cases are generally Mohammedans. In the
course of my tour in Macedonia a party of poor telega- drivers and
some other inoffensive followers of the Prophet had been assassinated,
and since then reports have appeared in the press of Mussulman
peasants, men, women, and children, being indiscriminately mur-
dered and afterwards mutilated. The motive of these outrages is
purely to provoke reprisals — that is, a general massacre — and then pose
as the victims of Turkish cruelty and fanaticism, a cry which never
fails to move the nations of Europe to sympathy and their Govern-
ments to intervention. That this is the object which prompts these
deeds of horror is proved by the circumstance that, not content with
murder, the revolutionary agents sometimes break into mosques
and defile the sacred buildings in what has been described as ' a
disgusting manner.' The Committee's efforts to rouse the Turkish
population to acts of vengeance are not wholly unsuccessful. The
Turks have never distinguished themselves by meekness. Though
their fanaticism under normal conditions slumbers, it requires little
provocation in order to wake and assert itself with fierceness in-
tensified by fear. We are, therefore, not surprised to hear that last
April several cases of reprisal occurred in various parts of the country
and that the Mohammedans were eagerly expecting the declaration
of a holy war. That no such thing has happened yet does credit
to Abdul Hamid's sense of self-interest, no less than to his Moham-
medan subjects' sense of discipline.

The Committee, needless to say, is not popular in Macedonia.
Murder, incendiarism, spoliation, and organised blackguardism are
hardly the means for winning the hearts of the people.' With the
exception of a small number of adventurers embarrassed by no
property, principle, or permanent residence, the bulk of the native

422 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

population either maintains a negative attitude or even joins in active
measures of suppression. Indeed, last spring the country people,
•exasperated by the excesses perpetrated by their self -constituted
champion?, took the matter into their own hands and organised
counter-bands with a view to defending themselves. This departure
resulted in a state of reciprocal throat- cutting between the agents
of the revolutionary movement and the inhabitants.

The soul of the Macedonian agitation for many years past has
been Boris Sarafoff, a native of Macedonia, whose name first became
known to the general public of Western Europe in connection with
what his associates euphemistically call the ' Eoumanian affair ' —
in plain English, the shocking murder of Professor Michaelnau,
of Bucharest. He is credited with the ambition of becoming the
dictator of Macedonia, and it has already been shown that in the
prosecution of his design he spares no efforts and no lives. Until
lately this demagogue exercised an autocratic sway over the
deliberations and decisions of the Central Committee at Sofia.
This, however, is no longer the case. At the annual Congress,
held last August, the adherents of Sarafoff refused to recognise
MM. Michailovski and Zontcheff as heads of the Committee, and
on being excluded from the sittings proceeded to form a Committee
of their own.

Nor does the rivalry between the two new Committees stop short
at boastful vituperation. During last summer the Zontcheff party
attempted to strengthen its position in Macedonia by fomenting an
insurrection in the province. Bands, organised in the Principality
and in some cases headed by ex-officers of the Bulgarian army,
were sent over the frontier ; but, once in Macedonian territory,
they found themselves face to face not only with the Turkish troops
but also with their quondam colleagues. Sarafoff's bands on several
occasions came to blows with their rivals, and declared themselves
ready even to assassinate the agents of the Zontcheff Committee,
should that step prove necessary.

This is one, but not the most important, aspect of the Macedonian
Question. Whatever the organisation and the forces of the Com-
mittee may be, it could hardly have become the source of danger
to the peace of South-Eastern Europe, which it is, if it depended
entirely on the efforts of its own members and instruments. In
Macedonia itself there is every reason to believe that the agents of
the Committee enjoy the sympathy and support of the Bulgarian
Exarchate. In so far as the movement serves the cause of Bulgarian
expansion, the interests of Committee and Exarchate are identical.
The rupture between the official Committee at Sofia and Sarafoff s
organisation does not perceptibly affect the Exarchate, whose primary
object is to detach as large a portion of the Slavonic element as possible
from the control of the Greek Church, an object for the attain-

1903 THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION 423

ment of which even SarafofFs watchword of 'Macedonia for the
Macedonians ' can be turned to excellent account. In many instances
the Bulgarian priests play the role of secret political agents. In
the Principality public opinion beyond question favours the Com-
mittee, as is shown both by the open-air meetings held at Sofia and
by the articles which frequently appear in the Bulgarian Press. But
to what extent the Bulgarian Government is guilty of relations -with
the revolutionary leaders is a delicate question, which perhaps had
better remain unanswered. It is sufficient for the present writer's
purpose to call attention to certain facts which can be interpreted in
accordance with the reader's means of information or personal bias.

The attitude of Prince Ferdinand's Government towards the
Committee was last April clearly denned by the semi-official news-
paper La Bulgarie. This journal, while announcing that severe
measures would be adopted against any illegal acts on the part of
the Macedonian agitators, declared that ' no Bulgarian Government
could close the frontier against Macedonians seeking protection.'
On the other hand, we have repeated Notes addressed by the Porte
to the European Cabinets, complaining that, notwithstanding the
assurances given by the Sofia Government, revolutionary bands
continue to be formed in the Principality and to be despatched into
Macedonia, whence, on being defeated by the Sultan's troops, they fly
back to Bulgaria. To these charges the Bulgarian Government has
retorted that the fault lies entirely with the Porte ; that the despatch
of Turkish reinforcements to Macedonia tends to increase the pre-
vailing excitement; and that the Bulgarian Government finds it
impossible to control the Macedonian residents in the Principality,
without taking such measures as might easily be misunderstood.
M. Daneff, the Bulgarian Premier, speaking to a representative of
the Figaro last June in Paris, declared that his country was nowise
responsible for the condition of Macedonia, and that the Powers should
address their reproaches to Constantinople rather than to Sofia.
These statements are, to a certain extent, in harmony with the
repressive measures which the Bulgarian Government has periodically
taken against the Macedonian agitators. In April all suspicious
persons were either kept under observation or were promptly
arrested, while inflammatory utterances and demonstrations were
strictly forbidden. Nay, last September, General Zontcheff himself,
the actual President of the Central Committee, and one of his lieu-
tenants were arrested on the charge of aiding in the formation of
revolutionary bands. Twice this hero was placed in durance vile, and
twice he succeeded with incredible facility in regaining his freedom.

These protestations and actions ought to be sufficient testimonials
of the Bulgarian Government's good faith ; at least so the Bulgarian
Government itself seems to think. But, unfortunately, no one else
shares the conviction. A sceptical world refuses to exonerate Prince

424 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

Ferdinand's Ministers from complicity with, or at all events connivance
at, the Committee's proceedings. The very correspondents who
announced the efforts made by the Daneff Cabinet to prove its good
intentions followed up their reports with the comment that the said
Cabinet protests too much and does too little. Even the dramatic
and repeated arrests of General Zontcheff have failed to dissipate the
clouds of suspicion. With the single exception of some of the
Russian newspapers, which have professed intense astonishment at
the step and expended some ingenuity in trying to account for it,
nobody else has attributed to the event any but a comic import-
ance. The journals of Vienna explained the General's arrest as due
to Prince Ferdinand's desire to give his gallant friend the advertise-
ment which had hitherto been denied him by the Turkish police and
the European Press, and which had been lavished on his opponent.
General Zontcheff had never been treated as a dangerous person !
Perhaps this explanation is too good to be true. A more sober
hypothesis, which has appeared in some of our own newspapers also,
is that Prince Ferdinand was actuated by the anxiety to prove to his
patrons at St. Petersburg that he is a peaceful, law-abiding Sovereign,
fully qualified for a royal crown. But the credibility of this theory
is spoilt by the suggestion that the band which the General was
caught in the act of leading was organised by order of the Govern-
ment. So hard it is to silence the tongues of unbelief.

While Prince Ferdinand and his Ministers entertained themselves
in this fashion, the raids into Macedonia grew more frequent. De-
fenceless Turkish villages were attacked and plundered, and their
inhabitants murdered, and in some cases mutilated. Fantastic
reports were circulated in Europe of fabulous Bulgarian victories
and fictitious Turkish atrocities. Zontcheff proclaimed a universal
insurrection, while Sarafoflf sneeringly denied that there was any
disturbance whatever, and, in a word, confusion became worse con-
founded, until the concentration of an enormous force — according to
authentic reports 300 battalions — by the Porte restored a certain
degree of temporary calm. But while in the act of massing troops
the Porte did not neglect diplomatic steps meant to justify these
military measures. A fresh circular note was addressed to the
Powers, complaining of the inadequate supervision of the frontier by
the Bulgarian authorities and of the fact that the Bulgarian monastery
of Kilo was allowed to be used as the headquarters of the insurgents.
Fresh representations were made by the diplomatic agents at Sofia,
and earnest though fruitless assurances of good conduct were obtained
from M. DanefFs Government. The Porte's complaints do not seem
to have been wholly devoid of foundation. It should be noted that
most of the chiefs of the marauding bands in question are retired or
reserve officers of the Bulgarian army, and that Lieutenant -Colonel
Jankoff, who has recently distinguished himself as promoter of the

1903 THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION 425

abortive insurrection, and whose acts of violence have induced
the representatives of the Powers to address severe admonitions to
the Prince's Government, on his return to Sofia was acclaimed by
people and press as a hero and enjoyed his notoriety unmolested by
the authorities. But what the Bulgarian Government failed to do
seems to have been done by the very people whom the heroic Colonel
was anxious to liberate. A telegram from Salonica, dated the 20th
of October, reported that Jankoff was captured in the vilayet of
Monastir by some Bulgarian peasants, who had declined to have
anything to do with the revolutionary movement. Be that as it
may, no one can accuse the Prince's Government of complicity in
JankofFs misfortunes. The insurrection itself was openly announced
with a flourish of trumpets a week in advance by the Riformi, the
organ of the Macedonian Committee at Sofia, which was also
permitted to placard its office windows with accounts of imaginary
successes obtained by the insurgents over the Turkish troops.
General ZontchefFs sanguinary proclamations on appropriately
coloured paper were posted all over the Principality, and the Central
Committee not long since issued postage stamps with the figure of
Macedonia as a woman in chains and the legend ' Supreme Mace-
donia Adrianopolis Committee.' These stamps were purchased by
patriots and used in addition to the ordinary stamps, the proceeds
of the sale going to feed the insurrectionary movement,

In the face of these and similar circumstances it requires very
robust faith to believe that the Bulgarian Government is a total
stranger to the proceedings of either section of the Macedonian
Committee. The only plausible excuse that has hitherto been put
forward by the Government's apologists is that the Committees are
too powerful and practically beyond the control of the Prince's
Ministers.

In the other Balkan States interested in the Macedonian Question
the Bulgarian movement meets with sincere and unqualified con-
demnation. At the first news of the Bulgarian preparations for a
rising in the spring the Greek Government hastened to warn the
Turkish authorities of the trouble to come. This action, though
neither unintelligible nor unexpected, excited the wrath of the Bul-
garians, who revenged themselves by redoubling their persecution
of the Greeks in Macedonia. In fact, the animosity between Turks
and Greeks might be taken for a lovers' quarrel when compared
with the feelings entertained by the latter towards the Bulgarians.
It is now universally felt among the Greeks that the Turk's rule is
temporary, while that of his successor, whoever he may be, is likely
to prove permanent. This feeling is strengthened by the conviction
that behind the Bulgarian looms the Great Power of the North, the
mortal enemy of Hellenism.

These sentiments are heartily echoed at Bucharest. Analogous

426 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

views are entertained in Servia. But no entente is possible between
that country and the two non-Slav States owing to the peculiar
position of Servia, whose political conscience, like Bulgaria's, is
under the spiritual direction of Eussia. This Power and Austria are
the^two 'paramount parties whose attitude in the Macedonian Question
remains to be considered.

The Balkan policy of these two empires is supposed to be
regulated by the Austro-Eussian Agreement of 1897, by which the
parties concerned are bound to co-operate in upholding the figment
of the diplomatic imagination known as the status quo. This
mutual obligation, however, is not incompatible with unremitting
efforts towards the extension of each Power's influence at the expense
of the other. On the whole the Agreement seems to be taken more
seriously at Vienna than at St. Petersburg, or it would perhaps be
nearer the truth to say that Austria-Hungary is compelled by cir-
cumstances to wink at her powerful partner's doings and save her
own prestige by putting upon them the most favourable interpretation
that they will admit of. There are even those who maintain that
Eussia intends to repudiate the Agreement openly as soon as the
friendly relations which at present exist between her and the two
Slav States, Bulgaria and Servia, are placed on a firmer and more
definite basis. Nevertheless, Austria has refrained from any action
which could justify Eussia in denouncing this compact ; but, on the
contrary, in common with the other Powers immediately interested
in the tranquillity of the Balkan Peninsula, has joined in urging on
the Bulgarian and Turkish Governments the importance of restoring
order in Macedonia.

Eussia's position with regard to the recent disturbances in that
province is not quite so clear. Although the attitude of the Tsar's
Government has been what diplomatists term ' correct,' the language
of the Eussian Press has often been the very opposite. Several
important newspapers have openly counselled independent action on
the part of Russia, and have done their utmost to encourage the
Macedonian agitators. It should be borne in mind that the Press is
not usually allowed in Eussia to air views positively opposed to the
Government's policy, and when the articles in question are taken in
conjunction with the Grand Duke Nicholas's participation in the Shipka
demonstrations, as the Tsar's representative, and Count Ignatieff's
oratorical displays, the only logical conclusion at which the impartial
observer can arrive is that the Eussian Ministers' official utterances
need not bear more than a very remote kinship to their thoughts.
At the same time, it would be an error to assume that the Tsar is
ready to embark on a long, costly, and doubtful campaign, for the
benefit of his 'dear and amiable brother, Prince Ferdinand,' and
his ' dear Bulgarian brothers.' ' Mother Eussia ' is as prudent as she
is tender, and the Bulgarians would probably be doomed to grievous

1903 THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION 427

disappointment if they expect anything beyond sentimental assurances
from the Kussian Press, effusive telegrams from the Kussian Emperor,
and, maybe, financial contributions from the Russian people, at the
present moment.

All these considerations tend to show the difficulties besetting
any solution of the knotty Macedonian problem. That the Turkish
rule is far from ideal or even moderately decent is a proposition no
longer in need of demonstration. That every attempt at shaking off
the yoke renders the latter heavier and more crushing is equally
well known. But these admissions do not bring one any nearer
to a solution. The agitation, sanguinary as it is, cannot claim
to be the spontaneous effort of the people. The inhabitants of
Macedonia are too well aware of their weakness to venture on revolt.
The very name by which the revolutionary movement is known is a
misnomer. Macedonians as a distinct and homogeneous ethnic group
do not exist. What actually exist are a Greek population in the
south of the province, a Slavonic population in the north, a mixed
and debatable congeries of nationalities and dialects in the middle, a
few Wallachs here and there, and Mohammedans sprinkled^every where.
The whole thing strikes the traveller as an ethnological experiment
conceived by demons and carried out by maniacs — not devoid of a
mad sort of humour. Add that the Slavs themselves do not always
know whether they are Servians or Bulgarians, and, if the latter,
whether they are Schismatic or Orthodox, or, if Schismatic, whether
they wish to see the country independent or part of the Bulgarian
Principality, and you have a fairly accurate picture of a state of things
presented by no other part of the globe of equal dimensions. Each
of these races has a national ideal of its own, and though this ideal
may change from time to time, it always remains not only incom-
patible with but violently antagonistic to the ideals of every other
race. These conditions offer a field for ingenious speculation as
tempting as it is rare, and accordingly the nostrums which have at
various times been brought to public notice could easily fill a fair-
sized volume of what might be called ' political pharmaceutics.'
I shall here confine myself to the latest of these recipes.

It has been suggested that a solution of the Macedonian problem
might be reached by the creation of an autonomous province under
a Christian Governor, after the pattern of the Lebanon. But the
analogy is not a very happy one. It is true that the mixture of creeds
and races, and their mutual hatreds, in that district of Syria, are
great. But there the Maronites form an overwhelming majority
which enables them, with comparatively little difficulty, to silence
opposition, whereas in Macedonia no race or sect can claim such pre-
dominance over the rest. Besides — and this, in my opinion, is a
more serious matter — the rival nationalities of Macedonia are each
and all imbued with traditions of the past and hopes for the future,

428 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

utterly foreign to the inhabitants of the Lebanon, whose chief
differences have always been of a simpler nature, such as a firm and
honest Governor could easily settle as they arose. Nor are national
traditions and aspirations negligible quantities. Little as they are
usually considered by hard-headed Northerners, sentimental and
historic factors have a most important share in the practical politics
of Southerners. Further, these nationalities live in contact with
fellow-countrymen and co-religionists who have already partially
realised the common dream, and the proximity of these emancipated
brethren is bound to continue acting as a centrifugal force on the in-
habitants of Macedonia. Indeed, nothing but the iron grip of the
Turk, which their mutual hostility perpetuates, prevents them from
flying asunder. Once this check is removed, the whole mass will
inevitably resolve itself into its constituent elements, each race
being attracted by the nearest State; the Bulgarians will join
Bulgaria, the Serbs Servia, and the Greeks Greece. Nor will such
a dispersion come about without a previous intestine struggle of
proselytism, the horrors of which can easily be conceived, though not
its possible and ultimate proportions. Slavs and Hellenes may con-
sent to live and act peacefully together when sheep and wolves have
forgotten their ancient feuds, when the fish have taken to building
nests in the trees, or when arbitration has entirely superseded war ;
but not before. An independent Macedonian Principality would be
the inauguration of a new state of things worse than the old, and
the remedy would create a disease more dangerous than the one
which it was intended to cure.

Meanwhile the insurrectionary movement, once begun, is not
likely to collapse. The bands, whom the advent of winter has
forced to seek shelter, will at the first approach of spring renew
their operations with greater vigour than ever, if the unusual
activity displayed during the past few months and the impetus lent
to the Bulgarian agitation by the Shipka fetes are any aids to
prognostication. Not that insurrection can by itself produce
anything but additional suffering. The lack of unanimity both
among the inhabitants of Macedonia generally and among the
agitators themselves in particular is a guarantee of failure. At the
same time, the necessary cumulation of Turkish troops cannot but
add enormously to the economic exhaustion of the province and the
various forms of oppression of which the wretched peasants are the
normal victims. A rebellion, even if general and serious, could
only be successful if supported by the assurance of European inter-
vention. But such assurance is not forthcoming. Zontcheff and
Sarafioff and their respective adherents, however, believe that they
can induce Europe to intervene by provoking a massacre, and it is
not at all impossible that their calculations may prove correct.
The Porte is incapable of sustained and vigorous action. Con-

1903 THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION 429

spirators are only caught to be released ; bands in open rebellion
are broken up, but, instead of being pursued and exterminated, are
given every opportunity of reuniting, and the ngitation, like a
Lernsean hydra, grows two fresh heads for each one that is cut off.
This blind policy is attributed partly to the disaffection of the
Turkish troops, who are so badly and rarely paid that they prefer the
peaceable plundering of the rayahs to the perilous extermination
of rebels, partly to the corruptibility of the local officials, who for
similar reasons find it more profitable to wink than to watch.

In the circumstances — despite representations to the Porte by the
Powers and platonic promises of discriminate firmness from the
former, despite like representations to the Bulgarian Government
and like promises from the latter — we dare not hope for the best,
but can only be stoically prepared for the worst.

G-. F. ABBOTT.

NOTE. — The above was written before Count Lamsdorff's tour ; tut this event has
hitherto produced nothing to justify the alteration of a single word in the article.

G. F. A.

430 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

THE RAVEN

II

MY intimate personal acquaintance with the raven dates from 1855,
nearly half a century ago, when I was a boy of fifteen years old, at
Milton Abbas School, Blandford. The circumstances may be worth
relating. I had, for some years, been fond of birds and not merely
in the sense in which Tom Tulliver was ' fond of them' — ' fond, that
is, of throwing stones at them.' Some six miles from Blandford,
between it and Wimborne, at the end of a stretch of open down and
near the park of Kingston Lacy, there stands, on high ground, a
noble clump of Scotch firs, younger and smaller trees outside, older
and bigger within. Eound the clump run several concentric circles
of fosse and rampart, the work of bygone races, British, Eoman,
or Saxon, which give to the whole the name of ' Badbury Kings.'
There, from time immemorial, so tradition said, a pair of ravens had
reared their young, and many attempts had been made without
success to reach their eyrie. The trees selected were too big in
girth to swarm, and the lower branches, for forty feet upward, had
disappeared. The raven, I knew, was the earliest of all birds to
breed, earlier by some weeks than the rook and the heron, which are
the next to follow it.

It was the 24th of February, and the snow lay thick on the ground.
When school was over at noon, I applied for leave to go to Badbury
Kings. My good master, the Rev. J. Penny, after a decent show of
objection — ' the snow was so deep that we could never get there,'
' the tree so hard that we should never be able to climb it,' ' the season
so backward that no sensible raven would be thinking of laying her
eggs yet ' — gave me the necessary permission. I was accompanied
by J. H. Taylor, now of Trinity College, Cambridge. We bought a
hammer and a packet of the largest nails we could get, some sixty
in number and some ten inches long, and we set out on our ex-
pedition ; but, what with the weight of the nails and hammer, and
the depth of the snow, and our losing our way, for a time, near the
halfway village of Spetisbury, v/e did not arrive till half-past three
o'clock. As we approached, we heard, to our delight, the croak of
the ravens, and saw them soaring above the clamp or wheeling round

1903 THE RAVEN 431

it, chasing one another. We entered the clump. There were two or
three raven-like looking nests, apparently of previous years, and we
did not want to assail the wrong one ; so we crouched down and
watched till we saw, or thought we saw, the raven go into one of
them. We crept up and gave the tree a tap, and out the bird flew ;
still, as birds often go into their nests and ' think about it ' some
days before they lay in them, we did not feel sanguine as to the
result.

The tree was just what we had expected, and there was nothing
to be done but to go at it, hammer and nails. It was a task of
delicacy and difficulty, not to say of danger : to lean with one foot
the whole of one's weight upon a nail, which might have a flaw in
it, or might not have been driven far enough into the tree ; to cling
with one arm, as far as it would reach, round the bole, and, with the
other, to hold nail and hammer, and to coax the former into the tree
with very gentle blows— for a heavy blow would at once have over-
balanced me — and then to climb one step upwards and repeat the
process over and over again. The old birds, meanwhile, kept flying
closely round, croaking and barking fiercely, with every feather on
neck and head erect in anger, and often pitching in a tree close by.
It was well that they did not make believe actually to attack me ;
for the slightest movement on my part to ward them off must have
thrown me to the ground. In spite of the exertion, my hands and
body were numbed with the cold. I had taken up as many nails as
I could carry, some six or seven in a tin box tied round my waist,
and let it down with a string, from time to time, to get it refilled by
my companion. As I got higher, the task seemed more dangerous,
for the wind told more, and a slip would now not only have thrown
me to the ground but have torn me to pieces with the nails which
thickly studded the trunk below. At last, the first branch, some
fifty feet from the ground, as measured by the string, was reached,
and the rest was easy.

There are few moments more exciting to an enthusiastic
bird's- nester than is the moment before he looks into a nest,
which he has had much difficulty in reaching, and which may
or may not contain a rare treasure. One can almost hear one's heart
beat ; and to my ' inexpressible delight,' if I may quote the phrase
used in my diary for that night, my first glance revealed that the
nest contained four eggs. It had taken me two and a half hours to
attain to them. Two of the eggs are still in my possession. They
are speckled all over with grey and green, twice the size of a rook's
egg, and perhaps a third larger than a crow's, and if the value one
puts upon a thing depends very much, as I suppose it does, on what
it has cost one to get it, I have the right to regard them as among
my most treasured possessions. The nest was a huge structure,
nearly as big as a heron's, but with larger sticks in it and more com-

432 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

pact and better built. The eggs lay in a deep and comfortable
hollow, lined with fibres, grass, dry bracken, a few feathers, some
rabbits' fur, and, strangest of all, a large portion of a woman's dress,
probably a gipsy's, for in those days, gipsy encampments were com-
mon thereabouts. The descent would have been comparatively easy
except for the darkness, which had come on apace and made it
difficult to find the nails. We did not reach home till nine o'clock
P.M., worn out with cold, hunger, and fatigue, but proud in the
possession of the first raven's eggs I had ever seen.

It may add a touch of interest to the story to mention that
Badbury Rings is identified by Dr. Guest with Mount Badon, the
scene of the great victory of King Arthur, the national hero of the
Britons, over the West Saxons, which delayed the course of their
invasion for some thirty years; and it adds still another touch of
interest to record that there is a version of the 'Passing of Arthur'
which must have been unknown even to Lord Tennyson. The
immortal knight of La Mancha, Don Quixote himself, tells us that
King Arthur did not die, but was changed by witchcraft into a raven ;
that the day is still to come when he will assume his former shape
and claim his former rights ; and that, since that time, no English-
man has ever been known to kill a raven, for fear lest he should
kill King Arthur ! What place could be more appropriate for King
Arthur to haunt during his inter-vital state than the scene of his
great victory, Badbury Rings ? Long may he haunt it ! The raven
has continued to build, with few intermissions, every year since 1856
at Badbury Rings or in the adjoining park of Kingston Lacy, safe
under the protection of its owner, Mr. Ralph Bankes, who will,
doubtless, be doubly anxious to protect it now, when he is assured on
the authority of Don Quixote himself, that the violent death of a
raven on his estate may not only involve — as it has long been held
in the neighbourhood to do — a loss to his family, but also a loss to
the nation at large.

The great German Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, who was
drowned, while on the Third Crusade, in a little river in Cilicia, was
believed, for centuries, by his subjects not to have died at all, but,
like King Arthur, only to have ' passed,' and to be lying in a cave
in the mountains, whence his red beard could occasionally be seen
flashing through the mist, waiting till it should be time for him to
awake and give unity to distracted Germany. Prince Bismarck has
done his work for him ; and I do not suppose that his sleep will ever
now be disturbed. But one incident of the legend must be recorded
here. He wakes from time to time, and asks sleepily ' whether
the ravens are still flying round the mountain.' The answer is
that they are still flying ; and the great Emperor sighs and goes to
sleep again, considering that the time for his resurrection has not
yet come !

1903 THE RAVEN 433

My other ravens' nests I must dismiss more briefly. The next
I found was two years later, in Savernake Forest, while I was at
school at Marlborough. Savernake Forest, take it all in all, is the
finest bit of woodland scenery in England and a very paradise of
birds. A paradise and a sanctuary it would be in one, if it were not
for the near neighbourhood of so many hundred boys. Of this,
however, I should be the last to complain, seeing that nearly every
spare hour of my three years at school was passed within it. It has
every species of game from herds of red and fallow deer to pheasants,
partridges, and rabbits, and, what is more to my purpose to remark,
it is also the happy home — as so many wild tracts of woodland and
noble parks might still be in England — of large numbers of interest-
ing birds of prey, the sparrow and the kestrel hawk, the white
owl and the brown owl, the crow and the magpie. With jays and
jackdaws it literally swarms. Its primaeval oaks or beeches, as they
gradually decay, afford easy boring and nesting room for every
species of climbing bird, the woodpecker, green and spotted, the
nuthatch, the wryneck and the tree-creeper. The kingfisher I have
known to build in its mailpits two miles from running water ; while
small birds which are not common in other parts of England, except
in specially favoured spots, such as the wood wren, the redstart, and
the hawfinch, are not uncommon there. All that seemed requisite
to crown its sylvan glories was a raven and a ravens' nest. Vague
rumours indeed had reached me that a stray raven had occasionally
been heard or seen within the forest ; but, in all my wanderings
hitherto, I had seen or heard nothing of it myself. I started, on a
somewhat forlorn hope, with my friend, now Sir Eobert Collins, on
the 1 1th of March, 1859, and as we neared a clump of splendid silver
firs at the far end of the Forest, beyond the reach of the ordinary
bird's-nester, we heard the croak of a raven, saw it flying, and found
its nest. It contained five eggs, which, in due time, were safely
hatched. For how many years before this the ravens had been
building there, and how many years afterwards they continued to
do so, I know not. I only know that they are not there now.

The next nest was in quite a different, but in an equally ideal
place, near my own home at West Stafford. It was in a wood of old
Scotch firs on Knighton Heath, the same of which I spoke, in my
previous article, as having, within my own knowledge, been the
home, for nearly half a century, of a pair of long-eared owls. It is
the outpost, as it were, of that large expanse of wild moorland and
woodland — brightened in springtime by brakes of gorse and broom and
hawthorn, and intersected by quaking bogs, fragrant with bog myrtle,
and, in autumn, often rich in colour with sun-dew,, and asphodel, and
the flowering rush, and the dark blue bog gentian — which begins
with Knighton or with Yellowham Wood, and stretches away, with
few intermissions, by Wareham, Poole, and Christchurch, through the
VOL. LIII — No. 313 F F

434 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

New Forest, and so right on to Woking or Bagshot. The nearer part
of this wild country, it may interest many to know, is that which
has been made famous by the genius of Mr. Thomas Hardy, under
the name of Egdon Heath.

The tree was the biggest in the wood, looking out upon the
heath, and a few yards below it was a ' silent pool,' half overgrown
with grass and rushes, to which we gave thereafter the name of

Kaven Tarn.

The coot was swimming in the reedy pond,
Beside the water-hen — so soon affrighted ;
And in the weedy moat the heron, fond
Of solitude, alighted.

The moping heron, motionless and stiff,
That on a stone, as silently and stilly,
Stood, an apparent sentinel, as if
To guard the water-lily.

And now, the presence of the raven made the eeriness of the
place complete, and for four months in each of the next five years —
in January, when the old birds began to repair their nest ; in
February, when the eggs were laid; in March, when they were
hatched ; in April, when the young birds, already dressed in their
complete and final plumage, were beginning to find their wings — I was
able, from time to time, to watch the progress made, and put to the
proof the solicitude of the parent birds for each other and for their
young, to admire their aerial movements, and to listen to the
curiously varied intonations of their deep-voiced throats. The
augurs and necromancers of old are said to have distinguished sixty-
five intonations of the raven's voice — a wide field for augural science
or chicanery ; but there are quite enough varieties — his croak, his
bark, his grunt, his chuckle — to attract the ear and call for close
attention. There is no bird whose movements are so varied and
so graceful, especially when the nest is preparing and the cares of
motherhood have not yet begun. They will toy with one another
in mid-air, and often tumble down a fathom or two, as if shot, or
turn right over on their backs in sheer merriment. When the wind
is high, the ' tempest-loving' ravens shoot up in the air like a rocket
or a towering partridge to an immense height, and then, by closing
their wings, drop, in a series of rapid jerks or plunges which they can
check at pleasure, down to the ground. The male bird, while his
mate is sitting, keeps anxious watch over her, and croaks savagely
when any one approaches, or sallies forth in eager tournament
against any rook, or crow, or hawk, or larger bird of prey which
intrudes on his domains. If you can manage to evade his watchful
eye, and enter the wood unobserved, you can sometimes lie down
quite still, in sight of the nest and see all that is going on. You
will see him perch on the very top of an adjoining fir-tree or whet

1903 THE RAVEN 435

his beak, as he is fond of doing, against one of its branches, or fiercely
tear off others and drop them below. You will hear him utter a low-
gurgling note of conjugal endearment, which will, sometimes, lure
his mate from her charge, and then, after a little coze and talk
together, you will see him, unlike many husbands, relieve her, for the
time, of her responsibilities, and take his own turn upon the nest.

The raven always pairs for life, and the strength of affection, the
fidelity, the dignity which this implies seem to me to raise him
indefinitely, as it does the owls, above birds which congregate in
flocks, and so abjure family ties and duties through a great part of
the year. Still more does he rise above birds which choose a new
mate with each new love season or which, like the daintily-stepping
cock-pheasant or the wanton mallard, are polygamous by nature, and
summon with a lordly crow, or cluck, or quack, now one, and now
another, of their humble-looking wives or drudges, to their presence.

The young ravens, long before they leave the nest, are, except in
strength of leg or wing, completely developed both in colour and in
form ; while birds of lower orders have to pass through a long
apprenticeship before they can be said to be perfect in either. A
young robin or a young thrush remain, in appearance, a young robin
or a young thrush for many weeks after they have left the nest ;
while birds like the harrier, the gull, the ganuet, the great northern
diver go, for years, through a very kaleidoscope of changes, before
they can be pronounced to have come of full age. And it is on thin
early maturity of the raven, as well as on his high physical and
intellectual development, that Professor Newton relies, when he
places him at the top of the ornithological tree.

The last raven's nest in which I was specially interested was
farther within the heath country, on the Moreton estate, belonging
to Mr. Frampton, an estate which, by its extent and its beauty, by
its clear streams, by its big fir plantations and its clumps of high
trees on isolated knolls dispersed over the heather, is calculated to
attract not only wading and swimming birds which abound there,
but birds of prey, and, above all, the king of birds, the raven. I was
walking home, late one evening, early in April, regretting that no
raven was now to be seen at Raven Tarn, or in the whole neighbour-
hood, when I heard one single low note which I felt sure must be
that of a raven. I looked up, and could just see him flying high in
air, inward from the sea, and going, as hard as he could go, towards
Moreton. I watched him out of sight, making, as it seemed to me,
right for a clump of firs on a conical hill called Millicent, some five
or six miles ' as the crow,' or as, I might say in this instance, the
raven ' flies ' ; and I was convinced that, at that time of the evening,
he must be going straight to his home, and that, at that time of
the year, his home must be his nest and his little ones. Next day,
I followed, as nearly as I could, in his viewless track, and there, in the

F F 2

436 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

biggest tree of the clump and looking over a wide swamp, was the
raven's nest, and in it five fully-fledged young birds. I managed to
bring one of them safely down in a handkerchief, in my teeth ; and,
for seventeen years afterwards it remained one of the most delight-
ful of our pets and most amusing of our companions at Harrow.

A few words about the raven as a pet. No bird, I think, is his
equal in this capacity, whether we look at his intense sociability, his
queer secretiveness, his powers of mimicry, his inexhaustible store of
fun and mischief. You have never got to the bottom of him. He
is always learning something fresh. No bird has a more elaborate
development of the vocal organs, and no bird, not even a parrot,
makes more use of them. He will catch up any sound which takes
his fancy, from his own name Ealph, or Grip, or Jacob, to a short
sentence, and the latter he will practise, with only a few ' flashes of
silence,' by the hour together. His voice is so human that it has
often been mistaken for a man's. Anecdotes about him abound.
Here is a sample or two of them. One raven, kept near the guard-
house at Chatham, managed more than once to ' turn out ' the guard,
who thought they were summoned by the sentinel on duty. Another,
the favourite of a regiment, of which I used to hear much when I
was young, would walk demurely on to the parade-ground, take his
place by the side of the commanding officer, and, in defiance of mili-
tary discipline, repeat, with appropriate intonations, each word of
command. The stable-yard of a country inn in the olden time, a
brewer's yard in more recent times, formed an excellent ' school for
scandal ' for a pet raven, who would not only learn to imitate all the
sounds made by all the animals or birds which frequented the spot,
but would pick up ' stable language ' or brewing language with a
somewhat objectionable facility. One raven, kept at the ' Elephant
and Castle,' when that famous hostelry was the resort of four-horse
coaches rather than of omnibuses, would take his place in an
outward-bound coach, the observed of all observers, by the side of
a coachman who had won his^- heart, and return in a homeward-
bound coach which he met on the road, by the side of another
favourite Jehu. Another raven, kept at the 'Old Bear' inn at
Hungerford, struck up a close friendship with a Newfoundland dog.
When the dog broke his leg the raven waited on him constantly,
catered for him, forgetting for the time his own greediness, and
rarely, if ever, left his side. One night, when the dog was by
accident shut within the stable alone, Kalph succeeded in pecking
a hole through the door, all but large enough to admit his body.
Another, kept in a yard in which a big basket sparrow-trap was
sometimes set, watched narrowly the process from his favourite
corner, and managed, when the trap fell, to lift it up, hoping
to get at the sparrows within. They, of course, escaped before he
could drop the trap. But, taught by experience, he opened com-

1903 THE RAVEN 437

munications with another tame raven in an adjoining yard, and the
next time the trap fell, while one of them lifted it up, the other
pounced upon the quarry. Wild ravens have, in like manner, been
observed, upon occasion, to hunt their prey in couples.

The strange story of yet another raven I owe, in outline, to
Mr. John Digby, of the Middle Temple, who got it from his friend,
the owner, and saw much of what it relates. A female raven, known
at that time to be sixty years of age, and who had passed much
of her early and middle life with a strange companion, a blind
porcupine, was given, in the year 1854, by Mr. J. H. Gurney,
the well-known ornithologist, to the rector of Bluntisham in
Huntingdonshire. She seemed so disconsolate at the loss of her
surroundings, that her new owner, failing to get another raven,
managed to secure a seagull as her companion. A warm friendship
soon sprang up between the birds. They followed one another
about everywhere, and the raven used often to treat her companion
to pieces of putrid meat which she had buried, for her own
consumption, in the shrubberies. These were delicacies in the
eyes of the raven, but they were not so good for the gull. In course
of time, whether from indigestion or not, the gull fell ill and the
raven became more assiduous than ever in her attentions, never
leaving him and plying him with her most nauseous tit-bit-s. The
gull grew worse, as was, perhaps, natural under the treatment, and
less companionable; and, one day, when he positively refused to touch
a more unsavoury morsel than usual which the raven had denied to
herself, and, doubtless, thought to be a panacea, the raven, in a fit of
fury at the ingratitude of her patient, fell upon her friend, killed it,
tore it to pieces, and, burying half of it for future consumption,
devoured the rest.

We know little enough of our own hearts, still less of one
another's, but how infinitely less do we know of the animals who are
our most constant companions, most of all, of our pet birds ! Such
intense affection, followed by such uncontrollable rage at a fancied
slight, one may have known in man, but who would expect it in a
raven ? Was it a reversion to type, to original savagery, just as a
Negro, apparently civilised and Christianised, has been known, on
returning to the Niger coast, within a year, to go back to his human
sacrifices and cannibalism, or as the Fuegians described by Darwin,
who, after a long visit to England, reverted, after their return to their
native land, to their old customs, the eating of putrid whale blubber,
and the suffocating of their old women ? Or was it a crowning proof
of love, such as is given by some animals to their young, when they
think they can save them in no other way, or by such savages as
those described by Herodotus, who thought it was the basest in-
gratitude not to kill and eat their aged parents ? We know not ; but
any bird which has a nature so inscrutable, so passion-ravaged,

438 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

capable of such fierce extremes and such violent revulsions of feeling,
possesses a personality of its own, and has that within it, from which
a whole Greek tragedy, nay, a second Medea, might be well evolved.
It should be added that the bird was still living in 1874. At that
extreme age, she bethought herself, for the first time, of making a
nest on the ground, in which she laid some eggs, all of which she
soon afterwards devoured.

Of course, a tame raven is an arrant thief, and if you let him
loose you must expect to pay for your amusement. Anything bright
especially attracts him. A butler who had lost spoon after spoon, and
had thrown the blame upon everyone but the real offender, at last
saw Kalph with the proverbial ' silver spoon in his mouth,' watched
him sneak off to the hole which served him for a savings bank, and
found therein not only the spoon which he had missed, but others
which he had not. The bank, on this occasion, paid compound
interest on the deposit.

One of my own tame ravens, a native of Eaven Tarn, had the run

of a stable-yard, of a garden, and of a field — in fact, pretty well also of

the whole of the adjoining village of Stafford ; and no small boy,

home for the holidays, for the first time, from school, could prove a

greater imp of mischief than he. He led the pigeons, the ducks, and

the hens of the stable-yard a sad life ; but he gave the cocks a wide

berth, except when they were busy fighting, and then he would

attack them in safety and with perfect impartiality, from the rear.

When a favourite cat was walking demurely and daintily across the

yard, Jacob, with a few quiet sidelong hops, would come up behind,

his head also on one side, as always when meditating mischief, give

her a sharp nip in the tail, and testify his delight at the panic he had

created by a loud croak. He had private stores everywhere of sticks,

bones, buttons, nails, thimbles, and even halfpence, some of which

were not discovered till after his death, and then chiefly by his

namesake, and successor, and residuary legatee. If you ever noticed

him putting on a particularly nonchalant air, you might be quite sure

he had some stolen treasure in his mouth which he was particularly

anxious to stow away unobserved. He was the friend of everyone in

the village, but the marplot of all who had any work to do in it.

Did he see the gardener bedding out, with especial care, any particular

plant, he would select it for his especial attention, as soon as the

gardener's back was turned. Did he see a labourer in the allotment

' setting ' a row of his beans, as soon as he was gone, the raven would

follow in his footsteps, dig them up one by one, and drop them, one

on the top of another, into a hole of his own. Did a well-dressed

man, something perhaps of a dandy, drop a new lilac kid glove, the

raven would be off with it in a moment, dodge all his pursuers, and,

the moment the pursuit slackened, would begin to pick it to pieces

and would continue his work, each time the pursuers halted for

1903 THE HAVEN 439

breath, till it was a thing of shreds and tatters. He would follow
me about for a walk of a mile or so, and if he happened to meet a
dog, there was a great show of excitement and fury on both sides ;
but each had too much regard for his own safety to come to close
quarters. It was a case of cave corvum quite as much as of cave
canem.

Most villages in Dorset — as is, I suppose, the case in other
counties —have at least one happy or unhappy imbecile, living
among them who — such is the kindliness of the people — is almost
always the village pet rather than the village butt. The raven
soon detected the weakness of the Stafford imbecile and would
demonstrate around him and make vigorous attacks on his legs
whenever he passed through the yard. He showed similar insight
and contempt for intellectual weakness, when I kept him for a
term or two in the gardens of Trinity College, Oxford. The son of
the gardener, who helped his father in the more mechanical part of
his work, happened not to be strong in his mind. The raven
instantly recognised the difference between them, and while he never
molested the father in his work, he never left the son alone in his.
Sometimes he would fly up to my window while I was giving a
lecture, it may be on some Greek play, to my pupils, and would
interpolate remarks which, if they were a sore interruption to the
lecture, seemed often quite as much to the point as some of the
remarks of the Chorus, through which we were painfully labouring.
He was quite impervious to rain or frost or snow. When the snow
was deep on the ground, he would play in it or roll over in it like a dog.
He chose for his roosting-place the ridge of a thatched wall in a very
exposed place in the allotments, and stuck to it through all weathers.
Pets usually come to a sad or premature end. Waterton's pet
raven, Marco, perished from a blow of one of his best friends, an
angry coachman, on whom, in a moment of play or of excitement, he
had inflicted a sharp nip. So sharp and strong is a raven's beak that
he can hardly ever touch the hand without bringing blood and
cutting rather deep. Dickens's pet raven ' Grip,' developed an
' unfortunate taste for white paint and putty,' and died of. the slow
poison, as is narrated in Dickens's own preface to Barnaby Rudge and
at greater length in his Life by Forster. My pet raven, ' Jacob,' met
with the most ignominious and unworthy fate of all. He either
walked or slipped into a barrel of liquid pigs'-wash and was found by
me therein. An open verdict of ' found drowned ' was all that could
be said about him.

Another pet raven from Millicent Clump could not be allowed
such unfettered liberty at Harrow, as he might have had in his native
air of Dorset. He was kept in a large aviary where, if his oppor-
tunities for mischief were less, his progress in language was greater.
His own name ' Jacob ' and that of the gardener, ' Holloway,' he

440 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

would repeat in half-a-dozen different tones. ' Come on ' he would
say, now in a commanding, now in a hectoring, now in a persuasive
tone, and, now again, in the most confidential of whisper?. This last
was a great effort. He would bend his body right down to the perch
on which he stood, open his wings, and every feather in his body would
stand erect or would move in sympathy with it. But his pleasure
was in proportion to his pain. He loved, as a clever parrot does,
to call forth a peal of laughter, and though he could not laugh
himself — it was almost the only human achievement that he did not
attempt — his eye showed that he knew all about it. ' How's that ? '
' Out,' was a question and answer which he picked up for himself
from a cricket-yard at some little distance. A bad cough, which I
had, he managed to imitate so well that people who passed down the
adjoining lane thought it inconsiderate of me to expose a gardener
who had such a hacking cough to all weathers in my garden. He
was a capital ' catch.' Blackberries thrown to him — as boys throw
a ball to one another when practising themselves at ' catch ' — he
would manage to intercept, whether thrown high or low, quickly or
slowly, from his central perch, by a dexterous movement of his neck and
beak, without ever shifting his position, and hardly ever missing one,
even on its rebound, when thrown against the opposite wall of the cage.
Morsels of food given to him he would pack, one after the other, into
the expansive skin of his lower mandible, till it was puffed out like a
pouch ; and he then would look at you with a queer and knowing
' where-are-they-all-gone-to ?' sort of expression. When he had given
you time to guess, he would gravely reproduce them, one after the
other, and proceed to hide them in various parts of his cage, patting
them down under sand or stones or rubbish of any kind, and then
again would disinter them as quickly as children do a doll which
they have buried in their play, with a genuine evprjtcc look. The
key of his cage-door, if it were left open by chance, he would whip
out in a moment, and hide it in his very best hiding-place, and
visibly enjoy the trouble he gave you in looking for it. He pecked a
small hole into the next compartment of the aviary, in which I kept,
sometimes an eagle owl, sometimes a kestrel hawk ; and it was
his supreme delight to filch away a bit of food which the owl or the
kestrel, in their comparative stupidity, sometimes left near it. One
day, the kestrel himself, in a moment of forgetfulness, came too
near the hole. The raven caught him by the leg ; and it was soon
all over with him.

It may be well, before I close, to say a word or two upon the
thoughts that men have had about the raven. How is it that, while
some nations appear to regard him with affection , with respect, with
religious veneration, others look upon him with fear, with hatred,
with disgust ? How is it that, in some latitudes, he is sacrosanct,
in others, an outlaw and an ogre ? A prophet may be a prophet of

1903 THE RAVEN 441

either good or evil, and the raven has been almost universally
regarded as a prophet of evil. Is it best to propitiate or to ignore
and defy him? When observed by the Eoman augurs he was
generally on the left hand ; and he not only foresees evil, he gloats
over it, he helps to bring it on. Danger and disgrace, disease and
death, are to him the breath of his life. In them he holds a ghastly
revelry. Like the splendid personification of Death itself in Paradise
Lost, he can sniff them from afar. He hovers over a house in which
there is to be a death, even before the disease, which is to be its
precursor, has appeared. He is on the field of battle, ready for
the feast, long before the carnage has begun. His mysterious,
his uncanny powers, his means of avenging himself for a wrong,
do not cease with his life. The enchantress Medea, when she is
mixing a life-potion by which to restore, in defiance of the Fates,
her aged father to the bloom of his youth, drops into the caldron,
like the weird sisters, first the most potent herbs and simples of
her country, then the bones and body of an owl, then some slices
of wolf, and, last and best of all, the head and beak of a raven
who had seen nine generations of men pass away. The medicine
man, among the North American Indians, is said, when he is peering
into the future, to carry on his back three raven-skins with their
tails fixed at right angles to his body, while on his head he wears
a split raven- skin, so fastened as to let the huge and formidable
beak project from the forehead.1 In Sweden, it was long believed
that the ravens which croaked by night in the forest swamps and
wild moorlands were the ghosts of murdered persons, whose bodies
had been concealed there by their undetected murderers, and had
not received Christian burial. Beliefs like these have often given a
partial protection to the raven in countries where he most needed
it. People, like the Highlanders, who are quite willing that others
should kill the raven, are not often willing to kill one themselves.
Others, who would on no account shoot a raven, are willing to put
down a strychnined egg for him, leaving him to be, as they flatter
themselves, the agent of his own destruction. 'Wickedness pro-
ceedeth from the wicked, but my hand shall not be upon thee.'
To this day, in England, the prosperity of many a great family
is supposed to depend upon the safety of the raven which has
deigned to make his domicile under its protection. If he meets
a violent death, a member of the family is sure to die within the
year.

Is it true or not true — another curious and current belief — that
the raven lives to an immense age, some say to a hundred or even to
three hundred years ? Old Hesiod is the father of the belief, and he
is supported, more or less, by a host of ancient writers, the elder
Pliny, Cicero, Aristophanes, Horace, Ovid, and Ausonius. Popular
1 N. Stanley's British Birds, p. 187.

442 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

opinion in modern times quite agrees with them, as expressed in the
Highland proverb, somewhat modified from Hesiod :

Thrice the life of a dog is the life of a horse,
Thrice the life of a horse is the life of a man,
Thrico the life of a man is the life of a stag,
Thrice the life of a stag is the life of a raven.

There cannot be so much smoke without some fire behind it ; and
I am inclined to think that a raven does live to a great age for a
bird, and that Horace's epithet for the raven, annosus, and
Tennyson's ' many- wintered crow' are justified by facts. But the
belief in its extreme age rests, I suspect, on one of its most touch-
ing characteristics, its intense hereditary attachment to the spot, a
particular cliff, a particular grove, a particular tree, where its ances-
tors, where itself, and where its young have been born and bred. The
most striking instance that has come within my own knowledge was at
the home of my own grandfather, the Down House, Blandford. In
a fine clump of beeches in a plantation named Littlewood, in the middle
of the down, a raven used to build year after year. Year after year,
the hen bird was shot upon the nest by an insensate gamekeeper ;
and, year after year, the male bird came back with a new mate to
share her predecessor's fate ; at last, the male bird was shot as well,
and the gamekeeper thought that he had done with them for ever.
But a fresh pair, doubtless birds of the same stock which had been
hatched there safely before the reign of the blood-thirsty game-
keeper had begun, came next year and shared the same fate. Since
then, the place knows them no more.

The same spirit of local attachment, I have repeatedly observed,
brings a pair of ravens, which, for some reason or other, have forsaken
a former home, to revisit it. Flying high in air over it, they drop,
as it were, from the clouds upon it, perch upon the favourite trees,
and outdo themselves, while there, in their garrulity, chattering, as
is probable in so intensely conservative a bird, if not of Elijah and of
Odin, at all events of the good old times which they have themselves
known. Now it is probable, I think, that it is this local attachment
of a pair of ravens to a particular wood or tree which has given rise to
the belief that the raven is a very Nestor among birds, a Nestor in
age, as well as in wisdom and eloquence. Two or three generations
ago, a ' raven-tree,' ' the pest or the pride of the village,' it might be
called according to the point of view, could be pointed out in many
spots, in almost every county in England. The oldest inhabitant,
a man perhaps of eighty or ninety years, could not ' mind ' the time,
nor his father before him, no, nor his father again before him, he
would say with honest pride, when ' the raven ' was not there. He
must therefore be older than himself, as old, probably, as his grand-
father, his father, and himself put together !

But if the raven has been a bird of evil repute and has had a

1903 THE RAVEN 443

bad time of it in many parts of Europe, it has been quite otherwise
in Scandinavia and its dependencies; for there the raven was the
sacred bird of Odin, his spy, his messenger, his pioneer, his minister
for war all in one. The banner of those ' kings of the sea ' was itself
made in the shape of a raven, and was so constructed that when a
fresh breeze bellied it, it looked as if the raven was fluttering its
wings for flight ; and surely, no banner that was ever borne before a
conquering host, not the Labarum of Constantine, not even the
Crescent of the Saracens, not the Cross of the Crusaders, nor the
Oriflamme of the French, carried such terror with it, as did the raven
of the Norsemen among those on whom he was to make his fatal swoop.
But happily the raven-standard did not always lead its followers to
victory ; and the capture of one such standard was a turning point in
the fortunes of the English nation and of the best and greatest of
English kings. Ragnar Ludbrog, a famous sea-king, was believed
to have been stung to death by serpents, in the dungeon of the
Northumbrian king, ^Ella, who had taken him prisoner. His sons
swore to avenge him by conquering England, and his daughters
managed to weave, in one noontide, the mysterious ' Raefan ' or raven-
standard, which was to accompany them, and to help and to witness
the conquest. Did it appear to flap its wings as they marched into
battle, it was a sure omen of victory. Did they hang listlessly by
his side, it was a sure presage of defeat. The fortunes of Alfred the
Great were in that year, the year 898, at their very lowest. England
had been reduced by the Danes to Wessex ; and Wessex had shrunk
to the Isle of Athelney. The first battle was fought in North Devon.
Whether the raven flapped or drooped his wings, the Saxon Chronicle
does not tell us ; but 890 of the warriors who followed it were slain,
and the raven itself was captured. The good news put fresh heart
into the faithful few who had clung to their king in his distress.
He burst forth from his island fastness, and the capture of the
raven was soon followed by the crowning victory of Ethandun, by
the surrender and baptism of Guthrum and his follower!?, and by the
Peace of Wedmore. Wessex was saved, and, through Wessex,
England.

One more appeal, as in the case of the owls, to those who love, or
who are capable of loving, what is wild in nature, and I have done.
Cicero tells us that, after the wholesale plunderings of Verres in Sicily,
the duty of the guide who took you over a town which had formerly
abounded in the richest treasures of Greek art was no longer to show
you those treasures, but only mournfully to point to the places in
which they had once been. So is it with the ravens. The ' oldest
inhabitant ' of a village here and there may still point, with pride
and pleasure, to a raven clump or a raven tree ; but where now are
the ravens ? Sir Thomas Browne, writing of ravens in Norfolk two
hundred years ago, said, ' Eavens are in great plenty near Norwich ;

414 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

and it is on this account that there are so few kites there.' And, as
late as 1829, another observer in Norfolk says, ' This bird is found in
woods in every part of the county' 2 Now there are none at all.
They have followed the way of the kite. Mr. Hudson was told by
the old head keeper on the forest of Exmoor where ravens surely
could do little harm, that, a quarter of a century ago, he trapped
fifty-two ravens in one year. What wonder that now there is not
one to be heard there ? In Dorset, besides those spots which I have
known, in my own time, to be tenanted and afterwards abandoned by
ravens, I have ascertained that a generation or two ago they still built
in Sherborne Park in one of the noble Scotch fir-trees planted there
by Pope, and in Bryanston Park, on Eempston Heath and Bloxworth
Heath, in Came Park and on Gralton Common, at Milton Abbey and
Buckland Newton, in the Coombe of Houghton and the Coombe of
Bingham's Melcombe, and — perhaps the most fitting place of all —
on the ruins of Corfe Castle, just as they once built on OHastonbury
Tor, in the adjoining county of Somerset. What would not Corfe
Castle and Glastonbiiry Tor gain in impressiveness, if there were
ravens there still ? If only they were to be strictly protected, as
they always have been at Badbury Eings, they might, owing to that
strong hereditary local attachment which I have described, be, even
now, drawn back to some of their ancestral homes.

' The raven,' says the author of Birds of Wiltshire,5 ' is no mean
ornament of a park, and speaks of a wide domain, and large timber,
and an ancient family ; for the raven is an aristocratic bird and can-
not brook a confined property and trees of young growth. Would
that its predilection were more humoured and a secure retreat
allowed by the larger proprietors on the land.' The great landowner
is, in my opinion, not so much to blame, except for the easy-going
laissez-faire which allows him to put a gun into the hands of an
unobservant, illiterate, and often blood-thirsty gamekeeper, and leaves
him to do exactly what he likes with it. A great landowner does,
as a rule, take some pride in ' showing ' a fox whenever it is wanted.
A heronry, if he is happy enough to possess one, he regards as the
crowning glory of his park, even if the herons do make free with the
inhabitants of his waters. He likes to hear that a rare bird is to be
seen on his estate, and he will sometimes tolerate, perhaps even
rejoice at, the presence of an otter in his osier-beds, or of a badger
in his sandy hills. It is the non-resident ' shooting tenant,' or
worse still, ' the syndicate of shooting tenants,' who are the arch-
enemies of all wild life. A shooting tenant has, with few marked
exceptions, hardly any bowels of compassion for anything but his
game. A * syndicate' has none at all. A shooting tenant, of course
with the same exceptions, values his land only for the head of game

- Birds of Norfolk, by H. Stevenson, p. 257.

3 Quoted by Mr. Hudson in his Birds and Man, p. 119.

1903 THE RAVEN 445

that lie can get out of it, and visits it, chiefly or only, when the time
for the battue has come. He pays his gamekeeper so much per head
of game, and the gamekeeper makes it his business to destroy
everything that is not game.

Under these sinister influences many of our most interesting
birds and animals are ceasing to exist. The bustard and the bittern,
owing to the increase of the population and the reclamation of the
fens, are things of the long past. The buzzard, the harrier, and the
peregrine falcon are becoming rarer and rarer. The fork-tailed kite is
as dead as Queen Anne. The Cornish chough is nearly as extinct as
the Cornish language. The principle of a preserve for interesting wild
animals, such as would otherwise be extirpated, has been established
by the Americans, on an extensive scale, in the Yellowstone Park.
It has been secured by the British Legislature, thanks chiefly to
the exertions of Mr. Edward N. Buxton, in a part of Somaliland and
elsewhere in Africa ; and a similar preserve, on a small scale, which
might be well extended to the New Forest, has been set apart by the
Crown, in Wolmer Forest in Hampshire. No tribute could be more
appropriate to the memory of Gilbert White, none would have given
him more pleasure, than the consecration in perpetuity of a region
through which he so often wandered, to the wild animals and birds
which he so keenly loved.

But why should not every large estate, if its owner be resident
upon it, as is still happily the case in most parts of England, and if
he have any love for real wild life, become, in itself, a sort of sanctuary ?
There is a balance in nature which man never transgresses but at
his cost. Witness it, the wholesale destruction of owls and hawks,
and the portentous increase of rats and mice. There is a principle
of ' live and let live,' which enlightened self-interest no less than
the public good, sentiment no less than reason, demand. There
may be as much game on an estate as any true and moderate
sportsman can desire ; but is there not also room in it for the wild
swoop of the sparrow-hawk, for the graceful hovering of the kestrel,
for the solemn hoot of the owl, for the harsh scream of the jay, for
the cheerful chatter of the^ magpie and the jackdaw ? And among
all the birds which charm the ear with their resonant cries, the eye
by the beauty of their form, their colour or their flight, the
historic imagination by the memories of the long past which are
bound up with it, the raven, if only he can be induced to revisit and
inhabit again the home of his ancestors, will always deserve the fore-
most place.

K. BOSWORTII SMITH.

44G THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

REINCARNA TION

FOR some years past intellectual Westerns have sought to expound
to the West this essentially Eastern doctrine. Presumably deriving
their knowledge from Brahminical philosophy, they have enunciated
the basic principle of this ancient belief and speculated upon its far-
reaching influence upon Hindu thought, Hindu religion, even Hindu
art. But one thing they have forgotten, or, remembering, have
doubted their capacity to depict — the effect of this doctrine upon
Hindu conduct; upon the daily life of the Hindu, prince and
peasant alike. Kesignation under the cruellest afflictions in the
hope of improvement in a life to come ; alien domination for seven
long centuries ; millions swept away by plague and pestilence and
famine — the history of India for seven long centuries is a living
proof of the practical belief of her people in reincarnation. How
could Westerns read that proof, though it be written in letters of
fire?

Perhaps an exposition of that belief by a Brahmin not un-
acquainted with both East and West might be deemed pertinent.

It is a common opinion in the West — to some extent fostered by
the writings of Mr. Kipling — that the ways of the Hindu are
mysterious ; that his motives of conduct are inscrutable ; that it is
impossible to predict under any given conditions how a Hindu would
act. As against this common Western belief, the writer of this
article seeks to prove that with one exception (to be mentioned here-
after) the ways of the Hindu are as clear as a crystal brook ; that, of
all people in the world, his motives of conduct can always be known
to a certainty; that under any given conditions it is as easy to
predict his course of conduct as to foretell that a stone thrown up
into the air will surely return to earth ; in fine, that the Hindu is
the exact antithesis of what he is supposed to be — that his rules of
conduct are as clearly defined as the laws of gravitation.

(1) The Hindu is nothing if not religious. His religious frame
of mind has been at once his greatest fault and his greatest virtue.
As an example of the former, it stopped the political development
of his country since the days of Manu. The Roman, intellectually
his inferior, outstripped him in the race for political progress ; for

REINCARNATION 447

he had learnt early to separate religious laws from the principles
of political science. The Hindu had not ; hence his subsequent
political stagnation. On the other hand, his religious instincts have
made him the one man whose practice is identical with his belief.
Nay, more; in religious principles he is the one catholic in the
world. If he sees a beautiful idea in any religion whatsoever, he
forthwith adopts it into his own and carries it into practice in his
daily life. The Sermon on the Mount probably contains the noblest
ideals known to man. The present writer, though a Brahmin, has
no hesitation in admitting that, especially because the one ' Christian '
he has ever met who actually practised those ideals was a ' heathen.'
He was a young student in the Calcutta University who had read the
Bible in the course of his English studies, and, reading it, had
adopted the maxims of the Sermon as the teachings of a great rishi.
Then, one day, being struck on the left cheek by a fellow student
in a moment of anger, he meekly turned to him the right, saying
nothing. Such is the practical religion of the Hindu.

(2) As regards his daily life, he has only two leading principles
upon which his entire conduct depends — the doctrines of reincarna-
tion and of karma. The latter it is not necessary to define ; it is
equivalent to the Christian maxim ' as thou hast sown, so shalt thou
reap.' The former is more subtle. Yet, comparing it with the
basic principle of Christianity, the difference between them is not so
great as it seems; certainly not essential. Christianity indeed
allows man but one life of probation in which to be saved or lost ;
the Brahminical doctrine of reincarnation several. But in either
creed it is the sum total of good deeds that must save. In Christianity
the probation lasts a portion of a century ; in Brahminism several
centuries. In the former, the actual moment of death is all-
important ; in the latter that moment is only like the moment of
sleep ; there is a new day after it. Yet in Brahminism also there is
a final death ; only it comes at the moment of attaining perfection,
after centuries of expiation, if need be. If then we compare this
belief with the doctrine of purgatory in the Church of Kome, or with
the general Protestant belief that hell is not eternal, there remains
very little essential difference between the basic principles of
Brahminism and Christianity.

(3) The Hindu does not believe that every man will necessarily
be re-born as one of the lower animals. The sinner may be, as a just
retribution ; but even he not necessarily. Similarly, the just man
may not necessarily re-appear as a still juster man. In either case,
the Hindu does not limit the forms which the soul of man may
take in its successive migrations. All that is essential to the
doctrine is that in the case of the sinner the next form will be lovjer
in moral perception, in the case of the just man higher ; but the
exact nature of the form the Hindu does not profess to know.

448 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

For instance, in the higher grade there may be a state inter-
mediate between man and ' angel ' (defining angel in the Christian
sense) ; more than man, less than angel ; may be, not must be. One
just man may pass through the intermediate state ; another, higher
in merit, leap above it. In any case, this state is not necessarily to
be identified with that of the spirit world of popular imagination ;
beings in that state may or may not have power to manifest them-
selves to us ; the Hindu does not profess to know which. All that
is essential to his belief is that in the higher grade various souls
will pass through various higher stages, whatever those stages be,
each according to its merits. And even as ' angels ' may fall, so also
may a soul in such eminence. But even then it would not be lost
for ever, as Lucifer was lost, according to Christian teaching. Its
trials would only be increased by that fall ; perhaps, if the sin be very
great, it would be set back several avatars. And even if it falls
repeatedly, there would always remain the possibility of repentance.
Nay, most Hindu thinkers believe that the usual lot of a soul is to
pass through such a vicissitude, rising and falling, but rising on the
whole, like the Himalayas from the plains of India, the summit of
Gaurisankar being the perfection that is nirvana ; only the most
favoured soul can attain nirvana by a continuous rise. And the
Creator alone must judge the moment when perfection is attained,
applying a test far higher in the case of the soul thus favoured than
in that of the average one that has risen and fallen. For even as the
Christian, so also does the Hindu believe that the merit of each soul is
to be judged by the light it has received, not by the Divine standard of
perfection itself. Thus again do Brahminism and Christianity meet.

Bearing these principles in mind, the motives of conduct that
rule the daily life of the Hindu should not be difficult to understand.
Even as the Christian has two main commandments (to love God
above all things and his neighbour as himself), so also has the Hindu
these two doctrines of reincarnation and karma for his daily
guidance. The perfect Christian is commanded to love his neighbour
' as himself.' The ideal Hindu has to obey exactly the same law in
the doctrine of karma. In any given case if his own interest be
in conflict with that of his neighbour, he is morally bound to forego
the seeking of his interest ; in fine, if he would be perfect, he must
consider not merely himself but his neighbour likewise. In connec-
tion therewith one could hardly do better than quote some of the
Hindu maxims of conduct from a book recently published, and
written by an Indian Prince : 1

Blessed is he that wipes away the tears of others ; for his own tears shall be
wiped away.

Blessed is he that, seeking his own just happiness, gives up that search because

1 The Romance of an Eastern Prince. (Grant Eichards.)

1903 REINCARNATION 449

of the pain it might inflict upon another ; for even in the hour that he has
abandoned his search he shall have found it.

Blessed is he that, lying on his death-bed, finds the sum total of happiness he
has brought to the world to be greater than the sum total of pain he has inflicted
upon the world ; for the balance shall be given back to him. multiplied a thousand-
fold.

Then as maxims of conduct for those that seek a yet greater
perfection :

If a bee sting you, and you in anger close your hand upon it to crush it, then
I say unto you : open your hand and let the bee go. What is the pain of the
sting to the life of the bee ? The life is all that the bee has. If you can but kill
it or let it go, it behoves you to let it go.

If a murderer come to kill you with a drawn sword, and you have a pistol in
your hand and raise it to shoot him dead at your feet, then I say unto you : cast
away the pistol and let the murderer kill you. For then your soul, which is in
grace, will find rest ; but if you kill the murderer, who already has sin in his
heart, his soul will burn in fire.

How like the Sermon on the Mount ! Thus again do Brahminism
and Christianity meet in the highest perfection !

There is, however, one difference — not indeed between Brahmin-
ism and Christianity, nor between the perfect Hindu and the perfect
Christian, but between the average Hindu and the average Christian.
The Hindu, because of his intense religious tendencies, tries to practise
most of the principles of the doctrine of karma; the average
Christian seldom tries to carry out the sublime precepts of the Sermon
on the Mount. Consider the case of even the reprobate Hindu. There
never has been known an instance of a Hindu consciously dying what
Christians would call an ' unhappy death.' Imagine a hardened repro-
bate, sinning up to the last, accumulating crime upon crime. Then
the moment he sees the hand of death upon him and realises the inevit-
able decree of fate, that instant his whole mental attitude changes.
' In this life I have been a failure,' he confesses in his inmost heart.
' I shall try to do better in the next ; shall accept the pain awaiting
me.' Such a frame of mind is not far distant from the Christian
notion of repentance, though it be but a death-bed repentance.
Even in these fallen days notorious dacoits or commonplace murderers
may be seen in India walking to the gallows in calm dignity. ' Mere
apathy,' says the average English spectator, scanning the immobile
face. ' Stoic indifference,' perhaps comments his more intellectual
brother, noting the steadfast eye. ' Christian resignation,' answers
the Brahmin, reading the inmost heart.

If such be the case of the reprobate, what shall we say of the
average Hindu, one who is neither saint nor confirmed sinner?
Secretive, mysterious, uncommunicative indeed to the European ;
for the European in India has little of human sympathy in his
make, little desire or capacity to make friendship that leads to

VOL. LIII— No. 313 G G

450 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

the communion of minds and hearts. But what is the average
Hindu in his dealings with his neighbour ? Even this : an ideal
* Christian,' save in one thing — where the interests of his loved ones
are at stake. Then the saintliest Hindu becomes a sinner. He
would see the whole world go to ruin if thereby he could bring
happiness to his loved one — be it parent or child, wife or mistress.
From his earliest childhood the Hindu is taught one practical virtue :
to love his own people. Keverence for parents, love for brothers
and sisters, constitute his chief moral training in his youth ; from
that, the love for wife and child follows in the course of nature. It
becomes the keynote of his external conduct. If he falls, it is for the
love of them. Even if his love be illicit, from it there spring the main
motives of his conduct, good or evil.

The European that understands this will find no such ' mystery '
in the ways of the Hindu as Mr. Kipling has sought to imply in his
writings. There are exceptions to everything, but usually let him
try to understand Hindu conduct, in the first instance, by the
doctrines of reincarnation and karma. If he sees the Hindu showing
kindness and tenderness to the lower animals, let him know that the
Hindu does so out of compassion for fallen manhood that may
perchance dwell reincarnated within them. If he sees cringing
servility suddenly give place to pride and hauteur, let him know that
in that instant the debased Hindu suddenly realises that in a future
life his position and that of the one to whom he had cringed may
be reversed — that then he may receive the homage and the other
eringe. Let him know also that the so-called ' fatalism ' of the
Hindu is in reality but another manifestation of this belief in
reincarnation. 'What is to be, is to be,' is not the true Hindu
belief; rather, ' everything will be changed hereafter.' The hope of
improvement in one's lot in a new life, not admission of helplessness
in this ; improvement by one's own virtues, not by Divine mandate
alone. The history of India is in itself a proof of this practical
belief.

And if these two tests of belief in reincarnation and karma fail,
let the European that seeks to understand the ways of the Hindu
apply the remaining test — his love ; alike in deeds of virtue and of
sin. In such a case let him try to realise that to the Hindu the
ties of affection are stronger far than triple steel. Where that
affection is at stake, king, country, the entire world, may go to
perdition. The history of India for seven long centuries is a proof
of this also. Cannot the European read it? It is fairly writ in
letters of fire. Seven centuries ago King Prithiraj of Delhi,
Emperor of all India, lost his kingdom, his life, the very destiny of
his country for the love of Princess Sanjogini of Kanauj. And
since that day the conduct of the humblest Hindu, in sin and in
virtue, has been but a reiteration of that sad tragedy.

1903 REINCARNATION 451

Both in regard to the love of the Hindu as a motive of conduct,
and in his belief in reincarnation, one could not close this
•argument with a more striking proof than that supplied in the book
mentioned above, The Romance of an Eastern Prince. In it we
have the clearing up of a ' mystery ' of Hindu life, the revelation of
a, motive of Hindu tragedy. The hero, an Indian Prince, is
-dominated by his love throughout his life. In his earliest youth he
gives his entire love to his parents. Then, having lost them, and
having no brother or sister, he concentrates all his affections upon
an adopted sister, a mere child. She is the sister of another young
Prince whose acquaintance he has made in the Raj-Kumar College at
Ajmere. Him he learns to love as a brother ; wherefore the sister
of his ' brother ' becomes his ' own sister.' Years pass. To him she
still remains a sister, and a mere child. But, unrealised by him, the
child has now grown to be a woman. Then to his horror the scales
suddenly fall from his eyes. He realises that ' in making her his
sister, he had not succeeded in making himself her brother — that in
giving her all the love in his heart, a brother's love, he had gained
in return all the love in her heart, which was not a sister's love.'
Forthwith he resigns his princedom, and disappears. His motive is
thoroughly Eastern. Having called her sister he can never call
her wife ; for in India the law of adoption is equal to the law of
nature ; once a sister, for ever a sister. Moreover, he knows that
according to immemorial custom she will soon be compelled to marry,
he likewise. He could not spare her the pain of the first ; but he
could of the second — of the knowledge of his union to some other
woman. He disappears, hoping that she will believe him to be dead.

He comes to London secretly and in disguise. Here, unhappily,
he falls in love with an English lady ; tries to win her, as man, not
as prince ; fails.

Meanwhile, a cruel tragedy has been enacted within him. Every
nation has believed, some time or other in its history, in the coming
of a Messiah. But even as to Israel, so also to India — the Messiah is
to come as a national hero and a conqueror. According to ancient
Hindu prophecy the tenth and last avatar of Krishna is now due ; he
is to come again to rebuild the walls of Ujjain and Hostinapur, and
restore the lost splendour of Hind. And from his earliest youth the
hero of The Romance of an Eastern Prince had sincerely believed
himself to be that avatar of Krishna ! Nay, all the conditions of
prophecy were seemingly fulfilled in him. Thus he had yielded up
his whole life to fit himself for that supreme destiny.

Then suddenly the whole edifice upon which he had built that
destiny lies fallen at his feet. His eyes are opened. He discovers
that he is not Krishna ; that his whole life has been one stupendous
failure — one long blasphemy. The shock leads him to suicide. But,
refusing to yield up a last lingering hope, he first appeals to the

452 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

justice of the Deity to send him back to life in a new incarnation as
Krishna.

And there remains one thing more for him to do, to make one
last reparation to the Hindu princess whose life he has unwittingly
wrecked. Before his death he sends her this message :

Soul to soul, flesh to flesh : thou canst not be my wedded bride till from death
I do return ; for in this life I have called thee my own sister. Wait, watch my
returning. Seek for me anew amid marble and alabaster.

From the Christian standpoint his last act is indefensible.
From the Brahminical, inevitable ; perhaps also heroic.

NAKAYAN HARISCHANDEA.

1903

THE REAL CIMABUE

IN the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore at Naples hangs one of the
most beautiful altar-pieces of the Trecento, Simone Martini's
^Coronation of King Robert by St. Louis of Toulouse. This picture
is not only a consummate work of art ; it is a great historical illus-
tration, and is connected with two names which occupy an important
.place not merely in the history of the kingdom of Naples, but also
in world-history. Moreover, upon the predella of this picture is to
be found an original inscription, probably from the hand of the artist
himself, which tells both the name and the nationality of the master
who painted it. Every line of this altar-piece confirms the inscrip-
tion. No one now doubts that the Coronation of King Robert is a
work of the great Sienese master. Modern critics agree that it is
one of the most sincere, the most characteristic of all existing
examples of his achievement.

It seems inconceivable that any successful attempt could ever have
been made to rob the author of such a work of the credit due to
him. But the parochial patriotism of the Italian archaeologist and
art historian is never daunted by mere facts. The feat was accom-
plished, and most successfully accomplished. Erudite Neapolitans,
eager to enhance the artistic reputation of their fellow-countrymen,
managed to persuade themselves and the world that this typical
Sienese painting was the work of a half-mythical local master,
Simone Napoletano. In a similar fashion, in the sixteenth and
following centuries, this shadowy artist was furnished with a whole
catalogue of heterogeneous paintings. Nor was he provided with
stolen works alone. Patriotic archaeologists came to the aid of the .
local art critics. Simone Napoletano was supplied with a biography.
Ultimately, not content with stealing Sienese pictures for their hero,
the art historians of Naples appropriated a piece of Sienese history.
In a guide book x written by local antiquarians for the members of a
scientific congress held in Naples — a work which was publicly
described in its own day as ' a most learned and accurate book ' — an

1 Napoli e sue vicinanze : Guida offcrta agli Scicnziati nel congresso del 1845,
vol. i. p. 296. Quoted by Crowe and Cavalcasclle, A New History of Italian
Painting, vol. i. p. 321 (London, 1864).

453

454 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

account was given of the triumphal procession of the clergy and
people of Naples that accompanied one of Simone Napoletano's
masterpieces when it was borne from the artist's house to San
Domenico. This story was evidently modelled upon the well-authen-
ticated historical narrative of the joyful procession that followed
Duccio's great Majestas when the great ancona of the Sienese
master was carried in state from his house near the Porta a Stal-
loreggi to the Cathedral.2

The only thing to be said about the Neapolitan version of the
Sienese story is that the picture to which it is attached is not by
Simone Napoletano, and does not even belong to his age or school.
It is by an Umbrian master, and was painted a century after the
period in which Simone Napoletano flourished. In no early manu-
script, in no printed chronicle of the fourteenth or fifteenth century
can be found any reference to such an event in Naples.

Distinguished German and English critics who had not sounded
the depths of Italian local prejudice accepted without question some
of the most astounding inventions of patriotic Neapolitans like
Dominici. Kugler himself acquiesced in the attribution of the
Coronation of King Robert to the Neapolitan master. At the
hotels in Naples foreign dilettanti were accustomed to prattle about
the masterpieces of Simon of Naples.

In a similar way the works in Naples of the Sienese sculptor
Tino di Camaino were given to Neapolitan artists. And vain, over-
rated Naples, self-styled nobilissima, might have continued to-
persuade the world that some out of the very few masterpieces of the
Trecento she possesses were the work of her own sons had not a
humble archivist, in that unfortunate way archivists have, produced
documents which silenced for ever the claims of local connoisseurs.

The artistic reputation of Siena was peculiarly liable to detraction
by subtraction. In the fourteenth century the influence of her art
was felt in every great Italian town, and in some cities across the
Alps. Her architects found honourable employment at Eome and
Naples, at Orvieto and Perugia. Her school of sculpture was the
most prolific in Italy. Even in Florence itself all the most im-
portant sculptured monuments executed in the first thirty years
of the fourteenth century were chiselled by Sienese artists. Her
painters went everywhere. They were employed in Eome and'
Florence, Orvieto and Arezzo, Perugia and Assisi, Pisa and Pistoia,
Citta di Castello and Castiglione Fiorentino, Naples and Avignon.

z An anonymous chronicler who would seem to have taken part in the festival
has left us an account of it. His testimony is confirmed by the account-book of the
Camarlingo of the Commune for the year 1311. At page 261 of this book we read
' Ancho viii sol. a Marsefetto Buoninsegne, a Pericciuolo Salvucci, a Certiere Guidi,
a Marcho Cierreti, trombatori et ciaramella et nacchare del chomune di Siena, per
una richontrata clie feciero de la Tavola de la Vergine Maria, a ragione di due soldi,
per uno, sechondo la forma de' patti ch'ene tra '1 chomune di Siena e loro.'

1903 THE REAL C1MABUE 455

They exercised a most important influence on the nascent schools
of Umbria and on the school of Pisa. Sienese goldsmiths were
employed by Pope and Emperor alike. One of them made the
crown of Dante's hero, the Emperor Henry the Seventh. Others were
the official goldsmiths of successive occupants of the Holy See.

Siena, however, had no art historians to tell of her early artistic
triumphs. The great historians and critics of art in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries belonged to the rival city. Only in recent ages
has Siena shown any great regard for her artistic reputation. It is
quite natural, therefore, that those of her sons who in the Trecento
made beautiful things for other cities were robbed of the credit due
to them. No one wrote much about the early masters of Siena.
The very names of some of them were wellnigh forgotten. The
local patriot in Florence or Naples who asserted that a Sienese
work in one or the other city was by a native master ran little
risk of being contradicted.

In Florence, to a much greater degree than in Naples, the spirit
of local patriotism manifested itself in her archaeologists and art
historians. In the latter half of the fifteenth century there was a
succession of writers culminating in Vasari who were eager to prove
that the whole credit of the revival of the art of painting in Italy
belonged to Florence. ' It became an axiom with Tuscan historians
that every great artist ' in Siena or ' in northern Italy about whose
artistic education they knew little or nothing must have been
initiated into the art of painting in Florence,' 3 and that every
important early picture or fresco that could not be proved to be by
an artist of another school was by a Florentine master. They were
not content with hymning the mighty genius of Giotto ; for Giotto
had contemporaries of other schools, who, though lesser men, were
also innovators. They were anxious to show that in the previous
age when all was darkness elsewhere the new light was already
shining in the city by the Arno. Consequently, in the latter half of
the fifteenth century, it began to be the fashion to exalt Cimabue.
Eegardless of the fact that Grhiberti had merely alluded to Cimabue
as one of the exponents of the Greek manner of painting, and that
Cennino Cennini in his two brief accounts of the revival of his art
had made no allusion at all to Giotto's reputed master, Cimabue was
held up to admiration as the father of Italian painting.

It was, of course, necessary to provide Cimabue with a list of
works and with a legend. This was first done in the early part of
the sixteenth century. Albertini, in his Memoriale published in the
year 1510, gave the first list of his works, and shortly afterwards a
contemporary of Albertini, the author of the Libra di Antonio Billi,
first related very briefly some of the stories in regard to the

3 Richter, Notes to Vasari's Lives of the Painters, p. 105. London : George Bell
& Sons, 1892.

456 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

S. Maria Novella altar-piece which twelve uncritical generations have
accepted. He mentions Charles of Anjou's alleged visit to the artist,
and for the first time tells the story of the triumphal procession of
the Kucellai Madonna from the artist's house to S. Maria Novella.4
To Giorgio Vasari fell the congenial task of embroidering and
embellishing the Cimabue legend. The earlier Lives of the Aretine
biographer, his biographies of Giotto and Duccio, of Agostino di
Giovanni and Agnolo di Ventura, are full of inaccuracies, improbable
anecdotes and stories which have been proved to be inventions.
But his Life of Cimabue is perhaps the most unveracious of all of
them. Vasari did not even know the painter's name. He did not
know the name of his family. He considerably ante-dated his
career. Beyond Dante's vague mention of the artist, and the
scarcely more informing allusions to him of the early commentators
upon the Divina Commedia, he had no early documentary evidence
to help him. Save for some late traditions he had, in fact, little more
than his own imagination to depend upon.

But to Vasari his imagination was a very present help in time of
need. In his anxiety to exalt his hero by depreciating his con-
temporaries and predecessors he began his biography with one of the
most astounding of the many extraordinary misrepresentations to be
found in his great work : — ' The overwhelming flood of evils by which
unhappy Italy had been submerged and devastated,' he writes, ' had
not only destroyed whatever could properly be called buildings,
but, a still more deplorable consequence, had totally exterminated
the artists themselves, when by the will of God, in the year 1240
Giovanni Cimabue, of the noble family of that name, was born in the
city of Florence to give the first light to the art of painting.' 5 This
sentence contains at least four errors upon plain matters of fact. To
comment upon the first of them would be to insult the intelligence
of my readers. As I think upon it, there rise before me the noblest
works of the greatest school of architecture that modern Italy has
produced — a school that arose in Vasari's own Tuscany, but not in
Florence. I see Pisa Cathedral ; the cathedral of Lucca, and San
Michele in that city ; and S. Giovanni Fuorcivitas at Pistoia ; I see,
too, the noble abbeys of Tuscany built under French influence, S.
Galgano in the valley of the Merse, and S. Antimo near Montalcino.
And not only had Tuscany produced great architects in the Middle
Ages ; before the coming of Cimabue there were flourishing schools

* See II libra di Antonio SHU, in the ArcUivio Storico Itallano, Serie V., torn,
vii., 1891, dispensa 2a, p. 318. This book -was composed between 1506 and 1532. It
is scarcely necessary to say that neither Villani nor any other early chronicler
mentions either of these supposed incidents. It was from ' Billi ' that Vasari obtained
his knowledge of these tales.

5 Vasari, Lives of the Painters, etc., Mrs. Foster's translation, vol. i., p. 34.
London : George Bell & Sons.

1903 THE REAL CIMABUE 457

of painting both in Siena and in Florence in which Coppo di
Marcovaldo and Duccio received their training.

The Florentines, as I have said, provided Cimabue with a list of
works. Like the Neapolitans, they took the paintings of foreign
artists to give them to their hero. Like loquacious Naples, boastful
Florence found dumb Siena good to steal from. Just as the
Coronation of King Robert was niched from Simone Martini and
handed over to Simone Napoletano, so the Kucellai Madonna at
S. Maria Novella was taken from its Sienese author by patriotic
Florentines and assigned to a local master, to Cimabue. That this
Madonna was painted by Duccio of Buoninsegna both Stilkritik and
documentary evidence prove. One of the most distinguished of the
followers of Morelli declared after careful examination of the picture
that ' it differed in nothing ' from Duccio's great Majestas in the
Opera del Duomo at Siena.6 The present writer can indeed detect
some slight differences in style between the two pictures ; but they
are only such differences as one would expect to find in two works
painted by the same artist in a period of rapid development in the
art of painting. In its form, in its colour, in its technique, the
Rucellai Madonna is entirely Sienese. The altar-piece at S. Maria
Novella is an early work, and it . has the peculiarities of Duccio's
early style. Something of Byzantine stiffness and Byzantine con-
vention is, of course, to be found in it. In the treatment of the
drapery we do not find the same freedom, the same knowledge of the
human form, the same traces of Gothic influence that manifest
themselves in Duccio's last great masterpiece. The features, too,
of the Virgin remind us of the works of his Byzantine predecessors.
The Child, however, does not differ at all from his later representa-
tions of the Divine Infant. In the figures of the angels supporting
the throne we see another type created by Duccio and reproduced in
the works of one of his greatest followers, in Segna di Buenaventura's
altar-pieces at Castiglione Fiorentino and Citta di Castello.7

And documentary evidence confirms the conclusions of the
connoisseurs. The documentary history of the Rucellai Madonna
appears in fact to be quite clear and unbroken. On the 15th of
April, 1285, Duccio di Buoninsegna agreed to paint a large Madonna
for the Confraternity of S. Maria of Florence, an altar-piece which
was to be placed in their chapel in S. Maria Novella.8 The chapel
of this society in the year 1316 was the chapel of St. Gregory, after-

6 Richter, Lectures on the National Gallery, p. G. London : Longmans, 1898.

7 See my History of Siena, pp. 338, 339, for a full discussion of the analogies of
style in these two pictures. (Murray, 1902.)

8 Arch, di Stato, Florence, Archivio Diplomatico. Pergamene spettanti al convento
di S. Marco. See Milanesi, Documents per la Storia dell' Artc Sencse, vol. i. pp. 158-
160. As this document has been known to archivists for the last hundred and
twenty years, it is difficult to understand why some scientific critics speak of it aa
' a recently discovered document.'

458 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

wards the Bardi chapel, which is in the right transept of S. Maria
Novella and immediately adjoins the chapel now known as the
Rucellai chapel. There is no record that Cimabue or any other
Florentine painter of his generation painted a Madonna for the
Dominican church. When this Madonna of Duccio appears again
in history in the sixteenth century, it is found hanging on the wall
just outside the Bardi chapel. The reason for its removal is quite
clear. It was in the year 1335 that the chapel of St. Gregory
passed into the hands of the Bardi of Vernio. No doubt the Bardi
wished to decorate the chapel themselves and to provide it with an
altar-piece of their own choosing. Consequently the Madonna of the
Confraternity of S. Maria was placed just outside the chapel on the
adjoining wall. The Confraternity continued to assemble in the
right transept of S. Maria Novella, in that part of the church where
they had been accustomed to sing their lauds, and their picture was
placed as near as possible to its former home. There it remained
until Vasari's day, when it was removed into the Eucellai chapel.

Surely few early Italian pictures have so clear and straight-
forward a history. The historians of S. Maria Novella, from Padre
Fineschi,9 who wrote in the eighteenth century, to Mr. Wood-
Brown 10 — patient archivists who have spent years in the careful
study of the documentary history of the Dominican convent — agree
that the Rucellai Madonna is the picture the Confraternity of
S. Maria commissioned Duccio to paint in the year 1285. In the
archives of the Convent they can find no reference at all to Cimabue.
The leading members of the scientific school of critics, following a
different method of inquiry, have arrived at the same conclusions as
the students of archives. Dr. Wyckhoff and Dr. Richter maintain
that the Rucellai Madonna is undoubtedly a work of the Sienese
master. But as some ultra-conservative connoisseurs cherished the
belief in Simone Napoletano's authorship of the Coronation of King
Robert after it had been abandoned by the rest of the world, so there
are here and there a few critics who still think that a late traditional
attribution, the origin of which can be easily accounted for, can be
put in the balances against this great weight of evidence, critical
and historical.

In a similar manner other altar-pieces by foreign artists were
given to Cimabue. In an uncritical age the now obvious fact that
they were by several different hands passed unnoticed. It was
Florence who produced or adopted the chief writers upon Italian
art ; and it was Florence who gained the ear of the civilised world.
Vasari — who, when to invent was required, always succeeded in
outdoing all his contemporaries and predecessors — gave to Cimabue

9 Fineschi, Memorie istoriche per serrire alle Vltc degli uomini illustri del Com-.
di Santa Maria, Novella, p. 321, also pp. xli and xlii. (Florence, 1780.)

10 Wood-Brown, The Dominican Convent of S. Maria Novella. (Edinburgh, 1902.)

1903 THE REAL CIMABUE 459-

the whole series of frescoes in the choir of the Upper Church of
Assisi as well as all the frescoes on the vaults and on the upper
part of the walls of the nave — an attribution which not even the
most conservative of critics will now defend. Not content with
having robbed the Eoman and Sienese schools of painting of the
credit due to them for the important part they played in the
evolution of Italian painting, the Florentines purloined a piece of
Sienese history. Like the Neapolitan archaeologists of a later age,
they appropriated and adapted the historical narrative of the
triumphal reception of Duccio's ancona at Siena on the 9th of June
1311. On that day a public holiday was proclaimed in Siena. All
shops and offices were closed. The forest of towers in whose shadowy
avenues the citizens had their homes vibrated with the clangour of
a hundred bells. With great pomp the ecclesiastical and civic
dignitaries of Siena and the principal men of the city bore Duccio's
Madonna from the artist's house to its place above the high altar of
their cathedral.

The student of comparative mythology knows that a striking
story, true or imaginary, belonging to one race was often borrowed1
altogether or in part by some neighbouring people. The nation
that stole it gave it in course of time a new setting, attached it to
another place or object, and altered the names of the principal
actors whilst preserving intact the main incidents of the narrative.
This is what may have happened in the case of this narrative. The
story of the procession of Duccio's Majestas no doubt reached-
Florence, and was told and retold there. In course of time the
name of the Sienese artist was forgotten, but Cimabue's name was
kept fresh in men's minds by Dante's eulogy of him. Ultimately
the name of the Florentine painter took the place of that of Duccio
in the traditional narrative; and when, at the time of the Renais-
sance, the Rucellai Madonna was attributed to Cimabue the trans-
planted story of the procession of the Majestas was naturally
attached to that great picture.

The misdeeds of the Florentines did not end here. There is
documentary evidence to show that Duccio was at work as a painter-
twenty-three years before the earliest documentary mention of Cima-
bue.11 Vasari, however, placed Duccio's biography amongst those of
the later Giottesques. He robbed the earliest of the great Italian
masters whose achievement is known to us of all his most important
followers, writing of them as pupils of Giotto. Just as the Neapolitans
had done, the Florentines stole also the works of Tino di Camaino
of his school and gave them to their own fellow-countrymen.

11 The earliest mention of Duccio is in an account-book of the Biccherna of the
year 1278. Arch, di Stato, Siena. Biccherna, Libra d' entrata e uscita, ad ann., c. 34.
8ee also Lisini, Notizie di Duccio, pittore. In the Bullettino Senese, anno v., fasc. i.r
p. 43.

460 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

The Florentines made even more dupes than did the Neapolitan
archaeologists. A whole succession of Kuglers accepted without
question the statements of their patriotic historians in regard to
Cimabue and his achievement. Florence was the petted darling of
the dilettanti. When the lie that she had made was en marche,
nothing could stop it. To the cultured curate the word Cimabue
was as blessed as Mesopotamia. The Maoriland extensionist on the
plains of Canterbury babbled of Cimabue, and high-toned Californians
at ' literary teas ' repeated Vasari's stolen story of the Passing of the
Picture.

An attempt has recently been made by one of the most distin-
guished of English art-critics, Mr. Roger Fry, to rehabilitate the
discredited Cimabue legend.12 The Mrs. Harris of Florentine paint-
ing has been provided with a new and revised catalogue of works.
Morellian methods have been applied to pictures traditionally
ascribed to Cimabue, and we have been given a list of his
'peculiarities' of style. It may be well, then, to examine again
the evidence both of documents and of style-criticism as to
Cimabue's life and achievement. And, first of all, putting aside
all late traditions that cannot be traced back to an earlier date than
two hundred years after the death of the Florentine artist, and
rejecting the discredited stories of Vasari, what evidence can be
gleaned about Cimabue from contemporary documents, or from the
pages of early writers ?

Whilst we find in Tuscan archives many documentary references
to Duccio in writings of the thirteenth century, we do not find one
reference whatsoever to Cimabue in any manuscript of that age.13 In
the fourteenth century the references to the Florentine painter are
few in number. They fall naturally into two groups. We have first
of all an allusion in Dante, which was commented upon by the
Anonimo in a passage I have already alluded to. Dante tells us
that, before Giotto, Cimabue held the field in painting. This line
does not even prove that Cimabue was the greatest of Florentine
painters, and certainly gives no ground for the assumption that he
was the greatest of Italian painters. Dante was full of parochial
patriotism. He was a Florentine of the Florentines, and was
exceedingly partial to his friends. There is an early tradition that
Cimabue was a friend of Dante. Whether this was so or not, Dante's
reference to Cimabue merely tells us that there was a distinguished
artist in Florence called Cimabue. To make it mean anything more
is to show ignorance of Dante and of the strength and narrowness of

12 Fry, Giotto. In the Monthly Review, December 1900, pp. 145-148.

13 A notarial deed, quoted by Strygowski (Cimabue und Rom, Vienna, 1888,
p. 158), dated the 18th of June, 1272, bears the signature Cimabove piotor de
Florentia. But there is no proof that this Cimabove was Cenni de' Pepi, and the
best modern authorities hold that it does not refer to him.

1903 TEE REAL C1MABUE 461

his prejudices. But upon this line, and upon a tradition that cannot
be traced farther back than the year 15 10 — that is, two hundred and
fifty years after the date Vasari gives of the birth of Cimabue — Mr. Fry
builds his whole case. His argument may be fairly summarised
thus : ' Dante tells us that Cimabue held the field in painting. If
Cimabue held the field in painting, there is a probability, almost
amounting to a certainty, that he helped to decorate the Church of
S. Francesco at Assisi.' At Assisi, Mr. Fry continues, we find two or
three frescoes by an artist whose work has some peculiarities of style
which are to be found in some of the heterogeneous collection of
pictures traditionally ascribed to Cimabue.

This argument is open to criticism in many ways, as we shall
presently see. It is enough to say here that Mr. Fry makes too
much of this single line of patriotic Dante, and of the unconfirmed
ex parte statements of sixteenth-century Florentines. So slender
a foundation will not bear the huge superstructure he erects upon it.
The evidence of documents and of style-criticism alike proves that
not from the Florentine, but from the Roman and Sienese schools
came the great decorators of the thirteenth century. It was
not until Giotto grew to maturity that Florence began to take a
pre-eminent position in the art of painting. All early allusions to
Cimabue tend to confirm this view, and to strengthen the conviction
that in his own day he was merely regarded as one of the many ex-
ponents of the Greek manner. Boccacio and the anonymous com-
mentator on Dante add very little to our knowledge of Cimabue.
They do not help us to identify one work of his. The statement of
the Anonimo only tends to show that the artist's achievement was
small in quantity ; as the commentator relates that he had a habit
of destroying his own works when they did not please him, however
much trouble they had cost him.

The only other contemporary references to Cimabue are to be
found in the Pisa archives. From these we learn that a Florentine
painter, a certain Cenni de' Pepi, called Cimabue, worked upon the
mosaic which fills the upper part of the apse of Pisa cathedral in
the years 1301 and 1302,14 and that in the latter year he painted a
picture, a Madonna, for the altar of S. Spirito in the church of
S. Chiara at Pisa.15 As the mosaic has been restored so drastically
that nothing of the original work survives, and as the altar-piece of
S. Chiara has disappeared and no description of it remains, we
cannot say that they tell us anything in regard to the artistic

14 Arch, di Stato, Pisa. Libra d' entrata e iiseita delV Opera del Duomo, act
annum, c. 62 v, 69 v, 120, etc. It is my intention soon to publish in full all the
entries relating to Cimabue. They have not all been printed, not even in Tanfani
Centofanti's Notizie degli artisti pisani.

13 Arch, di Stato, Pisa. Arch, degli spcdali riunitt di Pisa, Contratti, ad annum.

462 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

achievement of the Florentine. All, then, that we know about this
Cenni de' Pepi is that he was a distinguished Florentine artist, that
tie was nicknamed Cimabue, that he flourished in the closing years
of the thirteenth century and the early years of the fourteenth, and
that he executed a mosaic and an altar-piece at Pisa, of which the
latter has disappeared and the former has been entirely renewed.

The fact that no other known works of this painter remain to us
excites no surprise in the mind of the student who is acquainted
with the kind of evidence that is to be found in the archives of
Florence and Siena. He knows that there were many artists who
had great fame amongst their own fellow-countrymen in their own
day of whom not one single work remains. Of the many painters of
the Trecento whose names are to be found in contemporary Floren-
tine documents, the only important master of whose achievement we
know anything certainly is Coppo di Marcovaldo, whose works at
Siena and Pistoia are the only authentic pre-Giottesque paintings
to which we can go for information as to the characteristics of
the early school of Florence ; and his work rather contradicts than
supports the theory that a Florentine painted the S. Maria Novella
altar-piece.

There is, then, no early reliable documentary evidence to show
that one of the pictures in Mr. Fry's list was painted by Cenni
de' Pepi. Cimabue's advocate seeks then to establish his case by
style-criticism. But here, too, his position is desperate. It is
difficult to form an opinion of the style of any artist when there is
not one work that can with certainty be attributed to him, and the
difficulty becomes infinitely greater when the paintings ascribed by
•a late tradition to him do not in the least resemble the only known
contemporary works of his own school, or the undoubted works of
his reputed follower and pupil, but are curiously like the productions
of another and entirely distinct school of painters. Such, however,
is Mr. Fry's position. The works he assigns to Cimabue have little
-affinity with the one important Florentine altar-piece of the genera-
tion before Giotto whose date and authorship are known. They are
also strangely unlike the paintings of Cimabue's supposed pupil
Giotto. And the best of them bears so strong a likeness to the
authentic works of a great Sienese master that one of the most
learned of modern connoisseurs declares that ' it differs in nothing
from his authenticated work,' and that 'it is impossible for an
unbiassed critic to ascribe it to any other master.'

Mr. Fry includes in his list the Madonna attributed to Cimabue
in the Florence Academy, the so-called Cimabue Madonna of the
Louvre, the Crucifixion in the transept of the Upper Church at
Assisi — a work of which not one vestige of the original colour remains
— the Madonna Enthroned and St. Francis in the Lower Church at
Assisi, and the Rucellai Madonna. The selection is somewhat

1903 THE REAL CIMABUE 463

arbitrarily made. If Mr. Fry wished to settle the question, why did
he not take into consideration all of the pictures which are nearly
related to the Rucellai Madonna ? Why did he shut out of the
discussion the picture attributed to Cimabue at the National Gallery,
and the Madonnas by Segna di Buonaventura, Duccio's pupil at
Citta di Castello and Castiglione Fiorentino, which more closely
resemble the S. Maria Novella altar-piece than some of the pictures
in his list. An induction that leaves altogether out of account a
great deal of the evidence cannot be regarded as satisfactory. No
student of early Italian painting can afford to ignore these pictures.

Having made his selection, Mr. Fry proceeds to describe certain
' peculiarities ' which, he says, are common to the works he mentions,
and which distinguish them from the works of Duccio and other
early masters. It would not be difficult, I think, to show that these
five pictures are by three different hands, and that the particulars in
which they differ are no less important than those in which they
resemble each other. But it suffices for my purpose to prove that
these ' peculiarities ' of style are not peculiar to these paintings, but
are to be found in undoubted works of Duccio and of his school.
Of the characteristics of Duccio's style we can be absolutely certain ;
for the great ancona that he made for the high altar of Siena
Cathedral, which is now in the Opera del Duomo at Siena, is not
one picture, but a whole gallery. Upon the evidence it affords we
base our conclusions as to the authenticity of other works in Siena
traditionally ascribed to Duccio. I will give Mr. Fry's account
of the ' peculiarities ' of his re-discovered Cimabue in his own
words : —

The eye [he says] has the upper eyelid strongly marked ; it has a peculiar
languishing expression, due in part to the large elliptical iris (Duccio's eyes have
a small, bright, round iris with a keen expression) ; the nose is distinctly articu-
lated into three segments ; the mouth is generally slewed round from the perpen-
dicular ; the hands are curiously curved, and in all the Madonnas clutch the
supports of the throne ; the hair bows seen upon the halos have a constant and
quite peculiar shape ; the drapery is designed in rectilinear triangular folds, very
different from Duccio's more sinuous and flowing line. The folds of the drapery
•where they come to the contour of the figure have no effect upon the form of the
outline, an error which Duccio never makes. Finally, the thrones in all these
pictures have a constant form ; they are made of turned wood with a high foot-
stool, aud are seen from the side. Duccio's is of stone, and seen from the front.

As I have said elsewhere, I cannot understand how a distin-
guished critic possessing fine powers of discernment and a wide
and accurate knowledge of Italian pictures can have written such
a passage as this ; for every one of these peculiarities which,
according to Mr. Fry, Duccio does not share, is to be found in
undisputed works of his. Let us take one of these works, a little
Madonna in the Stanza dei Primitivi in the Siena Gallery, one of
the most beautiful and characteristic examples of the artist's earlier

464 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

manner, and let us compare it with the most important of the
paintings in Mr. Fry's list, the Eucellai MadomM. If we look at
this small Madonna we see in it that the iris of the eye is larger
than in Duccio's later pictures, and that the Virgin's expression
closely resembles that given to her in the S. Maria Novella altar-
piece. In this little picture, too, the nose ' is distinctly articulated
into three segments,' and ' the mouth is slewed round from the
perpendicular,' as it is in all Duccio's earlier works. The hands,
too, of the Virgin and the three kneeling donors are ' curiously
curved.' The drapery is designed in rectilinear triangular folds ;
and, as in the Rucellai Madonna, we fail to find in it the sinuous
flowing lines of Duccio's later manner. In an age of accelerated
transition, surrounded by the influence of so inspiring a master as
Giovanni Pisano and by other vivifying influences, an artist like
Duccio naturally acquired greater freedom, greater knowledge, a
more perfect command of his medium in the course of a quarter
of a century of hard work. In the little early Madonna, as in two
other early works in the same gallery, Duccio shows that he is still
under the tyranny of Byzantine convention. The folds of the
drapery are, in a measure, calligraphic ; as they are, in a measure,
in the Rucellai Madonna. Finally — and this is a point of some
importance — the throne in the little Madonna at Siena, like that
in the Madonna at S. Maria Novella, is of turned wood, has a high
footstool, and is seen from the side. Similar thrones are to be found
in earlier Sienese pictures, and are, in fact, one of the characteristics
of early Sienese altar-pieces. The earliest Italian panel I know of
in which a throne of this kind is to be found is a Sienese work,
the St. Peter Enthroned in the same Stanza dei Primitivi in the
gallery at Siena.

There are other peculiarities, besides those mentioned by Mr. Fry,
which the Rucellai Madonna shares with the early work of Duccio.
The Child, for instance, in the little Siena Madonna is identical
with the Child in the S. Maria Novella picture in every feature, and
has a very similar posture. The hair recedes far back at the corners
of the forehead. The nose is short, the ear placed rather far back,
the mouth slightly turned down at the corners. In both panels we
see the same curious posture of the left leg. The two feet of the
Child and the right hand in the picture at Siena differ in nothing
from the feet and right hand of the Infant in the Florence altar-
piece.

The S. Maria Novella Madonna, although it is a much earlier
work, and has the characteristics of Duccio's early manner, is closely
related, nevertheless, to Duccio's great Majestas in the Opera del
Duomo. It would be easy to give a long list of similarities ; but I
will not burden my readers with any more details of style-criticism.
I have proved that the alleged peculiarities of the re-discovered

1903 THE REAL CIMABUE 465

Cimabue are not peculiar to that artist, but are shared by Duccio
and his followers ; and that upholders of the late Florentine tradition —
a tradition which owes its origin to bigoted parochial patriotism — can
no more allege evidences of style in confirmation of their views than
they can produce early and reliable documentary evidence in their
support .

The fate of Humpty-Dumpty is the fate of Vasari's Cimabue, and
even Mr. Fry cannot put him together again. He was at best a
composite creature, a kind of artistic Wallenstein's horse, and now
that he has fallen down, and the disjecta membra of what once com-
posed him strew the ground, the best of showmen cannot persuade
us that this Florentine ' fake ' was ever a real living entity.

Connoisseurs of the old school may wail that without their
Cimabue the whole of the early history of Italian art becomes a dark
chaos for them. We have heard this sort of thing before, and in
other fields of historical and scientific inquiry. Bat he who has a
single-hearted love of truth will not shrink from acknowledging new
facts because the acceptance of them renders necessary a reconstruc-
tion of old theories and opinions. Moreover, recent discoveries have
in reality made the origin and early history of Italian painting
clearer and more comprehensible. To us Giotto is no longer the
monster he appeared to be to those earlier writers who thought
little of the achievement of Cimabue. Just as we have come to
realise that the exquisite technique of Niccola Pisano had no
miraculous origin, so we now know that the greatest painter of the
Trecento had his artistic forerunners. The discovery of the frescoes
of Pietro Cavallini at S. Cecilia in Trastevere reveals to us one of
Giotto's true masters.16 We see that he was in part an artistic
descendant of the old Roman school, in part a scion of the Pisani.17
It is now obvious that the two great schools of painting in
Italy in the last quarter of the thirteenth century were the
Roman and the Sienese. The Roman school brought about a
genuine revival of wall decoration, of fresco and mosaic. The
Sienese were the leaders of a progressive movement in the art of
painting upon panels. Florence lagged behind ; and in painting, as
in the minor arts of the goldsmith, the silk-weaver, and the potter,
was content to absorb and to make her own the results of the
pioneer efforts of her neighbour cities.

LANGTON DOUGLAS.

16 Ghiberti, who visited Rome before the close of the fourteenth century, gives
a list of the works of Cavallini, and praises him as one of the greatest masters of
his age. Vasari's account of Cavallini, written a century and a half after that of
Ghiberti, is entirely untrustworthy.

17 Bode, Die italienische Plastik, p. 23.

VOL. LIII— No, 313 H H

466 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

IF English farmers are to compete upon equal terms with their foreign
rivals they must have similar educational opportunities. Success in
farming requires extensive scientific knowledge quite as much as
thorough practical training. The truth of this becomes more apparent
every day, and every Government but our own has made the ample
provision of agricultural education one of its first duties. To some
extent the neglect of past years is being repaired. In his Report
for 1901 upon the educational work of the Board of Agriculture Major
Craigie gave evidence of considerable progress under certain County
Councils, and with the small funds placed at the disposal of the
Board for educational purposes. But there is nothing in the nature
of a national system. There is no central authority responsible for
the agricultural education of the whole country. The satisfaction of
the needs of each county depends upon the policy of each particular
Council. The inevitable result of this absence of State supervision
or direction is that, while in some districts there is little to complain
of, others, especially those where improved methods of cultivation
could alone relieve the present depression, entirely lack the means
of appropriate instruction; uniform progress is impossible without
systematic organisation under a single department of the State.
This has been abundantly proved by the experience of other nations,
and nowhere more conspicuously than in the Netherlands.

It was only after repeated efforts in many directions that the
Dutch system became consolidated. Nearly a century ago an
attempt was made to provide higher agricultural education by the
appointment of special professors of agriculture at the Universities
of Leyden, Utrecht, and Groningen. It was intended that their
classes should be open generally to students in all the faculties, but
not unnaturally these students did not frequent them. There was
apparently nothing to gain by their doing so. Nor was the sub-

1903 NETHERLANDS AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 467

sequent attempt to attract the theological students, whose future
would lie in the rural districts, more successful. Ultimately it was
decided, in 1840, to admit the public. At Leyden and Utrecht few
took advantage of this, but at Groningen the response was not
unsatisfactory. Courses in natural and physical science were
arranged, and in 1842 a school or college of agriculture was esta-
blished there. The experience gained in connection with this institu-
tion is instructive. An effort was made to combine theoretical with
practical training. Theoretical lessons were given at the university
from October to April, and during the summer the students worked
on a farm of about eighty-five acres. The results were dis-
appointing, and the impossibility of teaching the science and the
practice of farming at the same time with success was clearly
demonstrated. All this, however, paved the way for the admirable
system of to-day.

The law of 1863 upon intermediate education provided for the
establishment of a State Agricultural College, and recognised that
agricultural interests were a matter of State concern. But for a
considerable period little was done beyond the addition of agricultural
divisions to the secondary schools at Warfum and Wageningen. At
length the Government under continuous pressure from the agricul-
turists, and largely owing to the influence of Mr. Salverda, took
some definite steps. In 1876 the school at Wageningen was con-
verted into a State Agricultural College, replacing the institution at
Groningen, which had been closed six years previously. Following
upon the agricultural crisis in the early eighties a royal commission
was appointed in 1886 to inquire into and report upon the causes of
the depression. In consequence of its representations, a special
department of the Ministry of the Interior was created, to which the
administration of agricultural affairs is still entrusted. Had the last
general election resulted differently, it was hoped that a distinct
Ministry of Agriculture would have been formed, with Dr. Sicker?,
to whom of late years Dutch agriculture has owed so much, as its first
President. To assist the above department there is a Council of
Agriculture, whose duties are similar to those of the consultative
councils to the Departments of Agriculture in Ireland and France,
the chief difference being that its members are elected by the various
agricultural societies and not appointed by the Government. It
meets periodically at the Hague, advises the Department on all
agricultural matters, and publishes an annual report, based upon
statistics supplied by every commune. An exact knowledge of the
agricultural condition of the country is thus obtained. Each of the
eleven Provinces has its State Professor of Agriculture, whose
functions are to inspect and administer the experiment and demon-
stration stations, give lectures, provide courses of instruction for

H H 2

468 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

primary school teachers who wish to obtain a certificate entitling
them to teach elementary agriculture, inspect the winter classes in
agriculture in receipt of a State subsidy, and, in those Provinces
where winter schools of agriculture are in operation, to act as their
directors. Five of the Provinces have also State Professors of
Horticulture, whose functions are mutatis mutandis the same. Six
winter schools of agriculture, the organisation of which is subse-
quently described, have been established at Groningen, Goes,
Sittard, Dordrecht, Schagen, and Leeuwarden. Winter horticultural
schools exist at Naaldwijk, Aalsmeer, Tiel, and Boskoop. Beyond
the subsidies given to these schools the State also makes grants to
the schools of Horticulture, Forestry, and Agriculture established
by the Societe de Bienfaisance for its colonists at Frederiksoord
in Drenthe. About one hundred and twenty classes in agriculture
and about twelve in horticulture are annually maintained by the
State in different districts. Experts in dairying are appointed by
the agricultural societies, but their expenses are largely defrayed by
the State. Each Province is now provided with one of these experts,
who gives instruction on the analysis of milk, butter, and cheese-
making, and supervises the manufacture of butter at the small
co-operative factories. The first agricultural laboratory was founded
at Wageningen in 1877, and is now the central depot for the
examination and testing of seeds. Others were subsequently
established at Grroningen, Hoorn, Goes, and Maestricht. They
undertake scientific research, and the analysis of manures, farm
produce, &c. for the farmers. At Hoorn (North Holland), the centre
of the dairying industry, the laboratory includes a bacteriological
department, and in 1901 a dairy of twenty cows and a farm were
opened for experimental purposes. At the head of each laboratory
is a director, appointed by the Crown, with a staff of chemists,
botanists, and other assistants, appointed by the Ministry of the
Interior. The directors together form a college, which meets at
least twice a year, to draw up reports for the Special Committee of
Inspection, a body of eleven members, nominated by the Crown.
Agricultural and horticultural experiment stations (Proefvelden),
under either State or private control, are widely distributed through-
out the Provinces. The annual report of their work fills a volume
of some 590 pages. Matters relating to veterinary science are
regulated by an Act of 1870. The services of nine district surgeons,
with 92 assistants, are available for stock-breeders and others. The
Veterinary College at Utrecht, founded in 1821, is maintained by
the State.

Dr. Sickers, Director-General of Agriculture, courteously supplied
me with the following statement of the State expenditure upon
agricultural education for 1901 :

1903 NETHERLANDS AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 469

Florins

Inspector of agricultural education :

Salary 3,500

Travelling and other expenses .... 1,1CO

Agricultural college at Wageningen :

Salaries 108,100

Maintenance 83,771

Subsidies granted to voluntary associations for courses

and lectures 91,722

Winter schools 39,200

Teachers of agriculture and horticulture appointed by
the Government :

Salaries 38,500

Travelling and other expenses .... 22,075

Training of elementary teachers .... 8,500

Veterinary College at Utrecht :

Salaries 54,500

Maintenance 36,700

Subsidies for courses in farriery .... 3,600

Total , 491,268 Florins.

Holland, it must be remembered, has an area a quarter, and a
population less than a fifth, of those of England alone. This
sum of 40,939^., therefore, presents a very striking contrast to the
similar expenditure here. In the report, already mentioned, Major
Craigie estimates that the total outlay, including the 8,0001. placed
at the disposal of the Board of Agriculture for educational purposes,
and the appropriations by the County Councils out of their respective
shares of the Residue under the Local Taxation (customs and excise)
Act, 1890, upon agricultural education amounts for England and
Wales together to between 85,0001. and 90,0001. Thus the total
amount utilised in the interests of agriculture is only twice that
expended in a country not a quarter the size. A glance, moreover,
at the record of the work done will show how unequally it is distri-
buted, and that several counties are practically without any scientific
instruction at all. At the same time it must not be forgotten that
the Councils are under no obligation to expend any of their funds
upon agricultural education.

The college at Wageningen, founded in 1876 and considerably
enlarged in 1897, need not fear comparison with any similar
institution. When Mr. Mulhall visited the Netherlands on behalf
of the Recess Committee in 1896, it was currently believed that the
best Dutch farmers were those who had been educated in Wiirtem-
berg. This is no longer the case. Wageningen since its extension
has become a model in regard to both its workmanlike methods and
the excellence of its equipment. The whole establishment embraces
four distinct schools, (a) A Secondary School providing a course of
general education up to the age of seventeen, with special attention
to chemistry, physics, and modern languages. Pupils who obtain a

470 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

diploma at the final examination are entitled to enter the Higher
Agricultural School. (6) A Lower Agricultural School for the sons
of small proprietors and tenant-farmers. Pupils are admitted at the
age of 18, 14, or 15, after passing an examination in the subjects
taught at the primary school. The course lasts for three years. The
first year is a continuation of primary education, and serves as a
preparation for either the agricultural or horticultural schools.
During the second and third years the instruction is mainly
theoretical, and corresponds to that usually given in intermediate
agricultural schools in England, except for the importance attached
to the study of English, French, and Grerman. For pupils intending
to emigrate to the Dutch Indies — and they are the majority —
there is an extra year in colonial agriculture. From what Mr.
Broekema, the director of the entire college, stated to the writer
upon a recent visit, it appears that there is the usual difficulty
in attracting pupils really identified with the land, (c) A Lower
Horticultural School, with a two years' course for gardeners, market-
gardeners, florists, and nurserymen. A Higher Horticultural School,
also of two years, for those who desire more advanced and scientific
training. Throughout this section the instruction is more practical.
There is a large garden of about 12 acres, excellently planned
and well supplied with glass-houses, an arboretum, and a botanic
garden. Every branch of horticulture can be effectively taught.
(d) A Higher School of Agriculture and Forestry, with a two years'
course for Dutch, and one of four years for Colonial, agriculture. For
purposes of demonstration and experiment there is a small farm of
about 25 acres (10 acres grass and 15 acres arable), where some of
the best breeds of farm stock may be seen and the most modern
agricultural implements are in use. To anyone at all acquainted
with Dutch education it is unnecessary to say that each school is
lavishly provided with first-rate specimens, diagrams, and the
expensive papier-machi models. In addition to the spacious
laboratories there is an interesting museum of agricultural imple-
ments and machines, seeds, vegetable products, &c. Diplomas
are awarded at the end of each course. The fees for all pupils are
31. 6s. 8d. a year, with a reduction for those attending some of the
classes only. The cost of board and lodging amounts to about 46L
per annum. Female students are admitted upon the same terms as
males, and there are now two or three in the horticultural schools.
The present number of students in attendance is 275, distributed as
follows : — Higher Agricultural School, 60 ; Lower Agricultural School,
85 ; Horticultural School, 34 ; and Secondary School, 96. As yet no
attempt has been made to introduce the system of short courses,
and probably they are not required in view of the permanent Winter
Agricultural and Horticultural Schools.

These winter schools are established in those agricultural or

1903 NETHERLANDS AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 471

horticultural districts where they are likely to prove of the greatest
service. The commune has to provide suitable buildings, and the
State defrays the rest of the expenses. Pupils are admitted at the
age of sixteen, but may attend up to any age. They have to pass
an entrance examination to test their capacity to benefit by the in-
struction, and must possess some previous practical knowledge of
agriculture or horticulture, as the case may be. The full course is
for two years, and the classes are held during the winter months for
three or four hours in the afternoon on five days a week. The scale
of fees is determined by the Minister of the Interior, but may not
exceed II. 13s. 4cZ. a year. Frequently it is below this, and the poor
may be admitted without payment. The equipment of each school
leaves nothing to be desired. In agriculture the instruction is
wholly theoretical, but there is always a small demonstration plot,
and during the summer the pupils have excursions to well-
managed farms and other places of agricultural interest. The curri-
culum comprises chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, the breeding
and care of animals, the properties of the soil, tillage, manuring, the
cultivation of crops, dairying, rural economy, arithmetic, and farm
accounts. In horticulture the pupils have more practical work, and
private associations have provided large gardens. In addition to
those subjects which bear directly upon the art of gardening, in-
struction is given in commercial correspondence in French, German,
and English — a matter of considerable importance, having regard to
the great export trade in bulbs, flowers, fruit, and vegetables. When
the schools are not open, the teachers are available to advise the
surrounding farmers and gardeners. The prejudice with which they
were at first viewed by cultivators generally has now quite disappeared.
The good which the schools have done to their respective neigh-
bourhoods is unmistakable. There is, too, a distinct advantage in
thus bringing systematic instruction of the highest quality to the
people themselves. Even in winter it is not easy for farmers and
gardeners to be absent from home and to attend classes at distant
colleges.

Wisely it has never been suggested that agriculture should be
taught at the primary school. The strong common-sense of the
Dutch would at once scout any proposal of the kind. But ' Nature-
study ' in its widest applications is taught not only in rural but in
urban schools. From their earliest years the children are familiarised
with the simple facts of nature, and encouraged to take an intelligent
interest in them. By object-lessons on plant-life, by frequent
country walks, by collecting plants and insects, and by cultivating a
few flowers or vegetables in small gardens, their powers of observation
are developed, and that spirit of inquiry is aroused without which
success in any walk of life is unattainable. This study of nature is
rightly believed to be an invaluable element in all education, wholly

472 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

irrespective of its relation to agricultural pursuits. Indirectly it lays
the foundation upon which the scientific knowledge of farming must
be based. At each of the six State Normal (Training) Colleges
all the students receive theoretical and practical instruction in
horticulture, and in natural and physical science. There has never
been any idea that the training of the rural teacher should be
differentiated from that of the urban teacher. Courses in agri-
culture are also, as we have seen, provided by the State for those
teachers who wish to obtain a certificate, which will entitle them to
teach agricultural subjects in the continuation schools, the esta-
blishment of which is now compulsory in every commune.

Self-help on the part of agriculturists and horticulturists has
enabled them to improve their position in every direction, and to
turn the education which has been provided to the best account.
Co-operative associations abound. The value of the chemical
manures, seed, forage, &c., purchased by the eleven societies which
undertake purchases on behalf of their members, amounted in 1898
to no less than 343,549Z. 16s. 8d.

To facilitate the sale of farm and garden produce some societies,
like the Co-operative Agricultural Society of Grroningen, sell for the
joint benefit of the members. In 1898 the sales of corn, vegetables,
flax, caraway, &c., effected by the Grroningen Society were of the
value of 37,690£. 15s. Seventy-five per cent, of the net profit is
distributed amongst the members ; the remainder goes to the cost
of administration and into the reserve fund. Other societies, such
as the Horticultural Companies of South Holland and the Dairy
Companies of Limbourg and Gelderland, find markets for their
members. The ' Gelria ' Co-operative Society at Tiel, the centre of
the orchard district, grades, packs, forwards, and disposes of the
produce of its 493 members. The value of the produce, all of
which if approved bears the Society's stamp, sold in 1899 was
5,166£. 13s. 4c£. The packing and forwarding of produce are also
undertaken by the Agricultural and Horticultural Casino at Venlo.

The first co-operative dairy was started at Warga (Friesland)
in 1886. In 1899 there were 485 co-operative dairies, 134 of which
have steam factories, in operation with a membership of 25,376.
Forty-three butter and cheese factories, disposing of the milk of
44,336 cows, are associated with the Dairy Company of Friesland.
Its trade-mark, ' Nedraw,' is registered in England as well as in
many other countries. The organisation of this company is remark-
ably complete.

To improve the breed of horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs, 174
co-operative societies have been formed, owning 91 stallions, 169
bulls, 7 rams, and 39 boars.

For the mutual insurance of animals there were 592 banks, with
56,718 subscribers in 1898, and their numbers are still increasing.

1903 NETHERLANDS AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 473

This movement emanated almost entirely from the peasants
themselves.

Seven local agricultural societies, with a membership of 1,300,
provide mutual insurance against injury to crops by hail, &c. The
total area insured is about 82,500 acres. In five of the societies the
premium is a fixed sum per acre ; in the other two it depends upon
the value and character of each particular crop, ranging at Groningen
from £ per cent, for potatoes to 1 per cent, for 3ax.

Kaffeisen banks are being gradually introduced. From two in 1 896
they rose to seventy by the end of 1 899. Towards the expense of esta-
blishing them the State renders certain assistance. At the suggestion
of the Peasants' Unions two Central Banks have been founded at
Utrecht and Eindhoven to form a tie between the small local banks,
guarantee their credit, and promote new banks. The central or-
ganisation at Utrecht is composed solely of co-operative banks, or of
those conducted upon Kaffeisen principles. One of the most suc-
cessful is at Lonneker (Overijssel) with 394 members. In 1899 the
deposits amounted to Q23l. 15s. and the advances to 1,490£. : the
rate of interest on deposits is from 3 to 3£ per cent, and for loans
4 per cent. The movement is yet in its infancy, but there seems
to be no doubt of its ultimate popularity and extension.

It may be of interest to append a few statistics as to the
agricultural condition of the country. According to the Official
Kegister of Lands for 1900 the total area of the Netherlands
comprises 3,253,827 hectares, of which about 96 per cent, is distri-
buted as follows :

Hectares

Arable land 847,000

Pastures 1,167,000

Heath, marsh, and dunes 597,000

Market gardens and orchards .... 69,000

Wood . • 218,000

Land liable to be flooded outside the dikes . . 29,000

Farms and country houses 43,000

Properties not taxable 80,000

Properties temporarily exempt from taxation . 87,000

Large estates are the exception, and few of the great owners
farm their own lands. The following particulars were prepared by
Dr. Lohnis, of the Department of Agriculture, to whom I was
indebted for much valuable information when in Holland, for the
Paris Exhibition of 1900. The total number of proprietors farming
their own land is 96,219, as against 71,394 tenant-farmers. Of these
only 113 proprietors and sixty-three tenant-farmers have farms
above 100 hectares, whilst there are 45,241 proprietors and 32,036
tenant-farmers with less than 5 hectares. Altogether the number
of proprietors with farms under 20 hectares is 83,774, and of

474 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

tenant-farmers 58,571. Farms above 20 and under 100 hectares
are held by 12,445 proprietors and 12,823 tenant-farmers.

On the diluvial lands of the south and east rye is the principal
crop. The north and south, where the soil is chalky, are mostly
pasture, and Friesland is wholly devoted to stock-raising and dairying.
On the heavier lands of Grroningen, Zeeland, Ghielderland, and
Utrecht the cultiration is more mixed. Beetroot is grown chiefly in
Zeeland and South Brabant, and it is spreading into the other
Provinces owing to the low price of corn. Thirty-one sugar factories,
nearly all in the western districts of South Brabant, are now at work.
Market-gardening flourishes in the Westland near the Hague, in
the neighbourhoods of Zwijndrecht, Venlo, Vlijmen, and in North
Holland. The very profitable bulb industry lies between Haarlem
and Leyden. Orchards are mainly in Utrecht, Limbourg, and the
Betuwe district of Gruelderland. The area under each of the leading
crops in 1895 was:

Wheat. . 61, 000 hectares Peas .

Rye . . 210,000 , Potatoes . . 150,000

Barley . . 38,000

Oats . . 130,000

Buckwheat . 35,000

Beans . . 36,000

Beet . . . 35,000

Carrots and turnips 26,000

Clover and sainfoin 62,000

Fallow land . . 12,000

The fall in prices caused the area under wheat to drop from
86,000 hectares in 1880 to the above figure. Caraway,, flax,
chicory, and onions are also largely grown. At one time madder,
tobacco, hemp, and hops were cultivated to a considerable extent,
but these crops barely pay their expenses now.

There are three distinct breeds of cattle. That of Friesland is a
large black and white animal, which does best on the clayey lands
of the polders, and is a heavy milker. The Grroningen breed is
lighter, black with white heads, of a good shape, and carrying a lot of
fat. The .smaller Gruelderland cattle, usually red and white or
fawn, thrive better than the others on poor land. Shorthorns were
formerly imported for breeding purposes, but of late years pure
native stock has alone been raised. The Grovernment and Provinces
annually give subsidies for the improvement of cattle-breeding. In
1895 the total number of cattle was 1,543,000, of which 904,000
were milking cows.

Great efforts have been made to improve the breed of horses.
Since 1892 the annual subsidy from the State has been 6,500^., and
there is Provincial aid as well. The old Dutch black horse is now
rarely to be seen, except in Drenthe and some parts of Friesland. It
is usually crossed with Oldenburg stallions or with those from the
Ardennes. Probably the best horses are to be found in Grroningen
and Gruelderland. Limbourg, Zeeland, and Brabant are noted for
their pure Belgians. The stud-farm of the War Office is at Berg-op-

1903 NETHERLANDS AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 475

Zoom. It was estimated in 1895 that there were altogether 266,300
horses in the country.

The number of sheep fell from 895,000 in 1880 to 679,000 in
1895, mainly owing to the low price of wool. On good land it is
usual to cross them with Lincolns ; on the poorer land of Drenthe and
Gruelderland there is no imported blood. Friesland has a distinct
race of its own, famed for its milking qualities ; the attempts to
improve it by the infusion of English blood have not been suc-
cessful.

The above summary to some extent indicates the agricultural
character of the country, and the steps taken by the Government to
provide opportunities for agricultural education.

JOHN C. MEDD.

476 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

THE EFFECTS OF THE CORN LAWS

A REJOINDER

I WAS glad when I was informed that the gauntlet, which I had
thrown down in my article on the Corn Laws, had been taken up by
the Secretary of the Cobden Club; believing as I did that the
question would be fought out 'fairly and squarely' on its own
merits.

I must confess my disappointment on finding that Mr. Harold
Cox has taken it up in the spirit of a counsel who having a brief
employs the ' Old Bailey ' methods of damaging the character of a
witness on the other side by unfounded personal charges.

Mr. Cox has thought it proper to accuse me of ' skilful muti-
lation ' of quotations, of ' sins of omission/ of ' unfair and misleading
quotations and statistics,' of being ' astoundingly inaccurate,' &c.

First let me take the case of ' skilful mutilation.' My quotation
from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations ran thus :

Even the free import of foreign corn could very little affect the interests of
the farmers of Great Britain. . . . The average quantity imported one year with
another amounts only ... to 23,728 quarters of grain, so it is probable that one
year with another less would be imported than at present.

I then showed that the actual import was 1,800 times the amount
on which Adam Smith based this conclusion.

Space did not admit of the full quotation ; moreover, by omitting
the reasons which led Adam Smith to this opinion, I was able to
give his views concisely in his own words. This omission Mr. Cox
has distorted into the accusation of ' skilful mutilation,' insinuating
thereby that I had been guilty of entirely altering the sense and
thus misleading the public. I give below the quotation in full ; the
words which I had quoted being shown in italics.

Even the free importation of foreign corn could very little affect the interests
o the farmers of Great Britain. Corn is a much more bulky commodity than
butchers' meat. A pound of wheat at \d. is as dear as a pound of butchers' meat
at 4td. The quantity of foreign corn imported even in times of the greatest
scarcity may satisfy our farmers that they can have nothing to fear from the
freest importation. The average quantity imported one year with another amounts
only, according to the very well-informed author of the Tracts on the Corn Trade,

1903 THE EFFECTS OF THE CORN LAWS 477

to 23,728 quarters of all sorts of grain, and does not exceed one five-hundredth
and seventy-one part of the annual consumption. But as the bounty on corn
occasions a greater exportation in years of plenty, so it must of consequence occa-
sion a greater importation in years of scarcity than, in the actual state of tillage,
would otherwise take place. By means of it the plenty of one year does not
compensate the scarcity of another, and as the average quantity exported is
necessarily augmented by it, so must likewise, in the actual state of tillage, the
average quantity imported. If there were no bounty, as less corn would be
imported, so it is probable that, one year with another, less ivould be imported than
at present.

It is obvious then that the quotation given in my article exactly
expresses Adam Smith's conclusion in a form which brings it more
clearly to the reader's mind than if it had been encumbered with the
reasons which led him to adopt that conclusion.

There is not the slightest ground for the disingenuous accusation
of Mr. Cox.

I now take up the accusation that my * quotations are as mis-
leading as my statistics.'

The quotation in question from the Wealth of Nations ran as
follows :

If the free importation of foreign manufactures were permitted, several of the
home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin
altogether.

Mr. Cox endeavours to discredit this quotation, and to distort its
plain and obvious meaning, by stating that the passage ' is taken
from a chapter devoted to the eloquent advocacy of free trade in
manufactures as well as in corn.'

JS"ow this statement is put in such a manner as to involve a
suggestio falsi and a suppressio veri. The first portion of the chapter
is devoted to an argument against 'monopolies and ' absolute prohibi-
tions ' in manufactures as well as in corn, and to ' high duties which
amount to a prohibition,' but there is not a word in it which favours
the free importation of manufactures. After discussing the question
of monopolies, prohibitions, &c., the chapter approaches the subject
of free import, and then the whole argument proceeds to show that
the free import of agricultural produce is not open to those ob-
jections to which the free import of manufactures is exposed. This
will be seen by quoting from the chapter a little more fully than I
had originally done.

Manufactures, those of the finer kind especially, are more easily transported
from one country to another than corn or cattle. ... In manufactures a very
small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in
the home market. It will require a very great one to enable them to do so in the
rude produce of the soil. If the free importation of foreign manufactures were
permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of
them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether, and a considerable part of the stock and
industry at present employed in them would be forced to find out some other
employment. But the freest importation of the rude produce of the soil could have
no such effect on the agriculture of the country.

478 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

The chapter then goes on to explain the reason of this :

If the importation of foreign cattle, for example, were made ever so free, so
few would be imported, that the grazing trade of Great Britain would be little
affected by it.

The chapter then goes on to dilate upon the difficulties and ex-
pense of transport. It then takes up the question of the importation
of salted provisions as follows :

The freest importation of salt provisions, in the same manner, could have
ae little effect upon the interests of the grazier* of Great Britain as that of live
cattle, &c., &c.

Then the chapter comes to the question of wheat, which has been
already quoted.

Even the free importation of foreign corn could very little affect the interests
of the farmers of Great Britain, &c., &c. . . . The small quantity of foreign corn
imported even in times of the greatest scarcity, may satisfy our farmers that they
can have nothing to fear from the freest importation.

It is not surprising that Adam Smith should have failed to foresee
the marvellous progress of inventions which have entirely altered
the conditions of transport ; but I am fully justified in my contention
that Adam Smith would have predicted the ruin which has unfortu-
nately befallen our agriculture if he could have had any conception
that the actual imports would have risen to 1,800 times the amount
on which he based his conclusion that it would ' very little affect the
interests of the farmers of Great Britain.'

Another ' sin of omission ' on my part is that I treated the price
of corn as if such a phenomenon as the change in the value of
money had never been known. Now this statement is absolutely
contrary to fact, and diametrically opposed to my contention, which
was expressed as follows :

In fact prices are generally regulated by what may be termed the world's
level of prices — a level which is due to the general conditions of exchange,
currency, and production.

The word ' currency ' shows that I had not lost sight of the effect
of changes in the value of our money. Again I pointed out that
the distress which led to the Anti-Corn Law agitation was wholly
unconnected with the Corn Laws, that it was due to a monetary crisis
caused by a drain on the reserves of the Bank of England from
abroad, that it was caused not by dear bread but by want of money
to purchase it. Moreover I specially guarded myself against such
an imputation by saying that it was not my intention to ascribe all
these changes to the Corn Laws or to their repeal ; but that other
influences had been at work, and I pointed out that the low price of
wheat, now prevailing, was due not to free imports but to increased
facilities of transport and improved processes of tillage, cropping, and
shipping, by machinery.

1903 THE EFFECTS OF THE CORN LAWS 479

Another point on which I am charged with being ' astoundingly
inaccurate ' is in my argument that the Corn Laws enacted in and
after 1773 were inoperative. Mr. Cox argues that because in only
four out of fourteen years following 1773 the price of wheat was
above the limit of free import, therefore the 'protective duty was
fully operative.'

An examination into the import of wheat proves that Mr. Cox's
conclusion is absolutely incorrect. Not only did the Corn Laws of
1773 fail to protect the British farmer from the ruinous influx of
foreign wheat, but the import under those inoperative laws was
actually far larger than even under unlimited free import. Before
the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1765 the import of foreign wheat was
insignificant, but as soon as the floodgates of unlimited foreign
import were opened the rush was so great, that the attempt to stem
it by inadequate Corn Laws entirely failed. This is evident from
the following table which I have compiled from a Parliamentary
paper.1

Table of Annual Average of Imports of Foreign Wheat and Flour at
different Periods.

Period. Average Annual Import.

Quarters.

1755-64 . . . 14,954 . . Corn Laws.

1765-73 . . . 100,707 . . Corn Laws repealed.

1774-83 . . . 205,242)

1784-93 . . . 189,042

1794-18032 . . . 655,324 ( ' ' In°Peratlve Corn Laws.

1804-12 . . . 508,403j

It is evident, therefore, that the Corn Laws were absolutely
inoperative not only in the fourteen years mentioned by Mr. Cox, but
also in the forty years succeeding 1773. The average importation
under these Corn Laws in the ten years period, 1774-1783, was more
than double that of the period, 1765-73, under unrestricted free
imports, and in the last period, 1804-12, it was quintupled.

I was quite aware that in some years the prices of wheat were in
excess of the limit of free import, and this induced me to qualify my
expression by the word ' virtually ' free import. Mr. Cox has unfairly
endeavoured to put a false meaning on my words, which are to all
intents and purposes identical with those of the Committee of 1813. 3

Let me take another accusation of ' misleading statistics.' I

1 Parliamentary Debates, vol. 27.

* During this period not only was the import virtually free, in consequence of
high prices, but also sums amounting to 2,826,9472. were paid for bounties on the
import of foreign corn.

s For many years previous to the establishing of this system (the Continental
system which imposed difficulties on the importation of grain) the trade in grain
between this country and the Continent was virtually a free trade, the laws for
regulating and restraining it being wholly inoperative in consequence of the high
prices. — Report of the Committee 0/1813, p. 7.

480 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

stated that during the sixty-four years from the commencement of
the eighteenth century the price of wheat, which had remained
steady and low at an average of 33s. 3d. per quarter, had risen to
45s. lOd. in the eight years after the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1765.
Mr. Cox suggests that I have misled my readers in not taking the
prices immediately preceding the repeal, thereby unfairly insinuat-
ing that if I had done so the result would probably have been
reversed. Now the official figures given by the Committee of 1813,
for the average of five years preceding the repeal of the Corn Laws,
is only 30s. lOcZ. ; so that if I had quoted this figure it would un-
doubtedly have strengthened my contention in showing that the rise
in price, after the repeal of the Corn Laws, was 15s. per quarter
instead of 12s. 5d. No doubt if I had quoted this price Mr. Cox
would equally, and even with greater justice, have accused me of
unfairness, in taking the shorter period, which was more favourable
to my contention, instead of taking the average of a large number of
years. There is less excuse for his ungenerous insinuation, because it
is evident that he has consulted the report of the Committee of 1813,
in which the five-year averages of the price of wheat form a promi-
nent feature — not even shelved in an appendix — but in the body of
the report separated in two tables, one before, and one after, the
repeal of the Corn Laws.

Another of my so-called misleading quotations is from the report
of the Committee of 1813. Mr. Cox states the risk of dependence
on foreign corn was a small fragment of the report and ' a mere
incident in the argument.' It is difficult to conceive a greater per-
version of fact. Far from being a mere incident, the risk and inex-
pediency of a dependence upon foreign supplies pervade the whole
report. In fact, the entire argument is devoted to that question.
The report commences by stating that foreign corn to the value of
58,634,135^. had been imported in the last twenty years and the
average price for the last four years had been 105s. 5d> It then
proceeds to say :

So great a degree of dependence on foreign countries for a sufficient supply of
food, and so great an advance of price of wheat as is hereby proved, require the inter-
position of Parliament without further delay. . . . Under this impression and
with the view of ascertaining what measures it would become your committee to
propose, as best calculated to induce our own people to raise a sufficient supply
for themselves, from their own soil, and at the same time to reduce the prices of
corn, they have examined into the means which the United Kingdom possesses of
growing more corn, and into those laws which from time to time have been made
for regulating the corn trade.

Then follows the result of this examination, which is summed
up as follows :

Upon the whole it appears to your committee to be a fair practical inference
to draw from this enquiry into the means which these countries (Great Britain
and Ireland) possess of growing an additional quantity of corn, that they are able

1903 THE EFFECTS OF THE CORN LAWS 4.81

to produce as much more corn, in addition to that which they already grow, as
would relieve them from the necessity of continuing in any degree dependent for a
supply on foreign countries.

Next the Committee takes a general review of the laws for
regulating the corn trade, and sums up as follows :

This review of the Corn Laws shows that, so long as the system of restraining
importation, and encouraging exportation, is persevered in, Great Britain not only
supplied herself, but exported a considerable quantity of corn ; and also that the
prices were steady and moderate.

Then the whole argument, part of which I originally quoted,4
is devoted to the evils of foreign importation, with the exception
of a few words devoted to the question of Colonial treatment
which are irrelevant to the point in question.

The Committee of 1814, which carried on the investigations
commenced by the Committee of 1813, endorse their views in the
following terms :

They are convinced that a reliance on foreign importation, to a large amount, is
neither salutary nor safe for this country to look to as a permanent system ; and
that many of the sacrifices and privations to which the people have been obliged
to submit, during the late long and arduous contest, would have been materially
alleviated, if their means of subsistence had been less dependent on foreign growth.5

4 There is much more to the same purpose which for want of space I did not
quote. For example, ' The various evils which belong to so great an importation
from foreign countries — to so great an expenditure of our money, in promoting the
improvement and cultivation of those countries, at the loss of a similar extent of
improvement and cultivation in our own — and to the established high prices of corn,
are so numerous, and so mischievous, that every one will readily allow they are
deserving of the serious attention of Parliament.' — Report 0/"1813, p. 7.

5 The Committee of 1814 then recommended that, while protecting British
agriculture, Parliament should, consistently with this first object, ' afford the greatest
possible facility and inducement to the import of foreign earn, whenever from adverse
seasons the stock of our orvn growth should lie found inadequate to the consumption of
the United Kingdom.'1

This is of course needed to obtain proper elasticity in any system of corn laws, and
it naturally gives rise to the passing of Acts from time to time to carry out this view.

The array of Acts which Mr. Cox has brought forward in order to discredit the
Corn Laws appears formidable at first sight. It is not so, however, when it is
considered that it extends over nearly two hundred years, and that probably one
emergency may entail several Acts ; for separate needs are met by separate Acts, and
each Act entails its corresponding Act of repeal when the emergency ceases. This
may be seen in such cases as the following :

(1) An Act to allow flour to be substituted for wheat.

(2) An Act to ascertain the price of corn.

(3) An Act to give bounties on importation.

(4) An Act to repeal the same.

(5) An Act to permit importation at low rates.

(6) An Act to repeal the same.

(7) An Act to restrain exportation.

(8) An Act to repeal the same.

(9) An Act to authorise the King to permit changes in exportation or importa-
tion, &c., &c.

VOL. LIII— No. 313 II

482 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

How Mr. Cox could have the hardihood to assert that the risk
of dependence on foreign corn was a ' mere incident ' in the report
of 1813 passes my comprehension.

Beyond clearing myself from the unwarranted imputations
which have been cast upon me, I do not care to follow Mr. Cox
through the haze of plausible misrepresentations with which he has
obscured the main points at issue, and I must decline all further
controversy with an adversary who has recourse to such weapons.

I would simply remark that while endeavouring to ' throw
dust in the eyes of the public' he has not attempted to grapple
with the main points of my contention. These points may be
briefly summed up as follows :

(1) When an article, like wheat, is or can be produced at
home, a tariff stimulates the home production, and does not raise
the price, provided that the duty be protective and not pro-
hibitive ; the burden of the tax falling on the foreign producer.

(2) The price of wheat is generally regulated by what may be
termed ' the wwld's level of prices,' due to general conditions of
exchange, currency, production, &c. Unlimited import, however,
interferes with this equalisation by enabling the foreign producer to
swamp the market, and ruin the industry of the unprotected
country.

(3) Corn Laws cannot keep up the price to the limit of
allowed importation, nor can free import keep down the price.

(4) The dependence on foreign supplies tends to raise the
price in time of war. During the war with France the price rose
to 126s. 6d. per quarter, and during the Crimean war our
dependence upon foreign supplies had become so great, that the
price of wheat rose to 74s. 8d. per quarter, under unlimited free
import, although we had complete command of the seas. Should
we be engaged in war with one or more strong maritime powers the
famine prices of 1810-15 would probably be repeated with the most
disastrous consequences to our country.

(5) The distress of 1843 which gave such force to the Anti-Corn
Law agitation was wholly unconnected with the Corn Laws or the price
of wheat, but was caused by a monetary crisis due to a heavy drain
from abroad on the gold reserves of the Bank of England.

(6) The imposition of a tax on wheat is frequently followed by a
fall of price, as has been proved by our Consular reports from Belgium,
Italy, Germany, France, and elsewhere.

(7) Our policy of free import of wheat has failed to secure for
us cheapness, wheat being in many cases cheaper in protected
countries than in England.

(8) Under our present policy, our agriculture has been ruined,
and its ruin has reacted on the manufacturing industries and

1903 THE EFFECTS OF THE CORN LA WS 483

involved them in the common ruin. It has driven our agricultural
population to emigrate or to swell the ranks of the unemployed.

(9) Oar policy of heavy direct, instead of indirect, taxation has
enabled foreign countries to compete with us, and carry off our
trade, reacting on our working classes by reduction of wages, short
employment, and consequent distress and poverty.

GUILFORD L. MOLESWOHTH.

i r 2

484 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

THE BRONTE NOVELS

' DAMN the curate ! ' ' Hell ! ' * You lie ! ' ' Silence, eavesdropper !
Judas ! Traitor ! Hellish villain ! ' These violent expressions are
from the novel WutheriTig Heights, published in the year 1847.

They are justified in dignified language by the sister of the
authoress. Charlotte Bronte, in her preface to her sister's novel, says :

The practice of hinting by single letters words with which profane and violent
persons are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which,
however well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does, what
feeling it spares, what horror it conceals.

In effect, the sisters Bronte had great courage, a lofty ideal, and
seriousness of purpose.

The question is whether we have not in 1903 arrived at the end of
the journey on which we started when Ellis Bell wrote Wutheri/ng
Heights and Currer Bell championed what struck the reading public of
that day as alarming realism. It is not very alarming realism to
readers of the twentieth century, for we have left fifty years behind
us, days when it was necessary to apologise for unrestrained ex-
pressions, and have arrived at the time when, thanks to the Header
of plays, we are spared the exhibition of masterpieces which have
nothing else to commend them except the lavish use of un-
restrained expressions.

In the enchanting parody of a University Extension lecture intro-
duced by Mr. Andrew Lang in The Disentanglers, we have in two
bantering phrases at once the limitation and the justification of the
Brontes' art : ' Impropriety reintroduced by Charlotte Bronte.
Unwillingness of lecturer to dwell on this topic. . . . Fallacy of
thinking that the novel should amuse.'

Precisely. The object of the Brontes' art was didactic ; the
means employed by them was to avoid any appearance of squeamish-
ness in recording the facts of life as they appeared to the authoress.
The question for us is not so much whether it is disagreeable to
discover in classic pages the language of the streets, or whether one
is not rather bored by encountering a sermon where one expected
to find relaxation, but rather — are the means which everybody extols
as indispensable to the ends of true art really indispensable ?

1903 THE BRONTE NOVELS 485

Of course what Ellis Bell was trying to do was to present us with
an accurate picture of the savage and violent life that lay about her,
and she could find no better way of doing this than faithfully
recording the violent language in which her characters were accus-
tomed to indulge.

Was her method a success ?

It is a partial success if she has succeeded in making her
characters alive, even at the expense of employing this questionable
method. It is not even a partial success if she has merely recorded
violent language without enabling us to realise the violent characters.
An artist certainly as great as Ellis Bell came face to face with the
same difficulty forty years after the appearance of Wuthering Heights.
Before the appearance of Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
wrote to Mr. Henley : ' Two chapters are written, and have been tried
on Lloyd with great success ; the trouble is to work it off without
oaths. Buccaneers without oaths — bricks without straw. But
youth and the fond parient have to be consulted/

Well, Treasure Island was produced — buccaneers without oaths
— and surely no more vital characters were ever produced by a great
artist. There is not one single violent expression in Treasure
Island, and yet the impression of ruthless, savage, bloodthirsty
villany is complete, convincing, terrible.

Here we have matter for consideration which may enable us
without dogmatising to see whether the naturalistic method really
deserves the unchallenged supremacy which our generation, though
now somewhat reluctantly, still accords it. If John Silver and ' that
brandy-faced rascal ' Israel Hands and George Merry and Morgan
can be made to live and terrify us without the aid of one single ex-
pletive, where is the compulsion that Ellis Bell found so urgent?
The conclusion surely is that Stevenson was a great artist, and Ellis
Bell was not a great artist.

In fact, the habit of relying upon violent expressions to produce
violent effects is closely akin to the habit of relying upon italics in
composition, which is one of the first weaknesses an author has to
overcome. If it were merely an inappropriate monosyDable that
one found trying, there would perhaps be little to say, but the free
employment of coarse words is not an accident, but only a rather
unimportant incident, in a system which has ceased to produce good
results.

What, then, shall we say are the abiding merits of the works of
the sisters Bronte ?

Firstly, their abounding human sympathy ; secondly, the infinite
patience and conscientiousness with which they observe and record
the facts of life. They interested themselves in people as human
beings ; they did not think it necessary that they should be wealthy
or important or adventurous or exceptional in any way whatever.

486 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

Clods and ruffians and bores and dowdies, among whom their lives
were passed, are drawn with accuracy. The authoress accepts her
clods and dowdies as interesting people, which is a tribute to her
own wide sympathy,; but she expects her readers to find these people
interesting merely because they are accurately reproduced. Greorge
Eliot could do this because she was a mighty artist ; but one yawns
over Wuthering Heights, because, although Ellis Bell's sympathies
are wide, her style correct, and her intentions excellent, she is not a
great artist.

But then that is precisely where her champions would take up
her case, and tell me that it is I whose sympathies are narrow and
whose sense of art is defective, and not Ellis Bell.

That is quite fair ; but for my own part, after painstakingly
reading the whole of Wuthering Heights, I cannot distinguish the
Christian names of the characters from their surnames, or one
character from another, male or female, or make out what is the
story, who is telling it, or what all the anxiety is about ; nor can I
carry my attention from one page to the next without a strong effort
of will. Yet hardly had I laid aside this tedious production, when a
lady told me that she had j just read Wuthering Heights for five hours
at a stretch, and been only able to lay it down because she was
compelled to dress for dinner.

This is a severe shock to'one's convictions, and drives one to the
conclusion that there are men's authors and women's authors : to a
few, only a very few, is it given to appeal to all mankind. Ellis Bell
was assuredly not one of these.

' Wuthering Heights,' wrote her sister, ' is hewn in a wild work-
shop, with simple tools, out of homely material.' This is true, and
greatly to the credit of the authoress. But what so many writers of
the calibre of Ellis Bell overlook is the fact that inexperience is not
necessarily genius. Byron's contempt for 'the mob of gentlemen
who write with ease ' was only the characteristic expression of a
justifiable impatience with people who clamour for our attention to
unfinished work. Perhaps the shade of Ellis Bell will not feel
affronted if I quote Sheridan's advice to a young writer when he bade
him remember that ' easy writing is damned hard reading ' ; but there
again, easy writing may — does — produce that impression upon me,
but not by any means upon most ladies who read Wuthering Heights.
The mountains of detail, the solemn periods, the faithfully repro-
duced jargon of the peasant, all the other features of Ellis Bell's
work, are great recommendations to many readers. They enjoy
losing themselves in detail ; they admire the accuracy of the dialect ;
the lack of anything resembling humour is no drawback to their
enjoyment.

To my mind it is very depressing to think that all this excellent
material, these high intentions, this dogged industry, should be

1903 THE BRONTE NOVELS 487

wasted ; and, without wishing to dogmatise, may one not profitably
recall the severe training that Thackeray underwent, and the terrible
self-imposed discipline of George Eliot's mind, before their match-
less powers were developed to the full ? All this was wanting to
Ellis Bell. It was not wholly her fault, but still it is wanting ;
although, in the circumstances of her life, she wrought wonders.

There remains the question whether she would have had the
patience to submit to discipline. Probably not, for the ideal which
she set before her did not call for discipline. She ' wished ' to ' write
what she saw,' and she would probably have urged that drilling the
mind destroys its freshness and spontaneity. One can only infer
this from the nature of her work, but the phrase is often used and is
responsible for much conceited laziness and stupidity.

If one would see how much may be done towards improvement
of style, and consequent success in art, in the most untoward circum-
stances, one need only turn to Agnes Grey, a work produced in the
year 1847, by Acton Bell.

Here we have dissolute squires and vulgar nouveaiix riches
presented, and convincingly presented, in a style which Stevenson
himself could not but have approved.

The story is the familiar one of a young lady whose family
misfortunes compelled her to earn her own living at the age of
eighteen. Agnes Grey is the full and attractive portrait of a type
of which Kuth Pinch was but a sketch. We should hardly have
realised Kuth Pinch in all her attractiveness without the help of
Fred Barnard, but Agnes Grey is higher art.

It is needless to say that the incidents in the story of Agnes
Grey are in themselves tedious and dismal. The daily routine of a
poor girl leading the arduous and depressing life of a governess in
families where she was despised can hardly be anything else; but
the story is so connectedly told, and the incidents are presented so
soberly and touched so lightly, that the impression is great. Nothing
is overdone: there is sufficient dialect to divert, not enough to
weary. The children of both of the families Agnes Grey served
stand out each from the other like living beings. The good men are
not tiresome, the wicked men are not melodramatic.

There could be no greater contrast to Wuthering Heights than
Agnes Grey.

In the one case the machinery is lavish, the scenery startling,
and there is a wild abandon of language, which, if licence could
effect anything, ought to result in a horrifying impression, but the
impression is nil : in the other case we have nothing but the bread
and butter of life, but the impression is great.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte (or ' Acton Bell ' ),
is a much neglected book. It suffers from the slight drawback of
being a story within a story, which always fatigues the attention ;

488 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

otherwise the construction is good. The famous incident of the
brother who is mistaken for the lover was probably more or less
novel sixty years ago ; but the consequences of the mistake lead up
to scenes which disclose a very curious confusion of ideas. The
hero of the book is supposed to show no more than manly displeasure
when he strikes the brother with a loaded crop and nearly murders
him. The unhappy victim is, of course, extremely ill. The
murderer ' left him to live or die as he could/ overwhelming him
with foul abuse. But all this does not appear to have been a bar to
quite a cheery friendship when the little mistake was cleared up.
This is perhaps creditable to the temper of both parties, who conduct
themselves with manly and criminal violence as gentlemen ought
to do.

Their conduct throughout was based upon a misconception from
beginning to end. In another part of the story a prominent
character, Lord Lowborough, really suffers a very deep injury at
the hands of one who was formerly his friend, and is applauded for
declining to demand satisfaction, in the manner customary among
gentlemen, in the following interview.

' Name time and place, and I will manage the rest,' says the \vould-be second.

f That,' answered the more low deliberate voice of Lord Lowborough, ' is just
the remedy my heart, or the devil within it, suggested — to meet him and not to
part without blood. Whether I or he should fall, or both, it would be an
inexpressible relief if —

'Just so. Well then?'

'Oh ! ' exclaimed his lordship, with deep and determined emphasis. 'Though
I hate him from my heart, and should rejoice at any calamity that could befall
him, I leave him to God ; and though I abhor my own life, I leave that too to
Him who gave it.'

' But you see in this case ' pleaded Hattersley.

' I will not hear you,' exclaimed his companion, hastily turning away. ' Not
another word. I have enough to do against the fiend within me '

' Then you are a white-livered fool, and I wash my hands of you,' grumbled
the tempter, as he swung himself round and departed.

' Eight ! right ! Lord Lowborough,' cried I, darting out and clasping his burn-
ing hand as he was moving away. ' I begin to think that the world is not worthy
of you.'

Verily the ways of English gentlemen must seem mysterious to
gentlemen of other nations accustomed to more rigid codes of honour.
A violent and criminal assault on an unarmed man is hardly
condemned, but a stand-up fight is a temptation of the devil. Sir
Walter Besant humorously explained the abolition of the duel on
the ground that men found it simply intolerable to have to rise at
five o'clock in the morning for such an uncomfortable purpose. One
may with equal seriousness reason that the duel as a satisfaction of
honour was reprobated by public opinion, because public opinion
came to be the opinion of people to whom the idea of honour
was unintelligible.

1903 THE BRONTE NOVELS 489

Apart from this somewhat startling confusion of ideas, there is
much in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall that interests, much that is
even absorbing in its interest, but one sees here and there the first
appearance of catchwords that may have been seriously meant at the
time, but that have not always been useful.

The teaching of the book is on the familiar lines, namely, that
' one should be one's self,' and ' speak right out,' and all the kindred
exhortations to awkward manners and disagreeable remarks.

The heroine is one of those blameless people who have served as a
model for so many imitators. Blameless herself, she is in a perpetual
attitude of reminding all around her of their duty, while weeping hot
tears over her curly -headed little boy. Of course she despises clothes,
and of course her husband is everything that he ought not to be ;
although, if one comes to think of it, it could not have been very
agreeable to the best of husbands to find the young lady keeping a
diary of his married life in which all his peccadilloes were set forth in
excellent style and with much verve. Of course she runs away,
and the husband dies repentant but despairing, while she comforts his
last moments.

Equally of course, Society is decried, and the country life extolled.
This is how Mr. and Mrs. Huntingdon enjoy London :

He led me such a round of restless dissipation while there that in that short
space of time I was quite tired out. He seemed bent upon displaying me to his
friends and acquaintances in particular and the public in general on every
possible occasion at the greatest possible advantage. It was something to feel
that he considered me a worthy object of pride, but I paid dear for the gratifica-
tion. For, in the first place, to please him I had to violate my cherished pre-
dilections, my almost rooted principles in favour of a plain, dark, and sober style
of dress. I must sparkle in costly jewels and deck myself out like a painted
butterfly, just as I had long since determined I would never do ; and all this was
no trifling sacrifice.

The obvious comment that occurs to one is this — that perhaps
if the young lady had not been so exacting about trifles, and so
unreasonably reluctant to accept the small things of life as they
came, and so determined to see nothing in life except sitting about
in the country doing nothing and keeping a diary of her husband's
shortcomings, perhaps her husband would not have taken to drink.
We are to remember that the young lady came of a considerable
family, was an heiress herself, and now married to a young man with a
large establishment and the usual prosperous and dignified surround-
ings of a country gentleman in the great days of English agriculture-
It is therefore only reasonable that her husband should have liked
her to wear the family jewels ; and a ' plain, dark, and sober style
of dress,' which would be the very thing for housekeeping in the
morning in the country, is not the right thing for the opera. In
short, the young lady did not know how to dress and would not be
taught.

490 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

This is the obverse of the medal, and here is the reverse :

Mr. Huntingdon discovered his wife keeping her diary and said, 'With
your leave, my dear, I will have a look at this.' . . . And drawing a chair to the
table composedly, sat down and examined it, turning back leaf after leaf to find
an explanation of what he had read. ... Of course I didn't leave him to pursue
this occupation in quiet. I made several attempts to snatch the book from his
hands, but he held it too firmly for that. I upbraided him in bitterness and scorn
for his mean and dishonourable conduct, but that had no effect upon him. And
finally I extinguished both the candles, but he only wheeled round to the fire,
and raising a blaze sufficient for his purpose, calmly continued the investigation.
I had serious thoughts of getting a pitcher of water and extinguishing that light
too, but it was evident that his curiosity was too keenly excited to be quenched
by that. . . . Besides, it was too late. ' It seems very interesting, love,' said he ;
. . . ' but as it is rather long, I will look at it some other time, and meanwhile I
will trouble you for your keys, my dear.'

This is meant to be tragedy, but there has been no more scream-
ing farce in real life since the matrimonial difficulties of Count and
Countess Eumford.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is undoubtedly a very interesting
story, but the idealisation of these unrestrained and dubious manners
is unfortunate in itself, and has had an unfortunate effect upon the
English mind.

It is curious that a family should have existed and presented to
the world of letters three remarkable specimens of the same type.
If we take up any one work of the Bronte sisters it will be extremely
difficult even for a practised critic to say to which of the three sisters
the work should be ascribed. In each case we find the same micro-
scopic accuracy of detail, the same indifference as to whether the
detail is unimportant or not, the same laudable determination to see
the soul of the character through all untoward externals, the same
incapacity to grasp the fact that in order to make an impression details
must be most carefully sifted and most artfully arranged, the same
lack of humour and the same gallant disregard of convention, even
of such literary convention as is very convenient and cannot be dis-
regarded with impunity by the most reckless scribes. In short, we
have all the elements of the naturalistic school of novelists, not
excepting Mr. Andrew Lang's humorous conclusion, ' The novel is
the proper vehicle of theological, scientific, social, and political
instruction.'

Villelte, by Currer Bell (or Charlotte Bronte), is a book in which
one is alternately exasperated by pointless detail and rewarded for
one's patience by positive flashes of insight.

The cook, in a jacket, a short petticoat, and sabots, brought me supper, to wit,
some meat, nature unknown, served in an odd and acid but pleasant sauce ; some
chopped potatoes made savoury with I know not what, vinegar and sugar, I
think : a tartine or slice of bread and butter and a baked pear. Being hungry, I
ate and was grateful.

1903 THE BRONTE NOVELS 491

Naturally, and one has eaten many worse meals. If this is a
letter of a young lady to her parents after her first experience of
Continental cooking, one would say it showed promise ; being in-
serted into a grave and didactic narrative, it produces the impression
of mere padding. It reminds one of Mr. George Moore's criticism
of the late M. Zola, ' Ce que je reproche a Zola c'est qu'il n'a pas
de stvle.' He proceeds to illustrate this by pointing out that pas-
sages worthy of Pascal and Bossuet rub shoulders with police news
and downright padding. The Bronte sisters never rise to M. Zola's
heights or sink to his depths. They may be described as the Carac-
cisti of the naturalistic school : not that the parallel is exact, for
they were hardly inspired and they certainly were not experts ; but
they do hold an unchallenged position of mediocre attainment which
never sinks into baseness, and here and there really invades the
realm of excellence.

Villette, for example, although dwelling in tedious circumstances,
is very faithful work. Even Bronte lovers admit that it is dull. It
suffers like all the Bronte novels from the impression of self-
consciousness which may or may not have been the just reflection
of the ladies' minds, but it cannot be shaken off when we find the
entire book occupied with the impression made upon the writer by
the most trivial incidents of everyday life, and by introspection
which may have been original sixty years ago, but seems quite
childish to us now. Of course the most famous of all the Bronte
novels is Jane Eyre. In this interesting work we find the fervour
of Mr. Andrew Lang's enchanting mock lecture in full blast, ' the
novel is the proper vehicle of theological, scientific, social, and political
instruction.'

In order to make this quite clear to her readers, ' Currer Bell ' has
prefaced Jane Eyre with a dedication to Mr. Thackeray and a few
words expounding her principles. She says, writing on the 21st of
December, 1847 :

There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle delicate
ears, who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of society much as the son
of Imlah came before the throned kings of Judah and Israel, and who speaks
truth as deep, with a power as prophet-like and as vital, a mien as dauntless and
as daring. Is the satirist of Vanity Fair admired in high places ? I cannot tell.
But I think that if some of those among whom he hurls the Greek fire of his
sarcasm, and over whom he flashes his levin brands, were to take his warnings
in time, they or their seed might yet escape a fatal Ramoth-gilead.

It is a far cry from Ramoth-gilead to Cornhill, and there is
this material difference between the prophet Micaiah and Mr.
Thackeray, namely, that the prophet Micaiah did not publish his
prophesyings and build a handsome house from the proceeds. Not
that Mr. Thackeray was not perfectly entitled to all, and more than
all, of the rewards of his industry and genius. But really, Micaiah

492 4 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

and Mr. Thackeray — is not the parallel somewhat strained ? And
what is all this about Greek fire and levin brands ? Is it not to take
the novel much too seriously ? What have we to do with Greek
fire and levin brands when we sit down to be amused for an hour ?
There again we run our heads against the dictum — 'Fallacy of
thinking that the novel should amuse.'

Now the failure of Jane Eyre as a work of art lies precisely in
this attempt to wield the levin brand and also to amuse us at the
same time.

The purpose of the authoress is eminently didactic ; the means
of enforcing her conclusions are the simple ones of a narrative of
love and tragedy, but the melodrama is painfully mechanical ; and as
for the love, well, let us see what it was.

We are introduced to a character of the later Byronic type — a
dark-haired, strong-jawed voluptuary, who commands wealth and all
that wealth can buy in a world which is still extremely agreeable for
wealthy people. We are given to understand that an unhappy
married life has driven this saturnine person to the usual consola-
tions of a vigorous and melancholy maturity. At the age of forty
he casts the eyes of regard upon a plain, poor, plain-spoken, dull
governess, and we are also given to understand that this virtuous
young person arouses in him a passion so deep that all considerations
are swept away in the torrent of his emotion, and not even the penalties
of bigamy will deter him from the gratification of his desires.

There is nothing impossible in all this, because there is nothing
impossible in human nature, but it is so wildly improbable that one
is justified in describing a melodrama under the circumstances as
purely mechanical. As regards the claim of the authoress to reform
or chastise or instruct her generation, it is a claim that has been
put forward in the last fifty years by so many people that we can
hardly avoid the inquiry, has it any justification ?

We may safely say that the immense mass of professedly didactic
fiction that has been published since the appearance of Jane Eyre
has really modified the ideas of two generations. It has had an
influence such as might be expected. That is to say, it has im-
pressed the minds of two half-educated generations with the
convictions of several educated people.

The assumption of the prophetic attitude is merely ridiculous to
anyone with a grain of humour ; and on the whole one can only say
that the influence of fiction when it has deserted its proper province
of amusement and relaxation has been wholly pernicious. It has
engendered among the ignorant and half-educated a conceited
dogmatical habit of thought which is extremely disagreeable to
encounter, and is the source of endless misery to the people who are
so unfortunate as to possess it.

' Currer Bell ' need not have been anxious as to the reception of

1903 THE BRONTE NOVELS 493

Vanity Fair in high places ; it was incontestably received with
delight and admiration — as a work of fiction. If it did not exactly
shake a throne or reform a selfish and voluptuous aristocracy, perhaps
that is because there really is a substantial difference between
Micaiah, or even Voltaire, and Mr. Thackeray.

Yet this mechanical melodrama and painfully didactic com-
position was received with delight by a generation of readers who
are to-day no longer young. Some will say that this is in con-
sequence of the development of the critical faculty; others will
maintain that there is no surer sign of our literary decadence than
the waning interest in the works of the Bronte sisters.

The Professor tells a plain tale. It gains by not attempting to
teach us anything. The didactic element is wanting ; unless we are
to infer that to make all the blunders possible in life is to show
strength of character. The hero of the story has highly placed
connections on both sides. He is sent to Eton, and is then offered
the alternative of being pushed forward in the public service by the
influence of the generous relatives who paid his school expenses, or
of looking out for himself. Common gratitude, as well as common-
sense, would appear to suggest that the hero should become an
attache in the diplomatic service or something like that ; but he
does not like his relatives' manners, so he decides to throw himself
on the tender mercies of his brother, who is making a large fortune
as a manufacturer.

All this may be very fine and manly, but one would suppose
that the natural inclination of a young man who had been ten years
at Eton would not be towards drudgery in a mill. Here again one
cannot help noting the tendency of all the Bronte sisters to produce
their effects somewhat mechanically. Given a young man of leisure
and culture and natural refinement set down to be a clerk to a
miserly bully, and you get the most distressing situations. The
most distressing situations supervene, and the hero, having quarrelled
with the people who naturally would have helped him, is now
compelled to quarrel with the people who regard him as a poor
relation. Finally he lands himself as an usher in a school in
Belgium.

All the rest is pretty story-telling ; the heroine being the usual
Bronte heroine — a deserving governess. The incidents are what
one might expect, but one is no longer impatient with them when
one is not expected to draw any disciplinary conclusions from them.
One is content to admire the grace and ease with which they are
told, and does not trouble one's head about the monotony of the
story or the exaggerated prominence given to uninteresting people.

Readers who enjoy Wuthering Heights will naturally revel in
Shirley, a story of very great length. It is difficult to say anything
more, for if one were to add that it is very tiresome as well as very

494 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

long, one would assuredly find one's self contradicted by an eager
reader who had studied it for five consecutive hours.

The heroine is a nice, high-spirited girl, who is possessed of a
considerable independence. Having been badly brought up, or rather
not brought up at all, the consequence is that she affects 'the
leopardess/ is fond of describing herself as ' untamed,' throws
convention to the winds, and gives her own opinion freely.

The portraits of the three curates are celebrated in many
appreciative notices of Shirley, but are really, although admirable
in their way, quite the least important part of the book. They are
the portraits of three very vulgar young men. There were vulgar
young men in Holy Orders fifty years ago : there are vulgar young
men in Holy Orders to-day, only too many.

In Shirley we find the characteristics of independence and self-
reliance extolled at the expense of all other mental qualities. When
the world was half empty men possessed of this mental equipment,
and nothing more, could do much.

Mr. Charles Kingsley added the cold bath and a devotion to field
sports, and beyond that, many Englishmen have been accustomed to
conclude, manliness cannot go.

' The Squirradical ' was ' wooden spoon ' in the year 1850, and a
very grotesque and pathetic figure he made in 1890. No doubt he
would have been to ' Currer Bell' a very earnest young man.

As the world has filled, and the conduct of life grown more
and more complicated, this ideal has come to be more and more
disastrous to the people who cherish it. Good intentions, honesty,
and courage are much. Unfortunately, the teaching of the Shirley
school of thought tends to engender the companion conviction that
anybody can do anything somehow, and that it does not much
matter how things are done. The conviction found its most famous
expression in the imbecile vaunt ascribed to Lord John Russell, that
he would take the command of the Channel Fleet if he were ordered
to assume that responsible position. This is quoted with approval,
and even with enthusiasm, by numerous people who might be sus-
pected of knowing better, as the last expression of that devotion to
duty which ought to animate the Englishman in public life.

These may seem somewhat solemn reflections. Perhaps in the
very making of them one is continuing the error of those who take
the novel too seriously. But let us go back to our mock University
Extension lecturer and quote once more — ' The novel is now the
whole of literature. . . . People have no time to read anything else.
Study of the novel becomes an abuse if it leads to neglect of the
morning and evening newspapers.'

Although this is said banteringly, it is hardly an exaggeration.
Politics have lost their interest since intelligence was swamped in
numbers. History has subsided into a thing of text-books, which

1903 THE BRONTE NOVELS 495

nobody reads unless compelled to do so for the purpose of passing
examinations. Conversation is extinct. Consequently it is not
unfair to ascribe to the novel a considerable share in moulding and
directing the public opinion of the time.

The widely read and deeply studied novels of the Bronte sisters
must have had a great influence ; an influence growing stronger as
other engines for directing public thought wear out.

The school of thought which lays it down that form is essential,
that perfection should be aimed at, that slovenliness and disregard
of authority is a blemish in otherwise sound work, that maintains
that reverence is due to all thought and to all work whether re-
munerative or not — this school still lives, if it languishes, in one
great seat of learning ; and this is the school to which the Bronte
influence, whether for good or for ill, is antagonistic.

WALTER FREWEN LORD.

496 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

CRUSADE AGAINST PROFESSIONAL
CRIMINALS

FACTS weigh more with most people than arguments, however telling ;
and a case reported a few weeks ago from Bristol may serve to con-
vince the sceptical that my crusade against professional criminals is
based on facts.

I cannot definitely fix the time when I first heard of ' Quiet Joe.'
But during the years of my official connection with Scotland Yard
' Quiet Joe ' was a person of note with the police. At first, I confess,
I sometimes fancied he was a mythical housebreaker to whom
undetected burglaries could be attributed — a sort of ' Mrs. Harris '
in the sphere of crime. Bat my scepticism was soon dissipated.
1 Quiet Joe ' was a man to be reckoned with ; very real, and very
difficult to catch. For long experience has made him an adept at
all the tricks of the trade. He is famous at what is technically
called the ' ladder larceny.' Thieves who practise in that line,
having laid their plans to raid some suburban or country house, gain
entrance by a ladder placed against the window of one of the princi-
pal bedrooms, while the family and guests are at dinner, and the
upper rooms are deserted. The outer doors, and any windows open-
ing on the lawn, are fastened by means of screws and wire or rope ;
and further to baffle pursuit, in case they are disturbed and need to
secure their safety by flight, a line is stretched across the lawn as a
' booby trap ' to trip up anyone who attempts to follow them.

Such then is ' Quiet Joe,' and such his trade or calling in life.
He gave us no little trouble at Scotland Yard, and I felt relieved
when, in December 1892, he and his special 'pal ' were convicted at
Liverpool, and sent to penal servitude. It was with real interest,
therefore, that I read ' A Detective Story ' in the Daily Telegraph
of the 19th of December last, for I recognised my old friends at once.
They had been watched by the police in London for a fortnight.
They met frequently at the Lambeth Free Library to confer together
and to study directories and books of reference. Having planned
their ' job,' they bought a map of Bristol in one shop, and at another
the screw eyelets and ropes needed for their work. On the 17th,
they booked for Bristol, and there took observations of the suburban

1903 CRUSADE AGAINST PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS 497

house which they had fixed on. But the detectives, well disguised
as labourers, were on their track ; and at this juncture they declared
themselves, and arrested the criminals. On the following day the
men were brought up and sentenced to nine months' imprisonment.

Now most people can be wise after the event ; but even that sort
of belated wisdom seems lacking to the Legislature and the law. If
these men had been asked ten years ago what they meant to do when
again released from penal servitude, they would have answered,
' Why, go back to business, of course ; what else ? ' If the same
question had been put to them at Bristol the other day, they would
have replied with equal frankness. There is no Jesuitical pretence
about such criminals. It appears from the newspapers that when
arrested they openly expressed their gratification that the officers
did not wait to ' catch them fair on the job,' as ' a long stretch would
about finish them ' — a playful allusion to their venerable age, for
both men are in their seventh decade, and another ten years'
sentence would see the end of them. As matters stand, their return
to' the work of their calling is only deferred till next September.
Meanwhile they live without expense, and a paternal government
will take care that the money found in their pockets on arrest will
be restored to their pockets on release to enable them to buy more
jemmies and rope and screw eyelets.

Now, according to my projet de loi, the judge who sentenced
these men in 1892 would, before sentence, have held an inquiry
on the charge that they lived by crime ; and, on finding that charge
proved, would have declared them to be professional criminals. And
as a further result they would, on the expiration of their present
sentence, be removed to an asylum prison, there to be detained as
moral lunatics, if such a phrase may be allowed. The community
would thus be relieved of their baneful presence; and, humanly
speaking, the criminals themselves would be afforded some reason-
able chance of real reformation in view of what remains to them
of this life, and of true repentance in view of the life that is to come.

The objections taken to this scheme in Mr. Crackanthorpe's article
of last November are very easily disposed of. He would probably
accept my assurance that he is wrong in thinking it would operate
to prevent a criminal from obtaining an honest livelihood. It is not
by duping employers that the police induce them to give work to
licence -holders. And I am surprised that a lawyer should have so
misread my words as to suppose I meant that the issue whether a
criminal is a ' professional ' should be tried by a jury. I spoke of an
inquiry, not a ' trial.' Indeed, this part of the scheme is not mine
at all, but Sir James Fitzjames Stephen's, whose language I quoted
in my first article (February 1901). His words are: 'A formal,
public inquiry, held after a conviction for an isolated offence.' And
the question at issue he explains to be whether ' the criminal really was

VOL. LIII— No. 313 K K

498 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

an habitual/hardened, practically irreclaimable offender.' I question
whether a judge is competent to decide whether a criminal is so
hardened as to be irreclaimable; but the issue whether he is a
' professional ' is very much simpler than that on which the jury has
to find the verdict. If an artist should repudiate a particular picture
attributed to him, it might be very difficult indeed to prove that he
painted it, whereas it would be very easy to establish the fact that
he is by profession an artist, and that he earns his livelihood by
painting pictures.

The proposal, I repeat, is not mine, but Sir James Stephen's.
And the only point of difference between us is that, when the result
of such an inquiry is adverse, he would send the prisoner to the
gallows — a clear proof that he never contemplated referring the issue
to a jury — whereas I suggest that the criminal should be registered
as a ' professional,' and that he should be finally deprived of his
liberty if, after solemn and formal warning of the consequences of a
further conviction, he deliberately provokes those consequences by
going back to crime. And my refusal to advocate the infliction of
the death penalty is solely because my knowledge of criminals leads
me to believe that, in this country at all events, it is unnecessary.
Milder measures would suffice.

My object in taking up this subject is not to air theories or fads.
I want, in my humble way, to enlighten public opinion upon plain
questions of fact. I want the public to recognise that, however
important the reformation of criminals may be, and their treatment
whether in or out of prison, the primary duty of the State is to
protect society against their crimes ; and that this duty is flagrantly
violated by setting our ' Quiet Joes ' at liberty to prey upon the
community. And further, I want the public to realise that most of
the crimes which are recorded in our criminal statistics are prevent-
able, and preventable by the adoption of measures which would have
the approval of the great majority of people in every class of life.
I am not a doctrinaire philosopher, or, to use a terse synonym, I am
not a fool. I do not dream of making England a Utopia where
crime shall be unknown. Human nature being what it is, a project
to stamp out crime would be as visionary as a scheme to stamp out
disease. But it would be perfectly practicable to reduce the volume
of crime as definitely as sanitary reforms have, in our own times,
reduced the volume of disease. And if methods analogous to those
which have produced such signal results in sanitation were adopted
in regard, to crime, results still more striking would be achieved.
For just in proportion as human beings are more easily dealt with
than bacilli and bacteria, so is the crime problem simpler than the
disease problem.

The analogy between the two is closer than might at first sight
appear. The main efforts of sanitation are directed to dealing, first

1903 CRUSADE AGAINST PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS 499

with the causes which produce disease, and secondly with cases of
disease when they occur. And here attention is transferred from
disease to the persons who have contracted disease. And in the
same way we should seek to counteract the influences which tend
to crime, and when crimes occur attention should be concentrated
upon the living human beings who commit them. But while
proposals to these ends would have general approval, all preventive
measures are decried as ' grandmotherly legislation ' by the very
people who advocate unreasoning severity in punishment ; and any
proposal adequate to safeguard the community against the depre-
dations of professional criminals is resisted and denounced by the
professional humanitarians.

Most of those who have practical acquaintance with the subject,
and are best fitted to speak upon it, testify that the great mass of
ordinary crime could be reduced within narrow limits by the
operation of reforms of a reasonable and practical kind. Reforms, I
mean, such as are calculated to raise the tone of life generally
among the masses of the population, and to protect them from
temptations and dangers which at present engulf unnumbered
victims. Some of our ablest and most experienced judges, indeed,
have publicly declared their conviction that most of the crimes
which come before the criminal courts may be traced, directly or
indirectly, to the one vice of drunkenness. 1 have before me, for
example, a report of a speech of one of the greatest judges of this
generation — I mean Lord Cairns -in which he used these words :
' I believe it is scarcely possible to exaggerate the blessings which
would come down upon the country from the practice of temperance.
It would empty our gaols.' Lord Chief Justice Coleridge is reported
to have said that 'judges were weary of calling attention to drink
as the principal cause of crime.' And, among others, Lord Brampton
has from time to time spoken strongly in the same sense.

But it would seem that no legislation upon this question may
be looked for at present ; and for the simple reason that the political
teetotalers are strong enough to wreck any measure in the nature of a
compromise, and no other kind of measure is practicable. Moreover,
any radical reform of the drink code would, if successful, involve the
abandonment of our present fiscal policy ; and that policy commands
the almost fanatical support of the great majority of the temperance
party. It is not my purpose to enter on a discussion of the merits
or demerits of what is called ' free trade.' But I wish to point out
that it operates to keep His Majesty's Treasury ' in the same boat '
with the public-house interest. For the Treasury largely depends for
its revenue on the drinking propensities of the population. The
contribution to the general taxes paid by an ordinary working
man, with a family to support, amounts to not more than a half-
penny a day ; but his contribution to the excise in paying for his

K K 2

500 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

daily drinks averages, at a low computation, not less than fivepence
a day. That is to say, a man who drinks pays some ten times
more to the public chest than the teetotaler. Any reform, therefore,
sufficiently thorough to ruin the publicans would leave the Treasury
bankrupt. It follows that if Local Option is not to be merely a salve
for weak consciences — if, in fact, it is to be what its advocates expect,
free trade must go before it can be introduced. But this will take
time. People are slow to perceive that, whatever the merits of real
free trade — and I am expressing no opinion upon it here — the system
called free trade in England is an imposture and a sham. If a man's
life depended on his explaining on free-trade principles why tea and
coffee should be taxed on entering the country, while, e.g., watches
and boots come in free, that man's life would not be insurable. An
import duty on wine and tobacco can be explained on special
grounds ; but the only possible explanation of a similar duty on tea
and coffee is that everybody needs them, and everybody should be
made to contribute to the taxation of the country. And, this being
so, there is no reason whatever why watches and boots should not be
treated in the same way. Indeed, there are strong reasons for
levying a duty on articles of this kind, which do not apply to tea and
coffee ; for if the tax should limit the importation, our manufactu-
ring interests at home would be benefited.

If I pass away from this branch of the subject it is not because
I fail to appreciate its importance. No one could have the excep-
tional, though by no means unique, experience I have enjoyed of a
long official connection with prisons and police, and a still longer
practical acquaintance with philanthropic work on behalf of the poor
and the fallen, without being profoundly impressed by the fact that
to the drinking habits of the people may be attributed most of the
crime and a very large share of the ill-health and the poverty of the
labouring and lower classes. The police and prison authorities
would endorse the dicta of the judges as regards crime. Sir Andrew
Clark used to say that 70 per cent, of the cases treated in the great
London hospitals were, due directly or indirectly, to drink. And as
for the poverty, it would probably be found that very many of the
artisans who are at present destitute have spent in drink during the
summer enough to keep them from hunger throughout the winter.

It will be objected, perhaps, that in countries where drunkenness
is as rare as it is unfortunately common in England there are more
crimes of violence than with us. The comparison is fallacious. The
Englishman is by nature quiet, well-disposed, and peaceable; and
the dull serenity of his temper would be scarcely ruffled by causes
which would send an Italian, a Spaniard, or a Frenchman into a fit
of ungovernable passion. The type theory, moreover, may be ignored
in dealing with the crime problem in this country. The main
practical questions involved relate to the influences which tend to

1903 CRUSADE AGAINST PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS 501

crime, and to the inadequacy and (I adhere to the word) stupidity
of our present methods of dealing with professional criminals.

Among these influences drinking holds the foremost place. But
there are others which must be taken into account. Said the Lord
Chief Justice, in charging the Lincoln Grand Jury at the recent
winter assizes, ' Judges had constantly to observe how many cases of
embezzlement and fraud depended on the miserable habit of betting.'
(rambling, indeed, in its many forms is becoming as great a plague
as it was before the Lottery Acts. Then, again, there are questions
relating to the treatment of the young in years and the young in
crime. But from these and other kindred topics I turn back to the
special question upon which I have been accorded a special hearing
in my efforts to impugn our present system and methods in penology.

The main count of my indictment of that system in my article
of February 1901 was that our criminal courts deal with crimes,
instead of with criminals. And if any new proof of this be sought,
it will be found in the dicta of the eminent judges cited in Mr.
Crackanthorpe's article of last November. If I quote Lord Brampton
only, it is because Lord Justice Mathew, Sir Edward Fry, and Mr.
Justice Channellall speak in the same sense. It is ' the punishment
of crime ' they have in view. Lord Brampton is remarkably precise
and explicit. After referring to the various proposals put forward to
avoid inequality in sentences, and the difficulties of dealing with that
question, he goes on to suggest that judges, before passing sentence,
should ' first reflect and determine what, ivithin the maximum limits
fixed by statute, would be a just sentence to award for the particular
crime before them.'

Now I am sure Lord Brampton will not deem it an impertinence
on my part to express my admiration for him as a criminal judge.
More than once, moreover, in cases of special interest to myself, he
has done me the honour of explaining to me the grounds which led
to his apportioning his sentences. But while I do not presume to
question his judgment in administering the present system of fitting
punishment to a particular crime, I deplore and condemn the
system itself. That system leads to the imprisonment of not a few
who might be much better dealt with than by sending them to gaol ;
and it brings the law into contempt in the case of persons who
commit crimes, not under the influence of passion or poverty, or
sudden temptation, but deliberately and of set purpose, and in the
course of the regular business of their lives. And my contention is
that when a verdict of guilty has been found against a person
charged with crime the proper question for consideration ought to
be not what sentence it would be just to award for the crime, but
what, in the interests of the community, should be done with the
criminal.

I appeal to the reader, whether lawyer or layman, to consider

502 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

this whole question on its merits. Such an appeal is not unnecessary,
for the English mind is intensely conservative, and clings with
tenacity to existing systems and ways. For long years our streets
were disgraced by an infamy unknown in most civilised countries ;
I mean that of permitting men openly to live upon the immorality
of women. The police were powerless. They could but report the
abominations done under the existing law. Parliament, it was said,
would never sanction measures necessary to put down the evil.
The story is told that when the inventor of the calculating machine
offered it to Government, urging that it was entirely new, the
answer he received was that Government could find no precedent
for the use of it ! And so here. There was no precedent for the
needed legislation. But in 1898 a Bill introduced by a private
member passed both Houses unopposed ; and on the eve of its
coming into operation the fraternity of loathsome men against whom
it was specially directed disappeared from the streets of London.
Doctrinaires may declaim against ' morality by Act of Parliament,'
but practical men believe in it implicitly. And in regard to the
Vagrancy Act 1898, that belief will be only confirmed by the fact
that when, after a time, some of the magistrates, most perversely
as I think, refused to accept the evidence of the women in cases
under it, the men began to return to their former haunts and their
hateful trade.

The main provision of that enactment is that where a man ' is
proved to live with, or to be habitually in the company of,' a woman
of a certain class, ' and has no visible means of subsistence, he shall,
unless he can satisfy the court to the contrary, be deemed to be
knowingly living on the earnings ' of the woman. My proposal is
that a convicted felon who is proved to be an associate of criminals
and to have no visible means of subsistence shall, unless he can
satisfy the court to the contrary, be deemed to be living by crime,
and shall be judicially declared to be a professional criminal. This,
I may add, is but an extension of the seventh section of the Preven-
tion of Crimes Act, which has worked admirably for thirty years.

It is fortunately no longer necessary to prove the existence
of a class of criminals who deliberately live by crime. It is no
longer necessary to prove that such criminals are plainly distinguish-
able. As Lord Justice Mathew so well says, ' the man who does no
work and lives by crime is easily identified.' Neither is it necessary
to prove that our present methods are inadequate to deal with these
professionals. All this is now raised out of the sphere of controversy
by the action of the judges and the last report of the prison authori-
ties. But I want the public to grasp the fact, first, that just as
most of the vulgar crimes of violence are due to drink, so most of
the serious crimes against property are the work of professional
criminals ; and secondly that it is perfectly practicable, by dealing

1903 CRUSADE AGAINST PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS 503

with these criminals in a sensible way, to put an end to the great
bulk of crimes of this character.

A good story is always worth repeating. When sitting at
luncheon in a country house in Scotland some years ago, my hostess
exclaimed, ' Oh, look, there's the thief ! ' And I saw a hulking fellow
slouching past the house. ' The thief ? ' said I ; ' what do you
mean ? ' The answer was that there was only one thief in that part of
the country. After a while my attention was called to ' the police-
man.' They had but one thief and one policeman ; and the chief
duty of the policeman was to look after the thief. Our grandfathers
managed such matters differently. And if our grandfathers came
back to life they would probably think our humanity had developed
at the expense of our sanity. Would it not be more sensible
to shut up the thief and to pension the policeman ?

Someone will say, perhaps, that this state of things exists only in
remote country districts. But this is not so. There are districts
within the Metropolitan Police area, not fifteen miles from Charing
Cross, where they seem scarcely to have even one thief. Thieves are
professionals, and professional men do not settle down in villages.
I am not speaking at random ; what I say is based on official know-
ledge. The inspection of the books in some of the outlying police-
stations was a revelation to me. Offences against property I found
to be few in number ; and of these the petty larcenies were gene-
rally attributable to passing tramps, while the serious crimes, reported
at long intervals, were almost always the work of experts from town.
Honesty and love of order are national characteristics. If the drink
curse were removed and professional criminals were caged, * man's
millennium ' would be brought almost within the range of ' practical
politics ' in England.

All this is well known to the detective police of our large cities and
towns. But it is not known to the public, or even to the Legislature.
And it appears to be unknown also to many of the judges. If it
were a crime to make the likeness of anything in heaven above or
in the earth beneath, and the police had to trace the author of some
particular piece of sculpture, they would look for him among a
definitely limited class of men. Now a case of forgery, or coining,
or burglary involves an inquiry limited in the same way. Let us
take the burglaries — the public always like to hear about burglaries.
According to the Commissioner's annual report for 1901, recently
issued, there were 547 burglaries in London during the year. In
the previous year, by the way, there were only 367. Now some of
these cases, of course, were trivial. If a kitchen window is left
unfastened, a sneak thief or a hungry tramp can get in and steal his
supper. But real burglaries are the work of skilled professionals.
And a ' good ' criminal may be trusted to do five or ten ' jobs ' at the
least before he is caught. We may conclude, then, that the burglaries

504 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

of 1901 were the work of not more than fifty or one hundred criminals.
And this in a population of over 6,000,000.

Now an increase by nearly 50 per cent, of burglaries in a single
year is serious enough to call for action. But what action shall be
taken ? ' Increase the Police Force,' it will be said. But every
1,000 constables added to the Force means an addition of 100,OOOL
a year to the rates. And 1,000 more constables would not be of
much account in this huge ' province of brick,' in which upwards of
600 miles of*new streets and about a quarter of a million of
new houses have been built since I became officially connected with
Scotland Yard. Here my Scotch story comes in. When it is a
question of one thief in a population numbered by thousands,
common sense suggests getting rid of the thief. A like remedy is
quite as obvious in the case of a proportionate number of thieves in
a population numbered by millions.

But are not the burglars shut up when they are caught ? Yes,
no doubt ; for a few months or years. And then they are let out
again to resume the practice of their profession. And while they are
' doing time ' another fifty or hundred carry on the business. And
when these in turn are caged, a third lot are at the work. And so on,
and so on. Treat the matter on the basis of statistics ; and, finding that
the criminals are a very trifling percentage of the population, we
shall pride ourselves on our twentieth-century civilisation and
enlightenment. But look at the matter from the point of view of
those with whom the burglars are not mere units of the population,
but well-known members of a skilled trade — for ' Quiet Joe's ' case is
not unique, but representative — and our system, instead of savouring
of enlightenment worthy of our own century, seems to give proof
of folly unworthy of any century.

Take the case of that other well-known cracksman ' Eed Jim,'
who, after committing ten or twenty crimes since his last discharge
from prison, has once again been brought to justice. What shall
we do with him ? Under our present ' punishment-of-crime '
system he of course receives a sentence of five years' penal
servitude. The man himself knew that perfectly well as he planned
and executed each of his successive crimes. And the sentence
affects him much as an accident on the football field affects a player
who has to retire from play for a while. Or if a ' strong ' judge
should impose a severer sentence, or a ' weak ' judge a lighter one,
the result is dismissed as a mere eccentricity, and it fails to influence
' the trade.' But I ask the reader to consider the case of ' Ked Jim '
on its merits, as if the problem it involves were a new one. What,
then, should be done with him ?

We have got beyond the mingled profanity and folly of regarding
a criminal judge as ' a vicegerent of the Deity,' who can apportion
the penalty to the sin. We recognise that the reformatory and

1903 CRUSADE AGAINST PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS 505

deterrent elements in punishment, important though they be, are
secondary and incidental. The essential element in the problem is,
how can society be protected against a man who has outlawed himself
by deliberately choosing crime as the business of his life, and whose
only conception of liberty is license to prey upon his neighbours ?
To turn him loose again in five years does not betoken quite as
much imbecility as to release him in as many months or weeks.
But the difference is only one of degree. All sane and sensible
people would agree that he should be got rid of. Sane and sensible
people, I say ; for we must take account of Bedlam, Earlswood, and
the humanitarians. But how got rid of? It would have been
possible formerly to send him across the seas to a distant penal
colony. But nowadays we are reduced to one of two alternatives :
we must deprive him either of his life or of his liberty.

If criminals are sent to gaol on superstitious grounds, or as a
matter of routine, then the reasons for committing them may
be adequate to justify releasing them. But if imprisonment is
imposed on intelligible and reasonable grounds, it should be con-
tinued as long as those grounds demand it. ' Eed Jim ' gets five
years, not because he broke into a house — that, if it stood alone,
would possibly have involved only five months — but because he is a
professional burglar. And at the end of his term he remains a burglar
still. If it was reasonable and right to shut him up on this account,
it is stupid and wrong to let him go again. If beasts of prey were
let loose at intervals from the ' Zoo ' we might surely expect a
preliminary warning. Equally so if burglars are released from gaol.
And though Government and the law ignore this duty, Scotland
Yard tries to discharge it for them. Every week men are turned out
of prison who, it is well known, will at once begin to commit crimes ;
and so their descriptions and photographs are sent to the various
police forces, in order that a look-out may be kept for them. Such
a system would be really amusing if the matter were not so serious.

And if I dissent from Sir James Stephen's proposal to send such
men to the gallows, it is not because I question the justice of such a
measure. But the object to be attained is the protection of the com-
munity, and this can be assured by keeping the criminal in confine-
ment. Two objections, however, are urged against this scheme. The
first is that no man is irreclaimable, and therefore no man should be
permanently deprived of his liberty. The second is that the irre-
claimables are so numerous that to shut them up in this way would
be impracticable. These objections are mutually inconsistent. Both
are fallacious ; and the second is not only fallacious, but the basis on
which it rests is false.

If professional criminals are reclaimable, their reclamation would
be expedited by increasing the penalties of impenitence. And to
make the possibility of their reclamation a reason for turning them

506 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

loose in an impenitent condition is but a weak concession to ignorant
sentiment. Even under our penal servitude system criminals are in
fact reclaimed. But the probability of a criminal's reclamation in an
asylum prison, managed as such a prison ought to be, would be far
greater than if he were left at liberty to pursue a life of dissipation
and crime. Any man who is really capable of reformation ought to
be thus reformed ; and upon adequate proof of genuine repentance
he might be restored to liberty. But the reformation of criminals is
a secondary consideration. In any case the main object of all prac-
tical penology, now thrust into the background, would be attained ;
I mean the protection of society. What compensation the prisoner
should be required to make to the victims of his crimes ; what pro-
vision he should be permitted or compelled to make for a wife or
children dependent on him — the discussion of these and kindred
questions of great importance I must once again defer.

The second objection claims a fuller notice. It is complicated
by elements which might be eliminated. The question whether the
hospitality of our shores ought to be extended to alien paupers is at
this moment under inquiry, and I will not discuss it here. And the
question whether political criminals should be allowed an asylum is
one upon which opinions differ. But surely there can be no second
opinion as to whether England should be made a refuge for the
common criminals of other countries. If a British subject is con-
victed of any offence abroad, he is deported to England on the
expiration of his sentence, and severe penalties await him if he goes
back. But a foreign thief or cut-throat who is convicted of crime in
England is treated in every respect as ' one of the family,' and when
released from prison he can at once resume his career as a criminal.
We learn, from the Home Office answer to Sir Howard Vincent's
question on this subject in Parliament on the 20th of November,
that 'during the twelve months ended on the 31st of October last
4,943 persons of foreign nationality were charged at the Metropolitan
police- courts.' And this return relates only to the Metropolis. It
takes no account even of cases in the City of London. If the figures
could be obtained for the whole kingdom, or even for our chief sea-
ports and manufacturing towns, the number would of course be very
much greater. It is plain, therefore, that our criminal population
would be appreciably reduced if criminal aliens were expelled from
our shores.

Nor is this all. In dealing with the crime problem we must take
account not merely of the number of the criminals, but of their
quality. And the recent great forgery prosecution is one of several
cases which have occurred lately to awaken judges, magistrates, and
the public to the fact — well known to the police — that the foreign
aliens include many of the most skilful and dangerous of the ' pro-
fessionals.' And my respect for the genius of the Americans leads

1903 CRUSADE AGAINST PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS 507

me freely to acknowledge their eminence in this particular sphere.
These criminals, moreover, are better known at Scotland Yard than
are the King's Ministers. There would be no difficulty in putting
our hands upon them. But with a depth of imbecility which it
would savour of profanity in anyone who reverences the Creator to
call natural — it is altogether acquired — these men are allowed freely
to ' enjoy the hospitality of our shores ' !

But our home-grown criminals must also be dealt with. What I
have written about those who have not merely the brains but the
means both to organise and to finance crimes against property has,
I fear, been received with incredulity. But what I have said I
adhere to. While the influence of such men is widely felt, their
number is ludicrously small. I doubt whether the police could name
a dozen of them ; I am certain they could not name a score. And
these men are largely responsible for the organisation of crimes
against property in this country. But most of the crimes of every
day are not the result of organisation. They are due to the preda-
tory instincts and habits of the criminal classes. And we have to
take account of criminals of various types. There is the common
' hooligan,' who works by mere brute force ; the snatch thief, who
relies on his swiftness of foot ; the trained pickpocket, whose nimble
fingers can relieve a man of watch or purse without even attracting
notice. And then there are the housebreakers and burglars of
different types and different degrees of skill ; to say nothing of
coiners, forgers, &c. Now many of these doubtless are so far gone
and have so little power of recovery that, humanly speaking, their
only chance for this world or the next is in prolonged confinement.
But of the rest there are not a few who pursue a criminal career
because its penalties seem to them to be more than counterbalanced
by its advantages. They are prepared for the risk of imprisonment
measured by months or years ; but if they were confronted, not with
the risk, but with the certainty of final deprivation of liberty, they
would turn in despair to honest labour. A scheme such as I propose
would avail to divert many of them from crime, even without its
being put in force against them. Still more marked would be its
effects on the class of persons who are now tempted to a career of
crime by the influence and example of successful criminals.

The objection here under consideration is sufficiently answered by
the last report of the Prison Commissioners ; for my scheme would
require less prison accommodation than theirs, and therefore it may be
assumed to be practicable from an official point of view. Were I to
attempt an estimate of the numbers that would have to be dealt
with, I fear my estimate would be received with as much distrust as
in the case of the organisers of crime. And yet I speak with know-
ledge. The details of statistics often mislead the uninitiated, but
experts may learn much from them. If, for example, a dozen sepa-

508 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

rate cases of murder are reported, we assume there were a dozen
murderers; but, as I have noticed already, we do not look for
hundreds of burglars to account for hundreds of burglaries. And a
like observation applies to the figures in the case of all those crimes
which the police know to be the work of professionals. And lastly, I
would urge that to make the difficulty of disposing of these profes-
sional criminals a reason for allowing them to keep the community
in a state of siege is a shameful policy of despair.

Sir James Stephen declared that ' if society could make up its
mind to the destruction of really bad offenders, they might, in a very
few years, be made as rare as wolves.' And this was not a chance
dictum uttered by him as a judge, but his deliberate opinion when
writing his History of the Criminal Law. The ' destruction ' of
offenders is unnecessary. Their seclusion would avail to achieve the
same result. Great reforms often work so slowly that their benefits
are not apparent in the lifetime of their authors. But in this matter
the resulting benefits would be immediately declared. If a statute
were passed providing for the banishment of criminal aliens and
the permanent confinement of native professionals, its influence
would be felt before a single case had been dealt with under
its provisions. And as one criminal after another disappeared by
the operation of the Act, the army of crime would be further weak-
ened by desertions.

' In a very few years, really bad offenders might be made as rare
as wolves.' That statement I would modify by saying that
criminals of the classes I have specified might be made as scarce as
foxes. A small share of the intelligence and patient, plodding care
to which we owe immunity from cholera and the plague would soon
accomplish this result. And the task, I once again repeat, would be
a vastly easier one. Even if ' Red Jims' and ' Quiet Joes ' were far more
numerous than in fact they are, they could be dealt with far more
easily than bacteria and germs and all the intangible and subtle
influences which produce and spread disease. Howr long, then, will
the public tolerate the present state of things ? Is it possible that a
nation which has sacrificed over 20,000 valuable lives to put down
Krugerism in South Africa would refuse to sacrifice a tenth or
possibly a twentieth of that number of mischievous lives to put
down crime at home ?

ROBERT ANDERSON.

1903

LAST MONTH

THE meeting of Parliament has been attended by a remarkable
phenomenon, the significance of which ought to strike the imagina-
tion even of the casual observer. This is the sudden and very
substantial reduction of the Ministerial majority in the House of
Commons. That majority, according to the calculations of the
Party whips, ought to be more than 120. No doubt if a great issue
were called, and Ministers had to fight for their lives, a majority
approaching this figure would still be forthcoming. But what are
the facts ? In the debate on the Address there were, during the
first week of the session — and it is only of the first week that I am
able to write — five divisions. These were taken upon amendments
any one of which, if it had been carried, would have been equivalent
to a vote of censure upon the Government, and they were defeated
by majorities of thirty-nine, forty, fifty-one, thirty-eight, and sixty.
It will be seen, therefore, that Ministers never once in these five
divisions had half their normal majority, whilst on three occasions
the majority was not one third of what, according to Dod, it should
have been if the Unionist Party had put forth its full strength. Of
course there are many easy-going people who will say, ' what on
earth does the reduction of a Ministerial majority matter, so long as
there is a majority, and we know that the reserves are all right in the
back-ground ? ' Eeasoning of this kind may suit the slipshod observer,
but it cannot satisfy any capable Parliamentary tactician. Let it be
remembered that the questions on which Ministers could only
command these maimed majorities were all of them of importance.
They included the housing-of-the-poor question, the state of the
unemployed, the refusal of the Public Prosecutor to institute pro-
ceedings against the persons connected with the London and Globe
disaster, the holding of directorships in public companies by
Ministers, and the condition of the Navy. Yet, despite the variety
and interest of these questions, it was only on that of the Navy that
Ministers secured anything like half their normal majority. Many
explanations will doubtless be offered of this strange state of affairs.
The two explanations which will alone hold water are, however, the

509

510 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

extraordinary apathy which has characterised the political world
during the last few weeks, and the fact that in the eyes of both
friends and foes, the present Ministry seems to have lived too long.
The first explanation, the prevailing apathy, is, I think, one about
which all will be agreed. By common consent the House of Commons
has never been duller than since the present Session began. The
almost joyous excitement which used to prevail not only in the House
but in its precincts at the commencement of a Session in the old days
is invisible now, and members speak in the Chamber, or creep about
the lobbies, with a curious air of lassitude and weariness. Is it
something in the air that has robbed them of their old spirit ? Or
is it not rather the consciousness of the fact that there is a barrier
between themselves and the rest of the nation. They got their
khaki mandate in 1900, and there is not one of them who does not
know that it is now exhausted. The dissolution may still be some
years distant, but for all that they act as if they were ciphers, with
nothing more than a mechanical duty to fulfil. What is true of the
House of Commons as a whole is still truer of the Government.
Despite the changes which took place in 1900 and the retirement of
Lord Salisbury, it is still to all intents and purposes the Government
which came into office in 1895. Nearly eight years of Ministerial
servitude have weighed upon the nerves of its leading members,
and probably there is not one of them who does not sigh for release.
Their ministerial life has been stormy and trying. They have
' muddled through ' — the expression is that used by one of themselves
— the greatest crisis which the country has had to face during
the last half-century. And now, when they are literally exhausted
by the strain they have had to bear so long, they find themselves
confronted by a whole series of new problems, some of them extra-
ordinarily difficult and complex. Is it surprising that they are
visibly faltering in their task, and stumbling into strange and inex-
cusable blunders which would only be possible to men who were
suffering from fatigue and over- strain ? These seem to me to be the
facts which furnish a key to the present situation, and to the
ominous reduction of the Ministerial majority. I have no wish to
exaggerate the importance of that reduction, but it is unmistakably
significant. The Government Whips will probably be able to effect
an improvement in the division-lists at an early date. But Ministers
have received an emphatic warning, and unless they forthwith set
their house in order, their position cannot fail to become critical.

The position of the Ministry, as it is revealed to us in the dry
records of the division-lists, is the real key to the political situation,
and the story of the month is, in consequence, a subject of minor
importance. The programme of the Government for the coming
Session, as it has been set forth in the King's Speech, is not of a
nature to excite the enthusiasm of any political party. We are pro-

1903 LAST MONTH 511

mised an Irish Land Bill, a London Education Bill, and measures deal-
ing with the Sugar Bounties, South African loans, the Port of London,
and the Scotch licensing laws. Perhaps the most curious feature
of the speech was the fact that it said nothing whatever about Army
reform, and this is, of all others, the question upon which a very
large body of the Ministerialists are most in earnest. Mr. Balfour,
however, in his speech at Liverpool, made a statement on this
subject which, to some extent, atones for the silence of the official
programme as it fell from the lips of the King. I shall revert to
the Prime Minister's utterance later on. At this point it will be
more convenient to deal with the actual proposals of the Grovernment
with regard to the legislation of the session. To begin with, the
scheme for bringing the educational system of the metropolis into
harmony with the Education Act of last session must tax the
resources of the Grovernment and the fidelity of its followers very
severely. At the moment at which I write, nothing is known of the
provisions of the Ministerial measure, but it is already evident that
there are two hostile parties in the House of Commons, and that the
division extends to both sides of the chamber. A certain number of
Conservatives are anxious that the future educational authority for
London should be a body composed on what has been called the
Water Board principle ; that is to say, it is to be a body in which
the Borough Councils are to have the preponderating authority, the
County Council taking only a secondary place. It is difficult to
understand how anyone who realises the necessities of London in the
matter of education, and the nature of the local borough councils,
can dream of accepting such a body as this as satisfactory. The
Borough Councils, despite their mayoral and aldermanic dignities,
have so far proved themselves to be nothing more than the old
vestries writ large. One does not wish to disparage the men who
devote themselves to purely local work, but it is a matter of
notoriety that the type of citizen attracted to these Borough
Councils is not equal to that from which the larger and more
important County Council obtains its recruits. Moreover, the ex-
perience we have had so far proves that the great body of citizens
do not take the interest in elections for the Borough Councils which
they undoubtedly feel in the elections for the County Council, not
to speak of the elections for the old School Board. Possibly there
might be some improvement in this respect if the Borough Councils
became the principal school authorities for London ; but the opinion
of most, if not all, authorities in education is that it would be a bad
day for our London school system when it was placed under the
control of men who are at present no better than slightly glorified
vestrymen. The other party in the approaching controversy is
anxious that if there is to be no authority elected ad hoc for the
management of the educational system, the power should be placed

512 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

in the hands of the County Council. That body is not popular with
the supporters of the Government, but despite its errors of judg-
ment, it has undoubtedly secured the confidence of the majority of
the people of London. The metropolis, which is so stubbornly
Conservative in its attitude towards Imperial politics, has shown
itself to be just as stubbornly Progressive with regard to its local
affairs. The elections for the County Council are watched with
interest by the whole community, whilst the publicity which is
given to its proceedings, and the magnitude of the operations in
which it is engaged, attract to it the unceasing attention of the
public. It is difficult to believe that Ministers will ignore the
advantages that the County Council thus possesses, or will attempt
to place it, in a matter of such importance as the education of
London, in a position subordinate to that of the inferior local bodies.
But whatever the Ministerial decision may be, there is certain to be
a severe battle over the Bill in the coming session. The struggle
will not be made less acute by the fact that throughout England
the controversy over the Education Act is still being carried on.
There are still many Nonconformists and advanced Liberals who
adhere to their determination to make that measure unworkable
except on lines which they regard as equitable ; and the great body
of Liberals, though they may not favour the extreme measures
advocated by Mr. Lloyd George and Dr. Clifford, are pledged to
an agitation for the amendment of the Act of last year. Ministers
will have to face this situation when they are dealing with the
schools of London, and it is safe to predict for them a stormy time
between now and next August.

As for the Irish Land Bill, the second measure mentioned in the
King's Speech, nobody can yet form any conclusion as to its fate.
It is clear, however, that it will not satisfy the Irish people unless it
provides for a free use of the Imperial resources in order to meet the
demands of landlords and tenants. This can only mean an additional
levy upon the taxpayers of the United Kingdom. Possibly, if the
burden which is thus to be imposed upon England — for, after all, it
is the predominant partner that will have to pay — is a moderate one,
the measure may be carried without much difficulty. But every-
body knows that the great danger of the administration lies in the
financial position of the country, in the enormous increase of
expenditure, and the alarming growth of taxation. The Opposition
are well aware of this fact, and it would be strange if they were not
to direct their attack, when the time comes to appeal to the country,
against the weakest spot in the Ministerial defences. Here again,
therefore, we may anticipate a stormy and difficult passage for the
Irish land proposals of the Government. Even the fact that at last
the two parties to the agrarian struggle in Ireland seem to have
come to terms, and that a proppect is thus opened up of the cessa-

1903 LAST MONTH 513

tion of the long warfare, will hardly silence the more resolute members
of the Opposition, who believe that this country is gradually being
weighed down to the earth by the pressure of the taxation which it
has now to bear.

There is an additional cause for anxiety on the part of Ministers,
owing to the increasing prominence which social legislation and
social ideas are gaining among the members of all Parties. I
have spoken of the reduction of the majority on the amendments
moved to the Address. Two of those amendments dealt with the
housing of the poor, and the condition of the unemployed. It was
made plain, not only by the division lists, but by the debates, that
many Ministerialists were, to say the least, secret sympathisers with
Dr. Macnamara and Mr. Keir Hardie, who moved these amendments.
The truth is that the reaction, foreseen by everybody as certain to
come after the war, has set in, and the British working-man is
demanding that Parliament shall give some portion, at least, of its
attention to his wants. The country, if it has not yet actually
fallen upon bad times, is skirting perilously near to them, and
there is an uneasy apprehension on all sides as to what the
future may have in store for us. It is only natural in these
circumstances that social legislation should once more become a
subject of popular attention. During the past month London was
called upon for several weeks to witness a dismal and sinister spec-
tacle. This was a daily series of processions of the unemployed
through its streets. The processions might not in all cases be those
of bond-fide working men thrown out of employment by industrial
depression ; but nothing sadder than these columns of half-starved
men, whose hollow cheeks and wasted bodies testified to the cruel
privations they were enduring, could well be imagined. Nothing could
be more orderly than these demonstrations of the sufferings of the
poor in the richest city in the world. They could hardly be regarded
as a menace. They were nothing more, perhaps, than a hint ; but
it was a hint pregnant with meaning, and not even the most sym-
pathetic words from the Treasury Bench could efface its effect upon
the minds of our legislators. The question of the housing of the
poor stands, happily, upon a different footing from that of the
unemployed. But in London, at all events, it is a very pressing
question, and a most difficult one. The highest influence in the
land has been openly manifested in favour of a work which is abso-
lutely necessary if the working poor of London are to be saved from
a slow but sure process of physical and moral deterioration. Here,
then, are two social problems of the first magnitude awaiting the
attention of the Ministry and Parliament. During the present
session the House of Commons may have little more to say about
them, but assuredly they will be heard of again, and that, perhaps,
when Ministers are least prepared to deal with them.

VOL. LIII — No. 313 L L

514 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

I have said that a notable feature of the address was the absence
from it of any reference to the army. The subject, however, is one
that has been in most men's minds during the past month. There
is a general consensus of opinion that Mr. Brodrick's ambitious
scheme of army reform has collapsed. He may not himself be
personally answerable for the fact, but he has to bear the responsi-
bility in public, and for the moment, at least, he is probably the
most unpopular member of the Administration. An incident in
itself perhaps trivial has, during the last few days, aroused increased
anxiety as to the state of things in the army, and especially as to
the training and morale of the officers. This is the affair of which the
first outward sign was the summary removal of Colonel Kinloch from
the command of the First Grenadier Guards. I need not go at length
into a narrative to which great publicity has already been given, but
the exact facts of which have not yet been made public. Suffice it to say
that cases of ' ragging ' of a peculiarly odious character had occurred
among the subalterns of the regiment, that the fathers of the young
men aggrieved had complained to the authorities, and that Colonel Kin-
loch, a man of high character and brilliant military service, had been
deprived of his command. The affair, of which we have not as yet heard
the last, created no little excitement, and it increased the anxiety of
the Parliamentary critics of the army to have their say in the House
of Commons. The incident must be passed over here as being still
incomplete. It will be more to the purpose to refer to the Prime
Minister's utterance at Liverpool on the subject of the Committee
of National Defence. This Committee, consisting solely of members
of the Cabinet, has been in existence for more than seven years.
Nobody knows what it has done daring that period, or whether it
has done anything. We certainly heard nothing of it during the
critical period of the South African War ; but, speaking at Liver-
pool, Mr. Balfour announced that it had undergone an almost
revolutionary change. Curiously enough, before he made this
announcement, he went out of his way to pour a stream of elaborate
ridicule upon Lord Rosebery because of his preaching of the gospel
of efficiency in the management of our national affairs, and more
especially because of his suggestion that Lord Kitchener might be
invited to join the Cabinet in order to carry out the reform of our
military system. It is difficult to resist a suspicion that the Prime
Minister attacked Lord Rosebery in order to dispel from men's minds
the idea that the announcement he was about to make had really
been inspired by Lord Rosebery's advice. Whether this be the
case or not, it is clear that Ministers, in dealing with the Committee
of Defence, have not only striven to put in force the doctrine of
efficiency, but have shown an easy way of carrying out Lord Rose-
bery's suggestion with regard to Lord Kitchener. In future, the
Committee of Defence is not to be a mere Committee of the Cabinet,

1903 LAST MONTH 515

a body which keeps no records, and has no tangible existence. It
will consist, not merely of the President of the Council, the Prime
Minister, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Secretary of State
for War, but of the Com mander-in- Chief, the first Xaval Lord, and
the directors of military and naval intelligence. Furthermore, it
will keep records stating its decisions and the reasons for arriving at
them. Thus a very important step towards the necessary concentra-
tion of supreme authority over our defensive forces has been taken,
the future only can show with what results. In the meantime the
friends of army reform in Parliament have not allowed the subject to
pass unnoticed in the debate on the Address. During the last days
of the month — too late for comment here — the whole question was
to be raised on an amendment moved by Mr. Ernest Beckett from
the Ministerial benches. I have spoken of Mr. Brodrick's unpopu-
larity, even with his own party. It seems a pity that so grave a
question as the state of an army should be mixed up with the
personal qualities of a particular official, or that we should be invited
to turn aside from the great topic of national defence to discuss the
manner in which the Minister for War was received in Malta during his
recent visit to that island. But personal topics of this kind have an
irresistible attraction for the House of Commons, and more than once
they have had serious political consequences. Onlookers during the
opening week of the Session undoubtedly recognised the existence of
a widespread desire to treat Mr. Brodrick as the Jonah of the crisis.
He is not the only member of the Government who since the
opening of the Session has been threatened with this fate. The
Ministry unquestionably ran great risk of being defeated on the
amendment moved by Mr. Lambert censuring the Attorney General
for his refusal to assent to the prosecution of Mr. Whittaker Wright
and his colleagues. For some time past a vigorous newspaper
agitation has been kept up in favour of such a prosecution, and hints
have been freely circulated as to the reasons why the Public
Prosecutor had failed to act upon the report of the Bankruptcy
Court official, who clearly intimated that a fraud had been committed.
Plain men could not see why, if this was the case, Mr. Whittakrr
Wright should not be treated like Mr. Jabez Balfour, and compelled
to submit to the ordeal of a public trial. It was evident when
Mr. Lambert moved his vote of censure on the Attorney General
that he had the sympathy of the House, and unluckily for the
Government the way in which the chief law officer of the Crown
defended himself only served to increase that sympathy. If the
Prime Minister had not come to the rescue, and, by adopting a line
altogether different from that of Sir Eobert Finlay, rallied his
wavering supporters, the probability is that Ministers would
have been defeated. It was only by throwing over the Attorr.ey
General and his dry legal pleadings that Mr. Balfour succeeded in

I, L 2

516 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

averting the catastrophe. And this incident happened before the
Session was many hours old ! I have said enough to show how
small is the probability that the present Ministry or the present
House of Commons will be able to live until their term of existence
reaches its natural limit. One must now wait for the developments
which the new Session is likely to witness.

One event has happened since I last wrote, that has caused a
feeling of general and unfeigned relief. We have at last succeeded
in getting out of the Venezuelan ' mess.' (Here again one has to
adopt the word of a Ministerialist speaker in order to describe the
affair accurately.) After prolonged negotiations and the awakening
of a rather dangerous excitement in the United States, England,
Germany and Italy have succeeded in shuffling out of their entangle-
ment by means of a conditional resort to the Hague Arbitration
Court. It is not a very dignified termination of the incident, but it
is one that has been accepted with thankfulness in both London and
Berlin. Now that we are out of the mess we are more than ever
inclined to wonder why we were allowed to get into it. The
official papers furnish no explanation of the conundrum. They show
that so long ago as the beginning of last year the English
Government knew that Germany contemplated taking action against
Venezuela, and that in July last the German Ambassador made the
first overtures to us for an alliance against the peccant State. How
it came about that those overtures were listened to, and that the
United States Government was not taken into our confidence at the
earliest possible moment, nobody can tell. All we know is that the
Foreign Office conducted the business with an unthinking levity that
was almost unprecedented even in its own history. Without cause,
without excuse, we were entangled in an alliance that public feeling
in this country resented with almost passionate indignation and that
for a time seriously imperilled our good relations with the American
people. As an instance of the inefficiency of a great department,
nothing more striking could have been presented to us. Yet it is not
the only instance of the way in which our foreign affairs are mis-
managed that we have witnessed during the month. The belated
embassy to Teheran, to present to the Shah the Garter which, if he
was to have it at all, he ought to have received during his visit last
summer to London, has accomplished its mission ; and on the very
day on which the Shah received his coveted decoration his Ministers
signed a commercial treaty with Russia by which British commercial
relations with Persia are seriously jeopardised ! When one has
to add to this simple story the statement that the Japanese — our
allies in the East — are much piqued at the fact that the Shah has
received an order of Knighthood which has not been conferred upon
their own Emperor, the picture of muddle and mismanagement
(jems to be complete. And yet the Prime Minister regards any

1903 LAST MONTH 517

demand for greater efficiency in the public service as being nothing
more than a copy-book platitude ! In common fairness, however,
one piece of good work that has been successfully accomplished
during the month must be credited to the Foreign Office. This is
the settlement of a treaty with the United States for submitting the
Alaska boundary dispute to arbitration. We may not succeed before
the court of arbitration — the luck of England in such matters is pro-
verbially bad — but at least the question will be settled in a business-
like and honourable way.

Mr. Chamberlain's visit to South Africa is now at an end. He
has been engaged upon a remarkable enterprise that cannot fail to
secure a place in history. He has, if we except one or two trivial
occasions, been successful in divesting his mission of any merely
partisan character. He has been followed in his course by the good
wishes of his political opponents as well as his political friends,
though the former have had some reason to feel irritated by the
daily dithyrambics of his ardent supporters in the press, who have
chanted his praises almost as loudly and copiously as if he were a
new edition of an encyclopaedia. All this is to the good, and to the
good also seems to be the general result of his mission. He has not
obtained the contributions to the cost of the war which he expected
to get when he set out. But he has gained something, and, what is
still better, he has had many straight talks with the representatives
of all parties. Mere words cannot, of course, close wounds so deep
and bitter as those from which South Africa is now suffering, but
they may at least extract some of the poison from the sore and
accelerate the healing process. Yet, now that Mr. Chamberlain's
immediate work on the continent whose destinies he has so pro-
foundly affected is finished, men are bound to confess that they
must wait to see whether his mission, worthily designed and not
unworthily carried out, has been a substantial success. Its greatest
immediate success is probably in the impression which it has created
among the Boer population in South Africa of the resolute deter-
mination of the British people and Government not to falter in
pursuit of the course they have marked out for themselves, and not
to allow themselves to be ' bluffed ' by men who in the past have
shown a singular degree of proficiency in that art. Next to this the
best result of the memorable journey lies in the knowledge which
the Colonial Secretary has obtained at first hand of the real conditions
in South Africa. This should enable him at least to avoid some of
the pitfalls into which he and his predecessors have too often fallen.

Eather unexpectedly a change of great importance in our scheme
of naval defence has been made during the month. The journalists
and public men who seem to regard it as their chief duty to inspire
the country with a dread of Germany's possible designs against us
have for some time been clamouring for the creation of a North Sea

518 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

squadron, the purpose of which would be to act as a counterpoise to
the German fleet. It is to be regretted that any necessary steps for
the improvement of our naval forces should be associated in this
manner with our distrust of a particular Power. It is still moie to
be deplored that in both countries the press should be so eager to
inflame rather than to assuage international bitterness. So far as
naval reforms are concerned, however, it is fair to remember that
every increase in the maritime force of Germany is officially
supported by comparisons with the fleet of England. Whether the
Board, of Admiralty has acted in deference to the agitation out of
doors, or independently of it, is not a matter of much consequence.
The essential fact is that whilst refraining from a provocative
measure like the creation of a North Sea fleet, which Germany could
not fail to regard as a challenge, it has decided to create out of the
reserves a sea-going Home Fleet, and has placed it under the com-
mand of Sir A. K. Wilson ; Lord Charles Beresford being once more
withdrawn from the House of Commons in order to take charge of
the Channel Squadron. The step is one of great importance. It
leaves the Channel Fleet to fulfil its appointed duty as the support
and reserve of our squadrons in the Mediterranean, and it provides
at the same time a powerful fleet, constantly mobilised, for the pro-
tection of our shores in other directions. Even if no strategical
value attached to this important change in our system of naval
defence, it would still be of use as enabling us to send a larger pro-
portion of our bluejackets to sea instead of leaving them as at present
to waste their time and forget their seamanship in barracks.

The occupation of Kano by a British force came as a surprise to
everybody, for none of us knew that we had been let in for another
little war on the borders of Nigeria. Colonel Morland's successful
expedition against the city and its king was a surprise even to the
Colonial Office, which has gently intimated to Sir Frederick Lugard
that operations of this nature ought not to have been undertaken
until the sanction of the Home Government had been obtained. Sir
Frederick can, however, point to the success that he has achieved,
and to the relief that has thereby been given to the situation in
Northern Nigeria as his justification, and Parliament is evidently
inclined to accept his apology as sufficient. The Macedonian
question, which more than once during the past month wore a
very threatening aspect, has been, temporarily at least, placed upon
a more satisfactory footing by the acceptance by all the Powers of
the Austro-Kussian proposals for dealing with the crisis. Nobody,
it is clear, desires another war in Eastern Europe at the present
moment, and it is possible that the pressure of United Europe upon
Bulgaria and Turkey may suffice to prevent a conflict which a
month ago seemed to be imminent.

WEMYSS KEID.

1903

SOCIAL REFORM: THE OBLIGATION OF
THE TORY PARTY

PROCESSIONS through the streets of London, hemmed in by police
on their front, rear, and sides, with skirmishers on the pavement
collecting in money-boxes alms for the ' unemployed,' are a
spectacle disgraceful to our civilisation. They do nothing to cure
the social disease of which lack of employment is the symptom;
they are the very worst way of relieving hunger and misery
which lack of employment produces. The class of casually employed
is ever present in our great cities. It is not a class shifting from
place to place ; it is permanent in its residence. It is not a class of
persons perpetually changing their employment : its members are
not intelligent enough to seek new occupations ; each remains con-
servatively attached to the one he has always practised. It lives in
ordinary times on the edge of destitution, now in comparative
comfort, now in dire straits of poverty. Economic causes or
inclemency of weather plunge it from time to time in the depths
of starvation and misery. Public compassion is awakened, the
public conscience is aroused. An immediate remedy is imperatively
demanded, but none is forthcoming ; none has, indeed, ever yet
been suggested for dealing with lack of employment as an isolated
evil, which does not tend to increase the very mischief it is intended
to correct. The disease can only be cured by measures for
improving the general health of the body politic. If the general
condition of the people were sound, the class of ' unemployed '
would cease to exist.

The happiness and welfare of the people have always been a vital
article of the Tory creed, just as important as the maintenance of
our Constitution and the defence of our Empire. Mr. Disraeli, the
great leader of Tory Democracy in the last century, always insisted
upon social progress as the most essential principle of his policy. He
incurred the ridicule of his opponents, who dubbed his proposals ' a
policy of sewage.' His last administration was as distinguished by
measures for improving the condition of the people as by the revival
of the Imperial position of Great Britain. The present leaders of

519

520 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

the Tory party hold the same principles : they secured their accession
to power in 1895 by definitely pledging themselves to an active and
creative policy of social reform. The Radical party, pledged to the
impossible task of devising a practicable system of Home Rule for
Ireland, had become incapable of satisfying the aspirations of the
people for social progress. An accumulation of problems, such as
the prevention of strikes, the treatment of the unemployed, and the
housing of the working classes, were awaiting solution, with no
prospect of being taken in hand. Even reforms which raised no
great economic questions, and on which public opinion was ripe for
action — in the treatment of children, the sick, and the aged — had
been put on one side to make room for purely political controversies.
At this crisis the Tory party came to the rescue. ' We have
no plans/ they declared, 'for the dismemberment of the United
Kingdom. We have no designs for again taking to pieces the parlia-
mentary machine so recently adjusted, in hopes of gaining some
party advantage. We desire to use the machine for some benevolent
purpose. The welfare of the people is our old party principle ; trust
us : we have leisure to address ourselves to social problems and social
reforms : give us a majority, and we will do something by practical
legislation to improve the condition of the people.' This was the
platform of all the Unionist leaders of the Tory Democracy. Every
blank wall in the towns displayed the legend, ' Vote for the Unionist
Candidate and • Social Reform.' In the rural districts, where the
poor-law is the one institution of our country that the agricultural
labourer hates and dreads above all other, because he knows that,
if he lives long enough to grow old and infirm, he must ultimately
fall into its clutches, the legend ran, ' Vote for the Unionist Candi-
date and Reform of the Poor-law.'

These are the antecedents and promises of the Tory party on the
subject of social reform. For these, if we were false to them, the
constituencies would bring us into judgment at the next General
Election. It would go hard with us if we were unable to show
that our pledges had been substantially redeemed. The difficulty
of the task, imperfectly appreciated in 1895, would afford no adequate
excuse. Our opponents, while pointing out the shortcomings of
the Tories, would in turn make promises themselves. One of the
most deadly arguments with which the candidate of a party that
has been long in power has to contend in an election is this : ' We
have seen all that these people can do for us — let us give the other
side a turn.' I remember a county member boasting of the length
of time during which he had represented his constituency. A voice
from the crowd cried out, ' Then it's high time we had a change.'
Against this sentiment reason fights in vain. How long the people
of the country will continue to put their trust in one or other of the
two political parties alternately, and to feed on promises that are

1903 SOCIAL REFORM 521

never effectively fulfilled, it is impossible to foretell. If they should
ever come to lose their faith in both parties at one and the same
time, the system of party government would be shattered.

How, then, is the obligation of the Tory party to be fulfilled?
Experience shows that social reforms are not likely to originate
spontaneously in the public departments of the central government.
The established practice of speaking of our public departments in
terms of conventional flattery received a rude shock by the revelation
during the late war of the incapacity of the War Office. But whatever
their excellence may be in the carrying-on of their ordinary routine
work, the constitution of public offices does not promote those
qualities which are requisite for the creation of great schemes of new
legislation. The Civil Service, it is true, is recruited from the best-
educated young men of their generation ; but few of these brilliant
intellects can survive the blighting influence of routine, of having
always to act on precedent, and of seniority promotion. Should a
person possessed of the rare qualities necessary in a reformer arise in a
government department, he would, except under some happy chance,
be driven forth from the service before he had attained a position in
which his genius would be useful to the State. Neither are public
departments likely, under present arrangements, to be stimulated
into the proposal and construction of great measures of social reform
by their parliamentary heads. These are seldom, if ever, selected for
their previous knowledge of the matters with which their department
has to deal. The most industrious Minister must spend a long time
in learning the routine of his office before he is fit to propose
amendments in its procedure. Meanwhile he is liable, just as he
feels competent to act, to be whisked off from his post and placed at
the head of some other department, of the work of which he is
equally ignorant. If he has energy enough to persevere in his efforts
to serve the public, he must, Sisyphus-like, begin to perform his task
anew. For this, among other reasons, the duty of administering a
public office is not generally taken very seriously by politicians. It
is only one amongst many distractions of ' society ' life in London.
A respectable reputation for efficiency and freedom from disquieting
criticism are best attained by following the cautious advice of per-
manent officials down the beaten paths of routine and precedent.
Originality and enterprise are troublesome and dangerous. When it
is further remembered that almost every proposal for social reform
affects many offices — the Home Office, the Board of Trade, the Local
Government Board, the Board of Agriculture, the Board of Educa-
tion, the Scotch Office, and the Irish Office — and that the legitimate
criticism by each Office of a proposal may give rise to an infinity of
delay, it will be manifest that in such matters no initiative and little
help is to be expected from the public departments of the central
government.

522 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

If, for the reasons above stated, initiative is unlikely to proceed
from the wisdom and prescience of the individual departments,
what is the prospect of a government collectively taking the matter
in hand ? Modern governments embark on schemes of change with
great reluctance, and only under the overpowering compulsion of
public opinion. Not only do they wait, ' whistling for a wind,' but
when the wind comes it must increase to the dimension of a gale
before it can set them in motion. The history of the education
question during the last eight years is a good illustration of how
slowly collective governments in these days move. The election of
1895 was regarded by the Government as having given an imperative
mandate for educational reform. In the following year, in obedience
to this mandate, a large and comprehensive measure, identical in
principle with that ultimately passed, was framed and submitted to
Parliament. But so soon as the Government appreciated the magni-
tude of the task they had undertaken, the enterprise was abandoned.
Instead of pursuing their great scheme of 1896, Government in
1897 passed an Act to give relief to Voluntary school managers out
of the taxes. Its policy and provisions were so inconsistent with
the carrying-out of their larger plan, that in the Act of 1902 the
Act of 1897 had to be repealed. Had the Exchequer grants of 1897
permanently relieved the financial difficulties of the managers of
Voluntary schools, it is probable that little more would for the present
have been heard of education reform. The partial measures laid
before Parliament, Session after Session, were not pressed. But the
increased grants of 1897 were soon swallowed up by the increasing
cost of elementary education, and the ' intolerable strain ' became
as great as ever. A certain amount of public opinion as to the need
of education reform had been stirred up by people genuinely
interested in the subject on national and not party grounds. Well-
founded alarm had been created amongst the commercial and in-
dustrial classes by the superior technical instruction attainable by
foreign workmen. Finally, the judgment of the Court of Appeal in
E. v. Cockerton stopped the successful attempts that were being
lawlessly made by the School Boards in the great towns to give
some sort of secondary education. Unless a number of excellent
secondary schools already in full operation were to perish, legislation
of some kind or other was inevitable. It was as well to be hanged
for a sheep as a lamb, and the combination of forces was strong
enough to compel the collective Government to reintroduce and pass
a comprehensive scheme of reform.

Social reform, it is said, is easier for a government to deal with
than education reform, because it does not excite the same religious
passions. In enabling a government to carry through a measure of
reform, religious passions are not an altogether unmixed evil. They
ensure zeal and interest if they lengthen controversy. But social

1903 SOCIAL REFORM 523

reforms have for a government peculiar perils of their own. They
may affect in an unexpected manner the votes of large classes of
electors. It is the nervous dread of producing electoral difficulties
that has prevented successive British governments from dealing
frankly with the recommendations of the Berlin Labour Conference.
The scope of that conference was narrowly limited, but within the
narrow limit laid down the administrative ability of the German
Ministers secured business-like and effective treatment. The dis-
cussion related to the hours and conditions of labour of children and
young persons, including women. Continental countries have a
very patent and immediate interest in the health and strength of
the rising generation. The boys are the stuff of which the army,
on which the national safety depends, is composed. The girls are
to be the mothers of the next generation of soldiers. Conscrip-
tion brings any incipient degeneracy at once to the notice of the
authorities. Great Britain has really just as great an interest in
the condition of her young people, upon which the future greatness
of our country also depends, and, if she would but use the eyes of
her school teachers, just as good an opportunity of supervising the
growth of mental and physical qualities in her boys and girls ; but
we prefer to shut our eyes and leave things to chance. The result
of the Berlin discussions was the drawing-up of a number of clear
and definite propositions relating to the labour of children and
young persons in industries and mines. They might have been
adopted by any government in block, and carried into law, and the
result would have been a very useful and substantial measure of
social reform. But all that the nations represented at Berlin
pledged themselves to was that these reforms were ' desirable ' ; the
time and manner of adopting them was left to each nation's discre-
tion. A year afterwards the British Government of the day proposed
a Factory Bill to the British House of Commons. One of the
reforms ' desired ' by them at Berlin the year before was the restric-
tion of the labour of children in factories to those twelve years old.
The limit of age at that time in English factories was ten. No
change was proposed in the Government's Factory Bill. A motion
was made in the House of Commons to raise the age, not to twelve,
but to eleven. This was resisted by the Government which had
' desired ' twelve in the face of Europe the year before — doubtless on
somebody's representation that it was for their electoral advantage
to do so. The limit of eleven was, however, imposed upon them by
a vote of the House of Commons. No attempt has ever been made
by any British government of either party — and both parties have
held office since the Berlin Conference — to bring up the conditions
of labour of children and young persons to the ' desirable ' Berlin
standard. The condition, for example, of children and young
persons in underground mines still leaves as much to be ' desired ' as

524 THE NINETEENTH CENTURA March

it did in Berlin days. Quite recently a private member of Parlia-
ment carried through a Bill for raising the age of children employed
in industries to the Berlin standard of twelve. The British
Government, though largely composed of the same persons who
had 'desired' the Berlin reforms, doubtless again influenced by
electoral considerations, took no part whatever in the affair ; the
members of the Cabinet were absent from all the debates and all the
divisions. A subordinate member who took part in the passing of
the Bill announced to the House of Commons that he was there to
represent his individual opinions, not those of the Government to
which he belonged.

British Governments have in modern times made free use of
those admirable instruments for hanging up questions with which
they do not know how to deal — Royal Commissions and Select
Committees. A Royal Commission on Labour was appointed the
year after the Berlin Conference, with a great flourish of trumpets.
It was composed of men of the highest eminence in social and
political circles, of philosophers and political economists, of repre-
sentatives of employers and employed in all the chief industries of
the country. It sat for several years in three divisions ; it took an
enormous mass of evidence — and it;attained no practical result except
that of gaining time. The main purpose of its appointment was to
devise some method of putting a stop to strikes and lock-outs. It
was recognised that these industrial wars often inflicted grievous
hardship upon the people at large, upon men and women who had
no part in the dispute, no voice in its adjustment, and were merely
sufferers by its continuance. It was thought that the collective public,
whose interests and whose people were injured, had some right to
interfere and put a stop to the contest, if some effective method of
doing this could be invented. But the report of the Commission,
though it contained a most interesting and valuable description of
the state of industry in the United Kingdom, did not suggest any
scheme by which strikes and lock-outs could be restrained by public
authority. Its chief practical suggestion was that the funds of
trade-unions should be made liable for injuries inflicted by trade-
unions on other people's rights. A recent decision of the House of
Lords appears to show that this recommendation of the Royal Com-
mission has been the law of the land all along, although the Royal
Commission and the learned lawyers upon it were unaware of the
fact. A report was also made by a minority of the Commission,
declaring State socialism to be the only cure for the economic evils
under which modern society suffers, and containing very interesting
views of the results of the nationalising of land, capital, and the
instruments of production ; but it contained no practical suggestions
applicable to the state of society which is at present subsisting. The
problem which was before the Royal Commission has continued to

1903 SOCIAL REFORM 525

occupy the attention of statesmen in'other countries and in our own
colonies, and plans have been actually put in force for stopping
industrial war by public arbitration of various kinds. But in Great
Britain we have given up the problem in despair, and we can only
stand by and witness the ruin of such an industrial community as
that of Bethesda in Carnarvonshire, in a dispute about which the
public has no means of obtaining accurate information, and no
opportunity of knowing who is in the right and who is in the wrong.
The only outcome of the Koyal Commission was a sham Act of
Parliament, empowering the Board of Trade to do that which it
could very well do without any Act of Parliament at all — act as an
arbitrator in cases in which both parties agreed and invited it to do
so, and give a decision when both parties pledged themselves before-
hand to abide by it.

A Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed by
the Government of the day in 1895 to consider the case of the
unemployed, which was at that time in one of its phases of urgency.
It was composed of the best men the two parties in the House of
Commons had to offer. It was to make an immediate report of any
measures that could be at once taken to relieve the existing distress.
It failed to find any palliative that was likely to be accepted by
Parliament and could be immediately applied. It continued its
labours till interrupted by a dissolution of Parliament. It failed to
discover and recommend any permanent remedy. A second Com-
mittee, appointed in the following year, was equally unsuccessful.
It, however, negatived, at the bidding of the Local Government
Board, one small practical suggestion made by its predecessor.

If experience has taught us that modern British governments,
with the help of permanent officials, Royal Commissions, and Select
Committees, are in themselves incapable of introducing to Parliament
and carrying into law great measures of social reform, can they look
for much help from the modern House of Commons ? The answer
is that for purposes of legislation the House of Commons has become
almost effete. The machine is out of order and will no longer work.
After a generation of perpetual change in its rules of procedure, the
House of Commons is a far less efficient instrument for law-making
than it was thirty years ago. For anyone but the Government to
get a public Bill through the House of Commons is almost an im-
possibility. It must be short ; it must have no opponents or only a
few that can be ' squared ' ; and the member who has charge must
have great perseverance and luck. To carry such a Bill as that
before mentioned, which raised the age of labour for children, was a
quite exceptional achievement. Government measures, even if
strongly opposed, have frequently now to be carried through the
House of Commons by rules specially made for the occasion, which
amount to a temporary suspension of the Constitution. The law in

526 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

such cases is made, as in Eassia, by the determination of officials,
and not, as it used to be in the United Kingdom, by the consent of
the representatives of the people. The House of Commons has
always, as the late Mr. Bernal Osborne used to say, shown a ' great
love for painful personal questions,' and in the decay of its real
power of influencing public affairs it shows a much greater prefer-
ence for questions which affect the character of individuals, or which
make or mar ministers and governments, than for those which affect
the general interests of the public at large ; the importance of these
does not make, up for their lack of excitement. A scandal in the
Guards draws a much bigger attendance than a debate on the con-
dition of India or the efficiency of the navy.

The story of a small matter of social reform, about the necessity
of which there is probably no difference of opinion, will illustrate
what I have endeavoured to establish — the impossibility of attaining
satisfactory results through the agency of central bureaus, central
governments, and central Parliaments. It will also lead us to what I
believe to be the true solution of our difficulties. Many years ago
a lady, who has, unfortunately for society, not lived to carry through
her work to its consummation, became impressed with an evil affect-
ing the children attending our public elementary schools. Many
of them were employed in industrial pursuits, outside school hours,
to an extent which injured their health and rendered them unfit to
receive the instruction provided for them at the public expense.
She set forth the evil very clearly in an article published as long ago
as 1897 l in this Eeview. The facts were derived from inquiries in
certain London schools only, but they established quite conclusively
the reality and magnitude of the evil. The disease was correctly
diagnosed, and was as ripe for remedial treatment then as now. She
next determined to lay the facts collected before one of the State
Departments concerned, and after some difficulties a deputation on
the subject was ultimately received by the Education Department.
That Department thus became officially ' seised of the case. It was
proposed to call for a return from the school teachers throughout the
country; but difficulties arose with the Home Office and Local
Government Board, both of which had a voice in the matter, which
caused some delay. At last, in the Session of 1898, a member of the
House of Commons moved for a return of the kind, and, as there
could be no objection made to it, it was granted. The return was
presented in the spring of 1899. It was startling and terrifying.
The speech of the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on the
Education Estimates in that year was almost exclusively taken up
with a description of the return and an attempt to impress on
Parliament the gravity of the state of things disclosed. The House
of Commons, however, was indisposed to entertain a question of

1 'School Children as Wage Earners,' by Mrs. Hogg (Nineteenth Century,
August 1897).

1903 SOCIAL REFORM 527

this kind, and went off into a discussion of the supposed personal
relations subsisting between the President and Vice-President — a
matter neither then nor at any time of the slightest public importance.
But, although the subject was neglected by the House of Commons
for matter of more personal interest, it was very seriously taken up by
local authorities throughout the country : it was discussed by municipal
councils, by school boards, and by boards of guardians : and the
conscience of the public appeared to be so thoroughly aroused that
the Government was constrained in the autumn of 1899 to appoint
a joint Departmental Committee of the Home Office, the Education
Department, and the Board of Trade to consider and report on the
evil and recommend, if they could, a remedy. The proceedings and
report of this Committee are deserving of the highest praise and the
most careful attention. In them we can perceive the clue to the
general solution of the problem of social reform.

The Committee did not impose upon themselves the task of re-
discovering all the facts already well known. They recognised that
to ascertain the exact number of children overworked was of no
consequence. The examination of a few witnesses convinced them
of the reality of the mischief and that the return furnished by the
school teachers to the Board of Education rather understated than
overstated the case. They reported it to be proved that a substantial
number of children, amounting probably to 50,000, were being worked
more than twenty hours a week in addition to 27^ hours at school,
that a considerable proportion of this number were being worked to
thirty or forty, and some even to fifty, hours a week, and that the
effect of this work was in many cases detrimental to their health,
their morals, and their education, besides being often so unremitting
as to deprive them of all reasonable opportunity for recreation.
They had found that attempts had been successfully made by several
municipal authorities, especially the City Council of Liverpool, to
deal with a part at least of the employment of school-children —
namely, that in the public streets ; and they recommended, as a
remedy for the grave evil of which they recognised the existence,
that power should be conferred on municipal and county councils of
making by-laws with regard to the occupations of children. A Bill
to give effect to the recommendations of the Committee was laid
before the House of Commons by the Government in 1901 ; but the
whole attention of Parliament was occupied with burning questions
about catechisms and formularies, to which the material interests of
the children had to be postponed. The Bill, though unopposed, was
not proceeded with. Its re-introduction in the present Session is
promised; and should it become law in 1903, the local authorities
will be in a position to begin to consider how to remedy a social
disorder the existence and gravity of which had been discovered and
pointed out six years before.

528 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March

"We must then, like this Committee, abandon the central, and look
to the local, authority as the quarter from which public action directed
to the improvement of the condition of the people is to be expected.
Government officials, statesmen, and Parliaments, though animated by
the most sincere desire to promote social reform, have failed. The time
has come to recognise that failure and the impossibility of the wishes of
the people being ever carried out by them, to cast on local authorities
the responsibility for the social condition of their people, and to confer
upon them the necessary powers for efficiently discharging a public
duty of this kind. It is the old policy of Mr. Disraeli's Government
as regards public health ; it is the recent policy of the present
Government as regards national education. The plan of trusting
education to local authorities was tried at first partially and tenta-
tively by the creation in a part only of the country of school
boards with very limited powers relating to elementary education
alone. It was afterwards supplemented by giving to the ordinary local
authorities very limited powers with regard to technical education.
These embryo education authorities proved, in the great centres of
population, in which social problems in their most acute phase are to
be met with, an immense success. The school boards gave a great
stimulus to the elementary education for which they were appointed,
and, by a beneficial though illegal stretching of their powers, to higher
education as well. The county and municipal councils, in spite of
the interference and competition of school boards, established and
improved secondary and technical schools in their districts. By the
new Education Act the principle of local responsibility for education
has been finally established. Powers greater than those previously
enjoyed by school boards or local authorities, relating to educa-
tion of all kinds, have been conferred on county and municipal
authorities covering the entire country. This, the great principle
of the measure, was scarcely understood and appreciated either
by friends or foes. Both sides have insisted on introducing some
regrettable restrictions on the discretion of local authorities. But
notwithstanding these limitations the principle of local authority
and local responsibility in matters of education is by the new Act
firmly and forever established. Any restrictions which now appear
potentially to hamper their complete and absolute control will either
by the good sense of parties concerned never come into actual opera-
tion, or will hereafter, as the result of wider experience, be discarded.
Social reform, which is so ardently desired by the mass of our
people, and upon which the safety of our Empire so vitally depends,
must be carried out on the same principle as the establishment of a
national system of education. Give up the dream of a benevolent
central government, which is to do everything for the people — to
diagnose the social disease, to invent and apply the remedies, and to
superintend their operation. That may come hereafter in some

1903 SOCIAL REFORM 529

future generation, but we are in a more primitive and elementary
stage as yet. We are in the condition of towns a generation ago,
when they cleansed away their snow by every householder sweeping
his own doorstep. Let each county and municipal authority become
absolutely and entirely, as it is already partially and imperfectly,
responsible for the health and welfare of its own men, women, and
children, the care of its own sick and aged, the provision of healthy
dwellings and of light, air, and water, the prevention of strikes and
lock-outs, and the treatment of its own 'unemployed.' Let the
county and municipal councils be summoned by public opinion to a
recognition of their duties in these respects, and to a collective
demand of additional powers in those matters in which the powers
that they possess already are insufficient for the due promotion of the
public welfare. Let the central Government abstain from vexatious
meddling, from tying up local authorities by useless and vexatious
regulations, and from obstructing schemes as to which local author-
ities are more competent to judge than they : let them restrict
themselves to their proper function of inspecting, so as to prevent
jobbery, of giving suggestive, not authoritative, advice, of collecting
information whereby the experience of one district may become
available for all, and of acting as a ' clearing house ' for the various
authorities in their mutual relations. Under such a system we
might hope to make similar progress in social reforms to that
already attained under school boards in elementary, and hoped for
under the new authorities in general, education.

Local authorities have, in regard to domestic legislation, many
advantages over central ones. A much greater number of minds
can be engaged in the solution of the problems : instead of a single
group composed of a few permanent officials and one or two amateur
ministers, there can be as many groups at work as there are local
authorities. There would be more than one hundred such groups
if domestic legislation were reserved for county and county-borough
councils. The quality of their members would exhibit much more
variety. The politician thinking of parties and of offices, and the
official thinking of precedents and routine, need not be excluded.
The full advantage of their administrative experience and political
sagacity could be retained. But to them could be added keen men
of business, accustomed to carry through transactions rapidly to
a practical result, persons of both sexes having ripe knowledge of
the condition and needs of the people, and some of the workers
themselves. The advantage of being able to secure the co-opera-
tion in domestic legislation of educated women, whose advice can
rarely penetrate Government offices, is inestimable. Labour repre-
sentatives can much more easily find a place in local legislatures,
and can much more effectively secure there the recognition of the
needs and aspirations of working classes. In a London House of

VOL. LIII — No. 313 MM

$30 THE NINETEENTH CENTUHY March

Commons they are stifled by the atmosphere of wealth and birth in
which they are immersed. Amongst groups of thinkers and workers
thus composed, there is a better chance of the solution of social
problems being evolved. Then local bodies are not under the
obligation to invent a scheme of social legislation that will fit the
infinitely varying circumstances of the entire country. They can
adapt the domestic regulations they make to the condition, the
character, the occupations, and even the prejudices, of the people
to whom they are to be applied. This is to a central authority
an impossibility. The very best general measures inflict a great
amount of local hardship and cause much local discontent, because,
however admirably they are suited to most places, they are not
suited to all. No social reform can be effective unless it is in
accord with the feelings and desires of the people themselves.
There must be public opinion to support it. Laws which are passed
in advance of, and in opposition to, public sentiment are generally
disobeyed. It is much more easy to create and instruct a popular
opinion in a limited area than in the country at large. If the
interest of the people is first evoked, if they are made to see the
necessity of some new regulation for the health and welfare of
themselves or their children, if they themselves press its adoption
on their local representatives, it has a much better chance of being
obeyed and carried out than if it is imposed by a remote government
over which they exercise little influence, and whose members are to
them inaccessible.

One of the greatest advantages of local over central legislation is
that the former is so much more easily amended. All regulations
which affect the order of society are empirical and experimental.
Social reformers make many mistakes and ought to have an easy
opportunity of correcting them. But although the legislative
activity of Parliament is almost entirely absorbed in passing Acts to
amend Acts which have themselves been passed only a few years
before, it is a matter of extreme difficulty to get any particular error
of Parliament rectified. If our statutes are not so absolutely un-
changeable as those of the Medes and Persians, yet they alter only
after the expenditure of a considerable amount of labour and time.
Local by-laws, on the contrary, which prove unsuitable to the people,
or ineffective for the purpose for which they were designed, can
readily be changed. If a number of bad shots are unavoidable
before the mark is hit, the happy consummation will be arrived at in
a local far sooner than in a central assembly.

It is objected by some that local bodies as they exist are not fit
to be entrusted with such powers as I have above suggested. There
is no surer method of raising the character of an elected body than
that of conferring upon it more important functions. The electors
become more desirous of exercising their franchise, and it becomes

1903 SOCIAL REFORM 531

more indispensable to bring forward as candidates men whose
character will command public confidence. The result of the new
Education Act is already felt in the greater readiness of the best
men to offer themselves for election on local bodies and the greater
interest taken by the electors in the elections. Improvements in
the constitution of local authorities will properly follow a great
accession of responsibility and power. Independent and rival
authorities, such as school boards were, and boards of guardians
still are, within the sphere of a local authority, must cease. There
must be one single rating authority, with complete control over all
local legislation, all local finance, and all local administration, in
every district; but there is nothing to prevent the paramount
authority from acting — as, indeed, it would have to do — through
committees composed of its own members and of persons co-opted,
and through the agency of subordinate local authorities, such as
the councils of urban districts.

The last objection to social reform remaining to be considered is
the cost. It will entail, like reform of every kind, some expenditure.
But it will be infinitely less costly to the nation in the end to set up
now the machinery that will make, so far as governments and laws
can, the condition of the people satisfactory, than to drift on and let
the country decay without an effort to save it. Devolution to local
authorities need not throw the entire expense on the rates : subven-
tions can be made out of the taxes. But nothing is more remarkable
in politics than the success with which politicians have established
amongst the masses a horror of rates which they do not pay them-
selves, and a preference for taxes which they do pay themselves.
Rates are ultimately in the long run a burden on the profit which
the owner of houses or lands makes by letting them for occupation.
In the case of occupiers holding under a lease, the rates no doubt
fall on them until the expiration of their term. But the mass of
the population of the country live in houses or rooms taken by the
week or month, and pay a price for the use of their house settled,
like the price of any other commodity, by the law of supply and
demand. What the occupier pays goes partly to the owner as rent
and partly to the public authority as rates. If rates are raised, the
owner gets less rent ; if they are lowered, he gets more. Where the
sum that has to be paid by economic law for the use of a house or
room is rising, as it is at present continually doing in most English
towns, the incidence of a higher rate gives the occasion for raising
the rent or price; but the rise in such a case could take place
without the incidence of any increased rate, so that the real cause of
a rise is the demand for houses, not the rate. But owners of property
are more interested financially than any other class in the prosperity
of the people : a large share of prosperity means greater power of
production, and the additional produce finds its way into the land-

532 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March 1903

owners' pockets. If the increased rates have the effect of increasing
the happiness and welfare of the mass of the people, the expenditure
of them is a very good investment for the owner. In Germany the
intelligent owner thoroughly understands this. In many towns the
local authority is constituted thus : the largest ratepayers, whose
properties together amount to one-third of the rateable value of the
town, appoint one-third of the authority ; the next largest, whose
properties amount to another third, another third of the authority ;
the rest of the ratepayers appoint the remainder. In some cases
the result is that a single individual appoints a third of the
authority. But authorities over which property exercises so
enormous an influence are found to be just as free as more democratic
ones in spending the money of the ratepayers upon works and
institutions of public advantage.

I have now done my best to set before the Tory party their
obligations on the question of social reform, and the direction in
which that reform can with the least difficulty be effected. It is no
good to sit down in idleness and call to the leaders who now form
the Government to proceed. The leaders are entitled to a mandate
from their followers, and to be backed up by an energetic public
opinion, which it is the business of the rank-and-file of the party to
create. If we do our duty, there is no reason to doubt that they will
do theirs ; and we can then, as a party, face the electors with our
pledges redeemed and with a fair claim to retain the confidence of
the nation.

JOHN E. GORST.

The, Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot
to return unaccepted MSS.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTUEY

AND AFTER

No. CCCXIY— APEIL 1903

THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH

IT is asserted that a wave of anti-clericalism is passing over the
country, that there is a growing distrust and dislike of the clergy,,
that recent events in Parliament are a symptom of this distrust, and
that it much concerns those who have the interests of the Church at
heart to consider why this is, and, if they can, to remove the causes
of it.

Much is also being said in this connection of the rights of the
laity, and a Bill is now before Parliament, which has passed a second
reading in the House of Commons, for the purpose of asserting and
securing those rights. That nine millions should have been volun-
tarily subscribed for Church work and in support of clerical objects
in 1902 is proof conclusive that this alleged distrust of the clergy is
not very general. "What may be admitted to exist is a distrust of the
clergy amongst certain classes — amongst persons who have found seats

VOL. LIII— No. 314 533 K N

534 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

in Parliament, some of them friendly in their way to the Church, but
who have little acquaintance with Church principles and derive their
knowledge of Church matters chiefly from the newspapers, the reports
in which are often inspired by a hostile purpose and written with
ulterior objects. There exists also a dislike of the clergy which is
due to the same cause as that which is largely responsible for the
persecution of the religious Orders in France. A Church which is
identified with the world excites no opposition. A Church which
makes no inconvenient claims, and which insists on an answer to no
awkward questions, which is content to allow its members to ignore
the supernatural, acquiesces in a standard of morals which is not too
strict, and insists on just that amount of respectability and of religious
observance which enables the conscience to close its eyes to its real
condition, and to make the best of both worlds — such a Church excites
little hostility. Why, indeed, should it ? The day may come when,
like any other institution, it is attacked, and when that occurs such a
Church falls like a house of cards, for no one cares to defend it ; but
meanwhile it is at peace. The world knows its own. No wondrous
works are being performed within its borders, and it occurs to no one
' to beseech ' the clergy ' to depart out of their coasts.' Reverse the
picture. Let the Church proclaim the Catholic Faith, let it declare
' This is the truth : you can accept it or reject it, but you reject it at
your peril.' Let it insist on the doctrine of the Cross and the
crucifixion of self, on the grace conferred by the Sacraments, on the
Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, on the
power of the keys and the gift of absolution, on the fact that we are
here and now brought into contact with God through the ministra-
tions of His Church — and the different forces which make up the
world rise up at once in opposition. The charge is made of mediaeval
superstition, of clerical assumption, of an attempt to revive the
domination of the clergy, of a desire to create an imperium in an
imperio. Under the plea of anti-clericalism the clergy are attacked,
while all the time it is the world, under the disguise of anti-
clericalism which is refusing to be brought face to face with the
Divine life of the Church.

There is, then, a distrust and dislike of the clergy, which, far from
being a discredit to the clergy or a symptom of danger to the Church,
is a witness to the Church's life, and a proof that the clergy are true
to their vocation. What Archbishop of Canterbury in later times
appeals to the heart and imagination of Churchmen like Archbishop
Laud ? Who has so deep a place in their veneration ? What Arch-
bishop has so unmistakably left his mark on the Church of England,
on the whole Anglican Communion ? Did he meet with no oppo-
sition ? Was there no anti-clerical feeling excited in his case ? The
scaffold and the block on Tower Hill may be left to answer those
questions ; but though he died his work lives on. The seed he sowed

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 535

grows and shows no sign of decay. He may have been mistaken in
his political aspirations, in his methods of repression by the civil
power, but is there one who cares for the Church of England who
would have had him less keen to assert the Catholic Faith, one who
would have had him shrink from the opposition he encountered ?
It is the mission of the Church and every member of it to bear
witness to the truth in the teeth of opposition, and there is there-
fore great need to discriminate between the kinds of opposition to
which the Church and the clergy may at any time be exposed.

Again, there is an anti-clericalism and a distrust of the clergy due
to politics for which it would be most unjust to make the clergy
always responsible. Such anti-clericalism has existed in Italy when
the clergy have seemed to be in opposition to the popular aspiration
for national unity, in France when they have seemed to be identified
with the cause of the Bourbons or of the Empire, in England when
the necessity for an alliance between the Church and a Conservative
Grovernment has been insisted upon. Such anti-clericalism will
depend upon whether the Church is in harmony with the popular
feeling of the moment, whether it happens to be in opposition to the
political aspirations of a particular party. It shows, indeed, very
clearly the disadvantage it is to the Church to be entangled with or
committed to any particular Grovernment or any one political party,
but in itself it has to be discounted, and the responsibility for it will
depend on the causes which have produced it. The anti-clericalism
of Dr. Clifford and his friends, for example, need not, I should sup-
pose, disturb the consciences of the clergy in England at the present
moment.

There is a third form of anti-clericalism which is due to the fear
of interference on the part of the clergy with matters outside or only
indirectly connected with their office. The feeling expressed by the
words ' we don't want the parson interfering with us ; if we give him
an inch he will be taking an ell ' is not unknown in England, especially
in the country ; but this, so far as it exists, results more from dislike
of the methods and character of a particular clergyman than from
dislike of the clergy as a class. What those have in view who insist
on the development of anti-clericalism in England at the present
moment is dislike of the clergy as such — a feeling that they have
ulterior objects which they do not avow; that as clergy of the
Church of England they are pledged to teach one thing, but do in
fact teach another ; that they are disloyal and disobedient to their own
superiors, insisting on the duty of obedience in others, but disregarding
that duty themselves.

Now, even here I believe that it will be found on examination
that much of this feeling, so far as it exists, is due very largely to
causes of which some, in view of the history and the circumstances
of the Oxford revival, were practically unavoidable, while others

N N 2

536 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

were the direct and certain consequences of the principles and aims
of that revival itself.

That revival forced those who were interested in religious matters
to take definite sides in regard to them. By its sacramental teaching
it brought men face to face with the supernatural, and such teaching
repels if it does not attract in a way that an easy-going religion which
exacts very little — and such religion still widely holds its ground in
all ranks of society — is quite unable to do.

Take the mere fact of the restoration of the Holy Eucharist to its-
proper place as the one service of Divine obligation. In face of such
restoration you must either accept or break with the Church's teaching
in a way which was by no means necessary when such a modicum of
religious observance as attendance at the reading of two chapters of
the Old and New Testaments, some Psalms, and a few collects was
all that was necessary for maintaining a character of ordinary religious
respectability. The Eucharist put back into its proper place as the
distinctive Sunday service — and no one can pretend that primitive
Christianity did not so consider it — brings men face to face with the
question how far they really accept the Christian religion in all its
supernatural character. It is a test they cannot avoid. The preaching
of the duty of confession in cases of grave sin, its expediency in
many others, does the same thing; so does an insistence on the
strictness of the Church's law as to the indissolubility of Christian-
marriage and the Church's prohibition of divorce. It is not so easy
in the face of such a revival of Christian doctrine and practice to
make the best of both worlds. Such teaching exemplifies the truth
of the saying ' I came not to send peace, but a sword.' It con-
stitutes an attack on the ordinary life of the world, its principles,
and its convenience, which cannot fail to excite opposition. No one,
whether friend or foe, not even Mr. Walsh, the author of the History
of the Oxford Movement, will deny these to be the principles and
teaching that have inspired the Oxford Movement, or will refuse
to admit that they suggest a cause for a development of an anti-clerical
feeling in England, the absence, not the presence, of which would be
a source of anxiety as to the future of the Church, and the occasion
of just reproach to the clergy.

One other fact in the history of the Oxford revival in England
must not be lost sight of. The clergy — for it was their own more
immediate business — were naturally the first to be influenced by
that movement, and in a greater corresponding degree than the laity,
who had other interests. The consequence has been that their
theological and ecclesiastical standpoint has often come to be in
advance of that of the general mass of the laity. Hence not unfre-
quently a divergence of view, a loss of mutual contact and under-
standing, with the further consequence of misunderstanding, and
not unfrequently of misrepresentation on the part of those who-

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 537

wished to discredit the movement. Mr. Walsh's History of the
Oxford Movement is the signal instance of such misrepresentation.
Dr. Fairbairn, the distinguished Nonconformist Head of Mansfield
College, is a better witness than Mr. Walsh, and well describes l the
impulse which, under the influence of the Oxford Movement, has
inspired the clergy of the Church of England. They were inspired,
he writes, by the belief that the Church to which they belonged
was ' one of Apostolic descent, of continuous life, supernatural
endowment, and Divine authority ; they studied how to make again
significant and symbolical her homes and temples of worship, how
to deepen the mystery of her Sacraments, how to make her live to
the eye of imagination, as to the eye of faith, arrayed in all the grace
of the Lord, clothed in all the dignity and loveliness of the Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church/ The spirit which animated the
Oxford Movement can hardly be better described. It placed before
the eyes of the clergy the vision of a Church which corresponded to
all their wants, supplied all their needs, provided them with just
the weapons they required for the winning of souls : it also revealed
to them as they looked around not only how little the actual con-
dition of the Church in which they ministered corresponded with
the vision which had so fired their imagination and had spoken so
strongly to their hearts, but how little that Church carried out the
plainest requirements of her formularies, how completely she pro-
fessed one thing and did another. Was it wonderful under such
circumstances that they should sometimes have revolted against the
stupidity, the want of spiritual preception, and the blindness to all
the ideal side of things which had made such a falling short possible
in the past, and which now in the present was for ever putting
obstacles in the way of its realisation — was it wonderful, I say, that
they should have resolved that this ideal which had appealed so
strongly to their hearts should be realised even at the price of much
opposition, and that the great Church to which they belonged and
which they desired so ardently to serve, should once more re-enter,
•even at the price of the alienation of some who in fact hardly
belonged to her, on her inherent rights, her full Catholic heritage ?

It was, it is, a noble vision — one for which a man might well give
his life ; but a price had to be paid for its realisation, and the price
has been that period of ecclesiastical strife and unrest which has
marked the history of the Church of England for the last sixty years,
and of which the difficulties of to-day are but a further stage and
development.

If there is any truth in these statements — and I think they can

hardly be denied — they go a long way to explain the difficulties, the

perplexities, and ambiguities of the present state of ecclesiastical

affairs. The Liverpool Church Discipline Bill, which obtained a

1 Catholicism Roman and Anglican.

538 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

second reading in the House of Commons on the 13th of March,
introduced with the express object of securing the rights of the laity
to have the services of the Church ministered to them as the Church
has prescribed — a right no one would deny — provides that any lay-
man is to be enabled to institute legal proceedings against any clergy-
man, whether the Bishop approves of such proceedings or not, for
enforcing what is assumed to be the law of the Church ; and every
clergyman who does not obey the law thus declared is to be sum-
marily deprived of his living, and declared incapable henceforward
of holding any preferment in the Church of England.

Now, if the Bill, as it professes, had merely been a measure to
enforce a better observance of the law of the Church, no one would
have objected to it, least of all those who represent the Oxford
Movement. Such a measure would have contemplated an enforce-
ment of the rubrics which insist that Mattins and Evensong shall be
said daily in every parish church, that there shall be a Celebration
of Holy Communion at least on Sundays and Saints' days, that the
Athanasian Creed shall not be omitted when ordered to be recited, that
the use of the vestments prescribed by the ornaments rubric shall
be enforced on all the clergy, and that the clergy who pretend to
marry divorced persons shall be punished, with many other like
things ; but it is quite notorious that the Bill in question contem-
plates nothing of this sort. Its object is to set Courts in motion
which it knows have no authority over the consciences of those who
are to be dragged before them, in order to stereotype and bind upon
the necks of both clergy and laity an interpretation of the rubrics
for which the Privy Council alone is responsible, and which has very
generally been repudiated both by the Episcopate and by the Church
at large.

If this had been generally understood — if it had been perceived
that the Bill was one which, if it had been passed and acted upon
forty years ago, would have deprived Mr. Keble of his living and
declared him incapable of holding preferment in the Church of
England — can anyone suppose that it would have obtained a
second reading, or that any doubt could have existed as to its real
purport and scope ? It would have been seen to be what it is — a
measure directed not against this or that doctrinal exaggeration and
ritual excess, but against the whole High Church party and the
underlying principles of the Oxford Movement.

The most cursory examination of the debate shows how false the
issues are that were raised, how completely the very points in
dispute were assumed, and, I may add, how absolutely incapable
Parliament is of dealing with such a subject. Indeed, if the matter
were not so grave, there would be something almost ludicrous in the
childlike unconsciousness of the difficulties which beset the whole
question with which members not unfriendly to the Church voted

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 539

for a measure the results of which, were it ever to become operative
for the real purposes of its promoters, would be so very different from
those they had been led to expect.

Does anyone deny that the laity have a right to have the services
ministered to them as the Church has prescribed ? No one. Does
anyone deny that the law of the Church ought to be enforced ? No
one, again. The whole point is, What services has the Church
prescribed ; how does she require them to be performed ; what is the
law of the Church ; what is the doctrine and discipline which the
clergy have sworn to accept ? These are the questions which through
the whole of the debate were persistently begged. For example, it is
assumed throughout, notably in Sir William Harcourt's speech, that
it is the right of Parliament and of the Crown to deal with the
Church. Does the insistence on such a right mean the right of
Parliament — i.e., in theory, of the Church laity — to clothe with legal
sanction and to invest with coercive power the enactments of the
Church, and on the part of the Sovereign the right to see that
Church law is properly and justly carried out ; or does it claim for
Parliament as it is — i.e., the representatives of the country irrespective
of Church membership — a right to make and alter the law of the
Church as they see fit, and for the Sovereign through the machinery
of civil tribunals to determine what that law is ? The first, however
little it may correspond with the present constitution of Parliament,
is in theory unobjectionable, but it is the second which is assumed
by Sir William Harcourt when he asserts the right of the Crown and
Parliament as representing the laity to deal with the doctrine and
discipline of the National Church.

It is an old and acknowledged right which appears to be asserted,
but it is a new right which in fact is claimed — a right which nullifies
the indefeasible right of the laity and clergy of the Church of
England to determine their own affairs free from the interference
and intrusion of those who are not members of the Church. It was
said in the course of the debate that such a claim was inconsistent
with establishment. The case of the Established Church in Scot-
land contradicts that assertion ; but can any reasonable man pretend
that Presbyterians and Nonconformists, Jews and Mahommedans,
Agnostics and non-Christians — and there are representatives of all
such in Parliament — should be entitled to discuss the affairs of the
Church and to interfere in Church matters to the infringement of
the rights of the laity and clergy of that Church, and to the great
detriment of the Church herself? Can there, indeed, be a more
flagrant claim, as Dr. Fairbairn, the most distinguished representative
of Nonconformist opinion at Oxford, admits, ' than that those whose
distinctive note is dissent from the Church should be invested with
legislative power over a Church they dissent from, or that men
whom the Church cannot recognise as fully or adequately Christian

540 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

should be law- givers for the very Church that refuses them recogni-
tion ' ?

It is quite plausible, if you assume the position asserted by Sir
William Harcourt, to insist that 220 or indeed any number of
incumbents who reject the interpretations put upon the formularies
and rubrics of the Church by the Privy Council should be deprived
at once ; but the matter becomes less simple when it is remembered
that the position is one which has always been emphatically denied
by the largest and most influential section of the Church, and that
a man like Mr. Keble could declare that it was a duty to make ' the
whole of Christendom ring with a protest against it.'

Again, it is assumed that anything which offends ordinary
Protestant susceptibilities is necessarily at variance with the law of
the Church. Is this the fact ? The late Dr. Neale once said,
' England's Church is Catholic though England's self is not,' and it
is a remark which sums up and explains the whole of the present
situation. Clergy are not unfaithful members of the Church because
they offend Protestant susceptibilities. They are unfaithful if they
contravene the law and principles of the Church, and a little exami-
nation will show that it is not the conduct of the clergy except in so
far as they are no longer content to allow great portions of the
Prayer Book to remain a dead letter, but the principles of the
Church itself, that are the real grounds of offence. Parliament has
the power to do many things : it can disestablish and disendow
the Church if it pleases, it can endeavour to alter the constitution
of the Church, it can attempt any other revolution : but it has no
right to brand those as disloyal who are merely carrying out
principles and practices enjoined by the existing formularies of the
Church.

It is worth while to examine this point in some detail, for it is
the key of the present controversy.

It has to be asserted, and asserted most emphatically — it was a
point that was constantly being pressed in the debate on the
Liverpool Bill — that the laity possess the most undoubted right to
have the Church services and privileges as provided by authority at
their disposal, and not to have that right infringed by the private
taste and fancy of the officiating minister. But it has to be asserted
no less emphatically that this right is not to be infringed by (1)
influential persons, inhabitants of the parish or persons from the
outside, or even the man in the street, who likes to attend church
but does not like Church principles, and by pressure manages so
to get them tampered with as to suit his own tastes and convenience ;
(2) Dissenters, Nonconformists, Agnostics, Jews, who by the con-
stitution of Parliament as it now is claim to interfere in Church
matters to the infringement of the rights of the members of the
Church. Nothing, indeed, can be more monstrous or contrary to the

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 541

fact than the assertion that Englishman as such have a right to
interfere in the internal affairs of ' the National Church.'

Consider what the position is and what the rights are which the
Church of England claims for herself and her members.

To make this matter plain, T would draw attention to the fact,
which has been shown over and over again in a perfectly conclusive
manner, notably by Sir John Seeley in his book Ecce Homo,
which created so great a sensation some years ago, that Christ saves
mankind through incorporation in a hierarchical society : that He
came to found a Kingdom.2

Consider the character of that Kingdom. As witnesses to that
character I will call three writers, two of whom are entirely opposed
to my own convictions, while the third is a writer in the Guardian
whom no one has ventured to contradict. ' Sacerdotalism,' says Dr.
Fairbairn, the Nonconformist Head of Mansfield College, Oxford, in
the interesting and instructive book from which I have already quoted,
'was full blown by the time of Cyprian.' Now, S. Cyprian was
martyred in the middle of the third century — that is, before the first
of the Ecumenical Councils to which the Church of England appeals.
' It is no justification,' says a writer in the Pilot newspaper, ' to say
that a practice obtained in the fourth century.' ' The Church
system of the Nicene period was in almost all essential respects the
same as ' what the writer calls ' Romanism,' and he adds, ' We must
protest against both.' It is a far-reaching statement, and one to which
exception might be taken, but it is true in so far as it expresses the
fact that no trace of Protestantism is to be found in the Church
system of the Nicene period.

' The Catholic Church,' says the writer in the Guardian to
whom I have referred, 'of the age which settled the Canon of
Scripture and was responsible for the Catholic Creeds, was tbe Church
which, beyond dispute, invoked the Saints.' I quote this, not for its
bearing on the practice of invoking the Saints, but for the light it
throws on the position claimed by the Church of England. What is
important to remember is that it is precisely to the teaching and
practice of the Church of the first four Ecumenical Councils that
the Church of England makes her most explicit appeal — a fact no
doubt remembered by Dr. Wace, who is a brave man and a perfectly
independent witness, when he declared, as reported not long ago,3 in
the journal of the Ladies' League, Lady Wimborne's organ, that he
would have no clergyman prosecuted for any practice which could

2 Within this idea of a Kingdom of God upon earth the question whether the
supreme government of this Kingdom is vested in S. Peter and his successors (either
in union with or independent of the rest of the Episcopate) or in the Corpus Episco-
porum — that is, the whole body of the Episcopate holding our Lord's supreme author-
ity in commission — though a point of the utmost importance in view of the history
of the Church, does not affect the main issue.

3 Vide Ladies' League Gazette, January 1903, p. 311.

542 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

appeal to the sanction even of the first five centuries. Were that
understood and acted upon, we should hear no more of disloyal
clergy or of the need of prosecutions. For of course there is no real
doubt as to the character and teaching of the Kingdom founded by
Christ by the end of the fifth century. No one pretends that by the
time of the fourth General Council the doctrines and practices for
which the clergy are now being attacked were not everywhere
recognised by the Church. To justify those clergy it only remains
to show how clearly and unmistakably the Church of England makes
her claim to be a portion of this one Kingdom of Grod upon earth — that
is, to be a part of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, a
sharer in all the rights of that Church, bound by all her doctrines
and principles, and not a mere collection of units associated together
in virtue of their Protestantism and by the exercise of their own free
will, as is the case with all those religious societies which have set
themselves up outside and independent of the Church of Christ.

Let me give three illustrations which shall make this claim on
the part of the Church of England perfectly clear.

I will take first the question of Ordination.

Consider the official attitude of the Church of England towards
converts who are ' ministers.' From the Eoman Communion they
are received as priests. For example, no incumbent can be instituted
unless ordained a priest. A convert priest from the Eoman Com-
munion is instituted to a benefice on exhibiting his letters of Orders
from a Koman Catholic Bishop. Others — Dr. Clifford, for example, or
a minister from the Established Church of Scotland — have to be
ordained : their status on reception is not that of a priest, but of a
Confirmation candidate. The fact speaks quite unmistakably as to
the position the Church of England claims, and on which side she
ranges herself in the controversy between Catholics and Protestants.

Secondly, I will take the Mass. In spite of its simplicity, which
is only saved from baldness by the wonderful beauty of its English,
and by the dignity of full Western ceremonial with which the orna-
ments rubric orders it to be clothed, the English Communion service
is on precisely the same principle as the Eoman Mass.

First, Preparation — Collects, Epistle, Grospel, Creed; secondly,
Offertory and Oblation ; thirdly, Preface, Sanctus, and Consecration ;
fourthly, Communion ; fifthly, Post-Communion and Dismissal. The
identity is further emphasised by the fact that the manner of
executing the rite by virtue of the ornaments rubric is generically
the same.

It is the Mass of the Catholic Church so arranged as that Church
has allowed individual portions of that Church to arrange it. By
consecrating in both kinds the priest who celebrates makes the
Sacrifice, by Communion in both kinds he consummates it, in a prayer
he asks that the action may be acceptable : what matters whether

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 543

that prayer be made before or after the consummation of the act ?
The act is the same, and there is not a single Koman Catholic
theologian who, admitting the validity of the Orders conferred by
the English Church, would deny it. The Archdeacon of Liverpool,
indeed, agrees with Cardinal Vaughan in denying the validity of
English Orders, but, granting their validity, the fact of the sub-
stantial identity of the Latin and English rites is one which cannot
be contested.

The Confessional shall be my third illustration. Consider the
form of ordination, 'Whose sins thou dost forgive they are for-
given ; ' ' the moving ' of the sick man, ' if he feel his conscience
troubled by any weighty matter' — and what mortal sin is not a
weighty matter indeed ? — to make his confession in order that he
may receive absolution ; the invitation before Communion to those
conscious of and distressed by grievous sin to come to the priest for
confession, ghostly counsel, and absolution, which imposes on every
parish priest the moral obligation of making himself accessible,
and to qualify himself as a confessor. Could any provision more
emphatically emphasise the character the Church of England claims
for herself in regard to a matter of doctrine and practice which more
than any other is a red rag to popular Protestantism and eelf- satisfied
world liness ? Yet Mr. Balfour in the debate on the second reading
of the Liverpool Bill seemed to imply that to preach this doctrine as
to confession and absolution was the crowning proof of the disloyalty
of the clergy, and the justification of stern measures, could such be
effectual, to repress the practice. Would it not be more honest to
drop any insinuation of disloyalty, and to say what is, indeed, the
truth — that such teaching is to be put down if possible, not because
it is disloyal to the Prayer Book, but because those responsible for
the present agitation dislike it ? The present agitation itself testifies
to the fact. What is it that the promoters of that agitation
denounce ? Not this or that detail of ritual, not the use of incense
or any such matter, but, to use their own words, ' the Mass ' and ' the
Confessional.' These were the matters expressly insisted upon by
the speakers, Mr. Mellor and others, at the meeting in St. James's
Hall called in support of this Liverpool Bill a short time before its
introduction. But ' the Mass ' and ' the Confessional,' as everyone
knows who understands the question, can only be put down by
altering the Prayer Book ; and when that fact is generally discovered —
for it is a fact, and the more these matters are threshed out the
plainer it will appear — the country will then begin to see what
these charges of disloyalty are worth, and who are the faithful and
who the unfaithful members of the Church of England.

One thing is already apparent. Both the conduct of the Liver-
pool Bill and its provisions show, not for the first time, how hope-
lessly out of touch its promoters are with that great mass of Church

^544 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

feeling and principle represented by what it is the fashion just now
to call the ' Moderate Party ' in the Church of England. The fact
has been proved over and over again. It will be remembered that
Bishop Harold Brown, when Bishop of Winchester, at the time of
the passing of the Public Worship Kegulation Act, threatened to
resign his see if Parliament attempted to deprive him of his veto on
any threatened prosecution. There are many bishops to-day who
would refuse to be relegated to the position of nonentities in their
own dioceses. But to a consideration of that sort the promoters of
the Bill are profoundly indifferent. They care nothing for the fact
that were it ever to pass and to prove more than a dead letter, it
would not make for peace, but, on the contrary, would be the
source of confusion and strife. They do not concern themselves
with the awkward questions which would arise in regard to the
canonical position of the deprived clergy and their relations to their
successors and their congregations. They are indifferent to the
certainty that the advocates of disestablishment would assuredly
seize the opportunity of pressing that question forward, and that
under such circumstances they would be reinforced by a strong
detachment of High Churchmen who have long ceased to regard
disestablishment as a positive evil, and are only asking themselves
whether the time has come to work for it as a positive good. It
never occurs to them to consider whether the Church of England is
doing less or more for souls than she was twenty -five or thirty years
«go, or who is to benefit by this arrest of all good work and the
setting up of congregation against congregation.

They assume that a state of things which was the result of a
total indifference to all the requirements of the Prayer Book in the
past represents the true mind of the Church of England. They
have to be undeceived. They have to be shown that they are in the
position of the lodger who is trying to turn the rightful owner of the
house out of doors, that those against whom this Bill is in reality
directed do not ask for toleration, but that they intend to insist on
their rights.

They have to learn that ' perjured priests,' ' faithless ministers
of a Church whose bread they eat, and whose principles they betray,'
' Jesuits in disguise,' are not phrases they can continue to apply
with impunity to men who have learnt what the requirements of the
Prayer Book really are and whose lives are spent in one round of
self-denying work, for the most part in the poorest livings and in the
most unattractive neighbourhoods. Such men are indifferent to
what is said of them. Their Master's work and example are enough
for them ; but will their friends always be so patient ? That
patience may be exhausted.

The laity who know what the Church of England is do not
intend to see their clergy turned out. If the rights of the laity

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 545-

are to be insisted upon, let them be insisted upon impartially ; let
the laity of the Church insist on having the rites of the Church
ministered to them in their entirety. Let them see that every
parish priest is compelled to say Mattins and Evensong daily, that
he is not allowed to shelter himself under the plea, which the Times
newspaper puts into his mouth, that the rubric which orders the
recital of the daily office is obsolete, or to pretend that family
prayers are a substitute for Mattins and Evensong said in the
Church. Let them see that the Athanasian Creed is not omitted
or mutilated in order to please those who think it signifies nothing
whether men reject God's revelation of Himself or not ; that doctrines
like those of the Virgin Birth and the Eesurrection of the Body are
not denied. Let them require — what more important right does a
layman possess? — that the Holy Eucharist be celebrated in every
parish church at least on Sundays and Saints' days, that the Holy
Eucharist be restored to its proper place as the chief service on
Sunday, and that opportunities be provided on Sundays and Saints'
days for Communion at an hour which does not impose too great a
strain in observing the Church's rule of fasting Communion. Let
them insist on the Blessed Sacrament being always reserved in some
safe place in every parish church, so that no one may run the risk of
being deprived of Communion in the case of any sudden emergency,
that the Friday abstinence and the fast of Lent be duly observed,
that a proper regard be had for vigils and Saints' days, that priests
be punished who read the marriage service over divorced persons ;
and let them also insist, and vehemently insist, on their right, as
Catholic Christians, not to have the cure of their souls entrusted to
any priest who does not believe in and will not give facilities for
practising the Catholic religion. To intrude such into the ministry
and to place them in positions where they have cure of souls is a
plain infringement of the elementary and most essential right of
the laity of the Church. Let the laity also assert their right to have
the formularies of the Church, if occasion arises for their interpreta-
tion, interpreted apart from any preconceived and assumed back-
ground. The neglect of this lies at the root of many existing
difficulties. The mass of the decisions given by the so-called
Ecclesiastical Courts did not attempt so to interpret them : they
considered only the later formularies and interpreted them by the
imaginary background of a sort of Protestant Common Law. This
is especially true of the decisions of Bishops' Chancellors. If the
formularies were taken by themselves and all the formularies were
considered, not those only subsequent to an imaginary date, the
Catholic background which belongs to them would be self-evident,
and might safely be left to take care of itself. By what authority, it
should be asked, are the Canons of 1603 to be obeyed and previous
Canons to be ignored ? What becomes of the authority of the Church

546 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

if such arbitrary distinctions are to be allowed ? The great need of
the present time is a reassertion of the true principles of ecclesias-
tical authority. How is the exercise of that authority to be
vindicated if the principles on which it rests are violated ? The
Church is an organised army in which those who fight her battle
against the forces of evil are not mere units, but parts of a whole — in
which none is isolated from or independent of the rest.

The affairs of S. Michael's, Shoreditch, which have recently been
the cause of so much distress, are more than enough to prove this.
It is an unhappy business about which many untrue things have
been said ; but can anyone think that the late incumbent, whose
self-denying work amongst the poor was beyond all praise, and who
had done so much to make those whom he found absolute heathens
into good Christians, had in the least considered as he ought the
circumstances of the Church as a whole, and the difficulties he was
creating, not only for himself, but for the Church at large ? Could
there be any doubt that the Bishop had the right, if he insisted
upon it, to require that the services ordered by the Prayer Book
should be given without omission and without addition ? The root
principle of the Church revival is the recognition of the authority of
the Church. Doctrines are preached and practices restored not
because they commend themselves to us, but because they are
ordered. Can we think this was sufficiently kept in mind by
Mr. Evans ? Has it always been sufficiently kept in mind by others ?
Has the legitimate authority of the Bishops always been sufficiently
remembered ? Cannot instances be cited in which things have
been done which are really irreconcilable with a due recognition of
Church order and Church authority ?

In matters touching their religion people are naturally and
rightly conservative. Nothing is so irritating as changes which are
supposed to be due to the arbitrary will of another. When a
suspicion is aroused^that such a change is only due to the arbitrary
will of a particular priest it arouses opposition and provokes the
assertion on the parfof the layman that he will only accept so much
of the priest's teaching and practice as he likes. Under such circum-
stances the whole principle of Church authority is apt to disappear.

The layman feels that he has a right to the services prescribed by
the Church, and not to have imposed upon him any fancy service
inaugurated by the individual clergyman ; and as many laymen
(and indeed some clergymen) are often very imperfectly instructed
as to what is prescribed by the Church, it ends in the right to
have what the Church orders being too often confounded with a right
to prescribe what the services of the Church should be, and results
not unfrequently in much irritation on the part of the laity if they
do not get exactly what they like.

So far as there is any distrust of the clergy at the present time,

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 547

I believe this to be at the root of it, and the only remedy is a frank
acceptance all round of that principle of authority in matters of
faith and practice which distinguishes the Church from the sects.
I say all round, because if in this matter there is blame attaching to
individual clergy and laity, there is also blame — may I be forgiven
for saying so ! — attaching to the Episcopate. The vindication of true
ecclesiastical authority has been and is the one thing needed in the
past as in the present to secure the Catholic revival from the various
dangers which beset it. Does the Episcopate ever seem to have
considered this matter as it deserves, and to have faced the question
whence it derives its own authority, what is the extent of that
authority, and what are its limitations? Is it not true that
throughout the whole course of the Church revival the Episcopate
has been constantly banning what as time goes on it has come to
bless — permitting, sometimes even encouraging, the stoning of the
prophets, and then building them sepulchres ? I will venture to say,
and it is a matter upon which I have some right to speak, that from
the beginning of the ritual controversy about the year 1866 to the
present time there has never been a moment when the Bishops
might not have regulated the whole course of the revival, if they
would frankly have asserted their authority as Catholic Bishops and
acted on Catholic principles. Instead of that, what has been their
conduct ?

While they have not ventured, at least in later times, or perhaps
even wished, to enforce the interpretations of the Privy Council as a
true exposition of the law and rubrics of the Church, they have never
had the courage or the principle openly and unmistakably to vindi-
cate their own authority as against that of the Privy Council. The
consequences are such as might have been foreseen. They are the
present disorganisation in which ecclesiastical authority finds itself,
and the attack which is now being made on the Bishops themselves
for failing to enforce what the general laity have every excuse for
believing to be the discipline and law of the Church.

The Lambeth Opinions are the latest and most conspicuous
example of an opportunity to vindicate the spiritual authority of
the Church completely thrown away. If in regard to the use of
incense the Archbishops had given no reasons, but had said, ' In our
opinion as Heads of the Church, we think it desirable, under exist-
ing circumstances and in view of present prejudices, that incense
should not be used in the services of the Church,' they would have
been obeyed — with regret and under protest it may be, but obeyed.
As it was, the decision was one which not only in itself, but much
more in regard to the principle on which it was based, was implicitly
destructive of any claim the Church of England could make to
continuity with the past and the possession of true spiritual
authority.

548 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

Would Mr. Keble, would Dr. Pusey, have admitted the right of an
Act of Parliament (for it was on the words of the Act of Uniformity
of Elizabeth, expressly dissociated from any claim to ecclesiastical
sanction, that the Opinions were based) to determine the ritual of the
Church ?

If it was right to refuse obedience to the Public Worship Kegula-
tion Act, could there be any duty to render obedience to a ruling
which entirely based itself on a similar Act of Parliament ? There
can only be one answer to that question. While it might be ex-
pedient, while it might be prudent, in view of the matter under
dispute, to conform to such an Opinion, there could be no duty in
the matter ; and so the clergy as a whole felt and acted — some
conformed their practice to the Opinion, and some did not. Mean-
while, the use of incense is practically allowed with only such
modifications in the manner of use as show the intrinsic futility of
the original decision.

I insist on this because it is this attitude on the part of the
Episcopate which makes the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline so
difficult, I might say so impossible, until the only principles on which
obedience in spiritual matters can be rightly claimed and rendered
are once more frankly and fully recognised by the authorities of the
Church. The great need of the present time is that decisions should
not merely be pronounced by ecclesiastical persons, but that they
should be arrived at and delivered on principles recognised by the
Church. As it is, the authorities of the Church of England make a
boast of the Church of England's independence from the rest of
Christendom. They erect her isolation, and the state of practical
separation from the rest of Christendom in which, largely by the
fault of others, she finds herself, into a principle — something to be
almost proud of, instead of one to be deeply deplored. They refuse
to recognise that they owe any duty of obedience to the rest of the
Church. The authority of the whole Church is nothing to them ;
' securus judicat orbis terrarum ' seems to be a phrase without
meaning in the ears of our rulers. In resisting the mediaeval and
temporal claims of the Papacy the English Episcopate seems to have
lost all sense of the duty it owes to the Primate of Christendom and
the rest of the Catholic Episcopate East and West. Eome may reject
our Bishops' claims, but that rejection cannot relieve them from the
obligations those claims impose — assuming those claims, as we
believe them, to be well founded. But Anglican Bishops appear to
care absolutely nothing for, they do not even pretend to consider,
the teaching and practice of the great majority of those who are
sharers with them in the episcopal office. What the other
Bishops of Christendom believe and teach might for all practical
purposes, so far as they are concerned, be non-existent ; and yet
they have no misgivings about insisting on the duty of obedience

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 549

to themselves on grounds which in their own case they totally
disregard.

To claim obedience on Catholic principles yourself you must not
abandon the ground on which your own authority rests. You cannot
totally disregard the authority of the rest of the Church, and at the
same time claim for a part the authority you deny to the whole.
The authority of the part must obviously be exercised in subordina-
tion to that of the whole from which it is derived. Is it wonderful
when all this is ignored — when, as in regard to reservation for the
sick, all deference , for the authority and practice of the whole
Church, East and West alike, all respect for the appeal of the
Church of England to primitive practice, and that in a matter vitally
affecting the need of souls, is wholly thrown on one side — that English
Bishops find it difficult, often impossible, and rightly impossible, to
vindicate their own authority in the eyes of their own clergy and
laity, and still more impossible to do so in the eyes of a critical and
unbelieving world ? What respect, indeed, does the Protestant
agitator pay to the authority of the Episcopate except when it can
be invoked to torment a ritualist ? What, indeed, is the attitude of
the mass of our countrymen towards all these subjects ? What is
their attitude, for example, towards the Prayer Book ? Half of the
community — I am talking of the religious part of it — neither believes
what is in the Prayer Book nor pays the slightest attention to its
directions. The proportion of Nonconformists to professing Church-
men is a proof of this ; and even of professing Churchmen what pro-
portion of them either know or attempt to conform to the precepts
and practices of the Prayer Book ? As to the other half, the majority
of them, so far as they believe in the teaching of the Prayer Book
and conform to its practice, do so in their own way, and without any
real regard to or understanding of the principles it enshrines, and
which alone make it a serviceable instrument for the salvation of
souls, and the satisfaction of more spiritual wants which it is the
business of the Church to supply.

No doubt, owing to the Oxford Movement, there has been a great
•change for the better in this respect, but taking that change at its
best, what little realisation there is still of the Church as an organic
whole !

It is not felt to be a living Body indwelt by the Holy Ghost,
really one with and summed up in Christ, of which no part therefore
•can be independent of the rest, and of which the authority must
ever at all times be the same.

Instead of this, the Church is conceived of as a collection of units,
«ach really separate, and only accidentally brought into relation
with each other. That we are saved as members of a Body, and in
a Body — the Body of Christ — is practically forgotten ; that Totus
Christus is Christ and His Church is ignored. We see the fact
VOL. LIII— No. 314 00

550 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

unmistakably evidenced by our whole attitude towards the Departed
and towards the doctrine of ' the Communion of Saints.' We do not
believe in the Communion of Saints because we do not believe in
the Church, and we do not believe in the Church because we have got
into the habit of looking upon the Church of England as a body
separate from and independent of that whole Church of which she
is but a fragment, and of interpreting her rules by themselves instead
of by the practice and teaching of undivided Christendom.

If the present troubles should compel us to face these difficulties
and to realise our duties in respect to the great principles of
Church authority and Catholic obedience, and teach us to recognise
a little more clearly what the Church is, they will prove, instead of
a misfortune, a blessing indeed.

I will conclude by some general observations which are suggested
by the present state of ecclesiastical affairs.

Since the sixteenth century Protestantism has effected a de facto
lodgment within the borders of the Church; an anomaly in itself
hardly tolerable, which hampers the Church in her office of pro-
claiming the truth at every turn, and which makes any really
consistent action on the part of her Bishops as Catholic Prelates —
and they will not deny that they profess to be such — to be at the
present moment almost impossible.

An English Bishop could only act really consistently with that
Catholic Faith and those Catholic principles which he professes to
hold, by deliberately making up his mind from the outset of his
episcopate — and no harder thing can be asked of any man — to take
a course which he would know beforehand would scandalise and do
harm to all sorts of good people whom he would most wish to win,
and which would in all likelihood make his whole episcopate, during
his lifetime at least, and until death had put its seal upon his work,
a complete failure. At this price he would do a work of incalculable
value, not merely to the Church of England, but to the whole of
Christendom, but it would be at the price of a life of which every
day was a martyrdom. 'I have loved righteousness and hated
iniquity, and therefore I die in exile,' would, 'mutatis mutandis, as
once before in the history of the Church, sum up such an episcopate.

The personal difficulty is not, however, the only one which
results from the existing state of things. It is possible to minimise
the conflicting elements and the points of divergence within the
Church of England ; but minimise them as you will, make what
allowance for them you like, recognise even, up to a certain point,
their providential character, and the consequent duty of bearing
with them, dealing tenderly with them, and of utilising them in
the interests of truth — it remains true that within the Church of
England there are practically something very like two religions,
and that it is only possible to tolerate a condition of things so

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 551

contradictory of the nature and office of the Church on condition
that nothing is done by the rulers of the Church to make the
recovery of Catholic doctrine and practice more difficult, or to
consolidate the position of those within the Church who, from a
Catholic point of view, ought never to have been allowed to occupy
the position they now hold.

Once it is made clear that Catholic doctrine and practice are
only to be tolerated, still more if it should appear that they are not
to be tolerated, and that the compromises of the sixteenth century —
the failure of which to retain the people of this country in the faith
of their fathers is only too obvious, as witnessed by the spiritual state
of the population and the developments of dissent — are to be enforced
for all time, and that they are to be appealed to as decisive in every
dispute as to doctrine or practice which may arise, and it will cease
to be the object of any who put the Catholic religion in the first
place to endeavour to maintain a state of things so little favourable
to what they believe to be the truth or to the highest interests of the
Church. In view of the past anything would be better than to have
such a yoke riveted on our necks. Much may be borne which is
admittedly only temporary and provisional, nobody distrusts heroic
remedies more than I do ; but some things are impossible, and
among them are the surrender of what has been already won back
from past neglect, and the acquiescence in a hard-and-fast line deter-
mined by the ipsissima verba of sixteenth and seventeenth century
formularies interpreted and enforced with no regard to the teaching
and practice of the whole Church and the peculiar and altogether
exceptional circumstances of the entire history of the Church of
England. Those formularies, as Mr. Keble insisted, interpreted by
Catholic consent are one thing, interpreted merely by themselves
quite another.

The Church exists to proclaim the Catholic religion and to bring
all men into the obedience of the Faith. Consider what the attitude
of Englishmen generally, and of the great mass of the population
amongst the English-speaking races, is towards the Catholic Faith,
and what a lesson that attitude teaches. What on the Anglican
theory is the purest portion of Christendom, with every advantage of
wealth, position, and privilege, has proved absolutely incapable of
retaining within its fold, not only the great masses of its population, but
a very large proportion of those (I say nothing of the irreligious and
the careless) who are really alive to their souls' needs and care for
spiritual concerns. If one object of a Church is to bring men to the
obedience of the Faith, why has the Church of England been so
eminently unsuccessful ? I should reply, amongst many and other
obvious reasons, because she has been so little true to her own prin-
ciples ; because she has professed one thing and done another.

The result has been, instead of the system of the Prayer Book,

o o 2

552 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

the practical establishment of a respectable form of Christianity
with very little power to attract, very helpless in those cases where
help is most needed, claiming little authority, insisting upon no
practice as of obligation, making no appeal to the imagination,
owning little connection with the past, and generally ignoring those
counsels of perfection and those heroic virtues which really attract
souls and convert the world. Why — the connection of ideas is ob-
vious— have the Roman Catholic body in England been able to build
a Cathedral which rivals some of the greatest works of the ages of
faith; while Liverpool Cathedral is still a dream ? The answer to that
question, if honestly given, is not one which suggests that the policy
of such measures as the Liverpool Church Bill or the principles which
inspire it are likely to be anything but an unmitigated misfortune
to the Church of England.

What the needs of the Church of England require is a very
different policy indeed. In the first place it should be resolved to
have no recourse to Parliament, not even to obtain the most needful
reforms : they will not be obtained from Parliament, and it is
dangerous to ask for them. Besides, a recourse to Parliament, con-
stituted as it now is, admits a right which cannot be admitted.
What right have Nonconformists, to say nothing of Jews and non-
Christians, to discuss the internal affairs of the Church ? These are
matters which do not affect them. The Acts of Uniformity are dead.
They were a tacit Concordat which is now broken by the State.
Under such circumstances the Church reverts to her original and
inherent liberty. She must organise herself under her own leaders,
the Bishops ; she must do for herself what her needs require. She
must take what will not be given. If done wisely and prudently,
there need be no insuperable difficulty in such action. Governments
and Parliament will only be too glad to be rid of ecclesiastical affairs.
In a word, what has to be done in this respect is to disentangle the
existing relations of Church and State from their present confusion.
Those relations are relics, and, in view of the deadlock which they
produce, harmful relics, of a time and circumstances that have passed
away. They were the result and expression of a general agreement
in regard to religion. That agreement has ceased to exist : we must
recognise the fact. We have also to admit that those who really hold
Church principles are in a minority. In view of that fact our present
relations with Parliament are only a source of weakness. A gradual
process of disestablishment has, in fact, been going on for a long
time. Everything that has been said and done in regard to Educa-
tion is evidence of it. How can a Church be said in any real sense
to be ' established ' when its Catechism is not allowed to be used in any
State school ? We have to admit the fact, utilise it, make the best
of it. We ask for no privilege, for no favour, but for equal treatment
and for the protection of the right of all.

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 553

Such things as the King's Declaration, the restrictions on the
offices of Lord Chancellor and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland must
be got rid of. If Jews may present to livings, why not Roman
Catholic patrons ? The right of institution inherent in the
Episcopate is a complete security in both cases. It would be an
advantage in many cases if the Heads of the Roman Church, the
Heads of the Established Church in Scotland, and of the chief Dis-
senting bodies had seats in the House of Lords. Dr. Clifford's oppo-
sition to the Education Bill would probably have been conducted
on different lines had he possessed a seat in that assembly. Should
the House of Lords ever be reformed and strengthened, should the
development and unification of the Empire lead to any changes in its
constitution, as is not improbable, such admissions may perhaps be
considered. For similar reasons the clergy should not be debarred
from sitting in the House of Commons.

If there is occasion to proceed against such men as, e.g., Mr. Beeby
or the Dean of Ripon, they should be tried as the Bishop of Lincoln
was tried, or even in a less formal manner. It would be quite
enough in the case of such a man as Mr. Beeby, if he has indeed said
what he is accused of saying, for his Diocesan to warn his parishioners
against his teaching, and to authorise another priest to perform
services in the parish in some temporary church till such time as
it pleased Grod to remove Mr. Beeby elsewhere. It would be a
scandal no doubt, but nothing like the scandal or the injury to the
Church which indifference to such a doctrine as that of the Virgin
Birth would be on the one side, or the danger which a legal trial
before Courts incompetent to try such cases would be on the other.

The twentieth century will not be as the nineteenth. We are
on the eve of great changes. It is in more senses than one la fin
d'un siecle. There is a movement of unrest and expectation on all
sides. The foundations are being shaken everywhere ; the state of
Biblical criticism both at home and abroad is alone sufficient to
prove this. There is a movement towards reunion at home and
abroad which must in the end bear fruit. It will be a fatal mistake
if the rulers of the Church despise it. They have to be brave about
it : a price has to be paid, something has to be risked, for all things
that are worth doing. There are defeats which are the necessary
steps to victories, present failures which spell future success. It is
not unlikely that the question of disestablishment may be brought
forward at no very distant period. An accident might bring it
within the range of practical politics. The present state of parties,
much that has recently happened, and the general current of opinion
on such matters throughout the world make such a contingency
probable, certainly possible. The difficulties which such a conflict
must involve are such as to inspire the gravest anxiety. No one
could wish to precipitate such a conflict. Few but would desire to

554 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

avert it, but should it prove unavoidable, it is hardly possible to
doubt that whatever the troubles and dangers, whatever the heart-
rending anxiety, which those who fight that battle will have to go
through, its ultimate end and result, as things are, will be for the
ultimate good of the Church.

It would in any case relieve the Church from a claim which is
absolutely intolerable — the claim that those who do not belong to
the Church shall determine her discipline, dictate her doctrine, and
arrogate to themselves the rights which belong only to the Divine
Head of the Church and to those He has invested with His authority
and empowered to rule in His name.

HALIFAX.

1903

IN writing a few lines on the present condition and future outlook
of our Church, I can lay no claim to approach the subject from the
standpoint of the scholar, the historian, or the theologian, but merely
from that of an ordinary member of the Church of England, and as
one who has, through the force of circumstances, been led to take
some small part in the all-absorbing movement of what, for want of
a better word, has been called the Church crisis. And although it
may seem presumptuous to deal with such grave questions without
higher qualifications, I am inclined to think that there is a value in
trying to express and define the views of that large class of persons
who may come under the category of more or less intelligent on-
lookers. The vast mass of the world are neither historians nor
theologians, and however much the labours of these more erudite
men may contribute insensibly towards the crystallising of beliefs
and the directing of public events, the history of a country is more
or less shaped by the consensus of opinion of men and women whose
education has been rather the inherited traditions of the race than
the accurate learning of the scholar. My justification, therefore, for
dealing with this question is because it is in the hands of this large
class of persons that the ultimate decision of the Church question
will lie. Their voices in the polling booth will decide on the fate of
our Church, and when that critical day arrives it will be the voices
not of Churchmen only, but of Englishmen in general, that will
pronounce the verdict. If this be so, there is an obvious importance
not only in ascertaining the views of this large class of individuals,
but, if possible, in bringing to bear on them an influence which may,
when the occasion arises, lead them to such an exercise of their
power as will be for the benefit of the country. And it is with the
deepest sense of the responsibility which is incurred by any in-
discreet handling of these questions, and with a conviction of the
extreme gravity of the present position of affairs, that I venture to
endeavour to describe the situation as it presents itself to the
ordinary Church-people of to-day.

There is no argument more frequently used than that extreme

555

556 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

clergymen and extreme churches are few, that such as exist are
mainly in large towns where the worshippers have a choice of
churches, and that consequently the hardship inflicted on those who
disagree with the form of service adopted is not great. I believe
that neither of these arguments is borne out by facts. The Tourist's
Church Guide for 1901-2, published by the English Church Union,
furnishes a complete answer to the first. A careful perusal of that
book will show the vast number of churches both in England and
the Colonies where an extreme ritual is practised, where the services
carried on imply a teaching at variance with the spirit of our
Prayer Book ; while a comparison of this volume with the one
issued two years before will bear testimony to the large increase
of the number of such churches. Then as to the hardship to the
individual worshipper. It is generally assumed that the congrega-
tion sympathise with the service. Those who frequent it may, but
how about the large class who are driven away from their church
in consequence of its character ? I can speak from personal ex-
perience when I say that a hardship is being inflicted both on rich
and poor which is easier imagined than described. The English are
a religious nation, and to an earnest mind the fact of being debarred
week by week from attending the service of your church, from
receiving the Holy Communion, from any of the ministrations of
religion in any sense congenial to the mind of the true member of
our Church, is not only a trial hard to endure, but an injustice
which leaves a deep and indelible mark, and accentuates the loss
tenfold.

The rich and powerful, indeed, have no experience of the trials
that are endured by people of small incomes and humble circum-
stances in this matter. They have for the most part their own
churches, of which they have probably the patronage, and can at
any rate through their influence control the actions of the parson,,
or they have the means of driving to any church they may prefer in-
the neighbourhood ; but it is very different with those whose position-
in life deprives them of such privileges. The sick person desires to
receive the Holy Communion, and begs that the clergyman may
come and administer it ; the response is the advent of a priest who
brings the consecrated wafer, and omits the main portion of that
service, every word of which is replete with consolation and hope to-
the dying. The widow settles in a district where she hopes to end
her days, the retired servant of the State seeks a locality where he
can make a home, the man of business is compelled to live in such a
place as his work calls him to, and to all these comes the question,
Where is the church I can attend and to which I dare take my
children ? Twenty years ago such a question would have been un-
heard of ; to-day it is the burning one, and such examples illustrate

1903 THE CHURCH'S LAST CHANCE 557

the position at which we have arrived. Those who frequent these
Eitualistic services, even if the number be increasing, as perhaps it
is, form but a fraction of the community at large, and from some of
the parishes in London which seem to command the largest following
I have received letters from working people urging the painful
situation in which they are placed through the line adopted by the
clergyman both in church and school. ' Our churches are being
taken from us ' is a common remark from the respectable poor, and
these people have no one to intercede for them or to make their
cause known. I think few, except those who have come in contact
with what is called the aggrieved parishioner, have any conception
of the depth of feeling which is being stirred throughout the length
and breadth of the country by the Eitualistic aggression, a feeling
none the less strong because it is patiently enduring, and what is
more, silently praying, but which, when the occasion arises, as arise
it assuredly will, will be a mighty force to be reckoned with. The
walls of episcopal palaces and the entourage of episcopal thrones
prevent the occupants of our Sees from knowing the real mind and
temper of the people, and there is an atmosphere which surrounds
these ecclesiastical centres adverse to the free breath of public
opinion. That public opinion is taking shape. A sense of injustice
and injury is growing, and from town and hamlet are to be heard
indications of a coming storm. We are rapidly arriving at a point
where, to speak broadly, we shall see a Romanised Church in the
midst of a population who cling tenaciously to Protestantism. The
ordinary Englishman is no theologian and cannot always give an
answer for the faith which is in him ; he is patient and enduring, not
always farsighted enough, or rather perhaps too honest in his charac-
ter, to discern in the first approaches of Ritualism the Romanising
aim and tendency of the movement ; he is unwilling to interfere
with a form of worship which often attracts the female portion of his
family, and consequently for the moment his voice is not heard ; but
once he detects the finger of Rome, or finds the priest exercising
influence either in his home or in the political institutions of the
country, there is no manner of doubt as to what his action will be,
and that it will show itself in a rebellion against the whole system.
The consequence, then, of the continued growth and spread of
Ritualism in our churches is that the country is in many places
seething with unrest, and that a bitter feeling against the clergy is
growing. It is showing itself in indifference to religion in general,
but it would need only a small matter to produce an open revolt.

The condition thus created is most grave. It can hardly be-
contested that the present position of the Church is one of the
utmost peril ; and yet there are many who believe her to be secure
as a rock. In outward appearance she was never so strong. In

558 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

possession of temporalities and endowments resulting in an income
of several millions a year, in dignity and importance second only to
the Throne, there are yet growing up around her, for the most part
unheeded and almost ignored, forces which threaten to imperil her
continuance as the established Church of the country. The Church
is growing out of touch with the mind and intellect of the rising
generation ; it is losing that old English character which bound
both clergy and laity together, and made the Church a truly national
one. All this is due to the importation of the foreign element,
which makes Italy and not England its ideal and dream, which is
seeking to force upon Englishmen a system from which their fore-
fathers revolted, and which, no matter what apparent success it may
achieve in certain directions, will never be accepted by the people
of this country. A clergyman at a recent meeting of the English
Church Union, in cautioning his hearers against too much exultation,
uttered these words, which I think contain a profound truth (taking
the words from his point of view) : ' Remember England's Church is
Catholic, but England's self is not.' England will never accept an
Italianised form of worship, and the only result that will be achieved,
if the influence of this party remains predominant in the Church, is
what we see already occurring, that the intellect of the country is
being driven into Nonconformity.

The growth and increasing power of Nonconformity is indeed
one of the most startling facts of the day. The late meetings of
the Free Church Council in Brighton ; the large audiences that have
gathered to hear Mr. Campbell, the young successor of Dr. Parker,
audiences larger by far than an ordinary English clergyman can
attract ; the vast sums of money raised by the Wesleyan bodies, all
show the rapid advance which is being made by religious organisa-
tions outside the Church. Such indications prove to us the
existence in this country of men whose deep religious convictions
must exercise an enormous influence upon its thought, and when to
this are added the feelings of deep and heartfelt indignation with
which Church-people of the old school view the practical monopoly of
patronage in the hands of men who are alienating the Church from
the mass of the people, and inculcating sacerdotal teaching foreign
to the spirit of the Prayer Book, we may realise how insecure is the
basis of an institution which is rapidly becoming the Church of the
minority of the population. Meanwhile the country at large is
organising itself in defence of Protestantism, and a very dangerous
situation for the Church is being created. Church-people to whom
Protestantism is dear are being driven, in support of its principles,
to ally themselves with a party which makes no secret of enmity to
the Church and to join forces with those whose Protestantism is of
such a character that it would force the Church into its own narrow

1903 THE CHURCH'S LAST CHANCE 559

limits, and utterly destroy that comprehensiveness which has been
hitherto its glory and the source of its power.

The result, then, of the success of the Protestant organisation,
if carried on as is now being done, and in the channel in which it
is now being forced by the apathy of those whose business it is to
steer the ship, and by their blindness to the reality of the crisis,
will in the end be the disruption of our Church. When the contest
comes, Komanism and its ally are bound to go to the wall. The
allied forces of Protestantism inside and outside the Church, in
•conjunction with the free thought and secularism of the day, are
far too mighty for any eventual triumph of Kome in this country.
But at what a coat will Protestantism be saved ! Will it, moreover,
be that form of Protestantism that has commended itself to the
mind of English people in the past ? We may and we do say that
in the ultimate resort almost anything is better than Rome ; but
we have in our English Church a heritage of a peculiar beauty.
The constitution of the English Church has had much to do with
the building up of our Empire ; it can accomplish more than any
other form of Protestantism for the welding together of our great
Colonial possessions ; and it has been used by Grod in the past, and
is being used by Him in the present, for the spread of Christianity
in the world. The triumph of ultra-Protestantism means the de-
struction of our old English ideal of Churchmanship as evolved at
the Reformation, and to save this ideal should be the aim of every
true English Churchman. Some would say it is too late, the
situation is past saving ; but we believe that there is still a chance,
although, as I have indicated, it would appear as though that chance
were the last one.

To define to ourselves what that English Churchmanship really
means, why it is so precious and worth preserving, and who are the men
in whose power it is to preserve it, is the aim and object of these lines.
A short glance at the history of the Reformation in this country will
assist us, and will tend to clear away many prejudices and miscon-
ceptions which lie at the root of the want of concerted action on the
part of the defenders of Protestantism. In doing so, one especial
qualification seems necessary, and that is that we should look at
the matter from a broad point of view. The tendency of most people,
especially the uninstructed, is to form opinion from some narrow
basis and to generalise from some particular instance, and as a con-
sequence to arrive at the most erroneous conclusions. We find
persons who adopt with ardour the Ritualistic cause, and even
uphold its entire creed, because of the saintly life and self-sacrificing
zeal of some exponent of these views ; and in the same manner
others will adopt a contrary attitude with equally irrational ground
for their argument. This narrow treatment of the subject, like that

560 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

of a painter who devotes the utmost care to the expression of the
minute details of the picture, to the loss of the general effect he
desires to produce, is disastrous in its results on questions of a great
and complex character like the one before us, the treatment of
which needs a breadth of view and a distance of perspective to
insure the formation of a correct judgment. Such a broad way of
looking at matters is, however, very difficult to those who are in the
thick of the fight, and before whose eyes the small and petty details
of the ritual controversy seem all-important and obscure the great
principles at stake. Those, therefore, who have the real interest of
the Church at heart, and desire to take this broad and wise view of
current events, will find, in the great causes which brought about the
English Reformation and in the course of events of that period, the
lessons which should teach us both the path to pursue and the pit-
falls to avoid in the present emergency. And such a study is the
more useful because to a great extent the conditions are repeating
themselves, and the different lines of thought which fought for
the mastery in the English Church of those times are finding their
counterparts in the present situation. England was then as now the
battle-ground of contending parties, and then as now the extremes
on either side exercised a baneful influence on the decision of
affairs.

The Reformation in this country, though part of the great wave
which swept over Northern and Western Europe, took, in some very
important particulars, a different colour from the movement on the
Continent. Owing, perhaps, to our insular position or to the
character and intellect of our people, it was distinguished by a more
judicious and sober treatment of the problems that presented them-
selves to the nation. Amidst the many causes which contributed to
our breach with the Church of Rome, political, religious, and social,
two main lines of thought seem to have possessed the minds of the
English people, and in the end guided our Reformers in the great
task which they carried through to such a successful termination.
The one might be described as a great idea which penetrated the
heart of our people and which is to-day the root of the Protestant
feeling of the country, and the other the assertion of a national
sentiment which, then as now, binds Englishmen all over the world
in a spirit of proud independence of all foreign control. The
idea which brought about the Reformation was born in the heart
and mind of Luther. The somewhat hackneyed phrase of justifi-
cation by faith contains a principle which cuts to the root of
sacerdotal pretensions, and levels, when accepted, at one fell swoop
the power of the Church of Rome. As long as men believed that
heaven, as a rule, was only attainable and sin only forgiven by means
of the priest, the Pope was the ultimate ruler of the souls and bodies

1903 THE CHURCH'S LAST CHANCE . 561

•of men ; but as soon as they based their faith on the Bible and its
view of salvation, the special Eoman creed fell to the ground. When
the English people had grasped this ideal, they were determined to
do away with everything in their services which justified these
pretensions of the priest. Everything in the Holy Communion
service distinctive of the Mass was swept away, confession to a priest
was no longer enforced, and practices inconsistent with the Bible
were abolished. How far this ideal permeated England is 'evidenced
by the ease with which the Keformation was brought about.
Henry the Eighth, autocrat as he was, could never have destroyed the
monasteries and scattered the religious bodies if he had done it at
the point of the sword, in the teeth of the opposition of the people.
One significant fact proves that this great idea pronounced by
Luther had conquered the ground formerly held by the Church of
Rome, and that is, that whereas at the commencement of the
sixteenth century every man and woman went to confession at least
once a year, by the end of the century no such obligation was re-
cognised ; an evident proof that a revolution of thought had taken
place in England, producing a result which no enactments from the
Throne could have effected. This idea, then, which may be called
the religious idea, found its expression in the Prayer Book. The
other principle, namely, the national sentiment, is more difficult to
describe, but was none the less a potent factor in our breach with
Rome. It was mainly political in its conception, and found its cham-
pions first in Henry the Eighth and later in Elizabeth ; but it was an
instinct indigenous in the race, and it ceaselessly asserted itself in
the three preceding centuries. The nation had long chafed against
the arbitrary and excessive exactions of the Court of Rome, had long
viewed with growing indignation the flow of money to that foreign
power, and it required but little persuasion to carry the whole country
in support of Henry the Eighth in his breach with the Papacy, while
it was the national danger of foreign invasion which in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth endeared Protestantism to the country.

But along with these two forces there operated another, which
emanated from the character of the English people, and which
furnished a check to the swing of the pendulum in one direction.
There is a conservatism in the race which leads it, while destroying
what is evil, to cling tenaciously to the past ; and it is this feeling
which gave our Reformation its distinctive character. As Bishop
Creighton in his History of Queen Elizabeth reminds us, ' The great
bulk of the English people wished for a national Church independent
of Rome, with simple services not too unlike those to which they had
been accustomed. They detested the Pope, they wished for services
they could understand, and were weary of superstition.' Such
sentiments describe the ordinary Englishman of to-day, and it was

562 . TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

to such sentiments as these that our Reformers gave expression in
compiling that Prayer Book which embodies the faith of our
Church. The more profoundly the Prayer Book is studied the
more will it reveal to us the mind of the nation at that period, and
we venture to think that at the present day it expresses with equal
accuracy the mind of the vast majority of Church-people. One of its
chief characteristics is its utter repudiation of Rome. If we brush
away some apparent inconsistencies born of a period of transition,
we cannot fail to see how it constitutes both a breach with Roman
doctrine and an assertion of national independence. It is the
expression of the mind of that English public which now as then
believes intensely in the Bible, has an aversion for priestly rule, a
love of dignity and reverence in worship, together with an in-
difference to detail of ritual as long as the principles to which it is
devotedly attached are not endangered. This is the more remark-
able as bearing on present controversies if we study the first Prayer
Book of Edward the Sixth, the book to which the extreme party in the
Church to-day look as advancing their programme. The instructions
given to the Visitors appointed to see that its provisions were duly
carried out were of such a nature that an enforcement of them
would abolish all the Romish practices of the present time. They
especially direct that no minister should counterfeit the Popish
Mass.

Amongst the matters objected to are : the Priest's kissing the Lord's Table ;
washing his fingers during the Communion Service ; crossing his head with the
paten ; shifting the book from one side to the other ; breathing upon the bread
or chalice ; showing the Sacrament openly before the distribution ; ringing of
sacring bells ; setting any light upon the Lord's board at any time ; or using any
ceremonies that are not prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer. No person
might maintain the doctrines of Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, images, relics,
lights, holy bells, holy beads, holy water, palms, ashes, candles, sepulchres,
creeping to the Cross, oils, chrisms, altars, beads, or any such abuses or super-
stitions. There was to be no more than one Communion in the same church on
the same day, except on Christmas Day and Easter Day.

These instructions prove conclusively the mind and intention of
the framers of that Prayer Book on which the Ritualist party base
their hopes, and prove that the Roman ideal was deliberately ex-
cluded. This end secured, our Reformers were not unwilling to
retain all that pertained to the dignity and beauty of an ancient
faith, and of a ceremonial which had grown to be part of themselves.
The two great principles which find expression in our Prayer
Book, then, are continuity from the Primitive Church together with
fidelity to the Protestant faith. 'Primitive and Protestant, con-
tinuous but Reformed ' is the English ideal of the Reformation, and
it is this which constitutes that English Churchmanship we desire to
maintain. It is far removed from that type of Protestantism which

1903 THE CHURCH'S LAST CHANCE 563

under the Puritans would have consigned to a common destruction
the superstitions of Rome, the glories of art, and the sacred memories
of the past, and it preserved for us that liberal and tolerant temper
of mind on religious questions which has always been a distinguish-
ing characteristic of the English people. It is this distinctive
character of our English Churchmanship which is being jeopardised
at the present moment, and which can only be saved by that great
moderating influence which at the Reformation delivered us from
Romanism on the one hand, and from the extremes of Puritanism
on the other. That great moderating influence is represented to-
day by that large mass of Church-people, both lay and clerical, who
voice the real sentiment of the English in their love for all that is
valuable in the past, and at the same time their aversion from, and
abhorrence of, all that is distinctively Roman in doctrine and
practice. That spirit of theirs is the true Protestantism of England,
that spirit which found its representatives in all our great Anglican
divines who, High Churchmen as they were, yielded to none in their
loyalty to Protestant principles. The ranks of that party have been
adorned by such names as Jewel, Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, and
many others, while George Herbert and Keble have been amongst
its poets and saints. A study of their writings, a study too much
neglected in the present day, would prove to us the possibility
of reconciling Protestant truth, as contained in the great dogma
which Luther revived, with the sacramental teaching held by
the High Church party, and which, although differing in some
particulars from that of the Evangelical school, is yet a teaching
well within the limits of our Prayer Book. This High Church
school has its representatives to-day in men as far removed
from Roman doctrines as their ancestors ; but at the present
moment and for a long time past they have allowed themselves
to remain identified with a party who have left the Protestant
standpoint, who are but little removed from the faith of the Church
of Rome, and who are on a road which must eventually lead them to
submission to that Church. It is to such as these that we appeal,
and implore them to see that their inaction is leaving the defence of
our Church to a party as un-English in its extraction as its enemy.
Can nothing be done ? If we ask the reason for this reluctance on
their part to come forward, we shall be told that it is due to the
fanaticism displayed by the extreme wing of the Protestant party.
If this be so, all we can say is that they are sacrificing their Church
to a small and insignificant minority of somewhat noisy though
well-meaning people. Besides which, it would be a calumny to
identify the great Evangelical party with the extreme Protestant
faction. Personal experience has convinced me that there are
amongst that body a preponderance of men of wise and liberal views,

564 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

who recognise to the full the importance of maintaining the com-
prehensive character of the Church.

The great Anglican party at the time of the Eeformation did not
act thus ; they asserted themselves, and theirs was the voice that
dictated the settlement which was made. There is nothing Puri-
tanical in the Prayer Book ; it was saved from that by the great
middle Anglican party who, recognising the peril of Eome, came
forward to save the Church for Protestantism. Again, the High
Churchman will tell us another reason for holding aloof is the dread
of secular tribunals being invoked to decide the doctrine of the
•Church. Again, may we not point to the wise and statesmanlike
policy of Queen Elizabeth, and to the Bishops of her time, who
contrived to find a means of securing the freedom of the Church
within the necessary sphere of allegiance to the State, and who
were deterred by no such fears from guarding against Eoman inter-
vention and influence? The peril in that time was great; it is
greater now, and unless that large mass of Anglican opinion will
range itself on the side of Protestantism, the cause of the Church
of England is lost. The abstention of that party is leaving the
battle in the hands of the Extremists ; and their late victory in the
House of Commons, a victory achieved by an alliance with a party
inimical to the true interests of the Church, is bringing into
operation forces which must in the end prove fatal to its existence.
If the Church of England is lost, its ruin will be at the door of the
old High Church party. History will record of them that they
were unworthy of the great name they have inherited, and that, on
account of a narrow prejudice against a small section in the country,
they refused to side with the great mass of earnest Evangelical men
and to work with them for deliverance from a party which aims at
Eomanism within our Church, if not at reunion with Eome.

This appeal to the High Church party has been repeatedly made ;
it was accentuated by Mr. Balfour in his speech on the Church
Discipline Bill. Will they respond ? The sands of time are running
out, and the Church of England is nearing a point where there will no
longer be an opportunity of saving her. The patience of the country
is well-nigh exhausted. The vast majority of the laity of the Church
of England belong to this moderate High Church party, but they
lack the knowledge on doctrinal questions, and the intimate acquaint-
ance with ecclesiastical history, requisite to the handling of these
delicate matters, and are only able to express their feelings from the
layman's point of view. The recent important deputation to the
Archbishops evinces the depth of their anxieties at the present moment.
They feel, as most Church-people feel, that it is the business of the
Bishops to see to these things ; they have an instinctive dislike of
bringing religious questions into the arena of Parliamentary debate,

1903 THE CHURCH'S LAST CHANCE 565

but they are none the less desirous of maintaining the old order. It
is, then, to the new Archbishop that the eyes of all are turning at
this crisis, and it is upon his action to a large extent that the fate of
our Church depends. He has a great opportunity ; his statesmanlike
qualities and his great experience fit him for the exalted post he
occupies. Both Parliament and the vast majority of the country are
ready to support him in the exercise of his powers, or if need be to
strengthen them, in maintaining the true Anglican teaching and
ritual of our Church. But it is absolutely necessary that he should
recognise that this is no matter of noisy agitators, but one of life
and death to the Church of England ; that there is no exaggeration in
the statements placed before the public, but that the deepest religious
feelings of the most earnest, loyal and devoted Church-people are
being daily and grievously injured ; that a determined assault is
being made by a well-disciplined and highly organised party on the
fundamental position of the Church of England, and that this assault
is being carried on not only in the most extreme churches, but by a
systematic, insidious, and gradual advance from point to point, with
one definite aim and object in view. All this requires what we feel
sure the Archbishop will bring to bear on the case, a careful investi-
gation of the inner working of the movement, which will lead him to
see that a mere conformity to the letter of the law will do little to
remedy the evil. What we need is an obedience to the spirit and
not only to the law of the Church. ' You will never manage a
question of spirit by merely strengthening your legal machinery '
were Mr. Balfour's words, and we in the twentieth century recognise
their force.

Three centuries ago Queen Elizabeth could pass an Act of
Uniformity and imprison those who disobeyed. Such action is
impossible now. Church Discipline Bills and prosecutions seem
to be regarded as obsolete weapons of the past. They are, at least,
hopeless in practice unless the Bishops will also recognise that this
is a matter of doctrinal truth, and not only illegal ritual ; otherwise
we are no nearer an anchor of hope than before. Hitherto, with a
few exceptions, they have failed to see this. Complaints addressed
to them, and petitions invoking their interference, have been met
generally by rejoinders which imply that the petitioners are either
interfering busy bodies, or troublesome agitators to be sent about
their business, entirely ignoring the fact that they are frequently
undertaking the disagreeable task of incurring odium and obloquy
in defence of the rights of Church-people, and that they are to a
large extent voicing the sentiments of those to whom doctrinal truth
is of the very essence of religion.

But while the immediate past records a history which leaves
much to be desired, we still refuse to despair, and look even with

VOL. LIII — No. 314 P P

566 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

hope to the future. There is yet a chance ; and the reign of the
new Archbishop may witness a lifting of the clouds which threaten
the Church we love so well. Of one thing we are sure, and that is
that from many a humble home, and from many an earnest heart,
a prayer is ascending to the throne of the Father in heaven that
He will guide and bless both the Church of this country and those
in whose hands its government lies, and that He will so keep its
teaching true to His own Holy Word that it may, in the future as in
the past, be the centre and source of the religious life and efforts of
the nation.

CORNELIA WBIBORNE.

1903

LOYALTY TO THE PRAYER BOOK

FEW things appeal more successfully to popular opinion than a
serviceable catch-phrase, which only needs sufficiently persistent
repetition to be accepted as an established axiom. The perennial
Church crisis having once more entered upon an acute phase, we
hear much of the existence in the Church of England of a ' line of
cleavage ' between parson and layman. In this formula is crystal-
lised the idea that a profound and perpetual antagonism alienates the
lay mind from the clerical on all kinds of questions relating to the
doctrine, functions, and government of the Church.

It is sought, more or less plausibly, to illustrate this theory from
contemporary events. The Kenyon-Slaney clause is regarded as the
typical lawman's slap at the parson, just as the Cowper-Temple
clause has been supposed to express the average layman's dislike of
parson-taught ' dogma.' There is a naive underlying assumption
that the professing Churchmen in Parliament whose votes carried
through the Kenyon-Slaney proviso are entitled to speak for the
mass of the English laity. In point of fact, their claim to be so
regarded is of too slender a character to bear the strain of in-
vestigation. A study of the division-lists would probably reveal the
fact that these are the same ' laymen ' the sincerity of whose devotion
to the Church may be gauged by their strenuous efforts, year after
year, to ' drive a coach-and-six ' through the provisions of her marriage
law. Meanwhile thousands of the genuine laity — including, as time
is destined presently to show, the vast majority of subscribers to
Church schools — resent the Kenyon-Slaney clause as deeply as they
have always resented the Cowper-Temple clause. So far, therefore,
at any rate, the line of cleavage — whatever its depth and direction—-
does not run between clergyman and layman.

Again, controversialists are accustomed to dwell on the imagined
repugnance of the laity to such and such ceremonial ' practices,' and
on their unalterable determination to have them put down ; while
certain doctrinal points are from time to time utilised to press home
the moral that lay opinion regards clerical teaching with jealousy
and suspicion. Here too the theory fails to square with the
facts. Some of the busiest and most prominent objectors are often

567 p p 2

568 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

persons who believe neither in the Church nor in her doctrines, and
who in more than one instance would be puzzled to produce their
baptismal certificates. There are thousands of laymen to be found
in every walk of life whose views are by no means a negligible
quantity, and who are even more tenacious than their clergy of
ceremonial usages to which they are deeply attached and to the
adoption of which they have in many instances urged their clergy
forward.1

The same holds good of disputed doctrinal points. How often
the assurance is forthcoming that the laity as a body are adverse to
the Athanasian Creed. Yet, as a matter of fact, on the only occasion
on which that opinion has been fairly put to the test, it was unequi-
vocally falsified. Thirty years ago the predominant factor in the
resistance successfully offered to the most formidable attack ever
made on the Quicunque was the spirited action of a vast body of lay
communicants led by the late Lord Beauchamp, to whose standard
rallied many of the best known public men of the day, including
Lord Salisbury himself. Since that crucial experience the subject
has not again been seriously broached, though the old disproved al-
legations of lay hostility to the formulary in question are occasionally
furbished afresh. It is not here, therefore, that the ' line of cleavage '
runs.

Once more: the laity as a whole are credited with broadly
Erastian views on the relations between Church and State — as, for
example, that purely secular courts of law have, and ought to have,
the power to decide the Church's doctrine, and that it lies with
Parliament to change her formularies. In reality there could be no
greater delusion than to imagine that the typical layman takes his
creed from Parliament, or is ready to accept open-mouthed whatever
gloss it may please a purely secular court to put upon it. The
genuine lay people, who constitute the Church's backbone, who give
practical aid to her work, who subscribe to her missions, provide the
stipends of her ministers, support her schools, or co-operate personally
in various forms of parish activity — this type of Churchman and
Churchwoman, so far from holding anti-clerical views, identifies itself
in the closest way with the parochial clergy, to whom personally it
accords a loyal and whole-hearted confidence.2

1 It is worth noting that the religious census for London taken by the Daily
Nervs shows at any rate that Ritualism is more popular than Puritanism. In South-
wark the five churches avowedly ' Low ' had congregations numbering in the aggre-
gate 1,591, as against 3,350 in five of the advanced ' High ' churches — these latter
not being the only ones of their kind.

- This is strikingly illustrated by the latest annual return of the Voluntary
Offerings of the Church of England. The funds contributed to central and diocesan
societies and institutions (including home and foreign missions) amount to nearly
2,310,OOOZ. But the total locally raised and left for administration in the hands
of the parochial clergy is more than 5,907,0002. Such a result hardly indicates a

1903 LOYALTY TO THE PRAYER BOOK 569

Truth to tell, this notion of a vast intellectual chasm yawning
between parson and people is but a fond thing vainly invented. The
lurid picture which represents the Church as split asunder between a
priestly caste of reactionary, arrogant, dogmatic obscurantists, and an
enlightened, liberal-minded, progressive, freedom-loving laity is a
caricature too grotesque to be acceptable to anybody except, perhaps,
a handful of militant partisans. Whatever be the dividing line that
marks a divergence of Church opinion on any subject, there are
invariably both clergymen and laymen to be found on either side
of it.

Not without a deliberate purpose, however, has this parrot-cry of
a mutual hostility between parson and people been raised and utilised.
It has been started by the leaders of a new ultra-Puritan attack on
the Church. It has been framed to serve a double object : first, of
sowing dissension and distrust between those who, when united, are
too strong to be coerced ; and, secondly, of affording some sort of
pretext for inviting Parliament to undertake the task of legislating
for the Church.

The movement referred to, whose headquarters are at Liverpool,
has given birth to the Church Discipline Bill — a measure which
bears on its face the mark of its origin. The Bill has been devised
not in the least with the object of doing good to the Church, but in
a spirit of hostility to her welfare and of menace to her very exist-
ence.

A very patent characteristic of this movement is its extra-
ordinary insidiousness. After all that has been said about a
' Ritualistic Conspiracy ' and ' secret societies,' it is somewhat
remarkable to note the difficulties that have often been experienced
in obtaining an authentic list of the persons who promote the
campaign for de-Catholicising the Church.

Another characteristic of the agitation is its insincerity. Its
promoters declare that their sole object is to maintain purity of
religion, and some of them even pose before the public as ' old-
fashioned High Churchmen.' If their professions were sincere, it
would follow that these champions of the Prayer Book would have at
least some word of condemnation for errors of defect as well as for
those of excess ; that they would seek to level up to the Prayer Book
standard those who fall short of it, as well as to restrain any who go
beyond it. Above all — and it is precisely here that their pretensions
to inherit the tradition of the old Evangelicals are put to the test —
they would show themselves zealous to defend the doctrine of the
Creeds, the fundamental dogmas of the Christian Faith, which even

' cleavage ' between clergy and laity ! Moreover the sum of 846,5001. was given
directly in aid of clerical incomes, while the confidence reposed in the parson as
school manager is represented by the further sum of 1,194,OOOZ. subscribed to the
Church schools.

570 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

at this present moment are seriously attacked from without and under-
mined within. On points so vitally and essentially important as
these, however, the spokesmen of the Liverpool party maintain an
absolute silence and indeed evince not the least interest in the
subject.

Meanwhile the true inwardness of their efforts is seen when they
profess their intention, if possible, of ejecting 10,000 ordained
ministers from the positions they hold. It is easy to perceive
that they are bent on ' purifying ' the Church of England of a good
deal more than under any reasonable or thinkable definition of the
epithet could be termed 'Romanising.' Their success could only
mean the rooting out of every doctrine and practice that pertains to
the primitive and Catholic character of the Church of England. In
other words, their goal is the entire undoing of the work of the
Reformation on its constructive and positive side. Their attempt to
nullify the rightful functions of the episcopate, to bring the Church
under the iron heel of a Parliament whose members need no longer
be even professing Christians, and to place every parish at the mercy
of any irresponsible inhabitant, fully avails to stamp the whole move-
ment as essentially anti-Christian and irreligious, as well as an
aggression upon the rights of all Churchmen, whether clerical or lay.

The leading characteristic of the Liverpool Bill is its insolently
aggressive treatment of the Bishops and the proposal to deprive them
of the veto they possess under the present law. The late Lord
Selborne, to whom nobody could venture to attribute any sympathy
with law-breaking, declared judicially in the House of Lords that the
discretion conferred by the Legislature on the Bishop was given in
confidence that every person chosen to fill the episcopal office will
be properly sensible of his duty, and that it invests him with this
power as a check on private intolerance, contentiousness, unchari-
tableness, or folly. These qualities, however, seem to be by no
means repugnant to the angry reformers of Liverpool, who would
certainly not endorse Lord Selborne's opinion that ' trivial charges
of heresy or of irregularity in the conduct of divine service, or im-
pertinent or groundless accusations of misconduct — brought, too, by
irresponsible persons — it ought surely to be within the power of the
Bishop at his discretion to refuse to hear.' No words could have
described more accurately the spirit of those who bitterly assailed
Dr. Temple, when Bishop of London, because, in the exercise of his
lawful discretion, he declined to regard the reredos at St. Paul's
Cathedral as idolatrous !

It would be difficult to frame a proposal more revolutionary than
this measure, or better calculated to cut at the very root of all true
discipline in the Church. The mischief which such a Bill is cal-
culated to effect becomes the more apparent when it is remembered
that the courts whose decrees it seeks to force upon the clergy are

1903 LOYALTY TO THE PRAYER BOOK 571

tribunals in which no Church people of any school whatever have
been able to place confidence. The Low Church party, as is well
known, have been quite as forward as High Churchmen to repudiate
the binding power of their decisions in foro conscientice. Neither
the Court of Arches — as it has existed since 1874 — nor the superior
tribunal, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, can claim the
Church's spiritual authority to declare her doctrine or to wield the
prerogatives which are hers alone. That any purely secular Court
whatever should not merely mulct a parish priest of his tempora-
lities, but actually pretend to suspend or deprive him of the cure
of souls committed to him by the Bishop, is to put forward a claim
that oversteps the border of presumption and enters upon the
province of profanity.

The utterly unsatisfactory character of any such tribunal as a
Court of Final Appeal in spiritual cases has for more than half a
century been a scandal and a byword. A few weeks ago Lord Hugh
Cecil, with characteristic courage, brought forward in the Canterbury
House of Laymen a resolution in favour of its abolition. He seems
to have been taken to task by Mr. Chancellor Dibdin, on the ground
that the Judicial Committee is not in reality a Court of Appeal
deciding ecclesiastical causes on their merits. From ancient times
— centuries before the Keformation — the king's subjects have enjoyed
the right of taking complaints for lack of justice — tanquam ab
dbusu — to the Sovereign in Chancery ; and the learned Chancellor's
view apparently is that the Judicial Committee merely advises the
Crown in cases of this kind, and does not act as a Court of Appeal
properly so called.

Technically this view is doubtless correct and Lord Hugh Cecil's
is erroneous. But it must have been some consolation to him to
know that he erred in exceedingly good company — namely, in that
of no less a legal luminary than the late Lord Chief Justice Cockburn,
who 3 in a well-known case repeatedly alludes to the Judicial Com-
mittee as having ' appellate jurisdiction ' over the Court of Arches,
and as being a ' Court of Appeal ' and an ' appellate tribunal.'
Further, he declares it to be the province of his own Court to
restrain, amongst others, ' the Ecclesiastical Courts, of which the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in its character of a Court
of Appeal from these Courts, forms a part, and is therefore as such
— however high its position and authority in other instances — sub-
ject to our controlling jurisdiction by way of prohibition.' Lord
Chief Justice Cockburn had the concurrence of three other Judges
of eminence, though his actual decision in the case referred to was
reversed on appeal. Although, therefore, originally the Judicial
Committee was not formally constituted an appellate tribunal, it has
3 Judgment in Martin v. Mackonochie, 1878 (pp. 5, 6).

572 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

virtually acquired that character, and is therefore open to the
objections urged by Lord Hugh Cecil.

There is undeniably, however, another side to the question. It
is mortifying to reflect that the assault on the Church signalled by
the Church Discipline Bill could have had no chance of effecting a
lodgment but for the self-will and obstinacy of a small section within
the Church itself. The enemy, often foiled before, now seeks to
rush the square of Church defence at its weakest point — the point
where a few of the defenders are wavering in their obedience to
the word of command.

Four years ago 4 a modest endeavour was made in the pages of
this Review to state the case in defence of certain of the clergy
who at that time were being roundly charged with a deliberate
infraction of their obligation towards the Church and Realm. That
case, it is humbly submitted, still holds good. During the interval,
however, a good deal of water has flowed under London Bridge.
The situation is no longer what it then was.

Formerly the watchword of the High Church party was loyalty
to the Church's system as set forth in the Prayer Book. The
Catholic Revival from the outset was an appeal to the authority
of the Prayer Book from the state of things actually prevailing,
so that the Church's own formularies might henceforth be the
standard of the people's faith and practice. Of course the attempt
drew down from its opponents the charge of ' Romanising,' just as in
the seventeenth century the same convenient missile had been flung
at any belief or usage not distinctively Calvinistic, and just as
the same accusation had in the century following been levelled at
the Methodists.

The attempt to restore conformity to the Prayer Book brought
the Catholic party into collision with the Bishops of that epoch. It
was the period when the Church's chief rulers set the example of
conniving at Erastian usurpations and of displaying a fine contempt
for the Church's spiritual rights, functions and authority. Loyal
Churchmen were naturally offended by seeing that, while, on the one
hand, every toleration was extended to errors of defect, and more or
less open encouragement was given even to heresy, the rigours of
persecution were reserved for those who sought to recover and uphold
the standard of belief and practice laid down in the Prayer Book.
Fidelity to the Church obliged the clergy and laity of that day
to resist the Bishops in their attempt to set aside the Church's law.

The spirit of lawlessness, like other evil things, comes home to
roost. The policy of resistance to Bishops in course of time became
almost identified with the vindication of the Catholic character of the

4 Nineteenth Century, April 1899 : ' The " Lawless " Clergy of this Church and
Realm.'

1903 LOYALTY TO THE PRAYER BOOK 573

English Church, and the ultimate result was a very chaos in which
every man adopted the exact measure of doctrine or ritual which
appealed to his individual fancy.

It is characteristic of the present situation that certain High
Churchmen are deliberately turning their backs on the very principles
they formerly professed, and destroying their whole rtiison d'etre as
a party within the Church.

There is no gainsaying the fact that a small section of Churchmen
—both clergymen and laymen — have really laid themselves open to
the charge of wanton ' Romanising,' the term being employed in the
specific and accurate sense of adopting usages and teaching doctrines
current in the Roman Communion but either alien to or unauthorised
by the Catholic Church in England. The explicit claim to adopt
any ' Catholic ' rite, ceremony, ornament, or devotion is accompanied
by an implicit assumption that the term ' Catholic ' covers each and
every point — even in minute particulars — of modern Roman usage.
It is not even a question of restoring what the Church of England
put away in the sixteenth century. The spirit that animates the
section of Churchmen referred to is shown in their gratuitous imita-
tion of purely modern Roman ways in the smallest trifles. Of their
doctrinal teaching this is not the place to speak. Let it suffice to
say that in every respect it seems to be carefully presented in as
Roman a guise as possible.

So long as the charges of ' lawlessness ' and £ Romanising ' were
unjustly brought, so long as those Churchmen who rejoice in the
name of Catholic could conscientiously declare their loyalty to the
Church, all was well. They occupied an intrenched position from
which, as the event proved, their assailants were unable to drive them.
Unhappily that position has in too many cases been abandoned. The
principle of Catholic obedience has been given up. There is evidence
of even open, hardly disavowed Romanising on the part of some who
employ the epithet ' Prayer-Booky ' as a term of scorn. There is a
certain temper, professing itself Catholic, which takes no account of
the Catholic principle of conformity to the Church's prescribed order
of Divine Service.5 It is an unwelcome fact that among the High
Church clergy, quite as much as among Low Churchmen or Broad
Churchmen, there are those who disregard the plain ceremonial pro-
visions of our service books, curtail or vary the services themselves,
insert unauthorised additions, omit important and considerable por-
tions of the Liturgy. More than this, they interpolate fragments of the
Roman Missal — in some churches it has been commonly remarked
that ' you hear more of the Latin than you do of the English ' — and
adopt whole services from the Latin rite.

It is beyond dispute that they who act in this manner violate

5 The True Limits of Ritual in the Church, edited by Dr. Linklater ('Conformity
in Divine Worship,' by Rev. C. F. G. Turner), pp. 57, &c.

574 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

the Catholic principle of conformity to Church order. The English
Church represents Catholic Christendom in this country. Her
form of Divine Worship possesses full Catholic authority, having
been drawn up by the Sacred Synods of this realm before being
accepted and sanctioned by the State. The Prayer Book cannot
consistently, therefore, be disobeyed by any Churchman claiming to
be a Catholic.

But almost worse than any negligence with which the Liturgy is
treated is the gratuitous slur cast upon its complete validity by
those who pretend that it needs supplementing from another service
book. As it happens, recent investigations in the liturgical field on
the part of scholars like Frere, Pullan, Brightman, Lacey, Tomlinson,
Warren, and Wordsworth, among the clergy, and the historical and
antiquarian researches of laymen like Wickham Legg, St. John
Hope, Micklethwaite and Comper, have thrown a flood of fresh light
on the forms and externals of Divine Worship in the Church of
England, and have contributed to demonstrate that our Book of Com-
mon Prayer — particularly in points where it diverges from modern
Roman usage — conforms even more closely than had commonly
been supposed to Catholic and primitive models. The breach of
continuity at the Reformation had been seriously exaggerated, and
many things formerly scouted as ' Protestant ' from the point of
view of High Church ' correctness ' are shown to be mediaeval. It is
known that the greater simplicity and dignity at which the Reformers
aimed in remodelling our Liturgy is in harmony with the spirit of
the primitive Roman Rite itself, which owed its later developments
in the direction of complexity to outside influences generically
termed Gallican. The malcontents in our midst therefore lack even
the excuse that the Prayer Book falls short of recognised Catholic
standards.

The position to-day is entirely changed. In former times the
clergy and laity were compelled, in loyalty to the Church, to resist
episcopal Erastianism. No one will venture to affirm that episcopal
authority in these days is perverted to promote the disregard of
Church order. The Catholic party has no longer to deal with
Bishops who are themselves lawless, or who suffer themselves to be
led by popular clamour, or who demand the abandonment of usages
plainly ordered by the Prayer Book, or who enjoin obedience to the
mandates of a Court devoid of Church authority, or who treat the
Church itself as though it were a mere department of the State.
Loyalty to Catholic principles means obedience to what are now the
legitimate directions of the Bishops. To refuse compliance with the
lawful commands of superiors is sheer sectarianism.

This spirit of anomia is all the less to be excused, seeing that
the Catholic Revival has won substantially all that it ever contended
for. In matters doctrinal the Catholic party enjoys the fullest

1903 LOYALTY TO THE PRAYER BOOK 575

liberty of interpreting the Church's formularies on the principle laid
down by Mr. Newman in Tract XC., by Dr. Pusey in his Eirenicon,
and by Bishop Forbes of Brechin in his treatise on the Thirty-nine
Articles ; while in matters of external observance they have been for
some time virtually unmolested in their possession of the essential
though hotly contested Six Points.

It is in fact possible, while keeping strictly and conscientiously
within the lines of the Prayer Book, to present its services in a form
which ought to satisfy the most ardent advocates of Catholic cere-
monial. By the new light which patient antiquarian research has
brought to bear on the meaning of the Ornaments Rubric, that
enactment is perceived to warrant the retention and employment
of all the ornaments in use in 1548 which belong to, or are needful
for, our present services.6

The Catholic party are well within their rights in reading the
Prayer Book by the light of tradition. The Book presupposes that
everything it prescribes shall be done in the traditional way — that
is to say, exactly as it would have been done by a priest of the
Eeformation period who had celebrated Divine Service in the reigns
of Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, Mary, and Elizabeth.

The Coronation of King Edward the Seventh — probably the most
impressive solemnity of its kind ever witnessed — has taught us how
ecclesiastical ritual gains in dignity as it aims at simplicity. The
Prayer Book Eite can count among its peculiar merits a direct
simplicity, a freedom from over-elaboration, and a capacity for ap-
pealing to the worshippers' understanding. Properly set forth with
its maximum of legitimate accessories, it yields to nothing in all
Christendom in point of magnificence, dignity and real grandeur.
Those English Churchmen whose zeal for the restoration of Catholic
ways has outrun their knowledge of what Catholic ways really are,
might do well to reconsider the attitude they have taken up.

While, however, those cannot escape censure whose action has
justly laid them open to the charge of Eomanising, it must in
common candour be admitted that theirs is not the only lawlessness
which calls for condemnation. The anomia of Low Churchmen
and Broad Churchmen is notorious. More than this, it must be
acknowledged that strict conformity to the Prayer Book is hardly
to be found in any quarter of the Church. Everywhere there is
observable a tendency to set aside what the Church has authorised
in favour of mere self-pleasing.

In matters liturgical the existing anarchy is largely traceable to
the passing of what is commonly known as the Shortened Services

6 The year 1548 was not an arbitrarily chosen date, nor does it send us back to
the whole medieeval tradition. It was 'just that which moderate reformers would
be likely to choose ' as representing ' the standard of a time when all really objection-
able ornaments had been taken away, but before the Puritan party had grown strong
enough to force their extravagances on the Church.' (Micklethwaite in True Limits
of Ritual, pp. 24, 25.)

576 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

Act of 1872. As a learned layman 7 has well said, 'the Act is bad
enough in what it directly allows ; but it is worse in what it has
suggested. It has taught men that any liberty taken with the
Services of the Prayer Book can be justified by precedents in the
Act.' Happily, as Archbishop Davidson recently observed, there are
signs of better things. There is a growing reaction amongst a
number of clergymen and laymen occupying prominent and leading
positions in the Catholic party, in favour of a strict adherence to
the letter and spirit of the Church's formularies.8

The time has come for concentration, consolidation, unity,
fidelity. Churchmen need these in order to withstand effectually
the attack — already beginning — on the fundamental doctrines of the
Faith. But concentration and unity postulate a point on which to
concentrate and unite. Let that point be the Book of Common
Prayer.

The Churchmen who have a right to feel most aggrieved by the
introduction of the ill-starred Church Discipline Bill are precisely
those "who most desire to promote loyal conformity to the Prayer
Book. This measure is likely to do harm chiefly by drawing the
great mass of the High Churchmen into unwilling co-operation
with the Romanising section. By force of circumstances they may
find themselves driven to lend their support in general to those
whose action they disapprove in detail. The Liverpool Bill, so far
from helping loyal Churchmen to check Romanising, will act as a
hindrance to the realisation of this object.

Presumably, however, the assailants cannot on this occasion reckon
on the compliance of the Bishops. That is a factor in the situation
which is as novel as it is of good omen. With the Bishops — the
Church's natural leaders — heading and guiding the defence, Church-
men should be able to present a bold front to the enemy. They are
fully strong enough numerically and morally to fight the battle,
whatever forces be brought to bear against them. Challenged to
do one of two things — either to submit to Puritan tyranny or to
suffer the consequences — they may well recall, both for their own
benefit and for that of others, the mediaeval story of the Knight who
had presumed to refuse compliance with his King's arbitrary order to
depart forthwith. ' Sir Knight,' said the King, 'choose one of two
things : you shall either go or hang.' ' Sire,' replied the knight, ' I
will not choose, for I will neither go nor hang.'

GEORGE ARTHUR.

7 Dr. Wickham Legg, in Some Principles and Services of the Prayer Booh,
pp. 130, 131

8 By way of illustration reference may be made to the strenuous efforts put forth
on behalf of this movement at the last Church Congress, to the protests of advanced

• High Churchmen like Mr. C. F. G. Turner, Mr. Lacey, and Mr. H. E. Hall, and
especially to Provost Staley's Hierurgla Anglicana and to Mr. Percy Deanner's
already popular Parson's Handbook.

1903

AN APPEAL TO THE DEAN
AND CANONS OF WESTMINSTER

Is the English Church about, within the near future, to re-state its
doctrine ? Probably not. The conservative and opposing forces
are too many, too compact, too alert, too belligerent. Yet a re-
statement of doctrine, in the future rather more remote, is, with
equal probability, inevitable, is certainly desirable, is perhaps the
awaited medicine which may rescue our Anglican Christianity from
mental inanition, debility, even, it might be, decay. The eighteenth
century for us was Evangelical ; the nineteenth was Sacramental ; the
twentieth, completing not conflicting, must be Liberal. What, then,
is to be done ? Ee-statement, we say, is sooner or later in-
dispensable ; re-statement, we say, is at present impossible ; what,
then, are we to do about re-statement ? Prepare for it.

To prepare for re- statement is to divert attention from the
questionable to the unquestionable ; to change the stress and strain
of doctrine, laying the weight upon the appropriate and immovable
supports ; to underline the right parts, not the wrong parts, in the
Christian story ; to reform the emphasis of theology.

' He descended into Hell.' Look at Albrecht Diirer's famous
engraving in the series of the Large Passion, dated 1510, woodcut
B. 14, in the British Museum. Hell is a place, an underground
building with arches, through one of which shine flames of fire. Here
the children of men before the Christian era had been incarcerated.
Oar Saviour in the foreground, one of Diirer's beautiful four-pointed
halos around His head, is kneeling at an open doorway which leads
out of the prison-house, whence with delivering grip He is handing
into safety a captive patriarch. Already saved and standing by are
Adam, aged and venerable, holding in his right hand the apple,
means of his fall, in his left hand the Cross, means of his redemption,
and Eve, and others of the elect of old. From an oblong window
above the door, a hideous, unnatural beast, representing the Devil,
malignly thrusts at our Lord with a broken, jagged spear, en-
deavouring to thwart Him in His merciful pursuit. Flitting above
the Devil's foul head is another offensive creature, horned, winged,
bellicose, blowing a trumpet of alarm or defiance. Diirer thus

577

578 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

beat out upon the anvil of his genius the thoughts of his time.1
The localisation of immense spiritual objects, the materialism, the
familiarities, the naive and terrene objectivity, the categories of
time and space so artlessly exported behind the veil — all this is the
apt pictorial language in which the men of Nuremberg of the year
1510, if speak they must, must speak. Turn to Bishop Westcott
expounding for us this article of the Creed at Peterborough in the
summer of the year 1880 :

He descended into Hell, that is, into Hades, into the common abode of departed
spirits and not into the place of punishment of the guilty. . . . His soul passed
into that state on which we conceive that our souls shall enter. . . . We cannot
he where He has not been. ... It carries light into the tomb. But more than
this we cannot say confidently on a mystery where our thought fails and Scripture
is silent. The stirring pictures which early Christian fancy drew of Christ's entry
into the prison-house of death to proclaim His victory and lead away the ancient
saints as partners of His triumph ; or again to announce the Gospel to those who
had not heard it, rest on too precarious a foundation to claim general acceptance.
We are sure that the fruits of Christ's work are available for every man : we are
sure that He crowned every act of faith in patriarch or king or prophet or saint
with perfect joy : but how and when we know not, and, as far as appears, we
have no faculty for knowing.

What a shifting of emphasis since Diirer's day ! away from detail
towards generality, from mode to fact \ The particulars have
vanished. Stonework and mortar, archways and the licking tongues
of flame, solid flesh and toothed devil dissolve, and, faded and
insubstantial, leave behind the spiritual truth which they had
sensibly projected. Such power for vitality, for amendment, for
development of doctrine lies in reform of emphasis.

The Dean and Chapter of Westminster have fractured the
Athanasian Hymn.2 It is a bold withdrawal of stress from doctrinal
menaces which, as they read in our English version, have become
insufferable, and whose periodic recital is an object lesson, mis-
chievous beyond all computation, in sacred insincerity. Ah ! it
goes against the grain in some of us thus to indict sections of a
revered Christian Confession, of a great inherited utterance, which
Keble could designate ' Creed of the Saints, and Anthem of the
Blest.' Yet the indictment is true.

The immorality of the recital of those minatory clauses lies in
this : they profess precisely what we do not believe. (I) Here is
what we believe :

1 The picture is said to have been suggested by the Gospel of Nicodemus, but
the artist's imaginations are fitted to his age.

2 The exact facts are these. The Apostles' Creed is sung in place of the Atha-
nasian Creed. This is an old and frequent breach of rubric. But the substance of
the Athanasian Creed is afterwards sung as an anthem. Such an anthem is, of
course, in itself wholly legal. The Dean, as Ordinarj', is alone responsible for this
change ; but there is good reason for believing that he has the sympathy of his
Canons, they having raised no protest.

1903 AN APPEAL TO DEAN AND CANONS 579

God [says F. W. Faber] is infinitely merciful to every soul, and no one ever
has been, or ever can be, lost by surprise or trapped in his ignorance ; and, as to
those who may be lost, I confidently believe that our Heavenly Father threw His
arms round each created spirit, and looked it full in the face with bright eyes of
love, in the darkness of its mortal life, and that of its own deliberate will it would
not have Him.

That is what we really believe. (2) Here is what we say we believe :
' Everyone who does not keep whole and ,undefiled the Catholic
Faith, as elaborated in the Creed of St. Athanasius, shall without
doubt perish everlastingly.' Theologians, on harmony bent, per-
suade themselves that they reconcile those two irreconcilable lines of
thought. They do not persuade other persons. To plain people
the effort is futile and unpleasant. To plain people the commina-
tions of this Symbol are beyond the reach of denial or abatement,
are frowning, desolating, incredible verdicts of damnation.

The Dean and Canons' purgative action is doubly justified. (1)
There is rubrical looseness all round. Only because this disobedience
at Westminster is novel does it catch the eye amid the luxuriant
growth of its companion and senior insubordinations. It is irration-
ality, at a high temperature, that extreme High Churchmen and
extreme Low Churchmen should wring shocked hands when they see
their own rubrical ethics achieve the flattery of imitation. You
reply : Many wrongs do not make a right. They do not. But as
judge-made law interprets statute law, so, in Church affairs, ecclesi-
astical consensus delimits the frontiers of documentary obligation.
And this particular liturgical licence pales in moral demerit before
that alternative sin — that the clergy and the congregation of the
faithful, with the utmost solemnity and decision, faced eastwards
towards Jerusalem, should proclaim before God and the angels appal-
ling judgments which, as the words stand, no person present believes
to be true. That rubrical revolt is a light offence which casts out
this mortal impiety. Venial is the trespass which a fireman may
commit as he runs to snatch occupants of the burning house from
suffocation. (2) Great reforms have sometimes grown from such
audacious seed. The burning of the Papal Bull at Wittenberg was
a considerable rubrical impropriety. It is difficult to read Tract XC.
without perceiving that the same spirit of enfranchisement from the
letter was harnessed into the service of the Oxford Movement. And
now, too, some of us who believe that the English Church, entering
the twentieth century, has her foot on new developments, dimly sees
about her future path grander and more vital messages and mean-
ings which she yearns to make her own and to deliver to this sterling
English people — now, in this step at Westminster, we note a liberat-
ing sign. The justification of civil rebellion is said to be success.
Success may justify this bold, forbidden, commendable act.

Other things may follow, we say. That two other things may
follow is the motive of this appeal.

(1) This act at Westminster should be a beginning : a beginning

580 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

of the expansive movement of the English Church in the twentieth
century. The Dean and Canons of Westminster are in a singular
position — central, authoritative, historic. They, unlike scattered
and lonely Liberal Churchmen about the land, can evoke and marshal
the larger sympathies, the intellectual inquietudes and desires, the
beating, bounding spiritual presentiments of many thoughtful
Anglicans. For instance, the Dean or a Canon there could, in-
formally and in his private capacity, summon to Westminster a
convention of representatives among the many English Churchmen
who more or less falteringly cherish in isolation those dreams for
the days ahead. The English Church Union has been, perhaps,
the heart of the later High Church activities. A nucleus of
earnest Broad Churchmen might, by inherent attraction, gather into
unlooked-for shape, cohesion, power the surrounding and diffused
Liberal atoms. An agent in each diocese mustering there the
dispersed units; an assembly for, at first, a day at Westminster;
an early morning service of Holy Communion and sermon in
St. Margaret's ; three sessions, in morning, afternoon, evening,
for discussion and prayer; common meals during the day, to the
accompaniment of the read words of some master mind in the things
of the soul — and the customarily faint and disunited Broad Church-
men would go back to their separate homes having tasted the might
of fellowship, and having seen generated from the concussions of
intercourse sparks of hope, even, it might be, of sublime vision,
for the spread of Christ's Kingdom in their native land.

(2) Will the Dean and Canons forgive a plain London vicar if he
importunately begs, should this policy at all obtain, that they breathe
into it from the first the breath of devotion ? Mr. Milburn offers wise
advice in his notable little book, A Study of Modern Anglicanism :
If Liberalism is undevotional, it will tend to be negative. . . . There is a lack,
or an apparent lack, of reverence and devotion among Liberals which seems to be
the cause of that flippant irreligious tone so common among them. They do not
speak or write icorthily. . . . They do not seem to think or write or speak as in
the presence of God.

That is to invite for their efforts intrinsic sterility. The great
fruitful movements — Monastic or Mystic, Franciscan, Lutheran, or
Jesuit, Laudian or Puritan, Wesleyan or Tractarian — have been
steeped at their source in communion with the Unseen. The New
Light and New Learning, in which Liberals claim to be proficient,
await this supreme and recreating process. Toute verite nue et crue
n'a pas assez passe par Vame. The Liberal Churchmanship which
can win, which can triumphant ride and have the world at will, will
be born amid the devotional deeps. 'Erant autem perseverantes
in doctrina Apostolorum, et communicatione fractionis panis, et
orationibus.'

HUBERT HANDLEY.

1903

EUROPE AND SOUTH AMERICA

THE closing years of the nineteenth century differ so entirely from
the rest of that era that we must look to them rather than to the
earlier decades to find the trend of the policy of the great European
Powers for the future. The early years of the past century belong
in a great measure to history, and recall the past rather than indicate
the future ; and though we can hardly hope that the year 2000 will
dawn without another great Continental convulsion, it seems probable
that this struggle will have been brought about — not, as in the past,
by dynastic or personal ambitions, but by the conflicting interests of
peoples seeking outlet in some distant quarter. This is the new
situation with which we commence the present century. Although
the expansion of Europe is no new thing, the rapidity with which the
vast African continent has been annexed is probably one of the most
striking events in the history of mankind, and will always remain as
the most permanent monument to European energy in the nine-
teenth century. Great tracts of country which within the memory
of living men were as desolate and inaccessible as the poles ; great
areas which, even at the present day, no white man has traversed,
are now the possessions of Europe. England, France, Germany,
Belgium, have with varying successes and in different degrees
prosecuted their conquests ; so that with the exception of Abyssinia,
whose inhabitants have proved themselves formidable, and Morocco,
whose proximity to Europe has been a protection, there is hardly a
territory which does not, at least in name and upon the map,
acknowledge the supremacy of a European conqueror or colonising
Power. The work of government, of colonisation, and the opening
of the country to commerce remains; but the days of empire-
building, in the sense of the acquiring of new territory, are practically
at an end. And though it is, of course, possible that the collapse of
some Power may effect redistribution, or that some internal African
revolution may dislodge a Colonial Government, it is evident that the
land-hunger which has been so prominent a feature of recent times
has resulted in the exhaustion of the supply of possible African
possessions. In so far as we ourselves are concerned we have been
so fortunate in the race for African empire, have acquired such large
VOL. LIII— No. 314 581 Q Q

582 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

and valuable possessions, and must shortly be engaged in so great a
colonial experiment, that we can afford to rest content and watch
the progress of events. But all have not been so fortunate. And to
study the possibilities of the future we must view the present, not
from a British, but from a Continental standpoint ; must remember
that the African territories of many Continental Powers are either
insufficient or unsuited to colonisation ; and keep before our eyes the
great incentive which has already produced the extraordinarily rapid
expansion of Europe. The partition of Africa has been brought
about not solely by the desire of present empire, but by the
knowledge of the Powers that what they left would be seized upon
by others ; and that, once secured, it would not again be offered in the
market. And if this view was for a time neglected, the events of
recent years have been an object-lesson of the results of this neglect.
The African market is now practically closed — not to be opened
again without a life-and-death struggle in Europe. And those Powers
which within the next few decades have not established such
colonies as they may require elsewhere must face this struggle
or go without.

If the object of empire is simply to secure trade, to boast of
a vast and conquered population, or to enjoy the pride of world-maps
coloured with the emblematic paint-box of the conqueror, the Far
East must be the next scene of activity. But if a saner imperialism
dictates the future, it must be recognised that a sphere which is
already thickly populated, and in which so small a proportion of the
surplus population of the future can find permanent employment,
hardly offers an adequate compensation for an effort which cannot at
present be calculated. Recent events in China, which have shown
the jealousy existing amongst the Powers, and which at the same
time have filled Europe with the fear of a Chinese national movement,
have not encouraged European democracies to urge their Grovern-
ments upon a career of conquest ; and though Russia may advance
upon her north-eastern and Persian frontiers, it does not seem that
the East can present any great attractions to a Western Power in
search of a second home for her children across the seas.

A war of conquest for the purpose of colonisation is, of course, im-
possible in Europe ; and thus it appears that though here and there
some savage or decaying State may be added to the possessions of
the Western Powers, there is no likelihood of any repetition of the
recent events in Africa in any of the three continents of the Old
World.

To argue that as the difficulties of colonial expansion are thus
increased, the desire for such expansion is likely to abate, is to over-
look the cause of this extraordinary movement. As the supply of
unoccupied territory suitable for colonisation decreases, it will become
increasingly apparent, not only that, if an empire is to be founded,

1903 EUROPE AND SOUTH AMERICA 583

no time is to be lost, but that the price at which a people can
afford to acquire such territory has risen. The increasing pressure
of European populations, the race for trade, and the natural desire
for national aggrandisement, must be powerful factors, and the policy
of ' Now or never ' must soon be the watchword of several European
Chancelleries. We have seen that the Old World offers few attrac-
tions ; there remains only the New.

If the New World is indeed to be the centre of interest and the
scene of expansion during the twentieth century, it may be worth
while to review the present position, and examine some portions of
the American continent. The presence of the United States bulks
so largely in this consideration that it is difficult to obtain a clear
view of the actual situation. If we may for a moment leave this
great force out of the account, only to return to the consideration of
the full problem later, we shall at least have obtained some idea of
the possibilities of the case.

First, what are the conditions which a European Power seeking
for new colonies would desire ? The territory must have a healthy
climate, in which the colonists can live and multiply ; the land must
be fertile ; and its inhabitants should not offer too serious a resistance
or continue their resistance for a protracted period. That the
Anglo-Saxon peoples at least are willing to undertake conquests
where these two last conditions are absent has been shown both in
South Africa and the Philippines. As the demand for expansion
increases, as it inevitably must, it is probable that other nations will
be willing to undertake far heavier tasks ; and if the countries which
they purpose to possess are not only suitable for colonisation, but of
extraordinary richness and importance, they would consider it worth
their while to make very heavy sacrifices.

Such countries which — as we have for the moment excluded the
influence of the United States — are practically at the mercy of any
enterprising nation are to be found in Central America, and include
the four republics of San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa
Eica.

The total area of these four republics is some 120,000 square
miles, or about three times the size of the Orange Eiver Colony ;
whilst the population, of which a great proportion is Indian or half-
breed, is under 2,000,000. The climate varies from tropical heat,
upon the narrow belt of low coast-line, through all variations of
temperature to the mild and healthy uplands of the interior ; so that
practically all kinds of agriculture can be carried on. The mineral
wealth of these almost entirely undeveloped countries is great and
varied, and includes gold, silver, iron, coal, copper, platinum,
zinc, tin, and quicksilver.

Founded with high hopes of greatness and prosperity, released
from the hold of Spain, and supported by enthusiastic sentiment, the

584 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

history of these republics is one of squalid discontent and failure.
Their idle populations have neglected every opportunity of profit, so
that the agricultural and mineral wealth of their lands remains
entirely untouched and undeveloped. The corruption and inefficiency
of their Governments have imposed a grievous burden on the foreign
trader ; and the perpetual revolutions in which the inhabitants engage,
and which still further retard the progress of their country, are a sign
rather of the degeneracy of the natives than an indication of a desire
for improvement. That it is possible that a new order of govern-
ment may arise is shown by the comparative stability of Guatemala
and the present prosperity and tranquillity of Mexico. But no man
has yet arisen to perform these good offices for the four remaining
republics, and we have no indications that such a time is at hand.
To visit these countries is to despair of any internal regeneration ;
and as the traveller listens to the details of their politics, views the
anarchy which follows upon the constant changes of government,
or, crossing their borders, watches the ex-Presidents of the various
States — the greater part of whom have both gained and lost their
posts amidst bloodshed and intrigue, and who under the friendly
flag of a neighbour are awaiting another favourable opportunity for
adventure — he feels that a condition of affairs so savage and pre-
posterous cannot continue for long, and that the time must soon
come when some stronger Power must step in and open the produce
of these rich lands for the benefit of mankind. If it be true that
the supply of available territory is now nearly exhausted, and that
the need for immediate expansion is great if the nations are to over-
flow under their own flags in foreign parts, we have here a territory
which, in so far as we have at present examined the problem, presents
great temptations. And it may even be hazarded that these tempta-
tions do not stop only at Central America. The actual conquest and
administration of Central America present no great difficulty to any
nation willing to undertake the trouble and expense. But below
the Isthmus of Panama there remains a vast and almost equally
derelict territory of equal richness, which, although more difficult to
subdue, is so vastly larger that it might well repay a war. The
territories of Venezuela appear to have, at least in our imagination at
the moment, a peculiar attraction for Continental empire-builders :
and when we remember that the combined republics of Venezuela
and Colombia are about eighteen times the size of the Orange Kiver
Colony ; that although presenting a serious military problem to an
invader, the Governments of these countries are but little superior
to those of Central America ; that the rural inhabitants of the interior
are very little civilised ; and that the insolvency of Venezuela is a per-
petual irritant to its creditors, it is hardly too much to suppose that
the possibility of carving a colony out of this immense and fertile
area may be sometimes considered as feasible.

1903 EUROPE AND SOUTH AMERICA 585

So far we have been dealing with but half the question. The veto
of the Monroe doctrine has until now guarded these countries from
foreign aggression, but it must be remembered that it has guarded
them at a time when the world offered many opportunities for
colonisation in other quarters. That period is drawing to a close :
and if the balance of fighting power is not very materially altered, it
can hardly be expected that any formula or opinion will protect them
for long. If any Power is tempted towards a policy of aggression
entailing war with the United States, it is certain that that Power
will not be Great Britain. Our interests and inclinations lead us to
a policy of friendship ; we are not in any urgent need of territory ;
and in case at any future time the mutual feelings of both States
should alter, and any grave cause of difference should appear, we
must remember that, though we are the greatest Sea Power, by a
curious paradox we are the only European nation which could receive
the full force of American retaliation. The three thousand miles of
undefended Canadian frontier are the weakest spot in our imperial
defences, and one that seems to be curiously neglected by those
stategists who seek for the right centres of our military distribution.

But though it is certain that we do not covet any of these
countries, the century will not be far advanced before it becomes
plain that all other nations are not so modest. Although a war with
the United States would be a very serious undertaking for a Con-
tinental Power, it is doubtful if at the present time it would be so
serious an undertaking as a war with England. In such a struggle,
though Germany might by some unforeseen circumstance secure our
overthrow, and thus obtain some considerable satisfaction, she would
still be far from having subdued our colonies. And if the fortune of
war did not favour her, she would run the risk of the blockade of her
ports and the loss of her commerce. If the object of her struggle
with America was to obtain possession of some of the tempting
republics, she would be faced with no very serious obstacles in sub-
duing them, supposing her to have been victorious at sea ; whilst in
the case of an early defeat she would suffer far less from a fleet
whose base was 3,000 miles away than from one whose striking
distance was only some three hundred. To embroil Great Britain
and America sufficiently to prevent the active intervention of the
British fleet is possibly not beyond the power of German diplomacy.

It may be objected that the world is sufficiently full of present
complications, without looking ahead to attempt to foreshadow those
of the future. But are we to believe that the great movement
which we have witnessed has abruptly ended ? There is certainly
no justification for such an opinion. And it can hardly be imagined
that because England and Kussia have now room in which to expand
for many generations, other European nations equally desirous of
expansion are likely to remain content.

586 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

That these nations will long hesitate before being driven to so
great a struggle as the founding of great new colonies would now
entail is certain. But as the problem of population begins to press
upon Europe some outlet must be found ; and unless the United
States throws aside its present policy of protection without responsi-
bility, and by securing control of its weak and mischievous neigh-
bours launches into a sphere of activity whose effect is as yet
incalculable, it is certain that some other Power will ultimately
seize upon this last undeveloped continent. In either case equatorial
America must be to the twentieth century what Africa was to the
nineteenth.

SOMERS SOMERSET.

1903

SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS AND
THE MONROE DOCTRINE

A FEW months ago a lecturer on the Monroe doctrine, in answer to a
question whether it was a part of international law, replied that the
person who said that it was did not understand what international
law was. It would be rash to answer so to-day. To be sure, it is
impossible to say with confidence when a principle or policy, long
contested, at last obtains such an amount of assent that it may be
taken to be a part of that necessarily somewhat loose and mutable
body of usages known as international law. The answer is still more
uncertain when expositors of international law write in one strain,
and the action of governments is conceived in another ; which has
been true of the history of this doctrine. It has, however, long been
manifest that the people of the United States have found in the
so-called doctrine a basis of a foreign policy ; that ' the fatalism of
the multitude ' has settled upon the phrase ; that the United States
Government are ready to fight for the doctrine, and that no European
States are prepared to fight against it. As to their assent, one or
two of them may perhaps say, Coactus volui. Assent has been
given, nevertheless, by some of them — by this country, certainly
and readily. Here it is regarded as an acceptance of the status quo ;
and there perhaps are fewer dissentients from it than in the United
States. The late Mr. Tilden said that the Monroe doctrine would be
a good thing if one only knew what it meant ; he expressed the
distrust of many of his countrymen with respect to a doctrine which
has experienced so many modifications in obedience to passing
exigencies, and lends itself so readily to ambitious schemes. Not
a few American publicists oppose it because they see in it an excuse
for expansion and a probable cause of entanglement in quarrels with
which the country has no concern. The doctrine finds favour in
Canada. One of the members of the present Government of the
Dominion has lately spoken of it as a guarantee of freedom.
'British statesmen approve of it,' said Sir Frederick Borden the
other day. ' Canada knows what it means, and believes it in every
form.' No doubt the majority of German publicists are opposed to
it. They do not admit the justice or reasonableness of the doctrine,

587

588 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

or the fact that it has obtained general assent. An ' empty preten-
sion ' is Professor Adolph Wagner's description of it. Nowhere is
the doctrine more acceptable, nowhere was it earlier received,
nowhere has it been more consistently upheld, than among the
South American Republics. President Monroe's words as soon as
uttered were hailed as giving them in their precarious infancy
a security against aggression. They might not prize it so much
as Bolivar's foreign legion and the volunteers who came from
Europe to fight against Spain. But from the first they recognised
its value to them. It is true that, to the disappointment of some
American statesmen, nothing was done at the Congress of Panama
to give effect to the doctrine. It has been sometimes forgotten, and
there have never been wanting protests when it was interpreted
as involving a protectorate or suzerainty by the United States. But,
on the whole, these republics have esteemed the Monroe doctrine
as the charter of their liberties. Many promising attempts to unite
among themselves have failed. Bolivar's idea of the United States
of South America is still as far from being realised as ever. There
are often signs of jealousy and fear of their powerful neighbours.
The Pan-American Congress, from which Mr. Blaine hoped so much,
was a failure. These republics would have nothing to do with pro-
posals for an American Zollverein. They recognised that their
interests as producers of raw materials and purchasers of machinery
and manufactured articles were not the same as those of the United
States. They do not understand the Monroe doctrine as meaning
in its ultimate development America for the "North Americans, the
creation of a form of protectorate, or as having an ' exclusively North
American character.' x But they prize it as the best security against
foreign interference. As one of the latest authoritative statements
on the subject may be quoted the words of President Diaz in his
message of the 1st of April 1896 :

The Mexican Government cannot but declare its partiality for a doctrine which
condemns as criminal any attack on the part of the monarchs of Europe against
the republics of America, against the independent nations of this continent, now
all subject to a popular form of government.

He added these words :

Each one of those republics ought, by means of a declaration like that of
President Monroe, to proclaim that every attack on the part of a foreign Power,
with the view of curtailing the territory or the independence of, or of altering the
institutions of, any one of the republics of America, would be considered by the
nation making the declaration as an attack on itself, provided that the nation
directly attacked or threatened in such manner bespoke the aid of the other
nations opportunely. In this manner the doctrine now called by the name of
Monroe would become the doctrine of America in the fullest sense of the word,
and, though originating in the United States, would belong to the international
law of the continent.2

1 The phrase is taken from Zumeta's El Continente enfermo, p. 9.
* 89 State Papers, pp. 230, 231.

1903 SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS 589

I have found among the most thoughtful of the publicists of
South America a belief that the policy has been a gain to the world,
at all events a check to rapacity of which their countries would
have been the victims. A sure instinct has guided them in their
approval of the Monroe doctrine. But for it there would have
been, it is probable, long before this a series of expeditions such
as that which terminated in the capitulation of Monte Video, or
that adventure, the closing scenes of which were the fusillade at
Queretaro, and the long years of reason-stricken widowhood. There
would have always been plenty of opportunities for intervention,
which, it may be assumed, would have passed through the usual
stages of military occupation, protectorate, conquest. Successive
revolutions in almost all these States ; frequent wars, often about
trivial matters ; the insolvency of several of the republics ; corrup-
tion in their courts and denial of justice to foreigners ; wrongs
inflicted on Europeans in the conflicts between rebels and Govern-
ment troops ; the growth in most of the chief towns of a European
population superior in intelligence and enterprise to the natives,
among whom they refused to be absorbed; a large amount of
foreign capital sunk in these States — all these circumstances would
have given an opening to ambitious European Powers. Long ago
there might have been a scramble for South America, such as there
has been for Africa. The State Papers are full of the records of the
quarrels between this country and these republics. In recent years
Venezuela has been particularly often in collision with European
States. Not a year passes without claims for compensation being
presented to her or some neighbouring republic by a European
Power. A vessel is seized and her crew thrown into a noisome
dungeon ; a patriotic mob hustles and maltreats sailors on shore ; a
forced loan is exacted from a European bank or foreign merchants ;
the property of a British or German subject is requisitioned by a
needy rebel general ; dues have been paid to the rebels ; they are
demanded again by the legitimate government, which declines to
acknowledge the prior payment. It is an old story with Venezuela.
She has long been on the black list of every Foreign Office. We
have been at loggerheads with her again and again. Great Britain
has had many diplomatic difficulties with all of these republics ; the
United States have had more. Then, too, many of these States have
been defaulters. Honduras and Costa Rica have been conspicuous
among bankrupt States. These facts would have brought about
intervention which might not have been confined to pacific blockades,
or the seizure of ships of war, or occasional bombardments, but
developing by familiar stages into occupation and conquest, if there
had not been the risk of a collision with the United States. Only
the Monroe doctrine has barred the way.

That is the first part of what is called ' The Spanish-American

590 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

Polity ' or ' Spanish-American Public Law.' The second article in
that polity needs explanation. Ever since they existed these
republics have been giving an opening for diplomatic intervention
on behalf of aggrieved Europeans ; and for years they have been
protesting against such interference. It has been a standing
grievance against European Powers. To exclude such interference
in all forms and to put an end to what is regarded as a serious abuse
is one of the chief aims of ' Spanish- American Public Law.' Those
who would study the subject fully will find the materials in the
discursive pages of the six volumes of Seijas's El Derecho Hispano-
Americano.5 I mention here only a few incidents in a long struggle
for freedom from interference. Just before the meeting of the
Pan-American Congress at Washington in 1889, there had been many
controversies of the usual kind with foreign States ; and the whole
matter of the position of foreign residents was then discussed. The
republics took high ground. They were indignant at the constant
interference of European Ministers and Consuls in domestic affairs.
The report expressive of their views said :

The committee gladly recognise that the Christian, liberal and humane principle
is that the foreigners should not be inferior to the native in the exercise and
enjoyment of all and each of the civil rights, but it cannot understand that the
foreigner should enjoy consideration, prerogatives, or privileges denied to the native.
It repels openly any restrictions which place the foreigner in a condition inferior
to that vouchsafed by the law to the native, but it likewise repels the pretension
that the foreigner should be superior to the native ; that he should be a perpetual
menace to the territory whose protection he seeks and whose advantage he enjoys ;
that recourse to a foreign sovereignty should serve as a means of self-advancement
whenever improper demands are not satisfied. None of the progress of modern
civilisation is unknown to the republics of America. Granting foreigners the same
rights, neither less nor more, that the native enjoys, they do all they can and
should do. And if these rights are not enough, and if they are not found to be
sufficiently guarded and to be placed beyond the pale of abuse ; if there is danger
that abuses will sometimes be committed, as there is danger of earthquakes,
floods, epidemics, revolutions, and other misfortunes, the foreigner should have
considered it all before deciding to live in the country where he may run such
risks. ... If the government is not responsible to its citizens for damages caused
by insurgents or rebels, neither will it be responsible to foreigners ; and vice versa.
If the natives had any protection against the decision and practice of the Courts,
the same rights should be given to foreigners.

The United States' representative totally dissented from the
theory, that forced loans were to be regarded in the same light as
earthquakes — a theory convenient for those who propounded it ; one
which assumed that what the native always got from his government
was substantial justice.

8 B. F. Seijas's El Derecho Internacional Hispano- Americano, Caracas, 1884,
published under the auspices of General Joaquin Crespo, constitutional President of
the United States of Venezuela.

1903 SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS 591

Under such a theory, what guarantee has the foreigner against a forced loan to
which a native subject may have been obliged patriotically to submit ? Take the
case of the foreigner bondholders, furnishing to the Government invaluable assis-
tance at critical times when the debt is neither denied nor repudiated, but simply and
persistently left unpaid. Has any Government hesitated to protect by diplomatic
claims the interests of subjects, which no foreigner can enforce in the court of his
debtor ? Take the case where the persons and property of foreigners have not
received the protection to which their relation with the native Government
entitles them. Is it conceivable that so great a departure from ancient usage
and recognised international law would be accepted ?

The American representative was alone in his objections, the
votes being fifteen to one, the representatives of Nicaragua, Peru,
Guatemala, Colombia, Argentine, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Brazil,
Honduras, Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela, Chili, Salvador, Ecuador,
voting against him.

They were carrying out a policy which they have always upheld,
for these republics have indeed paid indemnities under pressure, but
they have never ceased to protest against such interference. They
have also endeavoured by a series of treaties to exclude what they
believed to be a dangerous influence. What is known as the ' clause
d'irresponsabilite,' or the clause compromissoire, figures in many
treaties. An illustration of this is the treaty with France of 1886,
which re-established diplomatic relations which had been interrupted
since 1881.4

Article 11 : Les parties contractantes, anime'es du ddsir d'e"viter tout ce qui
pourrait troubler leurs relations amicales, conviennent que leurs repre"sentants
diplomatiques n'interviendront point officiellement, si ce n'est pour obtenir un
arrangement amical,ausujet des reclamations ou plaintes des particuliers concer-
nant des affaires qui sont du ressort de la justice civile ou penale et qui seront dejii
soumises aux tribunaux de pays, amoins qu'il ne s'agisse de de"ni de justice, de retards
en justice, contraires a 1'usage ou & la loi, ou de la non-exe"cution d'un jugement
ayant 1'autorite" de chose juge"e, ou, enfin, de cas dans lesquels, Emigre" 1'epuisement
des moyens le"gaux fournis par la loi, il y a violation e"vidente des traite"s existant
entre les deux parties contractantes, ou des regies du droit international tant
public que prive", &c.

In the many treaties of commerce between these republics and
European States between 1884 and 1896, the former were careful to
insert clauses compromissoires in some form.5 Thus, in the treaty
between Italy and Colombia of 1892, it is stipulated :

II Governo italiano non terrtt responsabile il Governo colombiano, salvo in casi
di constata colpa o negligenza da parte della autorita di Colombia o dei loro agenti,
dei prejudizi sofferti, in tempo d' insurrezione o di guerra civile, &c.

The republics have been unable to obtain similar exemption in
their treaties with certain countries, such, for example, as the United

4 Stoerk's Recueil, 2 Se>., 15, p. 840.

5 Ibid. 22, p. 308. See also the treaty with Belgium and Mexico, 1898 (23, p.
69), and remarks in Revue Generate de Droit International, 1, 171, on the clause
compromissoire.

592 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

States.6 But almost all of them attempt to limit their liability. The
jurists and publicists of South America often speak of a Spanish-
American public law, a special jurisprudence : ' which corresponds to
and satisfies the special aspirations and necessities of these countries '
(Seijas, i. 509).7 The corner-stone of the so-called American public
law is exemption from diplomatic interference. The republics have
been unable to give effect to their contention ; and there have been
many mixed commissions to settle such claims. Again and again they
have been compelled to indemnify the subjects of foreign Powers.
But they have never failed to protest against treatment which they
conceive to be an affront to them as civilised and sovereign Powers.
In the recent note to the United States the Argentine Government
reiterates this contention.8

Few parts of international law are more obscure than that
relating to the position of foreigners in countries in which they are
resident. The obscurity is especially great as to countries not in a
state of barbarism or subject to capitulations, but boasting of a high
order of civilisation and claiming equality with the States of Europe.
Most Governments — I might say notably our own — appear to be
anxious to formulate no rules which may bind them to far-reaching
unforeseen consequences, and are solicitous to reserve full discretion
in dealing with each question as it arises. In coming to a decision
in any case they have been careful not to pledge themselves to do
likewise on a similar occasion. Some general principles, however,
are gradually emerging from the many controversies in recent years
on the subject. The many mixed commissions which have sat
during the last half-century to determine claims against these
republics have helped to build up certain principles. One of them
is that a foreigner who settles in Venezuela or the Argentine is
entitled to be treated as well as natives, though not better ; and that
discrimination against him gives just cause of complaint on the
part of his Government. So much is admitted by Calvo, and other
champions of the republics, who says :

Les Strangers qui se fixent dans un pays ont au meme titre que ses nationaux
droit a, la protection, mais ils ne peuvent pre"tendre a une protection plus etendue.9

8 Article 34 of the treaty between Peru and the United States of 1887 declares
that ' only in case such protection of foreigners should be denied, on account of the
fact that the claims preferred have not been promptly attended to by the legal
authorities, or that manifest injustice has been done by such authorities, and after
all the legal means have been exhausted, then alone shall diplomatic intervention
take place.' Stoerk's Recueil, 2 Ser., 22, p. 72.

7 ' A declarar que los Gobiernos legitimos no reconocen la obligaci6n de reparar
dafios y perjuicios inferidos a los extranjeros por poderes de hecbo, por rebeldes 6
insurrectos. A igualar al extranjero en el goce de ciertos derechos que son inherentes
& todo habitante, pero nunca a darle privelegio sobre los ciudadanos ' (4-7). The
authorities are collected by Seijas, i. 77. There is sometimes reference to a

Venezuelan international law, which appears to have marked local peculiarities.

8 Timet, March 18, 1903. • Calvo, 6, 231.

1903 SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS 593

If such residents have been maltreated, whether by the orders or
with the connivance of Governments or not, by their agents or
by mobs which have got out of control, they are entitled to be
indemnified. It is also common ground that Governments are
bound to make compensation for forced loans levied on foreigners in
normal times, or for acts of violence by their officers or agents. It is
no excuse for harsh, arbitrary treatment of foreigners that natives
put up with the same. Let the agents of a Government be remiss
and stand aside while mobs loot the shops or houses of foreigners.
It is of course no answer to complaints to say, ' Such are our ways ;
it is the custom of the country.' Nor will grossly inequitable con-
duct be condoned because it is covered by municipal law. The
Government of Colombia in 1885 issued a decree declaring that the
payment of import duties to the rebel Government would not only
be no discharge of the liability to the Exchequer of importers, but
would expose them to an additional import duty of 50 per cent.10
The laws of some of the States do not permit release on bail.
European Governments have always declined to consider such
legislation as excusing grossly inequitable conduct. Nor will it
avail a State to say that the form of its government prevents its
doing justice to the subjects of foreign States. In answer to the
demands of Italy for indemnity to its subjects who had been lynched
by the New Orleans mobs in 1891, Mr. Elaine replied that the
Federal Government could take no cognisance of such matters,
which were wholly within the purview of the Government of the
State of Louisiana. That answer was generally deemed unsatisfactory :
it was contrary to principles which the United States themselves had
asserted ; and an indemnity was in the end paid.11 Nor is it denied
that when the rebels of yesterday have become the legitimate rulers
of to-day they are responsible for what they did as insurgents.

To liability for wrongs done to foreigners there are exceptions ;
many exceptions in the view of these republics. A foreigner settles
in a district where a government is striving to establish order ; he
goes to a turbulent frontier town ; he lives among savages or rebels ;
he trades in a district where the Government is making a hard fight
against anarchy ; he cannot look for the security of the capital. A
stranger — perhaps a Schlachtenbummler, some sightseer curious about
battles — goes to the scene of military operations, and is maltreated.
Surely in all these cases Bismarck's remark is in point : ' Quand
vous allez a 1'etranger, vous le faites a vos risques et perils/
Foreigners must, it is admitted, put up with what is done in
consequence of military operations, whether against external or
domestic enemies. The Austrian and Eussian Governments took

10 State Papers, 176, p. 534.

" See further as to this subject in 34 American Lam Review, p. 709.

594 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

that line with respect to claims which our Government presented on
behalf of persons who had been injured ; and we acquiesced.

The point at which these republics and European Governments
have generally come into conflict relates to damage committed in
putting down insurrections. One and all of these States disclaim
liability for such acts. That is the view of South American jurists
such as M. Calvo and M. Torres Caicedo ; and it should be added of
some European jurists, including Greffcken and M. Pradier-Fodere.
Calvo expresses his view thus :

Que le principe d'indemnite" et d'intervention diplomatique en faveur des
Strangers a raison des prejudices soufferts dans les cas de guerre civile n'a e'te' et
n'est admis par aucune nation de 1'Europe ou de I'Ame'rique ; (2) Que les Gouverne-
ments des nations puissantes qui exercent ou imposent ce pre"tendu droit a 1'encontre
d'e"tats relativement faibles commettent un abus de pouvoir (s. 1297).

Several of the South American States have passed laws intended
to exclude this dreaded diplomatic interference. For example, the
Congress of Ecuador passed in 1888 an enactment that the State
was not responsible for losses or damages to natives or foreigners
caused by the enemy in civil or internal war, or in riots, or by the
Government in its military operations, or in the measures it adopted
for the restoration of public order, or for the arrest or banishment of
foreigners, whenever the exigencies of public order require such
action.

Article 5. Foreigners who may have filled positions or commissions which sub-
jected them to the laws and authorities of Ecuador can make no claim for payment
or indemnity through a diplomatic channel.

It is almost needless to say that the Diplomatic Corps at Quito
protested against this legislation. The United States Secretary of
State denounced it as ' subversive of all the principles of international
law.'

Such is the nature of the controversies which have been going on
for many years, and the outlook is not satisfactory. The Venezuela
difficulty is, some points of detail excepted, now over. But the
causes of that difficulty may at any moment return in any of the
States of Central America, if international controversies are deter-
mined in the old way. It has been said that there are reasons for
believing that the turmoil and anarchy which have made up so
much of the history of these republics may be coming to an end
even in Central America. There are encouraging facts. Venezuela
is, it has been remarked, in the condition in which Mexico long was.
Its name was the equivalent for misgovernment and disorder. It
was the prey of adventurers and swashbucklers. From 1829 to
1853 there were forty-eight different forms of government. ' A
Mexican loan was the type of financial worthlessness, a Mexican
general was the type of military dishonour, a Mexican statesman

1903 SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS 595

suggested recklessness, inability, and fraud.' 12 ' The country attained
even among other Spanish-American republics a pre-eminence of
national abasement.' Every civilised State had its grievances unre-
dressed, its well-founded complaints against the lawless rulers. The
lot of foreigners was sometimes intolerable. In«the courts they could
not count upon getting justice. They were fleeced in times of peace
and robbed in times of trouble. For years diplomatic intercourse
with England and other States was suspended. All was changed
under the rule of Benito Juarez, a pure Indian, and of Porfirio Diaz,
also of the same stock. A group of honest men transformed the
situation. A similar change, it is predicted, will take place
elsewhere. I have not the local knowledge to analyse the
causes of the frequency of the revolutions and counter revo-
lutions, or the insurrections, suddenly breaking out without
ostensible cause. Some sources of unrest and instability are how-
ever obvious, and among them these : An abnormal number of
military officers with no high standard of honour ; an educated un-
employed or half-employed class which in some countries would be
Nihilists, and which are at the call of specious adventurers ; a system
of education which exaggerates the gift of the race for rhetoric and
makes happy phrases do duty for facts ; politics and finance closely
related ; excessive powers lodged in the hands of the President ; false
ideals among public men ; the attractive memories of the careers of
brilliant and unscrupulous soldiers, such as Santa Anna and Miranda ;
the absence of lofty saving examples of patriotism among the founders
of the republics ; no groundwork of free local institutions ; a heritage
of traditions and habits from times of despotic rule ; natural dis-
advantages from difficulty of communication, insuperable before the
days of railways ; troubles arising out of ill-defined frontiers. Aris-
totle's description of the causes of revolutions at Corinth and in other
small Greek republics is applicable to the South American States.
Especially in point are his suggested cures. ( Above all, every State
should be so administered and so regulated by law that its magistrates
cannot possibly make money.' 13 I am inclined to think that some of
the sources of turmoil are drying up. The fate of Balmaceda is a
warning not yet forgotten to presidents who would be dictators.
Most of the difficulties which arose out of the principle uti possidetis
adopted in 1810, in regard to frontiers, have been settled by arbitra-
tion. The area of permanent disturbance has for some time been
confined to Central America. The revolutions are fewer, and, as in
the case of that just settled in Uruguay, are over sooner than they
were. It is, too, only just to contrast the history of these republics,
not with that of the stable European countries or the United States,
but with that of Spain or Portugal during the same time ; to com-
pare their present condition with that which existed while they were
12 Burke's Life of Benito Juarez, p. 2. l3 Politics, 5, 8.

596 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

governed and exploited from Spain. The comparison will redound
to the credit of most of them. They have overcome difficulties as
to race which have baffled other countries.14 If they had many
quarrels, they have shown a readiness to settle their differences by
arbitration which is rare among other nations. All these facts may
be admitted without confidence that the difficulties of the past will
not recur.

There is force in the contention that diplomatic pressure often
exercised in the face of protests on behalf of foreigners with
grievances, real or imaginary, acts as a solvent of the strength and
dignity of a Government. A foreigner commits a crime; he is
prosecuted and convicted. The representative of his country inter-
poses, and says that the sentence is unjust ; he is released ; he then
claims indemnity for imprisonment. Or a foreigner is killed or
assaulted ; justice does not advance with the expedition to which
Europeans are accustomed, or there is a suspicion that the local
authorities are sheltering the true criminal. The consul lodges a
protest, and the injured man or his relatives claim compensation, often
with success. Even if the Governments of these countries were
naturally stable, their authority would be sapped by their decisions
being thus overridden.

To justify such intervention it would seem to be the duty of
foreign States to observe certain rules which one and all of them have
in the past been inclined to disregard, and among such rules these :

(a) To get rid of the obscurity and mystery as to the cases in
which foreign Governments will interpose ; to drop an official phrase
which is always used and which tells nothing: 'It is a matter of
discretion.' Thus, to name a crucial point, there might be a clear
understanding as to whether foreign Governments will aid bondholders
or State creditors in enforcing their claims. As everyone knows, our
Government, in common with others, have said that this is entirely a
matter of discretion.15 No doubt the tendency is to draw a marked
distinction between the claims of such creditors and those of persons
who have suffered from the violence or injustice of Government
agents. The former, it is fairly said, took the risk of repudiation
when they lent money at a high rate of interest. But neither our
Government nor others have ever clearly explained in what circum-
stances they will intervene. The air would be cleared by a frank
statement such as Argentina has asked the United States to join in
making, that State creditors must look only to the honour of their
debtors.

14 Seij as boasts with some reason: ' Que esta raza'latino-americana es una raza
homogenea, que habla un solo idioma, no corrompido en dialectos, que tiene las
mismas creencias, el mismo tipo, y unas mismas necessidades y aspiraciones ' (i. ix.).

15 Compare Lord Palmerston's famous circular of 1848 and his declaration to the
Spanish bondholders ((Hansard, 93, 1298) with the statement of Lord Salisbury to the
Turkish bondholders, January 6, 1880.

1903 SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS 597

(6) Generally to agree and to abide, as to the matters above
discussed, by certain rules by wbich all concerned would be guided.
In regard to one part of the subject, the Institute of International
Law has lately adopted a set of rules which, though erring on the
side of over-elaboration, probably express the common understanding
among lawyers.16

(c) To press no claims which have not been as far as possible
sifted or found good. To support by diplomatic action, and in the
last resort by force, claims which prima facie are plausible, but
which have never been examined thoroughly ; to press to the utmost
demands which may turn out — which according to the experience of
the many mixed commissions often turn out — to be bad or much
exaggerated, and which are in the end settled for a small sum : — all
that has been usual on the part of every European State. It is an
equivocal course. A Government which supports with all its weight
private claims is not quite in the position of a solicitor who fairly
says, ' It is not my business to verify them ; I put them forward for
what they are worth.'

(cZ) To do away with all pretext for certain recurring
recriminations and counter-accusations on the part of these republics.
To name a common complaint, to remove all pretext for the charges,
true or false, persistently made, that much smuggling has in past
times been carried on from Trinidad and Curacoa ; smuggling en-
couraged by the additional duty of 30 per cent, on goods coming
from the former to Venezuela. It is a very old complaint, and there
may be an element of truth in it.

(e) To organise beforehand tribunals or mixed commissions,
permanent or temporary, to which such claims as I have been con-
sidering should be automatically referred. Many such have been
formed after disputes have arisen ; u for example, after the close of
the Chilian Civil War most of the chief European States established
such commissions. It is desirable to avoid the necessity of negotia-
tions by providing for the constitution of such tribunals before
differences exist. This would be merely generalising provisions to
be found in several treaties. No countries have shown greater
readiness to accept arbitration than the South American republics.
These concessions would not give all that the expositors of ' Spanish-
American law' demand. But they would help to propitiate national
pride. They would remove a grievance — for such the constant
pressure from outside is regarded.18 Perhaps they would be in the

16 Anrmaire, 17, 236.

17 For example, United States and Venezuela, 1885 ; United States and Chili,
1892 ; Great Britain and Chili, 1895.

ls The Argentine Minister for Foreign Affairs has lately complained to the United
States authorities of the interference of the American Vice-Consul at Eosario in
proceedings relating to the murder of an American citizen as contrary to international
etiquette.

VOL. LIU— No. 314 E E

598 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

long run to the advantage of European States. It is safe to predict
that, after recent experience, they will be much more reluctant
than before to undertake debt-collecting in South America, which
cannot be carried out by the method of occupation continued until
satisfaction is given and without risk of embroilment with a power-
ful State. In truth, there must be an end of the old methods of
pressure ; they will not work if the creditor's really effective power,
that of taking possession in the last resort, is gone. In his note to
Mr. Hay, Dr. Grarcia Merou, the Argentine Minister at Washington,
says rightly :

The recovery of loans (and the same may be said of indemnities) by military
methods supposes a territorial occupation to render it effective, and a territorial
occupation signifies the suppression or subordination of local governments, &c. ;
such conditions contradict the principles oftentimes proclaimed by the nations of
America, and especially the Monroe doctrine, to which the Argentine Eepublic
signifies its adherence.

More is needed than forbearance and a common policy by
European States to prevent the old conflicts and friction. Whether
as originally stated by President Monroe, as expanded by Presidents
Polk and Cleveland, or as explained by Captain Mahan, the Monroe
doctrine is an incomplete doctrine by itself, an assertion of power
without assuming corresponding duties, and, whatever may be said
to the contrary, a shield to evil-doing, a temptation to failure in
international obligations. It ceases to be the mere expression
of force, it rests on a moral basis, only when it is accompanied by
recognition of responsibilities. The Argentine Grovernment has
just invited the United States to express themselves clearly on the
subject. The latter have as usual declined to do so. This is to
be regretted. It was all very well for Calhoun, when asked to
state the full consequences of the doctrine, to say, ' Every case
must speak for itself.' But in the course of eighty years light
should have come. The least that should be done, it is suggested,
is to co-operate with European States in framing methods of dealing
fairly and effectively with claims against these republics.

JOHN MACDONELL.

1903

IN an interesting article in a late number of a contemporary periodi-
cal1 the case of the Indian ryots is discussed with especial reference
to the question why their condition under British rule should be
one of increased and ever-increasing impoverishment, notwith-
standing the anxious efforts of successive Governments for their
welfare ; and what is the determining cause of the somewhat startling
paradox that the just and systematic rule of the Englishman has
resulted in a state of things worse — in this respect — than the
arbitrary and capricious government of the Hindu or the Mughal.
The answer arrived at by the writer is given in the following re-
markable words : ' that deep-rooted tendency which there is in the
Anglo-Saxon character to Anglicise everything with which it comes
in contact.'

The history of the Land Laws in Ireland presents another notable
example of the same tendency.

The horrible jumble in which these laws are now involved, and
from which we are endeavouring to extricate them by methods at
once ephemeral and expensive, and fundamentally opposed to
economic principle, is directly attributable to the persistent efforts
made to force upon a society wedded to a particular organisation the
legal relations and reciprocal obligations suitable to another and
different one.

It may be admitted that, from a purely economic point of view,
the ideal condition of agriculture, as of every other industry in a
civilised society, is that of 'a threefold cord.' The cultivation of
land lends itself naturally to the co-operation of owner, farmer, and
labourer, just as productive industry does to that of capitalist,
manager, and workman, and distributive trade to that of producer,
merchant, and retailer ; and any interference with this division of
labour is sure to prove both wasteful and inefficient. But the inter-
relations of the co-workers — the terms, as it were, of the partnership —
are susceptible of much variety, and in their determination esta-
blished customs exercise a powerful, often a prepotent, force. The

1 East and Wett, October 1902, p. 1332.

599 B E 2

600 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

Keltic ideal of land tenure is founded on status, the English on
contract, and the struggle between these differing ideals — though
somewhat modified in both cases by the influence of feudalism —
underlies the whole history of land legislation in Ireland. A system
where ownership is inseparably connected with occupation is equally
foreign to both ideals, and is indeed only fitted for young com-
munities in sparsely populated countries, where the object is to
attract settlers from outside ; it has never prevailed, and is indeed
incapable of continuance, in any fully populated country. The
exaggerated expectations which the recklessness of some politicians
and the weakness of others have excited or encouraged may render
the adoption of some such system in Ireland inevitable under
present circumstances, but can never be more than a temporary
expedient, in unstable equilibrio from the outset, which may possibly
outlast a single generation, but is doomed to give place, after
no long interval, to a new race of landlords not less rapacious,
and a fresh set of tenants not less discontented, than the present.
And the last state of that land will undoubtedly be worse than the
first.

To enable us to understand the causes of, and to discover the
appropriate remedy for, this lamentable impasse, it is necessary to
glance hastily at the history of the question. The ancient form of
land tenure in Ireland was that known as ' Tanistry ' 2 ; the whole
territory of the sept or clan belonged theoretically to the chieftain ;
but, though the separate interests of the clansmen therein were very
vague and undefined, the right of each family to continuous occupation
of some sort, and the duty of rendering corresponding services, partly
personal, partly payments in money or kind, were so far settled that,
although there must have been frequent cases of reapportionment
and consequent dispossession, the notion of eviction, in the modern
sense, was foreign to their ideas. Only in the case of some crime
against the clan resulting in practical outlawry would a tribesman
find himself houseless and homeless.

The Norman invasion made no practical difference in this respect.
The feudal ideas of the conquerors lent themselves easily to the
continuance of the former relations ; and, though in the conquered
districts the chieftains were dispossessed or reduced to vassalage, the
rank and file of the population did not find their status materially
altered, and the conditions of their services rapidly became, even in
matters of detail, assimilated to those to which they had been
accustomed, and which they found continuing all around them in
the still independent districts ; and after the lapse of a generation or
two the relation of lord and vassal had, except along a limited

* The same tenure practically prevailed down to a late period in the Highlands
of Scotland, and its collision with Southern ideas of ownership lies at the bottom of
the ' Crofter Difficulty,'

1903 THE IRISH LAND LAWS 601

portion of the eastern seaboard, been entirely superseded by that of
chieftain and dependent.3

Several attempts were made from time to time to ' introduce the
English polity.' The first of these that calls for notice was that
made by Sir John Perrot in the reign of Elizabeth. The forfeitures
consequent on the suppression of Desmond's rebellion had placed at
the disposal of the Crown about 575,000 acres of land in an important
part of Ireland, much of it to this day among the most valuable
agricultural land in the United Kingdom ; the country had been
devastated, and to a great extent depopulated, in the course of the
' Pacification of Munster ' ; ' and thus,' says Leland, ' was every
obstacle removed to Elizabeth's favourite scheme of repeopling
Munster with an English colony.' The idea aimed at was the
complete ' Anglicisation ' of the district, and the introduction of the
English system of manors in all its details : it was intended that the
actual cultivators of the soil should be men of English birth and
descent, settled thereon with tenures sufficiently attractive to induce
immigration on a large scale, and it was expected that, by the end
of the seven years allowed for the purpose, a substantial English
settlement would have been created in the heart of Ireland. The
scheme proved a complete failure. Somewhat less than half of the
available lands were granted to some thirty or thirty-five gentlemen
of distinction (amongst whom we find the names of Sir Walter Kaleigh
and Sir Christopher Hatton), but no acceptable recipients seem to
have been found for the remainder, and it was either abandoned
to the original possessors or squatted upon by strangers, with or
without a claim of right. The net result was to cover the land
with a numerous and impoverished population, clinging passionately
to the possession, to which they thought they had an indefeasible
right, but who were in the eye of the law mere tenants at will of
their immediate superiors, and in the estimation of those superiors,
new to the country, and out of sympathy with their customs,
dependents little if at all removed above the condition of serfs.

Warned by these ' errors and miscarriages/ the counsellors of
James the First, when the overthrow of O'Neill and O'Donnell had
placed at their disposal a 'vast tract of land escheated to the
Crown, in six northern counties, amounting to about 500,000 acres —
a tract of country covered with woods, where robbers and rebels
found a secure shelter, desolated by war and famine, and destined
to lie waste without the deliberate and vigorous interposition
of English government ' 4 — resolved upon a more thorough and

s So completely was this the case that most of the Norman nobles ceased to be
known by their proper family names, and adopted Gaelic patronymics instead ;
De Burgo (William) becoming MacUiliaim (MacWilliam, corrupted in the North
into M'Quillan), De Courcy (John) becoming MacEoin (M'Keown or Keown), De
Lacy (Hugh) becoming MacAoidh (M'Kay or Kay), &c.

4 Leland, ii. 429.

602 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

systematic procedure, which should include a separate provision on
favourable terms for such of the former inhabitants as were willing
to accept the new regime, while the ' places of the greatest strength
and command ' were everywhere assigned to the new settlers. It is
unnecessary, and would be tedious, to give the details of this ' famous
Northern Plantation ' ; 5 the most important difference between the
two systems was that care was taken to secure a bona fide immigra-
tion on such a scale as completely to outnumber the original inhabi-
tants ; and to this it is mainly due that the north-east corner of the
island, inferior to the south in position, in climate, and in the
character of the soil, and which had previously been the most back-
ward part of the whole country, has for nearly three hundred years
been conspicuously different from the rest, in the independence of
its inhabitants, their thrifty and law-abiding character, and all the
attributes that make for progress. To this also may probably be
attributed the origin of the ' Ulster Custom,' hereinafter described,
which has such an important bearing on this subject.6 It was
inevitable, however, that the same causes which had so effectually
prevented the ' Anglicisation ' of the south should not be wholly
without influence in the north also ; tenure in tanistry was indeed
swept away, but the desired manorial system was not substituted for
it. In the result, after a short interval, the great mass of the agri-
cultural tenantry — whether holding directly under the original
grantees or their representatives, or as tenants under leaseholders
in the first, second, or sometimes even third degree — had become
reduced to the condition of ' tenants at will,' a tenure equivalent
to the English tenancy from year to year. Neither the attempt
of Strafford to abrogate all the ancient titles, and substitute therefor
a system of express Crown grants, nor the confiscations — forfeitures
and counter-forfeitures — consequent upon the civil wars, nor even
the Penal Laws of the eighteenth century (although all of these
materially affected in other respects the relations between the owners
and occupiers of land) had any effect upon either the legal character
or the popular conception of possessory rights, rights which were,
as a general rule, tacitly acted on — though never explicitly acknow-
ledged, and frequently arbitrarily disregarded — by the majority of
landlords.

Three principal causes, however, operated in different ways, in
the course of the eighteenth century, to increase the ' earth-hunger '
natural to the people, and at the same time to embitter the relations

4 Leland, ii. 437.

6 There is some difference of opinion on this point ; but it seems likely —having
regard to the fact that it is even better established in the counties of Antrim and
Down, which formed no part of the ' Plantation area,' but which intercepted to some
extent the stream of immigration, especially from the south-west of Scotland, than
the plantation counties themselves — that it was a more or less indistinct recognition
of the claim of the new settlers to some degree of fixity of tenure.

1903 THE IRISH LAND LAWS 603

between landlord and tenant. First came the series of measures
forced on Ireland by the Parliament of Great Britain, whereby all
Irish industries and Irish commerce, whenever competitive, or likely
to prove competitive, with English interests, were ruthlessly crushed
out of existence, and the bulk of the population thrown back upon
agriculture as practically its sole means of livelihood. Secondly, the
pressure of the ' Penal Laws ' almost exterminated the Eoman
Catholic landed gentry, and added the animosity of religious
antagonism to the other sources of alienation between the farmer
and his landlord. The third cause was of a somewhat different
nature. One of the vicious peculiarities of Irish legislation —
perhaps the most pernicious — has been a slavish copying of English
methods in matters of detail, even when inappropriate, without any
corresponding regard to underlying principle. Accordingly, when
the emancipated Irish Parliament determined to extend the franchise
to Roman Catholics, they adopted the English limitation of ' forty-
shilling freeholders ' (a limitation introduced there by way of re-
striction, but adopted for Ireland by way of expansion), irrespective
of the vital differences between the two countries as regards the
occupation of land. The consequences were soon apparent; the
land-owners were not long in devising a tenure which, while techni-
cally a freehold, carried with it none of the stability and indepen-
dence attaching to the term ; and for more than thirty years the Irish
counties were systematically flooded with a class of small tenants,
barely rescued from pauperism, and absolutely at the mercy of the
landlords, to whom they were hopelessly indebted, and whose power
was avowedly, even ostentatiously, exercised for political purposes.7
A partial mitigation of this state of things was found in the lands
subject to the ' Ulster Custom,' a system which, when fairly worked,
effected a reasonable 'modus vivendi between landlord and tenant.
As might be anticipated, the Custom varied on different estates,
and sometimes even on different parts of the same estate, though
not, I think, to any greater extent than is constantly found in the
case of neighbouring manors in England. The general character
of the Custom was that, whenever a tenant desired or was com-
pelled to part with his holding (which seldom happened except
from inability to pay his rent), the landlord, instead of resuming
possession adversely, permitted him to sell the ' goodwill ' of the
farm, subject to certain conditions — generally known as ' office rules '
— the price being ordinarily applied in the first place in liquidation
of the arrears of rent due, and the surplus belonging to the oufc-

7 The forty-shilling franchise was swept away by the Emancipation Act — one of
the few statesmanlike measures passed for Ireland since the Union — but the tenants
remained ; and the results have affected prejudicially every phase of the Irish
question.

604 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

going tenant.8 It will easily be seen that this proceeding was
usually beneficial to both parties, the drawback being that the in-
coming tenant was too apt, in his eagerness for possession, to offer
a price out of all proportion to the value, and often such as to
deprive himself of necessary capital. On many of the best-managed
estates an endeavour was made to mitigate this evil, but the rules
made for the purpose were easily, and I believe systematically,
evaded. Unfortunately, the utility of the custom was impaired by
two circumstances. In the first place, for some reason ' which satis-
fied themselves,' the judges of the Irish Court of Chancery refused
to recognise the custom, and thus enabled a landlord — or more fre-
quently his creditors — to add to the sentimental grievance of evic-
tion a substantial injustice. Secondly, the custom was too vague.
There was nothing to limit the owner's right to demand any rent he
pleased, and it was always in the power of a landlord to impair or
destroy the ' goodwill ' by the simple process of raising his rent.
That this was not done more frequently can only be attributed to
the moral restraint of the landlord's sense of j ustice, and the mutual
kindliness engendered by generations of association in the same
relations.

How long matters could have so continued without disturbance
it is hard to say, though as early as the year 1820 discontent there-
with had become conspicuous. But about the middle of the last
century three things happened almost simultaneously which precipi-
tated the crisis. The adoption of free trade in 1846, which practi-
cally abolished wheat-growing in Ireland and seriously crippled the
mill industry there, however beneficial to the kingdom at large,
dealt a heavy blow to the interests of Irish agriculture ; the terrible
famine consequent on the failure of the potato crops in 1846-1847
reduced to absolute destitution the great bulk of the population,
living from hand to mouth at the best of times ; and the sales in the
Incumbered Estates Court in 1849-1851 introduced a new class of
owners, strangers to the traditions which alone had made the old
regime tolerable, and to whom the predominant principle was the
desire for profitable investment. I have no wish to quarrel with
either the establishment of the Court or its scheme of operation. But
its effects upon the relations of landlord and tenant were too often
disastrous. Eents were imposed with reference simply to ' what
the land could bear,' without regard either to the antecedents of the
holding or the custom of the estate ; 9 the new purchasers naturally

8 As the goodwill frequently amounted, on properly managed estates, to fifteen
or twenty years' purchase of the rent, this surplus was usually very substantial.

9 On one estate in a northern county — I purposely withhold the name — the rental
was doubled within a few years, with the result of absorbing both tenant-right and
tenants' improvements, guaranteed under the previous regime by mere entries in the
rent-book, but without any security cognisable in a court of law.

1903 THE IRISH LAND LAWS 605

regarding the question from a purely economic standpoint, with a
view to getting a reasonable return for their investments.

It was not long before the storm burst. In 1852, the late
Mr. Sharman Crawford commenced the movement still connected
with his name in the county of Down — a movement which, if it had
been met reasonably halfway, would not improbably have altered
the whole course of subsequent legislation in the direction of equi-
table adjustment. But the opposition of the landed interest was too
strong, and notwithstanding a well-intentioned measure passed by
Sir Joseph Napier in 1860, which did not even affect to recognise
tenant-right, the agitation, though temporarily eclipsed by the
struggle over the Church Establishment, continued to occupy public
attention during the whole of that decade. Eventually, Mr. Glad-
stone's Government introduced a Bill to legalise the Custom, which,
after an important addition granting certain limited amounts as
compensation for capricious disturbance had been made at the
instance of Mr. Macarty Downing, one of the members for Cork
county, became law in the session of 1870.

It was at this time that a proposal, described as ' A Plan of
Parliamentary Tenant-right applicable to all Ireland,' was put
forward by a body of gentlemen interested in the subject (among
whom it will be sufficient to mention the names of the Et. Hon.
Judge Longfield and Professor John E. Cairnes) which was accepted
with cordiality, if without enthusiasm, by the leading advocates of
the tenants, but was opposed on behalf of the landlords, and con-
temptuously rejected by the Government.

The gist of the proposal — the details are out of date — *ras the
following : The relative interests of landlord and tenant had first to
be determined ; that, in the absence of agreement, would have
involved the interference of an outside authority, an objection much
relied on at the time, but which would have no force now ; then the
tenant's interest was to be converted into so many years' purchase of
the existing or some other determined rent ; that merely involved a
simple numerical calculation : and when that was done, the mutual
rights of the parties were fixed for all time : if the landlord thought
the rent too low he might serve notice to raise it ; but it was to be
at the tenant's option either to agree to the increase or to require
the landlord to purchase his interest at the ascertained number of
years of the increased rent demanded — a provision which would
effectually prevent excessive or extortionate demands ; on the other
hand, if the tenant thought the rent too high, he might require the
landlord to reduce it to any figure he pleased, subject to the land-
lord's option, if he thought the demand unreasonable, to buy out
the tenant on payment of the ascertained number of years of the
reduced rent offered — a risk which, combined with the universal
desire for fixity of occupation, would have made the claims to which

606 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

we have since become habituated few and far between. There were
other provisions for the prevention of ' dribbling ' rises, and for the
valuation of improvements made by either party after the ascertain-
ment of the tenant-right (those made before would have been
included in the calculation), but they were mere matters of detail,
not essential to the scheme.

Theoretically, the Act of 1870 secured to the tenant everything to
which he had any reasonable claim ; the recognition of the Custom
where it applied, the ownership of his own improvements, and even
a somewhat belated concession to * Irish sentiment,' a modified
' Occupancy Eight.' But the benefits of the Act were to a great
extent neutralised by its uncertainty; the Act did not come into
active operation till eviction had become inevitable, and even the
amount of the tenant's interest — or ' compensation ' — could only be
ascertained by a legal process in which the parties would be entirely
at the mercy of the judge of the Civil Bill Court, who was left without
any guidance in the exercise of his discretion.10

The Government, however, persisted in the objections that the
proposal was inconsistent with the principle of contract, that a right
on the part of the tenant to acquire such tenant-right would be
equivalent to a compulsory sale as against the landlord, and that the
scheme could not be started without a general valuation of Irish
land. Viewed in the light of subsequent history the spectacle is at
once pathetic and instructive. The Act of 1870, with all its merits
— and it was not without merits — was doomed from its birth ; while
every defect pointed out in the competing proposal has been repro-
duced without the countervailing advantages, in the unprincipled
and preposterous Act of 1881, and the series of Acts 'amending' the
same. The landed interest, however, certainly in Ireland, and it
was asserted at the time in England also, were determined that an
* occupancy right ' should not, under any circumstances, be explicitly
recognised. If there be any class of persons to whom the old story
of the Sibylline Books is especially applicable, it is the class of Irish
landlords in their relation to this question.

It would be too much to say that the ' Longfield proposal,' if
adopted in 1870, would have put an end to all agitation on this
subject — finality is a word inapplicable to politics — but it certainly
would have obviated its next phase. When it was decided — and it
could not have been ruled otherwise — that there was nothing in the
Act to relieve lessees from the obligation of delivering up possession
according to their covenants at the end of the term, so that the
very instruments granted for their protection now operated to their

10 A crucial instance of this uncertainty came under my own notice. Two tenants
of the same landlord, whose farms lay in adjoining counties, were served with eject-
ments at the same time, and under precisely similar circumstances; one County
Chairman dismissed the application for compensation with costs, the other granted
the maximum allowance (se?en years' rent).

1903 THE IRISH LAND LAWS 607

disadvantage, an outcry was at once raised for ' tenant-right at[the end
of a lease.' But nothiDg came of it till the genius of Parnell seized
the opportunity of arousing ' the predatory instinct ' as an ally of the
Nationalist movement, and accordingly the campaign against ' Land-
lordism ' was set on foot — as if there were any inherent impropriety in
the letting and hiring of land, any more than of houses and ships — and
the result (after the election of 1880 had left both parties in England
at the mercy of the Nationalists) was the disastrous "'Majuba' of 1881.
Even then it was not too late : had the Act been administered with a
single eye to equitable adjustments, where needed, as a basis for a final
settlement ; had the actual working been entrusted to independent
and competent hands, and above all, had the original Commissioners
been left to do justice in their own way without Government inter-
ference, the consequent evils would have been rather theoretical
than important. But the very opposite was done. It soon appeared
that the fair rent clauses, regarded by the Grovernment as a very
subordinate part of the measure, were the only part for which the
people cared, whilst of those clauses the entire population hastened
to take advantage, and that consequently the provision made for
fixing fair rents was utterly inadequate. To meet this deficiency
the expedient of the Sub-Commissions was adopted; that is to
say, the duty of apportioning the respective interests of owner
and occupier, the necessity for which, in a comparatively few cases,
had been treated as conclusively negativing the Longfield scheme
in 1870, was now intrusted wholesale to a number of inferior
courts, inferior not only in status but in the qualifications of their
members, with the additional disqualifications that they were
appointed for one year only, subject to reappointment, and were thus
practically driven, in self-defence, to 'justify their office' by attract-
ing business to their courts : that could only be done by universal
reductions irrespective of merits ; and the natural result followed.11

In the end, the rental of Ireland was reduced, in fixing the first-
term rents, by about 35 per cent, on a principal of general average
and with the very slightest regard to the merits of individual cases.12

11 Nothing can be contrived more destructive of the efficiency, even when it does
not affect the independence, of a judge than his appointment for a limited period,
with a hope of reappointment. It is a favourite device of arbitrary governments,
democratic or despotic (they have many characteristics in common), and one which
I had occasion to demonstrate against when in India, but with indifferent success.

12 A typical instance of this came under my personal notice. Two adjoining
townlands, forming parts of the same property, were sold in the market many years
ago (somewhere between 1820 and 1835) to different purchasers ; there was abso-
lutely no ground for distinction between them, either in situation, quality of soil, or
otherwise. The purchaser of one, and his successors, were men of the ' live and let
live ' order, and the rental had been but little interfered with in the interval ; the
other owners were pushing business men, anxious to make the most that they fairly
could of their property (I do not suggest that they were ' rack-renters ') ; both sets
of tenants applied to the court ; the cases of the latter set were heard first, and the
rents reduced about 30 per cent. ; before the other cases came on for hearing the

608 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

Thereby the Sub-Commissioners triumphantly demonstrated the
value of their services, and have apparently established themselves
for all time to come as a charge upon the public exchequer.

When, after the ' great betrayal,' the gentleman who had exposed,
with the acumen of a lawyer and the eloquence of a born orator, the
errors and shortcomings of the Act was appointed to the important
office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland, those of us who cared more for a
reasonable settlement in the interest of law and order than for the
pecuniary results to either landlord or tenant had high hopes of some
such settlement being arrived at. The opportunity was unique ; the
hour was fairly propitious ; and the man seemed especially fitted for
the occasion. The objections to the Longfield scheme taken in 1870
(on the part of the tenants, the landlords were at that time opposed
to any interference with their personal control) were two ; one, that
for its successful operation it required in a large number of cases a
preliminary adjustment of rents ; the other, that the great majority
of tenants, outside Ulster, had no such interest in the land as would
enable them to acquire, under that scheme, a substantial tenant-
right (and an illusory right would obviously be worse than nothing).
Both of these objections had been obviated in the meantime. Under
the compensation clauses of the Act of 1870, the most unimproving
and impecunious tenant had an interest capable of supporting a
claim to a tenant-right based on seven years' rent, an amount
ordinarily sufficient to afford ample security against arbitrary
eviction ; whilst the Land Commission had been created as an
authority for the adjustment of rents, and had practically established
a scale for the purpose.

But this scheme, which has been rightly described as 'a co-
proprietorship between the parties, in which each will be entitled to
(and, by the natural action of the system, in fact obtain) his fair pro-
portion of the unearned increment, or bear his fair proportion
of any fall,' however in accordance with ' Irish ideas,' was incon-
sistent with that 'return to the principles of contract' for which
Mr. Gladstone expressed ' a pious hope ' when introducing his ill-
fated measure. It was therefore not to be thought of.

Yeoman proprietorship was, however, a known English tenure,
and, though under modern economic conditions it has almost died
out in England, and notwithstanding the fearful object-lesson afforded
by the morcellement of land in the south of France, it was determined
to introduce it into Ireland. Accordingly the ' Ashbourne Acts *
were passed, for doing away with ' dual ownership,' and establishing
on its ruins a peasant proprietary.

The plan was, in its inception, modest enough. Following the

valuer for the first set of tenants said to the agent of the landlord in the other cases :
' You may be perfectly easy ; for your rents are now loner tlian those they have reduced.
L to ' ; nevertheless, they had about 25 per cent, taken off I

1903 THE IRISH LAND LAWS 609

lines of the ' Bright clauses ' of the former Act, the State proposed to
assist tenants, who were desirous of purchasing their holdings, by
advancing a limited amount of the purchase money on favourable
terms. But it soon appeared that the remedy, thus limited, was
inadequate. A few energetic and thrifty men, principally in the
north, were enabled to become owners in a legitimate fashion, mainly
at their own expense. But the great bulk of the tenantry were both
unable and unwilling to avail themselves of the offer. They had
then no conception of the ' incubus of dual ownership ; ' on the
contrary, to use the somewhat inflated language of the Nation,13 it
was :

that idea, that imperishable tradition, which England's bloodiest efforts have
failed to beat out of the Irish peasant's memory : a claim deriving from the ancient
system of land tenure, which English statesmen must by this time have concluded
to be ineradicable from the Irish mind [alas, not yet] : namely, the idea of co-
partnership in a certain sense between the landlord and the cultivator ; the idea
that, without taking from the landlord's rights, but besides, and exclusive of, and
in addition to, those rights, the tenant also has property rights of a certain kind
in relation to the land, independent of, but subsidiary to, those of the landlord.

This was the bread for which the Irish tenantry had been inarti-
culately clamouring ; they were offered instead the stone of a proprie-
torship, alien to their instincts, and beyond the reach of their
resources. Naturally, they would have none of it. It became
necessary, then, if the plan was not to prove a fiasco, for the State
to advance the whole of the purchase-money.

Even this heroic expedient, however, proved insufficient to float
the scheme. Unfortunately, during this time two causes were at
work which tended in different ways to resuscitate that ' predatory
instinct ' which it had been the object of all this legislation to allay.
L'appetit vient en mangeant. The action of the Sub-Commissions
had given rise to an expectation — only too well founded, as it turned
out — that when the time came for settling the second- term rents
there would be an all-round reduction on the rents previously fixed
as ' fair,' comparable with that made for the first term, a reduction
wholly unwarranted by any change of circumstances in the interval.
Even such tenants, therefore, as were inclined to become purchasers
naturally hesitated to do so on the basis of rents which they were
told on all hands would shortly be further reduced.14 Hence arose

13 March 17, 1870.

14 Mr. Parnell, in the session of 1881, brought forward a proposal — I think it
never crystallised into a Bill — for the exploitation of the landlords on the principle
of compulsory purchase. On this the late Dr. Robert Macdonnell — whose keen
insight into Irish affairs was only equalled by his incisive wit — said to me : ' The
difference between Gladstone and Parnell is only that between the two ways of
cutting off a dog's tail ; Parnell would chop it off with a cleaver, and then try to
minimise the price as best he could ; Gladstone will shave a thin slice off with a
razor, and hold it up and say : ' There's nothing there to be worth compensation ' ;
and this he will repeat every fifteen years : but the whole tail will come off equally
in the end.

610 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

the utterly unjustifiable demand that a tenant should, by merely
going through the form of a purchase, without having paid a single
sixpence, or given any consideration whatever therefor, not only con-
vert a perpetual rent into a terminable annuity, but also effect a
reduction in the amount of that annuity itself. The extravagance of
this demand, which is self-evident on the mere statement, is by no
means the most formidable objection to it : instead of acting as an
encouragement to thrift and energy, it offers a premium on laziness
and improvidence, and raises expectations of unearned benefits
which could only be realised at the expense of some innocent
victim. It was capable, however, of being put forward with a
certain show of plausibility, and has been somewhat blindly accepted
as a necessary ingredient in any contemplated settlement of the
question.

Then, and not till then, came the cry for compulsory sale. Up
to this time the tenants had been hanging back in the hope of
further reductions, while the landlords, fearful of the future, were
anxious to make the best terms they could, if only any tabula in
naufragio were afforded them ; 15 but now, with the notion that the
worst that could happen would be the payment for forty-nine years
of a rent somewhat less than that to which they are at present liable,
it would have been a miracle if they had not yielded to the tempta-
tion. The movement, in its original form, proved a failure : the
tenants, with few exceptions, cared nothing for anything but an
immediate reduction in their payments; the landlords, driven to
' the last ditch,' absolutely rejected the offered terms : and the
Government, taking for once their courage in both hands, announced
positively ' that they would not, and that no conceivable Government
could' enforce a general compulsory sale. The last phase of the
agitation is found in the report of the Landlord and Tenant Conference,
which proposes to cut the Grordian knot by securing to the landlords
approximately their present incomes, giving to the tenants the
longed-for immediate reductions, and finding the requisite innocent
victim in the person of the British tax-payer. It is hard to say
whether this amazing proposal is more objectionable on financial,
political, or social grounds. Various calculations have been made
as to the expense to the public entailed by this scheme — calculations
all somewhat hypothetical, depending upon an unknown quantity,
the gross rental (second-term rents) of the unsold agricultural land
in Ireland. This rental has been variously estimated at from
5,000,000£. to 8,000,OOOZ. sterling ; taking the lowest figure, which
is probably under the mark, and assuming an immediate reduction
in the rents of 15 per cent, (the least suggested), and remembering

15 I have reason to believe that, if it were not for the fear of the possible third-
term rents, few, if any, of the unincumbered landowners would be willing to sell at
thirty- three years' purchase of the second- term rents.

1903 THE IRISH LAND LAWS 611

that even this is only to be payable for forty-nine years (heaven and
the agitators alone know why), the net loss to the Exchequer works
out at eleven and three-quarter years' purchase of the rental ; that
is, on the assumed figures, 58,750,000^. These are, moreover,
minimum figures, without any allowance for expenses, commission,
leakage, or any of the outgoings inevitably attendant on a trans-
action of this magnitude. Other — more empiric — methods of
calculation produce somewhat different results ; but, as the net loss
is in no case put at less than 40,000,000^., it is of small consequence
to consider which of them is most likely to be verified in practice ;
even the lowest is, or ought to be, prohibitive.

But the social and political aspects of the proposal, supposing it
to succeed, are even more objectionable than its extravagance.
' Landlordism ' — whatever that may mean — is to cease : i.e. the
present set of landowners is to be bought out, and replaced by others,
each of whom is to occupy all the land he owns ; but it is not pro-
posed, nor would it be feasible, to prohibit the sale and purchase of
land, under which a new generation of landlords is sure to be created
at no distant time, by the ordinary operation of economic laws. In
the nature of things, land — even in the hands of peasant proprietors
— will come into the market ; are the buyers to be prohibited from
letting it for hire, should they wish to do so ? and if they do, are
the new tenants to hold subject to the ordinary laws of contract, or
under the provisions of the Act of 1881 ? In any case ownership
divorced from occupation — call it ' landlordism ' or not — is bound to
reappear ; and if the new class of landowners is largely taken — as it
certainly will be — from the more thrifty and pushing of the tenant-
owners, the old controversies are sure to reappear also, and in an
exacerbated form. Further, the expropriated landlords will, as a class,
remain in the country, or they will not. It is hard to say which
alternative would be the more undesirable. The presence of a class
of loafers, with adequate or superfluous means, freed from the
obligation of labour in any form, and without either duties or
responsibilities binding them to the country — such a class as were
the French noblesse of the eighteenth century — is an unmixed
evil in any society, and would certainly not be less so because they
were permeated, reasonably or otherwise, with a sense of having been
the victims of injustice.16 On the other hand, were the landed
gentry, with their families, to ' commute, compound, and cut,' there
are no elements in Irish society with which to fill the gap. In the
country parts of Ireland they are the only employers of labour on
any appreciable scale, the only class (other than the clergy of the

18 It was at one time the policy of the Government of India to convert ' media-
tised ' chiefs into State pensioners ; the resultant evils were keenly felt when I was
there, and the then Government were very anxious to limit the practice as far as
possible, and rather to turn them into zamindars (subject landowners).

612 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

different denominations) possessing even the rudiments of culture,
or the leisure needed for its acquirement, and a general exodus on
their part would leave the professional classes face to face with the
proletariat, with what results the merest historical tyro can tell.

Setting aside, then, the idea of ' compulsory sale on fair terms '
(i.e. terms not involving either hardship to the tenant or injustice to
the landlord) as impracticable, and the wholesale exploitation of the
landlords as unwise, does it follow that nothing can be done to check
the growing demoralisation of all classes dependent upon Irish land ?
Proposals to facilitate voluntary sale, however valuable as a palliative
in individual cases, are not far-reaching enough for a remedy, and
whilst the reduction of rents through the agency of the Land Com-
mission can hardly be carried further with any pretence at justice,
the extravagant expectations raised and fostered by recent legislation
cannot be disappointed without provoking serious resentment. It is
indeed, too late to do complete justice in the matter : the ascent from
the Avernus in which we have been plunged is beyond human power ;
but a statesmanlike use of the present opportunity may go a long
way towards mitigating the evil. The second-term rents are still in
their infancy, and the prospect of third-term reductions fifteen years
hence is too distant and uncertain to be formidable. By all means
let every reasonable encouragement be given to voluntary sales ; no
legislation not directed to that end could, as matters stand, be deemed
satisfactory ; but it must be clearly understood that voluntary sales
on any considerable scale are not to be looked for unless the public
are prepared to supply, as a free gift, the difference between the
landlords' minimum and the tenants' maximum. The true remedy,
and the only effectual remedy, for the present disorder lies not in the
abolition of the 'dual ownership ' created by the Act of 1881, but in
moulding that ownership, so far as may still be possible, in accordance
with the fixed ideal so graphically described in the extract already
quoted from the Nation of 1870, the ideal which has held the field
from the earliest times, the sole ideal of ' ancient right ' ingrained in
the hearts of the Irish peasantry.

On the assumption that the second-term rents are fair rents —
and no honest man with any knowledge of the facts will affirm that
they are generally too high — the outside that a tenant can logically
claim is to hold at that rent for ever unless redeemed on equitable
terms. It may be — it is — too late to reproduce the Longfield scheme
in all its details, but an intelligent acceptance of its principle, with
such modifications as the subsequent march of events has rendered
necessary, is even yet within the range of practical politics. There
should be provisions for State* loans — a sop to Cerberus — on
reasonable terms to tenants desirous of redeeming their rents, and
provisions enabling those who desired to provide against possible
loss to convert their tenure into another, in which — to use words

1903 THE IRISH LAND LAWS 613

already quoted — ' each will be entitled to (and by the natural action
of the system in fact obtain) his fair proportion of the unearned
increment, or bear his fair proportion of any fall.'

An enactment fixing the second-term rents in perpetuity, with an
option to the tenant, (a) of redeeming the rent on equitable terms,
after the pattern of copyhold enfranchisement in England, (6) of
accepting a fee-farm grant at that rent, and (c) of acquiring a
Parliamentary tenant-right on the basis afforded by 'the Pink
Schedule,' would indeed be a belated acknowledgment that the
efforts of 300 years to introduce * the English polity ' in this respect
have failed, but would on that very account go far to allay agricultural
agitation in Ireland.

ALEX. EDW. MILLER.

VOL, LIII — No. 314 S S

614 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

LITERARY CRITICS AND THE DRAMA

IN the last December number of this Keview Mr. Oswald Crawfurd
ventured again into that perennial bog in English literature, the
modern English drama. Into the Slough of Despond, Bunyan tells
us, had been thrown * twenty thousand cartloads of wholesome in-
structions ' and yet the way was nowise improved. During the
last twenty-five years how many thousands of ' cartloads of whole-
some instructions ' have been poured down upon the English drama,
and yet the footing seems as shaky as ever. Till at last one begins
to dread that the English drama is as perverse and incorrigible as
one's own private character, a domain where in the very nature of
things enormous strivings after perfection are scantily rewarded
with the most meagre, oblique, and miserable results ; where vast
efforts must be unceasingly expended only to obtain the poor
satisfaction of not having slipped very much behind our former
state.

Those who watched the English drama for the few years preced-
ing 1894 must have seen that it was moved by a new impulse, that
it was diligently setting about to render a truthful portrait of
English life, or at least of certain aspects and currents of English
life. Let anyone compare the published English plays of the years
1890-94 with those of the preceding generation, with the faded in-
sipidities of Eobertson, the lifeless punning witticisms of H. J. Byron,
the emasculated and hybrid adaptations from the French which
held our theatres from 1860 to 1880 — let anyone make this com-
parison, and I do not think he will charge me with taking too
sanguine a view of the situation when in the autumn of 1894 I
announced The Renascence of the English Drama.

The ink in my pen had scarcely dried when a series of letters
appeared in The Times assailing the leaders of the English dramatic
movement, assailing The Second Mrs. Tanqueray and other plays as
subversive of English morality, and clamouring that the national
drama should again be raised to its proper level of a Sunday School
tale, and to the chaste dignity of Madame Tussaud's. The Times,
that in its current first-night notices had praised the very plays upon
which the onslaught was made, turned round and severely condemned

1903 LITERARY CRITICS AND THE DRAMA 6] 5

them in a leading article summing up against the whole movement.
We all know what happens in our blissful realm when instincts
which would make the fortune of an inspector of nuisances proclaim
themselves the supreme magistrates in art, and scourge their pos-
sessor to run amuck in aesthetics. Very little was seen or heard of
the English drama for the next two or three years. The English
playgoer, having taken two or three shuddering peeps at humanity
in Ibsen's and his imitators' mirrors, declared the likeness to be a
horrible libel and ran affrighted away.

There followed two or three years of gay revellings in cape and
sword, mere holiday burlesques with phantom fighting men for
heroes, with no relation to life, with no pretence to human por-
traiture. When our cape and sword junketings had somewhat
abated, an era of pretty sentimentality began to dawn ; always a
useful era for fathers of families; very deservedly successful, very
deservedly praised. For no one who has our national well-being at
heart can but wish that many, nay, let us say that most of the
entertainments at our theatres shall be such as children and young
girls can be taken to without any feeling of discomfort or alarm ;
providing that the dramatist is not thereby shut out from dealing
with those darker and deeper issues of life which are freely discussed
and probed in the Bible, in Shakespeare, in the Greek tragedies, and
indeed in all great literary and pictorial art ; providing that the
dramatist is not defamed as a malefactor when he declines to put
himself on the level of an illustrator of children's fairy tales. We
are here brought naturally into the one path where all discussion on
the English drama inevitably leads — that is, to the distinction between
popular entertainment and the art of the drama. Only so far as this
distinction is recognised and enforced can we set out to have a
national English drama.

To sum up the last ten dramatic years in one sentence, we may
say that we have passed from the raptures of ardent morbidity in
1894 to the graces of soppy sentimentality in the present year; we
have exchanged a dose of drastic purgative for a stick of barley-
sugar. Now neither black draught nor barley-sugar can long
furnish the staple diet of man ; neither ardent morbidity nor soppy
sentimentality can give forth a great spirit to possess and inform a
national drama. For both ardent morbidity and soppy senti-
mentality are alike far removed from that large and wise sanity, that
keen clear view of men and women, that clean delight in the healthy
savour of humankind, which are surely the distinctive mark of
the English people, which are equally the distinctive mark of the
greatest English literature, and which we may confidently prophesy
will be equally the distinctive mark of our English drama — if we
ever get one.

Now it seemed to me in reading Mr. Oswald Crawfurd's article of

s s 2

616 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

last December that he had really seized upon the supreme points
at issue when he explicitly asked, ' Why is English literature so
estranged from the English drama? Why does such fierce and
unnatural hatred exist between parent and child ? Is there any way
of bringing them together again ? '

Mr. Oswald Crawfurd glances across to France and sees there a
national drama not only akin, but indeed largely identical with
contemporary national literature. Ask at the smallest railway book-
stall in France for L'Aiglon or Cyrano de Bergerac, and you will
be handed the two hundred thousandth copy. Inquire in England
for a copy of some play upon whose representation the English-
speaking public has perhaps expended some two hundred thousand
pounds, and you will find that in print it can scarcely toddle into
a poor second edition. Here I imagine that nobody will be so
obliging as to give me the chance of this retort : 'Oh no ! The
mere absence of literature from a modern English play is no reason
why it should not sell in its thousands. Look at our bookstalls ! '

No, the truth is that play-reading is a habit, not very difficult to
acquire when once the shorthand of it is mastered. It must be
allowed that the technicalities of stage directions and descriptions of
the scene are tiresome and confusing to the inexpert reader. Rather
than perplex the reader, it is better to omit them as far as possible,
and trust to the dramatist's one and only weapon — his bare dialogue.
It has been suggested that readers might be won for English plays
if the stage directions were expanded in a literary way, the dialogue
being imbedded in full explanatory narration and description. The
experiment is worth trying, and might lead to interesting develop-
ments. I incline, however, to drop stage directions altogether in a
printed play. What more do we want when we open Macbeth than
' A blasted heath. Thunder and lightning. Enter three witches ' ?

I repeat that it is chiefly the mere habit that needs to be acquired ;
the reader will soon learn to slur and skip the bothering stage direc-
tions. And when once the English people have acquired the habit
of reading plays, what then ? Well, put it at its lowest, to read a
foolish play will only consume from one-tenth to one-sixth of the
time that it takes to read a foolish novel, and forthwith the English
playwright becomes a great time-saving apparatus in a sorely driven
age.

But, indeed, the habit of reading plays must have another impor-
tant result. In France, as Mr. Oswald Crawfard perceives, the drama
is recognised as something distinct from the theatre. It has a power
and life of its own. In England the drama and the theatre are alike
mashed up in the common trough of popular entertainment. The
dramatist does not count in the least with the great body of play-
goers, except as a sort of journeyman behind the scenes, who in some
vague and ill-defined way hands to the actor his conjuring imple-

1903 LITERARY CRITICS AND THE DRAMA 617

ments. A play does not exist in England apart from its representa-
tion. If, from one of a thousand causes, that representation is faulty
or ill-directed, instantly the play dies and is no more seen. And
the one law that governs the whole business — namely, that the crea-
tion of the dramatist and the embodiment of the actor must be equal
and coincident, that the greater the creation the greater and more
embracing must be the embodiment (or some forcible-feeble fiasco
will be the evident result) — this law is not even suspected by English
playgoers. Now Mr. Oswald Crawfurd has perceived that the habit
of reading and studying plays, as is the custom in France, would
surely give a great spurt to a national English drama. For having
clearly seen and urged this and other kindred points, I think English
playwrights are considerably in debt to him. He is, I think, a little
wide of the mark when he says : ' At present the writing of plays
is in England a close profession ' ; and again, ' In France and Germany,
especially in France, there is no privileged enclosure, barred to the
outsider, for the professional playwright.'

Nothing can be further from the truth than to suppose that
playwriting in England is ' a close profession,' that there is any
' privileged enclosure, barred to the outsider.'

What are the facts of the case? Some few months ago Mr.
George Alexander gave the Playgoers' Club a chance of discovering
and displaying the quantity and the quality of outside dramatic
talent that was vainly knocking at managers' doors. What was the
result ? Again, Mr. Oswald Crawfurd must remember that almost
every literary man of the present and past generation, from Tennyson
and Browning downwards, has written plays and has offered them to
managers. Can the managers be so ignorant and so blind to their
own interest as not to accept and produce any play that has a chance
of success ? Mr. Oswald Crawfurd says that the reforms indicated in
his paper have for their object the breaking down of ' barriers that
now keep away from the writing of plays the men most competent
to write good ones.' In reply to this it must be urged that, what-
ever barriers there are, they cannot be said to have kept away from
the writing of plays any one single person, competent or incompetent.
Mr. Oswald Crawfurd is surely the only literary man in England
who can boast, or confess, or deplore that he has never offered a play
to a manager. One scarcely knows whether to envy, to congratulate,
to belaud and belaurel, or to sympathise with a writer in so astonish-
ingly unique a position. No, it cannot be too strongly asserted or
too widely known that there is no ' dramatic ring,' no ' close pro-
fession,' no 'privileged enclosure, barred to outsiders.' Ask the
managers, whose interest it is to hail and encourage the least sign
of rising talent.

But further, the behaviour of literature itself offers the surest
testimony on this point. Nothing can be more amusing or more

618 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

significant than the manner in which literary gentlemen of quite
respectable standing (such, for instance, as Mr. W. E. Henley) treat
the modern English drama, their alternations of contempt and
patronage, their sudden changes from the sincerest form of flattery
to the liveliest exhibitions of disappointment and jealousy and anger
— all this should surely offer some key to the situation. No, the
barriers between literature and the drama are not such as Mr. Oswald
Crawfurd supposes. ' Barriers ' of some kind there are, since we are
all agreed that modern English literature is scarcely represented in
our theatres ; that it is largely despised by our audiences ; that
nineteen out of twenty of the performances given in our West-end
theatres are not merely indifferent to literature, but are instinct with
brazen and blatant derision of it ; that these are the theatres which
are the most successful with the public, which meet on all sides with
the utmost goodwill and goodfellowship ; where the entertainment is
always sure of a long run, though it is as far removed from anything
that could be called literature as a corner public-house is from
Salisbury Cathedral.

These, then, are the facts. Where does the fault lie ? What are
the real barriers ? Now it must be granted at the outset that at no
time is it probable that the drama proper will again be able to
compete with popular entertainment on its own ground. The stars
in their courses are not with us in the present stage of civilisation.
Never again will an English dramatist draw such popular audiences
as the Elizabethan dramatist could gather round him from the
sweepings of the streets. One of our present mischiefs is that the
English dramatist is bidden to try and hit two different bull's-eyes
with one shot ; he is commanded by his public and the press to meet
opposing sets of conditions, to minister to widely opposing tastes.
And seeing that the drama must always be a popular art — a popular
art, not a popular entertainment — seeing that a half-empty theatre
of itself makes a bad play and bad acting, he can only live at all by
drawing a certain number of crowded paying audiences around him.
If he shoots wide, he most likely hits neither of the bull's-eyes.

I think, however, it may be claimed that there is in this great
nation of London, with its constant stream of visitors, an audience
sufficiently numerous to support an intellectual English drama. I
think there is a large body of public opinion waiting to be organised,
a large vague feeling of expectancy waiting to be informed and
directed, a general wish that the subject of a national drama should
be explored and experimented upon. I have already thanked Mr.
Oswald Crawfurd for having struck his finger on the central spot, the
want of any definite understanding between our literature and
drama.

He goes on to make practical suggestions for a future drama.
And here I think an examination of his proposals will give us an

1903 LITERARY CRITICS AND THE DRAMA 619

insight into the whole matter, will show us exactly what the real
' barriers ' are and where they lie. Mr. Crawfurd perceives, that
modern audiences are more and more grudging of the time that they
will give to sit out a performance. The lateness of the dinner hour
has something to do with this ; the hurry of modern life, the value
of time, are also to be taken into account. But neither of these is
the governing factor.

What, then, is the governing factor ? Audiences will sit with no
sign of impatience from eight till twelve or half-past to see Sarah
Bernhardt, or Rejane, or Salvini, or a Wagnerian opera. They will,
under quite special conditions, sit nearly all day to see the Passion
Play. To put it briefly, audiences will sit as long as they can see
great acting in interesting plays. But no matter what great or
interesting play has been written, audiences will not sit to hear it
for one moment unless it is being acted in a great and interesting
manner. Then the whole of the credit is due to the actor, after all ?
Not a bit of it ; just his fair share, which is usually about half of
his one character, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less,
but usually I suppose about a half. And this brings us to the
unfolding of the law I have previously glanced at, the law whose
existence is not even suspected by English playgoers, viz. : ' It is not
what the playwright has written or intended that audiences see, but
only that part of it which is vitalised by the actor, vitalised in
accord with the playwright's design, vitalised in such a way as not to
unbalance or distort or obliterate that design.'

We begin to see the first great pitfall that eternally awaits the
playwright.

Ascend some mountain when the clouds are gathering round its
summit ; look down through the constantly shifting gaps ; see little
islands of green down below ; little ribbons of road leading nowhere ;
great cities being wholly blotted out, or only guessed at from the
fragments of spires and pinnacles that float unbuttressed on the
vapour; mist, mist, mist, and uncertain drifting everywhere. Try
to form some idea of the landscape, some coherent picture of what
lies before you, then try to piece together the picture that the
playwright has graven when it is blurred by bad acting and bad
stage management.

The main thing to note with regard to the length of a play is
that audiences will sit for four hours providing that the acting is
vital enough to keep them in their seats. And I think that herein
lies one superior attraction of the French theatre which Mr. Oswald
Crawfurd has failed to mention, in that our neighbours have a far
greater number of great natural actors and actresses than our
English stage can show, while in point of general average training
and technique we dare say nothing, and in saying nothing we
say all.

620 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

Therefore underlying the whole situation is this fact, that in the
absence of a reading public fine or great plays can only be produced
in direct proportion and relation to the number of fine and great and
trained actors who are available to interpret them. I hope I shall
not be represented or misrepresented as complaining of the actors
and actresses who have interpreted my own plays. I do indeed
owe a debt of gratitude to those who have so loyally, and so
patiently, and in some instances so magnificently introduced my
work to the English public. Let me hasten to record this immense
debt of general gratitude ; let me at any time be called upon to
make specific acknowledgment in any of those numberless instances
where splendid stage talents have been ungrudgingly employed with
the happiest results for myself.

This must not lead us away from the broad fact that we have
nothing like so many or such highly trained actors and actresses as
can be found in France ; and that the future success, and indeed to
a large extent the future writing, of high-class plays depends chiefly
upon our obtaining an adequate supply of highly trained comedians.
I saw a modern play at the Franpais. It held me throughout
the evening and gave me a constant illusion of being in the best
French society, and of overseeing a wonderfully interesting story. I
afterwards saw the same piece at a West-end London theatre, the
characters and scenes remaining French. It was played by some
well-known actors, not indeed of the very first rank, but yet quite
efficient according to our notions. The whole thing was dull, false,
feeble, vulgar, and impossible from beginning to end. Now all that
difference lay in the acting and stage management. Yet it was
impossible to blame the actors; they did not give what could be
detected, even by experts, as bad or lifeless performances. It was
only the comparison with what I had seen at the Franpais that
enabled me to say that the play was really ruined by the acting. If
it had been the first performance of a comparable play of English
life, the actors would have been praised for doing their best in what
was obviously a hopeless piece, and the author would have been
blamed. And nobody could have impugned this judgment, since
nobody can be blamed for not seeing what is not there. Most
regular playgoers, I suppose, saw the delightful performances of
M. Capus' La, Veine and Les Deux Ecoles at the Garrick last summer.
Loud admiration was expressed on all sides. ' So then real life can
be made interesting on the stage, after all ! ' Yes, when it is
superbly played by such artists. One dreads to think what kindred
pieces would look like on the English stage.

But it is not merely the lack of a large trained body of actors
and actresses with great methods that stunts our English drama.
We have great actors and actresses among us, great artists too ;

1903 LITERARY CRITICS AND THE DRAMA 621

nobody can more willingly offer more convincing testimony on that
point than myself.

But how is it that so many of these, and those in the highest
places, are never seen in English pieces by recognised English
authors ? This is a question upon which English playgoers have a
right to press for enlightenment. A generation or two ago it was
the custom of the leading actor to buy a piece outright, generally
an adaptation from the French ; he was then at liberty to put it in
a box, or put it on the fire, or put it on the stage with such altera-
tions as his judgment, or policy, or vanity might dictate. Now it is
very plain that the rise of a national English drama must put an
end to transactions of this kind. It is not a question of whether in
many cases the actor's judgment and instincts may not be surer
than the author's ; very often, and especially in what is immediately
effective with an audience, the actor is able to offer most valuable
suggestions. And, speaking for myself, I make it an invariable rule
in this and other matters to accept advice when it coincides with
my own opinion.

But very often the necessities and advantages and well-being of
the play are not in the least identical with the necessities and
advantages and well-being of the leading actor's reputation. And
this fact to a large extent, to an extent that is daily growing
larger, has separated the best English plays from their best possible
representation, perhaps from the only adequate representation of
them. English playgoers are herein the losers, and it is they who
must finally adjudge the dispute. But it is quite clear that if we are
to have an English drama, it can only be settled one way ; it is nob
a matter of fees, or of self-importance, or of precedence, it is a
matter where a just pride in one's art will always spring up so long
as there is any life in the art at all.

Bat further, not only is the training of our actors and actresses
deficient and slovenly, but the state of affairs is every day tending to
grow worse. Mr. Benson's and Mr. Ben Grreet's are now the only
repertoire companies left on the English stage. It is a remarkable
fact that nearly all the most striking recent successes, both in
modern and poetic drama, have been made by members of Mr.
Benson's company — that is, by actors who have had the advantage of
constant, hard, and varied training ; who have not grown mannered
and careless and lazy in the comfortable and ignoble shelter of a
long run.

From all this I hope it is apparent that a concurrent, if not a
primary move in the production of good plays is the foundation of
an academy, or training school or schools for actors, so that an
adequate interpretation may be ensured. Otherwise good plays, even
if written and produced, will merely fall dead and leave no seed.

G22 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

I have elaborated this point because I am sure it should be our
first practical step; all building of national theatres is at present
out of the question. The first great practical move to be taken in
dramatic reform is somehow and somewhere to provide training
grounds for young actors or actresses. The first great ideal, never
quite to be realised, but always to be upheld and impressed upon
playgoers, is the separation of the art of the drama from popular
entertainment.

I have left until now Mr. Oswald Crawfurd's suggestion as to the
way of meeting the supposed demand of English audiences for
shorter hours at the theatre. I have shown that this is to some
extent a demand for more vital and continuous interest on the stage.
But doubtless a shortening of the time, say from nine till eleven, is
desired and would be welcomed by a large body of our playgoers.
Mr. Crawfurd suggests that the first act of our plays should be
omitted, and that in lieu of it the author should write a narrative
prologue giving the substance in one literary speech.

It is just possible that this might be done successfully for once
in a way, as a tour deforce. But it is quite certain that nothing but
a hybrid, infertile form of art could issue therefrom. If anyone
wishes to write narrative poetry, let him do it ; there is still a great
field open. If anyone wishes to write drama, let him do it, or try to
do it. But if the piece has to be shortened let it be shortened
according to the rules of its own art. Will Mr. Crawfurd forgive my
telling him that no man should think himself a dramatist until he
can so condense and compress his dialogue that behind it is hidden
and packed up a narrative of greater volume than the dialogue
itself? I do not say that the main outline of the entire story may
not often be given in half a dozen words ; but I do say that whatever
is essential for the audience to learn must by suggestion, by im-
plication, by side-lights and contrivances, be given by the dramatist
in dialogue which shall convey all necessary facts of history, all neces-
sary facts of character, all relations of the persons in the play to one
another and to the main theme — shall do all this in far fewer words
than would be used by a story-teller in telling the same story in the
third person. And therein lies the art of the playwright ; therein
lies his peculiar technique, which I affirm is more difficult to master
to-day than the technique of painting, a technique which every man
who hopes to be a painter will willingly give many years to learn.

So that whatever reduction it is advisable to make in the length of
plays should be made within the rules of the art of play writing — that
is, by further compressing the story. What is perhaps the greatest
story that was ever told on the stage, the Edipus Tyrannus, is not
sensibly longer in words than Box and Cox, and it contains far more
story and action.

I think that English playwrights, guided by the loud entrances

1903 LITERARY CRITICS AND THE DRAMA 623

of late-comers in the stalls, are learning this necessary lesson of
compression. In this connection let who will glance at the first act
of Tartuffe, which is all exposition, and contains no action to speak
of. But Mr. Oswald Crawfurd thinks that the practice of writing
prologues would make us ' literary.' At best it could only teach us
to write narrative poetry or narrative prose, and it is not these but
national drama that the English nation is supposed to lack just at
present. So that Mr. Oswald Crawfurd's reform would really draw
off our forces from our own proper work. Now a change of work is
alluring and beneficial, but, speaking for myself, I fear that all the
poor literary skill I possess outside of play writing may be mortgaged
in framing gentle entreaties and admonitions to the editor of the lead-
ing journal, touching the elementary courtesies of dramatic criticism.

There is one sentence in Mr. Crawfurd's article which illumines
the whole matter. Mr. Crawfurd says : ' Stagecraft is an art, and an
important one, but literature is a far greater one, and only a great
writer could write a great prologue.' Just so, but only a much
greater writer could write a great drama. And it is here a question
of writing drama, wherein skill and practice in writing prologues
will help us scarcely at all. True it is that literature is a far greater
art than mere stagecraft, but what we are seeking to produce is not
stagecraft, but stagecraft that shall be also literature. Here I think
Mr. Crawfurd in unconsciously opposing literature to stagecraft has
disclosed the whole situation, has disclosed what and where are the
real ' barriers ' between literature and our drama. For the benefit
of English literary men who wish to write plays, and of English
literary critics who wish to discuss them, these ' barriers ' may be
conveniently pointed out.

English literature, then, can be seen on the present English stage
under the following conditions :

(1) The writer must have some natural instinct for the stage,
some inborn gift for the theatre.

(2) He must patiently learn the technique of the stage, a
technique I believe to be far more difficult and exacting to-day than
that of painting, which everyone will allow is not to be acquired
without years of study and practice.

(3) His literature must inform and exhibit a strong, moving,
universal story ; and must do this in a casual unsuspected way, as
if the writer were unaware and unconcerned about it.

(4) His literature must be so broad and human that it can be
instantly apprehended and digested by the boys in the gallery ; who
will else begin to hoot him, and prevent his play from being heard at all.

(5) His literature must be so subtle and delicate that it will tickle
the palates of literary critics in the stalls ; who will else proclaim
him to be a vulgar mountebank and impostor, practising the cheapest
tricks of moneymaking.

624 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

(6) His literature must exactly fit the mouths, and persons, and
manners, and training of the various members of the company who
are to deliver it ; or it may appear to the audience in some in-
conceivable guise or disguise of quaint imbecility.

(7) His literature (in a modern play) must be of that supreme
quality which is constantly and naturally spoken by all classes of
English men and women in everyday life, it must be obviously and
frankly colloquial ; or the writer will be instantly convicted of arti-
ficiality and unreality in a matter where everybody is an expert.

(8) His literature must be of that kind which will immediately
bring at least eight hundred pounds a week to the box office, in
addition to the costs of production ; or his manager will be hastily
advanced to the bankruptcy court.

These, then, are eight of the ' barriers ' between literature and the
drama. And after this explanation I do not think it will be fair
for literary men or literary critics to speak of a ' close profession/ a
' dramatic ring,' ' a privileged enclosure, barred to the outsider, for
the professional playwright.'

At different times I have had through my hands manuscript
plays of men whose names are eminent in literature, men of high
dignity in the Church, men of the highest renown in science, and
they have generally shown an entire ignorance of the conditions I
have laid down above.

After this I hope we may beg that literature will cease to flout
and despise the modern drama, and will try to understand what our
difficulties are ; how tough is the battle we are fighting with
vulgarity, with theatricality, with the prevalent lust for senseless
and sensual entertainment, with all the forces that are ranged on
the side of sprawling licentiousness.

I take it for granted that it is desirable to have an English
drama. How strange it would be if an English painter could by
any possibility moot such a question about his art ! Yet the drama
is in itself far more searching, instant, and operative than painting,
or indeed than any of the other arts, far more potent for intellectual
ferment and life. Surely in any well-ordered community the drama
should be the most alive of all the arts.

As Mr. Oswald Crawfurd has shown, in France the national
•drama is a live part of the national literature. That is because
French literary men love and understand their drama ; are jealous
for it, instead of being jealous of it ; jealous and ignorant of it, and
fitfully contemptuous, as they are in England.

Now if the English nation desire to have a drama, the way to it
is very plain ; very plain and straightforward, though it must be
owned it will be very difficult and hard of ascent. I have here
indicated some of the difficulties, and I have pointed out what
should be our first move — namely, to start a training school for our

1903 LITERARY CRITICS AND THE DRAMA 625

rising actors. I fear there can be no training school for playwrights ;
' therein the patient must minister to himself.' I hope, as I have
leisure, to deal with other difficulties and misunderstandings as they
may arise. My excuse for again vexing the public must be that
some of the most important matters are in their essence quite
different from what they appear to be, and can only be truly
weighed and estimated when they are approached with a practical
knowledge of the stage from within. It is true that any man who
looks at a watch can tell whether it goes or no ; but it is only the
practical watchmaker who can explain why it does not go, and
thereupon can mend it and start its working.

One word more of thanks to Mr. Oswald Crawfurd for having
brought this matter forward ; and again another word of thanks to him
for his defence of the English drama from the foolish cleverness of the
critic who ' writes down every play and playwright. It is pretty
sport to him, and to his readers, but the drama suffers. All this is
very commendable on the understanding that the British drama is
a noisome monster, and to be ended at all price ; but it is deplorable
in the extreme for those who would like to believe that one day it
may live and prosper in the land.'

That is well put, and needs to be remembered. I do not wish to
hark back to personalities in a case where already they have been
too freely used. But perhaps a natural resentment may be forgiven
to him who in the sweat of the battle is met by one with a pouncet-
box, whose only part in the fight is to sneer at the soldiers, and to
call them ' unmannerly, untaught knaves.'

The affair has larger aspects and implications than those which
are merely personal. What are the qualities which an English
dramatist may reasonably look for in the man who is sent to judge
a work that has cost some six months' incessant toil to himself, a
month's toil and anxiety to all the company, and perhaps one or
two thousand pounds to the manager in its production ? Surely the
English playwright may ask that in matters of technique he shall be
judged by one who understands the numerous intricacies and
difficulties of his craft ; in matters of literature and art by a com-
petent student ; in matters of morals by a sane and virile Englishman ;
in matters of taste by a person of taste ; in matters of manners by one
who is on easy terms with the different classes of English life ; in
matters of fact ,by an honest reporter. And seeing that it is only
by sympathy that any critic can hope to gain either insight or
permanent influence, seeing that all destructive criticism is vain
and stifling toil on the dustheap of Time, it is assuredly not un-
reasonable for English dramatists to hope that the leading English
journal shall appoint a critic who has some natural and instinctive
liking for the art ; some faith and hope that the English drama may
again become a great art, worthy of a great nation. Surely the first

626 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

sovereign quality in a critic is a sympathetic attitude towards the
art that he criticises. The other qualities and accomplishments I
have named, although they are various, are not rare among English
journalists; if I do not name any one of our present judges who
possesses them, it is only because it might seem a slight to others
who have an equal claim. Not to pursue the matter further than is
necessary, I will not, unless I am challenged, touch upon any of the
various qualifications I have named, except only the one that refers
to literature.

Mr. Oswald Crawford asks the most pregnant and pertinent
question that can be asked in the present condition of our stage :
' Why are our literature and our theatre so estranged ? Why are
our greatest men of letters absent from our theatre, absent as creators,
absent as critics ?' He asks that question in the most sympathetic
way, and throws out one or two suggestions which on examination do
not prove to be very practical. But his merit is that he has raised a
vital question, not that he has attempted a faulty solution of it.
Surely a review of his article should have recognised the value and
importance of his inquiry. All that I can remember of the Times'
review of Mr. Oswald Crawfurd's article is a clever and destructive
raid upon his proposals, with no perception of the real matter at
issue. And when Mr. Oswald Crawfurd suggests, what is surely a
most desirable thing, that eminent men of letters should be invited
to our first nights, the whole question is dismissed, so far as I can
recall, with a jest about Mr. Lecky writing a notice of Charley's
Aunt. What is the meaning of that ? How is it relevant ? In
what country would anyone comparable to Mr. Lecky be expected
to write a notice of a play comparable to Charley's Aunt ?

I would not have touched this point had it not supplied an exact
illustration of the methods, constantly pursued in the Times sup-
plement, of dealing with questions relating to the drama. I
understand that these are ' impressionist ' methods, and then again
that they are the methods of a ' critic's critic.' A critic's critic is
then something immensely raised above the ordinary critic ? I do
not know what position I may rightly claim for myself in this matter,
seeing that I am the critic of a * critic's critic.' Apparently that
should be a loftier station still. Let me disclaim and decline it.

But, to conclude the whole matter, let me render a sincere
tribute to the brilliant, clear, incisive literary style in which these
methods have been displayed, superficial and mischievous as they
appear to me, harmful as I think them to the best interests of the
drama, and, so far as they are operative, wholly destructive of any
advance or development.

And in the hope of withdrawing all personal animosities let me
cordially thank the editor of the Times in that, having proclaimed
me throughout the civilised world as a libeller of his paper and his

1903 LITERARY CRITICS AND THE DRAMA 627

critic (see Times, the 7th of March 1903), he has, up to the present,
kindly refrained from visiting me with my due legal punishment.

Let me with still more abundant gratitude acknowledge his
goodness to my art in giving so much prominence and consideration
week by week to dramatic matters. It is only by constant and
fearless (and I hope good-natured) discussion of our difficulties that
we shall reach to the end we all have in view, the gradual establish-
ment of the English drama, its gradual recognition by English
playgoers as a fine art.

HENRY ARTHUR JOXES.

628 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

THE GOSPEL OF MR. F. W. //. MYERS

MR. MYERS'S work on Human Personality, though it is interesting
and suggestive in many incidental ways, is an astounding monument
of misapplied talents and speculation ; and if it can be said to have
logically any tendency at all its tendency is to confirm the very
conclusions which its writer has laboured to overthrow. It is,
however, well worth examining. I shall begin with a brief analysis
of its thirteen hundred closely printed pages, for which most readers
should be grateful as a guide to its bewildering labyrinths.

The great task to which Mr. Myers has addressed himself is to
prove, by inductive and experimental methods, that the soul of man,
or the essence of the personality of the individual, is distinct from
the organism through which alone it normally reveals itself. If this
is to be proved, as he very properly says, we must begin with a
study of personality as normal observation gives it to us. Mr.
Myers, in fact, at starting is the type of the ordinary scientist.

What then, he asks, is our personality seen to be when modern
science submits it to physiological and psychological analysis ? The
pre-scientific view, he says, was the view expressed thus by Reid : that
' the identity of a person is a perfect identity. A person is a monad
and is not divisible into parts.' This view, says Mr. Myers, science
rightly rejects. Modern science, he continues, has proved con-
clusively that whatever else human personality may be it is an
elaborate co-ordination of the parts of the physical organism, of
which organism the brain is the supreme representative. But, says
Mr. Myers, this view, though indubitable, if we accept it as a half of
the truth, is not true if we insist on taking it for the whole ; and
the previous view, though untenable if we regard it as the whole, is
true nevertheless if we accept it as expressing a half. Personality,
in fact, as we know it, is found, when adequately analysed, to be far
more complex than even current science believes it to be, for it unites
the simplicity of the pre-scientific idea of it with all the elaborate
co-ordination discerned in it by the modern scientist. Let us, says
Mr. Myers, before coming to the question of its simplicity, first make
ourselves familiar with the main facts of its complexity.

The first and most obvious of these facts is as follows : Whereas

1903 THE GOSPEL OF MR. F. W. H. MYERS 629

till recently the personality of man was regarded as something that
was bounded by the limits of the normal consciousness, we now know
(if I may quote some recent words of my own) ' that, like an iceberg,
which floats with most of its bulk submerged, the human mind, from
its first day to its last, has more of itself below the level of conscious-
ness than ever appears above it.' This is the great fact with which
Mr. Myers sets out. We now are aware, he says, that personality is
not ' unitary ' ; that it is not, according to the old-fashioned concep-
tion of it, something ' known with practical completeness to the
(ordinary) waking self.' There is one part of it which is above the
threshold of ordinary consciousness and another part which is normally
below it ; and the first he calls the supraliminal and the second the
subliminal self. The subliminal self is, in his opinion, the recipient
of all the experiences, thoughts, affections, and appetites derived by
man from his human and animal ancestors. The supraliminal self,
which is stimulated by the world of experience, and reacts on it, is
something thrown up above the surface by the self which is submerged
below. ' Being the result,' says Mr. Myers, ' of irregular accretions
in the past,' its unity 'is federative and unstable. It consists even now
only in the limited collaboration of multiple groups/ and what the
groups are which have thus become supraliminal was determined by
natural selection during the struggle of incalculable ages.

Thus far Mr. Myers's argument, even if some of his details are
questionable, is in perfect general accordance with that of the most
orthodox evolutionist; and instead of exhibiting any germs of
spiritualism it is what many people would call materialistic in the
highest possible degree. But at this point Mr. Myers makes his own
special departure. To the ordinary scientific thinker the subliminal
or submerged self is a complex of unconscious activities, which rise
naturally into consciousness as a bulb rises into a flower, thus
showing that consciousness, as such, is no necessary attribute of
mind. This it is that Mr. Myers will not admit; and in denying
this view he first enters a speculative region of his own. He asserts
that the subliminal self is not the unconscious part of the supra-
liminal, but is a separate conscious entity, and that the supraliminal
self is a separate entity also. The latter is as mortal and as depen-
dent on the physical organism as any man of science can say it is ;
but the former stands on a totally different footing. The organism
depends on it, not it on the organism, and for it alone Mr. Myers
claims immortality. How these two selves are related we shall see
better presently. We will first see how Mr. Myers seeks to prove
their dual existence.

He begins this task with an analysis of the self we know — the
supraliminal self of common life and experience — and here he
returns for the time to the ordinary methods of science, and to
many of its latest conclusions, with which he is well acquainted.

VOL. mi— No. 314 T T

630 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

I will henceforward state his argument as he himself has arranged it,
and will, for the reader's convenience, refer to his several chapters.

In Chapter II. he deals with the disintegration of the supra-
liminal self. He takes his facts and illustrations not from spiritual-
istic sympathisers, but from the records of well-attested cases in
French hospitals and elsewhere. He shows us how, under certain
normal conditions, the supraliminal self is split up into various
parts, and how, not infrequently, the personality of a single indi-
vidual actually divides itself into two personalities or more, each
with a separate memory and a widely different character. Amongst
a number of such cases he cites that of Felida — well known to the
whole medical world — who was two persons in one, and that of Miss
Beauchamp, who was four. This whole chapter, so far as it is a
collection of facts, will well repay careful study. Mr. Myers's own
inference from this is a very different matter. It is this : that the
disintegrable character of the supraliminal self shows that it is not
the true self, since it has no indissoluble cohesion, and that the true
self resides in the subliminal region.

In Chapter III. he pursues his argument further by reference to
the facts of what is commonly called genius. Here again his facts,
considered as facts, are interesting. The main characteristic of
genius, he says, is the remarkable spontaneity of its operations.
Thoughts, images, intuitions crowd into the consciousness of its
possessor, so that they seem to master him rather than he them.1
This process Mr. Myers calls ' the subliminal uprush.' The phrase
is a sufficiently good one, and his analysis of the facts is true.
Here again, however, his inference is another matter altogether.
He thinks that this ' uprush ' is the work of the true or fundamental
self, inspiring and stimulating the subsidiary self, if not in an
abnormal manner yet at all events to an abnormal degree. The
phenomena of genius, in fact, are, according to him, direct evidence
of the reality and separate existence of the subliminal self.

In Chapter IV. he discusses the phenomena of sleep, and draws
from them the same inferences. Sleep, he says, is a suspension of
the supraliminal consciousness, and a partial setting free of the
subliminal self, which is, he insists again, a separate self-existing
personality. The class of facts which prove this most conclusively
are the recovery in dreams of memories lost to the waking conscious-
ness, and the perception in dreams of events unknown to the waking
experience.2 To these must be added the refreshment produced by
sleep, which Mr. Myers attributes to doses of spiritual vitality
administered secretly by the subliminal self to the supraliminal.

In Chapter V. Mr. Myers deals with hypnotism. He has indeed

1 See section 610 for the manner in which Watt invented the steam engine.
The sections in Mr. Myers's two volumes are numbered consecutively.

2 See sections 413 and 4 21 A.

1903 THE GOSPEL OF MR. F. W. H. MYERS 631

referred to it in his chapter on disintegration, but a full account of it
he has postponed until he has dealt with sleep ; for hypnotism, he
says, is merely ' an experimental development of the sleeping phase
of personality.' This chapter again, as a collection of facts, is most
interesting, nor is there any reason for calling the facts themselves
in question. Mr. Myers sees in the deeper stages of hypnotism an
immediate access gained, by physiological means, to an underlying
life or entity, which is the real soul of man, and which, though it
communicates with us by means of the physical organism, uses this
organism as nothing more than an instrument to communicate know-
ledge to us which it has gained by means which are not physical.
In the subliminal soul we discover, according to Mr. Myers, the
reintegration of that humanity which supraliminally we have found
so disintegrable.

In Chapter VI. Mr. Myers deals with what he calls sensory auto-
matism. He means by this the internal generation of images, similar
to those produced in us by external objects, but which are not pro-
duced by the ordinary channels of sense. Here again we are in the
region of familiar facts. We know that the drunkard, in delirium,
sees snakes in his boots as clearly as though they were there and had
impressed themselves on the retina of his eye. With similar clearness
we see objects in dreams ; and in dreams, too. we hear noises and
voices, though they have not come to us through our ears. We know
also, from an experience which is wide though not universal, that
images and sounds similar to those which we perceive during sleep
are perceived by sane persons during their hours of waking con-
sciousness, just as the snakes are perceived by the victim of delirium
tremens, when there is nothing externally in the physical world to
correspond to them. These are hallucinations ; and to this class, says
Mr. Myers, in one sense or another, belong most of those phenomena
which are popularly classed as ghosts. But a careful examination of
the evidence with regard to these apparitions shows us, he continue?,
that they are separable into various groups. Some have no moie
significance than the snakes seen by the drunkard. Their origin is
within the skull. The physics of the brain will account for them.
Others again, he thinks, may be explained by a theory which, appar-
ently unknown to Mr. Myers, had already been propounded by the
late Mr. Laurence Oliphant. Every physical movement, according to
this theory, leaves some impress on all the objects surrounding it,
like the lines in which the voice records itself on the moving disc of
a phonograph : and these movements, with the things or persons that
cause them, can, under suitable circumstances, be reproduced in the
consciousness of individuals who are sufficiently sensitive. The
majority of ghosts can perhaps be disposed of in these ways, without
the necessity of invoking any theory which does not accord in charac-
ter with current scientific conceptions. But in addition to ghosts such

T T 2

632 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

as these there are others, which convey information of a kind which
shows that they are not merely phantom images, manufactured by the
brain, or revibrated from physical surfaces. But here again, says
Mr. Myers, the phenomena are of two kinds. Some of the cases, for
instance, in which one person sees the phantasm of another, or the
manner of the latter's death, may be explicable by the hypothesis of
telepathy. That telepathy is a fact Mr. Myers strongly insists ; but
it is not, in itself, he says, a fact more spiritual or hyperphysical than
light, nor does it point of itself to an intelligence independent of
matter. But there is, he says, amongst the phenomena we are here
concerned with, a special class which cannot be explained thus. For
example, the death of some distant person is occasionally announced
by the appearance of the same phantasm to several persons simul-
taneously, which could not be due to any series of telepathic brain-
waves ; and again the phantasm, on other occasions, presents itself to
the percipient not as though it were visiting him, but as though the
percipient himself had travelled to the scene of the tragedy. These
phenomena, says Mr. Myers, are explicable only as cases of self-
projection, as actual detachments of the subliminal self from the
physical organism with which it condescends to be associated.

In Chapter VII. he deals with phantasms of the dead, as distin-
guished from the phantasms of those who are living or in the act of
dying. He cites a multitude of cases from Mr. Gurney's book on the
subject, and ends with repeating afresh, on what he takes to be still
stronger evidence, the same conclusion that the previous chapter ends
with.

In Chapter VIII. he deals with what he calls motor automatism.
By this he means effects produced on physical objects through the
agency of living bodies, but not controlled by the personalities with
which these bodies are associated normally. Of such phenomena
table-turning is the most familiar example ; but the most important
are automatic writing and speaking, the object here affected being
the body of the medium himself. Of the latter kind he cites a number
of cases, the two most remarkable being these : the case of Helene
Smith,3 which Mr. Myers calls classical, and that of Colon el Grur wood,
the editor of the Duke of Wellington's Despatches.4 Of these I shall
speak presently.

In Chapter IX. Mr. Myers arrives at what we may call the climax
of his argument, and introduces us to the phenomena of ' trance,
possession, and ecstasy,' which are, he says, the highest and crown-
ing proofs of the divine, the hyperphysical, and the immortal
nature of man. Of ecstasy, indeed, he does not say very much.
His main concern is with trance and what he calls 'possession.'
Trance is the condition under which possession takes place ; and he
means by possession the temporary but complete expropriation from
* Section 835. 4 Section 861.

1903 THE GOSPEL OF MR. F. W. H. MYERS 633

a given brain of both the two selves — the supraliminal and the
subliminal — of which it is the normal home, and the temporary
occupation of it by a personality wholly different. It differs from
motor automatism in one way and in one way only. In this case
the possession of the brain by the alien personality is complete ; in
the other it is only partial. Here again Mr. Myers gives us many
examples, but he mainly relies on two, which form, when taken
together, the composite rock on which he builds his church. These
examples are the case of the Kev. Stainton Moses and Mrs. Piper.
Mr. Myers claims that if all other evidences of man's immortality
were to fail the phenomena exhibited through the mediumship of
this lady and gentleman would be enough to establish the fact that
discarnate souls exist, and can actually take possession of living
organisms (the normal landlords becoming for the time absentees),
and can, through their use of these organisms, communicate with
living persons. This being proved, he says, his whole case is esta-
blished. The soul is a spiritual unity, superior to and essentially
independent of the perishing physical body through which ordinary
science knows it.

But Mr. Myers has not ended yet. In his tenth and last
chapter he sums up in a philosophical form the general view of
existence to which his previous arguments must conduct us. He
gives us an outline of his religio-scientific gospel. To this singular
document I shall refer before I have finished ; but first let us
re-examine the ground which we have thus rapidly traversed, and see
what, when considered in the light of a dispassionate judgment, the
special facts amount to on which the new gospel is founded.

These special facts divide themselves into two classes. Firstly
there are those which, though novel, and still startling, are neverthe-
less attested by physiological and psychological science, such as the
fact of submerged mentation and the various phenomena of hypno-
tism. Secondly there are those which, though much evidence exists
for them, are nevertheless doubted or denied by the majority of
ordinary people. As for the former, they may be left to speak for
themselves presently. We need concern ourselves here with the
latter class only. It is impossible to discuss the evidence by which
Mr. Myers supports them ; but I will try to give the reader an idea of
their general character. They begin with mere apparitions, familiar
to the student of ghost stories — apparitions which are appearances
and never anything more. Then come apparitions of a kind equally
familiar to us — apparitions of persons living or in the act of dying,
whose appearance coincides with their death, or with some act in
their lives; and to these must be added pictures cast on such
surfaces as walls, and representing some distant event and the
moment of an actual occurrence. The character of such phenomena
as these needs no examples to illustrate it ; and they are not the

634 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

phenomena on which Mr. Myers lays most stress. These last are
what he calls ' veridical phantasms ' of the dead, as distinguished
from the living or the dying, ' sensory automatism,' ' motor auto-
matism,' and ' possession.' I shall illustrate them in order by the
best examples of them to be found in Mr. Myers's repertory.

(1) Helene Smith of Geneva — whose case Mr. Myers calls, as we
have seen, 'classic' — exhibited a series of phenomena which were
carefully studied at the time by Professor Flournoy, a well-known
scientist — a total disbeliever in spiritualism — who wrote a book about
her. This woman was capable of putting herself into a kind of
hypnotic trance, in which she declared herself influenced by a
variety of spirits. The most remarkable of her performances was an
account she gave of a vision of a mountain village in Switzerland, the
name of which, she said, was Chassenaz, of its syndic, Chaumontet,
and of its cur$, Bournier. Neither Mdlle. Smith herself, when
awake, nor any of those present, were even aware that such a village
existed ; but at last they discovered it on a map, and learnt that
thirty years previously a Chaumontet and a Bournier had been its
syndic and its cur6 respectively. It turned out, however, that Mdlle.
Smith had, in early life, stayed in its immediate neighbourhood.
Mr. Myers accordingly agrees with Professor Flournoy in attributing
her revelations mainly to the action of a submerged memory, which
reconstructed and visualised fragments of past knowledge ; and of
such reconstructions he regards this as a ' culminant example.' He
insists, however, that an element of telepathy was nevertheless
involved in it, and here it appears that Professor Flournoy agrees
with him. Mr. Myers, however, differs from Professor Flournoy in
asserting that the whole process, whether constructive or telepathic,
was the work of a subliminal self, independent of supraliminal.
This case therefore forms, he says, a fit introduction to cases in which
the action of the supra-physical subliminal self is yet more evident.
Of the character of such cases the following incident is an example.

(2) Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, brother-in-law to the illustrious
Darwin, assisted a Mrs. K., one of his intimate friends, in various
experiments with planchette. On one occasion was produced an
extraordinary series of writings, which at first did nothing but
bewilder the experimentalists. The supposed spirit, by whom the
movements of planchette were controlled, signed himself 'J. Gr./
and made a rude drawing of an arm rising above an indented line
and holding a sort of sword. The spirit said that the thing repre-
sented was given him on ' paper and other things,' and often abruptly
stopped, complaining of a pain in his head. He finally explained
that his name was Colonel Grurwood, that he had been wounded in
the Peninsular War, and had killed himself on Christmas Day forty-
four years ago. None of those present knew his name ; still less did
they know his history. The truth of what he had told them they

1903 THE GOSPEL OF MR. F. W. H. MYERS 635

not long after verified, and they then realised that the rude drawing
he had made was the crest accompanying the coat of arms which
had been granted him by the King for his gallantry.

(3) In the foregoing case the spirit revealed itself by influencing
the personali ty of the experimentalists, or rather of some one of them.
We now come to examples of possession — Mr. Myers's supreme
phenomenon — in which the personality of the experimentalist is
altogether extruded, and his or her organism completely occupied
by the spirit. The Kev. Stanton Moses, his acquaintance with
whom Mr. Myers says was ' epoch-making,' was ' possessed,' when in
trance, by a considerable variety of spirits — by a friend of Erasmus,
and by others who preferred the use of pseudonyms, such as ' Kector,'
* Doctor,' and ' Imperator.' On one occasion Mr. Moses had been
dining with some friends, one of whose guests was a lady — a stranger
to Mr. Moses — who had some months before, when visiting a con-
nection of the host's, been much attracted by a baby seven months
old. After dinner Mr. Moses, without any warning, went off into a
brief trance. Whilst he was in this condition the lady just referred
to was about to sit down on a seemingly empty chair, when Mr.
Moses exclaimed in a voice not his own, ' Don't sit down on it ! don't
sit down on it ! Little Baby Timmins ! ' On another occasion, whilst
staying in his father's house, Mr. Moses, when writing, was suddenly
possessed by * Rector,' who said he had a message from a certain dead
Mrs. Westoboy, who had pushed Mr. Moses down in a yard twenty-
nine years ago, on which occasion he was badly bitten by a harvest bug.
Mrs. Westoboy wished to say that ' gratification of bodily appetite had
cast her back ' in the course of her earthly pilgrimage ; and Rector
added that Mrs. Westoboy could prove her identity by her knowledge
of a trap door in the roof of a certain house. The trap door, of which
Mr. Moses himself knew nothing, was subsequently proved to exist.
But even more sacred to Mr. Myers than Mr. Moses was Mrs. Piper.
Mrs. Piper, when entranced, was possessed by various spirits, but chief
among them was one calling himself Dr. Phinuit, who took complete
possession of Mrs. Piper's body, and by means of it introduced, as
their interpreter, a succession of discarnate human beings. One of
these was a deceased American author, who mentioned a number of
facts which his friends recognised as correct, and who one day also
complained that his ' head felt bad,' and on another confessed that
when first he quitted the body he felt somewhat desoeuvre, but would
very soon ' find an occupation.' Another spiritual visitor was a
certain discarnate Ruthie, who conveyed the remarkable news that
she did not like ' her powders.' Another was Baby Kakie, who
wanted to ' see mooley cow,' who sent her love to ' Marmie,' who
liked ' big horsey, not little one,' and was on the whole very happy
in the bosom of her deceased grandmother. All these revelations,
according to Mr. Myers, deal with actual facts which were neither

636 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

known to Mrs. Piper herself nor could have been possibly transferred
to her telepathically by any other incarnate mind.

I give these stories as examples of the innumerable alleged occur-
rences on which Mr. Myers builds up his theory that man's hyper-
physical personality is a fact which can be scientifically demonstrated.
Now whether the facts themselves (apart from Mr. Myers's interpre-
tation of them) are well attested or not is a question, as I have said
already, which it would be idle to discuss here. For our present
purpose, however, it is not in the least necessary to assume that, so
far as they go, they are not substantially true. No procedure is more
essentially unscientific than to assume that no process actually takes
place in the universe other than those which science, in some formal
manner, has recognised. Indeed every fresh discovery which science
makes shows that the constitution of things, as potentially amenable
to inquiry, is complex to a degree indefinitely beyond our present
knowledge ; and this is especially true of the processes which are
immediately concerned with life. Our modern knowledge of
electricity, of the ether, and of the x rays constitutes a warning
against any undue haste in dismissing facts as incredible merely
because they are new and strange ; and the admitted reality of the
facts which reveal themselves to the hypnotist repeats this warning
with yet more special significance when we take it in connection
with the unscientific contempt which men of science once accorded
to mesmerism.

Accordingly that the living organism, and the brain as the
organ of thought, should operate in ways which may prove as new to
ourselves as wireless telegraphy would have proved to our great-great-
grandfathers, is not only not an impossibility, but is the soberest of
all sober likelihoods ; nor is there anything incredible in the idea
of an etheric telepathy, and other cognate perceptions of distant
things, which would, in a perfectly natural way, explain the larger
part of Mr. Myers's spiritualistic marvels, and at the same time show
that these marvels were facts. All perception, except touch, indeed,
is in a sense telepathic.

There is one theory only which science can not admit ; and this
is that anything of which it can take cognisance does not exist
or occur as an incident of the universal order. The essential
principle of science may, in short, be summed up thus : In each
fact or occurrence, however small, scientific omniscience would see
the history of the entire universe. It is this doctrine against which
the upholders of free-will protest, and which, without repudiating
science, they are continually attempting to reconcile with it. But
the attempt is vain. Contemporary thinkers, like Professor Ward of
Cambridge, imagine that they can accomplish this work by sub-
stituting what they call a spiritual universe for a physical, but their
attempts leave the difficulty essentially unchanged. So long as

1903 TEE GOSPEL OF MR. F. W. H. MYERS 637

we admit that the individual mind is not in itself the sum total of
all existence we admit that it is conditioned by causes which are
wholly beyond its control ; and whether we call them physical, or
mental, or ideal, the result is practically the same. The only theory
which renders free-will conceivable is a theory not of spiritual
monism, but of spiritual pluralism — a theory which postulates one
universal first cause, and then adds to this a multitude of personal
first causes which are independent of it.

Now which of these is the theory that Mr. Myers adopts ? We
shall see that, as a matter of fact, he alternates between the two.
In his method of argument he adheres to a theory of monism, and
only in this way gives his views the semblance of science. But so
far as his object is concerned, and in all his implied conclusions,
the theory he advocates is essentially pluralistic. He endeavours to
represent personality as a self- existent and independent first cause,
which is partially conditioned by its environment, but also in its turn
conditions it — influencing it by means of an energy which is
generated in the personality only, and which is accordingly outside
the sphere of science altogether.

He takes this step at a very early stage in his book ; and he
practically begs the whole point which he desires to prove by an
assumption which will strike all careful and unprejudiced readers as
being not only fantastic in respect of its general character but also
as gratuitously inapplicable to the facts which he invokes it to
explain. This assumption is that the part of the personality which
operates outside the limits of normal consciousness is not an un-
conscious substratum which wells up into consciousness, but is a
separate self with a constant and superior consciousness of its
own, and that it is, in fact, the true and immortal soul of man.

It is on this assumption of the independent existence of the
subliminal self that the whole structure of Mr. Myers's theory
depends. If we take the assumption away the entire theory
collapses. Let us consider then in what manner this initial
assumption is supported by him. And first let me show the reader
how the very terminology adopted by him reveals his instinctive
vacillation between two opposed theories, the scientific and the
mystical, and his desire to recommend the latter by hiding it under
a semblance of the former. The assumed superior self he calls, we
have seen, subliminal, or the self which is below the threshold of
ordinary consciousness. Now in speaking of it as below the threshold
he succeeds in persuading himself that his view of the matter at
starting coincides with the view of science, and he thus tacitly
conciliates the sympathies of the scientific reader. But what he
really means is concealed by this mode of expression. "What he really
means is that the subliminal self is not below the threshold of ordinary
consciousness, but is above its ceiling. It does not rise up into the

638 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

ordinary self, but descends into it as a visitant from above. As soon
as the nature of Mr. Myers's idea is properly grasped, whatever
plausibility it might have seemed to possess, disappears, and it stands
revealed to us in all its bizarre nudity.

On what scientific and psychological grounds then does
Mr. Myers ask us to accept this idea as true ? for it is to science
and psychology that he makes his first appeal. He really asks us to
accept it on no scientific grounds whatever. The hands are the hands
of science, but the voice is the voice of the visionary. It is impossible
here, and indeed it is quite unnecessary, to combat the contention
that as soon as a man falls asleep the observed phenomena of
dreams demonstrate or even suggest that a higher intelligence,
possessed of supernatural powers of knowledge, takes possession of his
brain, and becomes its master, whilst the normal self, which was a
function of the brain, effaces itself. It is impossible and unnecessary
here to combat the theory that the ordinary life of man is nourished
and maintained by a mysterious second self, which comes to him, like
Elijah's ravens, as soon as he closes his eyes — perhaps in his bed,
perhaps after dinner in his chair — and injects into his system some
hyperphysical nutriment. It is still more unnecessary to combat
this theory as applied to genius. To say that genius is an ' up-
rushing of the subliminal self,' if this means an uprush of the
unconscious into consciousness, is a very good description of what
observation shows us ; but genius in this respect is merely an
exaggerated example of something that takes place in the mind of
every human being. Ordinary thought is, of course, consciously
influenced by the action on it of external things ; but thoughts at
the same time are constantly rising up from within, out of the
bubbling fountain or cauldron of the living brain, with its hoard
of post-natal and ancestral experiences — thoughts which the
conscious self, even if we assume the will to be free, influences only
as an agent who watches and directs them, but has no more share
in originating them than a fireman with a hose in his hand
originates the water that streams from it. To explain genius by a
theory of a supposed superior self, which descends through the
ceiling, or pushes itself up through the floor, with new pieces of
furniture for the sitting-room of the self we know, is to indulge in a
fancy which facts do not even suggest, and which can only have
originated in a desire to support a foregone conclusion.

The fantastic nature of this theory becomes more evident still
when we consider the phenomena of hypnotism, which, Mr. Myers
has persuaded himself, afford us the strongest proof of it. The
supposed subliminal self as operated on by the hypnotiser, instead of
exhibiting any special independence or superiority, distinguishes
itself mainly by its docile and credulous slavery to the suggestions
of any chance operator. It is tricked by statements which would

]903 THE GOSPEL OF ME. F. W. H. MYERS 639

hardly deceive an idiot. There is, indeed, only one point at which,
according to Mr. Myers, it shows itself morally superior to the
lower self that is supraliminal. It will do almost anything that
the hypnotiser tells it to do, except what is morally wrong. Here it
shows its innate spiritual purity, and enables us to see that, unlike
its supraliminal companion, its moral course is always steadily
upwards. On this point Mr. Myers lays much stress, and here gives
a curious illustration of the manner in which he really reasons. He
observes on one occasion that the Eoman Catholic authorities of
to-day in dealing with alleged miracles do not by any means swallow
the evidences blindfold, but treat them with what he calls a ' species
of pseudo-candour.' 5 This is precisely what Mr. Myers himself does
here. He begins by admitting that there is a large body of evidence
which shows that criminal suggestion is operative on hypnotised
persons ; but all this he dismisses with the singularly insufficient
remark that the persons experimented on were of weak moral
character : 6 and he then goes on to deal with a case in which a highly
respectable subject put some sugar into somebody's tea on being
told by the hypnotiser that it was poison. Of cases like this Mr.
Myers disposes by adopting the theory that the hypnotised subject,
though amenable in good faith to all other suggestions, fails to be taken
in by suggestions of an immoral kind, and is all the while ' laughing
at the hypnotiser in his sleeve, being perfectly well aware that the
immoral act is a make-believe.' When his own express admissions are,
however, taken together, the utmost his argument comes to is that
hypnotised subjects cannot be compelled to act in a way which is con-
trary to the dictates of 'the normal waking conscience,' whatever
these may be. He entirely fails, indeed, to prove even so much as
this ; but even if he could prove it how much would it mean ?
Merely that the subliminal self, the separate and superior entity,
never sinks below the moral level of its perishable and inferior
associate, but rises or falls with, and is in fact determined by, it. It
is hard to imagine a clearer admission than this that the two selves
are the same self in different conditions, and not, as Mr. Myers
imagines, two independent beings.

Finally it remains to be noticed that Mr. Myers is totally unable to
describe the character of this entity in any definite terms, without
contradicting himself and imputing to it absolutely incompatible
attributes. He begins by representing it as the storehouse of the
organic history of the race, as the flower of terrestrial evolution, and
the terrestrial struggle for existence, whilst the supraliminal self is
merely a ' ripple on its surface,' or a reef thrown up by it above the
surface of the subliminal waters ; and yet he ends by representing it
as a hyperphysical spirit, whose origin is beyond matter and whose
functions are trans material.

5 Section 698. 6 Section 555s.

640 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

And this is the foundation, the starting-point of Mr. Myers's
whole ' spiritual theory ' — a theory which he claims to be founded
on facts of scientific observation. The best comment on it is to state
in a few words what these facts of physiology and psychology to
which Mr. Myers himself refers us really prove. What they really
prove is as follows : The living organism contains incalculably more
than the consciousness, normal or abnormal, is in any moment aware
of. As Mr. Myers himself shows us by the cases of unreasoning
terror which many people experience in the dark, or in crossing
open spaces, there are traces in us still of the experiences of the
cave-dweller and the terrified animal.7 He shows us also, by a
highly interesting example, how specific fears on a mother's part,
which had a definite origin in her experience, may be transmitted
to her offspring, divorced from any apparent cause. And in addi-
tion to this astounding inheritance which we bring with us into the
world at birth, from the moment that we see the light the brain is
receiving impressions from every part of its environment, not only
by means of the recognised organs of sense, but by other cognate
means of which at present we know little ; and of these impressions
a small part only are conscious. Between the conscious part of us
and the unconscious there is a constant cerebral interchange. The
subliminal self is a cellar of discarded memories, a mushroom house
of sprouting thoughts ; and if there is such a thing as telepathy
between one consciousness and another, between one unconsciousness
and another, there is, we must assume, a crypto-telepathy also.

How such processes as these may take place we can at present
only conjecture ; but in none of the ' spiritualistic ' phenomena
mentioned by Mr. Myers, for which he produces any serious
evidence, is there a hint of anything belonging to a sphere of exist-
ence other than that with which ordinary science deals. There are
none, indeed, to which the ordinary phenomena of nature fail to
afford parallels. All the senses, as I have said already, except that
of touch, are telepathic ; and the same event often reveals itself to
the senses, not as one event, but as split up into two — for example,
the flash and the sound of a distant gun — and neither reaches us till
both of them have past for ever. If, endowed with sight and hearing
of power sufficiently magnified, we could watch the earth to-day from
the star Vega, as from an opera box, we should not be watching
Mr. Balfour in the House of Commons, but the body of Christ
actually hanging on the Cross; whilst as for sound, as the lips of
Christ moved, we should be hearing not his voice but the roarings
of the primseval monsters. None of Mr. Myers's telepathic anecdotes
suggests an experience so strange and so startling as this ; nor do his
spiritual pictures on walls, representing distant events, suggest any-
thing which has not its analogy in the familiar phenomena of mirage ;

7 Section 526B.

1903 THE GOSPEL OF MR. F. TF. H MYERS 641

whilst had Mr. Myers only lived to see the development of wireless
telegraphy he would have realised how unnecessary and how childish
was the spiritualistic hypothesis whereby he seeks to explain the
fact that a telepathic message is capable of being conveyed to several
recipients simultaneously.

I say all this on the assumption that the majority of Mr.
Myers's anecdotes of telepathic messages, which reveal actual facts,
of his phantasms of the dead or living which convey actual information
not derivable through the ordinary channels of sense, are examples
of phenomena which do really occur. There is nothing in any of
these which so much as suggests that the personality is in any way
independent of the individual organism. They do but suggest that
the nature and the processes of the organism are at present known
to us only in a very partial way. They do nothing to suggest the
belief in a hyperorganic self, for which the organism is merely a
tool or a tenement. The absurdity of Mr. Myers's hypothesis is
emphasised by the vigorous logic with which he pushes it to a last
conclusion. His supposed subliminal or hyperorganic self — the mar-
vellous self which is the passive dupe of the hypnotist — is, according
to him, so far from being dependent on matter that it actually uses
matter in the manner ascribed to Omnipotence ; that it can sort and
rearrange the molecules of the material world, and manufacture for
itself the transitory but veritably molecular bodies of which Mr.
Myers contends that certain apparitions consist.8

Finally, in this connection there is one more point to be
noted. Mr. Myers, throughout the greater part of his work, seems
himself haunted by the suspicion that what I have just said may
be true — that the subliminal self after all may be merely a part of
the organism, and that its spiritual activities may be explicable in a
manner which will explain them away. Indeed, he almost admits
that such might be his final opinion, if it were not for the phenomena
of ' possession,' which gave him his supreme proof that personality was
separable from the organism, and thus put the stamp of validity
on all his former hypotheses. Let us consider these for a moment.

These phenomena of 'possession,' which, as we have seen, he
describes as ' epoch-making,' were revealed to him through two
individuals, Mr. Moses and Mrs. Piper ; and on Mr. Moses and
Mrs. Piper hang all his laws and his prophets. Of these two
persons I must content myself with saying this : Mr. Moses was,
as Mr. Myers himself tells us, not only constitutionally incapable
of weighing scientific evidence, but resented the very idea of re-
sorting to scientific methods. His whole attitude was one of awe-
struck credulity in the presence of his own powers, and the dis-
carnate spirits who took possession of his organism delivered no
message which was morally in advance of the mottoes in a copy-
8 Section 926A, vol. ii. p. 536.

642 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

book, or the memories of a well-read clergyman, nor conveyed to
him any information of a more memorable kind than that ' little
Baby Timmins ' was sitting in an empty chair ; that there was a
trap door in the roof of a certain house ; and that Mr. Moses him-
self had been once bitten by a harvest bug. Of Mrs. Piper, whose
character appears to be far superior to that of Mr. Moses, it is need-
less to say much, and for the following reasons : that she herself
repudiated the greatness which Mr. Myers threw on her, and main-
tained that her communications had their origin in a telepathic
knowledge, conveyed to her from living persons, and had nothing
to do with the discarnate spirits of the dead.

I have no space in the few pages at my disposal to pursue a
detailed criticism of Mr. Myers's arguments further. I will now,
therefore, pass on to a very brief examination of the general theory of
existence which Mr. Myers himself draws from them ; and if any-
thing were wanting to justify what I have said already the reader
will find it here. In case any archdeacon or canon, as I think
exceedingly likely, should feel tempted to quote Mr. Myers in
Westminster Abbey as a new scientific witness to the doctrine of
Christian orthodoxy, let me advise him to think twice before he acts
on this impulse. Mr. Myers's theory lends no support whatever to
what he contemptuously dismisses as the orthodoxy of the ' pulpiteer.'
It resembles the scheme of Buddhism far more than that of Christi-
anity. It is, indeed, as he himself says, a kind of Buddhism,
harmonised with scientific fact. Provisionally, then, Mr. Myers
analyses the Cosmos (in which he includes the sum total of all
existence) into three elements — the material, the etheric, and the
metetherial. The metetherial element pervades matter and ether,
just as ether pervades matter. It is the universal spiritual substance,
or world soul. Out of this individual spirits are fashioned, either as
self-evolved vortices or in obedience to the will of the world soul
acting as a supreme unity ; and life, as we know it, comes into exist-
ence only when one of these spirits ' descends,' as the Platonists say,
* into generation.' This doctrine does not apply to men only. Mr.
Myers contends that if it applies to man it applies equally to every
living creature — to the protozoa, the sponge, the fly, the louse, and the
monkey. It presumably applies also, though he does not say this,
to the vegetable. Every living thing has an independent subliminal
self, which vitalises its organism and survives it. All these selves
possess similar powers. All are potentially, even when not actually,
telepathic. ' Our kinship with the ape ' is the analogue of ' our kin-
ship with the angel.' Mr. Myers finds it, however, impossible to believe
that new spirits are being constantly evolved or created. Their number
remains the same, but they are constantly being incarnated afresh,
and are constantly undergoing a course of spiritual evolution, similar
to that which is revealed to us in the history of physical organisms.

1903 THE GOSPEL OF MR. F. W. H. MYERS 643

Thus all life is eternally working itself upwards to a point at
which the individual is either absorbed into the world soul or else,
by what Mr. Myers calls the ' metetherial ' grace of God, is in perfect
communion with it. Thus all sin, selfishness, cruelty, and sensuality,
together with all misery, become relative evils only. They are steps
on the way to God — a God whom all will reach after ages of
spiritual ' striving.' Here, says Mr. Myers, we have in its rude
outlines the new religious ' synthesis ' which is rapidly revealing
itself to the world, and which is to dissolve those difficulties in the
way of faith and hope which have come, with the rise of science, to
seem more and more insuperable.

And now let us ask what this synthesis comes to. In the first
place it starts with a double falsification of thought, which shows
how Mr. Myers throughout juggled with his own convictions. Of
the three elements which, according to Mr. Myers, go to make up
existence, the implied contrast between the first and the second
is unreal. Nobody in his sober moments knows better than
Mr. Myers himself knew, that matter and ether are fundamentally
the same thing, and that no man of science contrasts them except for
purposes of conversational convenience. For science ether is as
material as an apple dumpling. Secondly, in contrasting the etheric
element with the ' metetherial,' Mr. Myers introduces a fresh source
of confusion and illicit implication. He contrives to smuggle in a
multitude of mystical associations which, from centuries of use, cling
to the word ' etherial.' To have been honest he should have said
not ' metetherial ' but ' metetheric.' Had he only done this his specu-
lations would have shown themselves under a new aspect ; and he
would have seen the absurdity of speaking about the ' metetheric grace
of God.' Throughout the whole course of his work he is continually
giving us to understand that he regards the three intertangled worlds
as one, operating together in obedience to some supreme unitary
law, and yet this is the very conclusion which he is constantly
endeavouring to elude. As an observer, when he forgets the case
which he has passionately briefed himself to defend, and only con-
siders the evidence on its own merits, as it presents itself, he shows
us the spirits of the depaited as so inextricably connected with
their organisms that Colonel Gurwood and George Pelham still suffer
from headache, and are sometimes hardly able to make their com-
munications in consequence. He represents the metetherial world as
in constant contact with the etheric, and leans to the idea that the
subliminal self is continuous — that all subliminal selves in a certain
sense are one ; and all these conclusions reappear in his synthesis.
But he does not see what this really means. He does not see that it
is the abandonment of the only thesis that he values — the thesis that
each separate personality is a spirit or first cause in itself, and as such
is eternal. Early in his book he does indeed lay it down that the

644 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

great question of determinism and moral freedom is written across
the order of things to which it is his endeavour to introduce us ;
but he subsequently devotes to this question only two pages in
passing, and dismisses it with a suggestion which he thinks is
entirely new, but is really nothing else tban one of the most familiar
of subterfuges, and is utterly inconsistent with the tenor of his own
reasoning. In a word, he leaves the Cosmos — the life of the person-
ality included — a single and determined process, precisely as
science finds it. The utmost that his speculations do is to raise this
determinism as it were to a higher power ; while his theory of the
continuity of the subliminal self, and the all-pervading metetheric
element, out of which all lives emerge, is nothing but the theory
of what Professor Haeckel calls ' substance ' and what Mr. Spencer
calls ' the unknowable,' presented to us in fantastic terminology, and
reached by random flights through regions of fancy and super-
stition, which nevertheless bring him to the same end at last.

And in conclusion let me point out something which is more impor-
tant yet. Even if we were to adopt the theory of Mr. Myers in its
integrity it would be utterly fatal to the conclusion which he really
desires to establish. His ultimate object is to indicate for the life of
man a moral value and freedom of which science seems to divest
it ; but the actual result of his theory is to reduce it to a more abject
and meaningless condition than any to which it could be thrust by
any scientific determinism. In transferring the seat of man's moral
and spiritual dignity from the normal waking self to a second
subliminal self of which normally it knows nothing he leaves the
supraliminal life a meaningless moral vacuum. It is like a fire
which burns in accordance with determinate laws, except when the
subliminal soul occasionally comes in and pokes it ; and the subliminal
soul itself is in an even worse condition ; for its will, which Mr. Myers
endeavours to conceive of as free, is, as he himself admits, more at the
mercy of any chance supraliminal hypnotism than ever was that of a
child at the mercy of a tyrannical parent. Mr. Myers suggests that
human character in the future will be elevated to new heights by
means of hypnotic suggestion, that the weak will be nerved to efforts
of self-denial which are now rarely met with except amongst saints
and heroes. Should this prove to be the case our new hypnotic
redeemers will certainly be accomplishing their mission by means of
vicarious sacrifices, but the moral value of the results will evaporate
in the process of producing them.

W. H. MALLOCK.

1903

FROM THIS WORLD TO THE NEXT

There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins ;
Such harmony is in immortal souls ;
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Merchant of Venice, Act v. Scene i.

I HAD been at work all the past winter and was feeling some strain
on my nervous system. Daring the period of wild storms with
which the month of February last belied its mild entrance, I was
wrestling with the Synthese Subjective — that most mysterious and
abstract of all Comte's works. I was striving to master his meaning
in that fifth chapter, on Differential Geometry, all the more difficult
for me in that my Oxford studies had but touched the Calculus in
a cursory and inadequate degree. Tired with abstruse mathematics
late one night in my study, I dipped into the new encyclopaedic
work on Human Personality: and its survival of bodily death;
which, in spite of its huge bulk, small type, and rambling matter,
amused me in a way and set my brain in active motion. Without
feeling for its philosophical conclusions anything but a genial
wonder, I read on hour by hour through the interminable pile of
reports of abnormal nervous phenomena, many of which are plainly
of real scientific interest. But it is uncanny reading. And soon
after midnight I began to feel creepy and queer. I drew my arm-
chair round a bright fire of oak logs, and lay back dreamily to think
what it all meant.

Suddenly a sharp pang seemed to shoot through my brain. A
sense of surging of the carotid artery, followed with drumming of the
ears, then a feeling of the bursting of a vessel, and finally stupor
came over me as I lay back. I tried to rise : but was unable to
move. I tried to call: but could not utter a sound. I strove to
see what was nearest to me : but I had no sight. I was not quite
unconscious : but I dimly recognised that I was paralysed by a
sudden cerebral stroke.

VOL. LIII-No. 314 645 U U

646 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

How long I lay there I hardly know. But towards morning my
absence was discovered. They came to me : presently a physician
arrived ; assistants, nurses followed. I dimly understood that a
consultation gave small hope of recovery, and that little remained to
be done by human skill. In my state of languid stupor I very
faintly retained any coherent knowledge of what was passing around
me ; and any expectation, or any wish that seemed to wander across
what remained of my mind, was too fitful and too tenuous to leave a
definite impression. I was tranquil, weary, and ready for my last
sleep.

What days and nights passed thus I knew not. Day and night,
time, sensation, life, were all to me one quiet blank ; save that, from
time to time, I was softly conscious of dear ones around me, and of
the care with which I was tended. I sank into a more profound
slumber. Then I passed out of my last sleep : it seemed — into the
Infinite beyond.

A tiny murky speck, with a grey haze like smoke rolling round
it, as it fluttered in the ether, seemed to be the Earth that I had
left. But the Ether itself was bright with a light that was not
reflected from any sun : not radiated from any definite centre nor
from any luminous body. The ether was self-luminous, or rather
self-manifest, as if it were ' a bright effluence of bright essence.'
' Sight ' is too material a term to be applied to a mode of perception
that was entirely independent of eyes, and had no relation to what
men call the laws of vision. Then was revealed the constitution of
the planets ; first of Mars : a congeries of metals and gases having no
practical analogy to the behaviour of either on earth, and without
a trace of the beings that men call intelligent organisms. Jupiter
and the planets had but little to show in comparison with that
infinite splendour — that immeasurable multitude — those myriad
sounds — which filled the Universe.

The Universe itself was not filled with Motion. It was Motion .
It was not charged with Light. It was Light. It did not reverberate
with Sounds. It was Sound. The self-luminous Ether rang with
eternal clangours of tremendous harmony and volume. And the
mighty diapason of ubiquitous noises scintillated with the ever-
changing colours of the iris. In that transcendental world all that
men call sensations are interchangeable. The very Zodiacal Light
chants its hymns. The Music of the Spheres is iridescent. Light
was Space. Sound was Motion. Heat and Cold were not different :
nor were they opposed. They were but the systole and diastole
of one Essence ; itself uniform, motionless, unchangeable : and yet
eternally pulsating in one inexhaustible throb.

From the sun to the Pole Star, from Sirius to Cassiopeia, from
Orion to the Southern Cross, the interval seemed to be no measur-
able distance in space, nor was the transit one of any measurable

1903 FROM THIS WORLD TO THE NEXT 647

period of time. Space was Time: and the Firmament itself, of
countless and interminable Suns, was at once a point in Space as
well as a point in Time. Man's earthly Sun had sunk to a Star of
the eleventh magnitude. His light was but a twinkle beside the full
blaze of Vega or Capella in the fiery whirlwinds of whom it was a joy
to bask. For neither the abysmal cold of the most sunless depths of
the Heaven, nor the central incandescence of the mightiest of the
constellations, was other than delightful and natural. One seemed
to revel in the tornadoes of an astral volcano ; and to find rest in the
icy regions where the very ether had frozen into a liquid.

One seemed? who seemed? who felt? who saw? who passed?
What, or who, was I ? Individuality, personality, subjectivity, had
slipped off as easily as the dried husk they were now laying out for
burial. How childish, how brutish, how selfish, did it seem now to
conceive of any me ! There was an end of ME, with its outlook of
blind kitten or wriggling earth-worm. Should it be rather We — was
I now a Gas, a Force, an Emanation ? Should it be rather They ? —
was I an indefinite unit of a limitless Power extended in Space, and
contemporaneous with all Time ? The pettiness, the feebleness, the
squalor of the sense of being ME was too evident. A more glorious
We took the place of ME : and WE in turn became THEY ; and
THEY in a flash became ALL.

What a miserable insect should I have been in this immeasurable
Universe if, by a miracle hardly conceivable of Omnipotence, the
individual ME had survived ! Personality was all very well in the
muddy speck men call their Earth : dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
But in the blaze of an Infinite Universe, scintillating in its every
atom with unquenchable light, throbbing not with momentary sensa-
tions, but with ideas, ideas intercommunicable from one point in
the boundless All to every other point, without need of language, and
without effort, act, or delay — to drag up into this Immensity the
soiled rags of 'human personality' — 'twould be better to be the
parasite of the anopheles gnat, spreading death and disease in its
passion for blood. When the entire Universe is continuously and
eternally apparent as a whole ; when all its infinite and interminable
ideas are simultaneously cognisable throughout its limitless field ;
when Motion is extinct, by reason that everything is everywhere,
and Sound is swallowed up in one endless circumambient Harmony,
then, assuredly, there is no place left for Sight, Hearing, Speech, or
Thought. The wretched makeshifts of human sensation are as
meaningless and sterile as the eyes of a mole. In this new world
the craving for Personality is seen to be a sordid lust of the flesh.

The transition from the dusty, cribbed, and fetid prison of the
Body to the radiant immensity of the Universe, wherein all the uses
of bodily sense, and all the notions of terrestrial mind are meaningless
and void, was a change so sudden and tremendous that it could not

TJ u 2

648 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

become familiar at first. Remnants of ideas and instincts belonging
to the old world of sense still lingered in the new world of trans-
cendence. Trasumanar significar per verba non si poria. On
earth one had played with conundrums of a geometry of four
dimensions. The new world presented dimensions at once infinite
in number, at once infinite and infinitesimal in quantity ; rather it
had no dimensions at all ; for everything was everything else ; and also
was nothing. And so, too, in the new world numeration was infinite
— all numbers were at once infinity and zero. Two plus two now
added up x millions raised to the nth power, and instantaneously
flashed back into minus 0. Had shame been possible in the world
of the Absolute, it would have been fit to mark this absurd attempt
to count — this survival of gross materialism from the world of
Relation and Matter.

The dregs of consciousness, of some flickering sensation of an
individual Me, would now and then break out, like a forgotten weed
in a well-tended garden. I tried to think of myself as Me. But
flashes of coruscating light shot round the Heaven from Pole to Pole
as if We — They — It — were smiling their merriment and wonder at
the inexperience of the neophyte. And lo ! I too was flashing a
smile at myself, as a child on earth smiles at its own infantile errors ;
for our happy laughter was the beaming of coruscating Aurora: —
infinite in number and immeasurable in range. Yes ! I was that
Aurora : no ! not a part of any single Aurora, not one of infinite
Aurora, but I was Aurora. I was Ether, or rather I had ceased to
be myself without becoming anything else that could be limited or
defined. Such petty egoisms belong only to a world of limitations,
of parts, of relations, of organisms. They drop off like dead leaves
in winter in a world of infinities, of absolutes, a world which knows
neither structures, nor parts, nor limits, nor substances, nor organs.

Once, whilst the sound of human voices had hardly faded from
my memory, I essayed to communicate some vague idea to the world
around me. Not that I attempted to speak, or even to frame a sign
or a symbol, but a fitful wish seemed to move some inward effort to
convey a fancy to that which was all around. The stupidity of such
a wish, its wild absurdity and gross animalism, was beamed forth in
the myriad flashes of a circumambient Lightning. Millions after
millions of electric welkins pulsated across the Heaven, amidst
the joyous peal of infinite Thunder claps. They had recognised my
wish before it had been expressed : nay before it had been formed.
They were ME : I was THEY : We were IT. The All now absorbed
the Many ; it had engulfed all individual entities, so that personality
had ceased to have existence or meaning.

This All seemed at once Electricity, Light, Heat, Motion,
Intelligence, and Sound. At the first peal of the abysmal Thunder
round the Firmament, the faint reminiscence of humanity within

1903 FROM THIS WORLD TO THE NEXT 649

seemed to suggest some conscious effort to listen and to gather a
consistent meaning. How vain ! how brutish ! how gross was the
effort ! In the Infinite and the Absolute there is no distinction of
sounds, as there is no separation of parts, neither voices nor hearing.
The only sound is one continuous Harmony, issuing forth without
«nd or interval from the Infinite All : — whereby, without ceasing,

Heaven rung

With Jubilee, and loud Hosannas filled
The eternal Regions.

Thereat I awoke. The loud Hosannas of my dream were simply
the fall of the two ponderous volumes of Human Personality which
I had been reading in my arm-chair before I fell asleep. I had
been dreaming: and 1,400 pages of close print had fallen with a
crash against the fender. My fire burnt low : my clock pointed to
2.45 AM. I stretched myself, and lit a chamber candle. I had
merely dreamed. The nightmare of an apoplectic stroke, my own
corporal paralysis, treatment, and death, all was but an effect of
' self-suggestion,' caused by my head falling awkwardly in sleep
against the arm of my chair. So slight a material pressure had
started such vagaries of the ' subliminal consciousness ' in my
hypnotic Self. I had been ' discarnate ' in dream. I had been
4 cosmopathic ' in spirit. I had been ' metetherial ' in imagination.
I had fully realised the ' disintegration of personality.' And I had
tasted the infinite joys of putting on incorruption at the sound of a
subjective last trump. I walked slowly to bed thinking it all over.
Was not my dream as good as any other dream ? Was it not
infinitely more sublime, more beautiful, more wonderful than that of
any S.P.R. ? What do we know of the Universe, except that it is not
this Earth, not the human, not the finite, not the material, as we
know matter ? What do we know even of Matter, except of such
matter as we can handle, and feel, and see, or reach by our instru-
ments ? Much more, what do we know of Spirit ? And why then,
should we be so coarse, so narrow, so earthly-minded as to fancy
we can unriddle the Great Mystery by means of Grhosts, bogies seen
by neurotic girls, table-rapping, planchette, and crystals ? Should
we fasten our puny guesses about Spirit, as we on earth conceive it,
upon the eternal manifestations of that Infinite Spirit which is to us
mortals an inconceivable Essence ? Personality we can conceive —
but only as Human Personality. Personality could have neither use,
nor meaning, nor place, in an Absolute and Transcendental Universe —
of which we can only know that, whatever else it may be, it certainly
is not this queer little speck we call Earth.

So I went to bed musing, and sad to have lost the glorious world
of my dream. I placed Human Personality on its shelf and took
down my Paradise Lost, turning to that eighth book where Adam

650 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

inquires of Kaphael concerning celestial Motions, and is exhorted
to search rather things more worthy of knowledge. As the Poet

tells us : —

From Man or Angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal and not divulge
His secrets to be scanned by them who ought
Rather admire : —

And Raphael warns our first father thus : —

Heaven is for thee too high
To know what passes there : be lowly wise:
Think only what concerns thee and thy being ;
Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there
Live, in what state, condition or degree.

So I went to bed, slept soundly, awoke without a headache,
resolved to read no more about Human Personality, and applied
myself with new ardour to my Subjective Synthesis.

FREDERIC HARRISON.

1903

THE NOVELS OF PEACOCK

AMONG tales of whim and fantasy Peacock's novels, if so they can
be called, have always held a high place. Equally removed from
the problem and the proverb, they are still more unlike those pure
works of art, such as Shakespeare's plays and Scott's romances,
where the author stands aside altogether, and the characters are
apparently left to develop themselves. Peacock follows his fancy
whithersoever it leads him, and never continueth in one stay. He
was as full of prejudices as an egg is full of meat, and he made his
stories the vehicle for expressing them. The late Dean Merivale
used to say that England had reached the summit of her greatness
under a system of rotten boroughs and Latin elegiacs. To the
Reform Bill and Greek Iambics he traced her gradual decline.
Peacock, though he was so loose a scholar as to write Greek without
the accents, seems to have believed that, if man did not live by bread
alone, good wine and classical quotations were sufficient to guide
him through this world of sin. He had not, like Merivale, the art
of writing Latin verse. His verse is English, and excellent it is.
He had not been through the mill of the University, or the public
school. His scholarship was self-taught, and few men have taught
themselves so well. But the Dean's doctrine was just the sort of
theme with which he loved to play, and it would have enlivened his
pages a good deal more than the perfectibility of man. For it is
true of Peacock as of most eccentrics — that they are best when
they are least serious, and do not go much below the surface of
things. Peacock was a humourist in the old sense of the term.
He was essentially a queer fellow. Never, or hardly ever, did he
deviate into the commonplace. The one thing certain about his
conclusions is that they do not follow from his premisses. His books
are as provoking as Lamb's Essays to well-regulated minds. He
violates all the conventions, and sets at defiance all the rules. Few
writers are so absolutely devoid of that common sense which, as
Pennialinus says, is the saving of us all. No wandering sheep was
ever brought back by Thomas Love Peacock to the intellectual
fold. Wherein, then, lies his charm ? The same statement might be
made, and the same question might be asked, about Laurence Sterne.
Peacock had not the profound humour and the subtle pathos which

651

652 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

made Tristram Shandy, with all its faults, immortal. Neither had
he Sterne's love of indelicate allusions, nor his cynical disbelief in the
virtue of women. What he had in common with Sterne was a
fantastic imagination, not his servant but his master, for he could
not choose but follow where it led.

His charm lies, however, not only in this, but also in his ripe
scholarship, his lively wit, his caustic irony, and a style so ex-
quisitely felicitous that at its best it has scarcely ever been surpassed.
To which may be added a power of creating graceful, delightful,
and perfectly natural girls, in which only Mr. Meredith has since
surpassed him. Peacock is one of the very few men who can draw
the other sex better than their own. Perhaps only Walter Scott and
Greorge Meredith are equally happy in both. Certainly Peacock's
male characters cannot be called natural. They are for the most
part types rather than individuals, except when celebrities like
Shelley and Coleridge are deliberately caricatured. Peacock was as
incapable as Sterne of constructing a plot. To read him for the
story is like reading Graboriau for anything else. Collections of his
songs are popular enough, for his severest critic could not deny that
he was a genuine poet. I saw it stated the other day that the true
' Peacockians ' only cared for the songs in their proper places. I
dare not arrogate to myself that sebast and cacophonous title, as
Peacock might have called it. But I love Peacock's songs, as I love
Shakespeare's, wherever I find them, and I should not consider them
out of place in an interleaved Bradshaw. Mr. Chromatic in
Headlong Hall expressly maintains that the words of a song have
no importance, except as a setting for the music, and his own per-
formances are by no means always topical. Except in Maid Marian,
where everything is in perfect harmony with everything else, and the
Friar leaves the room without a song when a song would have been
inappropriate, Peacock's poetry occurs just because Peacock felt
inclined to write it. And indeed no man ever wrote more ex-
clusively to please himself than the author of Crotchet Castle, unless
it were the author of the Sentimental Journey. ' Those who live to
please must please to live,' said the austere moralist who died the
year before Peacock was born. Literature was at the most Peacock's
staff. His crutch was the India House, where he seems to have done
as little work for his pay as he conscientiously could. His own lines
on the subject are well known, and though they need not be taken
as history they have a curious interest as coming from the successor
of James Mill.

From ten to eleven have breakfast for seven ;

From eleven to noon think you've come too soon ;

From twelve to one think what's to be done ;

From one to two find nothing to do ;

From two to three begin to foresee

That from three to four will prove a d — d bore.

1903 THE NOVELS OF PEACOCK 653

In Peacock's pages, as in Sterne's, every man rides his hobby.
Uncle Toby was beyond Peacock, as Matilda, and even Marionetta,
were beyond Sterne. The crudity of Peacock is seen in this, that
his characters, at least his male characters, represent merely qualities
or tendencies, and are seldom, as human beings, complete. They
are always playing a part, never simply themselves, except under the
influence of some sudden catastrophe, such as the appearance of a
spectre, or bodily concussion with a tangible object, or the advent of
a plentiful meal. Peacock was not so much an epicurean scholar as
a scholarly epicure. He made of eating and drinking something
very like a religion. The captain in Headlong Hall expresses an
opinion that a man who abstains from strong drink must have a
secret he is afraid involuntarily to disclose. The parson in Melin-
court, who undertakes to exorcise the ghost, requires the simple
apparatus of a venison pasty, three bottles of Madeira, and a prayer-
book. When he is found asleep in the morning, the bottles are
empty, the pasty has disappeared, and the prayer-book is open where
it was open before. When the lady guests of Squire Headlong faint
at the sight of the skulls on Mr. Cranium's lecture-table, and call for
water, the little butler brings them the only water he keeps, which
is powerful enough to revive them at once. There are no ' three
bottle men ' now. People do not reckon what they drink. ' Heel-
taps ' and ' Skvlight ' are obsolete terms. We do not breakfast in bed,
like Dr. Folliott, on beer and cold pie, or say 'Vanity of vanities, all is
vanity,' like Dr. Gaster when he turned up the empty egg-shell.

Peacock had a long life, and his novels are distributed over
the greater part of it. He was seven years older than Shelley, and
he survived Thackeray for three years. He lived into a world, as
Professor Saintsbury says, ' more changed from that of his youth than
that of his youth was from the days of Addison or even Dryden.' It
was not merely the Reform Bill and Greek Iambics, which Person
had written before his time, or Merivale's. It was ' the steamship
and the railway, and the thoughts that shake mankind.' His clergy
and country gentlemen, his schoolmasters abroad and philosophers
at home, had become before his death as obsolete as the guard who
woke up the inside passengers in the night and claimed to be
remembered. But for a satirist in the grain, as Peacock was, there
is little real change. Human folly seems to obey the law known as
the conservation of energy. The quantity of it remains identical or
increases with the population. The forms of it alone vary from age
to age. If there are no longer any rotten boroughs, there are con-
stituencies in which both the sitting member and the hoping
candidate are expected to subscribe towards every charity and every
football club. If there is no duelling in the army, and no flogging
of private soldiers, there is mutual flagellation of officers and gentle-
men among themselves. Champagne answers its purpose as well as

654 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

Madeira, and at least two more meals have been added to the collection
of Peacock, who seldom allowed for anything between breakfast and
dinner. Scythrop and Mr. Flosky are no more. Mr. Swinburne and
Mr. Herbert Spencer have never, so far as I am aware, been put into a
novel. Perhaps the nearest approach in modern times to Nightmare
Abbey is Mr. Mallock's New Republic, than which nothing could well
be severer. But it is not a novel, and Nightmare Abbey is. Thin
as the story may be, it is a story, and Scythrop's secret meetings with
the object of his affections are most ingeniously arranged. Flosky
is a rather cruel, extremely vivid representation of Coleridge.
Scythrop is a not unkindly caricature of Shelley. The art of
Peacock is shown in producing the impression that Scythrop was a
caricature, and that Flosky was not. Sometimes his likenesses are
coarse daubs enough, and the most sympathetic reader must be
wearied by innumerable references to Lord Brougham as ' the learned
friend.' It was natural enough that Peacock should have been
disappointed with Brougham. Many others were so too. But the
subject of Brougham's delinquencies, however attractive in itself, is
not suited to works of fiction, nor, indeed, for that matter, is the
duty of discouraging colonial slavery by not drinking sugar in tea,
as recommended by Mr. Forester in Melincourt. But even that is
better than the attempt to humanise an ape by conferring on him
clothes, a baronetcy, and a seat in Parliament.

Peacock passed his life in avoiding what was disagreeable. He
was not ambitious, and he was neither physically nor mentally
energetic. Writing was with him a luxury, an amusement, and a
vehicle for conveying his peculiar prejudices to the world. They
were very peculiar. He was in his way a keen politician, and yet to
classify him would have taxed the ingenuity of Dod himself. There
have been statesmen and writers, such as Palmerston and Bagehot,
whom it would be equally misleading to call Liberal or Conservative.
That is because they shunned extremes, or because they had one
measure for foreign countries and another for their own. But
Peacock held at the same time, and in reference to the same subject-
matter, opinions which the utmost ingenuity cannot reconcile. For-
getting that there must be some method for choosing members of
Parliament, he railed with equal severity at pocket boroughs and at
Keform Bills. Now and then his whims and oddities quite destroy
the whole effect of his books. Melincourt is an instance in point. It
contains some of Peacock's most attractive writing, and Anthelia
Melincourt, in spite of a tendency to priggishness, has sense and spirit
enough. But Sir Oran Haut-ton is intolerable. A single scene in
which a monkey played the part of a man might be endured in a
roaring farce. But a man-monkey as one of the principal characters
in a novel ; getting drunk, falling in love, and being returned to the
House of Commons, is avwpaKws avu>jjLa\os, purely grotesque, and an

1903 THE NOVELS OF PEACOCK 655

insult to the intelligence of the reader. Nor do the copious quota-
tions from Lord Monboddo with which the notes to Melincourt
are garnished remove the difficulty, or rather the impossibility,
of accepting this zoological licence. Lord Monboddo's vagaries,
though they have been described as anticipations of Darwin, are
devoid of all scientific or philosophic value, while even the great
name of Buffon cannot reconcile one to the preposterous and rather
disgusting absurdity of an ape taking a lady in to dinner. The
name of Sir Oran Haut-ton may be thought to deserve the praise of
ingenuity. But if so, it can only be in comparison with Peacock's
other efforts of the same kind. A worse inventor of names never
devoted himself to the art of writing novels. Thackeray's names,
though often ludicrous, are always happy, and often inimitably
droll. That Lady Jane Sheepshanks should be the Earl of South-
down's daughter is so perfectly logical that it moves only the inward
mirth of blissful solitude. The highly respectable family of the
Newcomes have so long lost all trace of novelty that one forgets how
the recency of their origin contrasted with the antiquity of Pen-
dennis. How could The Mulligan have been called anything else, or
what other appellation could the Fotheringay have chosen for herself
than that which she actually adopted ? What grim and stately
mansion in the London of real life ever had such an appropriate title
as Gaunt House? Sir Telegraph Paxarett and the Reverend Mr.
Portpipe are enough to spoil the reputation even of a story with such
a pretty name as Melincourt. Mr. Mystic of Cimmerian Lodge
shows an astounding poverty of invention. The intolerable pedantry
which disfigured Headlong Hall with sham classical derivations for
the patronymics of Foster, Escot, and Jenkison is an even surer
proof than his slovenly habit of writing Greek without the accents
that Peacock was not a scholar in the highest sense of the term.

Yet with all these drawbacks, which are better faced and acknow-
ledged at the outset, there are few more fascinating novelists than
Peacock. Perhaps ' novelist ' is hardly the word, for his plots are of
the thinnest, and his tales are not exactly smooth. Bat his humour
is of that delicious sort which must be felt and cannot be described ;
his style at its best was scarcely surpassed by his most illustrious con-
temporaries ; his dialogue is almost equal to Sterne's ; his passion
for good literature was no stronger than his love of rural beauty ;
and his young women, though rather sketches than finished portraits,
have a grace and a glamour which it is scarcely profane to call Shake-
spearean. As for the songs with which his books are interspersed,
they are all excellent, and some of them are absolutely perfect.
Peacock wrote only when he felt inclined, and, considering the length
of his life, he wrote very little. His first novel, Headlong Hall,
appeared in 1816 ; his last, Gryll Grange, in 1861,4wo years before
his death. Mr. Eichard Grarnett, the accomplished editor of Peacock

656 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

in succession to the late Sir Henry Cole, discerns symptoms of
senility in Gvyll Grange. His eyes are better than mine. I must
confess that I should have rather detected signs of failing power, of
course erroneously, in Melincourt or The Misfortunes of Elphin.
Peacock was never, from the cradle to the grave, under the influence
of reason. Perhaps we none of us are. But with him prejudice
followed prejudice in an unbroken series which enabled him to see
the ruin of the country in the reform of every abuse he had
denounced.

Peacock was no friend to the clergy, and the Eeverend Dr.
(raster of Headlong Hall is, as his name implies, a mere glutton.
His brother divines, Dr. Folliott and Dr. Opimian, though good livers
in the worst sense of that term, are also scholars and gentlemen.
Dr. (raster is as stupid as he is greedy, and represents the crudest
shape of Peacock's undoubted gift for caricature. The Homeric
capacity for eating and drinking exhibited by Peacock's male
characters is not exceeded even in Pickwick, where there seems to
be no appreciable interval between one meal and another. Dr.
Opimian, a strictly moderate man in Peacock's estimation, makes a
large hole in a round of beef at breakfast, lunches on cold chicken and
tongue, and only abstains from drinking more than two sorts of wine
in the middle of the day lest he should spoil his zest for the bottles of
Madeira and claret with which he washes down his copious dinner.
But there is this difference between Peacock and Dickens. Peacock,
at least the literary Peacock, was an epicure, and Dickens, at least
the literary Dickens, was not. A good cookery book might be made
out of Peacock's novels, especially if the dinners were reduced by
one half and the breakfasts by two-thirds. This, however, is by the
way. The three things by which Peacock will live, for they make
him as fresh now as he was seventy years ago, are his poetry, his
humour, and his style. In Headlong Hall there is one capital poem,
the song of which the first line is : 'In his last binn Sir Peter lies.'
Take these two couplets as specimens :

None better knew the feast to sway,

Or keep mirth's boat in better trim ;
For nature had but little clay

Like that of which she moulded him.

The humour of Headlong Hall, not perhaps very obvious in the
preliminary scene of the coach, full of humourists as that vehicle is,
breaks out after dinner when Dr. Gaster quotes Moses to Mr. Escot.

' Of course, sir,' replies Mr. Escot, ' I do not presume to dissent from the very
•exalted authority of that most enlightened astronomer and profound cosmogonist,
who had, moreover, the advantage of being inspired ; but when I indulge myself
with a ramble in the fields of speculation and attempt to deduce what is probable
and rational from the sources of analysis, experience, and comparison, I confess I
am too often apt to lose sight of the doctrines of that great fountain of theological
and geological philosophy.'

1903 THE NOVELS OF PEACOCK 657

Knight On Taste, unlike Moses and the Pentateuch, is forgotten,
but his methods of forcing Nature into artificial shapes have not been
so entirely abandoned that a reference to them will be unintelligible.
Mr. Milestone had not carried out his plans for the improvement
of Lord Littlebrain's park when Miss Tenorina praised its beautiful
appearance.

Mr. Milestone. Beautiful, Miss Tenorina! Hideous. Base, common and
popular. Such a thing as you may see anywhere in wild and mountainous districts.
Now, observe the metamorphosis. Here is the same rock cut into the shape of a
giant. In one hand he holds a horn, through which that little fountain is thrown
to a prodigious elevation. In the other is a ponderous stone, so exactly balanced
as to be apparently ready to fall on the head of any person who may happen to be
beneath : and there is Lord Littlebrain walking under it.

The artificial school of landscape gardening has never been
more happily hit off. In many respects a philosopher of the
Johnsonian school, Peacock did not share the Doctor's preference
for the life of towns. Unfair as he often was to Wordsworth, and
incapable of appreciating the Lake Poets at their true value, he was
a genuine Wordsworthian in his passionate love of woods, and trees,
and cataracts. Among contemporary novelists Mr. Hardy comes
nearest him in this line. As an artist in the widest sense, the
author of The 'Woodlanders is incomparably superior to the author
of Melincourt. Melincourt is indeed hardly a book at all, but a
burlesque grotesque, unlike anything in the heaven above, or in the
earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. Such names as
Miss Danaretta Constantina Pinmoney, the Keverend Mr. Grovelgrub,
and Lord Anophel Achtar would be in themselves enough to ruin a
story, if there were any story to ruin. But Anthelia's country walk,
so justly praised by Mr. Garnett, would be difficult to match for the
ease, grace, and power of the few strokes in which it is pourtrayed.
"When, after resting on the knotted base of the ash-trunk, she

' rose to pursue her walk/ she ' ascended, by a narrow winding path, the brow of
a lofty hill which sunk precipitously on the other side to the margin of a lake that
seemed to slumber in the same eternal stillness as the rocks that bordered it. The
murmur of the torrent was inaudible at that elevation. There was an almost
oppressive silence in the air. The motion and life of nature seemed suspended.
The gray miat that hung on the mountains, spreading its thin transparent uniform
veil over the whole surrounding scene, gave a deeper impression to the mystery of
loneliness, the predominant feeling that pressed on the mind of Anthelia, to seem
the only thing that lived and moved in all that wide and awful scene of beauty.'

Such a passage as this redeems even Melincourt from the oblivion
which, considered as a novel, it undoubtedly deserves.

The first book in which Peacock's genius had full play is Night-
mare Abbey. In wit and humour it stands at the head of all his
works. Better and purer English has seldom, if ever, been written,,
and the difficulty of quoting from it is that one would like to quote
every word. Shelley's friendship with Peacock, useful and honour-

658 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

able to both the friends, has produced some of the most delightful
letters and one of the most delicious farces in our language. The
letters were written to Peacock by Shelley from Italy. The farce is
Nightmare Abbey, in which Shelley, who much enjoyed his own
portrait, figures as Scythrop. ' When Scythrop grew up, he was
sent, as usual, to a public school where a little learning was painfully
beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was care-
fully taken out of him ; and he was sent home like a well-threshed ear
of corn, with nothing in his head.' Peacock was an unsparing satirist
of public schools and universities, with which he had no personal
acquaintance. But he caricatured Shelley as though he loved him,
and did full justice to the sound sense which was always in the poet's
mind, seldom as it may have appeared in his behaviour. To Coleridge
(Mr. Flosky) he was far less kind, and his Byron (Mr. Cypress)
must be pronounced a failure. In truth, Peacock had not the
thoroughness or the pertinacity to draw a finished portrait of anyone.
He belonged to what, in the language of modern art, is called the
impressionist school, and his caricatures suffer from exaggeration.
Caricature is like onion in cookery. There can easily be too much
of it, and there can hardly be too little. But Peacock sins against
all rules, and succeeds in spite of his transgressions or by the very
magnitude of his offences. Everything in Nightmare Abbey, except
the style, might be condemned on Horatian or Johnsonian principles,
and if people are not amused by it there is no more to be said,
at least for them. There is a sort of a plot (rare enough with
Peacock), for Scythrop made love to two ladies at the same
time, and thereby involved himself in awkward complications.
One of the ladies, Marionetta, in spite of her too suggestive
name, is a perfectly natural specimen of the human race, femi-
nine gender, and her Shakespearean quotation, which maddens
Scythrop, is one of the happiest in all literature. ' I prithee deliver
thyself like a man of this world ' was her ' arch ' reply to Scythrop's
* passionate language of romance.' But the loves of Scythrop and
Marionetta are not the real subject of Nightmare Abbey, which is a
satire on Grerman tales of horror, the metaphysics of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, the novels of Mrs. Kadcliffe, and other pet objects of the
author's aversion. Mr. Flosky, which, as the victims of compulsory
Greek may be persuaded into believing, means a lover of the shade,
expresses the opinion that ' tea, late dinners and the French Kevolu-
tion have played the devil, and brought the devil into play.' ' Tea,
late dinners and the French Revolution ? ' said the Honourable Mr.
Listless, ' I cannot exactly see the connection of ideas.' ' I should
be sorry if you could,' replied Mr. Flosky ; ' I pity the man who can
see the connection of his own ideas. Still more do I pity him the
connection of whose ideas any other person can see.' The satire of
Coleridge in this unique book is exquisitely malicious, because it is

1903 THE NOVELS OF PEACOCK 659

informed by knowledge, and contains just enough truth to make the
misrepresentation tell. Except that imperishable chapter in Carlyle's
Life of Sterling which begins with the words ' Coleridge sat on the
brow of Higbgate' there is nothing quite so successful in sarcastic
delineation of him as some parts of Nightmare Abbey, and the genius
of Coleridge is so far above the reach of disparagement that his
warmest admirers can afford to laugh at Mr. Flosky's boast that he
never gave a plain answer to a plain question in his life. Besides a
capital song (' Why are thy looks so blank, grey friar ? '), perhaps
suggested by Suckling, an excellent parody of Byron —

There is a fever of the spirit,
The brand of Cain's unresting doom —

and a convivial song of unsurpassed merit (' Seamen three, what
men be ye ? ') Nightmare A bbey contains the best and shortest ghost-
story in the English language. It is told by the Reverend Mr.
Larynx, and is as follows :

I once saw a ghost myself, in my study, which is the last place where anyone
but a ghost would look for me. I had not been into it for three months, and was
going to consult Tillotson, when on opening the door I saw a venerable figure in a
flannel dressing gown sitting in my armchair and reading my Jeremy Taylor. It
vanished in a moment, and so did I ; and what it was or what it wanted I have
never been able to ascertain.

Mr. Flosky's comment, ' It was an idea with the force of a sensa-
tion,' is a more scientific definition than the one really given by
Coleridge, ' A man or woman dressed up to frighten another.'

The most characteristic, and to my mind the most fascinating,
of all Peacock's tales is Maid Marian. It has been imputed to
Peacock that in this serio-comic romance of Sherwood Forest, of
Friar Tuck and Robin Hood, he meant to make fun of Ivanhoe. Mr.
Grarnett has shown that this is impossible, because Maid Marian was
completed though not published before Ivanhoe made its appearance.
No two ways of treating the Middle Ages more essentially different
than Scott's and Peacock's could well be imagined. Scott wrote
Ivanhoe because he thought the public would be tired of the Land
of Cakes if he never crossed the Border. But he had some portion of
the antiquarian spirit, and loved mediaeval chivalry perhaps better
than he understood it. Peacock himself described Maid Marian,
in a letter to Shelley, dated the 29th of November, 1818, as ' a comic
romance of the twelfth century, which I shall make the vehicle of
much oblique satire on all the oppressions that are done under the
sun.' But this hardly gives any idea of the brightest and most
fanciful extravaganza ever inspired by forest trees and rippling
streams and poetic sentiment and popular legend. The purest gem
it contains is that perfect lyric —

660 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

For the slender beech and the sapling oak

That grow by the shadowy rill,
You may cut down both at a single stroke,

You may cut down which you will.
But this you must know, that as long as they grow,

Whatever change may be,
You never can teach either oak or beech

To be aught but a greenwood tree.

Friar Tuck, otherwise Brother Michael, is constitutionally
incapable of making a connected statement in prose. He is per-
petually breaking into verse, and his verse is always of the best
quality, strong, light, simple, and melodious. Matilda, or Maid
Marian, is the most delicious of all Peacock's heroines, and the
devotion of the friar to her, ' all in the way of honesty,' must be
shared by every reader of the story. Her father, Baron Fitz-
"Water, who pretends to be her tyrannical master and is really her
submissive slave, displays Peacock's quaint, fantastic humour in its
most genial and jovial shape. When the friar ' kissed Matilda's fore-
head and walked away without a song,' we are to infer that he was
suffering from the violence of suppressed emotion. But it was not
many minutes since he had sung, and not many before that since he
had got the better of Matilda's noble parent in a verbal encounter of
considerable merit.

' Ho ! ho ! friar ! ' said the baron, ' singing friar, laughing friar, roaring friar,
fighting friar, hacking friar, thwacking friar ; cracking, cracking, cracking friar ;
joke-cracking, bottle -cracking, skull-cracking friar ! ' ' And, ho ! ho ! ' said the
friar, ' bold baron, old baron, sturdy baron, wordy baron, long baron, strong
baron, mighty baron, nighty baron, mazed baron, crazed baron, hacked baron,
thwacked baron, cracked, cracked, cracked baron ; bone-cracked, sconce-cracked,
brain-cracked baron.'

Fooling, no doubt, but excellent fooling all the same. To read Maid
Marian is like spending a long day in the country with the company
of the imagination, the best company in the world. Peacock's know-
ledge of human nature was limited. He saw weaknesses and oddities
rather than character as a whole. This it is which gives an air of
crudity to his books, and has prevented them even more than their
pedantry from being appreciated by the general. Peacock is in one
respect like Carlyle, and Browning, and Meredith. A taste for him is
a taste which he himself must give. We must make allowance for
his foibles, and grow accustomed to his ways. But when we have
fulfilled these conditions, few authors wear better, or yield more to
those who read them again and again. There is wit enough in
a single dialogue, as there is poetry enough in a single song, of
Maid Marian to make a literary reputation. The Misfortunes of
Elphin, for which I cannot share Professor Saintsbmy's enthusiasm
(so much the worse for me), contains, besides the lovely Song of the
Four Winds, the justly celebrated war-song of Dinas Vawr, every line

1903 THE NOVELS OF PEACOCK 661

in which is golden, while the first four verses are inimitable and
better than anything in Hookham Frere, as a specimen of the
mock heroic —

The mountain sheep are sweeter,

But the valley sheep are fatter ;
We therefore deemed it meeter
To carry off" the latter.

But perhaps some acquaintance with Lady Charlotte Guest's
Mabinogion, and some familiarity with the Dionysiaca of Nonnus,
are necessary for the due appreciation of Elphin and Taliessin.
Peacock sometimes forgets the words of Shakespeare which he him-
self puts with such exquisite appropriateness into the mouth
of Marionetta. He does not always deliver himself like a man of
this world. His want of invention, not of imagination, and his
love of eccentricity, ]ed him into strange and devious paths,

If we put personal predilections aside, Crotchet Castle is probably
the book to which the largest number of Peacock's admirers would
give the highest place. There is a gaiety, a vivacity, and a force in
it which carry the reader with ease and smoothness from the first
page to the last. The Rev. Dr. Folliott is the best of Peacock's
clergymen, by which I do not mean that he was a good clergyman,
nor anything of the kind. To assist at the squire's dinner, to
criticise his cellar and his wine, accompanying his criticisms with
abundance of Greek and Latin, was in Peacock's eyes the chief
function of a beneficed divine, the ' educated gentleman ' of the
parish. Dr. Folliott and Dr. Opimian, to say nothing of Dr. Gaster
and Mr. Portpipe, are quite enough to justify the Oxford Movement.
Gaster and Portpipe, however, are simply bibulous gluttons, hardly
men at all. Folliott of Crotchet Castle and Opimian of Gryll Grange
are capital as portraits. It is as parsons that their inadequacy
comes in. Incapacity it can hardly be called. Their capacity for
eating and drinking may be favourably described as Homeric, and
unfavourably as swinish. ' I do not fancy hock,' said Dr. Folliott,
' till I have laid a substratum of Madeira.' 'Palestine soup' are
the first words which issue from the mouth of Dr. Opimian, and he
is left giving instructions how to open simultaneously many bottles
of champagne. But Opimian and Folliott are not mere epicures. They
are scholars, though pedants, and proofs that a pedant may have a
sense of humour. There is nothing, for instance, finer of its kind in all
Peacock than the conversation between Dr. Folliott and Mr. Crotchet
about the Sleeping Venus. Mr. Crotchet, irritated by a magisterial
order that no plaster of Paris Venus should appear in the streets of
London without petticoats, determined to fill his house with Venuses
of all sizes and kinds. Dr. Folliott, perceiving this addition to his
friend's furniture, suddenly remembered his cloth, not, for once,
the table-cloth, and attempted experimentally a mild protest.

VOL. LIU — No. 314 XX

662 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

' These little alabaster figures on the mantelpiece, Mr. Crotchet, and
those large figures in the niches — may I take the liberty to ask you
what they are intended to represent ? ' Mr. Crotchet's answer was
not encouraging. ' Venus, sir ; nothing more, sir ; just Venus/
' May I ask you, sir,' proceeded the reverend doctor, ' why they
are there? ' Mr. Crotchet was not embarrassed. ' To be looked at,
sir ; just to be looked at : the reason for most things in a gentle-
man's house being in it at all ; from the paper on the walls and the
drapery of the curtains even to the books in the library, of which
the most essential part is the appearance of the back.' The dialogue
is unhappily too long to quote in full. Dr. Folliott's austerity was
partly assumed, and there can be no doubt that he enjoyed the
discussion of the subject, if only because it gave him an opportunity
of showing that he read the classics in the original, whereas his friend
only read them in cribs. His appeal to Mr. Crotchet as a father,
though futile, is touching. 'Now, sir, that little figure in the
centre of the mantelpiece — as a grave paterfamilias, Mr. Crotchet,
with a fair nubile daughter, whose eyes are like the fishpools of
Heshbon — I would ask you if you hold that figure to be altogether
delicate.' ' The Sleeping Venus, sir ? Nothing can be more delicate
than the entire contour of the figure, the flow of the hair on the
shoulders and neck, the form of the feet and fingers. It is
altogether a most delicate morsel.' Mr. Crotchet was getting
decidedly the best of it, and his spiritual adviser took refuge in a
gastronomic metaphor. ' Why, sir, in that sense, perhaps, it is
as delicate as whitebait in July. But the attitude, sir, the attitude/
Mr. Crotchet was unyielding. ' Nothing can be more natural, sir/
* That is the very thing, sir. It is too natural, too natural, sir/
And so forth, until Mr. Crotchet, becoming, as Dr. Folliott remarks,
rather weary, exclaims that to ' show his contempt for cant in all its
shapes he has adorned his house with the Greek Venus in all her
shapes, and is ready to fight her battle against all the societies that
ever were instituted for the suppression of truth and beauty.'

Gryll Grange is of all Peacock's novels the most pedantic. It is
strewn with quotations from the classics, especially from Athenseus,
and the friendship of Dr. Opimian for Mr. Falconer arises from
the remarkable fact that they are both acquainted with Homer.
The story is not more interesting than the words of Italian opera
and might almost have been written for the songs, as the libretto
of the Magic Flute must have been written for the music. Mr.
Algernon Falconer and his fantastic establishment of seven modest
maidens to wait upon one innocent bachelor lack the verisimilitude
which is literature's substitute for truth. But the Keverend
Dr. Opimian, whose wife calls him 'doctor' even when they are
alone (and indeed his Christian name of Theophilus is some excuse
for her), is a personage such as only Peacock could create, a pundit

1903 THE NOVELS OF PEACOCK 663

and an epicure, a dignified clergyman who might have acted as
chaplain to the Rabelaisian brotherhood and sisterhood of Thelema.
Dr. Opimian is a variant of Dr. Folliott in Crotchet Castle, and it is
impossible to read of either without thinking of Dr. Middleton in
The Egoist. But indeed Dr. Opimian is quite as like Peacock
himself as Jonathan Oldbuck was like Walter Scott. ' I think, doctor,'
said Mrs. Opimian, ' you would not maintain any opinion if you had
not an authority two thousand years old for it.' ' Well, my dear,'
was the reply, ' I think most opinions worth mentioning have an
authority of about that age.' In a charming and most appropriate
note to this passage Mr. Grarnett mentions that one of Peacock's last
remarks to his old friend Trelawny was, ' Ah ! Trelawny, don't talk to
me about anything that has happened for the last two thousand
years.' He was indeed a pure and perfect Pagan born out of due
time in an uncongenial world of Tractarian Movements and railway
trains. His oddities were numerous and ineradicable, following
without displacing one another. He was not much in the habit of
quoting scripture. But there is a text in Isaiah on which he could
always have preached. ' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall
die,' was the sum and substance of his philosophy. There is a tinge
of unwonted melancholy in his last book, as of one bidding farewell to
a long and happy life, which suits well with his creed, and he would
have delighted in the melodiously fatalistic stanzas of Omar Khayyam.
It is said that in his last days, which were calm and peaceful, his
memory dwelt with continual fondness upon a girl he used to meet
in the ruins of Newark Abbey, who died when he was seventeen.
His lovely poem, ' Newark Abbey,' much admired, as Mr.
Grarnett tells us, by Tennyson, is less appropriate to this strange
reversion, of which his granddaughter was the witness, than those
haunting lines which begin with ' What is he buzzing in my ears ? '
and end with ' How sad and bad and mad it was — But then, how it
was sweet ! ' The poetry of Gryll Grange is not as a rule among
Peacock's best. But the song called ' Love and Age ' is unrivalled
for its simple indefinable pathos in all the varied efforts of his
muse.

' There are some books,' said the country squire, ' which it is a
positive pleasure to read.' He was probably thinking of Surtees.
He was certainly not thinking of Peacock, who of all English authors,
except perhaps Burton and Southey, is the most bookish. One must
like Peacock because one likes reading. One cannot like reading
because one likes Peacock. Peacock had an irritable and foolish
dislike of Scott, who appeals to all healthy natures, whether they be
literary or otherwise. There was nothing in Scott, he said, which
could be quoted. It was a most characteristic objection, and it is so
far true that quotations from Scott can hardly be confined to single
phrases or sentences. With Shakespeare Peacock was familiar, for

x x 2

664 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

Shakespeare, as we all know, is even too full of quotations. But,
indeed, Peacock's own pet authors, of whom he never tired, from
whom he seldom cared to stray, were the classical writers of Greece and
Rome. They supplied him with an inexhaustible fund of epigram,
anecdote, and illustration. Except his poetry and his humour, they
were the only intellectual furniture he had. Gryll Grange might
well be edited for the use of schools as an entertaining substitute for
Becker's Charicles, or the same learned writer's Gallus. He was
perplexed by the tricks which according to Athenaeus the Greeks
played with their wine, for he was not in the habit of mixing it even
with fresh water, and they are said to have mixed it with water from
the sea. Dr. Folliott is even permitted, but only because of his
order, to express disapproval of the Athenian Aspasia, and the
Corinthian Lais. But the Greeks in his eyes were perfect. The
darker features of their life he ignored, or left to St. Paul. To him
they were simple people who made the best of art and nature, of
themselves and of the world they inhabited. Eabelais he worshipped
for having restored something like the spirit of ancient freedom —
freedom to understand and to enjoy. The sense of beauty penetrates
all his writings, and his most finished writing, as in Nightmare Abbey
or Crotchet Castle, comes very near perfection. His learning is so
enlightened with sense and enlivened by humour that it never
becomes offensive and seldom becomes dull. When the odd folk he
sometimes brings together grow quarrelsome over their cups, as
in Headlong Hall, their differences are composed by a glee or a catch.
Peacock cared not for the rules and restrictions which were imposed on
themselves by his beloved Greeks. Except that he is never indecent,
and that he has not the great Frenchman's tremendous force, he resem-
bles Rabelais rather than Lucian. Among Latin authors his favourite
was Tacitus, whose compactness of style, with its undying charm for
the literary palate, exercised a noticeable influence upon his own.
His acquaintance with modern literature was not wide, nor was his
judgment of it sound. He had none of his friend Charles Lamb's
genial catholicity in respect of all books that deserved the name.
The classics were his Koran. What they did not contain was not
worth knowing. Short of offering sacrifices to Jupiter and Venus,
from which the fear of ridicule restrained him, or perhaps the
opinion of Cicero, he stuck at nothing which was ancient, mature,
and respectable. Even in classical matters his taste was capricious.
But in spite of his irregularities, or perhaps because of them, his
books have an unfading attraction for those who can relish them
at all.

HERBERT PAUL.

1903

A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT

OF the many problems that modern society has to face, none seems
to be more difficult than that of the wastrel. He swells the ranks of
the unemployed ; he fills our prisons and workhouses. He eats the
bread of the charitable ; but when they try to mould him, he slips
through their hands. A whole army of civil servants and thousands
of clergy of all denominations spend their lives in trying to reform
him. A few, very few, of this class are picked out of the mire and
put on their feet again, and continue to walk steadily.

But compared with the self-sacrifice and prayers, the money and
labour spent in the effort, the result seems poor indeed.

I am afraid that I may be accused of cynicism, and that I shall
be certainly called a pessimist. But I plead not guilty on both
counts, for the pessimist and the cynic are quite content to sit with
hands folded and let their actions end in criticism. That is an
attitude that is at once Pharisaic and useless. The diagnosis of a
wasting disease ought, on the contrary, to stimulate everyone to
combat who has any means of assisting the attack on it. In fact,
the toleration of a great many evils springs from our own apathy.
We are too ready to leave to departments of State and religious
organisations the settlement of social problems which should be the
active concern of every individual citizen, since they drain away the
strength of the community. And so we leave the problem of the
submerged tenth, as we leave the question of the education of the
children, to the care of institutions who too often spend their time
in quarrelling about the labels they fix to their doors.

Now I do not care very much about these labels, if the organisa-
tion behind them is doing something that seems to be for the progress
of humanity and the making of a better citizenship. Provided that
an individual or an institution is doing good work to this end, and
not merely making recruits for its own Bethel with no thought
beyond, I do not care what religion or so-called want of orthodoxy it
may possess. If, therefore, I believe that the Salvation Army, for
instance, ought to receive wider recognition and better assistance
than it obtains at present, it is because I think that its method of
dealing with the wastrel in its colony at Hadleigh succeeds in

665

666 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

producing some good material out of the waste product of society.
Its success can perhaps best be measured by the comparative failure
of other organisations. I do not wish to draw any invidious com-
parisons. But a little social experiment that I have recently made
at Easton has for the time focussed my attention on the work at
Hadleigh, and I think it a pity that public interest should flag in an
undertaking that seems to me to be doing a great deal to solve one
of our most difficult social problems.

It was more by the accident of circumstance than by any strong
feeling in favour of the Salvation Army that a contingent of the
Hadleigh Farm colony was brought to Easton. I had for some
time planned wider gardens and shrub planting around my house,
and I required the necessary labour to carry it out. It was no use
to hope for a sufficient number of farm hands to do the work quickly ;
agricultural labourers are scarce in Essex. It would, of course, have
been possible to contract for a gang of navvies, but the idea of
planting a number of navvies on the estate did not altogether com-
mend itself to me. I thought that the navvy might possibly find
our quiet countryside a little dull. What, then, was to be done ? I
wanted a body of men who would do the work thoroughly and
yet be amenable to discipline.

It was then that the idea of obtaining the labourers from the
Hadleigh Farm colony came into my head. I knew that I should
not get the strength of the British navvy, but it seemed to me more
important that the men should be under good control. I was
assured that this was the great advantage that I should receive from
employing a Salvation colony contingent at Easton. And I was
not disappointed. The preliminaries were easily arranged, for
Colonel Lamb, the governor of Hadleigh Farm, was most eager to
oblige me, and to found what he called a temporary colony at Easton.
In the course of a fortnight seventy men were brought from Had-
leigh and lodged in a wooden building which was put up to receive
them. They set to work at once to carry out the work as directed
by the landscape-garden expert. And they worked so quietly and
so willingly that we should have hardly known that there was any-
thing unusual astir, except for the singing, the fervent hymn-singing,
in the evening. I liked that singing, for it was hearty and sincere,
and showed at least that my new gardeners were not spending their
evenings in public-houses, demoralising Essex villagers. The con-
duct of the men was quite admirable, and they seemed to enjoy
their work. There were many strange types of humanity among
them. There was the man who had once lived in and out of prison,
the criminal Jack-in-the-box on whom the prison lid has to be closed
very soon after he appears in respectable society. He was no longer
the gaol-bird, but a hard-working member of the community and
a model to many men who only know of prison life by hearsay. It

1903 A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 667

would perhaps be invidious to go through the category, and describe
the various types who worked in this very chilly Garden of Eden.
A man who has been in prison may be no worse than many other
men who do not yield to the particular temptations which make
our prison population. The wastrel is not limited to the class that
frequent our prisons. It is, therefore, quite sufficient for my pur-
pose to state that the type from which the Salvation Army colonist
is recruited is not usually supposed to be amenable either to prison
treatment or to gentler influence. Some of the men who came to
Easton had fallen from good positions in society, and they had all
touched a common ground of despair and misery before they knocked
at the gates of the Hadleigh Farm colony. Knowing this, I was
very interested to see what kind of work they would do and whether
they would show any persistency and strength of purpose in digging
and building. Their labour was not quite so rapid as that of the
skilled working-man who keeps his muscles in good training, but
this was due to lack of physique.

Most of them, however, made up for their lack of strength by
the willing and persevering spirit they showed. The Salvation Army
had in fact achieved a remarkable result in a short time from a class
that is generally considered most unpromising. Given their past
history, an astonishing change had certainly been wrought in these
men.

The Salvationist would of course have a ready explanation for
this change. He would say that the men had been ' converted.'
But this explanation does not render the phenomenon, in so far as it
seems to be a permanent change, any the less mysterious.

I have no great liking for the method of the revivalist, who
works his subject up into a state of ecstatic fervour, only to produce
a still worse type of wastrel in the long run. Whatever it is, the
Salvation Army treatment seems to be more efficacious. They
maintain that they make a permanent success of their subjects in
every two out of three cases. Even if the percentage is much
smaller, the Salvation Army undoubtedly give that backbone and
character to a very considerable number of the drift of humanity
that passes through their mill. If this is the case, and I am
convinced it is so, from what I have seen of their work at Easton
and Hadleigh, it would be a great pity if their mill had to go at
half-speed for want of means to work it.

I believe that in Australia several of the Federal States make
.grants of public money to the Salvation Army. Personally I am
against the public endowment of any religious sect, and I do not see
any reason why an exception should be made in the case of the
Salvation Army in this country. At the same time I believe the
Darkest England scheme to be productive of a great deal of good, and
when the governor at Hadleigh informed ine that if it had not been

668 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

for the temporary relief afforded by the work at Easton they would
have been compelled to close their doors on some fifty or sixty
cases this winter, I think that this fact, and the necessity it shows,
should be widely known. What I would venture to suggest is that
landowners and employers of labour should from time to time make
such experiments as have proved a success at Easton.

The Salvation Army labour is not, I think, more expensive than
other labour, although I run the risk of offending the agricultural
community in saying so. At Hadleigh the men get a good training
in farm work, and every year the colony becomes more self-
supporting from the sale of its produce. And it should be re-
membered that the farms that the ' Army ' took over were almost
derelict in the first place. Now they make a profit on their market-
garden and small fruit produce, and on their poultry and pigs, while
nearly all the milk for the colony, and a great deal of its meat, come
from their herds of cows and sheep.

I think these facts are sufficient to show that the Hadleigh
colonist has the making of a good agricultural labourer, and my
object in writing this article is to urge a more generous recognition
of the 'Colony' treatment of the wastrel. I believe that the Salva-
tion Army in reclaiming wasted lives is doing a most useful work
for the community, which should not be allowed to languish. I
have attempted by my experiment at Easton to point out a way in
which the work at Hadleigh could be assisted. We hear a great
deal about the scarcity of agricultural labour, and landowners and
farmers might do worse than to apply more frequently than they do
to the Salvation Army farm colony for labourers.

Several agriculturists might combine to pool their labour de-
mands, and thus establish a small colony from Hadleigh in their
neighbourhood. Such a colony, as I can testify, would be under good
discipline, and well behaved. They are neither loafers nor drunkards,
but respectable working-men. Employers who want labour need
not bother themselves as to the precise religious or psychological
means taken in making the wastrel a good worker. They will soon
find out whether they can obtain what they want — men who can hoe
and dig, and some of whom are skilled manual and farm labourers
ready to work with a plough and reaper. The work at Hadleigh is
not limited to farm labour. There is a brick-field which employs a
number of men, and those who own brick-fields might also do worse
than employ some of the Hadleigh brick-makers. In these ways the
farm colony might be extended in various branches throughout the
country. We all have a responsibility in the work of solving what
I called at the beginning of my article one of the most difficult of
our social problems. We owe this responsibility as members of a
community that suffers severe loss and injury from the wastrel
and loafer. They make what has been rightly called our Darkest

1903 A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 669

England, and if we only possess a rush candle we ought to assist the
efforts of those who try to pierce this gloom, so that there may be
more light. At the same time, in assisting to spread the farm-
colony idea, we shall be working for a return of those who have
proved a failure in our cities to a healthier and better life on the
land. But I do not wish it to be thought that I advance my ex-
periment as an answer to the cry of ' back to the land.' The land
question and the overcrowding of our cities require more heroic
remedies than the Salvation Army can apply. None the less is the
Hadleigh colony a step in the right direction.

FRANCES EVELYN WARWICK.

670 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

CORN-GROWING IN BRITISH COUNTRIES

SOME weeks ago Lord Masham invited competitive treatises upon
the ' best and most expeditious way by which a company with a
large capital might cultivate suitable corn lands in the Colonies and
British Possessions/ but a fortnight later he withdrew his invitation
in view of information received to the effect that Americans had
recently acquired some ten million acres of land in Canada! In
reply to a correspondent his Lordship stated that lie ' was very
anxious to stimulate the growth of corn on a large scale and to form
a company for that purpose, but, finding from the Press that the
farmers of the United States are taking up and have already taken
up some ten million acres, he thinks it now useless to proceed with
it ' ; and in another letter, ' My idea of a company was not so much
to make money as to render the country independent of foreign food,
which I consider is a great danger in case of war. But from all
I can learn that will now soon be the case, thanks to the energetic
Americans . . . .'

As the Canadian Government advertises that at least 200
million acres of corn-growing lands are still available for selection
it seems curious that the occupation by Americans of less than one-
twentieth of this huge area — in which movement, it must be borne in
mind, they, for the most part, have only transferred their wheat-
growing operations from the United States to Canada — should intimi-
date Lord Masham from carrying out his prodigious scheme. It is
unfortunate that the only result of his Lordship's widely published
announcement is the painful reflection amongst many aspiring and
probably necessitous litterateurs that they have had a fortnight's
profitless work.

Lord Masham's enquiry covers a very wide field apart from his
suggested company's constitution, with which, however, the writer of
this article has no concern, but proposes to address himself to the
consideration of the most suitable country in which to start farming
operations generally, in which wheat-growing on a large scale would
be the main feature. The chief conditions which determine this
question are (1) soil and climate, (2) price of land, (3) cost of
cultivation and labour, and (4) distance of producing countries from

1903 CORN-GROWING IN BRITISH COUNTRIES 671

markets and means of conveyance. The British, countries in which
corn-growing on a large scale has been more or less successfully
proved are India, Canada, South Africa, and Australasia.

Soil and Climate. — Extent and quality of production are mainly
determined by soil and climate. The following comparison of wheat
yields, including also those of oats and barley, indicates clearly
which countries lead in the question of bulk production. To make
the comparison the more intelligible the average approximate yields
of three chief foreign sources of England's wheat supply are also given.

-

Bushels per acre

Wheat

Barley

Oats

India

9*

_

Manitoba (Canada)

25

34

40

N.W. Territories (Ca

tiado)

25

37

48

The Cape Colony

12 (?)

—

—

New Zealand .

2o*

28

32

New South Wales

i 10

17

19

Victoria .

8*

17

9

Queensland

15

17

18

South Australia

6

11

8

Western Australia

1 10A

12

16

Tasmania .

21

22

28

Russia

9

—

Argentina .

13.V

Kansas (U.S.)

17

Minnesota (U.S )

1 10

In all the above-mentioned countries there are certain areas in
which yields are obtained greatly in excess of the general average,
but, as this article deals only with the subject of wheat-growing on a
large scale, the average yield may be accepted as indicative of the
yield that might be expected from large-scale operations.

As regards quality it may be sufficient to state that Hungarian
best grade has hitherto been generally regarded as the standard of
perfection in wheat. Eecent experiments, however, conducted by
the Government of Canada, gave the following results from a com-
parative examination between Canadian best and Hungarian best
grade wheaten flours : —

-

Caiiaclian best

Huugai-iau bast

Percentage of albuminoids or protein,

the most important part from a nutri-

tive standpoint .....

1269

11-27

Gluten (wet)

32-22

26-17

» (dry)

l-J-33

9-79

The Canadian Gazette (London) of the 6th of November, 1902,
records a very interesting test made recently in Ottawa with nine

672 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

barrels of flour from Manitoba, Washington Territory, and Oregon.
The Manitoba flour produced twenty-one pounds more of bread than
that from the United States. In extent of yield and quality of grain
the above tables award the chief place to Canada.

Cost of Land: India. — Very little good wheat-growing land is
obtainable in India outside the irrigation areas, and practically all
of this class is in small holdings in the hands of natives. In fact,
as soon as a scheme of irrigation is completed applications are made
for land greatly in excess of the amount available. Considerable
difficulty would be experienced in obtaining an appreciable area of
suitable wheat-growing land in India comparable with the cost and
productive capabilities of land in other British Possessions.

Egypt. — The conditions in this country — which may be re-
garded as a British dependency if not a possession — are similar to
those that apply to India.

Canada. — No country in the world offers land of high pro-
ductive quality on more advantageous terms to settlers than Canada.
On the payment of an entry fee of 21. any male over the age of
eighteen may obtain 160 acres (or in Ontario a head of a family
may obtain a free grant of 200 acres) of rich wheat-growing land
free of any further payment, the only condition being that he resides
on the land — or with his parents if they reside in the district — at
least six months each year for three years, and cultivates a small
portion of his land. He may also purchase an adjoining quarter-
section of 160 acres at 12s. 6cZ. per acre by the payment of one-
fourth in cash and the balance in three equal payments spread over
three years, bearing interest at the rate of 6 per cent. Millions of
fertile acres are obtainable on either side of railways and in other
desirable positions from railway companies, land companies, and the
Government, at prices ranging from about 2s. to 41. per acre, on very
easy terms. Canadian Government officials stated in May (1902)
that there are still upwards of 200,000,000 acres of wheat-growing
land available for selection in the Dominion. The price varies
chiefly according to position, for a great deal of the land at 2s. is
quite as productive as that at 41. Yet so rapidly are railways being
constructed that it cannot be long before much of the present low-
priced land will be as desirably situated as the present highest-priced
so far as railway conveniences are concerned. These free-grant
conditions apply to millions upon millions of acres from which wheat
yields averaging from twenty-five to thirty bushels per acre may be
obtained without assisted fertilisation. Vast tracts of richly grassed
grazing areas are also obtainable on even better terms.

New Zealand. — No free grants. Unimproved Crown lands, of
which there are still millions of acres obtainable, are purchasable
from the Government at from II. per acre upwards for first-class land
and from about 10s. per acre for second-class. The settler must pay

1903 CORN-GROWING IN BRITISH COUNTRIES 673

survey fees, and there are conditions as to cultivation and improve-
ments. No person may select more than 640 acres of first-class or
a total of 2,000 acres made up of second-class and all land which he
then holds. This does not apply to pastoral areas. Land may also
be leased at a rental of 4 per cent, on the estimated cash purchase
price.

New South Wales. — The lowest price at which fairly good agri-
cultural Crown lands are obtainable as freehold in this State is II.
per acre. Easy terms of payment are given, but the settlers must
pay survey fees.

Queensland. — As in the case of New South Wales, there are no
free selections in this State. Agricultural homesteads may be taken
up in maximum areas of 160, 320, and 640 acres, according to
quality of land, at 2s. Qd. per acre, payment of which may be spread
over ten years. Agricultural farms may be selected in maximum
areas of 1,280 acres at from 10s. per acre, payment extending over
twenty years. Land up to 1,280 acres may also be taken up under
the system of Unconditional Selections, the purchase price being
from 13s. 4cZ. per acre, payable in twenty annual instalments. Selec-
tions may also be acquired under other conditions, but the above
represent the most favourable.

Victoria and Tasmania. — In comparison with other Australian
States there is but little high-class agricultural Crown land open for
selection in these States. For what is available II. per acre may be
stated as the upset price.

Western Australia. — In comparison with other States of the
Commonwealth, Western Australia offers, perhaps, the most attrac-
tive inducements to agricultural settlers. A free selection of 160
acres of good farming land may be obtained by a settler subject to
easy conditions as to residence and cultivation. A further area may
be obtained by the same settler for the small payment of 6d. per
acre per annum for twenty years, when the land becomes the freehold
property of the settler. While all other Australasian States produce
a surplus of corn and other agricultural food-products, Western
Australia annually imports upwards of 1,000,000^. worth. The
demand will undoubtedly continue for some time, as the goldfields
are expanding and the output of gold and other minerals is increas-
ing steadily, giving employment to a large consuming population in
the immense arid tracts of auriferous country inland, where it is
impossible to grow anything satisfactorily. The West Australian
farmer is, furthermore, protected by customs duties averaging about
15 per cent, on all imported farm products.

South Australia. — The best terms upon which the Government
of this State grants good farming land to settlers is either by sale
outright at 5s. per acre or by lease for twenty-one years, with right
of purchase and with option of renewal for a further period of twenty-

674 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

one years, with right of purchase exercisable at any time after the
expiration of the first six years at a price of not less than 5s. per
acre. The maximum area to be held by any one person under these
conditions is 1,000 acres.

South Africa. — Apart from lands in Native Territory and military
service grants, the upset price of unimproved land in Cape Colony and
Natal may be estimated at from about Is. per acre upwards. The
land still remaining at the disposition of the Cape Government is
about 48,000,000 acres, the greater part of which is situated in the
arid regions in the north, and therefore unfit for agriculture unless
under irrigation. The land still unalienated in Natal amounts to
only about 1,720,000 acres. The land in both Colonies is usually
disposed of by auction, as occasion requires, at a fixed upset price.
In Rhodesia land may be purchased for Is. &d. per morgen (2'1 acres)
in Mashonaland and 3s. per morgen in Matabeleland, in addition to
which there is an annual quit rent, in advance, of 31. per 1,500
morgen and 4s. per each additional 100 morgen or fraction thereof.
There are reasonable conditions as to residence and improvements.

The new land;; settlement ordinances for the Transvaal and Orange
River Colonies (1902) are framed to suit the peculiar circumstances
of those new colonies, but they differ somewhat from each other.
Applications for land in the Transvaal are to be made in writing, but
the Commission may call upon any applicant to appear in person
before the Board, to enable it to judge better of his suitability ; in
the Orange River Colony, however, attendance in person is insisted
on in every instance. In the case of a group of settlers applying for
land in the Transvaal it is only necessary for one or two of them to
be interviewed. Holdings may be either purchased or leased. In
the former case purchase outright may be within five years in the
Orange River Colony, but in the Transvaal payment may be spread
over thirty years in half-yearly instalments. It is provided, however,
that a licensee may pay any number of instalments in advance, and
at the expiration of ten years from the date of license shall obtain
a Crown grant subject to mineral reservation and mining rights.
There are stringent regulations against alienation or subletting of
land which has been leased, or on which the full purchase price has
not been paid, without official authorisation. In the Orange River
Colony the rent of a farm held on lease is 5 per cent, on the purchase
price, but the Transvaal Ordinance allows a graduated rent not
exceeding 5 per cent, per annum on the price of the holding as
notified in the Gazette. The Land Boards fix the price of land in
both Colonies. There are conditions as to residence, but a wife or
child or partner is permitted to fulfil these requirements subject to
the approval of the district commissioner. Monetary advances for
use on, or improvement of, the settler's holding are granted, and the
Government undertakes irrigation works and provides instruction in

1903 CORN-GROWING IN BRITISH COUNTRIES 675

practical agriculture. In these and other respects the governments
of the new African Colonies display a generous interest in their
settlers that cannot fail to bear good fruit, not only in direct results
to the settlers themselves and to South Africa as a whole, but
also indirectly as an object-lesson to the Governments of other
Colonies.

Owing to rust and mildew in some parts, and low, irregular rain-
fall in others, wheat-growing in South Africa has only proved
successful in certain districts. For instance, in 1900 the area reaped
in Natal had decreased to 303 acres. Agricultural production is far
from supplying local requirements in South Africa, and it is not
expected that this stage will be reached without the assistance of
irrigation, which, on account of the many permanent rivers, and the
shallowness at which the water may be reached, could be easily
effected in many parts at comparatively small expense. There is an
excellent and growing demand for all sorts of farm produce in the
towns and goldfields, and farming industries are protected by almost
prohibitive tariffs on nearly every article that comes under the
classification of agricultural products.

Cost of Cultivation and Labour. — The aggregate of the many
items under this head, including that of labour, in Canada, South
Africa, and Australasia, appears to differ very little where white
labour is employed, excepting in the first cost of clearing the land.
Little or no labour in this respect is required in Canada, unless one
unnecessarily takes up a selection of what is known as wooded country,
but in parts of South Africa and Australasia a great part of the most
fertile wheat-producing lands is in wooded districts. In New
Zealand the average cost of clearing such land is 30s. per acre, but
in certain districts of Victoria and \Vestern Australia it amounts to
as much as 51. Apart, however, from the cost of clearing, which is a
charge that should be added to the price of the land, the cost of
producing wheat, including ploughing or cultivating, seed, harvesting
and threshing, with cord and bags, is estimated at about 21s. per
acre in Australasia and 24s. 3:iL in Canada. The cost of seed, cord,
and bags is less in Canada, but yield and wages are higher. The
general cost is less in South Africa and India, where coloured labour
is employed. The wage for agricultural white labour is about the
same in each country — viz. 15s. per week, with board and lodging,
excepting during harvest time, when from 30s. to 45s. per week is
paid. The above-mentioned charges do not include rent, interest,
cartage, freight to market, sale charges, and wear and tear of
implements and machinery.

Distances from Market. — Important factors in choosing a country
in which to start corn-growing for English demand are those
of distance from market and the relative cost of shipment. The

676 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

distances from London of the chief seaports of the principal wheat-
producing countries in the Empire are as follows :

London to : Miles

Montreal 3,085

Cape Town 6,065

Natal 6,810

Auckland 12,120

Wellington 11,870

Bombay, by Suez 6,330

„ by the Cape 10,590

Fremantle, by Suez 9,650

„ by the Cape .... 10,845

Adelaide, by Suez 10,835

„ by the Cape 11,730

Melbourne, by Suez 11,135

„ by the Cape .... 12,070

Hobart, by Suez 11,280

„ by the Cape 11,500

Sydney (N.S.W.), by Suez .... 11,595

„ by the Cape . . . 12,525

Brisbane, by Suez 12,070

„ by the Cape 13,025

For purposes of comparison the following distances from the
chief seaports of the principal foreign countries exporting wheat to
England may prove interesting :

London to : Miles

New York 3,245

Boston 3,030

San Francisco 13,670

Buenos Ayres 6,280

Odessa 3,410

Kiga . . . . . . . . 1,182

Archangel . 2,187

It is impossible to quote exact shipping charges, as rates are
governed by so many circumstances that they are constantly chang-
ing. For instance, tonnage rates for wheat from New Zealand to
London have ranged recently from 15s. to 30s., Melbourne to
London 17s 6cZ. to 30s. per ton, and from Montreal to Liverpool
Is. 3<2. to Is. 9d. per quarter. On the general principle, however,
that every additional mile's steaming at sea costs so much more
per ton of the vessel's carrying capacity, goods can be conveyed 3,000
miles at a cost approaching half that of double the distance, provided
all other circumstances are favourable. Shipping rates depend upon
full cargoes, payable return freights, cost of coal, competition, and a
variety of other conditions that make it impossible to establish
reliable comparisons.

A condition of much more importance is that of distance of
corn-producing centres to ports of shipment. It is impossible to go
thoroughly into this question unless at a length not permissible in

1903 CORN-GROWING IN BRITISH COUNTRIES 677

this paper. The distances are for the most part covered by railways,
the rates of which, like those of shipping, are changed from time to
time and are often matters of special quotation, and vary according
to amount, distance, speed, and contract. Furthermore the pro-
ducing districts in almost all the countries are widely distributed,
some of the most important in Canada being over 1,500 miles from
the port of shipment, while others are within 100 miles. Yet by a
wise dispensation of Providence these far-distant fields have been
given nearly double the producing capacity of those referred to as
only one-fifteenth the distance.

The Most Suitable Countries. — The foregoing particulars point
to Canada, South Africa, and Western Australia as being the best
countries in which to commence operations as set out at the
beginning of this article — Canada because of its large acreage
yield, high quality of grain, favourable land conditions, and com-
parative nearness to the world's great markets ; and South Africa
and Western Australia for their favourable land conditions and large
and increasing local demand for agricultural food products which
internal production does not nearly supply.

E. JEROME DYER.

VOL. LIII -Xo. 3U Y Y

678 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

THE DUEL IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA

WHEN the author had the pleasure of meeting English society in
various Continental places, one of the first questions he nearly always
heard was about the institution of the duel in Germany and Austria.
He had occasion to see how strange this whole matter is from an
English point of view, and it came into his mind to try to give
English people a glimpse into this old-fashioned survival. He hopes
that the following lines will fulfil their purpose of illustrating not only
the stupidity, but also the sadness, of the Continental, and especially
German and Austrian, point of view of ' honour.'

Within the last few months we have seen many sad examples of,
and great movements against, duelling. May the day come when
leaders will do away with the whole prejudice, as the late Prince
Consort Albert did in 1844 for England !

The duel is to be traced back to the tournaments of the knights,
even though it was in its beginning no duel in the sense in which
we use the word nowadays. It was only a match between two
men in the handling of weapons. It was then approved by Church and
State, and very often it was used as a legitimate means of deciding
the justice of quarrels by the 'judgment of God.'

The duel, nevertheless, is a relic of the Middle Ages, and now not
only sane public opinion, but the powers of Church and State too, in
all civilised nations, are arrayed against it.

The Catholic Church, which is powerful in all countries where
duelling is rife, and predominant in most of them, imposes the
penalty of excommunication not only on the principals, but also on
the seconds in a duel.

All States have similar laws.

Germany punishes all those concerned in a duel with confinement
in a fortress ; Austria, with ordinary imprisonment, and with con-
finement in a fortress only in the case of officers. Ordinary im-
prisonment, to which a civilian is condemned, entails the loss of
certain civil and political rights, e.g. that of electing or being elected
for parliament. For this reason the sentence in most cases is
commuted to confinement in a fortress. In the case of a duel with
a fatal termination, the survivor is condemned to confinement in a

1903 THE DUEL IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA 679

fortress for some years, but usually he is pardoned after the lapse of
some months, and he is reinstated in his previous rank without the
loss of any privilege or right. The same holds good with regard to
the seconds. Here it may be permitted to quote the laws against
duelling.

LAWS EXTRACTED KROM THE AUSTRIAN PENAL CODE.

Paras. 158 and ff.

158. Any person who, from whatever reason, challenges to a duel with
deadly weapons, or who accepts such a challenge, commits the crime of duelling.

Penalty.

159. This crime is punishable, in the case that no wound is inflicted, by
imprisonment in a jail for a period of from six months to one year.

160. If a wound is inflicted, the punishment is imprisonment in a jail for a period
of from one to five years.

If a wound inflicted in a duel has the consequence enumerated in Para. 156,
the penalty is imprisonment in the severest form for a period of from five to ten
years.

156. Serious injuries of the body are : loss of speech, sight, hearing, generative
power, one eye, arm, or one hand, or any other visible mutilation or disfiguratioB,
or the production of chronic and incurable illness or permanent disablement from
the pursuit of the avocation of the person injured.

161. "When the death of one party ensues in the duel, the homicide is liable
to the penalty of imprisonment in the severest form for a period of from ten to
twenty years.

162. The penalty inflicted on the challenger is always to be for a longer time
than would have been the case had he been the party challenged.

Penalty for the accessories to the fact.

163. Any person who incites to a challenge, or to the actual coming into the
field of one or the other party, or who in any other way knowingly encourages
them, or who threatens or shows contempt for a person endeavouring to hinder
the encounter, is punishable by imprisonment in a jail for a period of from six
months to one year. In the case when his influence was especially powerful and
a wound or death results, he is punishable by imprisonment in a jail for a period
of from one to five years.

164. Parties acting as seconds in a duel are punishable by imprisonment in a
jail for a period of from six months to one year, and, according to the extent of
their influence and to the seriousness of the injuries inflicted, by imprisonment in
a jail for a period of not more than five years.

No penalty is inflicted

165. (a) On the challenger in the case that he does not come to the duel.
(b) On either party when, though appearing on the spot, they voluntarily
refrained from actually engaging in the duel, (c) On all other guilty parties
who strenuously and successfully exerted themselves to effect the voluntary
abandonment of the combat.

LAWS OUT OF THE GERMAN PENAL CODE.

Paras. 201 and ff.

The challenge to a duel with deadly weapons and the acceptance thereof is
punishable by confinement in a fortress for a term of from two to six months.

T Y 2

680 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

If the intention of producing a fatal termination appears either in the wording of
the challenge or in the nature of the kind of duel therein mentioned, the duel itself
is punishable with confinement in a fortress for a period of from three months to
five years.

Any person killing his adversary is liable to confinement in a fortress for not
less than two years (up to fifteen years), and if the duel was one with the inten-
tion of causing the death of one of the combatants, by confinement in a fortress
for not less than three years (up to fifteen years).

Should one of the parties use his weapon in a manner contrary to the stipu-
lated conditions, he is punishable by the ordinary law against murder and corporal
injury.

Should the duel take place without seconds, the penalty is increased by half
the term stated in the case of ordinary duels. This i ncrease is not to exceed
ten years. Seconds are liable to imprisonment in a fortress for a period of not
more than six months. Persons inciting to a duel are liable, if the duel actually
takes place, to ordinary imprisonment up to three months.

Seconds, witnesses, doctors, who have made a genuine endeavour to hinder a
duel are not liable to any punishment at all.

As it may be seen the Austrian laws are much more severe
than the German, but in most cases the whole matter is quashed by
Imperial grace, and the lawsuit and punishment dispensed with by
His Majesty's clemency. Only very seldom is a duel or the challenge
to a duel punished as rigorously as the laws prescribe.

Before I go into details about the real and serious duels I may
be allowed to say a few words about the so-called student duels,
which are quite another matter.

When they take place, every vulnerable part of the body is protected
by bandages ; the face and the head only are exposed, but the eyes
are shielded by iron guards something similar to those used in
climbing glaciers. They principally take place among the students'
cwps or Burschenschaften, which number among their ranks a
large proportion of the undergraduates of the universities.

It may be mentioned, by the way, that the German Emperor was,
and that his son is now, a member of one of these corps. Member-
ship of these unions constitutes in itself a passport to good society.
This, however, is only the case in Germany proper ; in Austria it is
quite otherwise, as students of the better sort and belonging to good
families hold themselves aloof from them. The freshman, who by
the way is called ' fox,' on joining one of these unions is compelled
by order of his captain to engage in a certain number of fights
with opponents designated by his authority, belonging in most cases
to other corps with which his own is in conjunction only for fighting.

Before engaging in that he is trained to stand his ground
without flinching from any blow or on account of any injury which
may be inflicted on him. If he is seen to flinch continually, he is
expelled from the corps. When the student has fought a certain
number of these battles, which are called ' Mensur,' which may be
translated by ' measuring,' he becomes a fully qualified member or

1903 THE DUEL IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA 681

' Bursch.' His freshman's terms are then soon at an end, and he is
supposed to devote himself to the pursuit of his studies. It is doubtless
unnecessary for me to inform the members of the sister universities
of England with what undaunted zeal he proceeds to do this.

After this they are occasionally engaged in duels of their own
seeking, and sometimes in more serious encounters, such as I am
about to describe, but which can hardly be said to come under the
category of student duels.

The corps are also where the German students learn, and are obliged,
to drink, and whilst the English student in the time he can spare
from his work is in the fresh air, engaging in healthy sports, the Ger-
man sits in a smoky room, drinks gallons of beer, and fights his duels.

The real serious duel must be conducted, even down to the smallest
detail, according to the regulations laid down in the Duell-Codex.

It is, to quote the definition of this book, a 'private combat,
following recognised rules and conditions previously agreed upon,
in presence of witnesses, with deadly weapons of the same kind.'

From this definition it is obvious that the ' Mensur ' of our
universities is no real duel. It is punishable by the laws in the
same way as a serious duel, nevertheless in the greater number of
cases it is winked at by the police authorities, who only a few times
in the year make an example and punish the guilty parties.

It would take too long if I went into details about this very
interesting book, the Duell-Codex. The different grades of insult
are set down therein, together with the different kinds of duel which
are considered necessary to wipe them out. Insults are carefully
classified ; they range from slight breaches of social etiquette to the
infliction of a blow and calumny.

We have in Germany and Austria two kinds of duel, but these
two kinds have many grades according to the degree of insult.
Duels are fought with swords or with pistols. For smaller insults
swords are the usual weapons, and it must be determined if the
drawing of 'first blood' gives satisfaction, or the placing of one of
the combatants hors de combat. There is no kind of protection
allowed to the body, save that a silk handkerchief may be tied
around the artery of the neck and that of the right hand. The
combatants are dressed only in shirt and trousers. The fight begins
at the order of the senior second, and 'the combatants have to cease
whenever he commands.

In duels with pistols, according to the degree of the insult, the
preliminaries refer to the distance and the number of shots from either
side. More than three shots from either side are not allowed, and
no smaller distance than 12 metres (about 14 yards). Everything
must be removed from the pockets of the combatants, who fire at
the word of command, which is given by the senior of the seconds. The
most serious kind of a duel with pistols is that which, if the three

682 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

shots from each side prove ineffective, is continued with swords
until one of the combatants is disabled.

To describe briefly the usual way in which the preliminaries of
a duel are arranged, it will be necessary to explain the following
matters. If one gentleman — and only a gentleman in the strictest
sense of the word is able to fight a duel — is insulted by another, he
either challenges him on the spot, or sends him a challenge by two
of his friends within twenty-four hours after the insult. If the person
who is challenged accepts the duel, he mentions the names of two
friends to the challenger's seconds. If he does not accept it, the
two seconds draw up a report about the quarrel. The four seconds
deliberate together about the whole matter ; they have to try if some
other honourable way cannot be found to end the quarrel. And if
they cannot succeed in doing so, they decide when, where, how, and
with what kind of weapons the duel is to be fought. The challenge
must be brought, as we said, within twenty-four hours of the insult.
If it arrives later without any reasonable excuse, no one is obliged to
accept it. It is a duty of the seconds to endeavour to effect a
reconciliation as far as it is compatible with honour. From the
moment when the matter is given into the hands of the seconds the
principals have nothing to do but await their decisions. As soon as
they are made, the weapons, the spot, and time are determined ; the
seconds inform the principals of all these conditions, and the fight takes
place. The seconds are obliged to draw up a formal report about the
whole matter and the duel itself. In the case of an infringement of
the regulations laid down in the Duell-Codex, such an infringement
is to be mentioned in this report, and the offender is relegated to the
civil law courts and punished as an ordinary criminal.

In doubtful cases the matter is referred to an Ehrenrath
(court of honour). The members of such a court must be persons
who inspire confidence in all the parties concerned, as their judg-
ment is final and must be submitted to. They must be not only
gentlemen, but they must also have a considerable experience in
such matters. The court of honour must therefore consist of
members elected by both parties. This is very simple if one or
both adversaries are officers, and no civilian has the right to resist
the judgment given by a military court of honour. If both are
civilians, the seconds elect in .doubtful cases a fifth person with
whom they deliberate about the matter, and who, as a neutral, gives
his advice and opinion. It is not necessary to say that such a
neutral will always be a person who is known to both parties as a
gentleman with great experience. How strict the rulings of these
courts, especially the military ones, frequently are may be gathered
from the following episode, which took place in the German army a
short time ago.

A young officer gave a supper to his friends on the eve of his

1903 THE DUEL IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA 683

marriage ; he got very drunk, and late at night two comrades found
him near his lodging, lying on the pavement in deep slumber.
They tried to take him home, but they did not know that he was no
longer in his bachelor rooms, but was already in the new residence
taken by the young couple, a few hundred yards off in the same street.
They tried to take him to his old rooms, and when he resisted one
of them said to him, ' You are as drunk as a pig, and you do not
know where your lodging is.' The drunken man gave him a blow, and
when the other of the ' good Samaritans ' interfered he struck him
too. Next morning he travelled to his fiancee, but after a few hours
a telegram recalled him. Both the men whom he had hit had given
notice to the regiment, as was their duty ; and the court of honour,
consisting of members from both regiments, decided that a duel with
pistols must take place. The wedding was put off. The young officer
came back, not knowing what had happened, and was told by his com-
rades that he must either leave the army or accept the duel. His
father-in-law and his fiancee tried to persuade him to accept the first
alternative, but he could not make up his mind to do so, and the
duel took place next morning. At the first shot the young man was
killed. The bullet went through his abdomen and injured one of
his kidneys. This sad event made a great sensation in Germany
and Austria, and even English and American newspapers published
articles about it. The victor in the duel was punished with two years'
fortress, and left the army ; his seconds, with five days. The com-
mander of the army corps retired. The colonel of the killed man's
regiment and two generals, who were members of the court of honour
and commanders of the principals, were obliged to leave the army.
A question was put to the Minister of War in parliament, and two Bills
have been laid before the German parliament, but the debates thereon
have not yet taken place. They propose a change of the laws to the
effect that duelling should be punished with ordinary imprisonment,
instead of the now usual imprisonment in a fortress, for a period of
not less than three months for the challenge, and of six months at
least for the duel. The seconds also shall be punishable. When an
official functionary is punished for a duel, he shall also be suspended
from his functions for a period of from one to five years.

In Austria an officer who refuses a duel or does not challenge in
the case of an insult, must leave the army with ignominy, and is
degraded from his rank just in the same way as in Germany. But if
he kills or wounds his adversary in a duel he is punished and im-
prisoned in a fortress.

In order to illustrate this contradiction, it will be sufficient to
cite a sad little incident which occurred a few years ago in the
Austrian army.

Lieutenant Marquis T. had a quarrel with another officer, and
was challenged to a duel. He asked a friend of his, Count L., a

684 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

captain on the general staff, his opinion about duelling, and whether
he thought it possible for an officer who was a good and obedient
Catholic to accept a challenge. Count L. answered him by letter,
that in the same case he would refuse, and that he considered
duelling to be a great sin, and therefore no consistent Catholic could
accept or issue a challenge. Both were compelled to leave the army
with disgrace and loss of rank — and that in Austria, where the
Catholic Church is more powerful than in any other State.

A striking illustration of the dilemma in which Austrian gentle-
men may find themselves may be seen in the following episode.
Mr. von 0 , who is a lawyer and an officer in the reserve, and
who wrote some years ago a book against duelling, was recently
prosecuted for having challenged another man to a duel. He was
condemned to one month's ordinary imprisonment. He conducted his
own defence, and pleaded in a splendid speech that, although he
was an opponent of duelling, he was compelled to issue this challenge
under pain of losing his military rank. The month's imprisonment,
as we have seen, entails the loss of army rank ; therefore, whether he
challenged his insulter or refrained from doing so, he was compelled
to lose his rank as an officer in the reserve.

It is a contradiction in itself that a reserve officer must challenge
in accordance with military etiquette, but is under the jurisdiction of
civilian courts. That is only the case in Austria ; in Germany the
officer in the reserve, as soon as he does anything in his character as
an officer, is under the military jurisdiction.

The author hopes that the institution is to be understood from
what he has said about it. It is not so easy for English people to
understand the strong feeling of society about duelling, and the
refusal to issue or accept a challenge. Public opinion in our society
is such that it is morally impossible for a gentleman to refuse a
duel or to refrain from challenging if he is insulted, without being
boycotted in all good society and acquiring the reputation of a
coward. No one who knows of the matter will shake him by the
hand ; all doors are closed against him.

The author knows many men, and officers too, who are opposed to
the duel and who speak against it, but when asked what they would
do in the case of an insult or a challenge, their answer is invariably
the same : ' I must accept or challenge ! I cannot sacrifice my
social position or my military rank for an ideal ! The few who have
risked it have lost both ! '

Well known is the case of an officer who, a few days after having
delivered a lecture against duels at a military club, was engaged in
one himself.

All this is to be deplored, but one can only hope that better
times will come, and the German people will reach the same level
as that to which England and other States have already attained.

1903 THE DUEL IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA 685

But before that is possible the laws must be changed and made
stronger, our leaders must think differently and more humanely,
public feeling, and especially the point of view of honour in certain
classes of society, must be altered.

Not long ago the author met an officer of the Guards of one of
the northern States, and the conversation turned upon duelling. He
could not understand what the author told him, and when asked what
he would do if some one insulted him, his answer was : ' If he insults
me he insults himself, and by all society he is no more esteemed as
a gentleman.' That is the old point of view, which was already
attained by the Greek sages, and which our society should also
strive to attain to.

There was last October, in Leipzig, a congress against duelling,
the leading members of which belonged to the highest aristocracy ; the
president was Fiirst Lowenstein. In the first weeks of December in
all Austrian newspapers an appeal was published, which began with
the words spoken by the Minister of War, Baron Krieghammer,
answering a question in parliament : ' I call on all to join me in my
fight against duelling. State and society may co-operate ; the army
will certainly not be against this work, it too can only welcome and
favour it.'

This appeal was signed by more than 1,000 persons; the first
names of our aristocracy are among the list of members. A com-
mittee has been appointed, which is deliberating about the best way
to do away with duelling.

May there be the possibility of the hope that this new movement
in Austria, joined with that in Germany, will bring forth good fruit,
that this example will be accepted in high places, and a new era of
peace will dawn !

K. CL. BACHOFEN VON ECHT.

686 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

THE INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY

THE result of the Woolwich election came as a bolt from the political
blue. In spite of attempts to make it appear a Liberal victory the
party managers know it was nothing of the sort.

Mr.. Crooks was invited to contest the seat by a joint committee
composed mainly of trades unionists and members of the Inde-
pendent Labour Party, and one of the conditions laid down for his
acceptance was :

That a Labour Candidate, independent of both Political Parties, be run for
Woolwich.

This condition was accepted, and the election campaign conducted in
strict accordance with its spirit. To such an extent was this carried
that, with two exceptions, no Liberal Member of Parliament was allowed
to speak from Mr. Crooks's platform. In saying this I do not wish it
to be understood that the Liberals did not render help. Hundreds of
workers and canvassers were sent by Liberal clubs and associations
into the division, but it was to the help of the Labour and not Liberal
candidate that they went, a fact which they fully understood.

Whilst much has been made of the Woolwich triumph, the quite
as significant unopposed return of Mr. David J. Shackleton for
Clitheroe, in Lancashire, passed almost unnoticed. Mr. Shackleton,
who is a prominent trades unionist in the textile trade, where
Conservatism has a strong hold on the workers, was also run as a
Labour candidate who refused to call himself a Liberal, and who
would not even promise to support the Liberals in Parliament.

Already seventeen Labour candidates have been endorsed by the
Labour Representation Committee for various constituencies, and
as the number will certainly reach, if it does not exceed, fifty at
the General Election, it is important that a movement which is
changing the political outlook, and which, if its promoters succeed
in their declared intention, will compel the reorganisation of political
bodies, should have its scope, strength, and aims clearly defined,

1903 THE INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY 687

so that the public may realise the change which is coming over the
political situation.

At the Trades Union Congress which met at Plymouth in
September 1899, a resolution was carried instructing the Parlia-
mentary Committee, the executive body of the Congress, to convene
a conference to consider ways and means to secure more adequate
representation of Labour interests in Parliament.

The terms of the resolution were as follows :

That this Congress, having regard to its decisions in former years, and with
a view to securing a better representation of the interests of labour in the House
of Commons, hereby instructs the Parliamentary Committee to invite the co-opera-
tion of all co-operative, socialistic, trade unions, and other working organisations
to jointly co-operate on lines mutually agreed upon, in convening a special congress
of representatives from such of the above-named organisations as may be willing
to take part to devise ways and means for securing the return of an increased
number of Labour members to the next Parliament.

The voting was, for the resolution 546,000, against 434,000.

The Conference so decided upon was duly held in the Memorial
Hall, London, on the 27th of February, 1900, when delegates
were present from trades unions representing a membership of
550,000, and from the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian
Society, and the Social Democratic Federation. Mr. Kichard
Bell, M.P., Mr. John Burns, M.P., and the present writer attended
as delegates.

A suggested constitution, which had been drafted by a small
committee of representatives from the Parliamentary Committee of
the Trades Union Congress and members representing the organisa-
tions named above, was submitted to the Conference, and after
discussion the following resolutions were agreed to by a practically
unanimous vote :

(1) That this Conference is in favour of working-class opinion being repre-
sented in the House of Commons by men sympathetic with the aims and demands
of the Labour movement, and whose candidatures are promoted by one or other
of the organised movements represented by the constitution which this Conference
is about to frame.

(2) That this Conference is in favour of establishing a distinct Labour
group in Parliament, who shall have their own Whips, and agree upon their policy,
which must embrace a readiness to co-operate with any party which for the
time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interest of
Labour, and be equally ready to associate themselves with any party in opposing
measures having an opposite tendency ; and further, members of the Labour Group
shall not oppose any candidate whose candidature is being promoted in terms of
Resolution (1).

At the General Election of 1900 fifteen candidates were run
under the terms of the above resolutions, and Mr. Eichard Bell at
Derby and the present writer at Merthyr Tydvil were returned.
The following table sets out the results in detail.

688

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

April

Constituency

Candidate

Opponents

Labour
vote

Total
vote
polled

Representa-
tion before
contest

Representa-
tion after
contest

Derby .

R. Bell

2 Cons.

7,640

15,000

2 Cons.

1 Lab. and

ILib.

Merthyr

J. Keir

2 Libs.

5,745

13,000

2 Libs.

1 Lab. and

Hardie

1 Lib.

Gower

J. Hodge

1 Lib.

3,853

8,129

1 Lib.

1 Lib.

(Glam) .

Sunderland .

A. Wilkie

2 Cons.

8,842

19,102

1 Lib. and

2 Cons.

1 Con.

West Ham .

W. Thorne

1 Con.

4,439

10,054

1 Con.

1 Con.

Blackburn . P. Snowden

2 Cons.

7,096

18,000

2 Cons.

2 Cons.

Bradford

F. Jowett

1 Con.

4,949

9,939

1 Con.

1 Con.

Halifax

J. Parker

2 Libs, and1 3,276

13,000

1 Lib. and

1 Lib. and

1 Con.

1 Con.

1 Con.

Leicester .

J. R. Mac-

2 Libs, and; 4,164

18,000

2 Libs.

1 Lib. and

Donald

1 Con.

1 Con.

Manchester,

F. Brockle-

1 Con.

2,398

6,415

1 Con.

1 Con.

S.W.

hurst

Preston

J. Keir

2 Cons.

4,834

11,500

2 Cons.

2 Cons.

Hardie

Bow and

Geo. Lans-

1 Con.

2,558

6,961

ICon.

1 Con.

Bromley .

bury

Ashton-

J. Johnston

1 Lib. and

737

6,100

1 Con.

1 Con.

under-Lyne

1 Con.

Leeds, East

W.P.Byles

1 Lib. and

1,266

6,305

ILib.

1 Con.

1 Con.

Rochdale .

A. Clarke

1 Lib. and

901

11,290

1 Con.

1 Con.

1 Con.

When it is borne in mind that the election was fought whilst the
war fever was still raging and that all the Labour men were ' Pro-
Boers,' the results obtained are not without their significance.

Since then, as already indicated, Mr. Shackleton and Mr. Crooks
have been returned, so that the Labour Group in Parliament owning
allegiance to the Labour Kepresentation Committee now consists of
four members. These meet once a week, or more frequently as occa-
sion may require, to decide upon their policy and course of action.
The other Labour members in the House (of whom there are eight)
belong to organisations which are not affiliated with the Labour
Eepresentation Committee, and therefore, up to the present, have
not taken part in these group meetings.

The third Annual Conference of the Labour Eepresentation
Committee met in February this year at Newcastle, when the
Secretary reported that 127 trades unions, representing a member-
ship of 847,315, the Fabian Society with 835 members, and the
Independent Labour Party with 13,000 were represented by 244
delegates. Forty-nine trade councils are also affiliated, but to prevent
duplication the membership is not set down. The Social Demo-
cratic Federation, after taking part in the formation of the new body,
formally withdrew in 1891, whilst the Co-operative movement in
England has not yet become affiliated.1

1 This Conference represents England, Wales, and Ireland, the Scottish workers
having a committee of their own, which includes not only the trades unions and
the Independent Labour Party, but also the Co-operative Societies.

1903 THE INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY 689

The Committee is financed by a contribution of 10s. per thousand
of its affiliated membership, and the income for last year from this
source was 527£.

Every national trades union was represented at the Conference
and is affiliated to the Committee, with the single exception of the
miners. Shipbuilding, engineering, the textile trades, railway
workers, and the unskilled unions are all attached to the new Labour
combine.

During the three years that have elapsed since the movement
was founded a feeling has been gaining ground that a clearer
declaration was needed of the aims and objects of the Party than
that laid down in the somewhat loosely worded resolutions agreed to
at the first Conference. On the second day of the gathering at
Newcastle some hours were spent in discussing whether or not the
movement should be kept on rigidly independent lines, or whether
candidates nominated by trades unions should be free to run under
Liberal or Conservative auspices, or give assistance to the nominees
of other parties. After a number of amendments had been put and
disposed of, the following resolution was carried by 659,000 as
against 154,000. The voting was by card, the delegates voting in
proportion to the members represented, 1 vote for each 1,000
members :

In view of the fact that the Labour Representation Committee is recruiting
adherents from all outside political forces, and also taking into consideration the
basis upon which the Committee was inaugurated, this Conference regards it as
being absolutely necessary that the members of the Executive Committee, mem-
bers of Parliament, and candidates run under the auspices of this Committee,
should strictly abstain from identifying themselves with or promoting the interests
of any section of the Liberal or Conservative parties, inasmuch as if we are to
secure the social and economic requirements of the industrial classes, Labour
representatives in and out of Parliament will have to shape their own policy
and act upon it, regardless of other sections in the political world ; and that
the Executive Committee report to the affiliated association or bodies any such
official acting contrary to the spirit of the constitution as hereby amended.

Following this, and in order to more clearly define if possible the
policy of the movement and to prevent the candidates acting upon
their own personal responsibility as to the auspices under which they
should be run, a resolution was carried with practical unanimity, as
follows :

(4) That all candidates applying to the Executive Committee for ratification
of candidature must, in order to qualify, be in the first instance promoted by an
affiliated society or a conference of affiliated societies in the district in which the
candidature is promoted, and must pledge themselves to accept the programme ~ of
this Conference. Also that all candidates recommended under Labour Represen-
tation Committee auspices must appear before their various constituencies under
the title of Labour candidates only.

2 ' Programme ' is a slip for ' policy.' The Conference declined to agree to any
programme at this stage.

690 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

In the face of these resolutions and the literally overwhelming
majorities by which they were adopted there can be no question
about the political independence of the movement. Nor are the
reasons for such a stand far to seek. In Yorkshire, Newcastle, and
other places the bulk of the trades unionists were formerly Liberals,
whereas in the Lancashire towns and many other parts of the
country they were in the main Conservative. If therefore these
two sections were to be united, it could only be done on the basis of
an attitude of strict neutrality towards both parties. In addition to
this consideration, the Independent Labour Party had to be taken
into account. Despite its numerical smallness, it is generally
recognised that it is to the work done by this Party during the past
ten years that the success of the movement is largely due. As a
matter of fact there are not half a dozen constituencies in England
which could be won by a trades union candidate unless backed by
the Independent Labour Party. Whatever opinion individual dele-
gates might hold concerning politics, they felt, when brought face to
face with the actual facts of the situation, that it was only by con-
ducting the movement on independent lines that they could hope
to secure the adequate representation of Labour in Parliament.

One other matter of first importance engaged the attention of
the Conference — Finance. Hitherto the great weakness of the
Labour Party has been, first its lack of cohesion, and next its
poverty. Trades unions are by their rules in most cases prohibited
from devoting any part of their income to political purposes. The
divided state of political opinion already referred to made this
imperative. When, however, the trades unions found the law
courts depriving their organisations of that legal protection which
was supposed to have been afforded to them by the Acts passed in
1871 and 1875, they began to realise, as their forefathers had done
in 1867, the need for their having a Party of their own.

For a number of years, therefore, one union after another has
been balloting its members on a proposal to pay a sum varying from
Qd. to Is. per year for Labour representation purposes.

Every union affiliated to the Labour Representation Committee
has some such fund. Most of the larger unions are contributing
the Is. per member, as are also the 320,000 miners who belong to
the Miners' Federation, and who hare a Labour representation
scheme of their own, but who are not affiliated with the Labour
Representation Committee. I have tried to obtain the most
accurate information possible on this point, and am convinced that
the sum now being raised by trades unions for the purpose of
Labour representation alone will not fall far short, if it does not
exceed, 50,000£. a year. As the movement developed, however, it
was felt that if each trade union, or other affiliated organisation,
was to retain the whole of this fund in their own coffers and finance

1903 THE INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY 691

their own members, when returned, the result would be that the
smaller unions would be practically shut out from being represented
in Parliament. Most of these are numerically so small that the
tax of maintaining a member in Parliament would be beyond their
resources.

At the Labour Representation Conference which met in Birming-
ham twelve months ago, the Executive was instructed to draft and
submit for approval a scheme for providing a central fund ; and this
was submitted to and approved of by the Newcastle Conference.
It proceeds on safe and cautious lines, and proposes that each
organisation affiliated to the Labour Representation Committee shall
contribute Id. per member per annum to this central fund, and
that in return every member who stands for election under Labour
Representation Committee auspices shall receive, if the funds permit,'
"25 per cent, of the returning officer's expenses, and if returned, a
Parliamentary salary of 2001. per annum. It is not suggested that
200?. is a living wage for a Member of Parliament, but the intention
is that the trades union or other affiliated organisation putting for-
ward a nominee shall pay him such salary as it may deem fit for
services rendered to the union, whilst 2001. a year from the Labour
Representation Committee shall be paid in addition and be meant to
cover the extra expenses involved by a man who is sent to the House.

The Newcastle Conference was successful from every point of
view ; and although Liberal politicians and the bulk of the Liberal
press bewailed the fact that the movement had cut itself off from
the leading-strings of Liberalism, and predicted disaster to the cause
of Labour representation as a consequence, the Woolwich election,
fought since the Conference was held, and in strict accordance with
the policy there laid down, completely refutes and falsifies all such
predictions.

It is of importance to know that the movement is not exclusively
one for working-class representation in Parliament. Trades unions
in nominating candidates are confined in their selection to their
own members, and their nominees must as a consequence, without
exception, be all drawn from the ranks of the working classes.
With the Independent Labour Party, however, it is different. That
is a Socialist organisation, and no limits of class are recognised
when members seek admission. The composition of the Independent
Labour Party, whilst overwhelmingly of the working class, yet con-
tains a proportion of the middle class. Quite a number of well-to-do
members of the upper middle class, including business and com-
mercial men, are to be found in its ranks ; where the teaching
profession is also largely represented. Its candidates are selected
from its own membership, and may be drawn from any of the sections
mentioned above. As a matter of fact, now that trades unions are
coming more and more into the political arena, the candidates of

692 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

the Independent Labour Party will probably be even more largely
drawn from the middle class than they have been in the past.

In the Socialist and Labour parties of the Continent, France,
Germany, Belgium, Spain, and Austria the parliamentary representa-
tives are largely recruited from the ranks of the educated middle
class. Jean Jaures, the Vice-President of the French Chamber of
Deputies, and the head of the Socialist Party, is a lawyer ; so too is
Emile Vandervelde, the leader of Le Parti Ouvrier of Belgium. In
Austria Dr. Adler fills a similar position. Among the candidates of
the Independent Labour party are quite a number of educated men
of good social position. I emphasise this point in order to make it
clear that the new movement is not tied down to accepting only
working men as candidates.

The Labour Eepresentation Committee does not select candidates.
Each trade union and the Independent Labour Party select the
number of candidates it is prepared to finance. The names of the
men so selected are reported to the secretary, and when a con-
stituency conference is held to fix upon a candidate, the list of
names of available men is sent down, and, as a rule, one of them is
chosen. The work of the Executive Committee consists in bringing
the forces together to make the selection, and in endorsing the
candidate so selected. Before a candidate is put on the approved
list he is required to sign the constitution of the Committee, which
pledges him to ' form or join a distinct group in Parliament, with its
own whips and its own policy on Labour questions, to abstain strictly
from identifying themselves with or promoting the interests of any
section of the Liberal or Conservative parties ... to abide by the
decisions of the group in carrying out the aims of this constitution,
and to appear before their constituencies under the title of Labour
candidates only.' With this the work of the Committee begins and
ends so far as the selection of a candidate is concerned.

Such in brief outline is the framework of the New Labour Party.
Its success thus far has been phenomenal, and its influence upon the
future of parties can scarcely be overestimated. At the approach-
ing general election it will have fifty of its nominees taking part in
the contest, and already the feeling is abroad that in the constituencies
selected the Liberals will leave its nominees in undisputed possession
of the political field. Should this feeling turn out to be well founded,
and the political conditions of the hour almost render any other
course on the part of the Liberals impossible, then there will be
fifty possible openings barred to Liberal candidates. By another
election it is extremely probable, judging by the rate at which the
movement is growing, that the number of Labour candidates will be
doubled. What will then be the attitude of the Liberal Party? It
it keeps making way for Labour all along the line, it is doomed to
a speedy extinction. If it refuses to give way and elects to nominate

1903 THE INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY 693

candidates in opposition to Labour men, the end is equally certain.
I do not labour this point, but it is one which the student of politics
cannot afford to overlook.

The new movement must also exercise considerable influence on
the course of legislation. With a group of say twenty-five earnest
resolute men acting together on the floor of the House of Commons, it
would be impossible for the party in office to neglect social questions,
to play fast and loose with election pledges in the way in which past
experience of Governments has made us familiar. Such subjects as
work for the unemployed, old age pensions, better housing, a legis-
lative shortening of the working day, with a decent minimum wage
for Government employees and, possibly, for workers in the sweated
industries, are all matters of urgency. The legal rehabilitation of trade
unionism will doubtless occupy a foremost place in the efforts of the
new party, and those who know how bitterly the employing class
will resist this, and how they will be backed in their opposition by
the House of Lords, foresee a struggle impending which will again
bring to the front as a live political issue the whole question of a
Second Chamber. The land question, too, is certain to be met by
drastic proposals, and thus not only will the composition of the
House of Commons be, to some extent, changed, but the issues of
political strife will be revolutionised. In many of these questions the
front benches and official supporters of both parties are certain to
act together in opposing the proposals of the Labour group, and this
will in turn give it fresh strength with the electorate. The one thing
needed to strengthen and consolidate a Labour Party is opposition.

The Employers' Federation has, in fact, already sounded the note
of battle. At a conference of the Parliamentary Council of that body
held in London last month, the following resolutions were passed and
communicated to the press for publication :

Resolution I. — In view of the attitude of political parties towards industrial
problems, of the growing strength of the Socialist Labour Party upon local
governing bodies, and of the efforts of the Labour Party in the House of
Commons to promote legislation to nullify the effect of the recent legal decisions
with respect to conspiracy and picketing, this conference of representatives ot
employers' associations connected with the various interests in the United
Kingdom affirms the desirability of a closer and more effective combination of
employers for the purpose of protecting the interests of trade, of free contract, and
of labour against undue interference with such interests, on the part either of
Parliament or of local authorities.

Resolution II. — That this conference is of opinion that, independent of party
politics, steps should be taken at all Parliamentary and Municipal elections to
ensure that the views of employers are brought under the notice of candidates, in
order that the efforts of the Labour Party to control Parliament and local govern-
ing bodies may be resisted, and this conference desires to impress upon Em-
ployers' Associations, and upon individual employers, the need for personal
communications being addressed to their local Members of Parliament with
respect to all questions arising in Parliament affecting the relations of employers
and workpeople.

VOL. LIII— No. 314 Z Z

694 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

In a struggle of the nature here foreshadowed, it is well to bear
in mind that the voting power is with the working class, and that
just as they stand and starve together during a strike, so will. they
vote together when the issues are no longer Liberal versus Conserva-
tive, but capital versus labour.

This new Labour Party, then, a combination of the solid strength
of trade unionism and the fervid zeal of Socialism, is big with hope
and fear ; hope for those who believe that only by legislation can the
toil-worn and poverty-oppressed working class be freed from their
bondage, and fear for those who see in all such legislation the sure
and certain downfall of our national greatness. But whether the
new movement inspires hope or fear, it is here, a thing to be
reckoned with. It is a natural and inevitable outcome of the
possession of the franchise, and, rightly viewed, the real wonder is
that it has been so long in coming.

J. KEIR HARDIE.

1903

THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE
LICENSING QUESTION

THE Licensing Question has entered a new phase. Hitherto legis-
lation has been desired by the party of Temperance Keform, and one
plank in their programme has been a radical change in the consti-
tution of the licensing authority. Now, although His Majesty's
Justices of the Peace, alone and unalloyed, remain the licensing
authority, legislation is demanded for the protection of the brewing
interests. The determination expressed at one Brewster Sessions
after another, and throughout the length and breadth of the
country, that there should be some reduction in the number of
licenses in congested districts has caused alarm ; and a movement is
on foot to induce the Government to provide for the compensation
of persons interested in suppressed licenses. It is a remarkable
circumstance in itself, that legislation should be sought expressly for
this purpose. Such a demand is an admission that the ' interests '
which it is sought to protect do not as yet exist in law ; at the
same time it is a signal recognition of the growth of public opinion
in favour of a reasonable limitation in the traffic in drink.

That growth of opinion has been evidenced by two events, and —
through that curious action and reaction which is always taking
place in this country between opinion and law — has been immeasur-
ably strengthened by these events, and especially by their conjunc-
tion. We refer, of course, to the passing of the Licensing Act, 1 902,
and to the decisions of the Courts in what is known as the Farn-
ham Case.1 Probably neither event alone would have produced any
marked effect. The Farnham decision, though mainly an application
and extension of the law as previously laid down, has no doubt a
far-reaching operation. Bat standing alone, it might have been
regarded as the isolated action of a bench of magistrates of extreme
views, only to be followed by lean and hungry reformers, and not by
easy-going men of moderate views. The Act of Parliament, on the

1 An appeal to the House of Lords from the judgment of the Court of Appeal has
been lodged in this case. The references to the case in this article must be read
subject to that fact.

695 z z 2

696 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

other hand, so slightly alters the licensing law, that the Home
Secretary was recently asked by some alarmed Member to issue a
notice to justices informing them how little their powers were
changed ! Nevertheless the Act has been construed — and rightly
construed — as an indication of the anxiety of Parliament, acting
under the guidance of a Conservative Government, to promote
temperance ; and being passed just when the licensing authority had
been informed, that it had a right of initiative in reducing the number
of licensed houses, it has acted as a stimulant to the exercise of this
power. Both decision and Act are the outcome of the same force,
the steady growth of public opinion. But it is an accident that two
quite different effects of that opinion should have been produced
practically at the same moment ; and it is a striking instance of the
power of accident in political and social progress, that the syn-
chronising of these two events should have so largely enhanced the
influence of either.

The Licensing Act of 1902 is the outcome of the Koyal Com-
mission which reported in 1899, and it proceeds upon the very
sensible plan of embodying in legislation recommendations upon
which the two great parties on that Commission — the authors of the
Majority Report, and the Chairman and his associates in the Minority
Report — are agreed. Its provisions are neither very numerous nor
very complicated. They approach the question of intemperance on
three sides. They strengthen the law in dealing with drunkenness ;
they provide for the better and more convenient exercise of the
powers of licensing authorities ; and they seek to prevent the use of
premises for drinking, in privacy and without restraint, under the
pretext that they are club-houses. There are two notable pro-
visions under the first head, that which makes habitual drunken-
ness, either of husband or wife, a ground for a separation order, and
that which establishes a Black List for drunkards. These provisions
obviously have a social effect far beyond their actual scope. Not
every husband or wife who drinks is an habitual drunkard as defined
by statute ; such a person must be at times dangerous or incapable
of the management of affairs. But drunkenness persisted in, and
especially operating upon an uneducated and perhaps coarse nature,
tends always to produce that state which will warrant a court in taking
action ; and the knowledge that separation may follow upon outbursts
of drunken fury, or upon that soaking which destroys brain-power, will
be a powerful inducement to check a growing and pernicious habit.
Equally potent in its operation upon the fears of the individual and the
opinion of the class will be the establishment of the Black List. A
man or woman convicted four times in twelve months of an offence in
which drunkenness is a prominent feature will be reported to the police ;
and the police will thereupon take steps to give such information to
licensed houses and registered clubs as will enable the culprit to be

1903 PRESENT POSITION OF LICENSING QUESTION 697

identified. Probably a full description and a photograph will be
circulated, with a warning that the offender is not to be served with
drink.2 It will then be an offence for any publican, or the authorities
of any registered club, knowingly to supply drink to the person in
question within three years, and for the drunkard himself to attempt
to obtain drink at any such place. In recommending this provision
the Licensing Commission recognised that it could be worked more
easily in small places than in large ; but they added that even in
large towns drunkards had their special houses of resort, and to shut
them out even from these haunts would be to set a mark of disgrace
upon them which would have a deterrent effect. We believe some
such regulation has been in force in many of the cantons of
Switzerland for some time. Apart from its direct operation, it tends
to foster public opinion in the condemnation of drunkenness.

The most important amendment in the licensing law is that
which brings within the discretionary power of the justices what are
known as ' grocers' licenses.' Grocers' licenses were a creation of
Mr. Gladstone. They are, in fact, licenses granted to shopkeepers
to sell wine in bottles for consumption off the premises only, and
their object was to encourage the use of light foreign wines. In the
first instance they were altogether outside the control of the justices.
In 1869 a certificate of justices was rendered necessary; but it could
only be refused on one of four grounds — practically equivalent to mis-
conduct or want of qualification on the part of the applicant or his
premises. The recent Act removes these restrictions on the action of
the justices, and leaves them full discretion to grant or refuse any
grocer's license, except in the case of persons holding licenses on the
25th of June, 1902, who can only be dealt with on one of the four
grounds mentioned or for other misconduct. It has been alleged
that grocers' licenses have done much harm, mainly in encouraging
drinking amongst women ; and it has even been said that the prac-
tice exists of entering wine and spirits supplied to the mistress of
the house in the weekly accounts under the name of some harm-
less article of household consumption, with the object of misleading
the husband. It may be doubted, whether such practices obtain to
any considerable extent, and whether the encouragement to intoxica-
tion afforded by such licenses can be compared with that of the
public-house. But there seems to be a concurrence of opinion, that
drunkenness is on the increase amongst women, while it is (though
slowly) decreasing amongst men ; and no doubt the ability to buy
wine at a shop, kept not as a wineshop but as a grocer's, and to
consume it at home, may conduce to this most sad result. There is
certainly no reason why the licensing authority should not have full
control over such licenses, and it is only to be regretted that that
control does not extend to existing license-holders.

2 This is the course to be adopted by the Surrey police.

698 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Apri

The submission of all future grocers' licenses to the full
discretion of the justices brings within their control every kind
of sale of intoxicating liquors by retail, except that by a wine
merchant or wholesale spirit dealer for consumption off the premises,
where no other trade of any kind is carried on at the place of
business. This result has been arrived at by the most curiously
circuitous process. In 1828, the Act which still forms the basis of
the justices' authority gave them full power over every kind of
license for drinking on the premises. But from that time to
1872 the Legislature wavered between the principle of control
and the principle of free trade, and various kinds of liquor-selling
have from time to time been permitted upon simple payment
of excise duty. The most striking experiment of this kind was
embodied in the Beerhouse Act of 1830. This measure is said to
have had two objects — one to encourage the drinking of beer aa
compared with the drinking of ardent spirits, the other to counteract
the growing system of ' tied houses ' (that is, public-houses owned or
financed by a particular brewer), and to encourage the small trader.
It had the most astonishing and disastrous results. Thirty thousand
beerhouses sprang into existence immediately on the passing of
the Act, and before the justices' control of such houses was restored
(in 1869) the number had become almost equal to that of the fully
licensed houses ; in fact it would not be far off the truth to say, that
the legislation of 1830 is responsible for half the public-houses with
which the country now has to deal. Moreover, the growth of the
tied-house system was not in any way checked ; while the uncon-
trolled beerhouse was notoriously the refuge of persons who had
been judged unfit by the justices to hold a license, and the resort of
thieves and other bad characters. This signal failure must be borne
in mind, when one is tempted, by the difficulties occasioned by the
creation of powerful vested interests in liquor traffic, to think that
uncontrolled sale might be better than the present system. Experi-
ments in the same direction in relation to off-licenses have also become
gradually discredited; and, as we have seen, the control of the
justices both in relation to on and off licenses is now fully recognised.

The other amendments of the licensing law in the recent Act
relate to matters of detail ; the most important has reference to the
power of the justices over the structure of licensed premises. Plans
must be deposited before a new license is applied for. No alteration
affecting the serving of liquor can be made in any public-house
without the consent of the justices assembled for licensing business ;
and the justices may themselves require alterations necessary to the
proper conduct of the licensed business to be made.

We turn to the other factor in the recent awakening of public
opinion. The decision in the Farnham Case is the last of three
decisions which have established, that the justices when sitting for

1903 PRESENT POSITION OF LICENSING QUESTION 699

licensing purposes are not a body deciding a question as judges
between two litigants, but a body exercising a discretion in the
public interest. So recently as 1891 it was contended that the
discretion to refuse a new license — admitted to exist — did not apply
to the renewal of a license, and that the justices had no right to
refuse a renewal merely because they thought the requirements of
the neighbourhood did not render the license necessary or desirable.
Misconduct alone, or some definite breach of the law, it was urged,
justified the Bench in suppressing a license. The celebrated case of
Sharp v. Wakefield3 effectually disposed of this contention, and
established the right of justices to diminish the number of licenses
in the general interests of the neighbourhood and on no other
ground.

' It is not denied/ said Lord Halsbury in that case, ' that for the purpose of the
original grant [of a license] it is within the power and even the duty of the
magistrates to consider the wants of the neighbourhood with reference both to its
population, means of inspection by the proper authorities, and so forth. If this is
the original jurisdiction, what sense or reason could there be in making these
topics irrelevant in any future grant P '

And Lord Hannen refers to the duty of the justices to consider the
needs of the neighbourhood on an application for the renewal of a
license. Six years later the position of the justices when dealing
with licensing questions was emphatically distinguished from that
which they occupy as a court of justice. In Boulter v. The Justices
of Kent 4 the present Lord Chancellor declared, that when Justices of
the Peace were acting as a licensing authority they 'were not
occupying the position of judges at all, but were exercising the
discretionary jurisdiction as to how many public-houses they would
permit in a district, and what persons should carry them on.'

' The justices,' said Lord Herschell, ' have an absolute discretion to determine,
in the interest of the public, whether a license ought to be granted, and every
member of the public may object to the grant on public grounds, apart from any
individual right or interest of his own. ... A decision that a license should not
be granted is a decision that it would not be for the public benefit to grant it. It
is not a decision that the objector has a right to have it refused. . . . There is
no controversy inter paries?

These views paved the way for the Farnham decision, in which
the right of th« Bench first to object to the renewal of a license,
and then to decide upon the question of renewal, was upheld. The
facts of the case could not have raised the question in a more pro-
nounced way. The Farnham justices were invited by the County
Licensing Committee (also justices) to consider the propriety of
discontinuing a substantial number of the licenses in the division.
The justices investigated the circumstances of each licensed house

3 Reprinted in the Report of the Royal Commission, vol. ix. p. 163.
* Report of tJie Royal Commission, vol. ix. p. 169.

700 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

and subsequently objected to the renewal of all the licenses over
which they had control. At the hearing of the applications for
renewal, evidence in support of the objections was given on oath,
and questions were put by the Chairman based on the facts collected
by the justices. In the result a renewal was refused in nine cases ;
and the action of the justices was upheld and approved by the
superior Courts in all particulars.

' The magistrates,' said Lord Justice Matliew, ' proceeded from first to last
with commendable care, and seem to me to have had no other motive than the
desire of honourable men to discharge their duties faithfully.' ' In making the
preliminary investigation,' said Lord Justice Cozens Hardy, ' and considering
whether the number of licensed houses was in excess of the needs of the district,
the justices were simply preparing to discharge the important duties, mainly
administrative, imposed upon them by the Act of 1828.'

Thus the right of initiative in raising the question of a surplusage
of licenses was expressly established; and under the conjoint
influence of a judicial decision of so emphatic a character and an
Act of Parliament strengthening the laws against excessive drinking,
a wave of activity has swept over the licensing authorities of the
country.

Before considering the call for further legislation which this
activity has suggested, let us briefly consider the broad features
of the licensing problem. There are now in England and Wales
about 102,000 public-houses,5 or about one to every 320 of the
population — men, women, and children. Those houses where
all kinds of intoxicants are sold are about 67,000, while 30,000
are beerhouses originating under the Free Trade in Beer Act of 1830,
never sanctioned by the justices in the first instance, and still
outside their discretionary control. At the same time there are
over 27,000 licenses to sell beer, wine, or spirits for consumption off
the premises. And it is curious to remark with regard to these, that
wherever and whenever the magistrates' control has operated, the
kind of license affected has decreased in number, while freedom of
control has led to a rapid increase. For instance, the licenses to sell
beer by retail off the premises between 1869 and 1880, while they
could not be refused at the discretion of the justices, but only for
special reasons, increased from 3,000 to between 5,000 and 6,000.
By Acts of 1880 and 1882 the justices were given free discretion
in dealing with them, and since then they have fallen to 3,000. On
the other hand, grocers' licenses, which have only now been brought
under discretionary control, have steadily increased up to the present
day and now number several thousands.

We have said that the total number of public-houses is equiva-
lent to one to every 320 persons, or, roughly, to every 64 households.

5 This was the number stated by the Koyal Commission in 1899. Probably it
has now decreased by a few hundreds.

1903 PRESENT POSITION OF LICENSING QUESTION 701

This in itself is a sufficiently startling proportion, when one comes to
consider what it really means. It is not every household which is a
customer of the public-house, or every member of a household.
When sufficient deductions are made for the well-to-do, who do
not appreciably frequent public-houses, for the increasing number
of teetotal families amongst the working class, for the children of
working-class families who cannot drink, and for the women who
(as a rule) drink very little, it would probably not be far off the
truth to say that the supply of public-houses to those who habitually
use them is about one to every 160 persons. It is almost certain
that the supply of licensed houses throughout the country is in
excess of the supply of food-shops — butchers', bakers', grocers',
greengrocers' ; the recent Census returns for some of the Southern
Counties seem to give this result.6

But the general ratio of public-houses to population gives a very
faint idea of the state of things in many places. Licenses are not
distributed equally throughout the country. Some counties have many
more public-houses than others, and in the same county some towns and
some rural districts have an unenviable pre-eminence. Some very inter-
esting statistics have lately, at the instance of Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, been
collected by the Hants Quarter Sessions. In that county it appears
that there is now one public-house to every 256 persons, whereas in
1890 there was one to every 169. But this decrease in ratio is due
to the increase of population in and about a few towns and places —
such as Portsmouth, Southampton, Bournemouth, Eastleigh, and the
neighbourhood of the great camps — rather than to any general
increase or to any decrease in the actual licenses in existence. The
rural districts are in no way affected by it. Nor is it a case of one
rule for the town and another for the country. There are twenty-
eight towns which in the aggregate have one public-house to every
1 90 persons, and seventy-eight rural parishes which in the aggregate
have one license to every 157 persons. The remainder of the county,
with only one public-house to every 397 persons, stands out in favour-
able comparison. Although one public-house for 400 persons — men,
women, and children — strikes one as quite a sufficient supply, if the
over-supplied parts of the county were served in only the same pro-
portion no less than 511 public-houses would have to disappear ! In
the over-supplied districts there are great differences. For example,
Stockbridge and Minstead, in the New Forest, have the same popula-

6 In Surrey and Hants we have the following ratios of occupations to population :

Surrey Hants

Bakers 1 to 196-8 1 to 181-1

Butchers . . . . . . 1 to 274-6 1 to 311-9

Fishmongers 1 to 856-4 1 to 899-4

Greengrocers 1 to 490-5 1 to 640-1

Grocers 1 to 162-8 1 to 180-6

Publicans, Barmen, &c 1 to 152-3 1 to 133-3

702 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

tion — 860 ; Stockbridge has only 1,323 acres, while Minstead contains
over 10,000. Yet Stockbridge has eleven public-houses, or one to
every seventy-eight persons, while Minstead has but four, or one to
every 215 persons. Even smaller areas than towns and parishes must
be considered to get an idea of the quite ridiculous number of public-
houses in some places. In the town of Winchester, almost in the
shadow of the great Cathedral, it is said that there are nineteen public-
houses within a distance of 90 yards of each other. Pre-eminent
perhaps in the whole country is Portsmouth Hard, where in a distance
of 191 yards thirteen out of twenty-seven houses are licensed ! 7

It is generally admitted to be difficult to lay down any rule as to
the right proportion of public-houses to inhabitants ; but it seems
clear that in all the efforts to bring about a reduction a very liberal
view of the alcoholic requirements of the country has been adopted.
The report of the majority of the Koyal Commission declined to
recommend any fixed proportion ; the minority suggested a statutory
maximum of one house for every 750 persons in towns and one for
every 400 in country districts. But whatever the right proportion,
it is admitted, even by most brewers, that a large reduction, sooner or
later, is desirable. It has indeed been sometimes suggested, that the
number of public-houses has very little to do with the prevalence
of drunkenness. Statistics, it is true, cannot be cited to prove any
such connection. The Royal Commission pointed to some counties
where convictions of drunkenness were very high and licenses very
few, and to others where precisely the opposite state of things
prevailed. The fact is, statistics are of no value for any conclusion
on the subject, for two reasons — first, because offences are differently
catalogued in different places ; and secondly, because police activity
varies indefinitely. Charges of drunkenness are usually associated
with some other charge, and the conviction recorded may be entered
under the second offence ; while the district where drunkenness is
at its worst may — perhaps not unnaturally — be the district where
the police have lax views on the subject, and make few charges.
Both branches of the Royal Commission, after reviewing all the
evidence, came to the conclusion, without hesitation, that public-
houses should be largely reduced in number ; and they gave un-
answerable reasons for their view. One is that the greater the
number of public-houses the more difficult police supervision
becomes. But a still more cogent reason is, that when public-houses
are in excess they cannot all make an honest living. They are
therefore driven to unworthy expedients to secure a sufficient trade.
There is a direct temptation to foster heavy and continuous drinking,
and the class to which the public-house offers attractions suffers in
consequence. In one of Dumas' novels there is a graphic description

7 The figures for Hants have been taken merely for convenience. Hants is not a
county in which licenses are exceptionally numerous.

1 903 PRESENT POSITION OF LICENSING Q UESTION 703

of the man who passed five wine-shops, but could not resist the sixth —
with consequences momentous to the story. Not only the man who
suffers from drink-craving, but the man who yields to the invitation
of a comrade and wastes his money when he does not want to drink
at all, is affected by the multiplication of opportunities to take a glass.
On the other hand, the better the character of a public-house the
more likely is it to be well conducted, as both owner and tenant have
more at stake. Apart from teetotal ideals, all who would promote
temperance must desire to see a few, not too many, public-houses,
and those approximating to the hotel or the club of the well-to-do,
supplying food as well as drink, and giving means of rational recrea-
tion not dependent upon incessant repetitions of the pint of beer
or glass of spirits. It will obviously promote any such result, if
superfluous and poorly paying houses are weeded out, and their
legitimate custom transferred to establishments which are able at
once to give good accommodation and yield a good business profit.

Now it seems likely that a movement of a purely economic
character, which has been observed for many years and which has
had many injurious effects, may in the result facilitate some such
reduction of business as is admitted to be called for. We allude to
the concentration of licenses in the hands of brewers. The brewer
was not recognised at all in the original licensing system. The
occupier of the premises, the actual retailer of beer and spirits, is the
person licensed by the justices and accountable to them. But gradu-
ally the capitalist, who supplies the commodities to be sold, has
dominated the licensee, and the great majority of license-holders now
recognise the brewer or the distiller as their master. The result is
what is known as the ' tied house,' the house the occupant of which
is bound to get his liquor from some one firm. Sometimes the house
is tied for beer only ; sometimes, as a witness before the Eoyal Com-
mission put it, for ' everything, but sawdust.' Sometimes the tie is
effected by a mortgage on the house ; sometimes the holder of the
license is a tenant of the brewer, and sometimes he is a mere manager.
The statistics collected for Hampshire are an emphatic illustration
of the extent to which the system has developed. Out of 927 houses
in the congested districts 741 belong to brewers or brewery companies,
and 113 are leased to them ; the small balance is mainly accounted for
by hotels, railway refreshment rooms, and other establishments not
really in the category of public-houses. Further, of the 927 tenants,
only 29 held on a yearly tenancy, 374 on a quarterly, 137 on monthly
tenancies, and the rest on half-yearly. There is also a tendency on
the part of the larger breweries to eat up the smaller, so that, speaking
generally, it may be taken that the licensing question becomes more
and more a question between a comparatively small number of large
brewers and brewery companies, and the country at large. As we have
said, this result has often been deplored. It has been suggested, that

704 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

there is no adequate guarantee for the quality of the liquor supplied
to a tied house ; or it may be supplied at such high prices that the
license-holder can hardly make a profit by fair means. It is perhaps
more serious that while the owner of the house is deeply interested
in its conduct on lines well within the law, he is also deeply interested
in pushing the tenant to do a good trade. And most serious of all
is the solid phalanx of moneyed interests arrayed in favour of a large
consumption of alcohol, and in legislation favourable to that end.
But on the other hand, when, within a certain district, the reduction
of licenses becomes desirable, the fact that the licenses are largely
held by a few persons affords means for carrying out the reduction
with a minimum of inconvenience. If A holds one licensed house,
and the license is not renewed, he may be a loser. But if A holds
twenty licensed houses, and the licenses of ten are not renewed, he
may be a positive gainer. The custom of the ten suppressed houses
may go to the survivors, while the expenses attending them — repairs
and other landlord's expenses — are saved. It is on this principle that
most of the recent reductions in public-houses have been carried out.
The most noted instance is that of Birmingham, where on an intima-
tion from the magistrates that in certain quarters of the city the
number of licenses was excessive, the brewers agreed, after consulta-
tion amongst themselves and with the magistrates, to suppress 52 out
of 101. It is said that they appointed a valuer, who on the one hand
valued the licenses to be surrendered, and on the other the increased
value of the other licensed houses arising from the suppression. The
suppressed houses were bought up at the expense of the others, and
the increased value is said to have been more than the value sur-
rendered. The licensees, as a rule, were quarterly or half-yearly
tenants, or manager?, and their interests were looked after by the
brewers. Again, in Blackburn, through systematic inquiry by the
justices and arrangements with the brewers, the licenses have been
reduced from 604 in 1882 to 540 in 1893 and 480 in 1902. And in
Liverpool compulsory action on the part of the justices has resulted
in an offer on the part of the brewers to examine the houses in a
congested area with the view of agreeing amongst themselves upon
a scheme of reduction. In the Farnham case the justices first
invited the brewers interested in the licenses of the town (45 full
licenses) to assist the Bench in an arrangement for reducing the
number, and it was only on the failure of the brewers to respond to
this appeal that the Bench took direct action.

What then broadly is the existing state of things ? An admitted
surplusage of public-houses ; their aggregation in the hands of a few
capitalists ; remarkable instances of the suppression of surplus houses
under the present law and by the present licensing authorities ; a
tendency under pressure to co-operate in the process on the part of
the great brewers; a strong probability that large reductions can

1903 PRESENT POSITION OF LICENSING QUESTION 705

be made without serious loss to anyone. Is it desirable, under these
circumstances, that there should be further legislation, or that
matters should be left to the operation of the present law and of
public opinion ? There is one plea, and one plea alone, for further legis-
lation ; that is, the provision in some form of compensation for those
interested in suppressed licenses. Another reason is indeed alleged,
that of bringing within the full power of the justices the beerhouses
established before 1869. These at present can only be suppressed
(practically) for misconduct, and not because they are not required.
But in practice there seems to be little difficulty in dealing with
these houses. They are, as a rule, much less valuable than fully
licensed houses ; and they are, to a large extent, in the hands of the
same brewers who own the more lucrative class of license. In any
project of reduction, therefore, the ante-1869 beerhouses are fairly
certain to be the first to be voluntarily surrendered ; it is notorious that
to obtain a new full license, or even an off-license in a new neighbour-
hood, brewers often tender not one, but two or three privileged
beerhouses. The representative of the brewing interest in
Hampshire suggested at a recent conference with the justices that
there should be a kind of rule as between the brewers and the
justices, that at least three old beerhouses should be surrendered
whenever a new license was granted. This little flaw in the
justices' jurisdiction may therefore well be disregarded. The
suggestion, that these houses should be brought into line with other
licensed premises as a condition of the launching of some scheme for
compensation, savours too much of the very common proposal to
surrender a worthless license in one place in order to obtain the
grant of a new and valuable one in another. The bargain would be
a bad one for the public.

Compensation then is substantially the object of the suggested
legislation. Now on this branch of the question, also, public opinion
has made great advances. Formerly compensation at the hands of
the public was claimed by the brewing interest. Now the demand
is for compensation at the expense of other licenses. The Eoyal
Commission in effect disposed of the first claim ; their authority is
cited in support of the second. Both branches of the Commission
indeed suggested some scheme of compensation, the chief difference
being that those who signed the Minority Keport proposed merely
a kind of notice and period of grace, during which alone arrange-
ments for compensation should be carried out ; while the majority
seem to have contemplated the formation of a perpetual compensa-
tion fund, to be provided and applied in relation to successive fixed
periods. Both branches proposed to provide the fund by a tax or
rent on licenses. Parliament in the recent Act did not deal with
the subject ; and it is obvious that it presents many difficulties. On
the one hand any kind of payment would alter the relations of the

706 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

licensing authority and those interested in licenses. Even a seven
years' term, which practically would arise where a tax or rental was
imposed for seven years, would give licensed houses a status which
they do not at present possess. On the other hand a tax or rent of
general application might have very unfair operation. As a brewer
points out in a recent issue of the Times, unless very small areas were
selected for the operation of any such impost, many brewers would
be weighted with a burden without receiving any corresponding
advantage. The brewers in districts where no reduction was effected
would be made to pay for reductions in other districts ; and those
who benefited by reductions would be charged the same as those
who gained no benefit whatever. And the difficulty is not altogether
removed, however small the area chosen, if it be any area of local
government, such as a town, an urban or rural district, or a parish,
since, as we have seen, there may be serious over- supply in one part
of such an area and very moderate supply in another. Again, in
many cases no harm whatever may be done to any brewing interest.
If all public-houses throughout the country were to be suppressed
by Act of Parliament there might be a case for compensation,
although no license is held for more than a year, because the possi-
bility of renewal would be abolished. But while all that is proposed
is a moderate reduction in places where there is an excessive number,
and where therefore, prima facie, business is not good, and while
it is proposed to effect this reduction not by any change in the law,
but merely by the exercise of powers in the licensing authorities
which have always existed, there seems to be strong reasons for
abstaining from interference in a very difficult matter and leaving
the trade to settle their own affairs and to make such mutual
arrangements amongst themselves as will prevent cases of hardship.
The great advantage of such arrangements is that they can be made
irrespective of fixed areas, and can be adapted to each casa. In one
area one brewery may have a predominant interest ; in another,
another. A little give-and-take will enable each to profit by such
reductions as are made.

At the present moment two arguments for legislation providing
compensation are urged on the public. On the part of certain
magistrates, legislation is advocated on the ground that the licensing
authority is hampered in reducing licenses by the absence of any
machinery for compensation. On the part of the brewers, legislation
is said to be necessary because licenses are being too rapidly
reduced. These contentions serve to neutralise each other. If the
assertion of the brewers is well founded, magistrates apparently are
not hampered in the manner suggested by the memorial with which
Sir Ralph Littler's name is associated. Indeed, as Mr. Arthur
Chamberlain has suggested, if the licensing authority — a wholly
unfit body for the purpose — is called upon to consider claims for

1 903 PRESENT POSITION OF LICENSING Q UESTION 707

compensation and to apportion gain and loss between the brewers of
their districts whenever they decline to renew a license, their
discretion in dealing with licenses will be indefinitely restricted.
Not only will the process of reduction, admitted by all to be salutary,
be in all probability practically stopped ; but the right to deal with
each license on its merits — a right which has existed for centuries
and has been upheld by decision after decision of the courts — will for
the first time be in jeopardy. On the other hand, is it likely that
bodies constituted as are the County and Borough Benches will enter
upon any wildly revolutionary course ? Is there any body of evi-
dence to show hasty or harsh action ? 8 Is it not, on the contrary,
the fact that the licensing authority has been anxious in every case
to take the representatives of the brewing interest into their con-
fidence, and to obtain their aid in carrying out equitable arrange-
ments ? The present moment is, in fact, one of experiment. It
may be that the existing law is, from one cause or another, inadequate
to bring about such a considerable reduction in congested districts
as is thought desirable, and that it will ultimately be necessary to
embark upon the troubled sea of parliamentary compensation. If
ever that step is taken, it may be confidently predicted that
difficulties will be encountered, probably far more serious than any
now presenting themselves. There is more to be said for legislation
on the principle of the old Inclosure Acts, which would enable the
majority to bind a small minority. Arrangements between the
brewers of any neighbourhood for reducing the number of public-
houses, and for assessing any loss on the remaining houses might be
endowed with the force of law, when sanctioned by the Licensing
Authority. But further experience would be valuable even for the
framing of such a measure. A little patience, and a little genuine
desire on the part of all interested in promoting temperance
to make satisfactory progress with a difficult question, may in the
course of a few years either solve the licensing problem or point
unmistakably to the right road. Hasty attempts to legislate, under
the influence of exaggerated representations of the action taken
by licensing authorities, whether such attempts be successful or not,
would seem to be peculiarly inappropriate and likely to lead to
disaster.

EGBERT HUNTER.

8 It has been recently stated by representatives of the trade, that the Licensing
Authorities throughout the country have refused to renew 300 licenses — 300 out of
102,000 I Take as an illustration what is reported from Oxford. At the last Brewster
Sessions ninety-six objections to licensed houses were served ; at the adjourned
sessions an arrangement between the largest brewer and the magistrates was
announced by which seven full licenses and six beerhouses were to be surrendered
this year, and two full licenses and two beerhouses next year. This does not sound
very drastic.

708 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S predominance in his own party, and indeed in
the country, must be regarded as the leading feature of the month.
His return may have lacked some of the dramatic elements that
were expected to attend it, but it has established his personal
supremacy in the Government and in his party. It is a fact of
the first importance in the political life of the nation, and it
deserves something more than mere casual criticism. Cynics will
naturally tell us that Mr. Chamberlain's triumph has been care-
fully engineered for months past, and it is undoubtedly true that
the modern arts of advertisement have never been more skilfully
applied than since he started upon his patriotic mission. During his
absence from England, whilst his colleagues in the Cabinet have had
to face a grave loss of power and prestige and a serious defection
among their supporters, he has been basking in the unclouded sun-
shine of popular favour. Ministers addressing the public at home
have been subjected to harsh criticism even from quarters generally
favourable to them. The Colonial Secretary, cut off from the
intrigues and dissensions of the political world of England, has been
moving in another sphere, and has, in consequence, escaped from the
atmosphere of deepening suspicion and distrust which has enveloped
the other members of the Grovernment. But if he has been far
enough away to be exempt from the hostile criticisms of English
politicians, he has at the same time been under the constant observa-
tion of the British public. Day by day, during his absence, the
newspapers have devoted columns to his sayings and doings on a
distant continent, and everywhere his movements have been followed
with universal sympathy and all but universal approval. It would be
unfair and absurd to say that he left England to avoid the criticism
which has hurtled in a storm round the heads of his colleagues. No
generous opponent will admit for a moment that this could have been
the case ; but he has been extraordinarily fortunate both in the time
and the circumstances of his absence. He has been fortunate, too, in
the results, so far as they can at present be judged, of his great mission.
In any case he would have had a warm welcome from all parties in
this country, but his admirers have not been content to leave things

1903 LAST MONTH 709

to follow their natural course. Whilst he has been working for England
in South Africa, they have been working for him in England.

It would be ridiculous to make any complaint of their conduct.
They were entitled to do all that they could to increase the power
and popularity of the man in whom they believe so fervently. But
their success cannot fail to have important political consequences.
Whilst the Ministry has been gradually losing reputation and
influence, he alone among its members has gained a fresh and
remarkable accession of both, and he comes back to England to find
himself more powerful than any other member of the Cabinet or any
other politician, to whatever party he may belong. Those of us who
have followed closely Mr. Chamberlain's career, ever since he entered
public life as the apostle of aggressive Kadicalism and Nonconformity,
cannot pretend to witness his present elevation without a feeling of
surprise. He has passed through so many phases, has undergone so
many changes, has been the object of so much hatred and suspicion,
not merely amongst his opponents but his colleagues and associates,
that his present position excites a feeling of wonder among all.
Yet the history of English politics contains other instances of
personal triumphs that are hardly less remarkable. To say nothing
of the case of Mr. Gladstone, who, once 'the rising hope of the
unbending Tories of his time,' lived to be the leader and prophet of
the British democracy, we have only to recall the story of Disraeli,
despised and rejected by his own party, disliked and distrusted by it
even when he had won for himself the Premiership, yet dying an
object of veneration and admiration to the great political connection
which he had rescued from decay and restored to power. To some of
us it may seem that Mr. Chamberlain's story approaches much more
nearly to Disraeli's than to Gladstone's. No one, it is true, will pretend
that intellectually he has shown himself to be the equal of either. He
has won the position he now holds by the strength of his will, by his
confidence in himself, by his almost reckless disregard of obstacles, by
his directness and tenacity of purpose, and his clear, though limited,
foresight. The man who knows his own mind, and is resolved to
achieve his own purposes, has an immense advantage in these days
over the majority of his rivals in the political arena. The public
shows in the case of such a man that it is willing to overlook his
faults, and in the case of Mr. Chamberlain this is to say much.
Throughout his life he has always been imposing himself upon those
who were unwilling to receive him, and he has never been daunted,
he has scarcely been discouraged, by their unwillingness. When he
entered Parliament, he was viewed with unconcealed hostility by the
official Liberal party. He made no attempt to conciliate them.
Then, as ever, he believed that a man's strength is better put forth
in attack than in defence, and upon this conviction he has always
acted. In 1885, when he had rallied the Kadicalism of the country
VOL, LIII— No. 314 3 A

710 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

to his side, and when old Liberals, and Conservatives of every shade,
were agreed in regarding him as the most dangerous person in the
nation, he seemed to be on the point of gaining the first place in his
political party. If he had not committed the mistake of almost
openly challenging Mr. Gladstone to a mortal combat for the prize,
the Liberal leadership would assuredly have fallen to him before long,
and the course of history would have been changed. He fell into
the error of under- estimating Mr. Gladstone's strength, and as a con-
sequence he was driven from his old party, and had to spend years
of comparative inactivity. There is no need to say that for a time
his relations with the Conservative party of to-day could hardly be
described as cordial. The old Tories were unable to forget what he
had been, and were unable to hide their fears as to what he might
yet be again. But once more he fought down the prejudices and
suspicions which surrounded him, and now he has the Tory party at
his feet, whilst he has at his command the enthusiastic approval of
its younger and more militant section. There is hardly a more strik-
ing instance in our history of what can be accomplished by a strong
individuality animated by a commanding and relentless force of will,
than the fact that, single-handed, he has achieved more than any of
his contemporaries, and that to-day he is the most considerable
personal factor in the public life of his country.

To the dispassionate onlooker it is clear that his present posi-
tion is due largely to the lack of personal leadership in our national
life. For years past the country has been crying, and crying in vain,
for men to lead it. We are accustomed to the jibes that are con-
stantly addressed to the Liberal Party on this ground. The case
of the Liberal Party, still partially paralysed by hidden intrigues
and internal struggles, is patent to everybody ; but, as a matter of
fact, the case of the Unionists is little better. It is true that the
stern discipline maintained within the party, and the influence which
is always exercised by the official chiefs of a party in possession of
power, kept the signs of dissension and revolt beneath the surface
until the beginning of the present session. But no one who is not
a mere political hack will pretend that there was no feeling of dis-
satisfaction among the Ministerialists long before the new Fourth
Party sprang into existence. There was a time when Lord Salisbury
was a leader in the true sense of the word, and when he possessed
the full confidence of his followers. Bat can it be pretended that
the Ministerialists have had a real leader since Lord Salisbury's
resignation ? Mr. Balfour has, as he deserves to have, innumerable
friends, happily not confined to his own political following. In the
House of Commons his personal popularity exceeds that of any other
man. But, with all his admirable qualities, he has not succeeded in
imposing himself upon his party or the country in the character of
undisputed leader. We have only to think of what Lord Salisbury

1903 LAST MONTH 711

was in his prime, or of what Mr. Gladstone was until the day of his
resignation, in'order to feel how far below either of these statesmen
Mr. Balfour stands. Personally he may be free from blame for the
successive muddles and blunders into which the Ministry has fallen
of late — muddles and blunders which" have exasperated their friends
«ven more than their opponents. But, even if this were to be ad-
mitted, it would only make clearer the fact that he lacks the essential
quality of leadership. The very amiability of his character has told
-against him, and he has allowed himself to be surrounded ~by
colleagues whose personal fitness for the offices they hold is, in not
a few cases, angrily denied by the Ministerialists themselves. It
is useless to conceal the fact that since his accession to the Premier-
ship last summer the discontent in his own party with regard to the
leadership has much increased. And what of the country — the
great mass of the electors, who have no interest in the distribution
of the loaves and fishes of office, and only a partial knowledge of the
cross-currents of Parliamentary life ? Can it be pretended that the
country recognises Mr. Balfour as its leader? Or that the members
of the party to which he belongs regard him in that light ? Has
a single contested election been fought since he became Prime
Minister in which his name has been adopted as a battle-cry, or
his influence been a dominant factor in the struggle ? What the
country wants, and what it must have in any one under whom it
will serve, is a strong, clear, resonant voice that will speak for it,
in language that the common man can understand, that will give
it courage and inspiration in moments of trial and difficulty, and
point clearly and steadily to some goal that is to be reached. It
is not from Mr. Balfour that we have had any utterance of this
kind. The Opposition, curiously enough, had the advantage of
hearing such an utterance at Chesterfield, and might have profited
by it if the wreckers of the Liberal party had not forthwith sown
tares in the soil from which the good wheat should have sprung up.
But Mr. Balfour has never pretended to make a speech like Lord
Hosebery's at Chesterfield, has never attempted to lay his whole
case and policy, his opinions and aspirations, before the party he is
supposed to lead and the country he governs.

Human nature, not less than nature in the larger sense of the
word, abhors a vacuum, and for months, for years past, the
Ministerial party has groaned under the fact that it has had no real
leader in the true sense of the word. Can one wonder that it should
now be turning to Mr. Chamberlain, with the hope, I may almost
say the conviction, that here at least it will find the man who can
supply what is lacking in its equipment ? His gospel is not of the
highest, nor his temper the finest. Few impartial persons will
regard him as an ideal leader or a heaven-born statesman. To
some of his fellow-countrymen indeed his way of looking at life and

3 A 2

712 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

his methods for gaming his ends are almost abhorrent. But at
least those of us who feel the strongest dislike for these things must
admit that he has a voice, and that he can make that voice heard
throughout the Empire whenever he chooses to speak. Coming
among us now with fresh and brilliant prestige, and in the novel
but grateful character of peace-maker and conciliator, it is not
surprising that a large body of his own political associates should
hail him as the leader who is destined to restore the damaged
fortunes and reputation of the Unionist cause. Already his sup-
porters in the press openly proclaim him as the Pitt in an Addington
Administration, and a great number of the Ministerialists seem
prepared to give him the titular as well as the practical leadership.
Such is the political situation that confronts us to-day, and we who
look on will await with extreme interest the further movements in
' the high chess game * that we are witnessing. Doubtless I shall be
regarded as an opportunist for venturing to express my opinions in
this fashion. I am nothing of the sort. I abide by my own opinion
of Mr. Chamberlain's political career and of his character as a
politician. But it is absurd to shut one's eyes to what is happening
or is about to happen. To state facts plainly is not to proclaim
oneself an opportunist.

Let us turn for a moment from the position of the Ministerialists
to that of the Opposition. Here also we see the penalty that falls
upon the party that has no recognised leader, no one whose right to
give the word of command is generally admitted. An old Liberal
like myself who has striven for forty years to follow his party flag
may be forgiven if he feels some bitterness when he surveys the
present plight of the Opposition. There is deep humiliation in the
thought that, according to most Ministerial critics, the chief obstacle
to the removal of the present Government from office is the fact that
there is * no alternative Ministry ' to take its place. I do not admit
that this is true, but there is sufficient truth in the statement to
make it plausible and to secure its adoption by a very large and
powerful section of the public. It would be unfair to lay the
responsibility for this state of things upon any single person. The
original cause of the demoralisation of the Liberal party must be
sought far back in its history. It is of course obvious that the
Home Rule split of 1886 began the process. But though the party
then lost a powerful section of its members, it was not necessarily
disunited and disintegrated by their secession. The actual process
of internal disunion began in the years which immediately followed
1886, when Mr. Gladstone, with his whole mind concentrated upon
one great object, the passing the Home Rule Bill, was striving by
all possible means to gain a majority in the country and the House
of Commons. It is no treason to his memory to say that, in his
devotion to the cause to which he had consecrated the remnant of

1903 LAST AIOXTU 713

his life, he did not follow the movements of the times as closely
as he would have done under other circumstances. With him
the question of Home Kule seemed to be not merely paramount,
but to be the sole question that demanded his attention. It became
the one test that he applied to his followers. They were left to have
their own opinions upon all other subjects. It followed, as a natural
consequence, that upon every question except Home Eule a wide lati-
tude of opinion prevailed in the party, and naturally this condition
enabled extreme men who held strong views upon particular subjects
to exercise an influence that was altogether in excess of their
numbers or their weight in the community. The notorious New-
castle programme was the first sign of the new and unfortunate state
of things which had arisen for Liberalism. In that ridiculous, and
now discarded, manifesto, a dozen measures of an extreme character
were crowded together without any regard to the fact that the party
was notoriously divided upon most of them. Mr. Gladstone desired
a solid vote in favour of Home Rule. Other questions, he believed,
lay beyond his ken, and must be dealt with by other men. But he
committed the grave mistake of allowing Mr. Schnadhorst and the
party leaders of the time to attempt to conciliate all sections
of Liberals by combining in an omnibus programme all the
measures which any fraction of the party desired to carry. He
forgot that each of these fractions was thoroughly in earnest in
the advocacy of its own nostrum, and that each was resolved to have
the first place for its own particular item in the programme after
Home Eule had been dealt with. Thus, when the Home Eule
question disappeared from the field, the leaders of the Party had to
deal, not with a united and homogeneous body of supporters, but with
a number of distinct sections, each one of which had a policy of its
own for which it sought to obtain precedence. There was another
cause which aided much in the disintegration of the party at this time.
This was the fact that the success of Mr. Parnell's policy in the House
of Commons had made a profound impression upon the Liberals in that
chamber. Mr. Parnell had succeeded in bringing Home Eule to the
front by the extraordinary ability he showed in marshalling and organ-
ising his own particular body of followers, and he had shown what could
be accomplished by a comparatively small party acting in absolute
unison and under severe discipline. Other men thought that what
Mr. Parnell had done they also would be able to do. A Welsh party
sprang into existence, devoted to Welsh disestablishment and to
other movements popular in the Principality, and resolute in the
determination to press them forward without regard to the general
interests of Liberalism. Then came the formation of a Scotch
party, with its demand for Home Eule all round, and of a Labour
party, with a distinctly Socialistic bias. In short, even before
Mr. Gladstone's retirement, the Liberal Party had largely resolved

714 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

itself into a series of groups united only by their common feeling
of loyalty to their illustrious chief. When he went, that tie was
broken. It was an almost impossible situation that confronted
his successor in the Premiership. No man who did not possess
the immense prestige which Mr. Gladstone had won in a trium-
phant career of sixty years in|Parliament could/- have hoped to weld
into a disciplined and united army the men who had been allowed
to taste the sweets of liberty and independence during Mr. Glad-
stone's later days. There was still a Liberal Party, it is true, both
in Parliament and the country, but the freedom of action which was
claimed by contending groups rendered it impotent as a whole. If
no personal questions had arisen, and if Lord Rosebery had received
from his colleagues the unwavering support which Mr. Gladstone had
been able to command, his task must still have been one of enormous
difficulty, and one which it would have taken years to accomplish
successfully. But, as we know, personal questions did arise, even
among those who stood nearest to the Prime Minister, and the extreme
groups were led to believe that if they could only overthrow Lord
Rosebery's authority the way would be open for their own triumph.
It is worth while to recall the fact that when the Rosebery Govern-
ment resigned, the Prime Minister, with the full assent of the majority
of his colleagues, summoned his party to fight the election of 1895
on the question of the House of Lords. Immediately his two princi-
pal colleagues in the House of Commons set off, one to Manchester,
to raise anew the flag of Home Rule, and the other to Derby, to
announce that local option was the true question before the electors.
After such a flagrant exhibition of the want of discipline and loyalty,
even in the highest places in the party, it was impossible to feel sur-
prised when the party itself went hopelessly to pieces. Of the history
of the Opposition since 1895 it is not necessary to say much here.
Indeed, the story has already been told pretty fully in these pages.
It is a history of divided counsels, of personal intrigues which reflected
no credit upon those engaged in them, and of the strenuous attempts
of the most extreme men to capture the party organisation and the
party itself for the propagation of their own views. The story of
these years is not made more pleasant by the fact that the wreckers
have made such free use of slander and misrepresentation in pursuing
their ends, and that they have seemed to be chiefly inspired by a
venomous personal hatred of a particular man. But whatever may
have been their motives, they have at least succeeding in paralysing
the Liberal Party, and in reducing the Opposition in the House of
Commons to a state of impotence. Even when the Education Bill
gave all Liberals an opportunity of uniting on a common platform,
the weak strategy of the official leaders of the party caused the
advantage which was thus secured to be lost, and the Opposition
began its career at the opening of the present session hardly stronger

1903 LAST MONTH 715

or more united than it was in January 1902, when the paralysis of
the war still weighed upon it. And what an opportunity it has had
since then ! A month ago I drew attention to the reduced majori-
ties of the Government, and pointed out the obvious moral. Since
then all that has happened tends to confirm the belief that the days
of the present Ministry are numbered. Yet no one will venture to
claim for the Opposition that it has been the chief means of reducing
the Government to its present state.

The grave loss of prestige which Ministers have suffered, and the
successive crises through which they have passed since the session
began, have been to a great extent the work of those who were
elected as their followers and supporters. The birth of the new
Fourth Party has been dramatically sudden, and not less dramatically
complete. Yet, though in the end it has come upon us as a surprise,
it has been long foreseen as inevitable. The more Ministers have
trusted to the impotence of the Opposition for their own safety, the
more certainly has a feeling grown up among the more independent
of their followers that some means of checking their mismanagement
of public affairs had to be found. Mr. Beckett and his friends were
in no haste to break away from the Government. Last year it was
only in the lobbies and clubs that their deep dissatisfaction with the
Ministerial policy found expression, but the blunders of which the
Government was guilty daring the short recess, and more particularly
the Venezuelan mess, brought things to a head, and gave the new-
Fourth Party its chance. It has used it with effect, and during the
past four weeks the administration has received blow after blow from
the hands of those who were regarded as its most faithful friends.
Thus a new Opposition has come into existence, powerful and self-
confident, and determined to teach the Government that it can no
longer pursue the reckless happy-go-lucky policy of the last seven
years. Mr. Brodrick's foolish and inadequate scheme of army reform
has been the special object of attack by the new combination. If
the scheme in itself was foolish, what is to be said of the way in
which it has been defended by its author and his colleagues ? Mr.
Brodrick in particular has shown that he is wholly unable to grasp
the true nature of the objections to his scheme. He has displayed
great indignation against those members of his own party who
oppose that scheme, and has even gone so far as to taunt them
with want of patriotism. Liberals, who have so long been compelled
to suffer under similar taunts, may smile at this curious change in
the situation. The dissentient Unionists cannot fail to resent it.
As a matter of fact, their hostility to Mr. Brodrick's plans is founded
upon the deliberate conviction that those plans are not likely to
give us the army we require. This is the point which is wholly
missed by the defenders of the scheme. They insist that it is being
attacked, not because of its demerits, but because of its cost, and

716 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

they have gone so far as to compare Mr. Beckett and his friends to
the late Mr. Joseph Hume. The Opposition has naturally rallied to
the support of the Fourth Party. Most Liberals had criticised Mr.
Brodrick's proposals in a hostile sense before Mr. Beckett intervened,
and naturally enough they have been eager to join forces with the
new Opposition. The result has been an ominous reduction in the
Ministerial majority even upon questions on which the continued
existence of the Government depended.

Perhaps the most serious feature of the situation, so far as
Ministers are concerned, is the fact that they are even now
dependent upon the Irish Party for a working majority. The
Nationalists refrained from voting in the crucial division on the
Army estimates. If they had not done so — that is to say, if they had
pursued the course which has been habitual with them for many
years past — the Government would have had a majority of barely
thirty. Nobody could misunderstand their abstention from the
division. It meant that Mr. Redmond and his friends expected to
be paid for refraining from joining in the attack upon the Govern-
ment. The price they are to receive has not yet been revealed
to us, but there can be few honest Unionists who have not ex-
perienced an unpleasant emotion at the bare suspicion that the
Ministry to which they have pinned their faith is virtually trafficking
in Irish votes. It is long since the political situation has been so
curiously complicated and confused as it is at this moment. Wise
men will be slow to believe in any break-up of parties or any re-
volutionary change in the composition of the House of Commons.
But unquestionably both parties are being tried, and behind the
Ministerialists at any rate there looms, with menace rather than
with promise, the figure of Mr. Chamberlain. It is he who has the
casting-vote. Will he give it in favour of Mr. Balfour's airy oppor-
tunism and agree to allow the Government of the country to be
carried on by a combination with the Irish members to-day and
with the semi-hostile Fourth Party to-morrow, or will he define his
own intentions clearly and compel his colleagues to accept them as
the basis of their policy ? That is the question upon the answer to
which the history of the present session and the fate of the Ministry
now depend.

The Irish question is complicated by the fact that most Liberals,
and many Unionists, believe that behind the question of the land
lies that of Home Eule. It is a striking testimony to the changed
character of the situation that a general belief should prevail that
the present Ministry, if they remain in office, will bring forward
what is called a moderate measure of Home Eule. A year ago
such a suggestion would have been received with indignation.
To-day men wait in silence and apparently in apathy to see
whether it is well founded. Yet, if Ministers are going to advance

1903 LAST MONTH 717

a large sum of money in order to enable the Irish tenants to
become owners of their holdings, it is clear that something must
be done to create a responsible body in Ireland with which the
English creditor — in other words, the English Government — can deal.
So the Home Kule question seems to be drifting towards at least
a partial solution, and it is the solution which many of us have all
along foreseen.

But Ireland is not the only cause of trouble to the Adminis-
tration. Quite unexpectedly Ministers have found themselves
plunged into a dispute over the whole licensing system. The
Licensing Act of last year, in some respects a drastic and in others
a foolish measure, has had at least one effect of importance. It
has touched the consciences of the licensing authorities throughout
the country, and has led them to deal far more stringently than they
ever did before with applications for renewals of licenses. Fortified
by the decision in the famous case of Sharp v. Wakefield, the
authorities in many towns have boldly taken their stand on the
belief that the number of licensed houses ought to be reduced, and
they have acted on this belief in a way which has filled the license
holders with consternation. The latter see that the magistrates can
practically sweep away their licenses without granting them a penny
in the shape of compensation, and they are all furious with the
Government to which they have rendered so servile an allegiance
for having allowed matters to be brought to this pass. So serious
has been their revolt that the Lord Chancellor has been put up in
the House of Lords to soothe their fears by propounding a theory
which is meant to weaken the force of the decision in the Wakefield
case. The Prime Minister has gone further, for in Replying to a
deputation of brewers and publicans he has denounced the action of
the Justices who have dared to take measures for reducing the
number of licensed houses, and has deplored the injustice of which
the publicans and brewers have, in his opinion, been made the
victims. The support of the liquor trade is, as everybody knows,
one of the chief assets of the Ministerial Party, but Mr. Balfour will
find himself landed in a worse dilemma than that which now
confronts him if, for the sake of conciliating the publicans, he
proposes anything in the nature of compensation from the public
purse. The public, it is certain, will insist that dispossessed liquor-
dealers should get their compensation from some other source.
Here, then, is another embarrassment facing the Government, and it
is difficult to see how the Prime Minister can escape from this
dilemma. He is not likely to browbeat the Justices who are, after
all, the recognised authorities on the question of licenses, into a
reversal of the policy they^have now adopted in the interest of the
community at large. He cannot provide compensation from the
public funds without raising a storm which would wreck the most

718 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April

powerful Administration the country has ever seen. Yet if he fails
to do so, he must reckon with the bitter hostility of the trade at the
next General Election.

To add to the troubles of Ministers, the past month has furnished
the unpleasant moment when the bill for the meal that has been
eaten is presented. The amount of the bill has staggered everybody.
Army estimates for 34,500,000^. and Navy estimates for 34,457,000£.
are calculated to make the most improvident pause in astonishment
and dismay. An expenditure of nearly seventy millions on the two
Services in time of peace is a fact the significance of which the most
thoughtless should be able to grasp. It has made all but the most
reckless supporters of the Government ask themselves what must be
the end of the road along which we are travelling at so great a pace.
So far as the Navy estimates are concerned, although they are larger
by more than three millions than the amount voted last year, no
serious opposition has been offered to them in Parliament. The
axiom that, no matter what other things may be neglected, the Navy
must be maintained in a due state of efficiency is accepted not merely
by politicians but by the nation at large. It is true that we should
like more information than we have received as to the standard fixed
by the Admiralty when it demanded these enormous estimates.
Formerly a two-Power standard was that on which our naval adminis-
trators insisted. This year we are to spend more than France,
Germany, and Eussia combined, and possibly the end is not yet.
The dullest can see that the great States of the world are engaging
in a game of beggar-my-neighbour. If it is to be played out to the
end, and if England, as everybody agrees must be the case, is to be
the winner, we shall only escape something like financial ruin by
practising in all other departments a rigid economy. It is here,
however, that Ministers have blundered most seriously. They have
allowed the Army estimates to mount to a higher figure than ever
before, and they have done so for the purpose of carrying out a
scheme of which hardly one of their own supporters approves, and
which has called out into the field the new Fourth Party to make
open war against it. Surely the time has arrived when the interests
of mere departments, even of one so powerful as the War Office,
should be set aside, and an attempt should be made to grasp all the
conditions of Imperial defence, and to provide the nation with some-
thing better than a ruinous increase of expenditure upon our land
and sea forces, each apparently acting in rivalry with the other, for
the purpose of ensuring the safety of our shores. Lord Eosebery, in
his speech on the 24th of March, laid special emphasis upon this side
of the question, and endeavoured to give both the Government and
the Opposition a lead which they might follow with advantage, if,
indeed, they are capable of following any lead at all. The reorganised
Committee of Defence, though it is objected to on constitutional

1903 LAST MONTH 719

ground by certain pedants in the Liberal Party, is nevertheless
a step in the direction of real reform. Lord Eosebery, continuing
his crusade on behalf of national efficiency, implores the Ministry
to make use of this Committee in order to adjust the rival claims
of the Navy and the Army, and to draw up a general scheme of
Imperial defence which will at least make such grotesque blunders
as the occupation of Wei-Hai-Wei impossible for the future. Lord
Eosebery did not speak as a party man — doubtless he would have
given more pleasure to many of his friends if he had done so — but
he spoke as a man of common sense, and his words ought not to be
without effect among the members of both parties. There is no need
to dwell in detail upon the other Parliamentary debates of the month,
but they have made it clear that even the present House of Commons,
elected on the crest of a great wave of Jingoism, is beginning to wake
up, and to realise the danger that lies ahead of us. Upon one thing
it is evident a large body of the Ministerialists, and the whole of the
Opposition, are agreed. They will not support proposals which,
whilst they drain the nation of its life-blood, are recognised as wholly
unsatisfactory and inefficient.

That the country, as well as the House of Commons, is waking
up to its peril, has been shown by the two remarkable by-elections
to which I have already referred. It is useless for the Ministerial
apologists in the Press to repeat their clumsy explanations of
disasters such as those which the Government had to face at
Woolwich and in the Eye Division. Last autumn's tale of by-
elections was bad enough for the Ministry in all conscience, but this
year's record is infinitely worse. No one can doubt that the Ministry
has lost the confidence of the electors, and that if a General Election
were to take place now, only one contingency could save it from a
defeat as severe as that which befell Mr. Gladstone in 1874 and
Lord Beaconsfield in 1880. I put aside the idea entertained by
some that Mr. Chamberlain may yet be able, by the full use of his
powers as an advocate, to put matters right, and to set the shaken
Government on its feet again. I do so because I cannot conceive
that it is in the power of any man, however prominent his
personality, and however great his ability, to accomplish such a feat
as this. He may delay the catastrophe, but that is all.

The real contingency by which the fall of the Ministry might
even now be averted is the continuance in the Liberal Party of the
internal strife which has prevailed so long. So far as the rank and
file of that party are concerned, there are healthy signs of reunion
on a solid basis. Both at Woolwich and Eye, Liberal Leaguers and
the opponents of the South African War fought side by side. They
had enough, and more than enough, of material to use against the
Government without raising anew the defunct controversies that
attended the progress of the struggle in South Africa. It is to be

720 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY April 1903

hoped that their leaders will not fail to recognise the growing
determination of the party to become once more a united, and, if
possible, a dominant, factor in the political life of the country.
There is no question now of a recrudescence of what is called pro-
Boerism. In a few exceptional constituencies the opinions of that
section may still find favour, but in the overwhelming majority of
cases the electors will absolutely refuse to countenance any candidate
who comes before them to asperse the honour of the British Army,
or to refuse to recognise accomplished facts and the burden of
responsibility that an Imperial Power must always have to bear.
The question of Home Eule is still, it is true, made a bone of con-
tention by those who seek to use it against particular individuals ;
but it is now a bone without a scrap of meat upon it. Even Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman, whose ambiguous utterances on this
question have been unfortunate both for himself and for his party,
does not seem materially to differ from Lord Rosebery or Mr.
Asquith. Most Liberals feel that they do not necessarily abandon
the principles which have governed their policy towards Ireland
when they discard a worn-out formula which has no practical bearing
on the politics of to-day. A poll of the entire party would, I am
convinced, establish the fact that their chief purpose now is to undo
the evil that has been wrought by the grossly unjust Education Act
of last year, to check the extravagance which has laid so appalling a
burden upon the shoulders of the nation, to attempt to bring the
administration of our affairs into a state of efficiency, and, whilst
maintaining all the duties that we owe to the Empire as a whole, to
avoid the aggressive follies which, during the last seven years, have
plunged us into hot water in every quarter of the world, and exposed
us more than once to risks the mere recollection of which, now that
they have happily passed, is sufficient to appal the bravest. That, I
believe, is the policy upon which the great bulk of Liberals are now
anxious to unite ; and if any statesman or leader of men amongst
them should throw any obstacle in the way of their union he will
be betraying, not merely his own party, but something still greater,
the nation itself.

WEMYSS REID.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTUKY cannot undertake
to return unaccepted MSS.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTURY

AND AFTER

No. CCCXV— MAY 1903

THE IRISH LAND BILL
I

«A SCHEME OF PERNICIOUS AGRARIAN QUACKERY'

THE measure which, it-is pleasantly said,;is ' finally to settle the Irish
land question/ would arouse to its worst the ' sceva indignatio ' of
Swift ; it is well for its authors they do not feel the scourge of the
great man of genius who described Laputa. The Land Bill is an
elaborate scheme of ingenious i but pernicious agrarian quackery,
pregnant with many and far-reaching national evils. It is not only
that, in Mr. Lecky's language, it is a ' burlesque of legislation ' on a
gigantic scale, and that it ' sets economic principles at complete
defiance ' — reckless conduct that has seldom escaped its penalties.
Nor is it only that while it offers them ruinous Greek gifts, which, if
they are wise, they will take care to eschew, it seeks to annihilate a
VOL. LUI — No. 315 721 3 B

722 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

whole order of men, who certainly have not deserved this treatment,
circuitously, and by a sinister process ; its cruelty, indeed, is not
much worse than its kindness. Proceeding as it does on an utterly
immoral principle, it is rank with corruption from beginning to end ;
it is a monument of an unholy alliance between hitherto avowed
enemies, to carry a huge plan of spoliation into effect, at the cost and
the risk of the general taxpayer, through a system of bribery
without a parallel ; this Ministry has not been ashamed to support
this expedient ! The Bill, too, has been introduced in such a way
that its most dangerous mischiefs have almost been kept out of
sight ; the hard-pressed millions of the Three Kingdoms have been
left in the dark as to what may be imposed on them, should
Parliament unhappily pass it into law. And the measure, assuredly,
would not realise the optimistic expectations to which it owes its
origin. It would bring to Ireland not peace, but a sword ; it would
be a disturbing, not a tranquillising, force, even admitting that it
would do a certain amount of good. It would make the Irish land
system, chaotic as it is, a worse and a more troubled chaos ; it would
produce a bitter land war in many counties, corresponding to the
land war we have beheld in Connaught. And even if it had some
fruitful results, it would be attended with a whole train of economic,
social, and political evils ; it would probably throw back many parts
of Ireland into the condition in which they were before the Great
Famine : every ' Nationalist ' believes it would quicken the Home
Eule movement. Nor would this be all, or nearly all: should this
measure become law, it must, from the nature of the case, strengthen
the demand for what is called ' the compulsory purchase ' of all the
rented lands of Ireland, and not improbably, whatever Ministers may
say, may make that demand impossible to resist : it may thus lead
to a confiscation, wholesale alike and disgraceful, and subjecting the
taxpayer to a charge not less perhaps than that which Germany
extorted from France. The Bill, I should add, irests on assumptions
so unfounded that it is untrustworthy, were it for this reason alone.

Before examining this project it is necessary to glance at the
efforts made, in the last half-century, to reform the conditions of
Irish land tenure, for otherwise the subject cannot be understood, and,
indeed, it ought to take their conceit out of British statesmen. The
first of these attempts was the notorious Encumbered Estates Act, a
measure designed, as we know from Greville, to make ' fresh havoc '
of property in land in Ireland, and ' to regenerate Ireland ' by this
laudable method; it passed through both Houses, with scarcely a
dissentient voice ; Sir Edward Sugden, who knew Ireland, was the
only eminent public man who even hinted a protest. The Act expro-
priated the Irish landed gentry in scores by a most cruel process ;
it was, in fact, a scheme of spoliation, naked but not ashamed ; it
was extolled for years as the perfection of wisdom, but it ended in

1903 THE IRISH LAND BILL 723

complete and disastrous failure. It transferred nearly a sixth part
of the soil of Ireland, not, as was anticipated, to a race of solvent
landlords, capable of faithfully doing the duties of property, but to
a class of needy and hardfisted landjobbers, successors of the almost
extinct middlemen ; and, what was more important, it extinguished
to an immense extent the equitable rights of the peasantry, not yet
law-worthy. In the period of comparative rest in Ireland, that
succeeded the abortive agitation of 1852, nothing was done to
improve the Irish land system, though its essential vices were
manifest to impartial minds ; British statesmen were convinced that
these would be removed, partly through natural causes, partly by
the Encumbered Estates Act. The Fenian outbreak woke these
men out of a fool's paradise ; Mr. Gladstone addressed himself in
1869-70 to effect a thorough reform in Irish land tenure, the
second branch of the famous Upas tree, which blighted Ireland with
its far-spreading and baleful shadow. The measure he passed
through Parliament had real and grave defects, but it redressed the
worst grievances in the Irish land system, giving tenants compensa-
tion for improvements they had made on their farms, and protecting
them by an actual or a potential tenant-right ; in truth, it has been
the only statesmanlike scheme applied in the last fifty years to the J
Irish land. It deserves special notice that Mr. Gladstone declared
that the Land Act of 1870, as it is (called, was 'to be a final and
complete settlement ' — the nonsensical cant now in the mouths of
ignorant triflers. On the faith of this assurance millions have been
lent to Irish | landlords, sums, as affairs now stand, in no doubtful
jeopardy. Mr. Gladstone, however, as in the parallel case of Home
Rule, had ere long scattered his pledges to the winds. Having
surrendered to the Land League after a half-hearted struggle, he
induced Parliament to pass the famous Land Act of 1881, which
forms at present the mould of Irish land tenure, and which,
admitting that it has done some good, is now almost unreservedly con-
demned, and has been the source of infinite mischief. This measure
was a clumsy and ill-conceived attempt to apply what is known as
the system of the ' three F's ' to the Irish land. ' Fixity of Tenure '
was to be assured to the tenant through leases renewable for ever, at
short intervals of time ; ' Fair Rent ' was to be determined, not by
contract, but through tribunals set up by the State for the purpose,
a proceeding unknown in civilised lands ; ' Free Sale ' was to be a
right of the possessor of a farm, sometimes even against the will of
his landlord, and tenant's improvements were to be exempted from
rent, a provision, if reasonable in theory, by no means just in fact,
considering the state of affairs in Ireland.

The Conservative Opposition railed at the Land Act of 1881 ;
Lord Ashbourne, the present holder of the Irish Great Seal, ex-
claimed that it would be more wise and just to deprive Irish

3 B 2

724 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

landlords, at once, of a fourth part of their rents. But when Unionist
Ministers came into office, they extended this legislation far beyond
its original scope, and that in every conceivable way, in spite of its
evident and increasing mischiefs, a policy of tergiversation to
which few parallels can be found, and which I have always con-
sidered disgraceful. This climax of backsliding was reached in
1896; an Act was passed in that Session, which removed nearly all
the safeguards devised by Mr. Gladstone to protect the landlord ; it
enormously increased the benefits the tenant had obtained, and
changed the land system, in his interest ; it was, in truth, so
dangerous to the plain rights of property, not only in Ireland, but
in England and Scotland, that it was all but rejected by the House
of Lords, loyal as it was to Lord Salisbury's Government. Mean-
while bad administration was making bad legislation worse ; it is
impossible here to describe the conduct of the Land Commission and
its Sub-Commissions, the agencies appointed to fix 'Fair Kent'; it
must suffice to say that under the system of what are called first term
and second term rents, they have reduced and are now reducing the
agricultural rental of Ireland about 40 per cent., and that though a
Commission of the very first authority reported in 1880-1 that
rents in Ireland were, as a rule, low, and though Mr. Gladstone
solemnly acquitted Irish landlords, when he brought in the Land
Bill of 1881, of the mendacious charges preferred against them, and
announced that, in his belief, their rents could be hardly diminished !
This wholesale confiscation of the property of Irish landlords is
proved by the simple fact, that the value of the fee in Ireland has
been cut down by at least a third, and that the value of the tenant-
right has increased in about the same proportion, a circumstance
which a Government might reflect on ; but when the proceedings of
the Land Commission and its dependent Courts, and the system they
have adopted in fixing ' fair rents,' were dragged into the light in 1897
by the able Commission of which Sir Edward Fry was the head,
and when the gravest wrongs were proved to have been done,
this Ministry persistently refused to afford any real redress. The
results of the legislation of 1881 and its supplements, and of the
administration which has given effect to these laws, may be summed
up in a very few sentences. The landlord has been changed from
an owner nearly into a mere rent receiver ; he is so completely cut
off from the land that he is all but precluded from laying out a
shilling upon it. The tenant has been transformed into a kind of
owner, but though he has gained advantages to which he has no kind
of right, his tenure is by no means stable or secure, and he is
actually encouraged by the law to waste his farm in order to work
down its rent. Meanwhile the system of ' Free Sale ' is producing
excessive rents by the extravagant sums paid on the transfer of
farms ; as ' Fixity of Tenure ' is renewable every fifteen years, Ireland

1903 THE IRISH LAND BILL 725

has been made a cockpit for endless lawsuits, engendering the worst
kind of war of classes ; everything in the Irish land system is
unsettled and shifting; the sanctity due to contracts has been
destroyed ; and capital avoids the Irish land like a quicksand. And
beyond all stands out the unquestionable fact that a huge confiscation
of the property of a whole class has taken place, the more odious
because masked in the forms of law and justice.

The men now in office for many years delight in blaming the
Land Act of 1881 ; but they forget they have made it by many
degrees worse ; they have been participes criminis, and deserve far
more censure. But they have long been aware of the evils of the
Gladstonian remedy ; they have endeavoured to supplant it by a
remedy of their own, certainly as indefensible, and, on the whole,
more dangerous. The system of converting tenants in Ireland into
owners of the soil was inaugurated by the late John Bright, but the
tenants had to pay a large part of the price ; the transaction was a
real, not a sham purchase. This condition, essential to industry
and thrift, has been entirely removed since 1885 ; landlords in
Ireland can now ' sell ' their estates through the agency of the Land
Commission, and can receive the purchase moneys from the State ;
their tenants are then transformed into possessors in fee, without
having paid down a shilling of their own ; they are only subject to
' purchase annuities ' as they are called, much lower than any possible
rents, even those rents facetiously known as ' fair,' and they pay
these for a period of less than half a century ! This proceeding,
therefore, is in no sense a ' purchase ' ; it is a gift by the State to an
unjustly favoured class, beyond question of the nature of a bribe ;
the analogies urged to excuse it are not worthy of notice. Under
this system some 80,000 Irish tenants have been changed into
owners in fee ; and because they have paid their ' purchase annuities '
as rent very well — I could, however, refer to striking exceptions —
the experiment has been pronounced to have been more than
successful. Yet ' Land Purchase ' — the name is an economic false-
hood— has been to a great extent a failure, as those who know
Ireland predicted from the first would happen. Its authors hoped
that it would form a body of loyal freeholders ; hundreds of these
men, emancipated from the control of landlords, are active
emissaries of the United Irish League. Its authors believed that
it would form a class of successful tillers of the soil ; but bribery is
not the parent of industry; thousands of these 'purchasers' are
worthless and bankrupt farmers, falling into the hands of bank
managers or of local Shylocks. Besides, the new owners are
neglecting drainage of all kinds, which, indeed, can only be carried
on on considerable estates ; and numbers have cut down every tree
on their lands, destructive waste in a climate of superabundant
rains. In addition, many of these ' purchasers ' are sub-letting and

726 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

mortgaging their farms, as their renders to the State are much lower
than any rents ; they are thus producing again the almost vanished
middleman, the harsh tyrant of rack-rented serfs ; and instead of
evolving ' single ownership,' and doing away with the ' dual owner-
ship,' falsely said to have been ' created ' by Mr. Gladstone, they are
evolving double, treble, nay fourfold ownership ! The evils caused by
' Land Purchase,' indeed, have so long been apparent that an
apologist had to be found by the Government. A writer — he has
since been raised to high place — has been employed to cry up this
system, exactly as, forty years ago, writers were employed to cry up
the Encumbered Estates Act ; his report is a characteristic instance
how plausible generalisation may be deceptive. The ' content,' the
' peaceableness,' the ' prosperity ' of the new ' peasant proprietary,' as
it is called, shine through his pages in attractive phrases ; but the
large exceptions he acknowledges confute his argument, and he
urges that the State ought to interfere to remove the evils but too
manifest, as the Intendants of the later Bourbons insisted that the
French peasant should be sustained by leading strings, while they
were making him out to be in excellent case !

These, however, are not the worst evils inseparable from a false
and pernicious policy. ' Land Purchase,' I have said, draws a pro-
found distinction — at once arbitrary and absolutely unjust — between
rent-pajing and ' purchasing ' tenants ; the first are left subject to
renders much higher than the second ; it should be added, if this
Bill becomes law, this distinction will be immensely increased.
This system, therefore, divides the occupiers of the soil in Ireland
into a disfavoured multitude and an unfairly pampered caste ; it
necessarily fills the first with discontent, and that not without
real reason ; it tempts these men to refuse the payment of rent, in
order that they may compel their landlords to ' sell,1 and to make
them ' purchasers.' ' Land Purchase,' accordingly, establishes against
landlords a false measure of rent, analogous to a base coinage ; it
gives every tenant on such estates a grievance ; it cruelly handicaps
landlords who simply wish to be paid their just debts. We see the
result in the quarrel on the De Freyne and Murphy estates caused
by the act of the Executive Government in ' purchasing ' a huge
neighbouring estate and making the tenants fee-simple owners at
' purchase annuities,' a third less than the former rents ; the De
Freyne and Murphy tenants, resenting what they deemed the wrong
of being placed at a disadvantage compared with their fellows, struck,
not unnaturally, against the payment of their rents; two whole
counties were thrown into grave disorder ; and the quarrel was com-
posed, not by the vindication of the law, but through the inter-
vention of a Catholic Bishop ! ' Land Purchase,' therefore, from the
nature of the case, operates as a destructive, not a beneficial, force ;
whatever good it may do on a ' purchased ' estate, it stirs up trouble

1903 THE IRISH LAND BILL 727

on adjoining ' unpurchased ' estates ; it is like one of the old fire-
ships driven into a fleet to spread havoc around. And yet this is
not the worst result of the ruinous distinctions made by this system.
Men and women have wills and feelings of their own ; Irish
tenants under rents cannot tamely submit to be impoverished, com-
pared with tenant ' purchasers ' ; to be lean goats in one fold and fat
sheep in another ; they insist that all tenants shall be placed on the
same level of rights ; this can only be effected by the expropriation
of all landlords by force and converting all their dependents into
owners in fee. ' Land Purchase/ therefore, has necessarily provoked
the cry for the ' Compulsory Purchase ' of the Irish land, a cry
that certainly has much logic on its side, and that may be irresistible
in the long run ; it may thus lead to what really would be an act of
robbery by the State, unparalleled in any civilised country, and
imposing on the general taxpayer a colossal burden. In truth this
policy is not only essentially bad, it is founded on a theory showing
utter ignorance of simple human nature. As Edmund Burke wrote
of the pfiilosophes of the French Eevolution, the sages of Land
Purchase ' hominem non sapiunt ; they shut up human beings like
wild beasts in a cage to claw and bite each other to their mutual
destruction.'

This is the policy pronounced by Mr. Wyndham, with an
audacity not unworthy of Danton, to have been ' uniformly successful '
throughout Ireland, which it is the object of this Bill so largely to
extend that all or nearly all estates will be brought within its pro-
visions. How this ' New Departure ' in ' Land Purchase ' has been
brought about, is rather a curious episode in Irish affairs. Mr.
Wyndham introduced an Irish Land Bill in the session of 1902
which may be described as a mere abortion ; after a few parleys it
was quietly withdrawn. The Chief Secretary seems to have been
uncertain what he was next to do ; but he professed himself willing
to hear what could be said by representatives of Irish landlords and
tenants ; he hinted that a ' conference ' might be held on the
subject. A young gentleman, hitherto completely unknown, and
not the owner, I believe, of an acre of land, rushed forward to take
this idea up ; he was followed by a small minority of Irish landlords,
disgusted with their position on various grounds ; these men entered
into negotiations with chiefs of the United Irish League in order
' finally to settle the Irish Land Question,' a cant phrase I have
heard for more than fifty years. The ' Conference ' was a remark-
able instance how adversaries of long standing may adjust their
disputes, if a third party is at hand to be plundered. The high
contracting personages agreed that ' Land Purchase ' was the only
way to reform the Irish land system ; the landlords laid it down
that, should they ' sell ' their estates, they must receive from the
State a sum equal to nearly fifteen years' purchase above the

728 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

market rate ; the tenants' advocates laid it down that their clients
must obtain enormous reductions in their yearly renders, and that
the * purchase annuities ' must be made payable for a greatly
extended period, in order, in some degree, to make up the difference
between the actual and the artificial value of lands. This called into
the field the landlords' ' Convention,' a body fairly representative of
the Irish landed gentry ; after condemning the ' Conference ' in no
doubtful language, the Convention agreed with its conclusions in
part, a decision, I think, in the highest degree unfortunate. The
Convention demanded that the ' selling ' Irish landlord should be
paid a sum of more than ten years' purchase above the market value
for his estate ; and though it did not sanction the claim that the
tenants should secure the immense reductions to which the ' Con-
ference ' gave its assent, it declared that the difference between the
actual and the proposed value of land should be made up, as far as
this was possible, by the extension of the time for the payment of
the ' purchase annuities ' by the new owners. The two schemes,
therefore, were practically at one in this. ' Selling ' Irish landlords
were to have a fancy price for their estates ; the manipulation of the
'purchase annuities' might in some degree accomplish this end,
and the risk of this and of any further advances to be required was
to fall on the taxpayers of the ' Three ' Kingdoms ! These demands
for an extravagant artificial price, of course, could not be listened to
by any Ministry, but it was possible to make the huge reductions,
which the Conference asserted might well be made, and in some
degree to bridge over the gulf between the true and the fictitious
value of estates, by extending the period within which ' purchase
annuities ' were to be paid.

Mr. Wyndham has acted upon these demands, as far as he could
venture without incensing Parliament; the Land Bill follows in
some respects the lines set down by the ' Conference ' and the
' Convention,' but with modifications of the greatest importance.
The measure may be described as a cunning scheme to expropriate
all Irish landlords by degrees, making them the authors of their own
extinction, but hiding the transaction by a system of bribes. ' Land
Purchase,' as before, is to be ' voluntary ' in name, that is, no land-
lord is to be forced to ' sell ' ; but, probably, it will be ' compulsory '
in the last resort, however Ministers may pretend not to see things
as they are. A very brief account of the main provisions of the Bill
must be sufficient for the general reader. Landlords are empowered
to ' sell ' their estates, as they are now, by agreements with their
tenants, a process involving considerable delay ; or they may sell
them to members of the Land Commission, known by the name of
' Estates Commissioners,' two dependent upon the will of the Castle.
When an estate shall have been ' sold ' in either way, the tenants
are to be made owners in fee, subject to ' purchase annuities,' as

1903 THE IRISH LAND BILL 729

they are at present, and not paying down a single sixpence ; but the
' purchase annuities ' are to be payable for sixty-eight years and a
half, not as they are now for only forty-nine ; and they are to be
calculated on a scale which will cut them down fully 60 per cent, less
than the rents which were paid only twenty-five years ago, a signifi-
cant fact to which I direct attention. In this way the existing value
of land, which is barely more than eighteen years' purchase, may be
forced up to twenty- three or even twenty -five years' purchase ; but
other expedients have been found to promote ' Land Purchase.' A
bonus, in other words a bribe, is to be divided among ' selling '
landlords, to the extent of 12,000,0002. in cash ; this sum may be
equal to perhaps two years' purchase, for Mr. Wyndham is wholly in
error in estimating that he has to deal with a rental of only
4,000,0002. ; this will certainly be 6,000,0002. at least ; and by these
means landlords will probably be able to obtain about twenty-seven
years' purchase for their estates, but on rents artificially reduced
some 40 per cent., a less sum, by many years' purchase, than the
' Conference ' and the ' Convention ' made a sine qua, non. The
landlords are thus to have a considerable bribe, not paid, too, in de-
preciated stock — a transaction that will cost a good deal of money ;
they are besides to ' repurchase ' their mansions and demesnes,
through advances to be made by the State. The security for the
payment of the immense sums, for which the taxpayer may be made
even directly liable, will of course be the ' purchase annuities ' cut
down and extended for an increased period ; to these should be
added securities, which this Ministry fondly imagines might really
be made available. A Guarantee Fund created by the issuing of a
new stock is to be made forthcoming to buy out the landlords ; the
ultimate responsibility, whatever may be said, will rest on the tax-
payers of the three kingdoms. The fixing of ' fair rents,' which it
was hoped this Bill would stop, is practically to go on as before ; a
slight check is sought to be imposed on it ; but ' Nationalist' opposi-
tion will prevent this becoming law. The Bill contains large and
ingenious provisions for managing estates sold through the Estates
Commissioners, and generally for expediting ' Land Purchase ' ; it
attempts, too, to restrain subletting and mortgaging by the new
owners ; but this last provision will probably be wholly abortive.

This is the measure which is to bring agrarian peace to Ireland,
and to launch her upon the path of progress ; the Pacata Hibemia,
the vain dream of Bacon, is to be realised after the lapse of three
centuries. The student of history and of economic science will,
perhaps, be chiefly struck by the gigantic bribery which is the main
characteristic of the Bill, and which forms not its least repulsive
feature. Irish tenants — and I understate the case — are, without a
pretence of justice or a shadow of right, to have their annual renders
diminished 60 per cent, at least, compared with their rents of

730 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

1875 to 1880 ; and then, after a period of sixty-eight years and a
half, without having done a single thing to better their lot in life,
they are to acquire the fee in their holdings, ' rocked and dandled into
their possessions,' in the words of Burke, by an act of wholesale
corruption on the part of the State. And here it should be borne in
mind that there is conclusive evidence that Ireland was not an over-
rented land, even when the Act of 1881 became law, and that the
renders which are to be now reduced are rents not depending on
the will of landlords, but, as a rule, fixed by the Land Commission
and its Sub-Commissions. How can a land system, based on a
foundation such as this, be expected to prosper and to strike fruitful
roots ; how can a flagrant violation, on a colossal scale, of the unerring
principle that hard work and thrift can alone make a community
flourish, be attended by aught but disastrous results ? When these
novce tabidce of the Koman demagogue shall have been established
in a whole country, what can be expected but that contracts can have
no binding force ; that faith in ordinary dealings will not be held ;
that the repudiation of obligations will become common ; that the
ties which hold society together will be perilously relaxed ? The
iniquity, too, of the project is perhaps not less odious than its bare-
faced corruption. Are there no miserable householders in our great
towns, far more entitled to assistance from the State than Irish
tenants can possibly be, and are they to be left out in the cold ? Is
the English and Scottish farmer, who has suffered far more from
agricultural depression than his Irish fellow, to see rents across the
Channel abated 60 per cent. — not to speak of other and more
lasting benefits — and is he to obtain no corresponding advantage ?
And what is the class for the behoof of which this system of
universal bribery is to be set up ? Its leaders have been agitators
of the most dangerous kind, some marked with the brand of the
Special Commission ; it has, over a large part of Ireland, taken part
in a revolutionary and socialistic movement, and has been in avowed
sympathy with the bitterest foes of England.

Corruption, however, in the Irish tenants' interest is matched in
this Bill, if to a less extent, by corruption in the interest of the Irish
landlord. No doubt the hopes of the ' Conference ' and the ' Con-
vention ' have not been fulfilled ; 50,000,000^. or 60,000,000^. will
not be dropped, like manna from heaven, into the mouths of the
landlords ; in addition to other not unsubstantial boons, they are put
off with a sum of 12,000,000£. only, thrown to them, contemptuously,
like a bone to a hungry dog, as an inducement to sell their birthright
for a mess of pottage. But where is the justification for a bribe of
this kind, even though, like the frail lady's bantling, it is ' merely a
small one ' ? Consols are barely above 90 ; the income tax is at
fifteen pence in the pound ; taxes are being levied upon the neces-
saries of life ; the strain on the resources of the State is intense ; the

1903 THE IRISH LAND BILL 731

national expenditure is on the increase. Is this the occasion to lavish
a dole on Irish landlords, at least equal to two years of their rents,
in order to accelerate ' Land Purchase,' and to give effect to a bad
and disastrous policy ? Is this the time to enable Irish absentees to
spend moneys to which they have no right in London and Paris, and
shamefully filched from the overburdened taxpayer ? I shall refer

only to a single instance : should Lord * sell ' his Irish estates,

he will pocket a sum of about 30,000£. paid him by the Exchequer
out of the taxes ; what conceivable claim has he to this impudent
bribe ? No doubt he would make an excellent use of these moneys :
he would lay them out as well as the possessor of the talents in
Scripture : he would not hide them in a napkin, and turn them to
no account. But is he to levy contributions for this purpose from
the ill-fed labourer, from the pinched artisan, from clerks in offices
at a salary of a hundred a year, from the millions of our population
who can hardly eke out existence ? Properly considered, this is one
of the worst features of the Bill : its gross immorality and wrong are
nowhere more apparent.

But if a sum of 12,000,000^. and other douceurs are to be flung,
as a sop, to Irish landlords, this order of men will not obtain justice
under this Bill, or anything like it. The memories of politicians are
conveniently short, but when he introduced the Land Act of 1881
Mr. (Had stone solemnly announced that, should it appear that Irish
landlords had suffered from the measure, their right to compensation
could not be denied ; and Parliament assented to the Bill on this
express condition. Let us see how, under the present scheme, even
a reasonable indemnity can be afforded to Irish landlords. I shall
not stop to inquire whether, through the legislation of the last
twenty-two years, and the maladministration attendant on it, they
have not been cruelly despoiled and wronged; the fact does not
admit of a question. I will take the case of an Irish country gentle-
man who, in the prosperous years from 1870 to 1878, had an estate
with a clear rental of 2,0001. a year, subject to a family charge
of 20,000£. The value of his lands would then have been about
twenty-seven years' purchase, that is 54,0001., so, had he sold at
this time and paid off the family charge, he would have had a clear
surplus of 34,000£. The agricultural depression of the last twenty
years would have probably lowered his rental 4001. a year, had no
vicious legislation intervened ; his estate, therefore, would have only
fetched 43,200Z., and this would have left him a residue of 23,200^.,
the 20,000£. having been deducted. But his rental has been reduced
about 40 per cent., through the proceedings of the Land Commission
and its dependents; it is now, therefore, only 1,2001. a year;
suppose that, through the operation of this Bill, its value shall have
been artificially raised from eighteen to twenty-seven years' purchase,
what, in these circumstances, would be his position ? The estate,

732 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

which, thirty years ago, would have been worth 54,000£., would now
be ' purchased ' for 32,400Z., say 32,000£. striking off law costs ; but
the family charge would remain unchanged ; this victim, therefore,
who in 1870-1878 would have had a capital of 34,000£., would now
be left with a residuum of 12,000£. only! The Bill, therefore,
while it bribes Irish landlords in the most indefensible and offensive
way, does not even nearly redress their wrongs ; these can never be
redressed by a measure of this kind. The only means through
which they can hope to obtain even partial justice is to seek for a
reform in the relations of landlord and tenant, the real way to
improve the Irish land system, with some provisions as to mortgages
and family charges ; they ought to have long steadily insisted on
this, and no Government could have turned a deaf ear to them.
They made a capital mistake in not adopting this course ; and now
that the ' Conference ' and the ' Convention ' have committed them-
selves to ' Land Purchase ' and all that this involves, they have set
the general taxpayer against them, they have played into the hands
of the United Irish League, they have missed the best prospect ol
obtaining relief. The conduct of the ' Convention,' the hands of
which were forced, may be excused to a certain extent ; that of the
' Conference,' which took the first fatal step, is inexcusable, so far
as regards the * conferring landlords,' were it only that they have
made themselves henchmen of the United Irish League.

Mr. Wyndham has, as far as possible, kept out of sight the
financial part of the Bill, and all that this implies, in order to throw
the taxpayer off his guard ; but this must distinctly be brought to
the light. He takes care to inform us that the bribe of 12,000,000^.
will only be a charge of 390,000^. a year ; this is after the fashion of
a spendthrift who never thinks of the principal of a loan, if he pays
the interest; this is the recklessness denounced by Swift and
Bolingbroke, when piling up the National Debt was still deemed
perilous. Having assumed that 390,000^ a year would be the only
possible liability of the State, he next tells us that 250,0001. a year
can be economised in the Irish Civil Service ; and he triumphantly
concludes that 140,OOOZ. a year will be really the only charge that
could be imposed by the Bill. That reductions in Irish administra-
tion could be made with advantage is a fact that does not admit of
dispute ; for example, the Lord Lieutenancy and its sham Court
might be abolished, in the interests of Ireland and Great Britain ;
some of the bloated salaries of men at the Castle ought to be
reduced. But I much doubt if 250,000^. a year could be made
available. National and University education in Ireland requires
assistance from the State; and it would be objectionable in the
highest degree to diminish the great Irish constabulary force. In
short, the notion that the 12,000,000^. bribe could only cost the
Exchequer 140,000^. a year is, I am convinced, a mere chimera;

1903 THE IRISH LAND BILL 733

but this is only a small part of the matter. ' Land purchase ' has
already made the State liable for 22,000,OOOL ; should this Bill
largely extend the system, that sum might reach 50,000,000^.,
60,000,000^., nay, 150,000,000^. ; the only real security would be the
' purchase annuities,' the value of which would be extremely doubt-
ful. That these annuities have as yet been well paid is true ; but
they are due, for the most part, from farmers in Ulster, men not
likely to evade their debts ; with respect to tenants in the three
southern provinces, they are often not recovered without legal
proceedings. But this is only a very small part of the risk ; let the
' purchasers ' multiply in great numbers ; let a series of bad seasons
occur; might not the United Irish League, following the well-
known precedents of the ' No Rent Manifesto ' and the ' Plan of Cam-
paign,' issue a mandate forbidding the ' purchasers ' to pay a shilling
until Home Rule had been ' wrung from an alien government ? '
What, in that event, would the annuities be worth, enforceable by a
department of an absentee State ? From this point of view ' land
purchase ' is a trump card up the sleeve of the high-principled Irish
patriot ; let the general taxpayer look out while there is time. As
to the notion that in a crisis like this a Government could fall back
on the local Irish grants, which have been obtained as a collateral
security by most unconstitutional means, the idea is simply a delu-
sion, as Lord Randolph Churchill pointed out many years ago. Does
Mr. Wyndham imagine that he could shut up National schools in
Ireland, and let lunatics loose all over the country, in the hope of
recovering ' purchase annuities ' ? This security, in a word, is not
sound ; though Mr. Wyndham, in a singular phrase, has pronounced
it to be ' morally and mathematically safe.'

It is impossible to foretell with anything like certainty how
this Bill would extend, or even quicken, ' Land Purchase.' Mr.
Wyndham's assertion — a Castle shibboleth — that ' an immense
majority ' of Irish landlords are eager to sell their estates is about as
true as what he proclaimed less than two years ago, that the United
Irish League ' had not more than forty working branches.' Equally
vain is the notion that under any conditions, even the most favour-
able that could be conceived, the fee simple of Ireland could be trans-
ferred in fifteen years, and ' a peasant proprietary ' made its owners ;
under this Bill the process could not take less than fifty. It is
probable, however, that a large number of landlords would sell
through this measure, especially if the English and Scottish mortga-
gees of large Irish estates should call in their charges. Assuredly,
however, a very great number would not sell on the terms this Bill
offers. This would include the very best members of their class :
those who were not encumbered to a great extent ; those who, to
their honour, would rise superior to bribes ; those who would remain
bound to their hearths and their homes ; those who would resent an

734 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

attempt to entrap them like wild ducks lured into a decoy. Even
Mr. T. W. Kussell admits that a fifth part of the landlords of Ulster
would not part with their properties on the conditions proposed. I have
little or no acquaintance with Ulster, but I assert, with a knowledge
very few possess, that not many of the great landed gentry in the
southern provinces would sell under the provisions of this Bill. What
then would be the inevitable results, during a period of probably half a
century at least ? The iniquitous distinction between ' rent-paying '
and ' purchasing ' tenants, the evils of which cannot be too often dwelt
on, would be enormously aggravated by this Bill, through the mon-
strous reduction made in the ' purchase annuities ' ; tenants subject to
renders probably 30 per cent, higher than their ' purchasing '
neighbours would — and from their point of view not without real
justice — have the strongest inducements to withhold their rents ;
and as the sphere of ' Land Purchase ' would extend by degrees, a
land war would spring up in many parts of Ireland, caused, not by
the agitator, not by dishonest lawlessness, but by a most fatuous and
destructive policy. Ireland, in a word, would be a scene of discord
and contention for a series of years ; ' these ruins,' in the emphatic
language of Burke, ' would not be the devastation of civil war ; they
would be the sad but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant
counsel in time of profound peace.' Nor is it difficult to predict
what would probably be the end of this squalid and most disgraceful
conflict. The landlords who would hold to their own would diminish
by degrees ; they would be subjected to pressure of different kinds,
and to the cajolery of the men at the Castle, as their fathers were in
the affair of Wood, described by Swift in his inimitable style ; the
limits of ' Land Purchase ' would be greatly enlarged ; the number of
recalcitrant landlords would become comparatively small. The cry
for ' compulsory purchase,' even now sounding throughout Ireland,
would become fierce, intense, perhaps impossible to withstand;
judging from what we have seen in Irish affairs, a Government might
be formed which, like the frail fair in Don Juan, ' would consent,
saying it would not consent,' and would sanction a confiscation, the
most dishonourable even Ireland has beheld. Let the taxpayer put
a veto on legislation of this kind ; ' Land Purchase ' is directly
leading to it ; it would expose him to a liability for untold millions,
for which no really valid security exists.

The deceptions with which this measure is filled — the result of
ignorance of the real state of Ireland — are numerous ; a few only can be
noticed. The policy of the Government, it is said, is to leave the Irish
landed gentry their houses and demesnes ; landlords are thus enabled
to ' re- purchase ' these, and to hold on the tenure of ' purchasing '
tenants. But the mansions and demesnes of Irish landlords are, as a
rule, much too costly and large to allow them to be retained on these
conditions ; ' Land Purchase ' would generally turn them into deserted

1903 THE IRISH LAND BILL 735

solitudes, like the wrecks of the castles of the old despoiled Englishry.
Besides, a majority, probably, of Irish landlords, if compelled to sell,
would exclaim, like Charles Edward to Fleury, ' tout ou rien' ; if they
lost their estates, they would abandon their houses and demesnes and
quit a country in which they had been foully betrayed. But the
principal consideration in this matter is this : does anyone imagine,
if Irish landlords were practically obliged to sell their rented lands,
they would be permitted to keep the unrented at peace ? Would
not the cry ' All the land for the People ' be raised again ; would not
the fine and large pastures of Irish demesnes attract the covetous
eyes of a debauched peasantry — demoralised by the worst kind of
corruption ; would there not be a movement against the possessors of
these ' vast cattle ranches, aliens, and Saxons who had no kind of right
to them ' ; and would not a Government finally succumb to it ? It is
imagined again that the Bill would prevent the subletting and
mortgaging which, it is now acknowledged, is one of the bad
results of ' Land Purchase ' ; the checks it imposes are, no doubt,
stringent, especially the reservation of a quit-rent to be held by the
State, in the case of the new transformed owners ; but these are not
more stringent than those contained in most Irish leases, which
have been systematically evaded during three centuries; and the
check of the quit-rent will probably disappear from the Bill ; an
outcry has already been raised against it. In another and most
important respect, the measure has disappointed the best hopes
entertained by well-informed persons. Unionist Ministries have
always denounced the Land Act of 1881 ; it was expected that the
ruinous system of fixing rent, at short intervals of time, would be
greatly limited, and brought to an end by degrees. But the Bill
does but little in that direction. No doubt it provides that if three
fourths of the tenants on an estate, and in some instances a majority
only, shall agree to become 'purchasers' under this measure, the
remaining tenants shall lose their right to have ' fair rents ' fixed ;
but, besides that this condition would have little effect, at least for
a time, it will almost certainly not become law, as a similar
condition was dropped last year, in deference to ' Nationalists ' and to
Mr. T. W. Russell. Any other provisions in the Bill with respect to
' fair rents ' are trifling, and on the whole are mischievous. This
destructive system will continue unchanged for many years ; no real
attempt has been made to reform it ; in fact, the policy of this
Government obviously is to accelerate ' Land Purchase ' by sending
Irish landlords under the Caudine Forks of the Land and the Sub-
Commissions, a policy which does not require a single word of
comment.

Two other considerations of extreme importance present them-
selves to those who understand the Bill and know what would be its
probable effects. The Disestablished Anglican Church of Ireland is

736 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

an institution which commands universal respect : it has successfully
emerged from a sea of troubles ; its influence in Ireland is one of
unmixed good ; it is an institution which has a special claim on the
support of England. Its resources, thanks to excellent management,
are at present in a flourishing state, but they chiefly depend on the
Irish landed gentry, who, shamefully treated as they have been,
loyally keep it up ; if this order of men shall be much diminished
in numbers, and perhaps shall be extinguished by degrees, their fall
must lead to the material ruin at least of their Church in Ireland.
Are Englishmen prepared to bring about such a consummation as
this : to quench the light of Protestantism in a whole kingdom ; to
hand Ireland over to a Catholic priesthood and its flocks ? Again,
the effect of this measure would be to reduce the renders of Irish
tenants 60 per cent, at least below what they were thirty years ago,
not to speak of turning them into owners of their farms ; have English
and Scottish landlords reflected what the result of this may be, not
improbably, on their own rentals ? I have little sympathy with a
class of men who have acted as Jews to their Samaritan Irish
fellows ; but I detest spoliation and socialistic movements ; spoliation
in Ireland, it is not unlikely, may lead to spoliation in England and
Scotland ; confiscation, from the nature of the case, is contagious.
The land systems of England and Scotland are, no doubt, very
different from that of Ireland, but if English and Scottish tenants
learn that Irish rents have suddenly been cut down fully 60 per
cent, from their rate in 1870-8, I much question if they would
tamely submit. I am certain they would find Eadical support
against the payment of their rents. It would, perhaps, then be
discovered, when it would be too late, that the cases were not so
completely opposite as has glibly been laid down in the House of
Commons.

It would be interesting, had I the space, to look into the future,
and to draw a picture of what Ireland would be, should ' Land
Purchase ' be largely extended and become universal. But I must
confine myself to a single remark : Ireland is a land of a small agri-
cultural area, and of a few rich pastures, of low hill ranges, and of
tracts of inferior grazings, of vast bogs and morasses, of sluggish
rivers, above all, of insignificant inland towns ; it is the very last
country in which what is known as ' a peasant proprietary ' could
possibly flourish. Nature herself abhors an artificial creation of
this kind ; her laws, and those of political science, would assert
themselves, whatever might be done ; an experiment of unwise im-
prudence would be doomed to failure.

I have now glanced at the main features of this Bill ; I will not
say that it would do no good; as Burke showed, as to the achieve-
ments of the Assembly at Versailles, ' They who make everything
new have a chance that they may establish something beneficial.'

1903 THE IRISH LAND BILL 737

But I assert, with a profound conviction, that should this measure
become law, it will prove disastrous to Ireland and to Great Britain,
and will certainly have a calamitous end, as so many experiments
on the Irish land have had. It is political quackery of the very
worst kind, disseminating corruption by shameless bribes, at the cost
and the risk of the taxpayer and the State; it will subject the
millions of these kingdoms to unknown but huge burdens ; it will
spread through Ireland disorder and unrest, and may lead to a con-
fiscation for which there could be no excuse; it will create pre-
cedents dangerous to all property in land, not only in Ireland, but in
England and Scotland ; it will, in a word, be a parent of infinite
mischiefs. I am happy to reflect that I have denounced the
policy this Bill embodies, from the moment when it was first set
on foot ; as I denounced the Encumbered Estates Act half a century
ago; as I denounced the ruinous legislation of 1881; and every
prediction I have made has been verified.

For the rest, if I am an Irish landlord, I have been an Irish land
reformer through a long life, and have done not a little in this very
province. And if, as an Irish landlord, who holds a fragment of a
great inheritance lost by confiscation and conquest, by a title
anterior to the first Norman Conquest, I protest against a measure
of this kind, deceitful, treacherous, and pernicious alike, I write
without any personal vindictive feeling. My rental has been raised,
not lowered, through the legislation of the last twenty-two years.
It may be my lot, like that of the wise Persian, to say *it is
bitter that one who knows much shall not be able to prevail ' ; he
perished in the waters of Salamis ; I flatter myself I shall keep my
estate, spite of legislation that might elicit a grin from Machiavel.
Be this as it may, I have done my duty in condemning, not without
real knowledge, a measure pregnant with evil as this is, and
especially in warning the taxpayer to what it may lead.

WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS.

Gartnamona, Tullamore, King's County.

VOL. LIII — No. 315 3 C

738 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

THE IRISH LAND BILL
II

THE LATEST: IS IT THE LAST?

THE glamour of Mr. Wyndham's eloquence increased the proverbial
difficulty of appraising the Irish, Land Bill fairly on its introduction.
And this artistic effect of the first hearing was hardly impaired even
when one read the speech in cold blood ; and the almost universal
approbation with which the main principles of the Bill were received
in the House showed itself also in the early comments of the press
so generally as to arouse misgivings amongst some of the most
friendly onlookers. It seemed too good to be true. Was it really
possible that the Chief Secretary could harmonise the interests, so
obviously divergent, of the British taxpayer on the one hand, and
the Irish agricultural community on the other? Landlord and
tenant in Ireland had indeed, it seemed, been brought to a wonderful
pitch of unanimity and the extremists on both sides well-nigh
silenced ; but could this be maintained except at the expense of the
predominant partner ?

Despite such wise head-shakings, however, one thing was clear.
Mr. Wyndham had created, or at any rate preserved and utilised to
the full, an atmosphere of general confidence ; all classes and parties
were favourably predisposed ; no Bill could have a better start.

But naturally — nay, properly — when the measure itself came to
be studied, criticism began on both sides of the Channel ; and though
much of it, in Ireland at all events, is constructive in intention, it is
apt to conceal the general feeling in favour of the Bill amongst the
great mass of landlords and tenants, especially as the tendency is
always to wander off into details and to lose sight of the broad
principles. But discussion of details should of course be reserved
for Committee, and before that stage is reached a word or two on the
main issues involved may not be out of place, viewing the matter
rather from the British than the Irish standpoint.

And first a glance must be taken at the situation, so peculiar ,
not to say startling, as regards the Irish land question, that opinion
in England may well be puzzled and somewhat sceptical at what
seems a sudden transformation. Is the change real, deep, and vital,
or only a scenic effect cleverly staged by the genius of political
managers ? The hopes raised in England, the chorus of approval in

1903 THE LATEST IRISH LAND BILL 739

the House of Commons, the favourable ' atmosphere ' prevailing out
of doors, are, of course, largely the reflection of similar conditions
which seem diffused in Ireland. Have these latter any reality, any
guarantee of permanence? How did they arise, and when? Are
they anything more than a happy accident under the influence of
Mr. Wyndham's lucky star ? He has certainly taken the tide at the
flood, if it be a tide, but that is just the question. Are the forces of
Nature behind him ? If so it will surely lead on to fortune.

The new factor in Ireland is, of course, the Land Conference of
landlord and tenant representatives last December, and indeed it
came as almost as great a surprise to many politicians in Ireland
as it did to the British public generally. The extremists on both
sides derided the idea. The Nationalist leaders at first received it
nearly as coldly as the leaders of the Landowners' Convention.
But the mass of the farmers had no such misgivings. They knew
what they wanted, though their wants were not very speedily
audible, owing to the highly centralised state of the Nationalist
party. The leaders on the other side also miscalculated the pre-
vailing feeling of their brother landlords, and emphasised all the
difficulties of such a conference, which, indeed, were obvious
enough to many of its strongest supporters, and which nothing
but an overwhelming movement of public opinion could have
enabled them to surmount. But such a movement was there in
full force, and it was all the more resistless because it had been
generated slowly and had in one of its aspects, and that the most
important, been almost unnoticed by politicians. Even in Ireland
such spontaneous growths do not spring up in a moment. Even
in Ireland the more gradually they have been evolved the more
enduring they are likely to prove. On its negative side the pro-
cess of putting an end to a land system unsuited to the country
has been only too gradual, but the remarkable thing to observe now
is, that the new movement is far from being merely destructive or the
outcome of a mere rapacity on the part of the tenants, but has a
positive side also, and arises largely out of a desire for social peace
and reunion of classes, and that this too is no mushroom growth.
Partly no doubt a reaction from the bitter agrarian feuds which
culminated twenty years ago, it first took definite shape in the
Co-operative movement which in turn inspired the labours of the
Eecess Committee and the Financial Kelations agitation. This last
again led to the establishment of frankly democratic County Councils,1
while the Kecess Committee gave birth to the Department of
Agriculture and Technical Instruction, both which, the County

1 It is significant that three of the landlord representatives at the Land Con-
ference, Lord Dunraven, Colonel Everard, and Colonel Poe, are elected members of
their County or District Councils, while the fourth, Lord Mayo, sat on the Eecess
Committee with Mr. John Redmond.

3 c 2

740 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

Councils and the new Department, have given an immense impetus
to the desire and the capacity for social reconstruction. Surely
there are here the elements of permanence and healthy life; and
they show the improved relations to have been a natural develop-
ment culminating in the ' Dunraven Treaty.' Nor is the new spirit
confined to the agricultural community. The Chambers of Com-
merce of Dublin and Limerick early discerned its bearing on the
national life and passed resolutions in favour of the Land Conference.
Therefore without exaggeration the whole country may be said to
have become possessed with the new hopes of internal harmony and
development which under wise guidance should help to bring about
their own realisation.

And surely this better feeling between classes in Ireland, and
the prospect of reconstruction on the foundation of a sounder land
system may well raise hopes also of better feeling and sounder
relations between the two islands. And if the Bill is passed in a
form to insure a peaceful revolution, and the financial aid comes
with a good grace, it will certainly prove a main factor in determin-
ing the larger political problem. Unfortunately such hopes
inevitably take forms on the two sides of the Channel (or of the
House) which do not make for peace. Unionists hope and believe
that the Irish farmers will cease to agitate for Home Eule when
they have got the land. Nationalists passionately asseverate that
' purchase ' will make the farmers more ardent Nationalists than
ever, and the landlords less ardent Unionists. It is idle to prophesy,
though my instinctive feeling is that the new owners will desire
Home Eule less than before, and the quondam owners will fear it
less ; and that the consequent softening of asperities, not only within
Ireland but between the two countries, will lead to a peaceful
process of devolution, Irish national life developing on its own
special lines within the Union ; though I am as firm as ever in my
conviction that an Irish Parliament would be as disastrous to
Ireland as to England. But I have always maintained that the
Home Eule question could not be seen in its true proportions nor
its dimensions gauged as long as it was bound up with the Land
question, and it is to be regretted that English Home Eulers
have not followed Mr. Eedmond's example and agreed to leave
Home Eule out of the discussion, and that Unionists on their side
have not refrained from provocative prophecy.

British opinion, however, apparently requires the assurance of
something more than permanence. Sixty-eight years — the term
over which the repayment of advances under the Bill is spread —
is more than two generations, and if the measure is to have the uni-
versal application claimed for it, men naturally ask is it going to be
final? Is the latest Irish Land Bill going to be also the last?
This brings us to the consideration of the main principles on which

1903 THE LATEST IRISH LAND BILL 741

the Bill is framed, and (apart from certain limitations and exclu-
sions on which a word will be said below) I have no hesitation in
saying that those principles insure finality as complete as is possible
in human affairs.2 I shall indicate certain < organic details ' of the
Bill, as Mr. Gladstone would have called them, which hardly seem
to give effect to these principles, and on which the working of the
measure will mainly depend, and incidentally consider some of the
chief points still in dispute. But the principles themselves are now
practically agreed to by all parties in Ireland,3 and need not be
discussed at any length. They will all be found in the report of
the Land Conference 4 and may be briefly stated as follows :

(1) That dual ownership should be abolished by voluntary agree-
ments between landlord and tenant on a basis mutually satisfactory
to both.

(2) That the operation should be conducted without litigation or
social strife.

(3) That in order to avoid the expense, delay, and friction of
State investigation, the purchase money agreed on should be
advanced by the State within limits fixed by the Bill, expressed in
terms of the tenant purchaser's annual liability to the State in repay-
ment of advance.

(4) That this annual liability should be substantially below the
* second term ' rent.

(5) That the vendors' income should be assured to them, and
that the residents among them should be encouraged to remain in the
country.

(6) That safeguards should be adopted against the creation or
perpetuation of uneconomic holdings by sub-division, sub-letting, or
usurious money-lending.

(7) That the State should contribute by free grant or ' bonus ' to
bridge the difference between what the tenant could prudently
undertake to give and the landlord could afford to take.

Passing over for the moment the positive limitations and ex-
clusions, let us now see where the Bill fails to carry out fully its own
principles.

The Land Conference suggested that the reduction to the tenant
purchasers in their future annual instalments should be from 15 to

2 Obviously land tenure with which this Bill deals does not cover the whole
ground of agrarian reform, and Mr. Wyndham has shown a statesmanlike apprecia-
tion of the need, which will be greater than ever under a peasant proprietor system
for agricultural development and education, for better and cheaper transport, for
better and cheaper land transfer, and other auxiliary measures. But they can only
be glanced at here.

3 I do not, of course, ignore the splendid ' Athanasian ' opposition of Mr. Davitt
to, the whole principle of offering inducements to the landlords to sell without loss
of income ; but his force of character, sincerity, and disinterestedness have given
prominence to his views out of all proportion to the amount of support they have
.obtained amongst the tenant farmers of Ireland.

4 C ommons Return, No. 89 of 1903.

742 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

25 per cent, below second term rents or their fair equivalent. The Bill,
keeping the same mean of 20 per cent., stretches the limits at each
end, the range being from 10 to 30 per cent. This, though not a
departure from the principle of a maximum and minimum limit,
tends to weaken its effect, and, combined with the restriction of the
State ' bonus,' of which more anon, has given rise to a demand by
the National Convention on behalf of the tenants for the omission of
the maximum limit altogether. Its removal would have grave con-
sequences and might seriously impede or even arrest the operation
of this healing measure. For in the first place, in order to facilitate
sales, the life owner who can prove he has been receiving the rents
for six years is given ' power to sell ' without any previous investiga-
tion of title, the trusts of the settlement attaching thenceforth to
the purchase money instead of to the land. This certainly could
not be allowed with any justice to incumbrancers and reversioners
if the life owner could sell at any reduction, however ruinous, and
would necessitate importing again the preliminary investigation of
title which it is one of the main objects of the Bill to get rid of and
which would stop the sale of many properties on the very threshold.
Secondly, the removal of this limit would greatly widen the area of
dispute and imperil the newly established social peace. The narrower
the limits can be made without injustice the easier and more pacific
the process will be ; and the State as the honest broker should do all
it can to bring the parties to agreement. At the National Conven-
tion held in Dublin in Easter week, Mr. "William O'Brien and other
leaders frankly advised the tenants to combine to keep down the
price and prevent the weaker brethren from giving too much. It is
only fair to add that Mr. O'Brien expressly deprecated ' any violent
or unfriendly action ' in this connection, and so long as there is no
boycotting or intimidation no one can complain of such united action,
though, remembering the history even of the past twelve months,
' combination ' is an ominous word. But at any rate no one can-
deprive the tenants of their legal right to combine ; they will all be
free agents so far as the landlord is concerned. The mere possibility
of combination will prevent an exorbitant or even unreasonable price
being demanded. No doubt some landlords will get out on more
favourable terms than others owing to their circumstances as to
incumbrances &c., but the vast majority will be willing to sell if
they can do so without loss. On the other hand, though they fully
share the tenants' desire for peace, they have no intention of making
peace at any price or of selling in a panic, and any attempt to dictate
terms wholesale will simply exclude the most solvent estates from
the operation of the Act. Principles (2) and (3) seem therefore
somewhat impaired by the limits being extended, and would be well
nigh abandoned by the omission of the maximum limit of reduction.
The next principle which seems to me imperfectly carried out is
that of safeguards against uneconomic conditions. The provisions for

1903 THE LATEST IRISH LAND BILL 743

this purpose are (1) the retention by the State of one-eighth of the
purchase money in the form of a permanent rent-charge, giving a
right to inspection and control, and (2) a system of ' espionage ' by
rate collectors, registrars of births and deaths, and the Valuation
Office, for the discovery of subdivision or subletting. As regards (1)
no one in Ireland, except the Land Nationalisers led by Mr. Davitt,
has a good word for it unless reduced to a peppercorn, in which case it
would lose the one recommendation it has for the landlords of slightly
easing the finance by reducing the rate of the tenant's instalments from
3£. 5s. to ol. os. 9d. per cent. It may be mere sentiment — for of
course such a rent-charge is the same as a quit-rent under which
most estates in Ireland are held and which nowise impairs the abso-
lute ownership — but evidently there is a deep-rooted prejudice against
it in the minds of the tenants, and under these circumstances it
would hardly seem worth retaining, unless its effectiveness for the
object in view were amply proved. In any case, for what it is worth
as a safeguard (which in my opinion is not much), the State has the
power for sixty-eight years, and if by that time it has not taken
effective and positive measures for establishing economic conditions
further restrictions and merely negative remedies will be of little avail.
The only real cure is to be sought, as in Denmark, Germany, France,
and Northern Italy, through (a) agricultural co-operation in all its
various forms accompanied by (b) State aid on the educational side,
and in other matters such as transport, which are beyond the reach
of individual effort or local associations, and must be dealt with on
national lines by a central authority. The first (a) has already made
considerable progress under the Irish Agricultural Organisation
Society, though there is room for almost indefinite extension ; and
the second (b) is being earnestly taken in hand by the Congested
Districts Board in the south and west and by the Agricultural
Department over the rest of the country. Both systems would be
brought more rapidly and completely within the reach of the ' un-
economic ' peasant if the suggestion of Mr. W. F. Bailey in his recent
report on the ' Present Condition of Tenant Purchasers ' 5 were
adopted of appointing inspectors to supervise the working of the
Purchase Acts rather as advisers than in any detective spirit, an
arrangement which would be more effective than any amount of
' espionage,' and infinitely less invidious and irritating.

Lastly, I come to the ' bonus,' and this of course is the crux of
the whole matter. Without a ' bonus ' the scheme would work but
on a small scale and could not approach to a final solution. Heavily
incumbered owners might make a profit by selling at (say) twenty-five
years' purchase6 (which would give the tenant the mean reduction of
20 per cent.) and paying off charges bearing 4£ or 4^ per cent,
interest, and this might suffice to compensate them for the loss they

5 Commons Return, No. 92 of 1903.

• For simplicity's sake the mean is taken throughout.

744 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

must sustain on reinvesting the proceeds of the 4 per cent, security,
which they are selling, in trustee stocks at 3, or at the outside 3£, per
cent. And accordingly something of the kind is provided, though
the word is carefully avoided, not only in the Bill, but in Mr.
Wyndham's speech, if I remember right, and though the clauses
dealing with it are far from clear. Moreover, the manner in which
it is allocated, on a scale in inverse proportion to the amount of the
purchase money, has found no acceptance in any quarter in Ireland.
Last and worst of all, the amount (12,000,000^.) is quite insufficient
to bring about anything like universal sales or achieve finality,7 even
if it were treated frankly as a ' bonus,' and not mortgaged to pay for
law costs &c., as seems to be proposed.

Nor is this question to be regarded as merely for the advantage
of either class in Ireland or even of both. As pointed out above, not
the least important of the consequences to be expected from such a
Bill is the promotion of a better feeling between the two countries,
which will hinge very largely on this ' bonus ' question, according as
it is handled in a broad and generous spirit or a haggling calculating
one. In Ireland the twelve millions is universally regarded as Irish
money, inasmuch as Mr. Wyndham was careful to explain that it would
practically be recouped by savings, for which there should certainly
be ample room, in Irish administration, and for this it is surely
plausible to urge that Ireland should get credit. Nay, would
it not be sound policy, and even good business, to encourage such
economies by ear-marking the whole amount saved for purely Irish
purposes ? In fact, Mr. Wyndham himself practically admitted the
principle when he said in introducing the Bill, 'May not Ireland
come to this House on a Unionist basis and say, " May not these
economies be used for that object which we prize above all others?"'

7 Assuming the permanent rent-charge is abandoned and that ten out of the twelve
millions were given as an all-round bonus of 10 per cent, on the 100 millions at which Mr.
Wyndham estimates the total purchase money, an owner selling at twenty-five years'
purchase (which gives the tenants the mean reduction of 20 per cent, below second
term rent), would escape loss if he paid off encumbrances amounting to seven years'
purchase of his rental and bearing 4J per cent, interest or upwards, if he could re-
invest the balance (72 per cent.) of purchase money at 3J per cent. Below that line
no difficulty would arise on this score, but above it the owner could not sell without
loss except at a price proportionately increased. This would certainly exclude a
considerable number of gilt-edged estates as they may be called, and probably
among them many of the largest. I subjoin the figures :

Estate of £100 a year Rental with Mortgage of £700 bearing 4J per cent.

£ s. d. ] Purchase money = £100 — 20 capitalised
Landlord's present income 100 00; at 3J per cent.

Less agency . . 500
£700 at 4J . . 29 15 0

65 5 0

= £2,461 + 10 per cent, bonus
246

= £2,707

£2,707
less mortgage 700

£2,007 at 3J per cent. = £65 4*. Qd.

1903 THE LATEST IRISH LAND BILL 745

But whether the bonus is English or Irish money there is no
question of its involving any appreciable charge to the taxpayer.
The difficulties of the present financial situation are generally
recognised in Ireland, and there is no disposition to make any
unfair demand on the Imperial Exchequer. But how does the case
stand ? Mr. Wyndham has already ' saved 440,000£. a year during
the last few years,' and pledges the Government to save 250,000£. a
year more within five years ' as a minimum estimate.' Now, Ireland
might fairly claim credit for the past savings of 440,000^., but, even
without that, 250,OOOL is 3£ per cent, on 7,692, 300£., which is a
great deal more than could possibly be called for within five years.
Indeed, if the total ' bonus ' were increased from twelve to twenty
millions and the advances spread over fifteen years — a very moderate
estimate of the time required — the amount required in five years
could hardly exceed seven millions.

Twenty millions would have bridged the gulf, insured finality, and
appealed to the Irish imagination. Beside Mr. Morley's bold though
far from reckless estimate of twenty-two,8 Mr. Wyndham's twelve
looks poor indeed. Perhaps Mr. Morley had in mind Burke's maxim,
'Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom.' At any rate,
it is magnanimity rather than pecuniary liberality that is wanted.

I must pass on to say a word on certain exclusions. First, it is
to be regretted that the capital advance to any one tenant should be
limited to 3,0001., even apart from the apparent hardship to the
individual tenants affected, though there is unfortunately only too
good reason for some such limit, for it is estimated that the farms
above this line represent some 2,500,000£. rental as compared with
the 4,000,000£. Mr. Wyndham deals with below that level, while the
families comprised in the former class would not number a tenth
of those in the latter; and even Mr. Wyndham's maximum of 150
millions would not suffice for them all. It must be remembered,
however, that their exclusion may in many cases prevent the sale
of whole estates if the limit is absolute and invariable. The
' Ashbourne ' Amending Act of 1888 gave a discretion to the Land
Commission of increasing the advance up to 5,0001. where ' expedient
for the purpose of carrying out sales on the estate of the same land-
lord,' and it is to be hoped that this discretion is not abrogated by the
Bill, as Mr. Eedmond seems to suppose. On the other hand, no doubt
many of these large farmers could find the balance of the purchase
money above 3,0001., while in some cases farms of this size might
be divided with advantage; but without some provision for these
cases hundreds of smaller men may be shut out along with him
by the exclusion of a single large farmer.

Space forbids me to go into the case of the evicted tenants,

8 In debate on the Address, 24th of February, 1903. It is noteworthy that
Mr. Morley's estimate of the total rental to be dealt with is the same as Mr.
Wyndham's, viz. 4,000,0002.

746 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

some of whom are excluded possibly by inadvertence, or the congested
districts, but there is one exclusion of a whole class, viz. the labourers,
which I cannot altogether pass over. I have for many years advo-
cated opportunity being given to the labourers occupying Union
cottages, built by Boards of Guardians, to buy their holdings in the
same way as the farmers ; and every year deepens my conviction of
the mischief of the present system for the labourers themselves, for
the ratepayers, and even for the farmers. This is not the occasion
to discuss the matter at length, and perhaps it will be said that this
Bill is a Land Bill, not a Labourers' Bill, and I admit that it would
be dealt with more effectually in a separate measure. But, depend
upon it, the labour side of the land question cannot safely be
ignored, quite apart from the question of justice or desert, and inde-
pendence and the magic of ownership with them as with the farmers
is the surest foundation on which to build up character and durable
institutions. The provisions of the Bill regarding them are very
meagre, and there will probably be no time to consider them
adequately, still less to add to them, and it might therefore be better
to postpone the whole matter this year ; but there should be a
distinct understanding that this branch of the question should be
dealt with in a comprehensive spirit next year.

One word more as to the exclusions generally. They seriously
invade the first principle I have stated as underlying the whole
structure of the Bill — namely, the abolition of dual ownership — and
no serious attempt is made to amend the system for the excluded
unfortunates left under its baneful influence, while Part III., which
modifies that system in some respects, is a very doubtful improve-
ment. I am far from complaining that Mr. Wyndham leaves
undisturbed the 'judicial' tenants' right to a periodical revision of
rent which is an essential part of any system of rent-fixing by the
State ; nor am I suggesting that the tenants should be coerced into
purchasing by exclusion from the Land Act of 1881. But such revision
need not necessarily involve periodical revaluation of the land, in
which the mischievous part of the revision consists — which rewards
only the bad farmer and gives no security to the improving tenant.
If we are really to get practical universal abolition of dual ownership
by purchase, it would be waste of time to tinker at the Act of 1881,
in which case most of Part III. would-be better omitted altogether.
On the other hand, if the exclusions prove of serious dimensions (which
Heaven forbid !), some more effective means must be found for re-
moving this blot. I still hope and believe it may not be necessary.

I will only add that, though an Irish landlord, I have approached
this question with a profound sense of the various interests involved
— agrarian, social, political, national, imperial ; and I trust I have
not wholly failed to treat it with a due regard for those great public
interests.

MONTEAGLE.

1903

THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH

A REPLY TO LORD HALIFAX

THE majority of the House of Commons who voted for the Church
Discipline Bill will be interested to see their action receive the
complete though unintentional justification afforded by Lord Halifax's
article in last month's Nineteenth Century. He occupied, I believe,
a seat in the Peers' Grallery during the debate. From this coign of
vantage he could not of course contribute his views to the dis-
cussion. Had some good fortune placed his article in the form
of a speech before us, we should have all recognised how vain was the
notion that Lord Halifax and his friends are to be suppressed by the
paternal pressure of episcopal discipline.

The questions raised by the article are of great interest in their
legal and constitutional aspects, apart from any theological impor-
tance which may attach to them. Lord Halifax defines the attitude
which a section of the clergy maintain towards the Sovereign,
Parliament, the Ecclesiastical Courts and the Episcopate, and he
also states the grounds on which they seek to reconcile their claims
with obligations resting upon the ministry of the National Church
as by Law established.

The debate proceeded in the House of Commons upon the
general admission that a condition of lawlessness exists in the Church

O

of England. Lord Halifax quite accepts the proposition ; but the
law breakers, he says, are not an extreme section who have revived
mediaeval teaching and practices to the disturbance of the general
harmony, but consist of the Protestant members of the Church who
acquiesce in her creed and formularies as they have obtained during
the three centuries following the Reformation. He is all for the
enforcement of the law. ' No one denies,' he tells us, ' that the law
ought to be enforced.' But the law which Lord Halifax would
enforce is a version revised and expurgated by himself, with its
canons so framed that they entrap his opponents and let his friends
go free. The sword of justice is to have full play provided he can
direct its blows. He gives us some illustrations of the class of
clerical delinquents against whom this wholesome rigour might be
exercised with advantage to the Church. It need scarcely be said

747

748 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

that none of the offenders is of his own school. To use a phrase
appearing in another connection, he would ' drag before the Courts '
the parish priest who omits ' to say Matins and Evensong daily,'
who ' mutilates the Athanasian Creed ' ; who does not provide for the
celebration of the Eucharist on Saints' days, and ' at an hour which
does not impose too great a strain in observing the Church's rule of
fasting Communion ' ; who does not reserve the Sacrament or keep
1 Friday abstinence and the Fast of Lent ' or disregards ' vigils and
Saints' days ' and the like. It would probably turn out that much
of this litigation would be stifled at the birth by the exercise of the
right of every jurisdiction- to protect its procedure from vexatious
abuse. There is a glow of inquisitorial fire in the ardour of Lord
Halifax's wrath against one or two Broad Churchmen whom he
regards as holding heterodox opinions. He urges the Diocesan
of one of these clergymen to make short work of him : to ' warn
his parishioners against his teaching, to authorise another priest
to perform services in the parish in some temporary church until
it pleased (rod to remove' the lawful but unorthodox incumbent
' elsewhere.' So he is handed over, if not to the Civil, at least to
the Supernatural Powers. ' It would create a scandal, no doubt,'
Lord Halifax admits. One wonders what would be the comment
if a similar scandal arose from episcopal action equally prompt
and vigorous but directed against a member of the party of the
Catholic revival.

Lord Halifax enjoys a happy persuasion of security in thus
invoking the terrors of the law against those he deems lax or
heterodox; because, as he explains, he and his friends enjoy a
complete immunity.

First. — Parliament cannot touch them. Its authority in matters
of Church discipline has been destroyed by the admission among its
members of Presbyterians, Dissenters and Jews. ' The tacit con-
cordat' between Church and State has thus been broken. The
' Acts of Uniformity are now dead,' and the ' Church reverts to her
original and inherent liberty.' This method of repealing statutes
is new to jurisprudence and the Constitution. It would be interest-
ing to know by what recondite ecclesiastical canon so extraordinary
a proposition is supported. If it were applied to the sphere of public
morals, as Lord Halifax applies it to Church government, it might
with equal force be contended that a marriage within the prohibited
degrees or the second marriage of a married person was an exercise
of 'original and inherent liberty' to which the individual had
reverted because the admission of Dissenters, Agnostics, and Jews
to Parliament had invalidated the Acts against incest and bigamy,
and that these statutes were ' now dead.'

But in his treatment of the authority of Parliament in our own
times — crippled as he contends by the presence of Nonconforming
members — Lord Halifax does not show the courage of his argument.

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 749

He is no less disrespectful towards the Parliaments of Queen
Elizabeth — free as they were of this infirmity — when their statutes
present obstacles to his claims. He has to get rid of the Act of
Uniformity of that reign. The theory of the broken concordat
owing to the admission of Jews and Dissenters will not serve. It
is enough, therefore, to sweep the statute aside by the question,
' Would Mr. Keble, would Dr. Pusey have admitted the right
of Parliament to determine the ritual of the Church ? ' This post-
humous imputation of unexpressed opinions to deceased divines is a
still more novel and somewhat ghostly method of reforming the law.

Secondly. — Lord Halifax disposes of all interpretations of Church
formularies pronounced within recent years by the Ecclesiastical
Courts and markedly by the Privy Council which are in conflict with
the teaching and practices of the Catholic revival. These ' Courts
have no authority over the consciences ' of the clergy who disregard
their decisions. They are interpretations of the rubrics for ' which
the Privy Council alone is responsible.' These judgments of the
supreme tribunal of the National Church give him no difficulty.
' They have been very generally repudiated by the episcopate and
by the Church at large.' In what form and by what sanction this
vague reversal of judicial pronouncements by the ' Church at large *
has taken place is not explained. Mr. Bright once said in effect
that the prohibition of marriage with a deceased wife's sister had
been rescinded by the public sentiment. This application of Lord
Halifax's principle of the tacit rescission of unpalatable legal obliga-
tions by bodies ' at large ' who are called upon to obey them may
satisfy him that there is something defective in his easy method
of reversing legal judgments.

Curiously enough he blames the Bishops, not for accepting as
binding the decrees of the first Ecclesiastical Court in the realm —
he hints the contrary — but because their repudiation of the Privy
Council judgments has not been emphatic and outspoken enough.
' While,' he says, ' they have not ventured, at least in later times,
or perhaps even wished, to enforce the interpretations of the Privy
Council as a true exposition of the law and rubrics of the Church,
they have never had the courage or the principle openly and
unmistakably to vindicate their own authority as against that of
the Privy Council,' i.e. ' their authority as Catholic Bishops acting
on Catholic principles.' It would be interesting to know if the
Bishops accept as true the first part of the above statement. If so, the
attempt to abolish the episcopal veto needs no further justification.

One is a little surprised that so well-equipped and candid a
controversialist as Lord Halifax should, in adopting this familiar
clamour against the Privy Council, ignore the fact that this tribunal
consists of the Sovereign himself, acting on the advice of his council,
who report their opinion to him, and that its constitutional and ecclesi-
astical authority is sufficiently established for all practical purposes

750 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

by the Book of Common Prayer, which makes the king ' supreme
governor of the Church of England ' and of ' all estates of the realm
whether they be ecclesiastical or civil.'

Thirdly. — Lord Halifax, having got rid first of Parliament by
wiping out the Acts of Uniformity, and then of the Ecclesiastical
Court by the voice of the ' Church at large, ' his next obstacle is
the action of the bishops themselves. But he finds it no less easy
to dispose of their decisions when there is any danger of their going
against him. Every ecclesiastical ruling to which obedience can
be rightly claimed must comply with the following conditions :

(a) It must be the judgment of a bishop or 'ecclesiastical
person.'

(6) It must be ' arrived at and delivered on principles recognised
by the Church,' i.e. ' the whole Church, including the rest of
Christendom ' and in ' obedience ' to ' the duty which the English
Episcopate owes to the Primate of Christendom and the rest of the
Catholic Episcopate East and West.' ' Rome,' he adds, ' may reject
our Bishops' claims, but that rejection cannot relieve them from the
obligation those claims impose.'

These conditions of the validity of episcopal ordinances make the
position of Lord Halifax and his friends quite secure. They disregard
Parliament with its Presbyterian and Nonconformist taint, the
Sovereign and ' supreme governor of the Church of England ' in
council ; they act only in obedience to the ' Primate of Christendom
and the rest of the Catholic Episcopate East and West. ' These
' foreign jurisdictions,' condemned by the thirty-seventh Article of
Religion to which the Bishops are invited to defer, have already, as
Lord Halifax knows, pronounced on his side, and their influence will
obviate all danger of decisions adverse to his claims.

He gives practical effect to these principles by setting aside the
Lambeth Opinions in reference to incense and reservation, because
they are not arrived at in conformity with the conditions thus
prescribed. The Archbishops showed no deference to the authority
of the Primate of Christendom, and their decisions do not, therefore,
bind the Catholic conscience. With the Pope of Rome ' come to
judgment ' the last frail barrier between the Church of England as
Lord Halifax conceives it and the ' rest of Christendom ' falls to the
ground. The Reformation Settlement and all it accomplished has
indeed vanished into mist.

Lord Halifax is satisfied that the Bishops are on the side of the
Catholic revival. They are to aid and enforce it. He appeals to
them to assert their ' authority ' as ' Catholic prelates,' and adds
that ' they will not deny they are such.' He places before them as
their ideal Archbishop Laud. ' What Archbishop of Canterbury in
later times appeals to the heart and imagination of Churchmen like
Archbishop Laud, who has so deep a place in their veneration ? '
He wore the crown of martyrdom. He fell a victim to the ' scaffold

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 751

and the block on Tower Hill,' and as he points out, if his true follower
in these days of less summary but still painful penalties would
' only act really consistently with that Catholic Faith and those
Catholic principles which he professes to hold ... he would do a
work of incalculable value not merely to the Church of England but
to the whole of Christendom, but it would be at the price of a life
of which every day was a martyrdom.' Lord Halifax argues at some
little length that the rites of ordination, ' the Mass ' and the con-
fessional are of substantial ' identity ' in the Anglican and Roman
Churches, and he contends that this conformity to a common standard
shows on which side the Church of England ' ranges herself in the
controversy between Catholics and Protestants.'

The Bishops thus brought into line with the ' rest of Christen-
dom ' under its Primate are called upon to ' proclaim the Catholic
Faith ' — which seems indeed to be a new religion in this country —
to insist among other doctrines upon the ' grace conferred by the
sacraments : ' on the ' presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the
Eucharist : ' on the ' power of the keys and the gift of absolution.'

He then makes a frank disclosure of the plan of the ecclesiastical
campaign which underlies the illusory mists — roseate with the hues
of forbearance, charity, gentleness and the rest — spread by the Prime
Minister and the Vicar General over the picture. The Protestant
faction in the Church must be got rid of. ' They have to be shown
that they are in the position of the lodger who is trying to turn the
rightful owner of the house out of doors.' Protestant teaching must
be extirpated. The days of grace are growing to an end. ' The
patience ' of the real householder ' may be ' and apparently has been
already ' exhausted.' ' Protestantism has effected a de facto lodg-
ment within the borders of the Church, an anomaly in itself hardly
tolerable, which hampers the Church in her office of proclaiming the
truth at every turn, and which makes any really consistent action on
the part of her Bishops as Catholic prelates to be at the present moment
almost impossible.' ... 'It remains true that within the Church
of England there are practically something very like two religions.'
He prescribes the conditions on which alone he will tolerate or hold
any truce with the ' other religion.' First it must not strengthen
its fortifications : it must not be allowed to ' consolidate the position
of those within the Church who from a Catholic point of view ought
never to have been allowed to occupy the position they now hold ' ;
and secondly he and his friends must have a free hand ; ' nothing
must be done by the rulers of the Church to make the recovery of
Catholic doctrine and practice more difficult.'

The fact that such impossible conditions are even submitted
shows how unbounded is Lord Halifax's confidence in the support and
protection of the Bishops. He counts on their aid in evicting the
' something very like another religion.' The ' Church must organise
herself under her own leaders the Bishops : she must do /or herself

752 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

what her needs require. She must taJce what will not be given. If
done wisely and prudently, there need be no insuperable difficulty
in such action. Governments and Parliament will only be too glad
to be rid of Ecclesiastical affairs' The italics here and elsewhere
are mine.

Lord Halifax counts, not without reason, upon the supineness of the
Ministry and the indifference of Parliament. His faith, however, in
the co-operation of the Bishops in this conspiracy against the
government of the Church shows more of mediaeval sentiment
than of the logical application of his own principles. Why should
Parliament be disqualified for ecclesiastical legislation by the presence
of Nonconformists, while the Bishops receive an unquestionable
Catholic patent from the hands of the Sovereign and civil governor
of the realm on the recommendation of a Prime Minister who was
possibly at one time a Jew, and who may very probably to-morrow be
a Unitarian ? Recent Premiers have been High-Churchmen. Had
the Bench been filled, by a fifteen years' premiership of, let us say,
Lord Palmerston or Sir William Harcourt, what would Lord Halifax
have said of the Bishops then ?

I have — I fear, at great length — called attention to this
exposition of the views of the advanced party in the Church.
Nothing can be more valuable at this juncture than such a
manifesto. I have made larger quotations than a consideration for
the patience of my readers would justify, because I have feared lest
a paraphrase of such remarkable propositions should create a doubt
of my version of the author's meaning.

Protestant Churchmen may well indeed protest against the
Oxford Movement being allowed to continue unchecked until their
exclusion from the communion of their fathers is complete. But
mere protests against the denial of their right of membership in the
National Church will not now suffice. They have to encounter a proud
and defiant party, which raises a menacing front, claims to speak in the
name of the Church, boasts the approval and sympathy of her ' Catholic
prelates,' threatens with excommunication the Protestant faction
which have 'de facto obtained a lodgment within her borders — an
anomaly hardly tolerable.' It is idle to hope to appease such
assailants by pious exercises, by a parliamentary litany of peace and
goodwill, and an obsequious appeal to the Bishops whose timidity,
unconcern or sympathetic indulgence during the last sixty years
have allowed this party to gather head and to assert a claim to
dominate the whole Establishment. Litigation in the Church Courts,
while they have some authority left, is doubtless an unpleasant
medicine : but still more drastic and repugnant remedies may be
necessary later on.

It is outside the original scope of this article to comment on the
course pursued by the Bishops during the last twenty -five years, or
to speculate upon the causes which have closed the Church Courts or

1903 THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH 753

kept them idle for that period. The least controvertible indication
of the policy of the episcopal bench is to be found in the history of
the litigation by which it was sought in the year 1878 to compel the
late Bishop Mackarness of Oxford to allow a suit to be instituted
against the Kev. Thomas Carter of Clewer. Lord Bramwell on
juridical grounds, and in a characteristic vein of trenchant humour,
condemned the exercise of a discretion which prohibited proceedings
for a breach of the law for reasons personal to the accused person or
connected with the policy or administration of the law itself. The
issue of this protracted struggle established by tacit proclamation an
episcopal interdict against resort to the Church Courts. Two pro-
positions were made clear : first, that the episcopal bench had set
its face against further litigation at the suit of the laity ; secondly,
that the bishops were not themselves disposed of their own volition
to put the law in motion against law-breaking clergy. No suggested
reasons for this policy can be universally attributed to the members
of the bench. The { scandal ' of litigation and strife may have
seemed more serious than the spread of the mediaeval revival.
Sympathy with the Catholic movement was probably stronger in
some cases than zeal for the administration of the law. The cost of
instituting proceedings by the diocesan himself may well have seemed
prohibitive. Most powerful of all, no doubt, has been the disposition
to trust unduly to the weight of official influence in strange oblivion
of Lord Halifax's position that the counsels and opinions of the epi-
scopal office count for nothing if they merely derive their authority
from the law of the Church as declared by statute and the courts,
and do not instead found their obligation upon the duty of obedience
which Anglican prelates owe to the Primate of Christendom and
other foreign jurisdictions.

It is not strange that laymen who had at great cost obtained a
clear exposition of the law on important points should have accepted
the tacit invitation of the bishops to leave in their hands the duty
and responsibility of enforcing compliance with its provisions. The
result we see in the present position of the Catholic revival,
accompanied by the declaration which Lord Halifax makes of its
claims. We have had silent courts, and a vociferous Mr. Kensit :
no law suits, but brawling in church : Lady Wimborne's League
and the Liverpool Bill : last, but not least, Lord Halifax's article :
in short the ' Crisis in the Church.'

The apologists for the bench in the recent debate were not very
convincing in their criticism of Mr. Taylor's Bill. Living bishops
had but in few cases vetoed suits ; in very few indeed had they been
asked to allow them. But there was no admission that they had
broken with the practice of their predecessors for the last twenty-
five years, or any undertaking that they were now prepared to
sanction litigation. It was true that the obligation of enforcing

VOL. LUI— :No. a 15 3D

754 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

the law rested with the episcopate, and that there was not a single
recorded suit by any bishop against any one of the several hundred
clergy acting in admitted breach of the law throughout the country.
The main if not sole reason assigned for this inaction was the cost
of litigation. If so, why had not Parliament been asked to throw
this burden upon some public fund ? Why was not Mr. Taylor's
Bill accepted, and this and other amendments engrafted on it?
The episcopal veto was alleged to be a necessary appanage to the
dignity and influence of the episcopal office. It cannot surely be
true that the exclusive right of authorising, instituting, and con-
ducting litigation with his own clergy in his own or the provincial
courts is an essential part of the spiritual jurisdiction of a diocesan.
No authority was vouched for the proposition : much could be found
the other way. It involves a strange combination of the pastoral,
judicial, and executive functions in the ecclesiastical sphere, and
does no little violence to the accepted views of merely civil juris-
prudence. The ideal presented apparently is, that the bishop should
discharge in his own person the irreconcilable duties of exhorting,
prosecuting, judging, condemning, interdicting, and depriving his
recalcitrant clergy.

Elementary principles are often the surest guides of policy. Fiat
justitia. While the law exists let it be enforced. Why close the
Courts of the Church when every other tribunal in the country is
open to the poorest suitor who complains of the most trivial wrong ?
Law, which is certainly better than riot and the martyrdom of
rioters, may prove no remedy. It will at least have been tried. And
the trial of all available expedients, even if it fail, has at least one
satisfaction : it exposes the worst. To know the worst of the present
system of Church government is better than a false security or the
unrest of apprehension. There are still the unexhausted resources
of legislation which may hold the promise of other and better systems
for trial in the future.

Meantime the object of my article has been accomplished if I have
said something to vindicate the action of the majority of the House of
Commons. While Parliament is charged with the duty of government
in regard to the Church of England, it cannot without the gravest re-
sponsibility dismiss the appeal to enforce the law of the Church in
the sense established by the Statutes and Ecclesiastical Courts of
the realm. Those who supported the recent Bill have at least clear
consciences. They have done and are ready to do what legislation
can effect to save the Church from the spread of the movement
of which Lord Halifax is the distinguished exponent and advocate.
Without the assistance of the Government these efforts will be in
vain. The responsibility for the protraction of a status quo which
Protestant Churchmen find intolerable rests with the Prime Minister
and those who support him.

J. LAWSON WALTON.

1903

THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY
IN GERMANY

ALMOST every country possesses a more or less turbulent party which
•is considered to be a party of subversion : Great Britain has the
Irish Nationalists, France the Nationalists, Germany the Social
Democrats. That subversive party represents either unruly or un-
happy men of limited numbers who are united by a common
grievance, such as the Irish Nationalists ; or it is composed of a
moderate number of malcontents of every kind, class, and description,
who are loosely held together by their common desire to fish in
troubled waters, such as the French Nationalists ; or it consists of
vast multitudes of all sorts and conditions of men, such as the Social
Democrats in Germany, and is then the unmistakable symptom of
deep-seated, wide-spread, and almost universal popular discontent.
In Germany alone, of all countries in and out of Europe, it has
happened that by far the strongest political Party has received
neither sympathy nor consideration at the hands of the Government.
Instead, it has again and again, officially and semi-officially, been
branded as the enemy of Society and of the Country, ' Die Umsturz-
partei,' the party of subversion. For instance, at the Sedan banquet
on the 2nd of September 1895 the present Emperor declared in a
speech that the members of that vast Party which had polled
1,786,000 votes in 1893 were ' a band of fellows not worthy to bear
the name of Germans,' and on the 8th of September in a letter to
his Chancellor His Majesty called the Social Democrats ' enemies to
the divine order of things, without a fatherland.'

It can hardly be doubted that in the future, and perhaps earlier
than is generally expected, the Social Democrats will be called upon
to play a great part in German politics, and possibly also in inter-
national politics, though their influence upon foreign policy would
be indirect and unintentional. It would, therefore, seem worth
while to look into the history, views, composition, and aims of that
interesting Party, which may be said to be in many respects unique.
As the full history of the Social Democratic Party in Germany
would be as bulky as that of the British Liberal Party, it will, of

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756 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

course, be impossible to give more than a mere sketch of it in the
pages of this Review. It may, however, be found that a sketch
brings out the essential points and light and shade more clearly and
more strongly than would a lengthy and detailed account.

The creation of the Social Democratic Party in Germany, like
the inauguration of many other political movements in that country,
is not due to the practical politician but to the bookish doctrinaire.
Koughly speaking, it may be said that that Party has been created
by the writings of the well-known Socialist authors Karl Marx,
Friedrich Engels, and Ferdinand Lassalle. It suffices to mention
these names in order to understand that German Social Democracy
was at first animated by the spirit of the learned and well-meaning,
but somewhat nebulous and very unpractical, idealists who had read
many books, and who sincerely wished to lead democracy from its
misery and suffering straight into a millennium of their own creation
without delay and without any intermediate stations. The fate of
the followers of Marx, Engels, and Lassalle varied greatly. Some
of them dissented and founded comparatively unimportant political
schools and groups of their own, some became anarchists like Johann
Most, some lost themselves in theoretical speculations and became
respectable professors, but the vast majority of Lassalle's followers
developed into the Social Democratic Party in Germany, and that
Party became, by gradual evolution, the level-headed political
representative of German labour under the able guidance of talented
working men. Its present chief is the turner, August Bebel, and
among the most prominent members of the Party are workmen such
as Mr. Grillenberger, a locksmith ; Mr. Auer, a saddler ; Messrs.
Molkenbuhr and Meister, cigar workers ; Mr. Bernstein, the son
of an engine driver ; Mr. Von Vollmar, formerly a post official.
Working men such as those mentioned manage, lead, and control
the Party, which may be said to embrace about 2,500,000 men, and
maintain perfect order and absolute discipline amongst that vast
number.

From its small beginnings up to the time of its present greatness,
German Social Democracy has been democratic in the fullest sense
of the word. Some working men of a similar stamp to those
mentioned, together with Wilhelm Liebknecht, a poor journalist,
created the Party, organised it, and led it. These leaders were
always under the constant and strict control of the members of the
Party. Individual members often inquired, sometimes in an un-
comfortably democratic spirit, not only into the expenditure of the
meagre Party Fund, which for a long time did not run into three
figures, and of which every halfpenny had to be accounted for, but
even cross-examined the Party leader, the aged Liebknecht, as to his
household expenses, and censured him for taking a salary as editor-
in-chief of the Vorivdrls, the great Social Democratic Party organ,

1903 SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN GERMANY 757

and keeping a servant, instead of living like an ordinary working
man. The idea of absolute equality, which is often found in small
democratic societies, but which is usually lost when the society
expands into a Party, especially if that Party is of enormous size, has
been strictly preserved by the Social Democrats in Germany. This
conservation of its original character was all the easier as the Party
had neither a great nobleman nor a distinguished professor for a
figure-head, nor even wealthy brewers and bankers for contributors to
the Party Fund, who might have influenced the Party policy as they
do in this country. Thus the Social Democratic Party was, and has
remained, essentially a Labour Party ; it has preserved its truly demo-
cratic, one might almost say its proletarian, character. However, it
has been sensible enough not to write consistency on its banners, and
has quietly dropped one by one the Utopian views and doctrines
which it had taken over from the bookish doctrinaires who were its
originators.

The Constitution of the German Empire gave universal suffrage
to its citizens, and the number of Social Democratic votes, which had
amounted to only 124,700 in 1871, rose rapidly to 352,000 in 1874,
and to 493,300 in 1877. Bismarck had been watching the rapid
development of Social Democracy with growing uneasiness and
dislike, and was casting about for a convenient pretext to strike at
it when, on the 1 1th of May 1878, Hodel, an individual of illegitimate
birth, besotted by drink, and degraded by vice and consequent
disease, fired a pistol at the Emperor William. Long before his
attempt on the Emperor, Hodel had been expelled from the Social
Democratic Party to which he had once belonged, on account of his
personal character and his anarchist leanings, and he had joined the
' Christian Socialist Working Men's Party ' of Mr. Stocker, the Court
preacher. Consequently it was not possible, by any stretch of
imagination, to lay the responsibility for his attempt at the doors of
the Social Democratic Party. Nevertheless, Bismarck endeavoured
to turn this attempt to account in the same way in which, in 1874,
he had laid the moral responsibility for Kullmann's murderous
attempt on himself upon the Clerical Party against which he was
then fighting. He at once brought forward a Bill for the suppres-
sion of Social Democracy, but that Bill was rejected by 251 votes
against 57.

By one of those fortunate coincidences which have always played
so conspicuous a part in Bismarck's career, a second attempt on the
Emperor's life was made by Nobiling, only three weeks after that of
Hodel, and this time the aged monarch was very seriously wounded.
At one moment the doctors feared for his life, but in the end the
copious bleeding was a blessing in disguise, for it rejuvenated the
Emperor in mind and body.

The two murderous attempts, following one another so closely,

758 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

naturally infuriated the population of Germany, and, though
Nobiling also was not a Social Democrat, Bismarck succeeded this
time in turning the feelings of the people against Social Democracy.
He immediately dissolved the Keichstag and fanned the universal
indignation at the crime to fever heat by his powerful press organisa-
tion; in the numerous journals throughout the land which were
influenced from the Chancellery in Berlin it was constantly declared
that these repeated outrages were the dastardly work of Social
Democracy. At the same time a reign of terrorism against Social
Democracy was initiated by the German police authorities. Count-
less political meetings of the Social Democrats were forbidden, a
large number of Social Democratic newspapers were suppressed, and
the law courts inflicted in one month no less than 500 years of
imprisonment for lese-majeste.

During the enormous excitement prevailing and in the seething
turmoil caused by those two attempts, by the critical state of the
Emperor, by the passionate campaign of the semi-official press
against the Social Democratic Party, and by the relentless persecu-
tions waged against the members of that Party by the police, the
new elections took place, and, naturally enough, their result was
that a majority in favour of exceptional legislation against Social
Democracy was returned into the Keichstag. Bismarck brought the
famous Socialist Law before Parliament without delay, and it was
quickly passed, and was published on the 21st of October in the
Meichsanzeiger.

Then the reign of terror, of which the Social Democrats had
already received a foretaste, began in earnest for that unhappy Party.
"Within eight months the authorities dissolved 222 working men's
unions and other associations, and suppressed 127 periodical pub-
lications and 278 other publications, by virtue of the discretionary
powers given to them by the Socialist Law. Innumerable bona fide
co-operative societies were compelled by the police to close their
doors without any trial and without the possibility of appeal, and
numerous Social Democrats were equally summarily expelled from
Germany at a few days' notice, through the discretion which the
new Act had vested in the police. Many were placed under police
supervision, others were not allowed to change their domicile.
Thousands of Social Democrats were thus reduced to beggary,
many being thrown into prison, and many fleeing to Switzerland,
England, or the United States.

The first effect of the new law upon Social Democracy was
staggering. The entire Party organisation, the entire Party press,
and the right of the members of the Party to free speech, had been
destroyed by the Government, and for the moment the Party had
become a disorganised and terrified mob. Everywhere in Germany
scenes of tyranny were enacted by the police. In Frankfurt-on-the-

1903 SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN GERMANY 759

Main, a Social Democrat was buried, and, for some trifling reason,
the police attacked the mourners in the very churchyard with drawn
swords, and thirty to forty of the men were wounded. In 1886
a collision took place between some Social Democrats and some
policemen in plain clothes, who, according to Social Democratic
evidence, were not known to be policemen. With incredible
severity eleven of the Social Democrats were punished for sedition,
some with no less than ten and a half years' penal servitude, some
with twelve and a half years of imprisonment. For the moment the
Social Democratic Party was staggered by the rapidly succeeding
blows. The election of 1878 reduced the number of Social Demo-
cratic votes from 493,300 to 437,100, and in the next election, that
of 1881, it sank even as low as 312,000.

Prosecutions were not brought merely against such Social
Democrats as were considered lawbreakers by the local authorities
and the police. On the contrary, the Grerman Government directed
the law with particular severity against the intellectual leaders of
the Party in Parliament, in the vain hope of thus extirpating it.
Bebel and Liebknecht, the heads of the Party and its leaders in the
Reichstag, were dragged again and again before the law courts by
the public prosecutor, often only in the attempt to construct, by
diligent cross-examination, a punishable offence out of some inoffen-
sive words which they had said, and time after time the prosecution
collapsed ignominiously, and both men were found not guilty ; time
after time they were condemned to lengthy terms of imprisonment
for lese-majeste, high treason, and intended high treason. Lieb-
knecht received his last conviction of four months of imprisonment,
for lese-majeste, as a broken man of nearly seventy years, and even
his burial in August 1900 was marked by that petty and annoying
police interference under which he had suffered so much during his
life. No less than 2,000 wreaths and other floral tributes had been
sent by Liebknecht's admirers, yet, in the immense funeral procession,
in which about 45,000 people took part, not one wreath, not one
banner was to be seen, for the police had forbidden their inclusion in
the procession. Though hundreds of thousands of Social Democrats
attended the funeral in the procession and in the streets of Berlin,
and in spite of the provocative orders of the police, no breach of the
peace occurred, no arrest took place, an eloquent testimonial to the
orderliness and discipline of the Party of subversion.

Bismarck soon recognised that his policy of force and violence
promised to be unsuccessful. Therefore he tried not only to vanquish
Social Democracy by breaking up the Party organisation, confiscating
its books and documents, by destroying the Party press, and by
taking from Social Democrats the right of free speech, but he tried
at the same time to reconcile the Grerman working men with the
Government that persecuted them by a law instituting State Insurance

760

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

May

for workmen against old age and disablement, in order to entice them
away from their leaders, and to make them look to the State for
help. However, his Workmen's Insurance Laws failed to fulfil the
chief object which they were to serve. According to the Social
Democratic leaders the Imperial Insurance scheme kept not one vote
from Social Democracy, especially as the Insurance Law did not
satisfy the workers by its performance. German workmen complain
that the benefits which they derive under the Insurance scheme are
purely nominal, that the premiums paid come chiefly out of their
own pockets, that the contributions made by the employers are
insufficient, and that the cost of the management is excessive.
Consequently it is only natural that this law has failed to appease
outraged German democracy, and that it is scorned by it as a bribe.
Gradually the terror of prosecution wore off and became familiar
to Social Democrats, political meetings were held in secret, Party
literature printed in Switzerland was smuggled over the frontier and
surreptitiously distributed. By-and-by the Party pulled itself
together, and found that determination and perseverance which are
only born from adversity, and which are bound to lead individuals
and parties possessing these qualities to greatness. The campaign
of oppression and the creation of martyrs had done its work. As
Bismarck had created the greatness of the Clerical Party by the
' Kulturkampf/ with its prosecution of Roman Catholicism, even so
he created the greatness of the Social Democratic Party. Social
Democracy began again to take heart, and, from 1881 onwards, we find
a marvellous increase in the Social Democratic votes recorded, not-
withstanding, or rather because of, all the measures taken against it
by the Government. In eighteen years the Social Democratic vote
has increased sevenfold. The astonishing progress of the Party since
1881 is apparent from the following table :

Election

Social Democratic Votes
polled

Total Votes polled

Percentage of Social
Democratic Votes

1881

312,000

5,097,800

6-12 per cent.

1884

550,000

5,663,000

9'68 per cent.

1887

763,100

7,540,900

lO'll per cent.

1890

1,427,300

7,228,500

19-74 per cent.

1893

1,786,700

7,674,000

23-30 per cent.

1898

2,107,076

7,752,700

27-18 per cent.

When Bismarck saw Social Democracy increasing, notwithstand-
ing all his efforts at repression, he tried another method. It happens
very frequently in Germany that three, four, or more candidates,
representing as many parties, stand for one seat. If in such a case
none of the candidates obtains a majority over the combined votes
given to all the ether candidates, a second poll has to take place
between the two candidates who have received the largest number of

1903 SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN GERMANY 761

votes, whilst the other candidates have to withdraw. In the elections
of 1898, for instance, a second poll took place for no less than 48 per
cent, of the seats. In order to destroy the chances of Social Demo-
cratic candidates in the very frequent second polls, Bismarck and his
press used to constantly brand the Social Democratic Party as the
State-subverting Party, and to enjoin ' the parties of law and order,'
as he called the other parties, to stand shoulder to shoulder against
the common enemy of Society and of the Fatherland.

Thirteen years have passed since Bismarck's dismissal, but official
Grermany has not vet discovered a new method for the treatment of
Social Democracy, and therefore it merely copies Bismarck's example.
The Social Democratic Party is still loudly denounced to every good
patriot as the Party of subversion, which has to be shunned and com-
bated, and thus the election managers of the numerous parties and
factions, which number more than a dozen, have, up to now, in case of a
second poll, preferred giving the votes of their Party to the candidate
of any other Party to incurring the odium in official circles of having
helped a Social Democrat into the Reichstag. But voices of protest
begin to be heard all over Grermany against the official fiction which
brands Social Democracy as a pest, the enemy of the Country, of
Society, of Monarchy, of Family, and of the Church. In December
1902 Professor Mommsen, the greatest living historian, wrote in the
Nation :

There must be an end of the superstition, as false as it is perfidious, that the
nation is divided into parties of law and order on the one hand, and a party of
revolution on the other, and that it is the prime political duty of citizens belong-
ing to the former categories to shun the Labour Party as if it were in quarantine
for the plague, and to combat it as the enemy of the State.

In March 1890 Bismarck was dismissed by the present Emperor,
and a few months later the exceptional law against Social Democracy
disappeared. The net result of that law had been that 1,500 Social
Democrats had been condemned to about 1,000 years of imprison-
ment, and that the Social Democratic vote had risen from 437,158
to 1,427,298. The effect of the Socialist Law with all its persecu-
tion was the reverse of what Bismarck had expected, for it has made
that Party great. If less drastic means had been employed by
Bismarck, if less contempt and contumely had been showered upon
Social Democracy by the official classes and Society, and if instead
consideration for the legitimate wishes and confidence in the
common sense of the working men's Party had been shown by the
Government, Social Democracy would not have attained its present
formidable strength.

Among the various causes which led to the rupture between the
present Emperor and Prince Bismarck, a prominent place may be
assigned to the difference in their views with regard to the treatment
of Social Democrats. When William the Second came to the throne he

762 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

clearly saw the failure of Bismarck's policy of oppression, and, probably
influenced by the liberal views of his English mother, resolved to kill
Social Democracy with kindness. This idea dictated his well-known
retort to Bismarck, ' Leave the Social Democrats to me ; I can manage
them quite alone ! ' Even before Bismarck's dismissal William the
Second demonstrated! to the world his extremely liberal views regarding
the German workmen with that astonishing impetuousness and with
that complete disregard of the views of his experienced official
advisers to which the world has since become accustomed. On the
4th of February 1890 an Imperial rescript was published which lacked
the necessary counter-signature of the Imperial Chancellor, whereby
the responsibility for that document would have been fixed upon the
Government. This Imperial pronouncement declared it to be the duty
of the State '. . . to regulate the time, the hours, and the nature of
labour in such a way as to ensure the preservation of health, to fulfil
the demands of morality, and to secure the economic requirements of
the workers, to establish their equality before the law, and to facilitate
the free and peaceful expression of their wishes and grievances/ A
second rescript called together an International Conference for the
Protection of Workers.

These Imperial manifestations, which emanated directlj from the
throne, were greeted with jubilation by German democracy, but the
extremely liberal spirit which these documents breathed vanished as
suddenly as it had appeared, and gave way to more autocratic and
directly anti-democratic pronouncements, with that surprising
rapidity of change which has become the only permanent and
calculable factor in German politics. Whilst the words of the
Imperial rescripts were still fresh in every mind, and whilst German
democracy still hoped to receive greater consideration at the hands
of the Government than heretofore, and looked for a more liberal
and more enlightened regime, messages like the following, addressed
to democracy, fell from the Imperial lips :

We Hohenzollerns take Our crown from God alone, and to God alone We are
responsible in the fulfilment of Our duties.

The soldier and the army, not Parliamentary majorities and resolutions, have
welded together the German Empire.

Suprema lex ret/is voluntas.

Only One is master in the country. That am I. Who opposes Me I shall
crush to pieces.

Sic volo, sic jubeo.

All of you shall have only one will, and that is My will ; there is only one law,
and that is My law.

Parliamentary opposition of Prussian nobility to their King is a monstrosity.

For Me every Social Democrat is synonymous with enemy of the nation, and
of the Fatherland.

On to the battle, for Religion, Morality, and Order, and against the parties of
subversion. Forward with God ! Dishonourable is he who forsakes his King !

1903 SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN GERMANY 763

The Emperor did not confine himself to making in public pro-
nouncements highly offensive and hostile to German democracy such
as those mentioned, but set himself the task of actively combating
Social Democracy. Consciously or unconsciously, he gradually
dropped into Bismarck's ways, which he had formerly condemned,
and copied, to some extent, Bismarck's methods, Bismarck's tactics,
and Bismarck's mistakes. When, on the 13th of October 1895, a
manufacturer named Schwartz was murdered in Miilhausen by a
workman who had been repeatedly convicted of theft, William the
Second telegraphed to his widow, ' Again a sacrifice to the revolu-
tionary movement engendered by the Socialists,' imitating Bismarck's
attempt at foisting the guilt for an individual crime upon a
Parliamentary Party which then comprised 2,000,000 members.

The Socialist Law of 1878 had been a complete failure, as has
already been shown. Nevertheless, the Government tried not
exactly to revive it but to introduce, under a different title, a near
relative of that law of exception which breathed the same spirit of
intolerance and violence, for in 1894 a Bill which is known under the
name ' Umsturz Vorlage ' (Subversion Bill) was brought out by the
Government. This Bill made it punishable ' to attack publicly by
insulting utterances Religion, the Monarchy, Family, or Property in
a matter conducive to provoke a breach of the peace, or to bring the
institutions of the State into contempt.' That Bill, which, with its
flexible provisions, would have allowed of the most arbitrary inter-
pretations, and would have virtually given a free hand to the police
and to public prosecutors and judges anxious to show their zeal and
patriotism in the relentless persecution of Social Democracy, was
thrown out in the Imperial Reichstag. Notwithstanding the failure
of that Bill another Bill, of similar character but intended for
Prussia alone, was laid before the Prussian Diet on the 10th of May
1897, empowering the police to dissolve all meetings ' which do not
conform with the law or endanger public security, especially the
security of the State or of the public peace.' This Bill also was
rejected by the Prussian Diet.

Shortly after this second failure, William the Second made another
and still more startling attempt to suppress Social Democracy.
On the 5th of September 1898, he declared at a banquet in
Oeynhausen, ' . . . a Bill is in preparation and will be submitted to
Parliament by which every one who tries to hinder a German worker
who is willing to work from doing his work, or who incites him to-
strike, will be punished with penal servitude.' Naturally this
announcement, which promised that strikers and strike-agitators
would in future be treated as felons, created an enormous sensation
throughout the country. After a delay of nine months, which
betrayed its evident hesitation, the Government brought out a Bill,
which, however, had been considerably toned down with regard to its

764 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

promised provisions. Still it was draconic enough, for it made
threats against non-strikers, inducing to strike, and picketing,
punishable with imprisonment up to one year. Its piece de r6sis-
tance was the following paragraph :

If, through a strike, the security of the Empire or of one of the single States
has been endangered, or if the danger of loss of human lives or of property has
been brought about, penal servitude up to three years is to be inflicted on the men,
and penal servitude up to five years on the leaders.

This Bill, like that of 1894, possessed an unpleasant elasticity
which could make it an instrument of tyranny in the hands of
judges anxious to please in an exalted quarter, and the 'Penal
Servitude Bill,' which had so rashly and so loudly been announced
urbi et orbi by His Majesty, shared the ignominious fate of the two
Bills before mentioned.

The attempt to pass a Bill of repression directed against Social
Democracy through either the Reichstag or the Prussian Diet will
probably not be so soon renewed by the Emperor, but those who know
William the Second can hardly doubt that His Majesty deeply
resents his repeated failure to crush Social Democracy by legislation,
notwithstanding the repeated ' solemn promises ' which he has
made in public that he would initiate such legislation. Therefore
the question is often raised among the people, ' Will the impetuous
Emperor continue to tamely give way to Social Democracy and to
the Reichstag, or what will he do to enforce his will ? '

The Conservative parties and the National Liberal Party, which
cultivates only that kind of Liberalism which is pleasing to the
Government, have already loudly recommended a solution of that
difficulty. I give the views of some of the most prominent members
of the Conservative Party. Count Mirbach stated at the meeting of
his Party on the 1st of January 1895 that universal suffrage was a
derision of all authority, and recommended the abolition of the secret
ballot. The same gentleman stated in the Prussian Upper House,
on the 28th of March 1895, 'The country would greet with
jubilation a decision of the German Princes to create a new
Reichstag on the basis of the new Election Law.' In the same
place Count Frankenberg stated two days later, ' We hope to obtain a
new Election Law for the German Empire, for with the present
Election Law it is impossible to exist.' Freiherr von Zedlitz,
Freiherr von Stumm, and von Kardorff, uttered similar sentiments.
At the meeting of the Conservative Party on the 8th of March 1897,
Freiherr von Stumm said, ' The right to vote should be taken away
from the Social Democrats, and no Social Democrat should be
permitted to sit in the Diet,' and Count Limburg-Stirum likewise
advocated their exclusion. The official handbook of the Conservative
Party, most Conservative and many Liberal papers, have warmly

1903 SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN GERMANY 765

applauded these views, whereby a coup d'etat by the Government is
cordially invited.

Will the Emperor listen to these sinister suggestions when the
difficulties in German home politics become acute, for their chief
importance lies in the fact that they have largely been made in the
confident assumption that they would please William the Second ?
Will he act rashly on the impulse of the moment, or will he act with
statesmanlike prudence? Or will he allow a chance majority of
Conservatives and National Liberals to alter the Constitution and to
disfranchise democracy? So much is certain, that the Emperor's
personal influence for good or for evil will be enormous when the
Social Democratic question comes up for settlement. Will he use
his vast power with the recklessness of the soldier or with the caution
of the politician ?

The aims of the Social Democrats in Germany, generally
speaking, are similar to those of the workers in all other countries
— they wish to better themselves politically, economically, and
socially.

Politically, German democracy is not free. Though universal
suffrage exists for the Imperial Keichstag, it little helps German
democracy, for the German Parliament has far less power over the
Government than had the English Parliament under Charles the
First. The facts that the Emperor can, at will, dissolve Parliament,
according to Article 12 of the Constitution ; that he nominates and
dismisses officials, according to Article 1 8 ; and that the Cabinet is
only responsible to the Emperor, prove, if any proof is needed, the
helplessness of the German Parliament before the Emperor and his
officials, who are nominated and dismissed, promoted and decorated
by him, and by him alone. Parliament in Germany has no control
whatever over, and hardly any influence upon, the policy of the
Empire and upon its administration. Its sole duty is to vote funds
and laws.

In the single States, German democracy fares still worse. The
election for the Prussian Diet, to give an instance, takes place upon
the following system. The whole body of the electors is divided
into three classes according to the amount of taxes paid, each class
contributing an equal amount and having the same voting power.
The practical working of this curious system may be illustrated by
the case of Berlin. The voters of Berlin belonging to those three
classes were in 1895 distributed in the following way :

Voters of the first class . . . 1,469
„ ., „ second,, . , . 9,372
„ „ „ third „ 289,973

Total of voters in Berlin . 300,814

The figures given prove that the three classes system is the
capitalistic system par excellence, for each of the rich men voting in

766 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

the first class in Berlin possesses two hundred votes, each of the well-
to-do men in the second class has thirty votes, and the combined
first and second classes, or 3^ per cent, of the electorate in the case
of Berlin, form a solid two-thirds majority over the remaining
96 \ per cent, of the electorate. There are, besides, some further
complications in that intricate system which it would lead too
far to enumerate. At any rate, it is clear that that kind of
franchise is worthless to democracy. A similar kind of franchise
prevails in other German States.

Socially also, German democracy has much to complain of.
Except in the large centres, the position of the Grerman working
man is a very humble one. There are two words for employer in
German, which are frequently heard in Germany, ' brodgeber ' and
' brodherr,' which translated into English mean ' breadgiver ' and
' breadmaster.' These two words may be considered illustrative of
the German worker's position towards his employer in the largest
part of the country. Further grievances of German Social Demo-
cracy are the all-pervading militarism, the exceptional and unassail-
able position of the official classes, the prerogatives of the privileged
classes, and the widespread immorality which has undermined and
debased the position of woman in Germany. Nothing can better
illustrate the latter grievance of Social Democracy, which is not
much known abroad, than reference to the daily papers. For
instance, in a number of the Lokalanzeiger under my notice, there
are to be found the following advertisements :

Seventy-four marriage advertisements (some doubtful).

Forty-nine advertisements of lady masseuses (all doubtful).

Nine demands for small loans, usually of 51., by ' modest widows ' and other
single ladies (all doubtful).

Six acquaintances desired by ladies (all doubtful).

Five widows' balls, ' gentlemen invited, admission free ' (all doubtful).

Thirty apartments and rooms ' without restrictions ' by the day (all doubtful).

Forty-seven maternity homes, ' discretion assured ; no report home ' (all
doubtful).

Sixteen babies to be adopted.

Sixteen specialists for contagious disease.

These advertisements, found in one daily journal of a similar standing
to that of the Daily Telegraph, and similar in kind and extent of
circulation, explain better the state of morality in Germany, and the
consequent attitude of the German Social Democratic working man
towards morality, than would a lengthy dissertation illustrated with
voluminous statistics. This state of affairs explains the importance
with which the question of morality and of the position of women is
treated in the political programme of Social Democracy, and redounds
to the credit of the German working man.

In order to become acquainted, not only with the actual wishes
of Social Democracy, but also with the tone in which those wishes

1903 SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN GERMANY 767

are expressed, and with the manner in which they are formulated,
we cannot do better than turn to the Official Handbook for
Social Democratic Voters of 1898. The passages selected are
such as prove in the eyes of German officialdom that Social
Democracy is the enemy of the Country, of Society, of Monarchy, of
the Family, and of the Church. At the same time, they clearly show
the fundamental ideas of that Party, and clearly reveal the spirit by
which it is animated. The Handbook says :

The aim of Social Democracy is not to divide all property, but to combine it
and use it for the development and improvement of mankind, in order to give to
all a life worthy of man. Work shall become a duty for all men able to work.
The word of the Bible, ' He that does not work neither shall he eat,' shall become
a true word.

Marriage, in contradiction to religious teachings, is in innumerable cases a
financial transaction pure and simple. Woman has value in the eyes of men only
when she has a fortune, and the more money she has the higher rises her value.
Therefore marriage has become a business, and thousands meet in the marriage
market, for instance, by advertisements in newspapers, in which a husband or a
wife is sought in the same way in which a house or a pig is offered for sale.
Consequently unhappy marriages have never been more numerous than at the
present time, a state 'of affairs which is in contradiction to the real nature of
marriage. Social Democracy desires that marriages be concluded solely from
mutual love and esteem, which is only possible if man and woman are free and
independent, if each has a free existence and an individual personality, and is
therefore not compelled to buy the other or to be bought. This state of freedom
and equality is only possible in the socialistic society.

Who desires to belong to a Church shall not be hindered, but he shall pay only
for the expenses of his Church together with his co-religionists.

The schools and the whole educational system shall be separated from the
Church and religious societies, because education is a civil matter.

The God of Christians is not a German, French, Russian, or English god, but
a God of all men, an international God. God is the God of love and of peace, and
therefore it borders upon blasphemy that the priests of different Christian nations
invoke this God of love to give victory to their nation in the general slaughter.
It is equally blasphemous if the priest of one nation prays the God of all nations
for a victory over another nation. In striving to found a brotherhood of nations
and the peaceful co-operation of nations in the service of civilisation, Social
Democracy acts in a most Christian spirit, and tries to realise what the Christian
priests of all nations, together with the Christian monarchs, hitherto would not,
or could not, realise. By combining the workers of all nations, Social Democracy
tries to effect a federation of nations in which every State enjoys equal rights,
and in which the peculiarities of the inner character of every nation may peace-
fully develop.

In reading through the lines quoted, or indeed through the
whole book, or the whole Social Democratic literature available, one
cannot help being struck with respect for this huge Party of working
men and its powerful aspirations towards a higher level, notwith-
standing a certain crudity of thought, and a certain amateurishness
of manner which occasionally betrays itself, but which time and
•experience will easily rectify.

Ideas such as those quoted have been instrumental in framing

768 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

the programme of the Party, which is idealistic as well as utilitarian.
The ten demands of the programme are given in abstract :

(1) One vote for every adult man and woman ; a holiday to be
election day ; payment of members.

(2) The Government to be responsible to Parliament ; local self-
government ; referendum.

(3) Introduction of the militia system.

(4) Freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

(5) Equality of man and woman before the law.

(6) Disestablishment of the churches.

(7) Undenominational schools, with compulsory attendance and
gratuitous tuition.

(8) Gratuitousness of legal proceeding.

(9) Gratuitous medical attendance and burial.

(10) Progressive Income Tax and Succession Duty.

Were the Social Democrats as black as they have been painted,
the leaders could not have kept the millions of their followers in
such perfect order. Again, if the Social Democratic politicians were
selfish or mercenary, as has been asserted, they would not die poor
men. Liebknecht once said, and his case is typical for the leaders
of Social Democracy, ' I have never sought my personal advantage.
If I am poor after unprecedented persecutions, I do not account it a
disgrace. I am proud of it, for it is an eloquent testimony to my
political honour.' The Kolnische Zeitung, commenting on these
words, justly observed, ' It would be unjust to deny to Social
Democracy the recognition of the high personal integrity of its
leaders.' While the gravest scandals have discredited more than
one German Party and its leaders, the Social Democratic Party has,
so far, stood immaculate — an eloquent vindication of the moral force
of democracy, which force has been so thoroughly misunderstood in
Germany.

The lack of understanding and of sympathy with Social
Democracy and its aims is not restricted to official circles in
Germany, which are entirely out of touch with democracy. Typical
of these views on Social Democracy is the following pronouncement by
Professor H. Delbriick, the distinguished historian, which appeared
in the Preussische Jahrbucher for December 1895 :

The duty of the Government is net to educate Social Democracy to decent
behaviour, but to suppress it, or, if that should be impossible, at least to repress it,
or, if that be impossible, at least to hinder its further growth. . . . What is
necessary is that the sentiment should be awakened among all classes of the
population that Social Democracy is a poison which can be resisted only by the
strongest and united moral opposition.

German democracy in the shape of the Social Democratic Party
can not only raise the claim of moral force and numerical strength,
of discipline and integrity, but can also be proud of the consummate

political ability of its leaders and of the spirited support which
these leaders have received from all the members of the Party. No
better and no juster testimonial, with regard to these qualities, can
be given than the recent pronouncement of the great German
historian, Professor Mommsen :

It is unfortunately true that at the present time the Social Democracy is the
only great Party which has any claim to political respect. It is not necessary to
refer to talent. Everybody in Germany knows that with brains like those of
Bebel it would be possible to furnish forth a dozen noblemen from east of the
Elbe in a fashion that would make them shine among their peers.

The devotion, the self-sacrificing spirit of the Social Democratic masses,
impresses even those who are far from sharing their aims. Our Liberals might
well take a lesson from the discipline of the Party.

Whilst other German parties have split into factions or have
decayed, owing to the unruliness of their undisciplined members or
to the apathetic support given by the voters, or to the skilful
action of the Government which brought about disintegration, the
Social Democratic Party alone in Germany has, since its creation,
constantly been strong and undivided, notwithstanding the many
and serious difficulties which it has encountered. It is, no doubt,
by far the best-led, the best-managed, and the most homogeneous
party in Germany, and is, indeed, the only Party which, from an
English point of view, can be considered a Party. Similarly, there
is in Germany no journal more ably conducted, for the purpose
which it is meant to serve, than the Social Democratic Party organ
the Vorwdrts.

The Social Democratic Party does not possess in the Reichstag
that numerical strength which one might expect from the numerical
strength of its supporters, for it is greatly under-represented in that
assembly. This great under-representation springs partly from the
fact that, in the frequently occurring second polls, the other parties
have usually combined to oust the Social Democratic candidate as
before related ; partly it is due to the fact that German towns are
still represented by the same number of deputies as they were in
1871, notwithstanding the immense increase in the German town
population since that year. No redistribution has been effected or
seems likely to be effected, because the German Government does
not wish to strengthen the Liberal and Social Democratic parties
which, so far, have had their chief hold on the towns, and Parliament
has no means of enforcing a redistribution. Owing to the rapid
growth of the towns, they are greatly under-represented, whilst the
country is correspondingly over-represented. In 1893 the voters
in the Parliamentary country divisions of the Empire numbered
on an average 22,537, whilst the voters in the town divisions num-
bered on an average 41,098, and that disproportion has been still
further increased since 1893. In that year there were seventy-five

VOL. LIII— No. 315 3 E

770

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

May

Parliamentary country divisions with less than 20,000 voters, whilst
there were twenty-nine town divisions with more than 40,000
voters, and in consequence of this state of affairs it happens that
Schaumburg, with only 8,987 voters, and the district Berlin VI.,
with no less than 142,226 voters, are each represented in the
Imperial Diet by one deputy. Berlin is entitled to eighteen
deputies, yet it is represented in the Reichstag by only six deputies.
How enormous is the disproportion between votes and represen-
tatives in the Reichstag, and how this disproportion works in favour
of the two Conservative parties and of the Conservative Clerical
Party, and to the disadvantage of the Liberal parties and the Social
Democratic Party, may be seen from the following table :

Eesult of the General Election of 1898.

-

Votes

Members in
Imperial Diet

Average Number
of Votes
per Member

Social Democrats . . .
Centre (Roman Catholic Party)
National Liberals .
Conservatives . .
Freisinnige (People's Party)
Free Conservatives .
Anti-Semites .
Nine parties and factions .

2,1 07,] 00
1,455,100
971,300
859,200
558,300
343,600
284,000
1,173,800

57
102
47
52
27
22
10
76

36,966
14,266
20,666
16,523
20,677
15,618
28,400
14,129

Total ....

7,752,900

393

19,727

The consequence of this disproportion of votes to members in the
different parties is that the Social Democrats, who command 27' 18
of the votes, have only 14-11 of the seats in the Reichstag, whilst
the Conservative Party, with only 11-08 of the votes, has 13-23 of
the seats, and the conservatively inclined Centre Party, with 18-77
of the votes, has no less than 25*6 of the seats. Based upon th«
same proportion of votes to members which obtains with the Centre
Party, the representatives of the Social Democratic Party in the
Imperial Diet should have numbered 148 and not fifty-seven.

The political outlook for the Social Democratic Party seems
distinctly promising if not brilliant, provided that the strongest
factor in German politics will allow that Party to continue to exist.
Popular dissatisfaction has greatly increased in Germany during the
last few years, partly on account of the industrial depression, but
chiefly on account of the numerous political mistakes which the
Government has committed. The introduction of the new highly
protective tariff, which was cajoled and conjured through Parliament
in so strange and so surprising a fashion, is especially resented by
the masses in the towns and in the country, for it will enrich both
the big manufacturers and the big landowners at the expense of

1903 SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN GERMANY 771

the industrial workers and of the small peasants. The small peasants,
who count more than 5,000,000 families, may give a surprise to the
German Government at the next election. Formerly the German
peasant was the most reliable supporter of the Government ; his con-
servatism was blind, he read little, and he voted for the Conservative
candidate as he was told by the squire ; of late, however, Social
Democracy has been getting a hold upon the peasant ; he reads
more, and he will in future vote largely for the Social Democratic
candidate.

Whilst Social Democracy has been flourishing and increasing, the
various Liberal parties in Germany have been decaying for many
years. The reason for that phenomenon is that the Liberal Party
has striven to represent only such Liberalism as was approved of by
the Government. Therefore Liberalism shunned the Social Demo-
cratic Party and its leaders, in Parliament and out of it, like poison,
in accordance with the official mot d'ordre. Consequently the
liberally -inclined German workman, small trader, clerk, teacher, &c.,
whom that approved Court Liberalism — which in reality was Con-
servatism in disguise — did not suit, dropped Liberalism and gave his
vote to the Social Democratic candidate. But the German Liberal
Party leaders were blind and obstinate, and thus the disintegration
of their following is proceeding further. Now the well-to-do Liberal
citizens also are beginning to turn away from the Liberal parties in
large numbers, disgusted with the servile attitude which these
parties have adopted, and are joining Social Democracy, hoping for
reforms from that Party, which is the strongest Party in the country,
and which, at least, has the merit of being straightforward. It
appears that an incredibly large number of bankers, merchants, and
professional men of Liberal views will, in the next election, vote for
Social Democracy.

In view of the coming debacle of the old Liberal parties many
Liberals are strongly recommending the co-operation of the Liberal
parties with Social Democracy. Whether such co-operation will
take place in the next Keichstag remains to be seen, but Liberal
co-operation may be expected in the very important second polls.
Therefore it seems possible that the next Keichstag will see a
Social Democratic Party of about one hundred members (perhaps
even more) elected by three million voters.

As far as can be seen, Social Democracy is bound to become, in
course of time, perhaps already at the coming elections, the com-
manding Party in the Eeichstag, and the question suggests itself,
What will be the outcome of such a situation ? The favourite
stratagem of splitting the Social Democratic Party in the same way
in which Bismarck split the Liberal Party, reducing it thereby from
155 in 1874 to 47 in 1881, will probably be found impracticable,
for the simple reason that Von Billow is not Bismarck, and that the

3 K 2

772 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

Social Democrats are not Liberals. Hence the German Government
may soon stand before the alternative of either capitulating to the
Social Democracy, or of allowing a conflict to arise between the
Imperial Government and Parliament. As Social Democracy
intends ' to protect democracy against absolutism and militarism,'
which the Government of Germany represents in an exalted way,
the capitulation of the Government to Social Democracy seems
unlikely. Consequently we may well expect that a serious conflict
between the German Government and Parliament will take place,
which will remind us in its nature of that between Charles the First
and his Parliament, which, similarly to the German Parliament, was
chiefly a money- voting and law-assenting machine, without any real
control over the Government. Therefore, that conflict may, in the
beginning, take the shape of the conflict between Charles the First
and his Parliament, and the funds required by the Government
may be refused. But here the parallel will probably end. What
the nature and eventual result of that conflict will be, nobody
can foretell. It may mean the eventual advent of a Liberal era in
Germany, and the democratisation of that country ; it may mean
a governmental coup d'etat in accordance with the recommendations
of the Conservative parties, involving the abolition of universal
suffrage or its restriction upon the Prussian model ; it may mean
a great European war, provoked in order to divert popular dissatis-
faction from home affairs to foreign questions. At any rate, the
position of home politics in Germany promises to shortly become a
critical one.

Before German statesmen try further experiments in crushing
democracy, more dangerous than those which they have tried before,
they will do well to ponder over the wisdom of the proverb, ' Laissez
faire, laissez passer,' and to consider that the greatness of all Anglo-
Saxon countries rests securely upon the rock of free democracy, and
that in no Anglo-Saxon State has Social Democracy ever flourished.

0. ELTZBACHER.

1903

THE CANALS OF MARS-
ARE THEY REAL?

THE interest excited by the new astronomy during the last quarter
of a century has been very widespread. Its connection with
chemistry, electricity, magnetism, and photography, and its relation
to the prismatic analysis of light by the spectroscope, have afforded
many opportunities for popular explanation.

But the new astronomy has of late become increasingly
recondite. It now demands the utmost efforts of the physicist and
the chemist for the interpretation of the observations effected by
the union of powerful telescopes and spectroscopes; or for the
discovery of the deeper teachings of celestial photographs, like
those of the nebulosities around the recent new star in Perseus.
It opens to our gaze day by day far-reaching vistas of mysterious
truth which call for exploration in every direction. Depths of
meaning, utterly unexpected and apparently unfathomable, are
found in the minutest details seen in spectral lines and recorded by
photography. The new astronomy, owing to the very profundity and
complexity of its recent developments, is consequently becoming
much less popular, although of proportionately increased interest to
all who are well versed in physical science.

The present, therefore, may be a fitting time to turn from the
complicated and almost too engrossing revelations of celestial
spectroscopy and chemistry and photography to what is com-
paratively a very insignificant corner of the wide field of astronomical
science. I propose, in this article, to discuss our knowledge of the
planet Mars with regard to the study of the features of its surface.

Such study, it is true, may in a sense be termed physical, and
may seem to some extent to be embraced in the term astronomical
physics, which is frequently used as a synonym for the new as-
tronomy. I shall, however, endeavour to consider the features and
condition of the planet's surface, apart from the use of such in-
struments and branches of science as have an especial connection with
the new astronomy. I shall regard that surface, as far as possible,

773

774 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

simply as revealed by the lenses of the telescope, and depicted by the
hand of the observer.

And, as the new astronomy has needed the help of physicist,
chemist, and photographer, so I hope to show that the present con-
dition of the observation of Mars calls for the aid of physician and
surgeon ; of the physician in his knowledge of the action of the
brain and the nervous system in observers — of the surgeon, as an
oculist, with reference to the constitution and functions of the
human eye.

We must, however, first inquire, what details have so far been
seen upon the surface of Mars ? From the time of Huyghens, in
1659, lighter and darker markings have been constantly noticed,
and sketched by a long succession of observers. With occasional
exceptions they have proved to be permanent. The larger dark
portions have generally been supposed to be seas. But, more
recently, it has also been suggested that they may be due to
vegetation, or to a mingling of vegetable growth and water, the
latter being sometimes deeper and sometimes shallower, permanent
as in a sea, or more or less transitory as in swamps and marshes. To
certain parts such names as gulfs and bays and inlets have been
assigned.

The brighter portions of the surface have been assumed to be
land. They have been called continents or islands or regions.
Up to the year 1877 a very small number of observers, e.g. Schroeter,
Secchi, Kaiser, and especially the late Mr. Dawes (justly famed for
the remarkable distinctness of his vision), had noticed a very few
narrower dusky markings, which seemed to run along in approxi-
mately straight directions until they joined a sea or a bay, like large
rivers terminating in an estuary. It was, however, thought that the
detection of such delicate details must be very doubtful, and little
attention was paid to them.

But in the especially favourable opposition l of 1877 the
astronomer Schiaparelli, of the Brera Observatory, Milan, observing
under the pure Italian sky, with an excellent 8^-inch Merz refractor,
noticed a remarkable series of dark and almost invariably straight
lines, of uniformly narrow breadth, crossing the brighter portions of
the planet's surface, and more than thirty in number. He announced
his discovery ; but at first its reality appeared to most astronomers
to be almost incredible. Schiaparelli termed these lines ' canali,' or
channels, and very carefully mapped out their positions. By English-

1 An opposition of Mars — i.e. an epoch when it is seen nearly in the opposite
direction to the sun — involves a near approach of the planet to the earth and other
good conditions for its observation. Owing, however, to the ellipticity of its orbit,
our distance from Mars is much less in some oppositions — as, e.g. in 1877, 1892, and
1909— than in others. Those of 1899 and 1901 and of the 29th of March last have not
been favourable in this respect ; but each succeeding one of the next three — viz. in
1906, 1907, and 1909— will be increasingly so.

1903 THE CANALS OF MARS 775

speaking astronomers the well-known name of ' canals ' is now
generally given to them.

When Mars was next seen in opposition in 1879, its greater
distance from the earth diminished its apparent diameter by about one-
fourth, and the area of its disc by fully two-fifths. Nevertheless
Schiaparelli again saw all the canals (with one exception) which he
had recorded in 1877, and about twenty others. Moreover, towards
the close of that same series of observations, on one evening, one
canal appeared to be doubled. In place of a single narrow line,
of which it had previously consisted, another similar line was seen
to run along in addition, and (to use his own words) ' perfectly
parallel to the first.' This canal was the one which he had named
' The Nile.'

The above-mentioned surprising observation was followed, when
Mars was next observed at the time of an opposition, viz. in
December 1881, and in January and February 1882, by the detection
(in spite of the planet's disc being of less than two-fifths of the
area which it had exhibited in 1877) of more than twenty similar
cases of undoubted doubling, seventeen of which were seen between
January 19 and February 19. In ] 884, upon a somewhat smaller disc,
Schiaparelli saw more than fifteen doublings. In 1886 only one
appeared, when the disc was of the same size as in 1884. In 1888
he again saw several canals doubled, since which date many have
continued to appear double from time to time, there being sometimes
fewer and sometimes more.

Let us inquire whether these remarkable observations of the
distinguished Italian astronomer have been confirmed. Until the year
1886, apart from the few instances which are somewhat obscurely
indicated in the earlier drawings of Dawes and others, previously
mentioned, astronomer after astronomer tried in vain to see the
canals. A few are found in a chart of Mars drawn by Burton
and Dreyer in 1879, and in some drawings by Niesten in 1882, and
two in a drawing by Mr. Knobel in 1884. But in these exceptional
cases no doublings were noticed.

It was not until 1886 that Perrotin and Thollon, with the new
29-inch refractor of the Nice Observatory, first perceived one, and
presently sixteen or more canals, some single and some double, which
agreed closely in their positions with those recorded by Schiaparelli.
This may be considered to be the first definite confirmation of the
extraordinary network drawn by the latter in his charts.

Since then many observers have been able to see a continually
increasing number of the canals just as Schiaparelli recorded them ;
and have formed charts of the surface almost exactly correspond-
ing with his, but containing various other canals in addition to the
total of about eighty which he has recorded. For instance, in 1892
Mr. A. Stanley Williams, at Brighton, very skilfully detected about

776 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

twenty, and saw several doubled.2 In 1894 he saw at least twenty-
five, of which fully one-fourth were doubled. In 1894 Antoniadi
at the .Tuvisy Observatory perceived nearly forty ; 3 and in 1896 forty-
six, of which forty-two agreed with Schiaparelli's. Two other
observers, the Rev. T. Phillips at Yeovil, and Captain Molesworth in
Ceylon, each using a large reflecting telescope, saw many more.4

Excellent charts of the canals, quite comparable with those of
Schiaparelli, ^ay be seen in Vols. II, IV, VI, and IX of the Memoirs
of the British Astronomical Association, formed from the combined
drawings of many observers ; and one, more recent and still more full
of detail, in Knowledge of November 1902, p. 252. To such an
extent have Schiaparelli's canal observations been confirmed, that
Miss Clerke, in the fourth edition of her most valuable History of
Astronomy, has lately affirmed that ' further inquiries have fully
substantiated the discovery made at the Brera Observatory. The
canals of Mars are an actually existent and permanent phenomenon.' 5
While Antoniadi has recently said, ' Notwithstanding the natural
scepticism of many scientific men, every opposition brings with it its
own contingent of confirmation of Schiaparelli's discovery of linear
markings, apparently furrowing the surface.' 6

But all other delineations of the planet seem to be surpassed by
those made at Mr. Lowell's observatory, at Flagstaff, Arizona, a
locality selected with much care for the especial purity and clearness
of its air. Mr. Lowell was there assisted by Professor W. H. Picker-
ing and Mr. A. E. Douglass, with whose aid 917 drawings of Mars
were made between the 24th of May 1894 and the 3rd of April
1895. More than twice as many canals as Schiaparelli saw were
found, running across the brighter portions of the surface, nearly all
of them being observed more than once, and some more than a
hundred times. A very few of Schiaparelli's were missed, probably, in
part, because of their somewhat awkward position upon the disc. The
total number recorded was 139. And, in addition, Mr. Douglass made
the surprising discovery of forty-four others, visible it would seem as
lines of greater darkness across the larger dark, or dusky, portions of
the surface.7 The sum total of the observations is given in a chart
of startling complexity, in which, however, only about seven are
drawn doubled.8 A new feature, or one at any rate but little noticed
before, is also shown in this chart, viz. that about fifty-three apparently
small lakes (or it may be oases of vegetation) are shown at points
where two canals intersect, or where a number meet together. Another
map, as elaborate, but not indicating so many doublings or so many

2 Memoirs of British Astronomical Association, vol. ii. p. 157 et seq.
8 Id. vol. iv. p. 117. 4 Id. vol. vi. p. 65.

6 History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century, p. 279.
* Memoirs Brit. Astr. Assoo. vol. ix. p. 68.

7 Mars, by Percival Lowell, p. 145. 8 Id. p. 217..

1903 THE CANALS OF MARS 777

so-called lakes, has been published by Herr Leo Brenner of Manora,
Lussinpicolo, Istria, as the result of his observations in 1896 and
1897.9

We may now consider the above statements somewhat critically.
If it be proposed to admit the actual objective existence upon Mars
of these very numerous formations, many difficulties immediately
arise. All who have seen them have been puzzled by their
number ; the complexity of their interlacing and triangulation ; their
visibility when the disc of the planet is of very small size ; their
straightness ; their immense length, which in some cases reaches to
3,000 or 4,000 miles (nearly equal to a whole diameter of the planet) ;
and their uniform and great breadth, in different instances estimated
at 30, 40, or even 60 miles. This breadth has naturally suggested
that it must at any rate be a mistake to imagine them to be lines of
water, but that it is more likely that they may be lines of vegetation
extending along a canal of water which is itself too narrow to be
seen. It is to be noted that the very narrowest line which it is
considered that a telescope can possibly reveal upon Mars must be
at least 18 miles in width. As to the distance between the two
lines of the doubled canals, the observations indicate that it varies
from about 30, to as much as 360, miles.

The visibility of the canals is observed to be greater sometimes
than at other times. Now, it is probable that the climate of Mars is
very dry, its atmosphere of small density, its clouds rare, and its
land mainly desert. Nevertheless white spots are seen around its
poles, which are generally termed the polar snows. These wax and
wane with the alternation of the summer and the winter of the two
hemispheres, and are most likely not of great thickness, as they
almost, and sometimes altogether, disappear in the height of the
summer. Mr. Lowell has consequently strongly maintained that
the melting of such a polar snow-cap forms a sea of water around its
boundary, from which a supply gradually finds its way into the canal
system, causing vegetation to spring up, as on the earth along the
Egyptian Nile. The circular spots observed at the intersection of
two or more canals might, in that case, be fertile oases in the midst
of surrounding desert.

It is true that Schiaparelli thought that he perceived, during
several consecutive oppositions, that the doubling of canals occurred
chiefly after the spring equinox and a little before that of autumn
upon Mars. If so, it might also be suggested that, at the time
of the most abundant supply of water from a polar cap a second
parallel channel, 30 to 300 miles away from one previously
employed, might be utilised for additional irrigation in certain
cases, and cause a second line of vegetation to spring up. This
might produce the apparent doubling. To this, however, it is

9 Bulletin, Socicte A&tron. de France, 1899, p. 28.

778 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

replied that the doubling is generally completed in the course
of so few days (or even hours) that it is hardly probable that any
vegetation could be developed so rapidly.

Mr. Lowell and some other astronomers have maintained that
the whole system of canals appears to be so elaborately constructed,
and so cleverly planned, that it must have been made, or at any rate
elaborated, by the organised work of intelligent inhabitants, with a
view to the support of life amid the arid deserts of Mars. This idea
has naturally taken such a hold of the popular mind as to suggest
that if we could wave flags as large as Ireland ; or send forth
Marconigrams by means of Hertzian waves of sufficient intensity,
without their involving, like Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, the destruction
of those who manipulated them ; or if we could put forth electrically
illuminated advertisements with letters each larger than London ;
we might begin by suggesting to these intelligent beings that
two and two make four, and then lead them on by degrees to
understand, and possibly to answer, other interesting communications.
But the general consensus of astronomical opinion is nevertheless,
I believe, expressed in the words which Mr. Maunder used in
1895, ' Canals, in the sense of being artificial productions, the mark-
ings on Mars which bear that name certainly are not.' 10

As numerous almost as the writers who have discussed the canals
are the varied hypotheses promulgated for their explanation. Some
have suggested that they may be tracks drawn by meteorites as they
have rushed along the surface ; or by minor planets, which became
close satellites of Mars in the earlier stages of its formation, and
presently in grazing contact ran round and round it. Others have
supposed that they may be fissures, generally following the course of
great circles, and in some parts radiating from central points. These,
it is said, might be caused by the cracking of an unsupported
crust left behind by a contracting interior ; or, on the other hand,
by the resistance of the interior to the contraction of a more
rapidly cooling crust. It has even been suggested that vapours
continuously rising out of such fissures may perform a part in
producing the single, or doubled, appearance of the various canals.
The space at my disposal forbids the mention of other theories, or
the discussion of such as I have named. They are all, I believe,
unsatisfactory. They all alike involve great improbabilities, and
fail to satisfy the necessary conditions.

The general appearance, as well as the exceedingly complicated
interlacing and arrangement of these numerous so-called canals,
is therefore of so puzzling and enigmatical a character that I think
it may well suggest the question : Are they really there ?

Still greater difficulty belongs to the question of their duplica-
tion. Indeed many observers, who appear to be convinced that
" Memoirs Brit. Astr. Assoc. vol. ii. p. 163.

1903 THE CANALS OF MARS 779

the single canal-like lines are real, are very much disposed to doubt
the reality of the doubling, and, at any rate, give up the attempt
to explain it.

Antoniadi, e.g., in 1898 wrote that ' he wished to express his
strong scepticism on any idea of reality attached to the Martian
geminations.' n Again, in 1901, he says, ' Nous devons avouer notre
agnosticisme dans cette mysterieuse question.' 12 Once more he
speaks of ' the illusory character of this gemination.' Miss Clerke
called it, only last year, 'an apparently insoluble! enigma,'13 and then
referred to various conjectures of 'diffraction, oblique reflection
from overlying mist-banks, and refraction acting by a sort
of mirage,' put forward by way of explanation. Among other
equally unsatisfactory suggestions, Mr. Lowell mentions one
which supposes that ' a progressive ripening of vegetation from its
centre to its edges might cause a broad swath of green to become
seemingly two,' i.e. the tint of the central portion would become
lighter in the midst of two darker lines. Even he, for his own part,
however, can go no further than the statement, ' Exactly what takes
place .... I cannot pretend to say.' u In 1898 Schiaparelli wrote,
' The field of plausible suppositions is immense. The great liberty
of possible supposition renders all explanations arbitrary.' 15 While
he had previously said that ' none of the ingenious suppositions
corresponded entirely with the observed facts, either in whole or
in part,' and further remarked that, if asked ' Can you suggest any-
thing better ? he must reply candidly, No ! ' 1G Last year, in his
Manual of Astronomy, Professor Young, a very high authority,
stated that ' the gemination still remains a mystery.' Flam-
marion, in his splendid monograph on Mars, considers ' that the
explanations put forward are certainly premature.'

Once more, therefore, the difficulty of finding any explanation
of this doubled appearance, as well as the conviction of many
competent observers that it is illusory, justifies, I think, the
question previously asked as to the single canals : Are they really
there ?

In asking this question, however, I do not for a moment suggest
that these numerous canals, both single and double, have not been
repeatedly seen. There is no question as to the skill and competency
of the observers, but the question really is : Where are they seen ?
Are they seen on Mars, or in the observer's eye or brain? Nor
would I even deny that they may ultimately be proved to be upon

1 Memoirs Brit. Astr. Assoc. vol. vi. p. 102.

2 Bulletin Societt Astr. de France, 1901, p. 272.

3 History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century, p. 279.

4 Mars, by P. Lowell, p. 196.

5 Publications, Astr. Soo. of the Pacific, 1898, p. 212.
is Astronomy and Astrophysics, 1894, p. 722.

780 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

Mars itself, for there are certainly extant drawings of a remarkably
confirmatory character, which have been simultaneously made by
observers situated far apart, as for instance in England, France, or
Italy. But I maintain, as I began by saying, that the question needs
much further study, such as may be greatly helped by medical
and surgical science.

I will support this last statement by the quotation of a few
remarks from various astronomical publications which have especial
reference to it. For instance, Antoniadi says, ' The linear markings
are visible only by rare glimpses, each glimpse lasting scarcely as
long as a second ' ; 17 and again : ' Wrong focussing plays an important
role in the gemination of the Martian canals.' 18 Mr. Maunder remarks
how the observer ' has to study the planet at the telescope, to patiently
trace out the different details, and then depict them more or less from
memory in his sketch.' 19 This looking alternately through the instru-
ment and then to the sketching paper must clearly involve special
effects both upon eye and brain. Again we find Flammarion quoting
with approval another remark of Mr. Maunder's, ' We cannot assume
that what we are able to discern is really the ultimate structure of
the body which we are examining.' 20 In like manner Mr. A. Stanley
Williams, whose numerous drawings of the canals, single and double,
are some of the most important and beautiful that have been
published, has nevertheless expressed the belief that ' if we could
approach Mars to within a few miles, the appearance presented by
these so-called canals would be so changed that we should not
recognise them at all.21

The following remarks by the same very successful observer are
also very pertinent, in regard to the great difficulty involved in
seeing them : ' My eye invariably requires at least two months'
continuous observation of a planet before it acquires its full
sensitiveness to the most delicate details.' ' When the eye is not
in perfect training, nearly all the canals have the aspect of broad
diffuse streaks.' 22

Schiaparelli has made mention, from his own experience, of the
' variation of its focus owing to fatigue of the eye.' Antoniadi, in a
valuable memoir published in March 1898, has referred to a remark
of the great physicist Helmholtz, the well-known inventor of the
ophthalmoscope, that ' the eye is far from being a perfect organ.' 23
And by way of example he quotes Dr. Lloyd Andriegen as having
shown ' in his microscopical studies that, when very small objects were
examined by him with high powers, near to the limit of visibility,

17 Journal of Brit. Astr. Assoc. vol. xii. p. 113.

18 Memoirs, B.A.A. vol. vi. p. 86.

19 Knowledge, vol. xviii. p. 57. M Id. vol. xviii. p. 74.

21 The Observatory, vol. xxii. p. 228. M Id. vol. xxii. pp. 226, 227.

23 Bulletin, Societe Astr. de France, 1898, p. 175.

1903 THE CANALS OF MARS 781

the images became doubled after a certain time. The eye could not
maintain its mechanism of accommodation in unchanged and con-
tinuous action, but underwent an oscillatory or intermittent effect.'

The Abbe Moreux mentions in the same volume a remark by
Giraud-Teulon as to the formation by the crystalline lens of the eye,
when the retina is not exactly in focus, of a series of points sur-
rounding a more or less dark disc, instead of a simple circular disc
such as an ordinary lens, out of focus, would form ; ' the points being
equal in number to the sectors of the crystalline.' 21 An explanation
of apparent duplication can be hence deduced.

We find others referring to the optical illusion of a doubling
caused by the passing of ' air-waves,' or by 'a temporary alteration of
the focus of the eye '; while several astronomers of high repute consider,
that the effect of contrast often causes the eye to see as a single-
line canal what is really the outer boundary of a large and slightly
shaded space. We may also notice that it has been of late supposed
that canals are seen on Mercury and Yenus, and on two of the
satellites of Jupiter, especially at the Flagstaff Observatory ; where
those upon Venus have appeared astonishingly clear in spite of its
dense cloud canopy. It would therefore once more seem that
those who are best able to see the canals on Mars may to some
extent be subject to what has been termed the ' canaliform illusion.' 25

General Tennant, F.R.S., an observer of unquestionable skill,
some years ago spoke of the duplication of an image in the
telescope as familiar to him in his observations, ' and a common
result of the fatigue of the eye.' 26

Mr. Edwin Holmes, a well-known astronomer, has remarked on
the effects of slight undetected astigmatism in an observer's eye, and
on the way in which lines looked at through a somewhat tilted
spectacle-lens become doubled.27

Various astronomers have also tested the effect of looking at dark
lines on a brighter background when at such a distance as to be out
of focus, and especially if seen by a short-sighted person. Under
such circumstances they not only become broadened and fainter, but
very often doubled.

A surgeon, with whom I recently tried this experiment, when
looking at a single dark line, on going to a certain distance from it,
suddenly exclaimed, ' It looks like a tuning-fork.' Two lines crossing
each other at right angles, when seen at a distance such that they
appear to be indistinct, but not doubled, also form at their intersection
a spot which resembles one of Mr. Lowell's oases.

Again, in 1892, at the Arequipa Observatory, in Peru, Professor

21 Bulletin, Societc Astr. de France, 1898, p. 316.

25 Knowledge, April 1902, p. 82.

28 The Observatory, vol. xviii. p. 410.

17 Journal Brit. Astr. Assoc. vol. x. p. 300.

782 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

W. H. Pickering carefully tested the appearance of fine parallel
lines drawn on white discs and seen from a suitable distance through
a telescope. In the original memoir many very interesting details
are given ; e.g. that when the atmospheric conditions were best for
seeing, ' fine lines were the easiest to separate, but somewhat coarser
lines were easier when the seeing was poor.' It was also found that
there was a certain limit of closeness in the lines that could be
separated, depending upon the aperture of the telescope. This corre-
sponds to the well-known fact that a telescope with lenses of a given
diameter cannot separate the discs of double stars which are within a
certain proximity. It proved, in fact, that the angular distance
apart of the fine lines needed, in general, to be twice as great as
in the case of the components of a double star.

And the following very remarkable fact was noticed : viz. that,
in 1882, the apparent distance apart of the pairs of lines forming
the doubled canals seen by Schiaparelli was in general about the
very least that the power of the telescope, 8^ inches in diameter,
then used by him, could possibly distinguish. When, however, in
1886, he used a telescope of 19 inches aperture, the lenses of
which would suffice to reveal a much finer separation, the same
canals appeared to him to be in most cases just that smaller distance
apart. If, therefore, the amounts of separation seen by him were
real, ' it is certainly singular,' as Professor Pickering remarks, ' that
when the aperture of his telescope was doubled, the separation
of the canals all over the planet happened to be reduced one-half ; '
and ' that the separation of the canals ' in each case ' should happen
to coincide so exactly with the separating power of the telescope
that he used.' Professor Pickering concludes by saying that :

If the duplication of the canals were merely subjective and dependent upon
some personal peculiarity, there is no reason why it should not be seen in com-
paratively small telescopes quite as well as in larger ones. On the other hand,
if the duplication is real, it should, under equally good atmospheric conditions, be
very much better seen in a large instrument than in a small one. Heretofore,
however, quite as many duplications have been detected with telescopes of six to
ten inches in diameter as have been found with much larger instruments. These
facts, taken in connection with* the experiments above described, lead me to the
belief that the capacity for seeing the duplication distinctly is a personal one,
which some observers possess and others do not. The true appearance of the
canals is, according to my belief, owing to the properties of light itself, always that
of single hazy bands, the supposed duplication arising only when the bands
become unusually narrow and distinct.23

Mr. B. W. Lane, in an important 'and interesting article published
in Knowledge last November, narrates experiments made by putting-
white discs of ' about three and a half inches diameter, in not too
good a light,' at such a distance from an observer that details could

88 Annals of Harvard College Observatory, vol. xxxii. part ii. pp. 150, 151.

1903 TEE CANALS OF MARS 783

not be very distinctly seen. On these discs were rough sketches
of the large dark patch on Mars often termed the Hour-Glass Sea,
as well as of certain other parts of its surface, and of some of their
surroundings. Boys who knew nothing about the canals, and others
(e.g. a lady who was only told to look for spots and shading), drew what
they could see, after somewhat prolonged and steadfast gazing.

As a result, in addition to the dark portions really there, lines were
inserted in the drawings (some of which are reproduced in the article)
corresponding in many cases most remarkably with the canals
drawn in those same parts by Schiaparelli. It is stated that one of
the boys, of eleven years of age, when the original sketch was shown
to him, could hardly believe that the lines had never been there, ' so
certain was he that they were actual realities.' Mr. Lane found that
he himself saw similar lines after about two minutes gazing. Also,
if the experiment were repeated on successive days, that they be-
came less misty in appearance, increasingly distinct, and sometimes
doubled. They were best seen on rough drawing paper. In
some cases a radiation of lines from a central patch was also seen
as on Mars.29

At the close of the article the following statement is added
by Mr. Maunder :

Acting on the suggestion of Mr. Lane's letter, and by the kind co-operation of
Mr. J. E. Evans, head-master of the Royal Hospital School, Greenwich, I have
quite recently subjected a number of drawings of Mars — free from canals — to
boys in that school, for them to copy. The result was striking. Four out of
five drew no canals, but the remaining fifth supplied them. And it was clear
that this was directly a question of their distance from the drawing. Boys near
the drawing saw too well and distinctly to imagine spurious lines. Boys at a
great distance could only perceive the leading features of the drawing. But
those at mean distance, by whom the minor details were imperfectly perceived, in
many cases rendered these by straight narrow ' canals.'

I have myself tried this experiment, and have found a distinct
tendency in the eye to see a straight line running to or from any
part of a large dark patch that was so shaded as to be slightly
darker than the part adjacent to it, or even when a slight want of
flatness in any portion of the paper caused a difference in the
amount of its illumination.

Further striking and confirmatory details connected with such
experiments might be quoted, and reference might well be made to
various peculiarities observed in the canal system, such as the re-
markable parallelism of successive canals running in series over very
extensive portions of the planet's surface. Many other points also
deserve attention ; as, for instance, the especial directions of those
canals to which the phenomenon of doubling seems at certain times
to be limited. But what has been stated may suffice to show not only
the difficulty of seeing these canals at all, the limited number of
29 Knowledge, Nov. 1902, pp. 250, 251. (See also Dec. 1902, p. 276.)

784 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

observers who have seen them well, and their very puzzling appear-
ance, both when seen as single lines and still more when doubled ;
but also the importance of the statements made by so many capable
observers as to the results of eye-strain, atmospheric waves and
tremors, oscillatory and involuntary changes of focus in the eye,
the action of the crystalline lens, and other intra-ocular effects, doubt-
less combined with such brain processes as hope and the nervous
desire to see, imagination and the formation of preconceived
images. To which must be added the important evidence of the
experiments of Professor W. H. Pickering, Mr. Lane, Mr. Maunder,
and others.

What, then, is the conclusion to be drawn ? It is, I think, probable,
that the so-called canals (with the exception perhaps of a few of
the darkest and most prominent seen with low telescopic power)
may not really exist upon Mars ; and also that the apparent
doubling, seen in many of them, may be still more delusive. I
think that what is seen may for the most part be an appearance
produced by the observer's eye, when affected by the strain of
long and earnest gazing through the telescope. I consider that
this conclusion is supported by the experiments quoted, and by
the physiology of accommodation, astigmatism, and diplopia in the
human eye. And I believe that there is also a subtle influence which
is often conjointly effective upon the brain and nerves of an observer.

When much has been seen, more is wished for, and then more is
seen. Those who once begin to see canals generally go on to see
an increasing number ; and others may presently see what they have
recorded. Even Antoniadi wrote in 1898 that ' had it not been for
Professor Schiaparelli's wonderful discoveries, and the foreknowledge
that the canals are there, he would have missed at least three-fourths
of those seen now.' 30 Many of the drawings of portions of the
surface by Schiaparelli, which have been very often reproduced,
easily impress themselves on the memory. They may therefore be
the more likely to form imaginary cerebral images. It is certain
that individual observers have occasionally drawn some features
as they had previously been depicted in Schiaparelli's charts,
when many other observers have testified that they could not be seen
at that particular time.

I would that photography could come to our aid and definitely
determine the mythical character, or otherwise, of the canals. A
few photographs of Mars, it is true, have been secured, sufficient to
show the white caps at its poles, and in one case to reveal a large,
although very temporary, extension of such white surface. But the
small amount of light in a sufficiently magnified image of the
planet, as well as its comparatively rapid rotation on its own axis,
and still more the extreme faintness and minute delineation of the
30 Memoirs, Brit. Astr. Assoc. vol. vi. p. 63.

1903 THE CANALS OF MARS 785

canal markings, render it hopeless to appeal for the information
required to any possible photographs.

Astronomers are no doubt very well acquainted with the laws of
optics as applied to the eye. They have made, and may yet make,
many experiments connected with their action. They are accustomed
to allow for individual peculiarities in observation ; as, for instance,
when what is termed personal equation affects the rapidity with
which different observers touch a key to record what they see.
They may therefore very skilfully judge of the effect produced
in observations of Mars by such processes of the eye, or brain, or
nervous system, as I have referred to. Nevertheless I strongly
feel that it would be well, during the next few oppositions
of Mars, if some skilful nerve specialists and oculists could work
in conjunction with some of those practised observers who have
seen the canals. They might both assist in observing, and, at
the same time, carry out careful researches into the optical de-
lusions which brain or eye may experience in connection with
telescopic observation ; especially as regards the seeing of fine lines
near to the limit of distinct vision, and with reference to the
results of the mental and ocular strain thereby involved. I believe
that, in all probability, more progress would thus be made in the
solution of the enigma of the canals than could be attained in any
other way. At any rate, I feel that what is needed, at present, is
not the putting forward of any more hypotheses as to these canals,
however ingenious, but rather the co-operation with the highest
skill of the astronomical observer, of such medical and surgical help
and investigation as I have suggested.

E. LEDGER.

VOL. LIII— No, 315 3 F

786 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

THE MONUMENTS IN ST. PAUL'S
CATHEDRAL

THE public have been for many years sufficiently familiar with the
fact that the Abbey church of Westminster is everywhere terribly
overcrowded with public and private monuments, and that the time
has almost come when it will be impossible either to admit new
interments or to erect further memorials of any sort within its walls.
By a singular piece of good fortune the destroying hand of the
modern ' restorer/ which has done so much mischief elsewhere, has
been warded off from Westminster Abbey ; and no one will now be
so bold as to propose that the needless shiftings and wanton
destruction of the memorials of the dead which have disgraced the
restoration of so many of our parish and cathedral churches should
be permitted at Westminster, even for the laudable purpose of
finding space to continue for the present and future generations that
association of the names of illustrious Englishmen with ' the Abbey r
which has for so long been part of our national traditions.

In the absence of any generally acceptable plan for enlarging
Westminster Abbey the nation must ultimately be forced to face
the question whether there is to be any definite place for national
burials and monuments. But we shall, no doubt, be told that there
is no necessity for insisting upon this conclusion, as it will not
really be reached until the available space in St. Paul's Cathedral,
as well as Westminster Abbey, is absolutely exhausted. It will
perhaps be thought that the third largest church in Christendom
must surely contain ample room for all the great men likely to die
within the next hundred years or more. Yet there could not be a
greater mistake, as I shall have no difficulty in showing : indeed the
main object of the present article is to call attention to certain facts
with regard to St. Paul's which practically very much restrict its use
for monumental sculpture.

It may be desirable to recall, in the first instance, the history of
the existing monuments. Although the building of the present
church, which had been commenced in 1675, was finished in 1710, it
was not until 1796, i.e. after a^lapse of eighty-six years, that the first

1903 MONUMENTS IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 787

monuments were erected, notwithstanding that many burials, notably
that of Sir Christopher Wren, had taken place in the crypt.

The great cathedral may have seemed to the men of the early
eighteenth century a thing so much to their taste and so complete in
all its parts, that they would not tolerate the idea of any addition to it,
in spite of the fact that certain learned people of the period
quarrelled with many of the architectural details which they failed
to find in the copybooks. At all events, the capitular body seems
to have been perfectly well contented with what Lord Orford called
its ' excess of plainness ' ; and when some one pointed out to Dr.
Osbaldeston, Bishop of London, that Wren had himself provided for
the introduction of monuments, he obstinately adhered to his own
opinion that churches were better without them.

The change of sentiment which happened in the last ten years of
the eighteenth century was perhaps largely due to the influence of
the newly founded Eoyal Academy, and certainly, in a wider sense,
to the revived interest in the remains of Grrseco-Roman sculpture
initiated by the writings of Winckelmann. In 1791 the Dean and
Chapter gave their consent to the admission of monuments ' under
proper restrictions,' the decision having been come to upon the
application of a committee for permission to erect a statue to Howard,
the philanthropist. At that time funds were being collected for a
monument to Dr. Johnson, which would in ordinary course have
been erected in Westminster Abbey church, where he was buried ;
but at the instigation of Sir Joshua Reynolds its destination was
changed for St. Paul's. So accomplished an artist as Sir Joshua felt
instinctively the necessity for the symmetrical disposition of
monuments in a classical building, and he must have foreseen how
admirably the statue of his friend Johnson would balance that of
Howard. These statues, both of them the work of that able sculptor,
John Bacon, R.A., and both dated 1795, were placed in the position
they still occupy, under the north-eastern and south-eastern quarter-
domes, practically at the same date, in 1796, four years after Sir
Joshua's death. The editor of the Gentleman's Magazine for
March 1796 presented his subscribers with an engraving of the
Howard statue, and printed a letter from the sculptor giving ' the
ideas that predominated in his mind whilst forming the statues of
the late Mr. Howard and of Dr. Johnson.' At the same time the
editor made the following comment, which was, of course, seriously
meant, although it can nowadays only raise a smile :

The introduction of monuments into the cathedral church of St. Paul's, whilst
it forms a grand epoch to the Professors of the Imitative Art will convey to
posterity a striking example of the liberality of the present Dean and Chapter.

The statue of Sir William Jones, the Oriental scholar, another
work of Bacon's, and dated 1799, was placed under the south-west

3 F 2

788 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

quarter-dome. In this, as in the two previous statues, he evidently
carefully considered the scale it was necessary to adopt in order to
harmonise with the building — a scale ' colossal ' in the technical
sense, i.e. over life-size, and one which might very easily have been
exaggerated with fatal effect. The statue by Flaxman of Sir
Joshua Reynolds was placed under the fourth or north-western
quarter-dome in 1813, and satisfactorily completed what may be
called a desirable enrichment of an important part of the structure
of the church.

Proper regard for scale, coupled with a due sense of the relation
of the sculpture to the surrounding architecture, is the redeeming
feature of the greater number of those monuments in St. Paul's
which were voted so liberally by Parliament, or erected by public
subscription, during the eventful period of the beginning of the nine-
teenth century. It is indeed remarkable, and a subject for much con-
gratulation, that such a quantity of colossal sculpture, admittedly of
no transcendent merit either in conception or execution, should have
been placed in the church with so little injury to its dignity or its
fitness for public worship. The nave, including the nave-arcades (with
the single exception of the graceful and noble monument to the Duke
of Wellington), remains up to the present date absolutely free in all
its lines, and nothing whatever interferes with the visitor's enjoy-
ment of the magnificent western prolongation of the nave, probably
the most stately and beautifully proportioned piece of neo-classical
architecture outside Italy.

It must not, however, be supposed that the original allocation of
the monuments was in all cases so happy as at the present time. In
connection with the changes in the choir in 1858 and 1870, which
have seriously altered the character of Wren's design as a whole —
however unavoidable they may have been in order to adapt the
church for the great congregational services of recent times — it
became necessary to move the important monuments of Lord
Nelson and Lord Cornwallis from the conspicuous places they
occupied under the great arch at the entrance of the present choir.
They were accordingly transferred to analogous, but much less
important, positions under the great southern arch of the dome-area.
Those positions were already occupied by monuments to Captain
Burgess and Captain Faulknor, K.N., which had consequently to be
removed elsewhere. Captain Burgess's monument, one of the most
tasteless in the church, was therefore transferred to the westernmost
bay of the south aisle of the nave. At the same time the opportunity
was cleverly seized of turning out from under the great northern arch
of the dome-area a still more objectionable group of sculpture to the
memory of Captain Westcott, R.N. This latter group was replaced
by the above-mentioned monument of Captain Faulknor (including
a group representing the dying hero falling into the arms of Neptune

1903 MONUMENTS IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 789

and crowned by Victory) which originally stood where Lord Corn-
wallis's monument has found what we may hope is its final resting-
place. If anyone wishes to see Captain Westcott's monument they
will find that it occupies the easternmost bay of the south aisle.
The sculptured group forming the principal part of it represents the
gallant officer in a classical costume (or rather lack of costume),
supported in an unhappy fashion, partly by a coil of rope and partly
by a Victory, whose figure is sloped at such an angle as to suggest
that she is skating ' on the outside edge.' Ludicrous as these figures
unfortunately are, they are not so utterly commonplace as the group
of portentous dimensions in the adjoining central bay which com-
memorates Bishop Middleton, the first Bishop of the Church of
England in India. Perhaps this monument, like some others, such
as Earl Howe's, Sir John Moore's, and Lord Kodney's, has been un-
fairly treated by taking away an iron railing that was round it ; and
if this is so the railing might surely be replaced with advantage in
this instance.

Irreparable damage has been done in Westminster Abbey and in
other ancient churches by the removal of the fine wrought-iron
railings placed round the medieval tombs ; and the similar removals
in St. Paul's, notwithstanding that the railings themselves were
simple rather than dignified, are to be regretted, as the sculptors
must have taken the enclosures into account in preparing theirdesigns.
Grilles or railings are in many cases of great value as contributing
to that sense of reserve and aloofness from casual surroundings
which is generally essential to monumental sculpture. A lamentable
instance of the ill-effects of removing the railings round a public
statue is the case of the bronze figure of James the Second by
Grinling Gibbons, which stood behind the Banqueting Hall at
Whitehall. The figure looked so forlorn and unprotected when the
railings had been taken away, that it excited the compassion of the
Office of Works itself, and it was consequently removed to an
enclosed space next Gwydr House, but it was not allowed to rest
there, and now we hear of some wild project of sending it away to
Hampton Court, perhaps the most inappropriate place that could
possibly have been chosen.

The taking away of the railings around the equestrian statues of
Charles the First at Charing Cross and George the Third in
Cockspur Street was no less unfortunate, but has not yet led to
proposals for removing those works of art from their present sites.

Probably very few of the readers of this Eeview who take
an interest in the Fine Arts have ever given more than a passing
glance at the monuments at St. Paul's ; and many people will be
prepared to accept without question the opinion expressed in an
elaborate History of Art recently issued in Germany that St. Paul's
and Westminster Abbey are more like chambers of horrors than

790 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

museums of sculpture. The modern visitor is too much repelled
by the general conception common to nearly all these monuments to
do anything like justice to them. There is indeed an undeniable
poverty of invention, as well as an absence of fine taste and intimate
knowledge of form, in the majority of these productions. We object
nowadays to the triviality and triteness of such objects as Victory
pointing out the figure of Lord Eodney to the Historic Muse ;
Britannia, attended by Sensibility and the Genius of Great Britain,
crowning the bust of General Dundas ; Britannia calling the attention
of two sailor boys to the statue of Lord Nelson, or, as in another
instance, directing a youthful soldier towards the inscription on the
base of the sarcophagus of General Le Marchant. No sympathetic
emotion is produced by a Victory overcome with grief, reclining
nearly at full length under the sarcophagus of Captain Hardinge, or
by another Victory who makes use of her wreath as a sash for the
purpose of helping to lower Sir John Moore's body into the tomb.

It is hardly necessary to insist upon the fact that the simplest
motives are really the most touching and appropriate for sepulchral
monuments. This is nowhere so finely exemplified as in the Attic
tomb-reliefs of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. ; but they are treated
with an exquisite taste and the most evidently genuine feeling, as
well as with a sense of nobility of form derived from the great art of
the School of Phidias and his immediate successors. The fact is
that it is the artificial character of the sentiment rather than the
bad art of the early nineteenth century that repels the present genera-
tion. In this respect the monuments in St. Paul's do not differ greatly
from monuments of the same date on the Continent of Europe, and
they should be accepted as part of the history of the age to which they
belong. Their inferiority to contemporary work in France and
Italy must be set down to a low level of attainment on the part of
our sculptors at that time, mainly due to a general national want of
sympathy and appreciation for the sculptor's art.

I have already referred to the characteristic feature of the
architecture of St. Paul's, viz. to the simplicity and magnitude of its
component parts, as opposed to the multiplication of small parts in
Gothic architecture. This characteristic is, of course, common to
all buildings of its style, but it is more particularly of importance
in churches of vast dimensions such as St. Paul's and the Eoman
basilica of St. Peter. The magnitude of component parts, coupled
with symmetrical disposition of those parts, necessarily imposes a
certain scale upon everything of a permanent character added to the
building.

The due attention to scale which marked the first statues
erected in St. Paul's in 1796, and also the large groups of the naval
and military monuments of the earlier part of the nineteenth century,
has been lamentably wanting in some of the monuments added during

1903 MONUMENTS IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 791

the last few years. Take, for example, the monument of General
Gordon, which occupies the central bay of the north aisle of the
nave. The sarcophagus, with its recumbent figure no larger than
life-size, seems lost in its present position, almost on a level with the
floor, and suggests rather a bier temporarily placed in a mortuary
than a stately monument to a national hero. The same neglect of
the requirements of scale applies also to the monument of Lord
Leighton, which looked a refined piece of work when seen in plaster
in the comparatively small sculpture gallery of the Koyal Academy,
but appears almost insignificant in St. Paul's. Moreover, it suffers
from close proximity to the Wellington monument, which has a
sarcophagus of somewhat similar but bolder outline. The Leighton
cenotaph is also injured by the poor quality of its pseudo-cipollino
marble.

It is impossible to write on the subject of the national monu-
ments at the present time without touching upon the question of
the completion of the Wellington monument, which has recently
attracted a good deal of attention, but not all from the point of view
adopted in this paper. If some cynical or far-sighted person in or
about the year 1852 had foretold that more than fifty years after
the death of the great Duke of Wellington the monument ordered
by Parliament to be erected to his memory in St. Paul's Cathedral
would still be in an unfinished state, the prediction would certainly
have been looked upon as an insult to the nation and to the national
hero. And yet that is the real position of affairs in the year of
.grace 1903, a position which would be at least intelligible if the
design of the monument were unworthy of its subject or unsuited to
the building in which it stands. But so far is this from being the
case that it is admitted :by all competent persons that the work is,
beyond challenge, the finest piece of monumental sculpture ever
conceived by an Englishman and one of the masterpieces of the world.

Everyone interested in the subject knows that .the monument
was expressly designed by Alfred Stevens, in accordance with the
terms of the competition, to go under one of the arches of the nave
of the cathedral. Partly owing to financial difficulties in which
Stevens had involved himself by undertaking to do the work for
an absurdly inadequate sum of money, and partly because of the
ignorance and prejudice of Mr. Ayrton and Dean Milman, one of its
main features, the equestrian statue of the Duke, was suppressed ;
and thus truncated, it was thrust away in what is known as the
Consistory Chapel.1 A petition to Government for its removal to

1 It is with no desire to say anything disrespectful of so great a scholar and
excellent a man as Dean Milman, but as a useful reminder of the false conclusions
that eminent men may arrive at in regard to subjects outside their sphere, that I
reprint the following extracts from a letter of the Dean addressed to the Office of
Works on the 17th of January 1867.

' You are so kind as to await, so Penrose informs me, my judgment about the

792 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

the site for which it was originally intended was got up in the year
1883 and received considerable support from members of Parliament,
artists, and others, but the action then initiated proved quite fruit-
less, and, in all human probability, Stevens's work would have
remained hidden away up to the present day, if it had not been for
the generous and untiring efforts of Lord Leighton, one of the most
public-spirited artists this country has produced. He raised and
largely contributed to funds which enabled him to remove the
monument from the Consistory Chapel and re-erect it under the
central arch of the northern arcade of the nave. Unfortunately
Lord Leighton's death prevented his carrying out his further purpose
of completing the monument by adding the equestrian group, the
idea of which — so essential to his design — Stevens had never given
up. Indeed, he continued to work upon the model of this group,
notwithstanding that he had been called upon by the Office of Works
to produce a different design, and although he knew very well there
was no possible room for it in the Consistory Chapel.

In a letter to the Times in July 1895, Lord Leighton wrote as
follows :

The monument has been transferred to its proper position and surroundings r
it now awaits completion and it is in this necessary work that I would ask
the co-operation of such of your readers as are careful of a supreme artist's fame.

The original design of the sculptor, which may be seen at present by the side
of the unfinished monument, shows an equestrian statue of the great Duke
occupying the now vacant pedestal which surmounts the whole and worthily
crowning the magnificent conception.

More than six years passed after Leighton's death ; and, so far
as is known, nothing practical was suggested by anyone till last year
towards carrying out the proposal he had made in his letter to the
Times in July 1895. There have, however, always been some
persons amongst the few who care for sculpture in this country
who have never given up the hope of seeing justice done to Stevens,
and there have always been others who have felt it a national disgrace
that the most important (memorial of the Iron Duke should remain in
an unfinished state. It is not surprising, therefore, that last summer
a small committee of admirers of Stevens and the Duke of Wellington
was formed quite unostentatiously for completing the monument

design for the Wellington monument before you give your final order. I can offer
no objection, provided the Duke does not ride into the Cathedral on the top of his
own monument. . . .

' In truth I think it very probable that the design may be effective when worked
out in rich marbles. . . .

' The recumbent figure of the Duke is fine, though perhaps not very original. At
all events, since you relieved the Cathedral itself from the incumbrance of so large
a structure, and, with great judgment, suggested the chapel which it is to occupy, I
do not look upon the object with the apprehension which I must confess I felt at one
time.' (See Command Paper, entitled ' Correspondence relative to the Wellington
monument St. Paul's Cathedral 1870.')

1903 MONUMENTS IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 793

with the approval of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's ; the Bishop
of Stepney, a member of the Chapter, being appointed chairman of th&
committee. Accordingly, arrangements were made for the purchase
of Stevens's model for the equestrian group, which had been care-
fully preserved by the piety of one of his pupils ; and a young sculptor
of talent, who is said to be an enthusiastic admirer of Stevens's work,
was given a commission to finish the model in order that it may be
placed in position and, if found satisfactory, cast in bronze under his-
supervision. It should be clearly understood that in this, as in all
similar questions of the introduction or modification of monuments
at St. Paul's, no action can be taken in the building itself without
the concurrence of the architect who holds the office of Surveyor to
the Fabric, and is the responsible adviser of the Dean and Chapter
with regard to everything directly or indirectly affecting the archi-
tecture of the church.

The public were assured by the committee's letter in The Times
of the 24th of January that the plaster model by Stevens will be
preserved untouched for comparison and verification, and that Mr..
Tweed's model — cast from it and worked upon no further than is
absolutely necessary — will be tried in position before it is handed
over to the bronze-founder. On the faith of an imperfect illustration
which appeared in Black and White on the 10th of January Stevens's
model has been recently described as ' in a most incomplete and
fragmentary state,' and Lord Leighton in his letter of July 1895,.
from which I have quoted, refers to it as ' rough and unfinished.'
On the other hand, we are assured by Mr. Gamble (letter in the
Times of the 12th of February), a pupil of Stevens's, that when the
master died the model was standing in his studio all but ready for
the foundry. Mr. Gramble, evidently moved at the prospect of
Stevens's work being improved upon, exclaims, ' No, no ! Charge
Mr. Tweed with the rectifying of the horse's tail, which was the only
part left in clay unfinished.'

The artistic world has, however, been quite recently placed in a
position to form its own conclusions on the question how far Stevens
had carried his work on the horse and its rider ; the March number
of the Architectural Review having published an article which gives
a good description, with illustrations of the existing models and
drawings of the equestrian group. Two photographic reproductions
from the side and two from the front view of the cast upon which
Mr. Tweed is at work are given, as well as an illustration of the
small sketch model in the Victoria and Albert Museum at South
Kensington. These are sufficient to show not only how fine a master-
piece we have been deprived of for nearly thirty years, but also how
little remains to be done in order to finish the plaster cast sufficiently
to admit of its being put up for trial in the place to be finally
occupied by the bronze casting. In looking at the photographs

794 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

proper allowance must be made for the misleading point of view
from which they have necessarily been taken. The limbs of the
horse, owing to their nearness to the camera, appear too thick, and
•other parts look out of drawing. It is also necessary to bear in mind
the elevated position which the finished work will occupy. The
only portions of the horse actually missing are one of the hoofs
and a considerable part of the tail. The last-mentioned part was
treated in an extremely original way, being swished round on the
animal's flank, but there will be little difficulty in reproducing this
feature, as it is fully represented in the small model at South
Kensington. The Duke's head, which was removed from Stevens's
cast before it was consigned to the crypt of St. Paul's, many years
ago, has been most carefully preserved, and is one of the finest things
of its kind in modern sculpture.

We must reluctantly admit that there is no possibility of our
being able to obtain such a perfectly finished work of art as Stevens
would have given us if he had been able to put the finishing touches
to the model ; but surely what is wanted is that we shall have as
much of Stevens as possible, and as little as possible of Mr. Tweed
or any other man, academician or non-academician. If we have high
finish we shall not have Stevens's work, but somebody else's. Surely
Mr. Tweed, working under a committee which has assured us as to its
intentions, can be trusted to do no more than is absolutely necessary.
High finish is not essential for a work to be placed at the level at
which the equestrian group must stand, but character and the charac-
ter of Stevens's own handiwork is essential. No one would dream of
' carrying further ' the unfinished figures of Michel Angelo on the
tombs of the Medici in Florence.

We do not think it worth while to discuss the not very material
question whether the completion of the Wellington monument should
be undertaken by the Government or should be carried out under the
responsibility of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's by a committee
approved by them. The main point which concerns the public is
that the work should be done quickly, and that nothing more should
be done than is absolutely requisite in order to show Stevens's
own handiwork on the equestrian group to the best advantage.
It will rather be consonant with the object of the present paper
to point out how perfectly the whole monument, when com-
pleted, will comply with the all-important condition that such a
work must be designed with due relation to its architectual surround-
ings. The main problem which Stevens had before him in preparing
his scheme was the designing of a structure so light and graceful
in form that it would appear to fill satisfactorily the space under
one of the nave arches without in any way seeming to block it up,
or interrupt the sequence of the massive arcades which form the
principal architectural feature of the nave. But in its present

1903 MONUMENTS IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 795

truncated condition the monument only fills the space between the
piers, and the arch above is left entirely empty. This fact alone
imperatively calls for the erection of the equestrian group and its
pedestal, and should entirely dispose of the theoretical objection
which some persons besides Dean Milman have felt to an equestrian
statue placed over a recumbent effigy of the dead. The most famous
precedent for such an arrangement is, of course, the fourteenth-century
monument to Can Grande della Scala over the door of S. Maria Antica
in Verona, but there are very many others in Italy, not outside but
inside important churches, and we need go no further than the
sacrarium of Westminster Abbey to find two instances of the same
idea. Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and Edmund Crouchback,
Earl of Lancaster, are each represented ' on their barded horses ' in
the trefoil which fills up the pediment above their tombs. The
Earl of Lancaster has his hands folded in prayer, but the Earl of
Pembroke is riding gaily along in full armour with a surcoat over it,
which was originally brilliantly coloured. These figures are, it is
true, in relief and not in the round ; but as a scheme for a monu-
ment the idea is the same as Can Grande's ; and surely no more
appropriate scheme could be found for the memorial over the grave
of a Christian knight than to set forth in sharp contrast the fulness
of life and the solemnity of death. The motive is commoner in
Eenaissance than in Gothic art, although the ' lively effigy ' does not
very often take the form of a man on horseback. It has been
objected that the Greeks of the fifth or fourth century B.C. would not
have dealt with the problem in this way, and that is true enough.
They would, as in the Dexileos monument in Athens, have shown the
man in full vigour of life trampling over his enemies ; but they
would have suppressed altogether the recumbent effigy of the dead
hero which appeals most closely to modern sentiment.

The failures in the matter of scale in the case of the Leighton
and Gordon monuments should impose great caution upon those
responsible for admitting and placing further monuments in
St. Paul's. They 'should be called upon to emphasise very distinctly
the necessity for observing the rules which governed the scale and
placing of the earlier monuments. They cannot insist that only fine
works of art should be admitted ; but they can and are bound to
insist that the church committed to their charge shall not be
deliberately spoilt by crowding it with sculptured groups or wall
slabs for which there is really no room. It is to be observed, that,
unlike the interior of so many churches in Italy, where we find vast
wall spaces urgently calling for paintings and monuments to cover
them, the interior wall surfaces of St. Paul's are fully occupied by
pilasters, panels, and windows, with full architectural details and rich
floral decoration in wrought stone. Unless, therefore, the architectural
•design is cut into or blocked out, there is hardly any available space

796 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

for monuments of any size, and as regards the main architectural5
lines of the building the vital importance of keeping them perfectly
free as in the nave cannot be too strongly insisted on.

If anyone wishes to satisfy himself how small is the room now
left it will only be necessary for him to refer to a ground plan of
St. Paul's giving the position of the existing monuments. Such a
plan will be found in the useful handbook of the Reverend Lewis
Gilbertson, sold in the church for sixpence. It will there be seen
that nearly all the possible sites for monuments of a size necessitated
by the scale of the building are already occupied. Many persons
feared, not without some show of reason, that the filling of one of the
arches of the nave by the Wellington monument would seriously
injure the architecture. This fear has proved groundless owing to-
the elegance and refinement of the structure, standing as it does in
marked contrast with the great solid piers on either side of it. But
a repetition of the experiment under another arch of the nave would
be perilous in the extreme, even if we had another Alfred Stevens
with us. It seems also right, apart from architectural considerations,
that the monument of Arthur Duke of Wellington should stand1
alone.

The exercise of very great vigilance in using the extremely
limited space in St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey may put off for
some years the question whether there are to be any more national
monuments except in the open air and whether there are to be any
more burials of distinguished persons apart from the common burial
places in cemeteries. How the question will be ultimately solved
it is impossible to foresee.

There is a most serious objection to the burying of dead bodies
within buildings heated and in constant use by large numbers of
persons, as our principal churches are nowadays. Possibly some
' (rod's acre ' under the free canopy of heaven on one of the hills near
London might be reserved as a place for the interment of the
remains of those whom the State may desire to honour. The
sculptured memorials, especially if they are to be of marble, might
find a place in a cloister surrounding the consecrated ground, to
which naturally a church or chapel and a residence for custodians
would be attached. So wide a departure from national tradition as
is here indicated would not be seriously thought of unless it is
absolutely clear that it is impossible for us to continue in the
ancient ways ; but, if a precedent is required for the form of burial
ground suggested, there is a noble one, very well known, in the
lovely Campo Santo at Pisa erected in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries round the fifty-three shiploads of earth which Archbishop
Ubaldo de' Lanfranchi brought home from Mount Calvary.

ALFRED HIGGINS.

1903

THE DETERIORATION IN THE
NATIONAL PHYSIQUE

* IT is no use having an Empire without an Imperial race.' For
some time past the physical condition of the nation has been a
matter attracting the grave attention of thoughtful men. From
various quarters we have heard that there are many signs that a
serious deterioration in the national physique has been going on for
some years. Among those who have called attention to this state of
things are Earl Grey, the Earl of Meath, Mr. C. T. Horsfall,1
Dr. Cantlie,2 Mr. George Quick, E.N., Colonel Douglas, V.C., M.D.,3
Colonel F. Welch, M.S., Major-General Sir F. Maurice, and Hon.
Thomas Cochrane. Last year the subject engaged the attention of
the Government, and a Koyal Commission was appointed to inquire
into the physical condition of the children in State-aided schools in
Scotland.

Up to the present, however, no attempt has been made, so far as
the writer is aware, to show not only that the physical condition
of the people is bad, but that it is and has been for some time
past deteriorating. It will be the object of the present paper to
put before the public certain facts which leave little doubt as to that
deterioration, and to urge a remedy which may be summed up in the
words, National Training.

It may be stated at the outset that the economic conditions of
industrial life now-a-days are such as naturally to affect injuriously
the physical development of those engaged in it. True, sanitary
science and hygiene have made prodigious strides, and epidemics
which formerly carried off thousands, now only count their victims
by the score. The result has been a great reduction in the death-
rate, which is often quoted by superficial observers as a sign of
improvement in national health and vigour. But, as will appear in
the course of this article, the causes which are undermining the

1 Physical Training : C. T. Horsfall.

2 'The Health of the People': James Cantlie, M.B., F.R.C.S., D.P.H. Article in
Ilie Practitioner, March 1902.

3 Tlie Recruit from the Depot Medical Officer's Point of View.

797

798 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

physique of the nation quite outweigh the results achieved by the
progress of medical science.

The main cause injuriously affecting the physique of the nation
is one which is probably unavoidable. It consists in the growing
absorption of the population into big towns. At the present moment
more than 77 per cent, of the population in England is urban, while
the proportion in Germany is 36 per cent, and in France 25 per
cent. This means that hundreds of thousands of men, women, and
children now live under very unhealthy conditions. While their
forefathers lived, for the most part, in the country, where light, air,
exercise, and contact with the woods and fields of English pastoral life
had a healthy and invigorating effect on body and mind alike, the
vast majority of the people now live in large towns, where light, air,
space, and all that goes to make a ' healthy and happy human being '
are greatly lacking. On the other hand, the healthy amusements of
the village green are largely replaced by the unnatural and, in part,
vicious pleasures afforded to the tired worker in our big cities.

There can be no doubt that, unless we adopt some system which
shall provide for the physical training of the whole nation, as all
Continental nations do, we are destined before long to lose, if not
our national, at least our commercial, supremacy among the nations
of the world.

Unfortunately there are no general anthropometrical statistics
available in England as there are in all other European countries,
where the adoption of universal military service has obliged the
authorities to draw up very complete tables with regard to the
physique of the recruits who are called upon for service. The only
approach to such a general survey is given in the Reports of the
Inspector-General of Recruiting, in the Army Medical Reports, and
in the General Annual Returns for the Army. These Reports, taken
as a whole, show that for many years past the physique of the men
enlisted is more and more unsatisfactory — that the recruits accepted
for service are smaller, lighter, and narrower-chested.4

The standard of height was 5 feet 6 inches in 1845. The pro-
portion of men under that minimum was :

In 1845 105 per 1,000

1887 528 „

1900 565 „

In 1872 the standard was lowered to 5 feet 5 inches, in 1883
to 5 feet 3 inches, in 1897 to 5 feet 2 inches, and in 1901 permis-
sion was given to enlist men as low as 5 feet in height, the lowest on
record in the history of the British army.

4 Incredible as it may appear, the Annual General Eeturn for the Army has not
yet been issued for 1899. My facts are therefore necessarily restricted to 1898 and
preceding years, except -where they are taken from the Army Medical Report, which-
has been published for 1900.

1903 DETERIORATION IN NATIONAL PHYSIQUE 799

The proportion of men under 5 feet 5 inches serving in the
army has risen as follows :

1889 . . 106 per 1,000

1890 115

1891 . . 117 per 1,000-
1898 132

The proportion of men serving in the army with a chest
measurement under 33 inches (reduced in 1883 from the former
minimum of 34 inches) was :

1889 ... 17 per 1,000

1890 . 19

1891 . . . 22 per 1,000
1898 . 23

The ratio of chest measurements under 37 inches has increased
thus:

1880 . . 562 per 1,000

1889 . . 641 „

1890 657

1891 . . 668 per 1,000

1898 . . 677

1899 678

One of the highest authorities on military hygiene has expressed
the opinion that ' Grood weight for height is of even more importance
than an ample chest measure.' 5

The proportion of recruits finally approved for service weighing
under 8 st. 8 Ibs. has increased as follows :

1871 . . 159-4 per 1,000

1872 174-4

1898 . . 269 per 1,000

1900 301

It may be added that in 1900 44-2 per 1,000 of those finally
approved weighed under 7 st. 12 Ibs. and 25'5 per 1,000 weighed
under 7 st. 2 Ibs.

The average height and weight of those finally approved in 1890*
and 1900 respectively were :

Average Height. Average Weight.

1890 .... 5 feet 5-8 inches. 9 st. 0-2 Ibs.
1900 . . . . 5 feet 5'4 inches. 8 st. 12-4 Ibs.

But it is important to observe that, in arriving at these averages^
boys under 17 have been excluded; the averages would be very
much lower if they had been included, seeing that the proportion of
boys thus accepted was 35-6 per 1,000 in 1900.

It is interesting to compare the average height and weight of
the recruit of 1900 with those of the average German recruit
examined by Dr. Fetzer in 1877. These were 5 feet 5-75 inches
and 10 st. 3*3 Ibs. Dr. Fetzer gave it as his opinion that no recruit
should be accepted weighing less than 9 st. 6-15 Ibs. This would
have excluded more than half the recruits enlisted in the British
army in 1898; for 61 '4 per cent, of them weighed under 9 st.
4 Ibs. Of course every allowance must be made for the fact that
5 Munson's Military Hygiene.

300

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

May

the German recruit is, on an average, a year and a half older than
the British. On the other hand, as I have pointed out above, our
average is arrived at without taking into account the measurements
of boys under 17, while it includes men over 25 ; whereas no Ger-
man recruit over 23 years of age is accepted.

The following figures offer an interesting and instructive survey
of the health of our army. It should be noted that the figures take
no account of the South African War.

In 1900 the admissions to hospitals represent a ratio of 827 ''7
per 1,000 and there were over 10,000 men constantly non-effec-
tive from sickness, giving a return of 46*08 per 1,000 of the total
strength. There were also 24'93 per 1,000 discharged as invalids.
Taking the aggregate for the ten years from 1890 to 1899, we find
that 116,924 men were constantly non-effective from sickness, giv-
ing a ratio of 59' 15 per 1,000 of the aggregate strength in those
years. When we consider that we pay well over 1001. a year for
each of these men, one cannot but be struck by the loss to the nation
in sheer hard cash.

The health and stamina of our army, as compared with the
German, are indicated in the following figures :

1900

Admissions to Hospital

Constantly Non-effective
through Sickness

Death-rate per 1,000

England .
Germany

827-7
689-0

46-08
10-6

9'05

24

Now it may be admitted at once that the above figures do not in
themselves constitute a direct proof of a deterioration in the national
physique. They only show the deterioration going on among the
class which supplies the majority of recruits. But the state of that
class serves as a barometric indication of the general trend to deteri-
oration in the national health and strength.

This is shown, too, by the fact that recruits of the same age and
class of life are inferior physically to similar recruits of years gone
by. In 1878, Major Leith Adams said that the youths of seventeen
enlisted in 1845 were superior in physique to the majority of the
recruits of eighteen accepted in 1873. In 1899 Lieutenant-Colonel
C. M. Douglas, V.C., M.D., said that within his remembrance ' the
old recruiting sergeants would have laughed at the recruits now
accepted.'

The percentage of deaths due to disease to the total number of
deaths among our troops in South Africa was nearly double that of
German troops in the Franco-Prussian War, as the following figures
show:

Franco-Prussian War .

South African War (up to Sept. 30, 1900)

35-5
62-2

1903 DETERIORATION IN NATIONAL PHYSIQUE 801

Percentage of deaths due to disease on deaths in hospital from
wounds and disease:

Franco-Prussian War 59'3

South African War (up to Sept. 30, 1900) . 87 '0

In comparing these figures we must bear in mind the enormous
advance that has been made in the treatment of the sick and
wounded during the last thirty years.

But there are other indications besides those to be found in the
Annual Keturn of the Army and the Army Medical Reports, which
point to a steady deterioration of the national physique for some
years past. Such indications are (1) The steady and rapid decline
in the birth-rate, from 36'3 per 1,000 in 1876 to 29'4 in 1898. (2)
The increase in the death-rate of infants under one year old from
149 per 1,000 in the period 1871-80 to 163 per 1,000 in 1898.

(3) The increase in deaths among infants owing to ' congenital
defects' from I '85 to 4'08, or 130 per cent, in less than thirty years.

(4) The rapid increase in the proportion of female children born.

(5) The increase of deaths from premature childbirth by 300 per
cent, in the last fifty years.

These figures are the more striking when we consider that
sanitary science, hygiene, and therapeutic medicine have made
enormous strides, thereby lowering the death-rate, chiefly among
old and infirm persons. Earl Grrey has drawn attention to the
deplorable physical condition of the children in Manchester and the
Potteries, and it seems likely that the Eeport of the Eoyal Com-
mission on Physical Condition in Scotch Schools will tell the same
tale. The Hon. Thomas Cochrane, M.P., Under-Secretary for the
Home Department, who sat on this Commission, said that the
Report will furnish the public with ' matter for grave and serious
reflection.'

These facts are grave enough. But additional weight is lent to
them when we find that, while our national physique shows many signs
of deterioration, the physique of Continental nations has improved
and is improving since the adoption of universal military service
gave to the whole manhood of those countries a sound physical
training and discipline of body and mind.

And first let it be observed, that precisely the same tendencies
are to be noted in those countries as prevail with us. There, as
here, life in great cities tends to deterioration, as is shown by the
fact that, for the last five years, the percentage of recruits fit for
service was :

In Berlin . . . . .38 per cent.

In East Prussia (agricultural) . . 80 ,,

In Germany (average) . . .62 ,,
VOL. LIII — No. 315 3 G

802

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

May

In Manchester, out of a little over 11,000 men presenting them-
selves for service in 1899, 8,000 had to be rejected; while out o(
the 3,000 not rejected, only 1,000 could be put into the regular
army, 2,000 being placed in the Militia. The percentage fit for
service in the same city for the three years 1899, 1900, 1901, among
men voluntarily presenting themselves for service and, therefore,
presumably thinking they had some chance of being accepted, was
28 per cent. : whereas the German figures include all young men of
the military age, humpbacks, cripples, and invalids, as well as the
strong and healthy. The tendency of town life to injure physical
development is the same everywhere; and the natural result of
modern industry is the accumulation of the population into cities.

But while the same causes are at work in other countries, the
universal physical training of the whole youth of the country has
affected them so powerfully and beneficially that, so far from
deteriorating, their physique shows every sign of improvement, and
it may be safely said that the improvement is in direct proportion to
the length of time which has elapsed since the introduction of
universal military training.

In all these countries ' the army is the nation,' and therefore
military statistics supply a real index to the state of the national
health ; not, as with us, merely an indication of the health of one
section of the population.

Taking Germany as the country where universal service has been
in force for the longest time, all authorities are agreed that the health
and physical development of the German people have improved
enormously, in spite of the fact that the flower of its youth perished
in the three great wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870-71. The medical
returns for the German army give clear proof of this. Thus the
percentage of rejections for physical unfitness decreased as follows
from 1878-1887 (the standard remaining the same) : —

1878

1879

1880

1881

1882

1883

1884

1885

1886

1887

24-7

26-0

25-3

20-6

19-8

18-8

18-6

17-9

17-6

16-3

In other words, for three recruits unfit for service in 1878, there
were only two in 1887. The Sanitdts-Bericht iiber die deutschen
Heere for 1899-1900 shows a steady tendency to improvement in
the health and physical efficiency of the troops — that is, of the youth
of Germany. Thus the ratio of admissions to hospital has
diminished as follows :

1881-82—1885-86
188G-87— 1890-91
1891-92—1895-96
1896-97 .

899-6 per 1,000

1897-98 .

682-5 per 1,000

908.3 „ 1898-99 .

690-8 „

812-2 „ 1899-00 .

689-0 „

726-9

The ratio of mortality has diminished thus :

1897-98 . 2-2 per 1,000
1898-99 . 2-1
1899-00 2-4

1881-82—1885-86 . 4'1 per 1,000

1885-86—1890-91 . 3-3

1891-92—1895-96 . 2-8 „

1896-97 . . .2-3 „

We have seen that the ratio per 1,000 of those constantly non-
effective through sickness was 10'6 in 1900, against 46*08 per 1,000
for our army, a difference of over 325 per cent.

In 1890 the latest statistics showed that the average height of
the Frenchman of twenty was 5 feet 4f inches, which was £ inch above
the average in 1872 ; and Mr. W. M. Grattie, writing in 1890, says,
' the French as a nation are gradually improving in stature.' 6 In-
deed the improvement in French physique during the last thirty
years has been remarked upon by many observers.

The number of recruits rejected as unfit for service in Austria,
which adopted universal military service in 1868, has diminished as
follows :

1870 . . 141 per 1,000
1886 108

1887 . . 103 per 1,000

1888 102

A similar improvement has taken place in the Italian recruits
called up for service since the adoption of universal military service
by that country in 1876.

So that, in Mr. Grattie's words, ' While the physique of the
British army is deteriorating under influences already considered,
the material from which foreign armies are drawn is on the whole
becoming better and more vigorous ; and this — be it remembered —
has come about in spite of tremendous wars in which every Conti-
nental power of the first rank has sacrificed much of the flower of its
youth.'

In respect of the birth-rate and the proportion of male to
female infants, all these nations (excepting France as regards birth-
rate) show every sign of improvement in national physique.

There is nothing surprising in all this. It is clear that the
nation which gives a sound training in discipline, drill, and physical
development to its whole youth, must in the long run greatly
improve the physique of its people and counteract the unhealthy
tendencies of modern industrial life. On the other hand, a country,
especially if it be the leader in industry, which relies upon the
spasmodic effects of games played by the few and watched by the
many, to retain or improve the health of its people is destined to a
rude awakening some day when it discovers that

111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.

6 ' The Physique of European Armies ' : \V. M. Gattie. Fortnightly Jievien;
April 1890.

3 G 2

804 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

Moreover, it will certainly find itself poor in that best form of
' wealth ' which, according to Euskin, consists in the ' greatest number
of healthy and happy men and women.'

The effects of drill and physical training in improving even the
most unpromising material are shown by the following figures from
the report of the Inspector-General for Kecruiting for 1898 ; they
give the results of the training of those recruits ' specially ' enlisted
below the very low standard of physical measurements which
obtains :

Percentage who had reached
the Standard among those
remeasured in Jan. 1899

Enlisted in 1898 between Jan. 1 and June 30 .73

„ „ July 1 and Sept. 30 . 63

Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 . .43

Enlisted previous to 1895 90

during 1895 87

„ 1896 86

„ 1897 77

The following figures show the average improvement which takes
place in the ordinary recruit during the average course of five or six
months' gymnastic training, which means one hour daily, mostly
spent in free gymnastics :

2 inches round the chest.

1^ inch round the upper arm.

1 inch round the fore arm.

Colonel Douglas tells us that ' as a result of three months' train-
ing, the recruit gains in weight and height, girth of chest and limbs.
The improvement in the physical development is so great that one
often regrets that a similar training cannot be more universally
applied, and that more of the hooligans and youthful yahoos that
infest some of the streets of our cities cannot be trained to habits of
order and discipline and their physical powers developed.'

Drs. Chassagne and Dally, in their work Influence Precise de la
Gymnastique, show that 70 per cent, of the pupils at Joinville
gained, on an average, one inch in chest measurement in the course of
five months' instruction. Dr. Abel in Germany found that there was
an increase of from one to two inches in the chest measurement of
three-fourths of the men examined.

With such facts as I have given before us, it is surely high time
for us to take steps in the direction of giving a sound physical
training to the whole of our youth. And it seems certain that the
only way to reach the whole male population is to adopt a moderate
system of compulsory military and naval training, to be preceded by
cireful physical development during school years.

1903 DETERIORATION IN NATIONAL PHYSIQUE 805

From a national health point of view [says Dr. Candle] compulsory military
service would be a great hygienic gain to the nation. Our public school boys,
that is, the youths of the classes, are given time and opportunity to indulge ill
out-of-door sports, but the children of the masses have no such privileges. After
school life is over, at, say, thirteen, the boy of the poorer classes in town has no
playground open to him ; he has to look forward to close indoor employment, and
his holidays are but an occasional run to the sea-side or the country in Bank
Holidays. Were he, however, compelled to undergo a .... military training,
say from seventeen to nineteen, how much would it mean to him and to the
nation I The direct physical benefit obtainable is calculated to increase the work-
producing power of the nation. The discipline inculcated during these critical
periods of life is potential of great good. The habits of cleanliness taught and
the meaning of hygiene and sanitation insisted upon, elementary though they
would necessarily be, would affect the man's future life, it may be insensibly and
to but a slight degree ; tut a minimum of education in these matters, touching as
it would all classes, means a colossal total towards betterment.

Universal naval and military training would, in fact, arrest the
physical deterioration of our population and enable us to maintain
that vigour and strength without which we cannot hope to maintain
our commercial supremacy among the energetic and virile nations
which are now competing with us in the markets of the world.

But universal training would do much more. It would give our
youth a taste for soldiering, which, coupled with the inevitable
improvement in national physique, would fill the ranks of our
voluntary long-service army with sturdy and efficient men. It
would bring home the duties and responsibilities of citizenship to
hundreds of thousands who are without it. It would solve the ques-
tion of home defence on the only sound basis — namely, that the
defence of the country is, in the words of Mr. Beckett and Major
Seely, ' the affair of its citizens and of them alone ; ' not of one or
more army corps of regulars. It would enable us to cut down our
professional army and its cost to limits more compatible with its
relative position of importance in the scheme of national defence.
At the same time it would set the Navy and Army free to perform
their proper offensive functions in time of war, unhampered by the
consideration that, should an enemy break through, he would find
a population unorganised, untrained, unarmed. Finally, the accep-
tance of the principle of manhood service, a principle which may
be traced as the basis of our system of national defence from the
earliest times, would undoubtedly stimulate organisation for mutual
defence between the mother country and the colonies, and so bring
about that Imperial Federation which is the dream so many of us
wish to see realised. Above all, let us remember the truth em-
phasised by Lord Kosebery at Liverpool : * It is no use having an
Empire without an Imperial race.'

GEORGE F. SHEE.

806 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

WHAT IS THE ADVANTAGE OF FOREIGN

TRADE?

I HAVE been set a-thinking on the above question by the perusal
of Mr. J. A. Hobson's recently published book on Imperialism.
Mr. Hobson's volume is a monument of energetic thought and
research, and it is an illustration of its power that it stimulates
inquiry and discussion. Its main thesis seems to me abundantly
proved. The demonstration is complete that the present popular
pursuit of the extension of our empire as a means of securing
economic gains to our people is a vain and costly delusion. We do
not in truth realise any increase in industry or commerce by such
widening of our borders. It is admitted that no immediate gain is
attained, but it is urged that we are preparing the field for immense
benefits in future. Mr. Hobson exposes the fallacies of these
promises. He shows that the development of our trade with in-
dependent countries has been much greater and more profitable than
anything we have gained by trade with such regions as we have
been bringing under our flag, that this advantageous development
has gone on most actively when we have been least active in
processes of annexation, that our new designs have been of the
character of those commercial transactions where we spend a
sovereign to get a return of ten shillings, and that the policy of
grabbing unoccupied lands so as to make them fields for British
commerce, coupled with the allied policy, as yet only projected, of
bringing all imperial dominions into one Zollverein, has only served
to develop among our neighbours the reciprocal policy of keeping
our trade away from their shores and to retard that loosening of the
fetters of commerce which actual intercourse constantly suggests in
an effective if unconscious fashion. All this Mr. Hobson establishes
by an array of argument and an appeal to the facts of experience,
but he is not content with the position thus built up. In his zeal
for his end, he produces yet other arguments which would indeed
be fatal to all suggestions of Imperialism if they could be accepted as
sound. He sets out to prove that the advantages of our foreign
trade are really extremely insignificant, and that if it disappeared

1903 WHAT ADVANTAGE HAS FOREIGN TRADE? 807

it would in a large measure be replaced by an increase of domestic
trade making up much of the loss.

First, however, let us realise what Mr. Hobson has proved. The
figures have been often quoted in parts but they cannot be too often
repeated. They are all drawn from the Statistical Eeturns which
are above suspicion. It appears then that the course of trade is
almost independent of political manipulation. It flows along currents
of cheapness rather than in sequence to a national flag. The relation
between the value of trade with foreign countries and of trade with
our own colonies has varied within very narrow limits during the last
fifty years. Koughly speaking our exports to foreign countries, ex-
clusive of re-exports, have been just double or very nearly double our
exports to our colonies, and, what is remarkable, the proportion of our
exports going to our colonies has been dropping during the last fifteen
years of exaggerated Imperialism. So again with the exception of one
quinquennium, that of the American Civil War, our imports from our
colonies have never been more than one fourth of our imports from
foreign countries, and during the last fifteen years the proportion has
been again dropping till it is very little more than one fifth.

If now we include the re-exports of commodities other than
British and Irish, the proportion of our trade with our colonies to
that of our trade with foreign countries becomes even less, falling in
fact from three to six to something like three to seven, and the same
decline in relative importance is shown in the recent years of Im-
perialist extension. It is, perhaps, too much to say that Imperialism
has been the cause of the relative decline in trade with our colonies
or that the freer international feeling of former decades caused a
slight increase in colonial intercourse ; it is enough to observe that
the actual movement has been in the contrary direction to that which
Imperialism is supposed to develop.

If the tabulated returns of our total external trade thus lend no
countenance to the policy of Imperialism, an examination of the trade
of our colonies and dependencies is equally unfavourable to this
policy. The proportion of the trade of our possessions with other
countries compared with their trade with the United Kingdom shows
a pretty continuous growth. In other words, the identity of national
flag does not prevent our dependencies from increasing their trade with
other countries more rapidly than with ourselves any more than this
identity serves to make our trade with our dependencies grow more
rapidly than our trade with foreign countries. The last stroke
against the belief that Imperialism is advantageous to trade is found
in an examination of our commercial intercourse with those regions
which the modern burst of Imperialism has added to the dominions
of the Crown. Alike as marts for the interchange of commodities
and as colonies for the settlement of white men, these most recently
acquired countries are singularly unprofitable and present scarcely

808 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

a more favourable show than the acquisitions which the world-policy
of Germany has effected beyond seas.

Mr. Hobson is not content with having thus established his
position. He goes on to fortify it with two other arguments which
seem more than doubtful. They are unnecessary for his purpose,
and they might be neglected by a critic, did not the respect inspired
by the rest of his work produce a certain feeling that these specu-
lations must be cleared away if proved to be unsound. Mr. Hobson
attempts to show that the national gain from foreign trade is
relatively so small that it is scarce worth consideration and he then
affirms that, whatever the advantage derived from it, an equal
advantage could be secured through other channels if it ceased
to exist. He makes out his first statement by taking the estimated
income of the country, which he puts at 1,700,000,000^., and com-
paring it with the profit directly realised on foreign trade, say 5 per
cent, on a total of 765,000,000^. or 38,000,000^. per annum, which
he triumphantly adds is only -^ of the estimated total. Neither
side of this comparison can be accepted, and indeed Mr. Hobson
himself very promptly admits the incompleteness of the estimated
gain dependent upon foreign trade. Instead of 5 per cent, on the
total value of imports and exports, which, even if the figures are
accepted as sound, could represent only the profits of the merchants
engaged in this foreign commerce, he entertains the plea that the
whole value of what we export, which he puts at 233,000,000^.
represents payments in the shape of profits, wages, rents, &c., made
to persons in Great Britain who have produced the goods that are
exported. He proceeds to destroy the force of this admission in
a way to be presently examined ; but taking for the moment the
facts as they are, it seems clear that the 233,000,000^. which has
been distributed among the producers of goods exported should be
compared with the sum distributed in respect of all goods produced
both for home consumption and for exportation, and not with an
aggregate of incomes where the same substance often appears in
different forms. This would be a comparison of like with like, i.e.
of the valuation of the material commodities produced for foreign
customers with a valuation of the commodities produced for con-
sumption at home and abroad, whereas Mr. Hobson compares the
first sum with a total which involves, as may be quickly seen,
a computation over and over again of the same disposable incomes.
All the incomes of all the doctors are practically derived from the
incomes of other persons who have to spend this portion of their
incomes in payment of services in maintenance of health. All the
incomes of educationists apart from what is derived from endow-
ments are drawn in the same way from the incomes of others,
including, be it observed, the doctors just mentioned. The incomes
of lawyers, save so far as they can be deducted as business expenses

1903 WHAT ADVANTAGE HAS FOREIGN TRADE? 809

from the gross profits of the merchants and traders who employ
them, are drawn from incomes already enumerated for taxing
purposes. If we had the means of making the corrections these
observations suggest, we should have to reduce the total of
1,700,000,000^. considerably before we arrived at the proper sum
to be compared with the 233,000,000^. exported. The proper
comparison would be, as I have said, between the total value of
commodities produced and consumed in the United Kingdom with
the total value produced and exported, and I know not if the figures
could be found for making this comparison. At present all that
needs be noted is that Mr. Hobson's method cannot be accepted.
Let me add a sentence to prevent the supposition that I am ob-
jecting to the total of 1,700,000,000^. being presented as the total
of national income. For many purposes, especially that of taxation,
this is an accurate view and summation ; and all that I urge is that
it cannot be adduced in comparison with the total value of our
exports as giving the true proportion between the value of foreign
trade and the value of our trade as a whole, since the two totals are
not of the same material.

Mr. Hobson gets rid of any difficulty in his first argument by
presenting his second, which indeed, if admissible, would threaten
to take away the value of foreign trade altogether. He advances
the proposition that, if foreign trade did not exist, the labour and
the capital that find occupation in the production of commodities
sent abroad would still be operative, though through other channels,
in the production of commodities for which there would be an ever
corresponding demand at home. This is a very comfortable doctrine,
but I must confess to regarding it as an extravagant reaction against
the error of idolising foreign trade. Mr. Hobson says that in the
absence of foreign demand the commodities produced for exportation
(or equivalent commodities) would be consumed at home, since ' what-
ever is produced can be consumed.' The capacity for consumption
is no doubt extensible, but the process of getting rid of commodities
produced can only be sustained by the production of commodities
exchanged for them in satisfaction of the wants of their producers,
and this production of equivalent exchangeable commodities is not
so easily capable of augmentation. We could all of us easily extend
our consumption of the commodities and services of others, but we
cannot so easily satisfy these others by producing and giving them
something they are content to take in exchange. Mr. Hobson
himself in a subordinate phrase expresses the true limitations im-
posed on such production. These are found in restricted natural
resources and the actual condition of the arts of industry ; and,
although a capacity of developing the arts of industry would not
disappear with the destruction of foreign markets, the range of natural
resources could not be extended so as to allow the working of them

810 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

to fill up the gap that has been created. If we were to consider any
defined area, such as that of Great Britain, surrounded with Berkeley's
wall of brass so as to shut out the rest of the world, a certain popu-
lation could be maintained upon it, such as the development of the
arts of industry at any time would enable the working inhabitants to
support by applying those arts to the natural resources of the country.
With the continued development of the arts and with a possible
discovery of new resources the population would be augmented, or the
labour of production diminished and the standard of comfort and of
life raised. Improvements in the economy of exchange might serve
still further to increase the means of support and therefore the
numbers of the population. But at any given moment there would be
what may be described as an instantaneous total, representing the mass
of the population appropriate to that moment. We can imagine another
area with different natural resources, walled in by another exclusive
wall of brass, having its appropriate population living through the
application of their arts to their resources. Break down the two
walls of brass so as to allow of free interchange of commodities
between the two peoples and there will arise, through the principle
of the division of labour, increased facilities in the supplies of the
wants of the two peoples, with a corresponding augmentation of their
numbers until a point had been reached when, regarding the two
areas as joined together, there would be realised an instantaneous mass
of population corresponding to their developed arts and their diversified
resources. It must be noted in passing that in these illustrations
each country is supposed to have been filled up according to the arts
of the time, since, if one were only half occupied and in the other
the limit of population had been reached, the removal of the barriers
separating the two might cause a partial depopulation of the
second by transfer to the first. The essential point is that foreign
trade is but a mode of the economic distribution of labour in the
satisfaction of human wants, and in its normal course augments the
population of the countries engaged in it. If we could compare the
population which Great Britain would sustain walled around by
impassable brass with what it sustains to-day we might get some
measure of the estimate to be put upon our foreign trade. It is no
answer to say that such isolation is impossible. The barriers of
language, of different measures, of habits and customs, and of hostile
tariffs, effective and too effective as they are, are indeed but feeble
attempts at complete isolation. But the extreme case which fancy
suggests is serviceable if it compels us to realise how much the
nations of the world are really dependent upon one another ; and
how of all nations our own, as that which possesses the greatest
foreign commerce, is the most dependent.

I have thought it worth while to examine Mr. Hobson's argument
not only because I would not have the force of his book weakened

1903 WHAT ADVANTAGE HAS FOREIGN TRADE? 811

by this unsound addition, but also because it could easily be used by
those who hanker after protection in support of their propositions. If
an equivalent home trade could with only a transitory dislocation
of usage take the place of foreign trade, why should we not make
ourselves independent, or indeed why should we not, dispensing with
the co-operation of foreigners, call into existence an additional
industrial population at home ? I suppose Mr. Hobson has some
answer to this suggestion, though I do not see what it could be. It
is no invention of mine. Mr. Carnegie, in his discourse at St. Andrews
in the spring when installed as Lord Hector, expatiated on the double
advantages of home trade over foreign trade, as if the one could at
any moment take the place of the other, and he seems never to have
suspected that the destruction of foreign trade, so far from tending in
the end to the augmentation of home trade, would certainly curtail it.
It is almost impossible to read his simple pages without a smile.
He wrote :

Exchange of products benefit both buyer and seller. With British home
commerce, both are Britons ; with foreign commerce one only is a Briton, the
other a foreigner. Hence, home commerce is doubly profitable, and this is not all,
when the article exported, such as machinery or coal for instance, is used for
developing the resources or manufactures of the importing country and enable it
to compete with those of the exporting country, the disadvantage of this foreign
commerce to the seller, except upon the profit of the sale, is obvious.

I know not how this instruction was received by the University
audience to which it was addressed, but the underlying assumption
that commerce with other countries could without difficulty be
displaced at any time by an equal commerce at home would scarcely
be accepted by anyone who seriously considered it. If we attempted
to supply our food wants at home by forbidding imports of bread-
stuffs and meat from abroad, we should doubtless increase the
agricultural production here, but the process involves something like
starvation and reduction of population to the level that could be
sustained under the new conditions. Free trade in corn has in fact
increased the quantity of our industry and the numbers of our
population to a degree which incalculably outweighs the diminution
of agricultural produce and the reduction of agricultural labourers.
Even Mr. Carnegie's second and more taking suggestion, that the
exportation of machinery is a palpable case of self-injury when
the machinery may be employed to produce commodities com-
peting with commodities produced here, will not be found on
examination so self-evident as he assumes. If we send steam
ploughs and threshing machines to the corn-producing valleys of
the Danube, we aid in developing agriculture furnishing supplies
for our own wants in partial substitution for supplies at home, yet we
effect on the balance a considerable gain. So again we have sent
mining machinery all over the world to facilitate the development

812 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

of mines whence we have got tin and copper more easily than we
could get them in England, and the English nation has gained,
though Cornish miners have had to face new conditions of industry in
other lands. In these and all similar cases the activity of the United
Kingdom as a working factor in the economy of the world has been
developed, though the activity of one or another branch of industry
within the United Kingdom has been curtailed or has disappeared.
The whole process which has gone on has been that of finding for our
country its true place in the world's division of labour, and so far the
process has been marked by a continuous growth of our national
industry as a whole and of the population serving it. We have been
able to regard this cosmopolitan movement with satisfaction, and,
though we know it has advanced quickly because it has been un-
fettered, we see from the experience of other countries that the
irrepressible energy of trade would have demonstrated itself in spite
of the fetters that might have been imposed on its activity. It is,
however, true that, though free trade accelerates the industrial growth
of a country, it may be powerless to arrest its decline. Just as one
branch of the industry within a nation may die away whilst the
national industry grows, so in the organisation of world-production
the allotted service of a particular nation may decay whilst the
industry of the world is growing. The conditions of advantage of
which man avails himself in supplying his wants may pass from one
country to another, and the pre-eminence which has been the pride
of generations may come to be the distinction of other lands. The
suggestion has its warnings, but a realisation of the fundamental
cause of the threatened change must convince us that it is some-
thing for which we may prepare ourselves but which we cannot
avert. If a nation has grown in wealth and numbers through its
capacity of supplying with relatively least labour the wants of other
populations, and a new spring of still easier supply arises either
through the exhaustion of resources at home or the discovery of
rich resources abroad, the nation threatened with deposition cannot
by action within its own borders prevent the change nor could it
hope to compel the world whose wants it had supplied to abstain
from accepting the more easily acquired supplies which time and the
world movement brought to the fore. It is the fondest of delusions
to suppose that a nation which has arrived at the situation thus
described can hope to escape from it by imposing obstacles to im-
portations from other countries. Its position has been reached
through freedom of commerce, and restrictions on this freedom, so
far from helping to preserve its superiority, could only accelerate its
decline.

LEONAKD COUKTNEY.

1903

SOME MORE LETTERS OF MRS. CARLYLE

THOMAS CARLYLE was often blamed for his alleged brutality ; but
what is to be said of the cruelty of the fate which has already
entailed upon a proud, contemptuous Scot, genuinely scornful of the
crowd and the chatter of the tea-table, more than twenty octavo
volumes filled with little else but the most private affairs of the
great Prophet of Silence and his sarcastic lady? His house can
hardly be whitewashed, or his bedroom turned out, or his temper
tried ; he cannot go to Germany, or Scotland, or Wales, hardly take
a ride, or even a walk, but it is all described by one or other of the
spouses with a fire, force, and fury like

when some mighty painter dips
His pencil in the hues of earthquake and eclipse.

Had any corresponding misfortune, or the beggarliest fraction of
such, fallen upon one of Carlyle's contemporaries, it is as terrible to
think of the words, biting, insulting, flaming, he would have hurled
both at the books and their editors as it is impossible to fathom the
depths of the oceanic contempt he must have bestowed upon the
esurient herd of idle, blabbing readers. It is a hard fate to befall
any man — but that it should be Carlyle's !

How came it about ? So long as the Carlyles lived, and to the
gloomy end of the survivor, dignity was their portion. They led
their lives after their own fashion and in a way which, while it
attracted no particular attention, won universal respect and even
admiration. Carlyle's fame gradually became world-wide; he had
his readers in all classes and in many countries ; he was a great man
wherever he went, and his mode and habits of life seemed so to befit
his moralities and preachments that it did seem as if at last we were
to find a modern instance of the hero as man of letters. It was no
question of agreement or disagreement — of ' Cromwells,' ' Fredericks,'
or ' Nigger Questions ' — but here, walking along the King's Road,
Chelsea, was a veritable man of genius, of great reading, over-
whelming humour and boisterous fancy ; who was also a man of the
nicest honour, and with a tender human heart ; who paid his bills,
though he never went to church ; who scorned all the vulgarities of

813

814 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

life and disregarded many of its conventions, and through it all
lived under the same roof with his own wife, to whom he was known
to be strongly and even devotedly attached.

All these things remain severely true unto this day, and yet
something has happened to rob the air of its crisp freshness, and to
blacken, or at least obscure, the simple retrospect of a life noble and
well spent. What is it ? Sartor Resartus remains a burning bush,
still unconsumed, with its passages of immortal fame. The French
Revolution, the Cromwell, Past and Present, Chartism, the Miscel-
lanies, and the six volumes of Frederick, are still there — one dare
not add untouched by time ; but even though it should be their not
unusual destiny to crumble away, they at least cannot fail to make
splendid ruins, which for long centuries will bear witness that the
man who first put them together was a mighty workman in his day.
What, then, has happened ? Why, these twenty odd octavo volumes
have happened ; it is they, dotting the landscape like so many factory
chimneys, that have darkened the sky. I do not suggest there
should have been no life of Carlyle, for despite his wish — ' express
biography of me I had really rather that there should be none ' —
express biography there was certain to be. Publishers see to that.
A great man is a family asset, and a hard- up Chancellor of the
Exchequer may yet include in his death duties the cash value of a
dead man's * life,' even before it has been written. A ' life of Carlyle,'
the greatest man of letters since Johnson, could not fail to be
written — but twenty volumes seem proof enough that the job has
been mismanaged, and got into too many hands. It would be a
shocking thing if the ' Affair Carlyle ' were to become a bore.

Who is to blame for this startling output ?

Carlyle, it may be said, began it with his Reminiscences in two
volumes and his Letters and Memorials of his wife in three ; but it
ought to be easy to remember that Carlyle was before everything
else a picturesque historian, and the deftest possible handler and
annotator of correspondence. To work furiously at subjects, foaming
at the bit, cursing at large, had become a lifelong habit. His amazing
vocabulary, almost every word of which gave him as he wrote it the
fierce pangs of semi-creation, clamoured for constant employment.
He had a memory which found storage for everything ; no family
saying, no old Annandale jest was too trivial, if once it had struck his
abnormally developed sense of the humorous, ever to be forgotten.
He was likewise a sentimentalist, of truly prodigious dimensions.
When, therefore, his wife was snatched away, and he was left alone with
his teeming brain to brood over the past, to him unforgotten and
unforgettable, what wonder that the old expert, more than half dead
though he was after his terrific grapple with Frederick (' trying to
make a silk purse out of a sow's ear,' as his wife remarked with her
usual fierce discrimination), should fall upon her papers, and have set

1903 SOME MORE LETTERS OF MRS. CARLYLE 815

himself busily to work preparing them for a possible publication ' ten
or twenty years after my death, if indeed printed at all,' as his last
labour here below.

A picturesque historian himself, and an immense lover of those
small details of life and character upon which his devouring eye and
leaping humour were wont to seize and his pen make merry in his
histories and biographies, and having no intention of publishing
before him — ' the brute of a world ' being altogether lost sight of as
he sat alone at his toil — it is surely not surprising that he overlooked
in his pious, yet ever artistic, desire to lift his dead wife on to a
literary pedestal of her own, the greater charms of dignity and some
of the ' reticences ' and f silences ' of home. He was too great an
artist to fail ; a letter of Jane Welsh Carlyle's, annotated by Thomas her
spouse, is always, in their favourite phrase, first uttered by the lips of
one of Leigh Hunt's children, ' a good joy ' ; but, great as are the
Letters and Memorials, one may feel sure that Mrs. Carlyle, whose
cutting insight had long foreseen for herself, did her husband survive
her, a ' splendid apotheosis,' would have shuddered at the thought of
going down to posterity — she, the wittiest of women — as the much-
tried, much-exacting mistress of a tribe of ' Kirkcaldy Helens,'
' Lancaster Janes,' ' Dumfries Nancies,' ' Irish Fannies,' in revolt for
having to do ' the washing ' at home, and as the heroine of a thirty
years' war with those household pests Mazzini was content to
call ' small beings,' but she by a blunter name.

Judicious editing would have spared Mrs. Carlyle's feelings.
Editing there was, ruthless enough ; for Mr. Froude, being himself
an artist no less than Carlyle, did not hesitate to take whatever he
wanted for his own Life of Carlyle out of the draft Letters and
Memorials, and this without a word of explanation. One artist had
no right so to mangle the work of another. In addition to this
transmission of material, Froude, in the exercise of a necessary dis-
cretion, omitted many letters Carlyle had annotated. So of editing
there was no lack, but of judicious, kindly editing there was too
little.

Between the Carlyles and Mr. Froude there flowed both Tweed,
Trent, and the history of the whole world. He understood nothing
about their evolution. They had come out of another land than his.
Froude's own education can hardly be accounted a success. When
he was quite grown up, it took him by surprise to find out that two
such men as Newman and Carlyle could differ radically about
religion ; he would have us believe that, accomplished Oxford scholar
though he was, this astonishing discovery struck him all of a heap.
The rags and tatters of his discarded Anglican orders fluttered
behind him long enough to make it startling for him to unearth a
couple as completely unchurched, so genuinely indifferent to all and
everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer, as \yere Mr.

816 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

and Mrs. Carlyle. This spectacle, interesting, instructive, but hardly
unique, affected Froude's judgment so much that, instead of
recognising, as so shrewd and competent a man must have done but
for his childish education, that genius and eloquence and humour
do not by themselves supply the places of philosophy and religion,
he must needs hail the stormiest of rhetoricians, the most exuberant
of humourists, and one of the very best of men, as his ' master,' at
whose girdle jingled the keys of the universe. This mood lasted for
a while, during which the disciple had to furbish up a faith in
Cromwell Covenanters and Calvinists which the 'master' himself
probably never quite seriously entertained. But the mood finally
changed under the influence of the corrosive sarcasms and world-
wide scepticism of Mrs. Carlyle, whose sad history, as Froude read it,
he thought it his duty to tell at large. Whether Froude ever
understood Mrs. Carlyle must always remain doubtful, but by dint of
not over-scrupulous editing, and a happy knack of writing, natural
to a picturesque historian, he certainly has managed to divide the
Carlyle ' reading-public ' into two classes — husband's men and wife's
men, with, perhaps, a tertium quid which damns them both for a
quarrelsome couple. How horrible an epilogue ! how hateful a
catastrophe !

It is never wise, and seldom decent, to interfere between man
and wife. You cannot hope to know the real facts, even if you con-
descend to collect gossip. If Mr. Froude had only been content to
leave the matter alone, and do his plain duty as an honest and
discreet editor of the Reminiscences and Letters and Memorials, we
should have been spared a ' pluister ' l and splutter which still endures.

The time for repose had come at last,
But long, long after the storm is past
Rolls the turbid, turbulent billow.

Froude's notion, that Carlyle prepared the Letters and Memorials
in a spirit of deep abiding remorse, as of a man self-convicted of horrid
selfishness, is extravagantly far-fetched. What, in Froude's opinion,
was the head and front of Carlyle's offending ? His devotion for
Lady Ashburton. But nowhere else does Carlyle state his admira-
tion for this gracious lady so strongly and so unabashedly as he
does in these very Memorials. It does not weigh upon his mind or
poison his memory one atom. What cut Carlyle to the heart was the
sadness of his wife's life, he being of grim necessity absorbed in his
French Revolutions, Cromivells, and Fredericks, whilst she, thriftiest
of wives, was grappling with narrow means and ungracious circum-
stance. He longed to let the world know how brilliant was her wit,
how lively her pen, how great her courage. As for Mrs. Carlyle, she

1 ' What a pluister^ (mess) John has made of the place ! ' was the comment of old
"Walter Welsh, the minister of Auchtertool, after reading Dr. Carlyle's prose version
of Dante's ' Hell.'

1903 SOME MORE LETTERS OF MRS. CARLYLE 817

knew well enough, be her grievances what they might, that she had
by her marriage secured for herself the very fittest audience for her
peculiar humour to be found in all Europe. Carlyle never, from first
to last, ceased to admire his wife's somewhat bitter tongue, though
the ' cauldness ' of its blast sometimes made even him shiver. Was
it nothing to have such constant appreciation from such a man !
Suppose she had married a fool — no difficult thing to do according to
the Carlylian statistics ! Poor fool. Her health was bad and her mode
of drugging herself portentous (and she a doctor's daughter), but until
her last years her vitality remained amazing. Take a day at random,
the 13th of August, 1855; she is in her fifty-fourth year, and what
does she do ? She is up betimes, and catches the eight o'clock Chelsea
boat ' with a good tide' for London Bridge Station, where she buys herself
a third-class return ticket to Brighton, which place she reaches in an
open railway carriage ' without the least fatigue.' On alighting at
Brighton she plunges into the sea, and after her bathe walks along
the shore to an inn, which, as usual, she finds noisy and dirty. She
continues her stroll along the cliffs till she reaches Rottingdean, four
miles off. She falls in love with Rottingdean, and fixes upon a
cottage as the very place she has long been searching for as a summer
retreat. She dines at the little inn, devouring two fresh eggs, a plate-
ful of home-baked bread-and-butter and a pint bottle of Gruinness. She
lies on the cliff for an hour and a half, and then walks back to
Brighton, and searches up and down its streets for the agent, whose
name and address she had got wrong. At last she finds him, and
almost commits herself to take the cottage. She travels back to
London Bridge, walks to St. Paul's, where she gets the Chelsea omnibus,
alighting at a shop near home to write the agent a letter, and then
on foot to 5 Cheyne Eow.2 The next day she complains of a little
stiffness. This is suspiciously like ' rude health.' Had anyone ever
ventured to be ' wae ' for Mrs. Carlyle to her face, I wish I could
believe she would not have replied with one of her favourite Annandale
stories : ' Damn ye ! — be wae for yersel.'

It must, I think, be admitted that it was Froude who, in cricketing
phrase, has ' queered the pitch.'

The mischief once done it was certain and right that an attempt
to undo it should be made. If we were to have so much, a little
more material of an explanatory and mitigating nature may perhaps
be welcomed.

Two more volumes — ' New Letters and Memwials of Jane Welsh
Carlyle, annotated by Thomas Carlyle and edited by Alexander
Carlyle, with an Introduction by Sir James Crichton-Browne, M.D.' —
have just made their appearance, published by Mr. John Lane.

The introduction is a fine, spirited piece of writing, albeit some-
what disfigured to my lay mind by too many medical words ; but
2 Letters and Memorials, ii. 250.

VOL. UII— No. 315 3 H

818 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

I suppose in a scientific age we must begin to learn to put up with
scientific terminology. Sir James is, as we all know, a first-rate
fighting-man, and he states his case for his illustrious client — I had
almost written patient — Thomas Carlvle, with immense verve and that
complete knowledge of the ' cradle-land ' of both the spouses so unfortu-
nately lacking in Mr. Froude. Sir James covers the whole ground of
this unhappy controversy, and it is at least a pious wish that this
may be the last time we shall hear of it ; for could the dead be con-
sulted, could another Dante visit the sad realms of Dis, and, standing
on the shore, hear those mournful Scottish voices, who can doubt
that they would be heard to cry as they were swept along, ' For
pity's sake, leave us alone ' ?

As for the Letters themselves, they are those of which Mr. Froude
made no use, or only partial use, either in his Life or in his edition
of the Letters and Memorials. Froude was a famous artist, however
unscrupulous as an editor, and it speaks volumes for Mrs. Carlyle's
superlative excellence as a letter-writer that what Froude rejected,
for whatever reasons, should now be found so delightful. It is a
detestable literary maxim — * The king's chaff is better than other
men's grain ' — which too often has been made the excuse for obscuring
great reputations by the publication of poor stuff. But Mrs. Carlyle's
particular gift seems never to have failed her. These new letters
are every whit as good as their predecessors, and are full of the
merry phrases, the bits of stories, the ' coterie speech,' floating on
the surface of the ' rapid bright flowing style,' which always made
them so unmixed a delight to the man to whom most of them were
addressed, and for whose delectation or reproof they principally were in-
tended. ' Beautiful, cheery, graceful, true,' are Carlyle's own words
in relation to them — words which he used like the critic he was, each
one being charged with its own particular burden of meaning. We
have, indeed, even in these new volumes, too much of that eternal
housemaid and the terrifying bug, but an unhappy fate seems to
have made the conjunction unavoidable.

I saw the ' noble lady ' (Mrs. Montague) that night, and a strange, tragic
sight she was ! sitting all alone in a low-ceilinged confined room at the top of
Proctor's house ; a French bed in a corner, some relics of the grand Bedford
Square drawing-room (small pictures and the like) scattered about. Herself
stately, artistic as ever ; not a line of her figure, not a fold of her dress, changed
since we knew her first, twenty years and more. She made me sit on a low chair
opposite to her (she had sent for me to come up), and began to speak of Edward
Irving and long ago as if it were last year — last month ! There was something
quite overpowering in the whole thing : the Pagan grandeur of the old woman,
retired from the world, awaiting death, as erect and unyielding as ever, contrasted
so strangely with the mean bedroom at the top of the house and the uproar of
company going on below. And the Past which she seemed to live and move in felt
to gather round me too, till I fairly laid my head on her lap and burst into tears.
She stroked my hair very gently, and said, ' I think, Jane, your manner never

1903 SOME MORE LETTERS OF MRS. GARLYLE 819

changes any more than your hair, which is still black, 1 see.' ' But you too are
not changed,' I said. When I had staid with her an hour or so, she insisted on my
going back to the company, and embraced me as she never did before. Not a hard
word did she say about anyone, and her voice, tho' clear and strong as of old,
had a human modulation in it. You may fancy the humour in which I went
back to the party, which was then at a white heat of excitement — about nothing.

Mrs. Montague is the lady who once said to Mrs. Carlyle, ' Jane,
everybody is born with a vocation, and yours is to write little
notes.'

One faculty Mrs. Carlyle certainly lacked — the best gift of the
gods, far surpassing that of writing little notes — the ' faculty of being
happy.'

Writing from Humbie Farm, above Aberdour, in Fife, she says to
perhaps her greatest friend, Mrs. Eussell of Thornhill :

Our lodging here is all, and more than all, that could be expected of seaside
quarters, the beautifullest view in the created world ! Rooms enough, well-sized,
well-furnished and quite clean ; command of what Mr. C. calls ' soft food ' for
both himself and horse. As for me, soft food is the last sort I find useful. And as
for air, there can be none purer than this. Decidedly there is everything here
needed for happiness, but just one thing — the faculty of being happy. And that,
unfortunately, I never had much of in my best days ; and in the days that are it
is lost to me altogether.

Her threnody over her dead ' Nero ' must touch many hearts ; she
is again writing to Mrs. Eussell :

If I am less ill than usual this winter, I am more than usually sorrowful.
For I have lost my dear little companion of eleven years standing : my little Nero
is dead ! And the grief his death has caused me has been wonderful, even to my-
self. His patience and gentleness and loving struggle to do all his little bits of
duties under his painful illness up to the last hour of his life was .very strange and
touching, and had so endeared him to everybody in the house that I am happily
spared all reproaches for wasting so much feeling on a dog. ; Mr. 0. couldn't have
reproached me, for he himself was in tears at the poor little thing's end ! and this
own heart was (as he phrased it) ' unexpectedly and distractedly torn to pieces
with it.' As for Charlotte, she went about for three days after with her face all
swollen and red with weeping. But on the fourth day she got back her good looks
and gay spirits, and much sooner Mr. C. had got to speak of ' poor Nero ' composedly
enough. Only to me does my dear wee dog remain a constantly recurring blank and
a thought of strange sadness ! What is become of that little, beautiful, graceful
life, so full of love and loyalty and sense of duty up to the last moment that it
animated the body of that little dog ? Is it to be extinguished, abolished,
annihilated in an instant, while the brutalised two -legged so-called human creature
who dies in a ditch, after having outraged all duties and caused nothing but pain
and disgust to all concerned with him — is he to live for ever? It is impossible for
me to believe that. I couldn't help saying so in writing to my Aunt Grace, and
expected a terrible lecture for it. But not so ! Grace, who had been fond of my
little dog, couldn't find in her heart to speak unkindly on this subject — nay, actually
gave me a reference to a verse in Romans which seemed to warrant my belief in
the immortality of animal life as well as human. One thing is sure anyhow — my
little dog is buried at the top of our garden, and I grieve for him. as if he had been
my little human child.

3 H a

820 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

Mr. Arnold has expressed some of the same feelings, though
with greater restraint, in imperishable verse, over the grave of his
dachshund ' Geist ' :

That loving heart, that patient soul,

Had they indeed no longer span,
To run their course, and reach their goal,

And read their homily to man ?

That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled

By spirits gloriously gay,
And temper of heroic mould —

What, was four years their whole short day ?

Stern law of every mortal lot !

"Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear,
And builds himself I know not what

Of second life, I know not where.

When it comes to the point even of a little dog's death neither
eloquent philosophers, nor their wives, nor poets can carry us farther
into the mystery of things than the most commonplace of our
neighbours. Someone dies, says Browning, man, woman, or dog,

And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature's self
To rap, and knock, and enter in our soul,
Take hands, and dance there, a fantastic ring,
Round the ancient idol, on his base again,
The grand Perhaps !

Judicious editing is never an easy matter — let us concede so
much to Mr. Froude. Even this ' aftermath ' contains a blade or
two that had better have been burnt. Particularly, what a pity it is
that we should find once more in print Carlyle's brutal and barbarous
judgment upon Charles Lamb. The phrase 'diluted insanity' as
applied to Elia is not only ' ugly and venomous,' but downright stupid
and hard to forgive. Could the matter be looked into it would, I
expect, be found that the unpopularity Sir James Crichton-Browne
deprecates, which undoubtedly followed upon the too hasty publi-
cation and careless editing of the Reminiscences and the Memorials,
is attributable not to flirtations, real or supposed, with any ' great
lady,' or to alleged ' wife-neglect,' but to Carlyle's unhappy habit of
indulging himself (chiefly in private talk and correspondence) in
random vituperation. Heavy and public has been his penance for
what should have remained a secret sic.

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL.

LONDON CONGESTION AND
CROSS-TRAFFIC

IN the excellent article on ' the tangle of London locomotion ' which
Mr. Sidney Low contributed to the December number of this
Review he showed very clearly how necessary it was that any
Koyal Commission appointed for the purpose of endeavouring
to straighten out this tangle should have a very wide reference ; and
from the favourable answer given by the Prime Minister to Mr.
Bryce, who asked for an inquiry ' into the means of locomotion and
transportation in London on and beneath the surface' — the words
' and transportation ' were of crucial importance — we gathered that
the Government share this view. Since then the Commission has
been appointed and has got to work, and the variety of the points
on which it is asked to report is the best reading which we poor
Londoners have had for many a long day. For it foreshadows a
really comprehensive inquiry into free and fast locomotion. The
Commissioners are empowered to look into all methods, not only trains
and tubes which run on a special track to the exclusion of everything
else, tramways which run on the ordinary roads to the inconvenience
of everything else, but omnibuses, cabs, carriages and carts, the
conveyances of the individual, which can carry everything and every-
body, which can start anywhere, stop anywhere, and end up anywhere.
Let them, then, remember that though urgent, bitterly urgent,
and clamant, and fashionable, is the housing question, there are
other ways of dealing with it than by entraining the workers night
and morning to and from the outskirts, and that they might work
as well as sleep in the fresh air of the suburbs if only the product
of their labours could be brought cheaply and speedily to the
centralised marts where it is to be sold or to the actual consumer.
Let them also note that the converse of this holds good, and that
the rich must be considered as well as the poor ; if only because, once
the power of travelling fast all over the town and suburbs is assured,
there will no longer be that anxiety to live in or near the centre which
has the result of driving out the man who can only afford a few
shillings for his house room. At a meeting in Holborn one of my
constituents said that what he wanted to see was the well-to-do

821

822 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

tempted to the fringe, to make room nearer in for the poor man
whose work could not be moved from there. Above all let them not
forget that the congestion of London has grown through the trade
of London, and that it is on that trade, retail as well as wholesale,
that London lives. It is the life-blood of the town, which should
course through every vein right out to each extremity. If the
great old city is to be allowed to suffer permanently from blood to
the head, with clots in every artery, she will die of the obstruction.

Now it is unnecessary to discourse upon the influences born in
the past which have resulted in the great position which London
now holds ; sufficient be it for us that to-day she stands the biggest
city that the world has known, and in imminent danger of being
strangled by her own bulk. Strangled because, while from the four
quarters of the globe, from all parts of the British Isles, from the
open country round about, men and goods are hurried with all the
speed that modern Science has made possible in towards the centre,
once she has delivered them there, up to now Science has seemed to
sit down with folded hands, helpless and hopeless. Outside she has
annihilated space, inside she seems to do nothing but pull up the
roads. What is the reason of this ? Is it powerlessness to cope
with vested interests and ancient rights ? is it a paralysis caused by
the action of municipalities — for modern municipalities are not as a
rule the friends of scientific venture, in which they are apt to scent
the triumph and material advantage of the individual, patents and
monopolies ? — or is it simply evidence that our system of local govern-
ment is old-fashioned and unimaginative ? One thing is certain,
that if London is to live and thrive she must undergo a surgical
operation on a large scale.

We are indeed fortunate that, at the moment when we are called
upon to face this painful necessity, Science has at last awakened
and come to our aid, and is in a fair way to provide us with a new
remedy. Tubes are all very well, but apart from their probable
danger to health — for Londoners were not born rabbits — we must
always remember that they cater only for passenger traffic, and
that they no way assist or can be made to assist the trade of the
town. Lifts and stairs are troublesome enough for human beings,
they are impossible for goods, and in most cases ' handling ' and ' break
of bulk ' will turn a certain profit into a certain loss. But now we
are in process of being reinforced by horseless vehicles, which,
capable as they will be of travelling all day and every day at twice the
pace of any draught animal, and over any distance, should do much
to help us out of our difficulties. Only we must be careful that
we give them a fair chance and do not cripple their usefulness. We
must remember that the most notable of their many advantages lies
in their speed, and that anything which reduces them to the low
level of the slow-moving traffic of our blocked central thoroughfares

1903 LONDON CONGESTION AND CROSS-TRAFFIC 823

will seriously detract from their value. It is of no very great
account to-day to a horsed omnibus whose outside limit of speed
along an empty road is some seven miles an hour, if, as it gets
towards the centre, it is blocked for a few minutes, but the same
number of wasted minutes will be doubly objectionable to the
motor-bus of to-morrow, which will easily cover twice the distance in
the same time. And this is not only the question of omnibuses. I
sometimes wonder if many people realise that, though on the railway
and on the sea we have got away from the old tradition, in our streets
to-day for all vehicles we limit our speed of progression to two rates,
the same that have held good since the dawn of civilisation — the
trotting and walking pace of a horse ! In the future this limitation
will go by the board, the new generation will demand to go faster,
and we shall have light carts covering the ground at twelve miles an
hour instead of six, and coal carts, brewer's drays and heavy vans
doing six miles where they did three before. Time means money
for everybody, and cart and man will be able to do twice the work ;
only we must free the streets for them.

And so we naturally come to the question, what causes the
congestion in our thoroughfares, and what can we do to relieve it ?
There are many causes avoidable and unavoidable. I am not going
to discuss the breaking up of the surface of the roads, whether for
repair or to get at pipes ; these are unnatural causes of an intermittent
nature, outside the sphere of this article. Let us take the others,
the natural causes which obtain always. Our streets are too narrow
for what has to get along them. They can be widened. The
County Council will see to it; it is simply a matter of expense.
We mix our traffic, making the fast wait upon the slow ; why not
reserve certain streets for certain classes of locomotion ? The police
can arrange it. If their powers are not sufficient Parliament can
give them more. That is simply a matter of the greatest con-
venience of the greatest number. And it is the same with crawling
cabs, bad and thoughtless drivers, heavy carts which take twice the
width which is their due, and vans which stand for an interminable
period opposite houses and shops. The individual who blocks the
King's highway to the disadvantage of the community should be
punished by law. But there is one reason which overtops all the
others, and which street-widening and police regulations may
mitigate, but which they cannot do away with. A reason which is
the fault of nobody. A reason which has driven the tubes and is
driving the tramways underground, and which is the one certain bar
to fast locomotion on the surface, and that is * cross-traffic.' This
can be easily shown. If two bodies travelling in different directions
arrive at a fixed point simultaneously, one of them must give way. If
on the boundless Sahara desert one caravan crosses at right angles
the track of another caravan, and they meet, one must wait. And
this is what happens all day and every day whenever two people

824 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

desire to cross one another's paths. In individual cases it matters
nothing, in the mass everything.

Now perhaps my readers would realise this better if they would
accompany me in fancy along one of the main roads from west to
east, on an ordinary summer afternoon. It is of no consequence
how we travel — in carriage, or cab, or motor car, on the top of an
omnibus or in a butcher's cart, on a bicycle or in a coal waggon —
we should encounter the same obstacles. The faster we are capable
of moving, the more in a hurry we are, the more annoying it will be.
Supposing that we wanted to get to the Bank and started at the
top of Sloane Street. I am prepared to stake my reputation that
we are in difficulties as follows. At Albert Gate we are stopped
dead by the carriages going in and out of Hyde Park, a right angle
crossing which the widening of Knightsbridge now being carried
out by the County Council will do little to improve. Once clear of
the congestion which this crossing causes — for in all cases we must
remember that the crowding extends for some distance in every
direction from the actual point of contact — nothing will stop us till
we reach Hyde Park Corner. Again carriages coming out of the
Park. At Hamilton Place, which we will consider more particularly
later on, we are in danger of our lives, but once past its perils we
are free. A hansom called across the road, or coming out of Down
Street or Half Moon Street, may make it necessary to apply the
brake, but we need never stand still till we get under the influence
of the north and south traffic trying to get back and forward
from Berkeley Street, Dover Street, Albemarle Street, and Bond
Street to Arlington Street, and St. James's Street. There is not a
day in the year when we shall not be stopped at one or other of
these openings, sometimes that whole quarter of a mile may be
jammed up in a solid mass for a quarter of an hour. And still, once
past the Burlington Arcade, we go gaily on again. At Piccadilly
Circus, at the bottom of the Haymarket, by Morley's Hotel and
Charing Cross Station we shall waste more time, however fast we
may travel between these points, and it may easily take us longer
to negotiate the Wellington Street crossing than to cover the whole
remaining length of the Strand. And we can say the same of
Ludgate Circus, and the crossing at the Mansion House Station and
the Mansion House itself. Over the whole distance, which is rather
more than three miles, even with the very best of driving, anything
from a quarter to three quarters of our time we shall be standing still
or reduced to our slowest pace. With a free run the most indifferent
of motor conveyances would cover the distance in twenty minutes ;
we shall be lucky if we accomplish it in forty. There are few things,
we are always told, which impress the foreigner more than the way
the free-born Briton will restrain himself behind the broad blue
back and uplifted arm of the policeman on point duty, but even the

1903 LONDON CONGESTION AND CROSS-TRAFFIC 825

most intelligent of foreigners does not always grasp the language of
a man who is in a hurry. I hope I have convinced my readers that
the real bar to fast locomotion is cross-traffic and cross-traffic alone.

What then can be done ? The ordinary widening is of no use
unless it can be carried out in every direction, a very difficult thing
to arrange. Even then it cannot pretend to do more than to lessen
the evil, by making it possible for the vehicles to cross on a broader
front, thus shortening the string. And we must always remember
that the wider we make a thoroughfare the more traffic we tempt
into it, while the expense of setting back the enormously valuable
frontages of the recognised main roads through London is incalculable.
To add twenty feet to the width of a street at 101. a square foot —
no preposterous price — works out at the rate of over a million a
mile. And we must not judge by special cases. At Hamilton
Place the widening of Piccadilly has had a good effect, but there the
conditions were quite exceptional. We were allowed to take half
an acre of land off a royal park free of cost, while the facts that the
elbow room is unlimited — there are three and a half acres more
round the Wellington statue — and the crossing not at right angles,
enable the traffic to intermingle and struggle through somehow, by
the help of many policemen and to the very considerable danger of
the lieges. So far I have seen only one dead horse there, but it is
the most alarming place in London. Anyway we can deduce nothing
from the somewhat qualified success of this venture because there
is no other place where we can imitate it. Nor can we afford to
make clearances which will enable the streams to be sorted out as
they are at Piccadilly Circus or Trafalgar Square, nor even as at
Ludgate Circus, where we have a notable object lesson of the
inadequacy of half-hearted measures, with the t's crossed and the
i's dotted, by the splendid success of those who had the imagination
to build alongside of it the Holborn Viaduct. The fact remains
that there is only one way of dealing with the trouble in a thoroughly
satisfactory and scientific manner, and that is by bridges and tunnels,
as has been more than once pointed out by Sir John Wolfe Barry.
The ' over and under ' method is not a palliative but a complete cure.
Is it possible to work it ?

In order that the London County Council should consider the
matter in all its bearings, I last year put down on the Agenda paper
the following motion :

That, having regard to the fact that the traffic in main thoroughfares becomes
daily more congested, and that such congestion, though assisted by the mixture of
slow and fast draught and the narrowness of the streets, is even more certainly
caused by cross-traffic, it be an instruction to the Improvements Committee to
consider the possibilities of some ' over and under ' arrangement, by means of
bridges or subways, in or about every spot where two large streams of vehicles
have now perforce to wait to cross each other.

826 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

In course of time the motion came up and was discussed at some
length. The Council agreed to refer the matter to the Improvements
Committee, and that Committee in its turn called in those re-
sponsible for the Bridges and Highways. A small special committee
was appointed, and Captain Hemphill was elected chairman. At
our first meeting extracts were quoted from the paper read by Sir
John Wolfe Barry before the Society of Arts two or three years ago,
in which he endeavoured to express in monetary value the loss
caused by cross-traffic on the level at places in the heart of London,
and it was decided that the best course to pursue was to take two
points which were good examples, and ask for a report from the
officers of the Council upon them. The first thing to do was to
assure ourselves that there was considerable trouble and monetary
loss certainly caused by cross-traffic at these two places, and this
was entrusted to the statistical officer. Then we had to find out
from the engineer whether it was possible to arrange a cure, and at
what cost. Naturally we turned our attention to two points which
were at the moment very much before the Council, the two ends of
what is to be the new Holborn to Strand street, where the north and
south traffic has perforce to cross these two great arteries from east
to west. In course of time it was reported to us as follows.
Koughly 20,000 vehicles of different kinds pass the Wellington
Street crossing every day between 8 A.M. and 8 P.M., and one third
of them are stopped for at least half a minute. Stoppages for
shorter periods were not taken into consideration. At the Holborn
Restaurant 15,000 pass and 3,000 are stopped. In making their
report to the Council the Improvements Committee stated :

The statistical officer has advised us that, making the best estimate possible in
the circumstances, and taking the lower figure in every case in doubt, he estimates
a total lost of time to the value of 7,180£. per annum in respect of the stoppages
at the junction of the Strand with Wellington Street, and of 3,4301. per annum
at the junction of Holborn with Southampton Row. These estimates are in
respect of loss of time incurred by individuals only, and the following items are
excluded altogether from the calculation : (a) delays by temporary checks ; (b)
delays occurring outside the limits of the twelve hours during which observations
were made ; (c) persons not travelling on business ; (d) losses by detention of
goods ; (e) losses on vehicles ; and (/) losses due to the delay of pedestrians.

We felt that further facts could be obtained if we pursued the examination of
the case further, but before doing that we proceeded to consider the practicability
of constructing bridges or subways to relieve the cross-traffic.

We instructed the chief engineer to report (1) what gradient would be
necessary to carry a thoroughfare over or under another thoroughfare ; (2) what
are the gradients of Wellington Street north of the Strand, Trafalgar Square,
Haymarket, and Piccadilly near Half Moon Street ; (3) the minimum headway neces-
sary to enable vehicles now in ordinary use to pass under a bridge in safety ; (4)
the least thickness needed for the road across a bridge ; and (5) whether it would
be possible in order to reduce the gradient to arrange for the carriageway of a
bridge to be only a few inches in depth, but supported by the sides of a bridge,
the footway being perhaps of greater depth.

1903 LONDON CONGESTION AND CROSS-TRAFFIC 827

Dealing with these points in order, the engineer has advised us (1) that a
gradient of 1 in 30 is the steepest which is admissible in providing facilities for
cross-traffic ; (2) that the gradient of Wellington Street is 1 in 23, the east side
of Trafalgar Square 1 in 23, the Haymarket 1 in 34, and Piccadilly near Half
Moon Street 1 in 27 ; (3) the minimum safe headway for a bridge is 16 feet to 17
feet, and that for a bridge over such a thoroughfare as the Strand a headway of
not less than 18 feet should be adopted ; (4) if the width between the parapet
girders of a bridge were 30 feet, a depth of 2 feet 6 inches would be the minimum
in which a satisfactory structure could be obtained ; (5) that it is not practicable
to make the depth of construction for the carriageway only a few inches.

The chief engineer, in dealing with the suggestion for the construction of a
subway to meet the cross-traffic at the junction of the Strand with Wellington
Street and of Holborn with Southampton Row, has pointed out that the scheme
already sanctioned by Parliament for the construction of a shallow underground
tramway from Theobald's Road along the new street to the Strand, would make
the construction of a subway for ordinary vehicular traffic impracticable, and that
it would also be impracticable to find space for the approaches to a bridge over
Holborn in consequence of the tramway subway scheme, where it will come to
the surface in Southampton Row. If a bridge with inclined approaches were
constructed from Wellington Street to Waterloo Bridge, it would be necessary to
remove the western steps of Waterloo Bridge and to carry the approach to the
first abutment of the bridge, with the result that even then the gradient would
be as steep as 1 in 20. This could be improved to 1 in 30 if the inclined road
were extended a considerable distance on to Waterloo Bridge, involving a widen-
ing of the northernmost span of the bridge. This widening could not be carried
out by merely widening the arch, but would necessitate a girder span over the
"Victoria Embankment, unless the bridge were widened for its entire length across
the river. It would be necessary to widen Wellington Street and to place the
inclined approach in the middle of the widened thoroughfare, because if the
inclined approach were placed on one side of the street one line of the traffic using
the approach would, upon reaching Waterloo Bridge, have to cross one line of the
traffic passing on a level to the Strand, with the result that the construction of
the bridge would do little more than tend to remove from the Strand the conges-
tion caused by cross-traffic to the point where the inclined approach delivered on
to Waterloo Bridge.

To construct a subway for general traffic from Southampton Row under
Holborn would not only involve considerable interference with the projected
tramway subway scheme, but would also make it necessary either to syphon the
Fleet sewer in Holborn or to divert the sewer at considerable expense. The
gradients of such a subway would be about 1 in 17 on the north side of Holborn,
and about 1 in 25 on the south side, whilst if a bridge were constructed the gradients
would be 1 in 29 on the north of Holborn and about 1 in 17 on the south.

With these particulars before us, supplied by the Joint Sub-Committee, we
feel that we have no alternative at the present moment but to advise that the
question of the construction of a subway or bridge at the junction of the Strand
with Wellington Street and at the junction of Holborn with Southampton Row
should be postponed until after the formation of the new street from Holborn to
the Strand, when we shall- be in a position to decide as to the necessity or other-
wise of the construction of a bridge or subway, having regard to the effect of the
formation of the new street upon the general traffic, and also the effect of the work-
ing of the tramway subway from Southampton Row to the Strand.

We are of opinion, however, that the general question raised in the Council's
resolution of the 21st of January, 1902, should be borne in mind, so that whenever
we are contemplating the widening of main thoroughfares or the construction of
new streets consideration may be given to the question whether, in connection

828 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

with any such improvements, some arrangement may be made for the relief of the
cross-traffic. Our recommendations, suggested by the Joint Sub-Committee, are
accordingly as follows :

(a) That the consideration of the question of the construction of a subway or
bridge at the junction of the Strand with Wellington Street, and at the junction
of Holborn with Southampton Row, be allowed to remain in abeyance until after
the formation of the new street from Holborn to the Strand, when it will be possi-
ble to ascertain the effect of the construction of that street upon the general traffic,
and also the effect of the working of the tramway subway from Southampton
Row to the Strand.

(b) That it be an instruction to the Improvements Committee to bear in mind
the general question raised in the Council's resolution of the iJlst of January,
1902, whenever the widening of main thoroughfares or the construction of new
streets is in contemplation, so that consideration may be given to the question
whether, in connection with any such improvements, some arrangement may be
made for the relief of the cross-traffic.

Now I should like to comment upon this report, pointing out
what it teaches us. As regards the general question, it is enough
for the moment that it is serious reading and fully justifies the
inquiry. Turning to the special statements we will take the
engineer's portion first. It will be noted that, though the gradient
of Wellington Street itself is one in twenty-three, he would not
recommend that the gradient of the approach to a bridge to carry
the same traffic across to Wellington Street should be steeper than
one in thirty. He asks for an 18-foot headway and a 2-foot 6-inch
depth of structure, and points out that this rising approach must be
in the centre of the road. All through he has wisely laid down what
would be necessary to make a perfect improvement. In so doing he
shows us how difficult it would be to achieve perfection in con-
structing such a bridge or subway — for a subway would come to the
same thing — in any case where the lie of the ground is not excep-
tionably favourable. The difficulty will always be in the approaches.
If the ground is dead level and it were possible to have 16-foot
headway, a road specially constructed on a steel foundation to be
only 1 foot thick, and a gradient of one in twenty-three, the
approaches need only be 130 yards in length at either end; but
with 20 feet 6 inches to rise and a gradient of one in thirty these
approaches must be 200 yards. And consider what this means. If
you are going to make a detached ridge down the centre of the
street it means that over all that distance this backbone would be
rising at a slant. If you are going to give over a whole street to it
the houses on the side of that street must conform to that slant. In
either case any existing side streets would be a source of trouble.
What jumps to the eye is that in no ordinary case can anything of
the kind be made perfect except as a portion of a big improvement
scheme dealing with a large area.

And so we naturally turn to the report of the statistical officer.
Here we see how very real the trouble is, and that though he has

1903 LONDON CONGESTION AND CROSS-TRAFFIC 829

religiously set himself the task of ' making the best possible estimate
in the circumstances/ that though he has refused to reckon in any
stoppage of less than half a minute, and has taken ' the lower
figure in every case of doubt,' that though he has noted many
exceptions and has omitted many others — what may be the cost of
a block to a short-necked choleric man who wishes to catch a train —
he still states that to-day there is a perfectly preventable waste of
7,000£. a year at one end and 3,0001. at the other of what is the one
great metropolitan improvement which the London County Council
has undertaken. Verily the genesis of this street is an object lesson
for all time. It cannot have been other than the intention of those
who planned it to make it a great avenue, a real King's way, from
north to south, an artery for through traffic which would enable
Islington and St. Pancras to communicate comfortably with Lambeth
and Camberwell, even on the days of Lord Mayors' shows, returns
of C.I.V., and such like wild revelry. And what did they do ?
They apparently looked out the two spots on the great east and
west thoroughfares of Oxford Street and the Strand where there was
most traffic, and now we are proceeding to join them and invite into
them the accumulations of the north and the south, with the certain
result of adding enormously to their congestion. In the face of this
report I fear that we are too late, and that the opportunity of dealing
with this particular ' improvement ' is gone. As regards the Holborn
end we lost it when it was settled that 70 feet was wide enough for
Southampton Kow, when we allowed expensive buildings to be com-
menced, and when we permitted the tramways to take up the whole
of the subsoil. Had the cross-traffic question been raised earlier it
would have been easy to arrange that not only the tramways but all
traffic desirous of doing so could pass under Oxford Street. At the
Wellington Street end it is still possible to hope that the energy of
Sir John Wolfe Barry will carry the Westminster Council with him
to victory, but failing that we shall probably have another and
better chance when the question of a necessary widening of Waterloo
Bridge comes up. By then the Wellington Street block will have
become quite unsupportable. But we have gained something, for
we have raised the whole question, and the London County Council
has passed without a word a resolution to the effect that they will
endeavour to show more foresight in the future.

And here, as an interlude, and as an illustration of how though
this is a difficult question it is not an impossible question, I should
like to point out two places to which attention might be turned at
once. The first because it is crying out and can be done to-day by
the kind connivance of the Crown and by the energy of the London
County Council. The second because it will be crying out to-
morrow, and can easily and cheaply be arranged to-day by the fore-
sight of the London County Council. Let us take the last first.

830 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

Why is it that hansoms coming from the City, motor cars out for
exercise, and the processions marching to Hyde Park all choose the
Victoria Embankment ? Because nothing crosses them. From
"Westminster Bridge to Blackfriars Bridge their left flank is pro-
tected by the river, and the great traffic bound for the south side
passes uninterruptedly over their head. If the Embankment Road
could have been carried under those two bridges as it was under
Waterloo and Charing Cross we should all have been so much the
gamers. It is too late to think of them now, but Lambeth Bridge
has still to be dealt with from its foundations. Within the
next two or three years it is to come down and be replaced by a
new structure, and not only that, but the London County Council
are at this moment in process of remodelling Horseferry Eoad and
the whole quarter on the west bank. What is called the West-
minster Improvement Scheme is going to sweep away the wharves
on the river side and bring the Grrosvenor Eoad Embankment
in state to the Houses of Parliament. It will be a fine open
space for London, surely it might also be made a fine, free, fast
traffic road for London. Nothing can be easier than to arrange that
the new bridge shall be made to ' carry ' not only the river but the
embankment road ; but to do so we must look ahead now, and as
we pull down the Horseferry Eoad houses must see that the new
ones are built to conform with the rising road. There is ample
space for any engineering works. If this is not done, if we allow
the Embankment stream to come at right angles against the Bridge
stream on the level, we shall only create another Wellington Street
block. It may sound absurd to speak of a block at Lambeth Bridge,
but fifty years ago people would have said the same of Hyde Park
Corner, and one hundred years ago would have scoffed at the idea
of congestion at Piccadilly Circus. If it is worth while to make
this new embankment and to build a new bridge — and anyone has
only to look at the map and consider the lines along which London
moves to realise how valuable both will be — it will be criminal folly
on the part of those in authority if they do not make the necessary
arrangements at once. A year hence it will be again too late.

Then, to turn to what troubles many of us most to-day — the
Walsingham House block. At this point four streets on the north,
two on the south, pour their contents into Piccadilly. Some vehicles
from both sides turn west, a few turn east, the majority want to get
across, and are through traffic. There are the Mayfair carriages
trying to reach Pall Mall and Westminster, there are the Victoria
Station cabs fighting to get up north. Here Piccadilly stands on a
ridge, the ground falling gradually to Berkeley Square on the one
side and rapidly down the Green Park on the other. There would
be no difficulty whatever from an engineering point of view in
making a tunnel under Piccadilly. The ground being favourable,

1903 LONDON CONGESTION AND CROSS-TRAFFIC 831

the approaches need not be long, and their flanks are protected.
There are no cross streets to consider. The northern approach could
be constructed in one of two ways, either Berkeley Street might be
made a sunken road altogether and wiped out as a carriage-way into
Piccadilly, or the Duke of Devonshire might be induced to part with
a small strip off his garden and the extreme left of his forecourt.
The last would be the most expensive, but London spends hundreds
of thousands a year in street widenings. For the southern approach
there is already in existence the footpath straight down from
Piccadilly to the Mall. It is bounded on the east by the gardens of
Arlington Street and other houses, on the west by a fine line of trees.
It would be unnecessary to touch either. It would only be a
question of turning what is now a very broad footpath into a roadway
like Constitution Hill or the Mall. The width is the same, and the
class of traffic would necessarily be the same. At the Piccadilly end
the road would be sunken and out of sight, halfway down it would
gradually come up to the surface. And then as we get past Bridge-
water House there open out fresh possibilities. The proposed fore-
court of Queen Victoria's memorial comes almost to that point. The
roadway of Constitution Hill is to be diverted along its northern face,
sweeping round to the Mall by Stafford House. Let that be done,
but also let it be continued due east past Bridgewater House
to Cleveland How. If it were possible to carry all this out the
results would be as follows. Cabs and carriages from Hyde Park
Corner for Pall Mall and the Strand would come down Constitution
Hill and run straight through. There would be no necessity to go
round St. James's Palace. If they were bound for Whitehall, the
Embankment, or the City, they would swing round into the. Mall
and pass along it, and out by the new entrance which we are promised
near the Admiralty. If their destination was Westminster their
quickest route would probably be by Birdcage Walk. From Mayfair
they would use the reconstructed Berkeley Street, dip under Pic-
cadilly, and coming down the new road would turn east to Pall Mall
and the Mall. From Bond Street and the north they would follow
the same route. It would be to the advantage of the whole West
End, and would save a quarter of a mile to an infinite number of
people. It would take two minutes less time to drive from the
Wellington Club to the Carlton Club, Lord Eosebery would get from
Berkeley Square to the House of Lords five minutes earlier, and the
happy couple departing straight from St. Greorge's, Hanover Square,
to Paris and the Kiviera would be able to leave for Victoria five
minutes later. And when some people may ask why the money of
the ratepayers should be spent in making a new road for the sole
advantage of those who use cabs and carriages, the answer is that it
would at one and the same moment certainly cure, in the interests
of the whole community, the worst block in Piccadilly. It would

832 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

only be carrying out Mr. Bryce's proposal of ' appropriating certain
thoroughfares to certain kinds of traffic.'

So much for the advantages of such a scheme. Would anybody
lose by it? It is only with extreme diffidence that any proposal
that appears to entrench upon the amenities of the royal parks
should ever be advanced. They are the inheritance of the King,
they are the joy of the people. Of his Gracious Majesty's sympathy
with everything that is for the good of London we are assured. He
would naturally ask to be convinced that the public would benefit.
And what would the public say ? Remember that it would not be
necessary to cut one good tree or in any way destroy the park. It
is a question of turning a little-used footway into a carriage-way,
that is all. From Piccadilly, the fact that there was such a sunken
way would never be noticed ; from the houses in Arlington Street
and St. James's Place which look out over the grass, the road would
be practically invisible. It would be Carlton House Terrace and the
Mall over again, and so much would be gained that whatever
authority carried it out could afford to be liberal to those whose
interests were affected. If Lord Windsor and Sir Schomberg
M'Donnell wish to signalise their first year of office by striking a
swingeing blow in the cause of fast traffic here is their chance. If
Mr. Davies, the far-seeing Chairman of the Improvements Committee
of the London County Council, is anxious to give an object lesson in
the most satisfactory way of treating congestion, he will not hesitate
on the score of expense.

Here then are two places around which those who desire to see
the cross-traffic question seriously tackled may allow their imagination
to play. Both are possible, neither would be prohibitively costly.
But when all is said and done these are but examples for the sake of
illustration, two out of ten thousand, of the only possible way of
dealing with the one everlasting bugbear. It must be brought home
to everybody that if they want to move fast themselves, and to be
supplied with necessities or luxuries whose price depends upon
speed, they must agitate, agitate, agitate, until they find a man, a
council or a government — better still if they can arrive simultaneously
at all three — who will look a generation ahead and take this great
overgrown octopus and Haussmannise it throughout. And what does
a modern Haussmannisation mean ? It goes much further than wide
boulevards with avenues of trees. We live in scientific times, and
ask, not only for the width and the trees, but for streets of concrete
and steel. They talk of fifty millions to arrange a system of tubes
deep down in the London clay. Would it need any more capital
if a few strong men, backed by Parliament, backed by the credit of
London, backed, as they well might be if envy and spoliation were
ruled out, by those great ground landlords — in most cases not
individuals but corporate bodies, hospitals and charities — whose

1903 LONDON CONGESTION AND CROSS-TRAFFIC 833

property would be improved, were empowered to drive through the
meaner streets four, five or six arterial ways, scienti6c and up-to-date
as they could be made. In the bowels of the earth there would be
laid drain pipes and water pipes and tunnels, capable perhaps of
carrying railway carriages and trucks running in from all over the
country. Just under the surface, shallow tramways and galleries for
the thousand and one wire connections which will soon be the
necessity of all our lives. On the surface, people, carriages and
horses, all that moves slowly and wishes to stop by the way. Above,
raised so as to be independent of cross-traffic, moving platforms and
a bicycle and motor road. Everywhere new values would be created ;
and, given large powers, given financial capacity and probity, no
money would be lost, and London would be encouraged to live and
thrive and be healthy and happy.

I admit that there is another view to take of the whole question :
that it may be argued that the so-called home counties of England
are over-populated already, that water will run short, that sewage
will taint the ground and poison the air, and that the great city
should be forbidden rather than encouraged to expand over the
surrounding country. If any government of this earth had the
power to lead the migrations of the people, it might be well if they
could induce them to gather elsewhere, over the watersheds. But
that is beyond the wit of mortals, and I do not envy the man who,
having the chance of helping London to stretch herself outwards, for
one reason or another turns a deaf ear, and takes the risk of living
to see her pine and droop and die. It would be a painful death to
watch.

GEORGE S. C. SWINTON.

VOL, LIII — No. 315 3 I

834 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

A FORGOTTEN ADVENTURER

THE stage has many claims to represent real life, and perhaps it is
in no respect more true to Nature than when it relieves the tragic
sufferings of princes and heroes with the adventures of the comic
retainer — the faithful henchman who believes in his chosen master
through thick and thin, undergoes peril and discomfort on his behalf,
and ultimately disappears unnoticed into private life while the
central figure ascends the throne, or descends into the grave, amidst
the plaudits or sympathy of the audience.

The histories of the Stuarts and Bourbons afford many such
examples, and it may be worth while momentarily to rescue from
obscurity one of these half-comic, half-pathetic figures, the Baron
de Kolli.

Eighty years ago this individual gave to the world his own
version of his adventures ; and reference to French and English
papers of 1810 sufficiently confirms the main outlines of his story
to make it worthy of acceptance as a characteristic episode of the
period.

The manner in which Napoleon played off King Charles the
Fourth of Spain against his son Ferdinand the Seventh is well
known. The father, in successive attacks of senile terror, had at one
moment charged his son with high treason, at another abdicated in
his favour, and in yet a third appealed to the Emperor against his
disobedient offspring. The qualities of the son were not greatly
superior to those of the father, but, in the words of the historian
Eose, 'it was enough for his countrymen that he opposed the Court';
and he was received with acclamation when he entered Madrid as
King, while hoping all the time to secure his throne by marriage
with a Bonaparte Princess.

Napoleon was exactly in the position of the boy who, called
upon to decide between the claims of two comrades quarrelling for
a nut, awarded half the shell to either and the kernel to himself.
He decoyed both sections of the Spanish Eoyal Family to Bayonne,
and induced both Charles and Ferdinand severally to sign away their
royal rights in exchange for castles and pensions.

Ferdinand and the Infantes Don Carlos and Don Antonio were

1903 A FORGOTTEN ADVENTURER 835

handed over to Talleyrand, with injunctions to 'amuse them ' at his
Castle of Valenpay. Talleyrand, says Lady Blennerhassett, did what
he could.

His head groom put them on horseback for the first time ; his keepers taught
them to shoot ; his cooks forgot their art in endeavouring to please them ; and his
own attempts at educating them, which began in the library, gradually sank to
the level of a picture-book.

Sympathetic spirits at a distance evolved a very different ideal of
the interesting exiles : the heart of De Kolli, who had then never seen
them, was stirred by their grievances, and he draws this fancy
portrait of Ferdinand :

The continual study to contain himself enabled him to acquire that strength of
mind against which the arrows of adversity are now falling powerless. His
occupatioos were all of the fittest kind to lighten the weight of a great misfortune
or to charm the long and tedious hours of captivity. History, which he consulted
for lessons of conduct, served to feed him with hopes.

These hopes, De Kolli determined, should not be frustrated if he
could fulfil them.

De Kolli (otherwise Kelly) seems to have been an Irishman by birth,
to have at some time acquired the title, or at all events the uniform,
of a Colonel in the Gendarmerie, and to have been employed in
secret missions on behalf of the Bourbons in different parts of the
Continent. His exact nationality is hard to ascertain, but as his
memoirs were translated into; English (from what language is not
specified) it is fair to assume that this was not his native tongue.
He is called at different times and by different persons Chevalier,
Count, and Baron de Kolli. Since his memoirs appear under the
last title we need not grudge him the distinction, though it may be
remarked that the decree, which in after years conferred upon him a
Spanish Order, specially dispensed with the proof of nobility required
by the statutes.

Fired by the desire to rescue the young King of Spain (or
Prince of Asturias as he was called by his captors), De Kolli in
1809 communicated with the British Government, and met with
distinct encouragement, even if the first advances did not come
from London. The initial difficulty was to reach England for the
purpose of receiving his credentials and instructions. Being
apparently in Belgium, he resolved to go ' by way of Antwerp,' and
thence to find means of joining the English ships, then waiting to
remove the remnant of Chatham's ill-fated expedition from the
fever-stricken swamps of Walcheren. De Kolli learnt that the fleet
was not starting on its return journey so; soon as he expected, and,
while trying to collect useful information at Antwerp, he took up
his abode at the Trappist convent of Westmall, a short distance from
that city. His residence there must have introduced a little pleasing

3 i 2

836 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

variety into the lives of the brethren. He tells us that he { received
the most delicate attentions ' from the Superior, who ' neglected no
means to preserve him from the fangs of the police, which had
more than once carried its researches into the interior of these
peaceful abodes.'

In the course of De Kolli's daily expeditions into Antwerp he
made the acquaintance of a young gentleman called Albert de St.
Bonnel, who ' was still at the age when a noble and generous action
makes the heart beat.' For the purpose of avoiding conscription he
had taken refuge in the administration of the materiel de la guerre,
in which he had acquired a variety of information likely to be valu-
able to Kolli, who nevertheless asserts that he was inspired with
the desire to be useful to Albert when he offered him the position
of secretary in his enterprise. Albert accepted, and, to test his
courage, De Kolli suggested to him the possibility of seizing a
somewhat isolated gun-brig in the middle of the night and utilising
it for the voyage to Walcheren. Albert, probably well aware that
there was no serious chance of making the attempt, readily assented,
and this convinced his employer of his resolution and audacity, in
which happy belief he regretfully avows himself to have been subse-
quently undeceived.

In the beginning of December a case of books reached the ex-
pectant adventurer, and he found his final instructions in the middle
of a volume of Marmontel, the leaves of which had been carefully
pasted together. Thereupon the allies started for Holland, but
while seating themselves at table at an inn on the boundary of the
two States they overheard a stranger telling his travelling companion
that the gendarmes were in the daily habit of visiting this inn to
examine the passports. One would have thought that in the period
of waiting such necessary documents might have been procured :
not at all — this would have spoilt the occasion for a display of
ingenuity. Albert had no passport, and De Kolli's, besides being
only for travelling in the interior, described a bearer of different
height and colouring from himself.

Accordingly the conspirators passed out through the inn yard
while the gendarmes were entering by the principal gate, told their
postilion to overtake them on the high road, and walked to a rivulet
which formed part of the frontier. While they were preparing to
cross, a Custom-house officer appeared on a neighbouring bridge and
summoned them. Without hesitation De Kolli sprang lightly over
the stream ; the less agile Albert landed in the middle, but, scram-
bling out, rejoined his companion, and both walkedTover the fields
till they met their carriage. This had been but slightly searched,
and the guard on the bridge seems to have satisfied his sense of duty
by a shout without taking further trouble in the matter.

Arrived at the island of Overflakkee, in Holland, De Kolli agreed

1903 A FORGOTTEN ADVENTURER 837

with the master of a felucca to transport him to Walcheren, but
communications with that island and with the English fleet were
seriously interrupted by a French privateer and a Dutch frigate.
For two days the captain of the felucca declined to move ; towards
the close of the second a singular noise in the hold disclosed to the
acute De Kolli that the transport was carrying some twenty pigs and
a cargo of vegetables and poultry to sell to the English. He there-
upon determined that, if the prospect of so good a market were
insufficient to instigate the phlegmatic sailor to run any risk, he
must take the matter into his own hands. He looked into the
captain's cabin and saw him lying asleep in the midst of his sailors,
and in an open press he espied a dozen muskets, as many swords, and
some bottles of liquor. This repository he approached on tiptoe,
locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and went off to impart
to Albert a plan to be executed at midnight. Albert was provided
with a musket and stood sentry over the arsenal. Captain and crew,
still slumbering, were locked into their quarters, and De Kolli,
returning on deck, kicked up the sailor on watch who was sleeping
under the helm, and ordered him to rise, hoist the sail, cut the cable,
and put out to sea.

The astonished wretch attempted to refuse, on the score of bad
weather and the enemy. The cocking of De Kolli's musket conquered
his irresolution, and they ran past the privateer, regardless of her
challenge, ' Who goes there ? ' The raging storm soon obliged
De Kolli to release the captive crew ; but, far from being angry, the
sailors * shouted with joy ' when they heard what had happened.
Presumably they felt that others had run the risk and that they
should share the profits.

The English fleet was sighted at noon next day ; De Kolli's
statement that he had despatches for the Government was believed,
and the frigate Sabrina took him to the Thames. Arriving in
London on the last day of December, he promptly addressed the
Duke of Kent, enclosing a credential which he does not describe,
but which elicited a courteous answer from Colonel Vesey, Private
Secretary to H.R.H., and an intimation that the Duke would receive
him without delay at his residence near Baling. The interview
with the Duke was followed by one with the Foreign Secretary, Lord
Wellesley, who discussed the whole scheme with De Kolli at Apsley
House on the evening of the llth of January 1810.

De Kolli declares that the Duke of Kent himself desired to
become the principal in the enterprise, and was only prevented
by the injunctions of the King his father. This seems almost
incredible, but that the King and Ministers really furnished the
means and documents necessary for the undertaking could not be
subsequently disavowed. De Kolli was put into communication
with Admiral Sir George Cockburn, at whose house further meetings

838 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

were held, Lord Wellesley going there by night without attendants
and in a borrowed carriage.

A small squadron was formed, consisting of two men-of-war, the
Implacable and the Disdainful, attended by a brig and a schooner.
Plate, clothes, books, and astronomical instruments were put on board
for the use of the monarch, who, it was expected, would be shortly
conveyed to his kingdom ; nor was a priest with holy ornaments
for divine service forgotten.

De Kolli accompanied Admiral Cockburn to Plymouth, leaving
M. de St. Bonnel to follow with the necessary credentials and funds.
He arrived with these in charge of a King's messenger on the 26th
of February, and they were certainly sufficient for the purpose. A
letter was addressed by Lord Wellesley to De Kolli personally assur-
ing him of his confidence and esteem, and begging his acceptance
of a sword of honour, which later on, we are told, was -that which
Tippoo Sultan had in his hand when killed. Two other letters were
from George the Third to Ferdinand — one in French, dated the
31st of January, expressing to him the profound sympathy which
the British monarch felt for him as prisoner at Valenpay, and
begging him to ' reflect on the wisest and most effectual means of
tearing himself from the indignities to which he was subjected '
and showing himself to his faithful people. ' Les moyens les plus
efficaces ' then offered were not specified, but Ferdinand could read
between the lines. The other was a duplicate of the Latin credential
letter which Sir Henry Wellesley, as ambassador, was to present to the
Spanish Junta governing in Ferdinand's name. The fourth docu-
ment was a Latin letter addressed by Charles the Fourth to George
in 1802, announcing Ferdinand's marriage to his cousin Princess
Maria Antonia of the Two Sicilies, since deceased. This was endorsed
by Lord Wellesley as 'entrusted to the Baron de Kolli, who will have
the honour to submit it to His Catholic Majesty's inspection as a
proof of his mission to that monarch.'

In addition to these credentials, Albert was the bearer of a packet
of diamonds valued at 208,000 francs for De Kolli's private emoluments
and the first expenses of his mission ' ; and an unlimited credit with
a Paris banker had been opened for King Ferdinand. The English
Ministry had further procured for the mission French passports and
blank orders, and papers from various departments of Napoleon's
Government. Nothing seemed to have been forgotten, and the
expedition sailed with high hopes on the 28th of February.

Despite squalls of such violence that a sailor and an officer met
their death by drowning, the squadron anchored ten days later in
the Bay of Quiberon, where the appearance of British ships was too
frequent to excite any suspicion. Here Sir George Cockburn decided
that De Kolli should go on shore to reconnoitre and fix on the spots
where correspondence should be deposited, and where the rescued

1903 A FORGOTTEN ADVENTURER 839

Sovereign should be received by his deliverers. These observations
were effectually carried out under the conduct of Mr. Westfall, the
Admiral's first lieutenant, but Sir George felt rather uneasy at their
prolonged absence. Such was his interest in De Kolli that he
one day volunteered the promise, ' If fortune does not favour you, I
will myself present your children to the Parliament and obtain its
support for them.' In various anxious moments our hero refers
pathetically to his somewhat shadowy children, but never to their
mother.

Meantime a certain Baron de Ferriet, who was in the pay of
the British Government and happened at that time to be in the
neighbouring Island of Houat, became aware of the proximity of
English ships, and asked to be taken on board the Implacable, a
request which, after some hesitation, was granted. M. de Ferriet
brought information that the French coastguards had received
orders to watch for two strangers who were expected to land almost
immediately. Despite this apparently friendly caution, De Kolli
suspected the spy's good faith, and by way of testing his intentions
offered him fifty gold ducats for vague services to be thereafter
rendered, an offer at first refused but afterwards accepted. A
long conversation between these Barons seems to have had no
particular purpose save to enable De Kolli to repudiate with exalted
sentiments De Ferriet's suggestion that Bonaparte's life should be
attempted.

Ultimately it was decided to mislead De Ferriet as to the spot
selected for landing, and to transfer him to the Disdainful, with
instructions to the captain of that frigate to keep him on board for
a certain time, and then to put him ashore near the Sables d'Olonne.
Unfortunately these orders were not carried out, and information
fatal to the enterprise reached the French police.

Sir George, believing that the coastguards were really on the
alert, tried to induce De Kolli to select a different spot for landing,
but in vain ; so on the 9th of March two boats, manned with thirty
armed sailors, conveyed him to within some thirty fathoms of the
coast. Here Lieutenant Westfall threw himself into the sea, followed
by the crew. A stout seaman took Kolli on his shoulders, and he
and Albert were left on shore to carry out the daring project, which
was to restore a Bourbon to the throne of his ancestors.

The design, throttled before it came to birth, was to procure an
interview with Ferdinand, and to abscond with him on horseback, by
the Vannes road, to Sarzeau, near the landing-place. In this neigh-
bourhood are certain salt-pits, by which a trusty agent was to be
stationed ready to signal to the ships ; on receiving the signal the
Admiral would have immediately landed and taken the fugitives on
board.

Meantime a berline, driven with great affectation of mystery and

840 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

provided with an elaborate system of relays, was to have proceeded
by the Tours road, and this it was presumed would have been quite
sufficient to have thrown Fouche's police off the scent.

As a first move, our conspirators, just landed on a desolate shore,
had to reach Sarzeau, where they could hire horses, and now Albert
began to show the white feather. They had to plod through clayey
fields interspersed with pools and ditches. De Kolli pressed vigor-
ously on ; Albert lagged behind, and at length neither his steps nor
his voice could be heard. To the shouts of his leader only the
barking of dogs responded.

De Kolli retraced his path with melancholy forebodings, when
his ' feet became entangled between the legs of Albert/ who was
lying at full length in a ditch, apparently fainting, overcome with
bodily and mental exhaustion. A glass of Madeira partially restored
his physical powers, but all the exhortations of his companion were
unavailing to induce him to continue his journey without some
hours' rest. ' At least,' said De Kolli, ' if you allow yourself to be
taken, secure by an act of courage the secret of the State and the
King's fate.' ' I swear to do so,' answered the young man. Where-
upon De Kolli handed him, according to his own story, a thousand
pounds' worth of diamonds, to be accounted for when they met at
Paris or Vincennes, saying that while prudence forbade him to give
him any other instructions, he was to ' Die rather than betray the
Government ! ' Nevertheless, Albert reappeared rather shamefacedly
at Vannes, and the colleagues, thus reunited, proceeded on horseback
to Paris, Albert still occasionally lingering in the rear for repose.

It was necessary to visit Paris before the plans conceived could
be carried into execution — in order that ready money might be
obtained, and both the real and fictitious relays of horses provided.

For better security from police observation De Kolli, having
previously investigated the topography of Valencay, hired a house
in the forest of Vincennes, of which he took possession on the 17th
of March. Albert generally slept in Paris, where he remained to-
supervise the preparations ; and the gardener's son, a boy of eleven,
was the only factotum at Vincennes. Unfortunately, De Kolli could
not resist the desire to enlist another follower, and engaged a certain
Sieur Richard to stay with him. This man was an ex-Vendean soldiery
and De Kolli made him magnificent speeches concerning the virtues
of the Bourbons and the honour of serving them to the death. ' To
die for one's captive Sovereign is not paying too dear for immortal
glory ! ' said he. ' You turn pale, Richard ! Are you afraid of
sharing the fate of the faithful, whose ghosts are still trembling OQ
the shores of Quiberon, in the desert of Grenoble, or under the vaults
of Vincennes ? '

' This apostrophe,' he naively adds, 'astonished Richard without
at all touching his soul.' The unreasonable recruit askedi to know

1903 A FORGOTTEN ADVENTURER 841

the object for which he risked becoming a trembling ghost, and did
not appear altogether satisfied when asked what that mattered so
long as he was only called upon ' to combat the same adversaries ? '
He not unnaturally supposed that De Kolli had designs upon the
life of Bonaparte, and, while grateful for well-paid employment,
evidently realised the instability of his position, and determined to
provide for his own eafe retreat.

On the 24th, the day previous to that on which De Kolli intended
to leave for Valenpay, he directed Bichard to go and make some
purchases in Paris. While the horse was being put into the cabriolet
Kolli talked to his messenger in the garden and gave him notes
to the value of 2,700 francs. He was about to remark on his
gloomy aspect when a knocking was heard at the front door, and
the gardener's boy approaching said that his father wanted to enter
in search of some tools. De Kolli bade Kichard unlock it, and
followed him to the house, when the pair were suddenly seized upon
by eleven men, headed by the Inspector-General of Police, Sieur
Paques, whom their victim instantly recognised ' by his savage look
and forbidding air.' The rest of the scene is in the best style of
tragi-comedy. An order signed by Fouche ' to arrest three indi-
viduals charged with corresponding with the enemies of the State '
was produced, and challenged in vain.

The ' myrmidons ' were ordered to ' carry them into their apart-
ments ' : cupboards were ransacked, while the Inspector demanded,
' Who are you ? ' De Kolli, brought to bay, made a magniloquent
declaration of his real objects, and Richard, enlightened for the first
time, exclaimed in a tone of despair, ' What — was it for that ? '

The desk or portfolio containing money and documents was
opened, and, says the prisoner, ' while they were feasting their eyes
with the sight of the gold, I took secretly out of my pocket a note
which I had received the evening before from one of my best friends.
I tore it up very quickly and swallowed the pieces.'

De Kolli was carried first before M. Demarest, Fouche's second
in command, by whom he was subjected to a long examination. He
takes great credit to himself for having misled his interrogator as to
the vessel in which he sailed, and thereby caused an error in the
official report ; but Demarest certainly scored, as he elicited the name
of the person with whom the diamonds had been deposited.

The net result of the interview as regards De Kolli was that he
was convinced of the treachery of De Ferriet and Richard, and of the
innocence of St. Bonnel. Albert, though unconcerned in his arrest,
had, however, committed some other fault, which his employer
magnanimously declines to reveal, only saying that his name ' will
not appear again in these Memoirs.' Poor Albert ! His full name
was never recorded by De Kolli, but is supplied in the police report.

The subsequent interview with Fouche is related at length,

842 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

and bears every trace of veracity, as De Kolli is delightfully uncon-
scious of the good-humoured contempt with which he is treated by
the Duke of Otranto. The latter begins by commenting on the
utter impossibility of the enterprise, and when his prisoner retorts
that Sir Sidney Smith escaped from the Temple, the Duke quietly
remarks, ' He wished to escape.'

' Ferdinand,' asserts De Kolli, ' is not disinclined to do so.'

Fouche asks where proofs of such inclination exist. ' In Spain,
at Bayonne — in every part of Europe ; in the heart of every man
who respects himself,' exclaims the champion.

After a little lecture on De Kolli's folly in interfering ' in the
quarrels of nations,' the Duke sarcastically adds : ' I can praise you
for a zeal which, to be admired, only wanted the consent of the
person who inspired it. Do you know him ? '

' He is,' responds De Kolli, ' a monarch, the heir to the goodness
and virtues of St. Louis.'

One can imagine the shrug of the shoulders with which the Duke
remarks that, had the letters been presented to Ferdinand, the offers
contained in them would have been rejected, to which De Kolli
replies, with the unshaken conviction of happy ignorance, ' he would
have received them with the deepest emotion.'

The Duke tries to point out that the British Government had
sent De Kolli on a fool's errand which ought to have cost him his
life : De Kolli makes a beautiful speech in defence of his employers,
and declares his confidence in their protection of his orphan children.

Fouche, possibly touched by the enthusiasm of an evidently not
very dangerous conspirator, assures him for his comfort that all his
correspondents have been set at liberty, except Albert and Richard ;
and, after politely declaring that it would have been a pleasure to
have liberated him also, he concludes the interview by relegating
him to the Donjon de Vincennes for the time being.

Now Fouche was just then endeavouring to come to an under-
standing with England, and was conducting negotiations on his
own account through the financier Ouvrard. It is therefore quite
probable, as De Kolli insinuates, that he did not care to make this
abortive conspiracy a fresh cause of quarrel with the British Govern-
ment, and that had their emissary been willing to give him useful
information he would have set him free, and said no more about the
affair. It would, however, have been difficult then, and is certainly
impossible now, to penetrate the designs of the crafty Minister of
Police. De Kolli claims to have rejected his advances, and perhaps
what happened at this crisis is best summed up in the words which
O'Meara reports as having been used by Napoleon at St. Helena :

Kolli [said the exiled Emperor] was discovered by the police by his always
drinking a bottle of the best wine, which so ill corresponded with his dress and
apparent poverty that it excited a suspicion among some of the spies, and he was

1903 A FORGOTTEN ADVENTURER 843

arrested, searched, and his papers taken from him. A police agent was then
dressed up, instructed to represent Kolli, and sent -with the papers taken from
him to Ferdinand; who, however, would not attempt to effect his escape,
although he had no suspicion of the deceit practised upon him.

This indeed was the astute Fouche's next move. He would not
publish abroad the plot of the British Government without demon-
strating to the world at the same time that it was frustrated, not
only by the vigilance of the French police, but by the devotion of
the Spanish princes to their Imperial Protector. The farce was
carefully played out. A police agent impersonating Kolli went to
Valenpay, under pretence of being an expert in turnery having
curious articles for sale. In later years De Kolli extorted from the
Duke of Otranto and from the agent himself letters confessing that
this emissary was none other than our old friend Eichard, and
there is no reason to doubt the fact. Richard, then, found his way
into the castle, and, apparently by the connivance of M. d'Amezaga,
Intendant of the Household, was placed in a gallery leading to the
royal apartments. Here he saw the Infante Don Antonio, whom he
mistook for the Prince of Asturias, and to whom he made somewhat
confused suggestions of flight. Had De Kolli himself urged the
escapade with his undoubted eloquence, it is doubtful whether he
could have roused the Princes to take the risk, but, introduced with
intentional half-heartedness, the proposition was naturally rejected
with scorn, and drew from Ferdinand, when communicated to him,
the desired protestations and disclaimers. He wrote to M. Berthemy,
Governor of the castle, that he took this occasion of reiterating his
sentiments of inviolable fidelity towards the Emperor, and expressed
' the horror with which he was inspired by this infernal project, of
which he hoped that the authors and abettors would be punished as
they deserved.'

Eichard, having been duly arrested at Valencay on the 6th of
April, was brought up for examination on the 8th. He gave
his name and status as Charles Leopold Baron de Kolli, born
in Ireland, Minister from His Majesty George the Third to the
Prince of Asturias, Ferdinand the Seventh. His account of his
instructions from the British Government and of his subsequent
proceedings and intentions does not differ materially from that
given by the real De Kolli. He calls the Admiral's ship the Incom-
parable, (evidently the name so cunningly substituted by De Kolli
for the Implacable), and tells us that the King of England's letters
were concealed in the lining of De Kolli's coat, some of the diamonds
being sewn into his collar and waistband, and the remainder into
those of Albert.

Fouche, being thus provided with a complete dossier of genuine
and forged information, cast a bomb in the shape of a State Paper
and exploded it in the Moniteur on the 26th of April. This number

844 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

contains Fouche's official statement to the Emperor enclosing M.
Berthemy's report of the pseudo-Kolli's arrest, and particulars of his
examination. The letter of Ferdinand to Berthemy is given, and also
those from and to George the Third seized by the police. To emphasise
the futility of the attempt, in the same issue of the paper are published
accounts of the festivitiesjwith which the Spanish Princes had cele-
brated the recent marriage of Napoleon and Maria Louisa, and a
letter dated the 4th of -April addressed by the Prince of Asturias to
Berthemy, in which he repeats his desire to become the adopted son
of the Emperor.

News travelled slowly across the Channel in those days, but on
the 7th of May the English papers republished the compromising
documents, with comments of a more or less incredulous nature :

It is impossible [says the Times] to attach any degree of credit whatever to
that part of this statement which affects our Government without ascribing to
the Nobleman at the head of the Foreign Department the utmost indiscretion.
No proposition of the kind could have been entertained and encouraged without
greatly adding to that peril in which the Royal Prisoner it was intended to release
hourly stands. It is not impossible, however, that a proposal of this nature
might have been made to our Government by some French or other foreign
emissary, but we can hardly believe that the bait was so easily taken.

The Morning Chronicle remarks :

This story deserves very little credit. If such a plan had existed, it is very
unlikely that a squadron should have been sent when a fishing-boat would so
much better have answered the purpose. . . . Other considerations show its
extreme improbability.

Next day the Press had perforce to change its point of view.
When the House of Commons met on the afternoon of the 7th of May,
Mr. Whitbread questioned the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the
letter purporting to have been signed by the King, and countersigned
by the Marquis of Wellesley. As it was hardly possible, he said, that
such a letter could have been written by the King, he wished to
give the right hon. gentleman an opportunity of removing all
doubts, and therefore asked whether it was to be looked upon as
a document which had any pretensions to the character of authen-
ticity ? Mr. Perceval, who spoke in a low tone, was understood to
decline any answer, ' on the ground that it might be prejudicial to
the public service ' — that convenient formula not unknown at the
present day.

The Times covers the retreat with what dignity could be
mustered at short notice :

It seems to be admitted on the part of Ministry that the Count de Kolli, whose
real name now appears to be Kelly, was accredited by the British Government
for the purpose of assisting Ferdinand the Seventh to withdraw from his place of
confinement. The merit of the attempt, of course, depends upon the previous
probability of success. We cannot easily say what the French papers mean by
designating it as a horrid and atrocious plot. The restoration of this Prince to

1903 A FORGOTTEN ADVENTURER 845

his subjects, even by'stealth, if possible, is unquestionably the duty of us, the
allies of the Spanish nation.

The Morning Chronicle weeps tears of national shame :

With extreme mortification' we are obliged to confess our error respecting the
plot announced in the Moniteur for carrying off Ferdinand from his captivity.
Imbecile as we thought the Administration of this country to be, we did no4;
believe that the new Secretary'of State for the Foreign Department could have so
absurdly exposed his royal master's councils to scorn, and wasted the treasure
of the country in a contrivance so puerile, and with agents so unfit as it now
appears he did. . . . We have laid the particulars before our readers, and we
have only to add that they are all true. Mr. Whitbread last night put the ques-
tion to Ministers — but they were mute. Poor Lord Wellesley had not a friend
to defend him from the reproach of the only expedition he has contrived !

Lord Wellesley, accustomed to Indian methods, always managed
his own department with little reference to the Cabinet, so it is
probable that, though his colleagues were bound to give him tacit
support, they felt indisposed to say much on his behalf.

While the British Ministers regretted this rashness as silently as
they could on the Treasury Bench, their unlucky representative
expiated his in a solitary dungeon at Vincennes. So active a spirit
could not remain impassive, and in his account of his four years'
captivity in this fortress we hear of communications with his fellow-
prisonera obtained by bribery and other expedients, and of daring
but unsuccessful attempts at escape.

Among those with whom he contrived not only correspondence
but interviews were Count Julius de Polignac, afterwards Ambas-
sador in England, and his brother. These gentlemen gave De Kolli
a copy of the official account of his enterprise, which naturally filled
him with indignation. To have failed to reach Valencay was bad
enough, to be credited with the bungled attempt of an impostor was
to suffer insult heaped upon injury. De Kolli was quite as furious
with the police for the letters attributed to Ferdinand as with the
answers which they put into his own mouth. He fills pages with
arguments that the monarch for whom he had risked his neck
neither would, could, nor did use the language of disavowal and
subservience addressed through Berthemy to Napoleon. We can
sympathise with his feelings, and rejoice that he still enjoyed such
comfort as self-deception alone could have afforded him. The
Counts de Polignac, who were less strictly guarded than De Kolli,
secretly supplied him with the writing materials necessary to draw
up a protest against the garbled version of the French authorities,
and, further, undertook to transmit this memorial with a covering
letter to Lord Wellesley. After the removal of the De Polignacs
to a still easier place of confinement, our hero relates, among other
incidents, how he frustrated an attempt to search him for valuable
papers, which he still possessed, by stabbing himself with a pair of
scissors. Finally, he made a resolute bid for freedom in the way

846 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

which all annals of prison romance lead the reader to ezpect. He
excavated a hole in the outer wall, let himself down with a rope
made of sheets, and nearly succeeded in passing out through a draw-
bridge gate as one of the masons then employed about the prison.
Unfortunately, some real masons came up at the moment when the
warder was about to unlock this gate, and their failure to recognise
the fugitive as a comrade led to his re-arrest and confinement in a
secret cell, too high up in the eastern tower of the donjon to admit
of similar attempts in future.

Here, despite the watchfulness of his gaolers, he scraped acquaint-
ance with several Spanish prisoners of distinction, and here he
remained until February 1814, when he was transferred to Saumur
by order of Fouche's successor, Savary, Duke of Eovigo.

Eumours of Napoleon's difficulties now began freely to penetrate
even prison walls, and { on the 1 6th of April at noon the doors of
the prison were opened, the clanking of chains ceased to be heard,
and the cry of " Long live the Bourbons ! " was the only one that rang
through the sepulchral vaults.'

Of the reunion with the children, often mourned and so long
deprived of their father's care, we are told nothing ; but without
loss of time De Kolli rushed off to the bureau of police, and, while
panic and disorganisation still prevailed, managed to repossess
himself of his original credentials, and even to carry off other papers
likely to be serviceable. Armed with these, he hunted down Richard,
and, as previously stated, forced from him a confession of guilt ; he
then embarked on an epistolary campaign, through which we need
not follow him in detail.

He claimed from the restored Government the diamonds, bank-
notes, carriage, horse, sword of honour, and other articles of which
he had been deprived, and a royal ordinance restored to him 15,000
francs and his movable property, but declared the diamonds given
him by a Government then at war with France to be permanently
confiscated. De Kolli did not cease to protest, and never brought
himself to believe that so unjust a decree could have been promulgated
by a Bourbon properly acquainted with the facts.

He further accuses the Duke of Rovigo of detaining from him
Tippoo Sultan's sword.

A letter to Lord "Wellesley elicited from that nobleman a cautious
answer to the effect that he was no longer in office, and that all the
papers relating to the Valenpay affair had been handed to Lord
Liverpool, but that he would be most happy to be of service to De
Kolli if the British Government wished to move further in the
transaction. Postponement to the Greek Kalends indeed ! Ministers
were, however, not ungenerous to the envoy of the late Government,
and, realising what would most gratify his loyal heart, and possibly
what would best serve to quiet his active pen, they furnished him

1903 A FORGOTTEN ADVENTURER 847

with ample means to journey to Madrid, and even allowed him to
carry thither his former credentials.

Bearing these in a portfolio of brocade studded with golden
fleurs-de-lis and embroidered with an appropriate inscription, he was
fully compensated for all his labours and sufferings by an audience
with the monarch on whose behalf they were undergone. The
presentation having been made by Sir Henry Wellesley, ' Well,
Kolli,' said the King, ' do you find the air of Madrid pleasanter than
that of Vincennes ? '

* Sire, the air of Valenpay would not have been less pleasant to me/
' How are your children ? ' ' Your Majesty's goodness makes life too
agreeable for us not to enjoy it heartily.' A few more civil sentences,
and the Cross of the Order of Charles the Third bestowed upon
himself and his son almost overwhelmed De Kolli with a sense of
gratitude. A few years later, in return for a MS. copy of his
memoirs, the King made him a grant of money from the revenues of
Havannah, but from this source the Spanish officials took care that
he should derive little profit.

We last hear of De Kolli's activity during the Hundred Days,
when he was appointed second in command of the Regiment of
Maria Theresa, first raised by Madame (the Duchesse d'Angouleme)
from amongst the Royalist volunteers at Bordeaux, a town which she
had vainly attempted to hold for Louis the Eighteenth. On her flight
to England she recommended her officers and men to the King of
Spain, and, reinforced by other emigrants from France and the
Basque Provinces, this regiment was to be attached to the Spanish
Army of the Western Pyrenees. Its career was short. The colonel,
De Barbarin, proposed to lead a small corps of French emigrants
across the Pyrenees and to effect a junction with the Basque chiefs,
with whom he had concerted a plan of campaign ; they were to bring
1,500 followers, who were to be drilled and officered by the emigrants.
After crossing the river Nieve, the Basque guide, with whom the
Frenchmen could only communicate by signs, mistook their destina-
tion and led them into the middle of the hostile lines, surrounded
by enemies four times their number ; the French succeeded in
forming an open front, with some enclosures in their rear. The
colonel, wounded, fell from his horse, ' raised himself in the attitude
of the Dying Gladiator,' and ordered his men to suspend .firing and
charge with the bayonet. De Kolli darted forward, followed by his
friends, and ' overthrew everything that came in their way,' but in
vain. When the last cartridge was expended the intrepid De
Barbarin handed his portfolio to De Kolli, enjoined a retreat, and
shot himself through the head. The remnant were overpowered by
numbers and made prisoners, still shouting ' Vive le Roi ! '

They were conducted to Bayonne, where they awaited their fate
with some anxiety, as it was by no means certain that they would

848 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

not be executed as rebels rather than respected as prisoners of war.
At the beginning of June 1815 they were transferred from the
military to the civil authorities, which increased their suspense, a
suspense happily terminated by the news of Waterloo and the second
restoration of the Bourbons. De Kolli was promptly liberated and
placed at the head of his regiment, which was selected to occupy the
citadel of Bayonne, so that he had the supreme gratification of
commanding where he had been a prisoner.

He had, however, never forgotten ' the delights of home, the
effusions of friendship, nor the endearments of his children ' ; and
towards the end of July he writes to the General commanding the
Army of the Western Pyrenees : ' The Almighty, who presides over
the destinies of France, has replaced on his throne the monarch for
whom every loyal subject is bound to sacrifice himself ' ; and under
these happy circumstances Kolli begs leave to resign his commis-
sion and retire into private life.

Count de Damas-Cruz responds in language equally flowery :

Nothing can be more loyal or more delicate than the sentiments expressed, or
better deserve the general esteem or my personal regrets ; nothing remains for me
but to render that justice to you which the purity of your zeal, your disinterested-
ness, and the most sincere fidelity so fully merit.

With this testimony we may leave our adventurer, confident that
if his impetuous nature and tendency to hero-worship led him into
further difficulties, his boyish self-confidence and sanguine tempera-
ment must have won fresh friends to restore him to freedom and
prosperity.

M. E. JERSEY.

1903

THE NEW ZEALAND ELECTIONS

THE General Election held in New Zealand on the 25th of November
last presents several features that possess more than merely local
interest. The reputation, moreover, acquired by this colony as a
laboratory for political experiments, the attention attracted by its
attitude in the late war, and the impression recently produced in
England by the picturesque personality of its Premier, have com-
bined to give, even to its domestic concerns, a wider interest than
would otherwise be due to its position as a small and distant portion
of the Empire.

The elections were held within a few weeks of the return of Mr.
Seddon to the colony from the Coronation festivities and the con-
ference of Colonial Premiers. The results constitute, therefore, the
verdict of the people upon several matters of Imperial concernment.
It might perhaps have been expected that the perfervid patriotism
of the war-time would be succeeded by reaction. In the Common-
wealth of Australia signs of this are not wanting. Sir Edmund
Barton, on his return, was subjected to some amount of criticism ;
leading papers like the Melbourne Age complain that he has come
back ' more British than Australian ' ; and the Federated Labour
Congress of Australia has made withdrawal from contributing to the
Empire's navy a ' plank ' in its political platform. Of such an
attitude there is not in New Zealand the faintest hint. The Premier
has everywhere been received with enthusiasm ; and the party he
leads has again been returned to power by substantial majorities.
The proposals to which he committed the colony at the Premiers'
conference have received emphatic endorsement at the polls ; practi-
cally none of them were even called in question. Scarcely a voice
was raised at the hustings against the Premier's strongly Imperialist
views ; and if some of the candidates returned are personally opposed
to him on the point, they gauged public opinion too shrewdly to
attempt to make political capital of their criticism. So far as Mr.
Seddon's Imperialism was brought into the court of public opinion,
judgment went ' by default.'

But the main question at issue in the election was the liquor
problem ; and the verdict of the people upon this was so unexpected
as to approach the sensational. Under the licensing law of New

VOL. LIII— No. 315 849 3 K

850 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

Zealand, a local option poll is taken every three years. The franchise
is the same as the parliamentary, and the poll is taken on the same
day and in the same place as that for the selection of members of the
House of Kepresentatives.

Each voter is furnished with two ballot-papers : on the one he
records his vote for a member to represent his constituency ; on the
other he exercises his choice on these three questions : (1) That
licences continue as at present ; (2) That the number be reduced ;
(3) That no licences be granted in the district. In order to carry
(1) or (2) the number of votes given for it must amount to a bare
majority of the number of persons who voted in the constituency ;
in order to carry (3) the number of votes given for it must amount
to more than three-fifths of the total number of voters. If (2) is
carried, the public-houses in the district must be reduced by not less
than 5 or more than 25 per cent. ; if (3) is carried, the sale, though
not the manufacture, of alcoholic liquors is entirely prohibited within
the limits of the electorate. The decision remains in force for three
years ; and the same three-fifths majority that is necessary for the
abolition of licences is requisite also for their restoration.

Under this law, the prohibition party succeeded in 1894 in
carrying abolition in one and reduction in fifteen electorates.
Moderate people seem to have been satisfied with this measure of
success ; for although its numerical strength steadily increased in
the intervening years the party did not succeed in inflicting any
further signal defeat upon the liquor trade. In this contest, how-
ever, six districts declared for prohibition, and ten more for reduction ;
while in many others the voting was so close as to be gravely
ominous for the future of the publican interest.

This is in itself sufficiently significant ; but an examination of
the votes cast throughout the colony reveals results still more
startling.

The Women's Franchise came into force in 1894; from that year,
therefore, dates the effective influence of the Prohibition party.
Taking the figures for the last four elections — the reduction vote
being omitted as unimportant — we shall be able to see clearly the
growth of opinion on the question.

Votes Cast Coutirraance No Licence

1894 . . 105,877 41465 48,856

1896 . . 261,461 141,331 99,936

1899 . . 279,782 143,962 120,542

1902 . . 310,000 ' 146,290 149,585

The large increase between 1894 and 1896 is due to an amend-
ment in the law between those dates. In the former year it was
necessary to a valid poll that half the electors on the roll should

1 Approximate number ; the returns at the time of writing had not been fully
made up.

1903 THE NEW ZEALAND ELECTIONS 851

record their votes ; the Liquor party therefore urged its supporters
to abstain from voting, and the advice was largely followed. Under
the law as it then stood, moreover, the Local Option poll was not,
as now, taken on the same day as the General Election. Excluding
the 1894 returns from the comparison, therefore, it will be seen
that in the six years 1896-1902 'Continuance' shows a numerical
increase of 5,060, equivalent to 4 per cent. ; while ' Prohibition '
shows a numerical increase of 50,460, equivalent to 50 per cent.
Or to illustrate the growth of opinion in a different way : the no
licence vote fell short of the continuance vote in 1896 by 30 per
cent., and in 1899 by 17 per cent. ; it exceeded it in 1902 by 2 per
cent. It is probable, on the analogy of preceding elections, that
1905 will witness some reaction in favour of continuance ; the large
body of moderate people who, without being interested in the trade,
are concerned for liberty of conduct, will probably then bestir them-
selves more than they did on the present occasion. But it cannot
be pretended that the success of prohibition in this election has been
due, to any appreciable extent, to the apathy of its opponents ; for
of the 412,000 adults eligible to vote according to the last census,
the very large proportion of 310,000, or 77 per cent., went to the
polls.

It is evident that, if the total number of voters and the no licence
votes both increase at the same rate during the next six years as
they have during the last six years, then at the licensing poll of
1 908 there will be enough no licence voters .not only to furnish a
bare majority but even a three-fifths majority in favour of colonial
option.

If we examine the returns in detail it will be found that the
growth of the prohibition vote has been general and uniform in the
colony. In the four cities, Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch, and
Danedin, the continuance vote has been practically stationary, while
the no licence vote has increased by 54 per cent. In the southern
city, Dunedin, it has almost doubled itself in the six years. Of the
sixty-eight electorates, more than half give majorities for no licence.
The movement shows, on the whole, more vitality in the south
island than in the north. Four of the six prohibition districts are
in the province of Otago, one being Chalmers, the seaport of
Dunedin ; of the other two, one is Ashburton, the centre of the great
wheat-growing Canterbury Plain ; and the other, Newtown, the
' working-man's suburb ' of Wellington.

The Prohibition party attaches special importance to its victory
in the three inland electorates of Otago. Clutha first declared for
prohibition in 1894 ; so far, however, is this district from being
tired of the experiment, that the trade vote has steadily declined
from 1,618 in 1896 to 1,368 in 1902, while the prohibition vote has

3 K 2

852 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

increased in the same period from 1,989 to 2,248. Moreover, the
two electorates Bruce and Mataura, which are the immediate
neighbours of Clutha, have, with the evidence of its consequences
at their very doors, thrown in their lot, on this occasion, with
prohibition.

The No Licence party will probably now turn its efforts in the
direction of procuring an amendment of the licensing law. Although
but twenty of the seventy-six white members returned are pledged
to its platform, its growing strength at the polls will give it con-
siderable influence in politics. The party will endeavour to secure
legislation providing for ' colonial option,' a plebiscite on the liquor
question taken over the whole colony. Having attained so much
success, it will not be content to continue to apply to the liquor
trade the present method of ' closure by compartments.'

As to the effect of the poll upon property it is impossible at
present to speak with certainty ; the official returns are not yet all1
complete ; in many electorates the voting was so close that re-counts
are now proceeding; and the number of houses to be closed in the
ten ' reduction ' districts has to be determined by the licensing com-
mittees to be elected in March. But in the five new districts that
have declared for abolition the effect will be to close, in June next,
fifty-six public-houses ; to take away a considerable number of
wholesale and bottle licences ; and to limit the sale of breweries
situated in those districts.2 But the value of the property involved
in the trade presents no obstacle to the zeal of the advocates for its
abolition.

' Vested interests ' have no sacred immunities in the eyes of the
New Zealand democracy, and the phrase is not one to conjure with
at the hustings. There is no considerable section of the Prohibition
party that will seriously entertain the question of compensation ; by
the great majority the bare suggestion of such a course would be
scornfully rejected. The poll in Christchurch furnishes significant
evidence of this. In that town the licensing committee, last June,
ordered a number of hotels to be rebuilt as a condition of receiving
renewals of licence. As a consequence there were, on the day of
election, seven large buildings in course of erection in the town, the
scaffolding still round them and the bricklayers still at work. The
contract price for the seven amounts to over 60,000£. It might
have been expected that with these buildings, erected by order of
the law, staring him in the face, the average citizen would hesitate
to record a vote the effect of which would be to destroy their licences
before they were ready to open. Yet in spite of these seven argu-

2 At the present time there are 1,552 licensed public-houses in the colony — an
average of one house to 504 inhabitants. The revenue derived directly from them is
53,617Z. per annum ; the property engaged represents a capital value of a little over
3,000,0002., and the number of persons directly employed is 6,766.

3903 THE NEW ZEALAND ELECTIONS 853

ments in brick and mortar, the no licence vote in the town increased
'by over a thousand !

It would be wrong to suppose that the whole of the 159,000
persons who voted * no licence ' on this occasion are definitely and
permanently attached to the cause of prohibition. Many adverse
votes were cast as a protest against the insolent defiance of law of
which some of the publicans have been guilty and in order to ' give
the trade a lesson ' ; others proceeded from that passion for economic
-experiments which pervades this community ; others, again, from a
-sheer love of destructiveness inherent in human nature. But though
temporary considerations or local circumstances may have influenced
the result in this or that electorate, the enormous increase in the
no licence vote over the whole colony can only be due to the growth
of deliberate opinion and deep-rooted sentiment on the question.
The Prohibition party in its organisation is the complete expression
•of ' thorough.' Among its leaders are some of the ablest, most
-earnest, and most eloquent men to be found in public life in the
colony ; while many women contribute no less to its success by
distinguished ability and untiring zeal. The majority of the news-
papers of the colony are opposed to them, but give impartial
publicity to reports of their meetings and exposition of their views.
'The pulpits and platforms of the Presbyterian and Methodist
churches are their chief means of propagating their opinions ; but
their leading orators do not despise the lamp-post and the cart-tail
as rostra for their eloquence. As a political machine, the prohibi-
tion organisation is all but perfect.

It is to the women's franchise, of course, that the question owes
its present position. Women have now voted at four General
Elections ; it is only in this one, however, that their influence has
been really effectively exerted. However true it may be that in the
choice of Parliamentary candidates they vote in most cases as their
husbands and brothers vote, there can be little doubt that on the
liquor question they have exercised a separate judgment.

Although it was freely said at the time of the conferring of the
franchise that women did not want it and, if they got it, would
not use it, statistics go to show that women are at least as much in
-earnest as men in exercising their electoral prerogatives. In the
three elections 1894, 1896, and 1899, the proportion of women who
registered their claims to vote were respectively 78, 89, and 95 per
-cent, of the estimated adult female population. The proportion of
women on the rolls who actually voted was on the same three
occasions 85, 76, and 75 per cent. The figures for the present
election are of course not yet available ; but it is certain that women
-exercised their privileges at least as fully as on the earlier occasions.

Although the question of prohibition threw into the background
sail other issues at this election, there was one other matter that

854 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

obtained some prominence, and this also is interesting as an illustra-
tion of the influence of the women's vote.. The national system
of education established in the colony in 1876 is 'free, secular, and
compulsory.' There has always existed a strong party favourable to
the introduction of Bible-reading in the schools. But so devoted
are the people to the national system and so jealous of anything
that looks like ' the thin end of the wedge ' of a return to de-
nominationalism, that the question of the Bible in schools had for
ten years disappeared from national politics. At the 1896 and
1899 elections scarcely a single candidate ventured to pledge him-
self definitely to advocate the introduction of the Bible.

This year, however, the question has presented itself in a new
shape and bids fair to assume considerable importance. The
Protestant denominations in the colony have agreed to sink their
differences on the question and to unite in advocating the intro-
duction of a non-sectarian Biblical text-book. There is at present
a vague but widespread sentiment in the colony in favour of the
referendum. Of this the Bible in Schools party has taken
advantage to seek from candidates a pledge that they will vote for
submitting to a referendum, the question of introducing the text-
book. ' Trust the people ' is a popular political catchword ; and
candidates have found themselves able to give the pledges for a
referendum without expressing any opinion on the merits of the
question itself. Of thirteen members elected in Canterbury ten are
pledged to the referendum, and the proportion is probably about the
same in the rest of the colony. It would seem, then, that the
advocates of Bible-reading have advanced a step. If a referendum
is taken it will be difficult to forecast the issue. On the one hand
the advantage in a plebiscite is always with the enthusiasts who
affirm a change ; and the influence of the women's vote will probably
be found on the side of the Bible just as it is on the side of pro-
hibition. On the other hand, the people of the colony will not
readily consent to any step that threatens a return to denominational
education, and will fear, perhaps with reason, that the agreement of
the Churches is merely a patched-up peace in the face of political
exigencies.

From the point of view of a party contest, the result, of course,
was another victory for the Seddon Administration. On a fair
estimate the 80 members elected comprise : Supporters of the
Government, 50 ; Opposition, 25 ; Independent, 5. The Progressive
party has now weathered the storm of five General Elections. Its-
strength in a House of 74 members was: in 1890, 38; 1894, 50;
1896, 38 ; 1899, 52 ; in a House of 80 Members, in 1902, 50.

The Seddon majority, though decreased, is still ample ; but the
party includes a considerable number of ' candid friends ' who will
be severely critical of the expenditure. The opponents of the

1903 THE NEW ZEALAND ELECTIONS 855

Government have gained in strength by some eight seats : the
party made no attempt at organisation throughout the colony, and
its increase in numbers represents a growth of opinion favourable
to restoring the freehold tenure in the Government Land Settle-
ment system, and adverse to continued borrowing and financial
extravagance. It cannot in any sense, however, be said to represent
the old so-called ' Conservative party ' — the opinions and traditions
associated with the Hall-Whitaker-Atkinson Administrations have
practically disappeared from politics. The number claimed for the
Opposition is reached by including advocates of the Freehold and
disciples of Henry George ; champions of prohibition and defenders
of the liquor interest ; men with sound views on finance and
theorists who believe in a State Bank and paper money. A party
so heterogeneous as this can only by a violent fiction be considered
a remnant of the old ' Conservative ' party. The most vigorous
opposition to Mr. Seddon will in the future come from men who are
not less, but more, radical than he. Paradoxical though it sounds, it
is probably no exaggeration to say that if Mr. Seddon continues in
politics, his influence will be found, in the course of every few years,
to be the strongest conservative force in public opinion.

One final comment is suggested by the conduct of the people at
the election : in spite of the keen excitement roused by the liquor
question, the elections were marked throughout the colony by the
utmost good order and decorum. There was a time when eggs and
flour were, in New Zealand as elsewhere, no contemptible weapon
of political controversy. A candidate now has nothing worse to
face than good-tempered 'chaff' and 'heckling' at the hands of
questioners. The new spirit of orderliness on election-day is to
some extent attributable to a wise provision of the law by which all
bars are closed from noon till 7 P.M. on the day of the polling ; but
it is mainly the result of the entry of women into politics. In
the magistrates' courts of the two largest towns in New Zealand,
the police presented clean charge-sheets on the day following the
elections. Not a single arrest had been made for drunkenness or
disorderly conduct.

0. T. J. ALPERS.

Christchurcli,, Nerv Zealand.

856 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

RADIUM AND ITS POSITION IN NATURE

THE position of the new element radium in the universe is unique.
At present prices its purified compounds are sold at such a figure
that two tons, or sufficient to fill a cart and be drawn by a strong
horse on a level road, would liquidate the English National Debt.
But that two tons do not exist in the whole earth is probable from
the fact that in three years of isolation and preparation M. and
Madame Curie have obtained not more than an avoirdupois pound
weight of its compounds. These facts, which bring into such strong
relief the scarcity of the element, have to be taken along with
another which at first sight appears to present no point of connection.
Eunge and Precht have just found that the probable atomic weight
of radium is 258 ; in other words, that its atoms are the heaviest
known, being 258 times heavier than those of hydrogen. An atomic
weight has a cosmic significance ; there is undoubted connection
between it and the quantity of the element which exists in nature.
The heavier atoms are the rarest, and radium, with the heaviest of all
atoms, ought to be the rarest element in existence.

It is necessary in science, as in everyday life, to look at things in
proportion, and in doing this in the case of radium it would appear
to have a very insignificant place indeed in nature. By utilising price
statistics we obtain some idea of this. In the following table two
chemical family groups of elements are compared, and by the side of
the atomic weight of each substance is placed the troy weight
in ounces which is purchasable for the approximate sum of four
guineas :

Element Ounces Element Ounces

Copper G3 2,286 Calcium 40 7,349

Silver 108 42 Strontium 87 2,450

Gold 197 1 Barium 137 3,675

Eadium 258 -0003

Gold, with an atomic weight of 197, is the rarest of the members of
its family, and how rare it really is one can form some idea from the
statement that all of this precious metal which has been won up to
the present time by an expenditure of fabulous amounts of capital
and an unexampled waste of life would probably, in the condition of

1903 RADIUM AND ITS POSITION IN NATURE 857

bar gold, not fill more than a couple of good-sized rooms in an
ordinary house, and is an infinitesimal quantity when compared with
the five thousand and odd trillions of tons of the earth's mass of other
elements. Eadium, at the end of its series, is rarer still.

The following appear to be the circumstances of its discovery.
In 1898 it was announced in Comptes Rendus by Professor P. Curie,
Madame Curie, and Gr. Bemont that they had found a new element
in pitch-blende residues, in company with barium, and analytically
behaving like it, but extremely radio-active. By fractional precipita-
tion of the barium chloride from solution by means of alcohol,
chlorides were obtained containing the new element which had 900
times the radiant activity of uranium, the principal element in the
mineral pitch-blende. The amount of radium present was minute
in the extreme, for it only affected the atomic weight of barium to a
very small extent, although always in the same direction, that of
increase as compared with inactive barium.

Radiations from this trace made a photographic negative in half
a minute where uranium or thorium compounds would have taken
hours, and its radiations, after passing through aluminium, rendered
a film of barium platinocyanide luminous enough to make it visible
in the dark without any apparent supply of energy. After some
four years of labour, sufficiently pure samples of its compounds have
been obtained for its atomic weight to be ascertained, with the
result already mentioned. Chemists are thus enabled now to assign
it a place among its fellows in the periodic classification of the
elements.

When the position is clearly understood, it is at once seen that
it must be an element differing from all others in its properties, and
differing indeed so widely that, if judged from the standpoint of
any one of them, even the laws of nature might appear at first sight
to be defied. It is as far outside the ordinary system of atoms as
Neptune is outside the planets of the solar system. Its place may be
popularly appreciated from the following observations on the Periodic
Law.

A draught-board is made up of sixty-four black and white squares.
If there were only sixty-four elements, A, B, c, &c., in nature, with
atomic weights graded from one to sixty-four, they would just fill all
its squares. Let such a set of hypothetical elements be orderly
disposed in the squares, commencing with A, atomic weight 1, at
the top left-hand corner and proceeding along the top line up to
eight, then coming back and filling the square under 1 with an
atomic weight of 9, and so on in orderly succession ; we then get,
when the board is filled up, all the atomic weights of elements
A, B, c, &c., disposed in periodic fashion. In this ideal arrangement
we should have eight vertical groups ; all the elements on the black
squares of one of them would form a natural chemical family, and

858 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

the same would be the case with all the elements on the white
squares of a vertical column. The family likeness would show itself
in a gradation of properties of each of the elements, some given
quality gradually increasing or decreasing as the atomic weights
increased. As an illustration, which has also a bearing on sub-
sequent observations, one might take the property of transparency
to X-rays. These figures require no farther comment.

Atomitt Relative Trans-
Metals in Gronp II. Weights parency. Water = 1
Magnesium .... 24 0-5

Zinc 65 0-1

Cadmium .... 112 O09

Mercury .... "200 0-044

Metals in Group V.

Antimony .... 120 0'13

Bismuth . . . .208 0-07

Such is the principle of the periodic classification known as the
Periodic Law. There are many other arrangements devised of dis-
posing the elements; the squared parallelogram is here chosen as
being the simplest. It must be understood, however, that this
draught-board illustration cannot cover all the facts, as the atoms of
elements do not rise in unit steps and there are more than sixty-four
of them, but it enables a clear idea to be conveyed to the mind
•when the statement is made that the elements calcium, strontium,
and barium occur in the second group, and that radium, with an
atomic weight of 258, occupies the lowest place in this family
group, and further that its position is so low down in the vertical
column that it is in the thirteenth square from the top. It stands
alone ; isolated. Its position confers on it properties which make it
peerless among the elements, and only to be described by a succession
of superlatives. These properties may be predicted with more or less
success from the known properties of other members of its group.
Its soluble compounds will be extremely poisonous. Their gamut
of colour will be limited, being for the most part only white or yellow.
They will be highly susceptible to radiant influence or to sensible
heat ; the anhydrous bromide, for example, will have a specific heat
about one-twentieth of that of water, so that to produce a given effect
much less heat or radiant energy will be required than in the case
of compounds of elements with lower atomic weights in the same
family group. They will absorb X-rays with great avidity, and will
in all probability possess this property to a phenomenal degree.
Good absorbers of radiant energy are regarded as good radiators, and
radium compounds will form no exception to this rule. We may
well leave prediction here and return to a consideration of ascertained
fact. Eadium compounds pour out torrents of obscure radiations
termed Becquerel rays, rays which have been regarded as being
intermediate between the X-rays of the focus tube and ordinary

1903 RADIUM AND ITS POSITION IN NATURE 859

light. They have the peculiar penetrative power of X-rays and will
pass through aluminium. Like X-rays they blister the skin and
leave it in a condition which eventually requires dressing, the sores
sometimes taking weeks to heal. X-rays have a pulsating character,
and it is not improbable that this is a feature of Becquerel rays.
X-rays produce phosphorescence in bodies like zinc sulphide
(hexagonal zinc-blende) ; sunlight produces the same phenomenon
in calcium sulphide (Balmain's paint), and Becquerel rays give the
effect notably with the zinc-blende. Air is made an electric conductor
or suffers ionisation under the influence of X-rays ; Becquerel rays
produce the same effect. In fact, the Becquerel rays coming from
radium compounds have so many characters in common with Rontgen
rays that they have latterly been spoken of as X-rays. The
mechanism of their origin cannot be said, as yet, to be thoroughly
understood, but it is probably like the succession of events concerned
in the phosphorescence of Balmain's paint after exposure to solar
light. Here we have absorption of the sun's light ; conversion of
the ether undulations of the solar rays to the molecular vibrations of
the compound, and communication of the latter motions to the ether
again, with the visible effect of phosphorescence. This explanation
would have done six months ago, but Sir Oliver Lodge, who has
recently given us the latest ideas on electrons, will probably regard
it as old-fashioned. I, however, prefer it, electrons notwithstanding,
and the radiations of radium compounds may be similarly explained,
with the qualification that the radiations in this case either have
some quality pertaining to ether undulations, in extreme degree, or
a superadded quality which makes them of a pronounced radio-
active nature. What this latter is I shall presently attempt to show.

It will be of interest here, as bearing on our subject, to inquire
for a few minutes into the present state of knowledge respecting the
ultimate constitution of matter, and the attitude of chemist and
physicist with respect to it. It is in this that the main interest of
radium lies. From its extreme rarity it can never be of corporal use
to man, but its importance to science cannot be measured from this
standpoint any more than the historian would estimate the import-
ance of a Napoleon from his weight in the scales. Its properties
have produced profound disturbances in the philosophies, for it has
been largely instrumental in bringing about a partition of the atom.

Unfortunately the physicist's ideas regarding the atom have been
somewhat loose in the past ; time was, and not long ago, when he
indifferently used the term for the aggregation of atoms which is
known to the chemist as a molecule ; then came the period of the
vortex atom ; now he passes the chemist and fills his atoms with
electrons. The chemist, on the other hand, has been precise in his
conceptions of the ultimate constitution of matter; his atoms are
indivisible, and to each is assigned a more or less exact number, the

860 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

atomic mass. From this idea lie has allowed himself no excursion,
save latterly, in speculations as to the genesis of the atoms them-
selves, he has supposed the existence of a primordial matter to which
the name of protyle has been given. The grounds for this specula-
tion are clear, being the striking homology existing among the
elements when viewed from the standpoint of the Periodic Law ; the
remarkable relation subsisting between atomic weight and telluric
distribution of atoms ; and finally the apparent resolution of certain
rare earths by repeated fractionation. But he clearly draws the line
between speculation and what he has come to regard as fact, and does
not call this hypothesis of protjle to his aid in explaining the vast
variety of reactions with which he has to deal. The physicist is now
practically discarding the atom save as a form which he fills and
invests with electrons. It seems his electrons are not protjle, but
independent corpuscles which he has endowed with unique kinds of
motion to explain various physical phenomena. As electrons are
said to emanate from radium, we have to inquire more particularly
what they are and how they behave, and this we can only do by an
appeal to the opinion of eminent physicists.

Two or three years ago the electron was the charge of electricity
carried by the ion, an atom or group of atoms, migrating between
the poles in a cell where electric decomposition was taking place.
It was recognised that some atoms could carry more than one
•electron. The electron of then is now divided into thousands ; thus
in a mercury atom there are said to be 100,000 electrons. Lord
Kelvin, at a meeting of the Physical Society of London on the
31st of October, 1902, thus spoke of the electron :

In dealing with the subject of atoms it was necessary to consider the atoms of
electricity. The atomic theory of electricity, now almost universally accepted,
had been thought of by Faraday and Clerk-Maxwell, and definitely proposed by
Helmholtz. The atoms of electricity were very much smaller than the atoms of
matter, and permeated freely through the spaces occupied by these greater atoms
and also freely through space not occupied by them. An atom of electricity in
the interior of an atom of matter experienced electric force towards the centre of
the atom. We were forced to conclude that every kind of matter had electricity
in it, and Lorenz had named electricity as the moving thing in atomic vibrations.
If the electrions, or atoms of electricity, succeeded in getting out of the atoms of
matter, they proceeded with the velocity of light, and the body was radio-active.
It was therefore not surprising that some bodies showed radio-active properties,
but rather surprising that such properties were not shown by all forms of matter.
Our knowledge of this subject, which originated with the discovery of the
Becquerel rays, had been greatly advanced by the experiments carried out at the
davendish Laboratory, and he had no doubt that in the next two or three years
much light would be thrown upon this important matter.

These are weighty words from Lord Kelvin and worthy of much
•consideration. Listeners to Professor J. J. Thomson at his Belfast
lecture ' On Becquerel Rays ' in the month of September of the
came year will remember the following experiment. A charged

1903 RADIUM AND ITS POSITION IN NATURE 861

electroscope was shown with self-repelled leaves, apart like the legs
of a pair of tongs ; over the top a piece of pitch-blende or other
radio-active body was brought, when the leaves steadily fell together
under the influence emanating from the blende. This is one of the
indications of radio-activity which has been largely depended upon
in the accumulation of facts respecting this peculiar property, and
was explained as being due to the influence of moving electrons.
Where motion is quickly transmitted through partitions which are
impervious to gaseous matter, it has been usual, as in the case of the
Becquerel rays, to attribute its transmission to the transfer of
motion from particle to particle of a permeating fluid — the ether.
Action at a distance without the intervening partition has been
similarly explained. One would have preferred some such explanation
in the present instance, as it is ever present to the mind that a
corpuscular theory of light has failed.

But a still more striking exhibition of the supposed emanation of
electrons from radium atoms has recently been demonstrated by Sir
William Crookes, and in taking exception to the explanation advanced
in this particular instance I would say that in common with a later
generation of scientific men I feel the greatest admiration for this
veteran worker, whose labours in the border-land of chemistry and
physics have been so conspicuously productive in important results
for more than forty years past — from the days when he made the
brilliant discovery of thallium onward through the period of his
researches on radiant matter up to now, when he is seeking to eluci-
date the mysteries of this new element. The facts, as described in
his paper On the Emanations of Radium read before the Koyal
Society on the 1 9th of March, are briefly that radium nitrate, when
brought near barium platinocyanide or zinc sulphide screens, pro-
duces phosphorescence, which in the latter case may be accompanied
by a microscopic pyrotechnic display — a display which is practically
unaffected by rarefying the air or trying the experiment in vacua.
When a solid piece of radium nitrate is brought slowly near the zinc
sulphide screen, and the surface is examined with a pocket lens, the
scintillating spots of light are sparsely scattered over the surface ;
but on bringing the radium nitrate nearer the scintillations on the
screen become more numerous and brighter, until when close
together the flashes follow each other so quickly that the surface
looks like a turbulent luminous sea. If a card be interposed between
the screen and the radium nitrate there is still phosphorescence, but
no scintillations ; and without the card a distance of more than two
inches appears to be equally effective in preventing their production.
The phosphorescence is due jto X-rays, and the scintillations to
electrons — for Sir William observes :

It seems probable that in these phenomena we are actually witnessing the bom-
bardment of the screen by the electrons hurled off by radium with a velocity of the

862 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

order of that of light ; each scintillation rendering visible the impact of an electron
on the screen. . , . Each electron is rendered apparent only by the enormous
extent of lateral disturbance produced by its impact on the sensitive surface, just
as individual drops of rain falling on a still pool are not seen as such,, but by
reason of the splash they make on impact, and the ripples and waves they produce
in ever-widening circles.

One of the phenomena familiar to the chemist is that of decre-
pitation, seen more markedly in some bodies than others when they
are heated, a crackling and a flying asunder of their particles ;. or a
breaking off and shooting away of minute pieces at the surface due
to alteration of temperature. The assumption that radium nitrate
undergoes surface decrepitation will probably cover all the above
facts. The slight variations of temperature to which it is subject
would probably result in only sub-microscopic * material masses '
being hurled off, but wherever one alighted on zinc-blende there
would be the flash or scintillation. The interposition of a card
would prevent the particles reaching the screen, and in vacua the
decrepitation would probably suffer little alteration because active
absorption of radiant energy would still be proceeding ; and finally a
rapid limit would be reached as to the distance such particles could
be hurled, and a two-inch limit in this case would, it appears to me,
be more compatible with the idea of ' material masses ' than a speed
of something over 100,000 miles per second. Such particles need
not be visible to the microscope save in the phosphorescent effect.
The smallest object visible with a theoretically perfect microscope
could not be less than an eighty-thousandth of an inch. Let us
suppose, for argument's sake, that a particle half this size were sent
off from the radium nitrate ; no microscope could detect it, but it
would be competent to produce phosphorescent effects on a zinc-
blende screen, and so far from its being of the order of smallness of an
electron, it would be made up at the very lowest estimate of thousands
of millions of molecules of the radium salt.

The revelation of the extraordinary properties of radium com-
pounds appears to have reached a climax in March, when MM. Curie
and Laborde announced that they had found that a sample of radi-
ferous barium chloride maintained a temperature of a degree and a
half centigrade above that of the surrounding atmosphere. That
they observed this difference there can be no doubt, but that the
facts justify the conclusion that a radium compound containing 225
grams of the element will emit in a given time, and will continue to
do so, as much heat as would be obtained by the burning of one
gram of hydrogen is open to doubt. The grounds for this doubt are,
first, that all their experiments appear to have been conducted in a
bulb of glass, which is remarkably radio-active, and therefore that the
factor of regenerative effect comes into play : in other words, that the
rays emitted by the radiferous body, instead of getting away, have

1903 RADIUM AND ITS POSITION IN NATURE 863

been largely absorbed by the glass envelope, being then given back
and re-absorbed by the radiferousbody along with external radiations,
with the cumulative results that the enclosed substance has been
raised and kept to a temperature above that of the surrounding air.
Dorn showed in 1897 that X-rays absorbed by metals give rise to
sensible heat, and in one of these experiments under consideration a
thermo-electric couple was employed, which presumably would be
constructed of bismuth and antimony. Bismuth exhibits a maxi-
mum of absorption of X-rays, and would thus register not only the
sensible heat, but would also register as sensible heat all X-ray
radiations reaching it from a radiferous body and its glass envelope.
The same objection would apply to the use of a mercury thermometer.
Until these elements of doubt have been removed in the method of
experiment, it is premature to put radium compounds on the same
plane as heat-producers as burning hydrogen.

It has been, however, a cause of surprise that compounds of
radium, thorium, and uranium should exhibit such continuous
powers of emission of radio-active influence over long periods, and
before these latest observations of MM. Curie and Laborde attempts
have been made to account for the phenomena. In this connection it
may be observed that the researches of Gr. le Bon and others make
it abundantly clear that we are not yet fully acquainted with all the
phenomena of radiations. We are bound to trace back the energy
of these radio-active functions to the rays of known types received
from the sun by the earth, because everything appears to be more
or less radio-active, and, given a highly sensitive absorbent of these
hidden sources of energy which also combines within itself a maxi-
mum capacity for absorbing radiant energy of the known types,
we have a never-ending source of force which radium compounds
from their characteristics could be supposed to utilise. There is
also another source of energy which may be tapped, and that is the
energy of molecular motion of the atmosphere. The existence of
this natural illimitable reservoir of force was first pointed out by
Dr. Johnstone Stoney, and has since been consistently advocated by
Sir William Crookes as the source of the energy which gives rise to
the continuous emanations of radio-active substances like radium
compounds. Support seems to me to be given to this hypothesis
from the consideration of the remarkable experiments of Professor
Graham Bell and Mr. Sumner Tainter, made some score years ago,
on radiophony. I am quite aware that at that time another con-
struction was put upon them, but then the scientific world had not
become familiarised with the ether pulses produced by spark-gap,
and kathode discharges. Bell and Tainter showed that a ray of
light interrupted by rapidly-revolving cogs or a disc- interrupter would,
when converged on to non-metallic bodies, like chips of wood, cause
them to emit a musical sound. In other words, pulsating undulation*

864 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

of the ether were made to produce molecular vibrations which were
transferred to air and gave rise to sound. Mercadier split the
pulsating beam up with a prism and examined the audible effects
in different parts of the spectrum. Bell and Tainter repeated this
experiment. A beam of sunlight was reflected from a heliostat
through an achromatic lens so as to form an image of the sun on
a slit. The beam was then passed through another achromatic lens
and through a bisulphide-of-carbon prism, which formed a spectrum
of great purity, showing on a screen the principal solar lines. The
disc-interrupter was turned at a rate to give from 500 to 600*
interruptions of the light per second. Upon bringing various kinds
of matter through the spectrum, solids, liquids, and gases were
found to emit sound. The behaviour of the gaseous bodies, iodine
and nitrogen peroxide, was unusually interesting and instructive.
As they were moved through the spectrum they emitted sound from
those parts where they absorbed light. Now the reversal of this
phenomenon would be that atmospheric molecular motion should
generate vibrations in non-metallic bodies, which would be competent
to produce or confer the pulsating effect on ethereal radiations, and
thus give the character of X-rays or Becquerel rays to them. The
Bell-Tainter effect reversed, I take it, substantially supports what
Sir William Crookes is seeking to convey to scientific minds, and
it appears very highly probable indeed that it is accomplished in
certain heavily-weighted molecules, of which radium compounds
present the most striking instance. Such a view gives force to the
contention that the radiations from extremely radio-active bodies
have pulsating character more or less like the X-rays of the focus
tube, and it serves to explain many of the peculiarities of Becquerel
rays as they are poured forth by radium compounds. All the
anomalies they present will probably have vanished in a few months'
time, and this will be in keeping with the net result of our survey,
which is that the great use of radium compounds will be in the help
they will yield in the solution of the highly interesting problems pre-
sented by the heaviest-weighted of the atoms, and not in any very
material benefit to mankind, as this is precluded by their abnormal
scarcity in the earth.

WILLIAM ACKROYD.

Borovgli Laboratory, Halifax.

1903

THE LOST ART OF SINGING.

LESS than two hundred years ago Porpora did for the human voice
what Gruido of Arezzo did for music when he invented the modern
scale. Music had always existed, rude instruments had always been
employed : the voice was one of these rude instruments. But Porpora
perfected the instrument ; nay, he formed it of the raw material
which nature yielded. Having once formed the instrument, a new
art came into existence, a fine art, bel canto — an art with at least
all the difficulties, demanding at least the courage, the patience and
the long application which we expect in the study of painting, the
piano, or the violin.

At this time music was changing its character, its realisations, by
leaps and bounds. Mediaeval music was giving place everywhere to
modern music, which was becoming not only a fine art but the modern
art par excellence. The arts of the ancient world had been architec-
ture and sculpture ; painting had been given us by Italy at the
renascence of Europe ; but music alone has accomplished since then
what it had never accomplished before. The new requirements were
evoking everywhere a corresponding progress in power over the
material as a means of expression, the new perfection of instruments
and the rapid developments in music acting and reacting on each
other. It was not possible that singing alone should remain alien to
this breath of new art ; and indeed what a Mozart could perform on
a clavichord and what a Liszt could perform on a Steinway piano differ
less than the new singing differed from all that had gone before it.
The most individual of all instruments, that which was at once instru-
ment and executant, took part in the general awakening, and sprang
into perfect life under the wand of Porpora.

And the sensation created was proportionate to the greatness of
the event. People listened to the human voice, but it appeared to
them that they were listening to a new instrument. The uneducated
ear could not fully seize its beauty ; even so cultivated a scholar as
Abraham Tucker tells us in his work on Vocal Sounds that he
could not appreciate one of the most exquisite of human voices,
Farinello's singing appearing to him 'unnatural, and resembling

VOL. LIII— No. 315 865 3 L

866 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

rather the pipes of an organ ' ; and another perfect singer, Pacchie-
rotti, was not admired in France. The voices of the choir of
contraltos trained by Porpora, in especial, seemed ' strange and
non-natural': but these unknown maidens in the free schools of
Venice, from the mere* loveliness of the method they had mastered,
struck the musicians who heard them as greater artists than the
great singers of the time, the greatest the world had seen till then.
Dr. Burney, in his Present State of Music in France and Italy,
published in 1773, says 'their performance was ravishing' and the
singing of 'infinite merit,' perhaps superior to everything which
could be heard at the chief operas ; and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
that they had lovelier voices and were better singers than Faustina
and Cuzzoni. William Beckford ' still seemed to hear ' this
wonderful singing when he wrote his Italy in 1834, and these
' glorious voices ' made more impression on Goethe than any music
he had heard. ' I had no conception,' he says, ' of the existence of
such voices.' And what was the secret of this ? The harsh, unblended,
unequal sounds of the natural organ were gathered up by Porpora,
and formed into an instrument having one diatonic voice, or
colore, as the Italians call it. Eespiration was made the basis of
singing — chi sa respirare sa cantare — the breath which as a pedal
sustained the notes, united the sounds. The school of Porpora did
not die out ; by it were formed all the great singers whose mere
names carry a fascination with them — Farinello, Caffariello, Ferri,
Gabrielli ; and, later, Malibran, Catalani, Pasta, Grisi, Alboni, Bocca-
badati, Nilsson, Trebelli, Jenny Lind, Titiens, Patti ; Garcia,
Lablache, Tamberlick, Donzelli, Mario, Santley, Maurel. But from
the first three things militated against this latest of the arts — its
difficulty, its popularity together with the absence of trained criti-
cism, and the rise of modern instrumentation.

Music is the most popular of the arts and the one which is
nearest to us. First of the aesthetic pleasures in the order of time,
it is yet the latest of the fine arts, and has developed with human
development. Other arts have had their perfect epoch — have sprung
in the compass of two or three hundred years like Pallas equipped
from the brain of Zeus — but music has had no perfect epoch, it has
kept pace with the human spirit, reaching in modern times the
complex harmony of a Wagner, which speaks to the modern soul ' of
all things which ever it did,' the music whose emotionalism,
complexity and world-pain recall Jean Paul Eichter's apostrophe :
' Away ! away ! for thou speakest to me of things which I have never
known and shall never know.' We are all musicians, or we think
ourselves so. The modesty which would make us hesitate to
criticise the technique of a sample of architecture, sculpture, cr
painting, has no place here, for the public judges of all music
da maestro with no misgiving. It follows that it is not the best

1903 THE LOST ART OF SINGING 867

which always pleases most. The taste for the oleograph, the
inability to distinguish it from the old master (on the plane of
artistic beauty, of mere beauty of technique) tells with still more
insistence in an art which makes a stronger appeal to the general
than painting. The musician, indeed, would not forego elements in
his art which are his passport with humanity ; but if music has
nearly always something of the subject-picture in it, there is no
reason why it should be the work of a bad artist working with bad
materials. In the case of singing we have probably the most
immediately moving of all the forms of artistic expression, and
perfect examples can move the entirely ignorant in a way that great
specimens of other arts may fail to do ; it is therefore imperative if
it is to survive among the belle arti that the public taste should be
led by those who really understand the art they undertake to inter-
pret. If only a painter can judge a picture, it is at least as true
that only a singer can judge singing. But this is not the popular
belief. Popular taste and popular sentiment have made of our
modern singers not vocal artists but vocal artisans, vocal ' Jacks of
all trades.' The public does not expect art, the trained organ, the
voice which resembled the pipes of an organ ; but in its place it asks
for sentiment, and an amateur and untrained use of the voice which
is thought to be vocal expression, so that a voice which does not
provide us with adventitious effects is supposed to be inexpressive.
We forget, or we have never known, that it is because the instrument
is imperfect that it yields us this class of effects, while it is at the
same time incapable of producing the only effects which would be
legitimate. This absence of legitimate technique causes the young
singer to mistake the real resources of his art, and he is supported in
his ignorance by British sentimentalism. Popular taste in Italy
may be saved by the necessity for passion in art, but there is no
such safety-valve in the unbroken sentimentality of the English
ballad. The ethical rather than artistic instinct which asks clap-
trap sentiment of the arts, which makes the ' gods ' applaud a sound
common-place sentiment in a theatre, and miss the only art in the
piece, tolerates and encourages vapid sentiment in singers. I have
heard a well-known singer's voice break in a song calling for passion.
This is as though a painter were to make a smudge when he felt he
could express no more by means of his art, and it ought to be
resented in the same way. When the British public sees a favourite
* star ' getting a spasmodic grip of a handy piece of furniture in order
to produce her high note di bravura, its honest soul is moved at the
supreme effort being made for its delectation. For the effort counts
as part of the effect. It is listening to a star, so of course this is
real singing ; but the criterion is as primitive as that of the rustic
admirers who shouted to their primo uomo, ' Hold it on, Steen,' lest
the note being bawled from his throat at the risk of an apoplexy

3 L 2

868 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

should not last long enough to shame his rival in the village choir.
When we sing with effort we may be quite sure we are singing
badly. The divine in all art is like the ' still small voice ' ; the rush-
ing and the tearing and the noise are not yet art. Not until the
complex elements given us by the material have been reduced to a
simple formula — a simple formula used by a master — is real art
achieved ; and when we look or when we hear we say, ' how simple,'
and if we know we say, ' and how difficult.'

We seem a kindly and indulgent audience, but we do not know
what to require of the artist. An artistic people often make a cruel
audience, and if their aesthetic sense is not satisfied they hiss the
bad art, because the due resolution of the phrase is to them an
aesthetic necessity. In the eighteenth century, when music was
most degraded in France, a poetaster spoke of sounds

Qui sont faux pour 1'oreille, mais vrais pour le creur.

The indulgent English audience has no artistic necessities to be
outraged by the incompetent singer, who is generally sure of applause
if his performance while false for the artist has been true for the
sentimentalist. Meretricious ways of moving us must then be
sternly discountenanced if we are to have art and not music-hall
performances. What should we say of the violinist who snapped a
string to express pathos or despair, and why do we tolerate the same
class of expedients in the singer ? So popularity wedded to spuri-
ous sentiment have combined to rob us of good singing. To-day we
have either the declaimer or the diseur ; we have no longer the
cantante. We roar, scream, or warble, we talk or we declaim, we
pour out sentiment and 'classical taste' — but we do not sing.
We are all accustomed to voices completely strangled in the throat,
with no resonance, no limpidity. Our baritones, it would seem, must
burst a blood vessel when taking a sol, our contraltos have two
voices — one below and one above ' the break of the voice.' What
should we say to a ' new ' Stradivarius which had the timbre of a
'cello for half its extension and blossomed out into violin timbre for
the remainder? Has the cornet, which takes the solo part in an
orchestra, one uniform voice, or three or four different voices,
according as it sounds a low, a middle, or a high note ? Are not the
effects of all instruments obtained by greater and less intensity of
sound, not by difference of structure and register? The vulgar idea
is that vocal effects are obtained by inequality of production ; but
they are effects like those of our new Stradivarius, the effects of an
imperfect string or an imperfect wind instrument. An art may die
of too much popularity, and this moment has come when the
cantante instead of interpreting great traditions to an audience
waits upon their ignorance like some Latter-Day minister on his con-
gregation.

1903 THE LOST ART OF SINGING 869

Bettini (Trebelli's husband) used to say that no modern singer
•would encounter the good fortune which befell the singers of his
day. ' We were all celebrities, and we trained the public ear.'
People expected good singing as the Athens of Praxiteles expected good
sculpture and the Italy of the cinque cento expected good painting.
Not so nowadays. An ' artist ' has as much chance of making his
career with poor powers and poorer training as one of the great
singers of the past. This fact alone is the death-blow to great art.
The singer's audience, as it settles itself down to listen, hugs itself
with the flattering assurance : ' I know what I like.' Curiously
enough, this is held to imply some definite aesthetic criterion. Yet
in what other art would such a criterion pass muster ? Would it
guarantee the farmer's preference for the oleograph on his walls ?
For the chance good singer, therefore, a hard fate is reserved : he
sings before judges who ' know what pleases them ' and are devoid
of all criterion of the art they are to judge. It is amply realised
that if we are not brought up to appreciate good taste in literature,
in painting, in colours, in furniture, in architecture, in music, we
shall have bad taste in all these things. Neither is it supposed that
because I have been educated to judge a good picture I should
therefore be competent to criticise the performances of a violinist.
All these elementary principles, however, fade when we come to
criticise the art of bel canto ; there ' my love of music ' is an infal-
lible guide, and my instinct as to ' what pleases me ' a more powerful
solvent of merit than the traditions of a great art. Now these things
are not a sufficient vade mecum for judging a singer. No public has
sufficient art to judge for itself, and there are now not enough great
singers to teach them. That which pleases them and that which
accords with the traditions of the art have in this year of grace 1903
no chance of being identical.

Intelligent criticism is therefore at this moment one of the chief
desiderata. If the singers do not know how to sing, the critics do
not know either how they ought to sing, and the Press take no
pains to select a critic ; indeed they would have to search far and
long to find one. I have before me a critic's opinion of a soprano
who possessed ' clear and powerful upper notes ' and ' forced her
high notes.' One but not both of these statements can possibly be
true ; a clear and potent high note cannot be produced by forcing.
Another critic says that an imperfect control of the respiration spoilt
her singing, at the same time applauding the production of the
mezza voce. A true mezza voce requires more perfect control of the
breathing functions than any other call made on the singer. But
when we read that on the same occasion she 'phrased with no
ordinary skill,' our confusion is complete. With a sense of ' surfeited
amazements ' (as the Indian said of our English climate) we turn
to an axiom of the great teacher Lamperti : ' It is impossible

870 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

to phrase well until we have acquired, as it were by nature, the
control of the breathing.' Again, in an Italian review I read that a
singer made a great effect with a fine chest upper C. It is a wonder
if he lived to tell the tale. Such instances can be found in the
papers every day, and those who have retained any of the old tradi-
tions must know well enough that if our singers are poorly trained
our critics are perhaps even more poorly equipped. Nevertheless,
can the Star be among the prophets ? In this English evening paper
I read a criticism of a young singer who appeared in London in
December 1901, in which the critic, under the excellent nom de plume
of Legato, invites her not to spoil a lovely voice by complete ignorance
of her art — not to think of singing but of studying — and tells
her straitly that if she can find a Porpora she may become a
great singer. Here, then, is one person in London who remembers
there is such a thing as bel canto, and what it means, and what it
costs.

The critics, indeed, employ a phrase which seems to introduce us
to the adyta of bel canto, a phrase which is all that can be desired
as suggesting the expert, the green room of the arts, the atmosphere
of ' shop.' The happy word adopted among the elite is tone-colour,
and even the ear feels the subtilty hid beneath the idiom. A
Devonshire farmer passing one dark evening along the road saw a
man standing up to his middle in a pond. ' What are you doing
there ? ' quoth he. ' Well, you see, I'm going to sing bass in the
village concert to-morrow, and I'm getting a hose.' This was tone-
colour. The pure sounds of a voice placed uniformly along its
whole extension are never heard nowadays, and by tone-colour the
critic means something which is no longer the pure sound proper to
the note, but is a variety produced by throat, chest, or jaw. On the
other hand dozens of voices present nothing better than the tones of
a voce parlata ; the sound instead of being concentrated is spread
about in the mouth, and flat toneless notes are the result, which the
Italians qualify as ' voce bianca.' If the critics ask for a little ' tone-
colour ' here they should be applauded ; and it is therefore doubly
regrettable that they sometimes fail to recognise legitimate tone-
colour — that which results from an equal production of voice — when
they hear it.

But the perfect school of singing had certain requirements : one
of these is orchestration which takes due account of the voice, and
confides the principal part to it. Simple accompaniments like those
of Pergolese where every note counted, where every note must tell
or fail, discovered all the beauties, all the defects, of the voice. The
rise of modern complex orchestration not only introduced a new
taste, the taste for orchestral music, but helped to make singing
under the old conditions impossible. And in fact a new opera
succeeded to the old — the musical drama of which Wagner gave us

1903 THE LOST ART OF SINGING 871

perfect examples, but in which declamation largely takes the place of
bel canto. German opera and German orchestration, indeed, not
only made this latter a thing of the past, but implied a new theory
of the place of the human voice as a musical instrument. In the
eighteenth century homage was paid to the voice as possessing, in
comparison with all other instruments, the inalienable charm of
individuality — to the singer because she or he, unlike every other
instrument, was both instrument and executant. Every other
instrument was a means in the hands of a human performer ; the
cantante alone was his own instrument, his own performer, perform-
ing on an instrument to which he could give endless shades of
psychological expression. Music was conceived as the interaction
of the idea of the composer with the voice and the personality of the
singer. Wagner, on the contrary, employed the voice like any other
instrument : it is made to jump without any preparation from low
notes to high, to shriek along with the full orchestra; its physiology
being totally neglected, it is treated partly as so much catgut, partly
as a broken-winded instrument. This difference between the treat-
ment of the voice as the sine qua non of complete musical expression
and its treatment as an inferior piece in an orchestra, is the measure
of the difference in the ideal — the respect for the delicacy, the sub-
tilty, the individuality of the human voice in the one case, and in
the other that orchestral ideal of music in which there is really no
longer a place for it. We know that none of the great singers
would have consented to ' sing everything.' Bel canto was an art
to itself, and required its composers, men who knew how to sing,
who knew how to write for the voice, who knew what a voice
could and should do and what it could not and should not do. Yet
amongst us moderns who has retained this tradition with the excep-
tion of Patti ? The modern idea is that a ' fine voice ' should do
any and everything ; be tenore robusto and tenore leggiero, soprano
drammatico and soprano leggiero, in the same evening, nay in the
same piece; be controbasso and flute, violoncello and violin. Now
this is precisely what the fine voice, the trained tempered organ,
can never do, what only the inferior or ignorant singer will do. It
is the absolute imperfection of voices torn to shreds by improper use,
or which have never reached the condition of being instruments at
all, which makes such a pretence on the part of the public or such
a condescension on the part of the artist possible.

Hence the best musical audiences now are those whose apprecia-
tion is all given to orchestral music. This change is partly due to
the modern development of orchestration, but must also be partly
attributed to the parallel debasement of singing. In orchestral
music the musician can at least hear instruments which are formed
to produce the effects required, while vocalists are no longer able to
furnish him with adequate interpretations. The consequence is that

872 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

no one now is as well equipped for judging of singing as for judging
of instrumental and orchestral music.

It may be asked whether under present conditions it is at all
probable that the art of singing should be revived. It is certainly
unlikely that singing should flourish if the conditions remain un-
changed, but it is less unlikely that we shall see a change in them.
A return to the Italian school of which Titiens wrote, ' Believe me
there is but one method of singing — the good old Italian,' is in the
air, and we hear much talk, not seasoned with the same amount of
knowledge, about ' methods of singing.' It is improbable that we
should always be content with opera which affords no scope at all for
bel canto. We must get some distance from a movement if we
would place it in its due perspective, if we would see it in relation to
what went before and what will come after it. Those who came to
mock at Wagner remained to pray ; but the cheap silly contempt for
the precedent Italian school to which we owe every step in the art of
music till we come to the German giants of the late eighteenth
century was clearly evanescent. That a change is coming has been
prophesied on both sides of the Atlantic. Italian opera with Italian
voices have just been tried with signal success in Vienna, and Covent
Garden followed suit last season. A few modern writers have helped
to keep the subject of bd canto before the public, attention being
called to the problem in an excellent resume of music in the
eighteenth century by Vernon Lee (II Settecento in Italia) which
should be better known in England. In 1893 Signer Mastrigli
published his Manuale del Cantante (Hoepli, Milan). Some valu-
able articles appeared in the Cronache Musicali on ' Economy and
resistance ' of the voice, by Signer A, Lauria ; and in this Keview for
June 1899 so good an authority as Mr. Kichard Davey published an
article entitled ' The Decline in the Art of Singing.' ' If there is at
present,' writes Mr. Davey, ' a dearth of first-class oratorio and opera
singers, there is an equally marked diminution in the ranks of the
concert platform.' ' My principal difficulty,' he was told by a leading
impresario, ' is not the selection of operas, but that of finding singers
to interpret them. You ask me why I do not produce Lucrezia
Borgia, Norma, Medea, Vestale, Flauto Magico ? My answer is
that there is scarcely anyone now before the footlights who can sing
these operas. It is the same with La Sonnambula and a host of
others. . . . We have declaimers in abundance who can shout
Wagner, but with few exceptions artists who can sing Wagner as
well as Kossini belong to a bygone age. I think they died with
Titiens.' . . . Yet as late as 1848-70 London maintained two opera
houses, and listened to a galaxy of singers incomparably more im-
portant than any we can show to-day. In the ten years from 1848
to 1858 we could boast of such prime donne zndprimi uomini as
Grisi, Colbran, Sontag, Jenny Lind, Frezzolini, Alboni, Mario,

1903 THE LOST ART OF SINGING 873

Tamberlick, Lablache, Tamburini. Forty years ago the singing
which was the gift of Italy was nowhere received with more en-
thusiasm and genuine appreciation than in England. It was then
understood among us, and we asked for the best. Not only is this
true of opera, but a special role was marked out for the singer in the
oratorio, which is still the musical feature of this country — a homage
to Handel's sojourn among us. With so much use for competent
performers, with so much zest and zeal displayed in innumerable
grand concerts and ' vocal recitals,' is it not to be deplored that our
musical forces and conventions actually throw obstacles in the path
of a return to fine singing, of the formation of fine singers ; that
we are no nearer an appreciation of what is required for the artistic
interpretation of even the best known and most hackneyed vocal
music; that we have not moved a step towards encouraging the
trained vocalist to come before us ? There is a great deal of singing
but no bel canto, many scores of singers and no cantanti, an immense
amount of vocal music and an almost complete dearth of real vocal
interpretation.

The year before last I heard a performance of Verdi's Requiem in
a large London hall. Of the four soloists three were entirely unequal
to their work. In the duets and quartets the fact that the voices
completely failed to blend was more noticeable than the air they
were rendering. Even the critics have told us that the vocal
part in recent performances has been the poorest, and declare that
our English voices are inadequate to the solo parts in a work like
Verdi's Requiem. When one remembers what the share of the
chief cantanti in any adequate performance should be, how they
should sustain, create, add style and breadth, spirit and verve
and living force, majesty and serenity, power and charm, one indeed
feels that the performances to which we are usually accustomed
cannot and should not satisfy. Oar inability ' to let ourselves go,'
is not true artistic self-restraint, which we often conspicuously lack ;
and no amount of sentiment, apart from technique, will dignify
our expansive moments.

When we speak of the decadence of singing we mean that the
art of expression by means of the resources of a trained vocal organ
is no longer understood or appreciated. Something would be
gained if it were once fully recognised that the sentiment which
does duty among us for style and expression no more makes the
singer an artist and singing a fine art than the sentiment in sculpture
or painting before there was power over the material made fine
painting or sculpture. Even when natural taste and refinement,
a cultivated sense of musical structure, soul, and dramatic instinct
are not wanting, the present-day singer would not be a fine artist,
because the singer is not only executant but instrument, and the
instrument yet awaits the fiat of another Porpora. In the meantime

874 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

the cantante abdicates because he or she is unable to hold the
audience as it should be held.

Let us acquire ourselves and require in the performer some
notion of vocal style. Style is expected of the performer on every
instrument ; why is it that none is asked of the singer ? There
are only a handful of men and women before the public who have
any notion of style in singing. What goes down with an audience
in its place is pose, small affectations, sentimentalism. Let us
remind the singer that his effects should be obtained by greater
and less intensity of sound, not by shrieks, breaks in the voice,
whispered confidences. Let us cease to regard anyone as a ' vocal
artist ' who is unable to employ a true mezza voce, unable (in the
case of the robuster voices) to sustain a note, who is ignorant of
that true art of phrasing which depends entirely on mastery of the
breathing functions. In what can the art of singing or its technical
beauties be said to consist if not in these things ? The highly paid
singer is very easily quit when he ends each verse with a spoken
word or two in which there is as much art as in ordinary speaking.
He has not the art to smorzare i suoni, at the same time leaving
them distinct : and in the train of this lack of art come all the
other musical defects — lack of grasp of musical structure, of style, of
rhythm, of breadth, of the canto largo, of the power of increasing and
diminishing notes.

When it is said that nowadays ' the mere possession of a voice
is deemed sufficient,' this is only half the truth. An English or
German audience likes ivhat is sung rather than how it is sung.
With all the development of classical taste in England classical style
in singing is not demanded ; and while on the one hand we have
musical audiences for whom everything must be classical except the
singing, we have on the other the singers whom this system pro-
duces, who cannot summon to their aid one single resource of the
true vocal artist. Those modern lovers of classical music who con-
demn Wagner believe that their standard of singing is much higher
than his. This is not so. Their favourite composers are all men
who only wrote well for the voice by accident. Wagner himself in
choosing for the German people ' the chanted drama ' in place of
' opera ' says expressly : ' However charming and truly delightful
that art ' (Italian bel canto) ' may have become in the hands of
eminent masters, it is altogether foreign to the German's nature.'
He renounced fine singing for his countrymen ; and as he thought
the German could not be made a good singer he determined to
make him a good declaimer. Every frequenter of English concerts
must perceive that the German language is as much a sine qua non
of modern vocal ism as the Italian used to be. It has accustomed
the English ear to guttural sounds, and the voice which has not got
them appears to have something wrong with it. There is a Venetian

1903 THE LOST ART OF SINGING 875

district where the entire population are born with huge goitres, and
the inhabitants compassionate the few sports whom unkind Nature
has failed to decorate. Yet Wagner himself held that no other
language but the Italian could have produced ' the sensuous pleasure
of pure vocalism.' This he has certainly eliminated with success in
the recitatives, say, of Siegfried ; but he has not explained why the
sensuous pleasure of tone which is expected from other instruments
should be illegitimate in the case of the voice.

What we have forgotten is that all vocal music is transfigured
when it is sung by a beautiful instead of an inferior and uneducated
voice. If the ear were again accustomed to the timbre of the highly
trained voice, competent to provide us with all the resources of the
art, we should be unable to find pleasure any longer in the unskilled
singer's performance. We want voices trained as the great maestri
trained those who after all is said and done have rendered the art
famous and classical ; and then we shall no doubt agree with
Titiens that they will enrich German music ' with a greater variety
of intonations than the majority of rising singers imagine possible.'

M. A. K. TOKER.

876 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

A FUTURE FOR IRISH BOGS

THE fact that the population of Ireland, which was eight millions
in 1841, was found by the last census to have been reduced to about
four and a half millions, apart from other proofs, conclusively
demonstrates the presence of the extreme poverty in the sister isle,
which has thus driven beyond the seas a people who, notoriously,
are more passionately attached to their homes than is the case with
any other race. Such an exodus, unparalleled in historic times by
any other similar movement in Europe, has, as all are aware, been
brought about by the impossibility of finding means of livelihood in
Ireland, partly from the general want of industries other than
agriculture, and partly from the extreme subdivision of property
among the smaller holders of the land. The land question stands
by itself ; on the industrial problem, we may accept or reject the
remote cause assigned by geologists for the dearth of those industries
in Ireland, which have nourished and given wealth to England and
Scotland, namely : — that, owing to action of the glaciers of the last
' ice age ' the whole of the carboniferous rocks were ground off the
face of the country, and swept into the Atlantic. But, at all events,
Ireland possesses little or no coal worth speaking of, and is thus
unprovided with cheap fuel for generating power. Nor is the
amount of water power in the country available for industrial
purposes of any considerable value, relatively speaking.

Now, without cheap power, derived either from coal, mineral oils,
or other fuel for raising steam, or from abundant water supplies, no
modern nation can possibly maintain the struggle for existence,
which is becoming more acute everyday. The question therefore is,
how, under existing disabilities as regards the various sources of
power, the exodus from the country can be stayed, and the Irish
nation placed in a position which will enable it to compete in-
dustrially with others.

Previous attempts to solve this problem have overlooked one
great resource which Ireland undoubtedly possesses. The true
solution of the difficulty to my mind can alone be found by
utilising the vast amount of carbon which nature has stored up in
the bogs of Ireland for the generation in situ of electrical energy

1903 A FUTURE FOR IRISH BOGS 877

which through the application of modern scientific principles can be
transmitted and made available at an extremely low price in all parts
of the country. That peat has not hitherto been used in Ireland for
manufactures is due to the difficulty of drying the stuff (which, as
existing in the bogs, contains from 80 to 90 per cent, of water) in a
humid and uncertain climate ; of compressing and then transporting
it to considerable distances for driving steam-engines, at a cost
which would admit of any real competition with coal.

Of late years the question of discovering and preparing a cheap
fuel has received much greater attention in all countries where coal
is dear, viz. in Hungary, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Germany,
Holland, Spain, the United States, Canada, &c., than in the British
Isles, with the result that quite unlocked for success has been attained.
Briquettes of compressed peat have been produced for which, weight
for weight, a higher calorific value is claimed than for even the best
anthracite coal, and so appreciated is this material for domestic
purposes that, as I am informed, it commands in Holland a higher
market price than the best coal. It may be assumed, in fact, that all
the processes for the manufacture of peat as a fuel, while at the
same time securing all the valuable bye-products (peat-tar, illumin-
ating oil, paraffin in all forms, peat-pitch, antiseptic materials, &c.),
have been devised and applied. Yet, having regard to the cost of
transport and other incidental expenses, this by itself would
probably not, except occasionally, enable industries to be started
in Ireland with reasonable prospects of financial success.

In the plan of operation which I shall presently describe, all the
drawbacks which hitherto have hampered industries in Ireland
should vanish ; but before proceeding further, it is desirable to lay
before the reader some definite information as to the nature, extent,
and calorific value of the bogs of Ireland as they exist.

In the first place, much more is known about the bogs of Ireland
than probably about those of any other country ; since early in the
last century (1810-14), Sir Richard Griffith, afterwards Chairman of
the Board of Works and Valuation Commissioner, surveyed when a
young man all the chief bogs, in view to preparing schemes and
estimates for their reclamation and adaptation for tillage, as also for
the construction, in those pre-railway days, of a network of canals for
passengers and transport.

After giving maps and sections of four bogs in the county of
Kildare (a portion of the great Bog of Allen) aggregating in ex-
tent 36,430 acres, the Commissioners, whose first report is dated
the 20th of June, 1810, observe as follows :

From inspection of the great Ordnance Survey maps of Ireland by their chair-
man, General Vallemy, of the Royal Engineers, they were enabled to consider the
greater part of these bogs as forming one connected whole, and to come to the
conclusion that a portion of Ireland of a little more than one-fourth of its entire

878 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

superficial extent, and included between a line drawn from Wicklow Head to
Galway, and another drawn from Howth Head to Sligo, comprises within it
about five-sevenths of the bogs in the island, exclusive of the mountain bogs and
bogs of less extent than 500 acres, in its form resembling a broad belt drawn
across the centre of Ireland. . . .

The Shannon divides the area into two parts, of which the division to the west
of the river contains more than double the extent of the bogs which are to be found
to the eastward. . . .

Most of the bogs east of the Shannon, occupying a considerable portion of the
county of Kildare, are generally known by the name of the ' Bog of Allen.' This
is broken up in patches, each perfectly distinct, often separated by high ridges of
dry country, and inclining towards different rivers. . . . There is no spot of these
bogs (east of the Shannon) so much as two Irish miles distant from the upland
and cultivated districts.

The bogs specially reported on were stated to be ' a mass of peat, of
the average thickness of 25 feet, nowhere less than 12, nor found to ex-
ceed 42 feet.' As to the total quantity of peat available from the
2 '8 million of acres which on the best authority exists in the country,
Dr. Johnson, Professor of Botany in the Koyal College of Science in
Dublin, who has devoted much attention to the subject, observes, in
a paper published in 1899, that ' while the average thickness of turf
in Europe varies from 9 to 20 feet, Ireland has beds as much as
40 feet.' As a very conservative estimate, it may, I think, be taken
that an average depth of at least 15 feet could be counted on
throughout.

Nearly all authorities, home and Continental, are agreed that the
calorific value of ten tons of ordinary bog-stuff, as dug out, would,
when treated and turned into fuel, equal one ton of ordinary coal.
We thus by an easy calculation arrive at the result that for 15 feet
in depth, each acre of bog would have the heating power of 1,828
tons of ordinary coal. This multiplied by 2'8 millions of acres for
the whole of Ireland, gives the total equivalent of 5,104 million tons
of coal. It would apparently therefore not be too sanguine to assume
that one half of this quantity, or say the equivalent of 2,500 million
tons of coal, would be ultimately available for steam-raising ipurposes
from the bogs of Ireland.

Turning now to the power which may be made available from
this vast store of carbon, hitherto unworked, but ready at hand, it
has to be noted that one of the great factors of modern scientific
advance in economical production, is the steady improvement which
has taken place in the thermal efficiency of steam-engines of the
present, as compared with earlier designs. Whereas, for instance,
18 or 20 Ibs. of coal were required with the older class of engines to
produce a horse-power per hour, those of the latest type, e.g. Willans
& Eobinson's central valve, Parson's Turbine, only require 1^ Ib. of
coal and even less to do the same work. Moreover with the rapid
advance lately made in the construction of gas-engines, of which
several are now in hand of 4,000 and 5,000 horse-power, the above

1903 A FUTURE FOR IRISH BOGS 879

efficiency will in all probability be sensibly improved upon at an
early date. However, to be entirely on the safe side, it may be
assumed that 2 Ibs. of coal would be needed to produce a horse-
power per hour, and again that the engine, of whatever description
it may be, which may be employed for the generation of electrical
energy, has to work 3,000 hours per annum. We could thus count
on having enough heating power in the bogs for steam raising,
or gas production, to give us a constant output of 300,000 horse-
power for 412 consecutive years !

From the above calculations, based as they are on assumptions
which are much below the data furnished by existing developments,
it may, I submit, be reasonably contended that, quite apart from what
the future may have in store, through the adaptation of power as
yet unharnessed to the electrical car, there is present at this day
in Ireland material which, if scientifically applied by known processes,
would give ample employment in manufactures and industries of
all kinds, not only for the existing population, but for one much
more numerous.

This contention will be better grasped when it is fully realised
that the production of electrical power, which is capable of energising
industries all over the country, calls for no transport, except in a very
minor degree locally, of the material (bog-stuff) from the spot on
which it is dug out. Generating stations, permanent or semi-
permanent, may be set up at any place where the conditions prove to
be most convenient.

To take, for instance, an extreme case ; if it should be thought
desirable to establish a great permanent plant for the generation of
electricity with, say, 100,000 horse-power engines, in Mayo with its
vast expanse of unutilised bog, there is no apparent reason why this
should not be quite feasible. Nor, again, is it improbable to assume
that from such centre cables might be laid to convey high potential
currents from 10,000 to 50,000 volts, with very slight loss, to any
part of Ireland, to be there converted into direct current (say from
200 to 400 volts) as might be considered desirable for application to
any and all industries.

Lest any doubt should be entertained on this point, it may be
mentioned that, on the authority of a well-known writer in a late
number of the Electrical Magazine, the opinion is expressed that
high potentialities, up to 100,000 volts, may be safely conveyed
almost any distance with very trifling loss ; and Lord Kelvin, the
greatest living authority on electrics, when at Niagara last year,
expressed the hope that, before very long, it might be feasible to
transmit the energy there generated, for working all the machinery
in New York, 400 miles distant. As a fact, current has already
been transmitted from Colgate to San Francisco, a distance of 220
miles, with a loss of 25 per cent., and only the other day an

880 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

installation was inaugurated in Mysore (utilising the great falls of
the Cauvery river at Sivasamoodrum, for working the Colar Gold
Fields), in which electrical current is transmitted 100 miles, with
only 20 per cent, of loss. As the greatest distance of any point in
Ireland from Mayo would not exceed 150 miles, there is therefore
nothing extravagant in the above idea. But of course it would be
only commonly prudent to make a much less ambitious commence-
ment, e.g. for the working of railways, tramways, canals, breweries,
and all classes of existing industries and manufactures, within easy
reach of the Bog of Allen above adverted to.

The solvent for the industrial difficulty in Ireland is thus
nothing more than the supply of cheap power in bulk and ' on tap/
wherever required. Whereas, in fact, up to the present the bog-stuff
has remained unutilised for steam-engines, locomotives, &c. owing
chiefly to its bulk and cost of transport, the proposal is that, instead
of the bogs going to the engines, the engines should go to the bogs.
It is the old story of Mahomet and the Mountain — that is all !

Everything turns on the question of the price at which this
power, generated from the bogs, can be supplied. Householders
in towns have got so accustomed to pay Qd. per Board of Trade Unit
(the kilowatt hour equals one fourth more than the ordinary horse-
power) that it may surprise many people unacquainted with the
subject, to learn that this price, which has been necessitated by
various adventitious circumstances, is quite five times the price at
which the majority of the great electrical power companies (no
fewer than thirteen of which have already received Parliamentary
authorisation in the British Lsles, with more to come in the next
session) are prepared to sell current in bulk to customers. One of
these companies for universal supply, limited only by their re-
spective county boundaries to which their Acts apply, has allowed
it to be known that it is generating energy at very little more
than one third of a penny per unit ; and there can be little doubt
as to the feasibility before many years of generating a horse-power
per hour for one farthing, which would allow of the unit being sold
to customers with fair profit, at the surprisingly low price of one
halfpenny or a little over. If, as many think, we are on the eve
of a great industrial revolution in England, owing to this advent of
an age of electricity, in supersession of that of steam, there is to
my mind a far greater revolution in store for Ireland from the same
cause, should my proposals be carried into effect.

It may, and probably will, be urged that the Irish are not likely,
in any circumstances, to become skilled mechanics, and that the
country having no such raw material as coal or cotton to work on,
manufactures could not thrive, but these objections I am convinced have
no solid foundation. In the first place, no one can re#d the admirable
reports of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction

1903 A FUTURE FOR IRISH BOGS 881

in Ireland for the past and preceding years, without being struck by
the singular adaptability shown by the people, for the various indus-
tries that have been introduced under the able guidance of the Eight
Hon. Horace Plunkett, since the formation of the department, and of
previously existing bodies, e.g. the Eoyal Dublin Society. Irish opera-
tives in the United States, England and Scotland, and wherever else
employed, have proved themselves to be as good as the best when
favoured by opportunity. And again, as regards the absence of raw
material, it has to be remembered that even in the matter of iron
ores the workshops of England and Scotland are dependent mainly
on supplies from Sweden, Spain and other countries. Lancashire
has to look entirely for its cotton to America and Egypt, Dundee for
its jute to India, and so on through numerous important industries.
Ireland in this respect is by no means placed at a greater disadvantage
than England. There is therefore nothing whatever to militate
against the Irish becoming in time, with proper application of capital
under scientific direction, a manufacturing nation through the utilisa-
tion of electrical energy, as generated from their hitherto neglected
bogs, or holding their own in this respect against any other country.
In conclusion, I would advert briefly to the generation of electrical
energy, by means of water power, which is popularly supposed to be
everywhere running to waste in Ireland. In regard to this, it must
be observed that, while having a humid climate, chiefly from the
action of the Grulf Stream, which impinges along the whole of the
south and west coasts, the actual amount of rainfall in Ireland is
very moderate. Mr. J. E. Kilroe, in dealing with this subject (in
Ireland Industrial and Agricultural Report for 1902), observes that
' only in the east of England, with a rainfall of less than 25 inches,
is there a region distinctly dryer than any part of Ireland. The
general rainfall of the centre of England (25 to 30 inches) equals
that of the centre of Ireland. It is, in fact,! mere popular delusion to
imagine that Ireland is a country

Where mill-sites fill the country up as thick as you can cram 'em,
And desput rivers run about a-begging folk to dam 'em.

To this might be added that fishing and other rights exist on
nearly every river, which must at considerable expense be acquired
if the water is to be used for electricity ; to say nothing of the cost
of head works and auxiliary stream plant, which is absolutely neces-
sary with power schemes, where there are no storage reservoirs, thus
rendering it extremely doubtful whether more than a very few of
these could be made to pay. Under such conditions as exist in
Switzerland or Northern Italy, where streams have an assured supply
from the melting snows of the Alps, or again in the United States and
Canada, where a chain of vast storage reservoirs, extending from
Lake Erie to Lake Superior, is present to maintain a constant

VOL. LIII— No. 315 3 M

882 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

perennial supply, there can be no hesitation as to employing water-
power. But no such conditions exist in Ireland. If further proof
were wanted as to the undesirability of relying on this source of
energy in Ireland, one has only to cite the case of the Shannon
Water and Electrical Power Company, which has obtained its Act.
Although the works here are so designed as to utilise the water of
the whole drainage area of the river, 4,000 square miles in extent
(the largest in the United Kingdom), the total power which it
claims to develop is only 10,000 horse-power. The Bann Erne, and
many other rivers and streams in Ireland, may no doubt be similarly
harnessed for small local schemes, but in the aggregate I feel
assured that the power capable of being thereby generated must be
quite a bagatelle as compared with that derivable from the bogs.
Much the same remark applies to the utilisation of the small coal-
fields, Arigna, Coal Island, and Kilkenny, which together do not
produce more than 125,000 tons of rather poor stuff per annum.

E. H. SANKEY.

190-

LAST MONTH

THE King's holiday tour has taken its place among the leading
political events of the month. The fact furnishes fresh proof of
the changed regvnie under which we live. In the days when Queen
Victoria was wont to enjoy her well-earned spring excursion to the
Kiviera, the last thing that any of us thought of was of attaching
political importance to the journey. But the King's voyage, though
announced originally as a holiday trip, has assumed a political
importance that cannot be denied. His visit to Lisbon was, of
course, understood from the first to be part of the state ceremonial
which, after their coronation, monarchs are bound to observe. But
even then nobody thought that it would take the character which it
eventually assumed, or that it would furnish us with another instance
of the extent to which the personal factor, as represented by the
Sovereign, is entering into the domain of high politics. His Majesty
set forth attended by the smallest possible suite, one hardly larger
than that which would have accompanied him on such a journey
before his accession to the throne. Yet at Lisbon he met with a
reception such as few monarchs, when travelling with all the panoply
of state, could hope to receive. King Edward was accompanied
by no member of the Government, yet this fact did not prevent
the reaffirmation by the Portuguese of their alliance with England,
and the terms used in stating the fact were such as to indicate
that real political importance attached to the demonstration.
When we look back a few years, and recall the undisguised
hostility of the Portuguese officials at Delagoa Bay to this
country and the countless obstacles which were raised in the
path of our policy at the beginning of the South African war, we
cannot fail to realise the greatness of the change that has taken
place. During the war King Carlos was our friend, and he stood
loyally by us during the darkest season of the struggle. But
apparently he was almost the only friend we had in Portugal. Now
we see Ministers, peers, representatives, and even the people in the
streets hailing with enthusiasm the presence of our Sovereign on
Portuguese soil, and loudly acclaiming the alliance between the two
countries. There can be no doubt that we owe this to the happy

883 3 H 2

884 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

inspiration which led King Edward to make Lisbon his first port of
call on his Easter holiday cruise.

His Majesty's reception in Lisbon excited an unwonted degree
of interest all over the Continent. Nowhere was it watched more
eagerly, or criticised more sympathetically, than in Paris. For some
time past it has been evident that the statesmen of France have
been sincerely desirous of bringing about a better understanding
between their country and our own. Credit must be given to the
Governments of the two countries for the foresight and wisdom they
have shown in striving to lead both nations into the paths of peace
and good will. As a matter of fact, there has never been any difficulty
in persuading Englishmen to welcome the idea of friendship with
France, nor does the present French Government seem to have had
any difficulty in creating a similar state of feeling among French-
men. But it is the King's Easter journey that has enabled the two
countries to put a final stamp upon this propitious state of affairs.
His Majesty's reception at Lisbon created, as I have said, a profound
impression in Paris. It was hailed almost as the re-entry of Great
Britain into the field of European politics, whilst no one on the
Continent could fail to be struck by the profound respect and intense
enthusiasm the Portuguese showed in welcoming their august visitor.
The French press, with one or two ignoble exceptions, asked why
Portugal should be allowed to monopolise the demonstration of good-
will towards King Edward and his subjects on the occasion of the
King's first journey after his coronation ; and the idea of inviting
him to Paris was received with general and warm approval.
President Loubet and his Cabinet seized with alacrity a suggestion
which was in such complete harmony with their own policy. They
found a sympathetic hearer in King Edward, and the preliminaries
were quickly arranged for the state visit which His Majesty is to
pay to Paris in the first days of May.

That this visit will have political consequences of the most benefi-
cent kind is the firm belief of wise men in both countries. Nearly
fifty years have elapsed since such a visit was last paid by an English
sovereign to the French capital. Much water has flowed under the
bridge since then. France and England are no longer sworn allies
and comrades on the field of battle. The one ally of France is now
Eussia, the enemy of both in the days of the Crimea. No one hopes
or believes that the King's visit will bring about any change in the
relations of France and her present ally, but there is nothing incom-
patible with that alliance in a cordial understanding between France
and England. To the Parisians and to Frenchmen generally the
state visit of an English king to Paris must be an event that is
flattering to their national pride. For thirty years past France has
been the Cinderella of Europe, and during all that period no great
sovereign, except the present Czar, has appeared in state in the

1903 LAST MONTH 885

streets of Paris. One does not wish to say anything that may seem
grudging or impolite with regard to the Czar's visit, but everybody
knows that it was made with a specific purpose in view. It was part
of the bargain by which Kussia bound herself in certain contingen-
cies to France. Yet, even under these conditions, France received
its Imperial visitor with tumultuous enthusiasm and delight. King
Edward does not go to Paris to frame treaties of alliance. His sole
purpose is to show his friendship and the friendship of his subjects
to the French people, and to let them know how heartily we on this
side of the Channel will welcome a renewal of old cordiality.
None but a monarch could carry through so great a mission with
such certainty of success. After all, the most fanatical of Republicans
must admit that the monarchy has its uses. It is understood that
the King's visit to Paris will be followed by a return visit of President
Loubet to London. In the interests of the peace of the world, all
will desire the fulfilment of this hope. We could have no visitor
who would be more welcome, and none who will be received more
heartily by the people of England. If this event should come to
pass, it will furnish the needed complement to the King's visit to
Paris. His Majesty must feel that in his Easter journey of 1903
he has been permitted to make history.

I have spoken of His Majesty's tour as furnishing proof of the
changed order of things which the new century has brought in.
There are some persons daring enough, indeed, to suggest that we
are passing out of the era of Parliamentary Government into that of
Democratic Sovereignty. In this new era, we are told, the monarchs
of Europe are to be much more of real rulers than they were
during the greater part of the nineteenth century ; but they are to
exercise their sovereignty in the name of public opinion, and in
accordance with the will of their respective nations. This, assuredly,
is a fantastic speculation, the fulfilment of which we are little likely
to witness. But one thing at least is clear, that all over the world
the official rulers of states are bestirring themselves, and are taking
a more active part in public affairs than that which they did under
the old regime. The Czar once more asserts his personal authority
in the promulgation of a great scheme of administrative reform in
Russia; the German Emperor, who is the doyen of the new caste
of sovereigns, goes to Copenhagen to efface the last remembrance
of the hateful days of 1864; President Loubet makes something
in the nature of a royal progress through the greatest colony
which France possesses ; Mr. Roosevelt undertakes a journey of
thousands of miles by rail through Western America, and punctuates
his progress by speeches in which he lays down the fundamental
principles of his political creed ; whilst, finally, the King of England,
breaking away from the traditions of centuries, converts his Easter
excursion into a political mission the importance of which all Europe

886 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

makes haste to recognise. There is plenty of food for reflection in
the novel situation thus revealed to us.

Has our Ministry grown stronger during the past month ? The
Easter recess has given both Parliament and Ministers a welcome
season of rest. It came when it was sorely needed. At the end
of March it seemed that Ministers were on the very brink of a
catastrophe. Nothing, according to the declarations of their own
friends, stood in the way of their downfall but the impotence of the
Opposition. ' No alternative Ministry ' was the melancholy and
humiliating cry which proclaimed the only safeguard of an Adminis-
tration which had fallen into ail-but universal discredit. As the
month of April draws to a close, the friends of the Ministry seem to
have found heart again. Mr. Long, it is true, once more blurts out
an awkward bit of truth, and confesses that he cannot deny that
there is a wave of resentment against the Ministry of which he is a
member passing over the country. But Tory squires and county
representatives, misled perhaps by the lull of the Easter holidays,
come forward to declare that the revolt of Toryism against its own
leaders is at an end, and that the country is once more rallying to
the Grovernment which has held the reins of power during the last
eight years. This would be very satisfactory to Ministers them-
selves if only the facts tallied with the statement. Unluckily for
them, however, the facts tell another story. Let us examine them
in detail. There have been two contested elections since I last wrote,
the first for the Chertsey division of Surrey and the other for the
Camborne division of Cornwall. The Liberals, in circumstances
which have not been fully explained, chose as their candidate for
Chertsey a gentleman of estimable qualities who was nevertheless by
common consent not the strongest candidate who could have been
found, or the one most likely to win votes from the Ministerial side.
He made a good fight under many disadvantages, and he had the united
support of all sections of his party. But he was too heavily handi-
capped by the line he had taken during the war to achieve the
victory which he laboured so hard to wia. The result of the election
was that the Ministry retained the seat, though by a greatly reduced
majority. That they would have been beaten if a candidate of a
different stamp had been chosen by the Opposition was generally
acknowledged by their own supporters. It cannot be said, therefore,
that the Chertsey election indicated any recovery of strength on the
part of the Grovernment. In the Camborne division the failure of
Ministers to hold their ground was still more conspicuous. Here
the Liberal candidate was the veteran advocate of the Permissive Bill,
Sir Wilfrid Lawson, whilst his opponent was Mr. Strauss, a gentle-
man who represented the constituency in the Parliament of 1895,
and who had continued to ' nurse ' the constituency assiduously.
The supporters of the Government founded their hopes of success

1903 LAST MONTH 887

upon the line boldly and openly taken by Sir Wilfrid Lawson with
regard to the war. Every effort was made to defeat him on this
ground. Mr. Chamberlain was drawn into the struggle, and wrote a
letter in favour of the Conservative candidate which read like an
echo of the Mafeking epistles of 1900. There were few Liberals
who dared to hope that Sir Wilfrid Lawson would be returned.
Yet when the result of the ballot was made known it was shown that
the Liberal candidate had secured a majority of 689 votes, the
majority of his predecessor, the late Mr. Caine, having been only 108.
Here, even more conspicuously than in the Chertsey division, the
election proved the steady decline of the Ministerial strength in the
country. It is difficult to understand how in face of these two
contests even the most robust supporters of the Government can
maintain that their loss of influence and of voting power is only
temporary.

Nor is the test of contested elections the only one that can be
applied to the present position of the Government. During the
past month certain questions have arisen both in Parliament and
out of doors that have thrown fresh light upon the extent to which
Ministers have lost touch not merely with the country at large but
with many of their own supporters. Of these the most conspicuous
is that of the future school system of London. The Government
had unquestionably a thorny problem to handle when they came to
deal with London elementary education. They had not hesitated
in the Act of last year to destroy without remorse and without ex-
ception the whole of the School Boards of provincial England. They
had applied the same draconic law to Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester,
and Birmingham as to the poorest and most ignorant of rural parishes,
and in doing so they had killed bodies which by universal consent
had done magnificent service in the cause of national education. It
was this feature of last year's Act which brought upon Ministers
their crushing defeat in North Leeds. Everybody hoped that they
had learned the lesson which they then received, and that in dealing
with London they would find some means of completing their
educational scheme without destroying the great School Board
which during the last thirty years has done so much to civilise and
Christianise the masses of our vast metropolis. To educational
reformers of both parties — Church and secular — it seemed that the
Government had only two alternatives from which to choose. They
might create as their chief educational authority a body elected ad
hoc, which would practically have meant the retention of the old
School Board, subject of course to the provisions of the new Act ; or
they might treat London as they have treated the rest of the country
and make the County Council the governing body in matters of edu-
cation. There was, indeed, a third course open to them, but it was
so objectionable, both in practice and in principle, that neither their

888 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

friends nor their opponents believed that they could possibly adopt
it. This third course was the creation of an educational authority
on the lines of the Water Board, by distributing the seats among
the local municipal councils which have taken the place of the old
vestries. There is no need to dwell upon the notorious disadvantages
of such a plan, and upon its utter inadequacy for the work which
would have to fall upon it. The leading clergy of London, including
those of highest rank, were opposed to the idea almost as strongly
as the most advanced of Radical educationists, and men hardly
stopped to discuss its merits or demerits, whilst they argued the
relative advantages of an ad hoc and a County Council authority.
Yet this last was the plan selected by the Government, and which
was incorporated in the Bill they laid before Parliament early in the
month. Only a couple of days intervened between its introduction
and the adjournment for the Easter recess ; yet even in those two
days condemnation unsparing and almost universal fell upon the ill-
starred measure. To destroy the London School Board and to set
up in its place a federation of vestrymen was a step from which
Conservative and Liberal alike recoiled in anger and consternation.

That the London Education Bill must be altered and re-cast in
many important particulars is the opinion of almost all who have
criticised it. The most devoted friends and supporters of the
Government are just as much convinced of this as their open
opponents. In what manner it is to be changed so as to make it
acceptable to the House as a whole I do not pretend to say. But
when the discussions upon the measure begin the fact that it must
be altered in some of its most vital provisions will undoubtedly be
forced upon the attention of the Government. Some of the thick-
and-thin adherents of the Ministry advise that it should be pushed
through just as it stands by means of the majority which the
Whips can still command. The Irish members, these advocates of
a policy of ' Thorough ' declare, will support the Government, and
there is therefore no reason to fear an actual defeat in the division
lobby. It is difficult to imagine a more fatuous recommendation
than this. If the opposition to the measure had been strictly con-
fined to the Liberal benches it is possible that this method of forcing
the Bill through might have proved successful. But when one sees
that some of the most pungent criticisms have come from the
Ministerial side of the House the folly of the ' brute force ' policy
becomes at once apparent. At this moment itt'seems, therefore, as
though Ministers must either modify their Bill on essential points
or run the risk of a defeat which would at once put an end to their
existence. Whatever course they may choose to adopt, it is clear
that their position has not been strengthened by the introduction of
the Education Bill for London.

But a question even greater than that of London Education has

1903 LAST MONTH 889

visibly disturbed the repose of Ministers during the past month.
When I last wrote I referred to the strange rumours that were
afloat in many different quarters to the effect that when the Irish
Land Question had been dealt with the Government would bring in
a ' modified Home Eule Bill.' For some time this strange story
was allowed to pass without much notice and without anything in
the shape of an official contradiction. The uneasiness which it
created in Unionist circles was unmistakable, but no audible ex-
pression of that uneasiness was given. Experienced politicians knew,
of course, that no scheme of Home Eule could be contemplated by
the Government. But they knew also that such a scheme of land
purchase as that which had been laid before Parliament made some
measure for the establishment of a representative body or bodies in
Ireland almost inevitable, and they were therefore quite prepared to
hear that Ministers, after dealing with the Land Question, meant to
take up that of Irish Administration. The curious fact was that it
was among the Irish members that the rumours as to the intentions
of Ministers found the most general credence. How these rumours
originated nobody can say. The Times has referred to indiscreet
utterances in high quarters in Dublin as their probable foundation.
The Irish members, in private conversation, pointed to a higher
quarter than Dublin Castle as the source of their inspiration, and so
loud and confident were they in proclaiming their belief that the
hour of triumph for the national cause was at hand that at last they
spread alarm among the Ministerial ranks. Then it was that
Mr. Balfour, in answer to urgent appeals from his own supporters,
tardily intervened to put an end to the rumours. His denial was
in itself clear and emphatic. He explained that he had not taken
any notice of the rumour before because he never supposed that
anybody could have believed it, and he went on to deny it as a
' fantastic fabrication.' There is, of course, no excuse for anyone
who refuses to accept this statement on the part of the Prime
Minister. But it is one thing to deny that Ministers have a Bill
for some modified scheme of Home Kule under their consideration,
and quite another thing to show that they have not put their feet
upon a slippery plane at the bottom of which they will find them-
selves confronted by the old problem of Irish self-government.
Denials notwithstanding, they have taken a course which must
almost necessarily compel them to enter upon that ' step by step '
legislation to which Irishmen themselves now look for the attainment
of their national aspirations. It cannot, therefore, be said that this
episode of the month has made Ministers stronger either in Parlia-
ment or the country.

When we come to consider the merits of the Irish Land Bill
itself, we are confronted by some curious facts. The first is that
Ministers have, wisely as many persons believe, turned their backs

890 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

upon their old Irish policy, and made a genuine attempt to sub-
stitute conciliation for coercion. Everybody will sympathise with
their object in doing this. If we can win Ireland by kindness, then
in Heaven's name let us do so. Almost anything must be better
than the relations which for more than fifty years have prevailed
between the two countries. But when we come to examine the pro-
visions of the Land Bill we are brought face to face with proposals
which must fill politicians of the old school with amazement and
dismay. It should be noted that the criticisms upon the Bill, so
far, have been curiously timid and reserved. Liberals in particular
have seemed almost afraid to touch the subject, and Conservative
members have left it studiously alone. The measure is nothing less
than a gigantic attempt to buy the Irish people over to the side of
loyalty and contentment by a huge expenditure of the capital and
credit of Great Britain. There are many among us who would
cheerfully consent under certain circumstances to this expenditure.
Eemembering the past, most Englishmen would be ready to submit
even to a heavy pecuniary sacrifice if by doing so they could heal
the ancient feud between the two countries. But the defects of the
Government proposals are obvious, and so grave that it is impossible
to ignore them. To put the case in a nutshell, we are asked to
expend scores of millions of money in order to satisfy, not the Irish
nation as a whole, but merely the class of landowners and land-
occupiers. And at the end of a hazardous experiment of sixty-eight
years we are to grant to the beneficiaries under the scheme, or rather to
their successors of a future generation, the absolute ownership of the
holdings which are to be enfranchised at the national expense. Why
should this immense boon be conferred upon one particular section of
the people of Ireland ? And why should the Englishman — including
the men of the working class — be called upon to pay in order to confer
this partial benefit upon Ireland ? Above all, how can we deny to
the crofters of the Hebrides and to the impoverished farmers of our
Southern counties the State aid which we are thus rendering to the
Irish peasantry ? These are questions which naturally suggest them-
selves to any dispassionate person, and they will have to be answered
before Great Britain accepts a measure which is revolutionary in its
character, and which reads more like a proposal to bribe Ireland into
submission, than a really statesmanlike attempt to solve a problem
the difficulties of which can hardly be exaggerated. It is not
surprising that the reception of the measure on this side of St.
G-eorge's Channel has been cold, or that responsible politicians of
both parties have been shy in their criticisms of it.

But if the reception of the proposed Irish land measure has been
cold and cautious rather than sympathetic in Great Britain, it has
been very different in Ireland. There the public voice, with few
exceptions, is favourable to it. Of course the Irish deny that the

1903 LAST MONTH 891

pecuniary assistance they are to receive under the Bill is sufficient.
They would hardly be true to their national character if they were
to take any other course. But so far as they have formulated their
demands it cannot be said that they are specially exorbitant.
Twenty millions instead of twelve is the sum which Mr. O'Brien
has named as the amount of the free grant from the Imperial
Exchequer that will be needed to put the scheme on a working
footing, and if the only obstacle in the way of a satisfactory solution
of the Land Question in Ireland were this difference of eight
millions, it is possible that both parties in the House of Commons
would feel that for such an object the money question must not be
allowed to stand in the way. But the economic objections to the
measure remain, and it is difficult to see how they can be met. In
the meantime one significant fact is to be observed. That is that
Mr. Eedmond, speaking at the National Convention, at which the
Bill was accepted with something like enthusiasm by the majority
of those present, sternly rebuked those who sought to mix up the
question of Home Rule with that of Land Purchase, and thus tried
to neutralise the effect of the rumours — unquestionably of Irish
origin — of the intentions of the Ministry with regard to legislation
on the question of Irish government. He was compelled at the
same time to pass a resolution re-affirming the demand for Home
Rule ; but the fact remains that for the present the question of
Home Rule has disappeared from the field of practical politics.
When it reappears it will be under conditions altogether new.
Perhaps the most striking proof of this change in the situation is
that which is furnished by the remarkable series of speeches
delivered by Mr. Morley to his present and past constituents during
Easter week. Mr. Morley is one of those who in former days nailed
the Home Rule flag to the mast. Twelve months ago, when Lord
Rosebery was so hotly assailed for venturing to declare that the
question of Home Rule was one that must in future be approached
under entirely different conditions from those which prevailed in Mr.
Gladstone's time, it was generally understood that Mr. Morley
sympathised with his assailants. But now the member for Montrose
comes forward practically to endorse the declarations of Lord
Rosebery, and to oppose a stout resistance to those Liberals who,
in defiance of facts and of the teachings of experience, have sought
to commit their party to the old Home Rule propaganda on the old
lines. It looks therefore as though, among its other consequences,
the new departure of the present Government with regard to Home
Rule is destined to make for unity among the different sections of
the Opposition. No one can pretend, however, that it will have the
same effect in the ranks of the Ministerialists. They seem con-
demned to suffer alike from their virtues and their faults.

Space does not permit me to dwell upon some minor incidents

892 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

from which the Ministry has suffered during the past month. The
licensing question, or rather the question of compensation for the
non-renewal of licenses, has given rise to acute controversies, and the
attempt of Mr. Balfour to save the situation so far as Ministers are
concerned, by fulminating against those magistrates who, sitting in
Brewster Sessions, have been trying to effect a reduction in the
number of public-houses in their respective localities, has aroused
some feeling against him even in his own party. That there was, to
say the least, an appearance of indiscretion in the form of his
utterance is not to be denied, though neither he nor his colleagues
in the Government can be held responsible for the movement
which has suddenly brought the question of compensation to the
front.

Those critics of the Ministry within the Unionist party who have
been concerned chiefly about foreign affairs have found a new and
serious grievance against Lord Lansdowne in the question of the
proposed railway from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. This is a
German enterprise, and though as at present devised it is purely a
commercial concern, it is an undertaking which may have grave
political results. When the question of the railway first assumed
a tangible shape in the beginning of April, Mr. Balfour was closely
questioned in the House of Commons as to the part which this
country was to play in a scheme that for many reasons must be
disadvantageous to our interests. The Prime Minister's answers did
nothing to remove the fears of those who were apprehensive that we
had been inveigled into another agreement with Germany of the
Venezuelan type. The fears of the public grew apace until at last
they were only too fully confirmed by the publication in the Times
of the substance of the convention signed on the 5th of March
between the representatives of Turkey and Germany for the con-
struction of the line. This document made it clear that the railway
would not only be controlled by Germany, but would be governed by
statutes which effectually secured German interests without safe-
guarding those of this country. Ministers who, before the publication
of the convention, had shuffled with the question, were compelled to
give way, and on the 23rd of April they announced that they would
not support the scheme. The fact remains, however, that Germany
had counted upon their support, and must have had some reason for
doing so.

Finally there remains the grave question of the national finances,
by which in the long run the Government must stand or fall.

Mr. Kitchie's Budget statement, which was not presented to the
House of Commons until the 23rd of April, was a surprise both to
politicians and to the country at large. It is to be regretted that
it cannot be described as a Budget which has added to the reputa-
tion of Ministers. The financial position of the country was known

1903 LAST MONTH 893

by everybody to be serious, and at the recent by-elections this
theme was duly discussed by speakers of both parties. The burden
of taxation was strongly insisted upon by the representatives of the
Opposition, and there can be no doubt that in some of these elections
the payers of income-tax deliberately sought to impress upon
Ministers their grave objection to that particular impost. Before
Mr. Kitchie made his statement it was known that if there were any
remission of taxation it would be in the shape of a reduction of this
tax. Twopence, or at most threepence, in the pound was the figure
at which that reduction was placed by the more sanguine of the
financial experts. Nobody believed it possible that the reduction
could be so high as that announced by Mr. Kitchie — fourpence in
the pound. Still less did anyone imagine that after making this
great remission in direct taxation the Chancellor of the Exchequer
would be in a position to strike more than two millions off in-
direct taxation by repealing the new corn-tax. Never was a simpler
Budget than this laid before Parliament : so much expenditure,
so much revenue, and the surplus distributed almost up to the
hilt in remissions of taxation. It was a Budget that at the first
moment of its presentation was certain to be popular. No wonder
that the members of the House of Commons received the announce-
ment of the reduction of the income-tax with a burst of enthusiastic
cheering. They are all payers of income-tax, and, like everybody
else, rejoice in the lightening of that unpleasant impost. The
removal of the corn-tax was a different matter. It is not a tax
which presses upon members of Parliament. To a section in the
House it was endeared by the fact that it represented the thin end
of the wedge of protection, and they witnessed its withdrawal with
something like dismay. To the Opposition it is and always has been
hateful ; but the Opposition are, like other people, human, and it was
hardly in human nature to see a weapon which had been used with
effect against the Government snatched from their hands without a
certain feeling of disappointment. That its sudden abolition after
so brief an existence constitutes a moral victory for its opponents
cannot be denied. But it undoubtedly deprives them of one of the
arguments which they have used with effect against Ministers in
recent elections. Strange to say, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
frankly gave this as one of the reasons for the removal of the tax.
It lent itself to misrepresentation, he declared, and therefore it must
go. ' A most successful electioneering coup,' are the words in which
the Times describes the step taken by Mr. Ritchie in reversing the
policy of his predecessor and putting an end to a tax which was
only imposed twelve months ago by his own Government. After
this expression of opinion from the most powerful of the Ministerial
organs it does not seem necessary to say anything more in order to
make the matter plain to the community at large. Sir William

894 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May

Harcourt's unconcealed anger at the ' successful coup ' only made
Mr. Eitchie's electioneering triumph more conspicuous.

But it is only when we examine the whole financial situation
that the vices of the Budget become fully apparent. It was described
at the moment as ' a dissolution Budget,' ' an electioneering Budget/
aud ' a rich man's Budget.' There is a great deal of truth in all
these descriptions. It is, indeed, such a Budget as a reckless Ministry,
which felt that its doom was sealed and which meant to go to the
country to-morrow in the forlorn hope of snatching a victory from
the ballot-boxes, might have presented to Parliament. It recalls the
historic dissolution of 1874, when Mr. Gladstone made the mistake
of supposing that an offer to abolish the income-tax altogether
would recall the middle classes to their traditional allegiance to
Liberalism and prevent their moving further in the direction of
Mr. Disraeli's newly formulated Imperialism. Perhaps if Ministers
had studied more closely the disastrous results of that episode in the
history of the Liberal party, they would not have acquiesced so readily
in Mr. Ritchie's ' successful electioneering coup.' Its success, indeed,
still remains to be proved. But the chief vice of the Budget does
not consist in its very evident appeal to popular feeling. No one
can study Mr. Ritchie's figures without seeing that, in order to secure
his wholly unexpected surplus of nearly eleven millions, he has
allowed his hopes for the future to carry him far bejond the limits
of prudence. If there were no attempt at popularity-hunting or
vote-catching in the Budget, it would still be open to condemnation
as a Micawber Budget. It is founded not upon actualities but upon
the expectations of a very sanguine man. It leaves no margin for
possible contingencies — nothing but a paltry surplus of 316,000£.
It takes everything of a favourable nature for granted, and does not
even stop to consider the possibility of any of those accidents which
year by year affect the calculations of Chancellors of the Exchequer.
Even whilst he spoke one of those possibilities had loomed up before
Mr. Ritchie's eyes. The disaster in Somaliland is certain to affect
the expenditure in the current year, and it will not affect it favour-
ably. One wonders whether Mr. Ritchie when he made his state-
ment entertained anything like a confident belief that a year hence
he would be standing in the same place and performing the same
duty. If so, he must be as courageous as he undoubtedly is sanguine.
Few figures are needed in order to prove the Micawberism of his
estimates for the coming year. Last year's estimate, framed by so
cautious a financier as Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, fell short in the
realisation by 600,000£. Yet for the current year Mr. Ritchie
estimates on the old basis of taxation an increased revenue of
more than 3,000,OOOL The expenditure for last year, inclusive of
54,000,000^. of war charges, was 1 84,500,000^. This year he esti-
mates that the expenditure, including 4,500,000^. of war charges, will

1903 LAST MONTH 895

be 144,270,000^.; his estimated revenue is 154,770,000^., and he is
thus enabled to imagine a surplus of 10,500,000^ All that can be
said is that we shall be unusually fortunate if twelve months hence
the figures justify this year's Budget.

The question of direct versus indirect taxation is not one that
need be discussed here. But at least it is clear that the remission
of so large an amount of direct taxation as compared with the re-
mission of indirect taxation is wholly contrary to modern ideas, and
leaves the working-classes with a distinct grievance. Everybody
agrees that they ought to contribute their due proportion to the
revenue of the country, and that, above all, in these democratic days
when we see Ministries frankly taking their policy from the man in
the street, they should not be allowed to escape a share of the pay-
ment for wars of which they have expressed their approval. But to
remit eight and a half millions of the taxes imposed upon the well-to-
do and only two millions of those which are more especially imposed
upon the poor can hardly be said to be in accordance with popular
ideas of fair play. Taken as a whole, it is difficult to believe that
Mr. Eitchie's Budget, despite its great concession to those payers of
income-tax who form, we are told, the backbone of the Conservative
party, will strengthen Ministers even among their own supporters ;
and it is difficult to conceive on what grounds the mass of the
nation can be expected to accept it with gratitude.

Mr. Ritchie, however, is not to be blamed for the ugliest feature
of the Budget — the enormous sum which is now required to meet the
normal expenditure of the nation. It seems only yeste.'day that our
financial authorities were contemplating with horror a possible
annual expenditure of 100,000,OOOZ. Now we have actually to
provide for an expenditure of 139,500,OOOL And we have to do
this whilst, by Mr. Eitchie's own confession, the revenue in many
departments is inelastic and disappointing, money is dear, and the
business of the country is in a critical condition. Mr. Eitchie was by
no means so emphatic as his predecessor was last year in denouncing
our national extravagance. But even he had something to say on the
subject, and he made it clear that, like Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, he
is not one who views with favour the bloated estimates for the army.
It is in the direction of economy, and in that direction alone, that
we can look for good Budgets in the future. The revenue may go
up once more by leaps and bounds, as it did in the happy days of
the seventies, but unless we resolutely oppose ourselves to the
reckless extravagance of the departments, and above all to the waste
of money on absurd schemes of army reform so-called, our
expenditure will mount higher still, and the richest nation in
Europe will come perilously near to the end of its resources.
Finally, in leaving the subject of the Budget, it is only necessary to
state the cost of the South African War, which is now at last before

896 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY May 1903

us. It has reached a total of 220,000,OOOZ., of which sum we have
as yet paid rather less than 61,000,000^. Military successes, it is
evident, are not now to be secured ' on the cheap.'

During the month little or no progress has been made towards a
settlement of the grave difficulties in the near East, and we are still
threatened by the pessimists with an early outbreak of war in the
Balkan Peninsula. Russia and Austria have put all possible pressure
upon Turkey in order to induce the Sultan to act against his truculent
Albanians. They have extorted from him promises in abundance,
and as the month closes there are some signs that he is screwing up
his courage so far as to attempt to fulfil these promises. But the
situation continues to be one of serious danger, and its gravity is not
diminished by the fact that Russia has mobilised her Black Sea fleet,
whilst the Turkish fortifications at the eastern mouth of the
Bosphorus have been hastily put in order. In China the date has
passed for the Russian evacuation of Niu Chwang, and the Russian
troops, it is almost unnecessary to say, are still in possession of that
place and of the railway. Russia has formulated a new set of
conditions for her withdrawal from Manchuria, and they are conditions
which would make her mistress of the province. At "Washington
these new proposals are denounced as a distinct breach of faith.
Our own Foreign Office has not yet spoken on the subject, but,
remembering the past, Englishmen naturally fear that they are about
to witness a fresh retreat on the part of their Government before
the arrogant pretensions of Russia. The imperialism we proclaim
so loudly in other parts of the world is not apparently to be applied
to China. The news of a serious disaster to one of our columns in
Somaliland completes the record of administrative misfortunes for
the month. As yet we have no details sufficient to enable us to >•
pronounce judgment upon the affair, but the loss of nine English
officers and of nearly two hundred black troops proves the gravity
of the disaster. In West Africa we seem to have brought the
military operations commenced by Sir Frederick Lugard to a close
by the occupation of Sokoto, and there at least the war-flag has at
last been happily furled.

WEMYSS REID.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake
to return unaccepted MSS.

THE

NINETEENTH
CENTURY

AND AFTER

No. CCCXVI— JUNE 1903

IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY

FATE has dealt tenderly with the Prime Minister. Misled,
apparently, by the agrestic eminence of Mr. Chaplin, he framed his
reply to the deputation introduced by that gentleman on the
15th of May as if it were only rural constituencies and their
representatives that are concerned in and disturbed by the proposal
to repeal the shilling registration duty on corn. It is understood
that Mr. Balfour does not derive his knowledge of what goes on in
the country through the medium of the daily Press ; still, it was to
be expected that other channels might have conveyed to him the
information that a good deal of the work of Unionist members
for large industrial centres during the recess had consisted in
explaining to their constituents the principles on which that tax
had been reimposed, as enunciated by the late Chancellor of the

VOL. LIII— No. 316 897 3 N

898 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

Exchequer. Anyhow, it would require a very slight effort of his
imagination to realise what it must cost his supporters in Parliament
to vote black in 1903 what they voted white in 1902. It suggests
curious speculation about the amount of forethought bestowed upon
matters of high policy that, down to the very eve of the introduction
of the Budget, gentlemen who, having undertaken to address meetings
in the country at the instance of the Conservative central office,
applied to that office for guidance in the selection of subjects, actually
were supplied with leaflets expounding the excellence and success of
the registration duty upon corn.

Agriculturists, indeed, and those most closely in touch with their
opinions and best acquainted with their peculiar difficulties, read
Mr. Balfour's speech with sheer amazement. They were surprised
by the persistence with which he imputed protectionist motives to
the deputation, and the emphasis with which the corn tax was ear-
marked by him as a war tax, which could never become ' a perma-
nent part of our fiscal system.' So much for the main argument by
which it was re-established by Mr. Balfour's Cabinet last year — that
it was in no sense a war tax, but a means of permanently widening
the basis of taxation. But what amazed agriculturists most of all
was the attempt to convince them that the corn tax was a burden
upon their industry. Now, whatever be their intellectual defects,
farmers are usually credited with a shrewd knowledge of the place
where their shoe pinches. It was reserved for Mr. Balfour to lay a
paternal finger upon a sore which had wholly evaded the acumen
of chambers of agriculture. It was certainly putting the matter in
an unfamiliar light to assure practical men that by the remission of
the corn tax ' a great burden on the raw material used by farmers '
would be removed.

The disagreeable impression created by this speech was not con-
fined to those who heard it, or to agriculturists in general. It
extended to very large numbers of people, unconnected with the
cultivation of the soil, who entertain a profound distrust of a policy
of Wobble : and what gentler term will serve to connote the repeal
this year of a measure advanced last year upon such explicit and
statesmanlike grounds ? Nobody can suspect Mr. Balfour of
insincerity. There have been Ministers in the past able to convince
themselves, or, at all events, to assume the air of conviction, of the
necessity for a sudden abandonment of a course of policy previously
followed. Not so the present Premier. In this instance the
discouraging impression was left upon the deputation, and upon
thousands of intelligent persons throughout the realm, that Mr.
Balfour neither had convinced himself, nor was able to put on an air
of conviction. His speech was not that of one who had something
to say, but of one who could not avoid the necessity of saying some-
thing, acting under the loyal obligation of defending a colleague.

1903 IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY 899

What chiefly galls the withers of friends of the present Adminis-
tration is the obvious connection between the loss of a by-election
or two and the abandonment of the ' broadened basis of taxation.'
It inclines one to despair to perceive that political meteorology of
this fallacious kind has not fallen into the universal discredit which
it has earned. The new impost is 'liable to misrepresentation';
wherefore, at the bidding of myopic wire-pullers, it must be
hastily withdrawn. If the thing was right to be done, why not stand
the consequences of having done it? Or must policy — Imperial
policy — for ever be nothing loftier or further-sighted than election-
eering craft ?

Fate has kindly thrown a partial veil over this misadventure.
A few hours after the downcast deputation to the Prime Minister
had dispersed, one of his colleagues sounded an appeal in a very
different spirit, which dispelled, in great measure, the despon-
dency and perplexity thrown by the other upon the party. I do
not find it possible to recall, from an experience of parliamentary
life extending to nearly a quarter of a century, any parallel to the
restorative effect of Mr. Chamberlain's speech to his constituents on
the 15th of May. Mr. Gladstone's sudden adoption of Irish Home
Kule caused a greater immediate stir, and, for aught I know, may
have brought balm to many a disconsolate Liberal heart ; but it did
not come in the nick of time, as this has done, to save a great party
from going to pieces. Those who are aware of certain tendencies
among the Unionist rank and file will not be inclined to pronounce
this an exaggerated statement. Caves may be discounted : they are
most alien from the instincts and traditions of the party at present in
power ; but there arrives a time when the most loyal supporter of a
Ministry wearies of trotting round lobbies in support of measures
which awaken no enthusiasm in his bosom, and in compliance with
a policy which, without disrespect, may be described as nebulous in
some of its features. He is inclined to ask himself whether the
sacrifice of his time and the withdrawal of his energy from other
objects really serve any useful purpose.

To such questioning the answer has come from a Birmingham
platform. There is still work to be done — definite, urgent, fruitful.

There have been times lately in Parliament suggesting the
similitude of one who has set sail in a centre-board boat and forgotten
to let down the centre-board. His progress is a combination of drift
and dangerous wobble. We opened our Times on the morning of
the 16th of May to find that a strong hand had let down the centre-
board, enabling the craft to stand stiffly to the breeze, and rendering
it possible, nay imperative, to steer a course.

Do not let me be misunderstood. It is not that we recognise in
Mr. Chamberlain's bold announcement of a new purpose in fiscal
policy the unfurling of the protectionist flag. For better, for worse,

3 N 2

900 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

all practical men have long since joined in celebrating, more or
less mournfully, the obsequies of protection for British industries.
I disclaim absolutely all sympathy with projects for raising by means
of import duties the price of commodities in the catalogue of
primary or secondary necessaries. Nor shall I here question the
expediency of continuing to admit duty free manufactured goods in
the category of luxuries to the detriment of the home producer. So
far as Mr. Chamberlain's scheme is explained in his speech, such
questions lie entirely outside its scope. Nevertheless, in that speech
frank recognition seems to have been given to one of the cardinal
doctrines of fair trade, namely, the inadequacy of sentiment alone ta
provide a trustworthy cement to hold together the component parts
of a great empire. Sentiment is the fertile source of magnificent
results, but it is subject from its very nature to sudden fluctuation
and periods of revulsion. The sentiment of British colonists in
America during the first half of the eighteenth century ran warmly
towards the Crown and the Mother Country ; but it turned suddenly
to bitter animosity so soon as the policy of King George's Cabinet
interfered with colonial interests ; and for two years before the
outbreak of the rebellion, British officers and soldiers endured
intolerable insults and injustice from the people whom they were
there to protect. On the other hand, paternal sentiment did not
avail during the latter half of the nineteenth century to save
successive Cabinets, as well Conservative as Liberal, from subsiding
into less than lukewarmness in their regard for our colonial Empire.
Sentiment, in truth, is one of the most powerful agents in human
intercourse, but it is also one of the most inconstant. What would
be thought of any business man who relied upon sentiment alone in
the transaction of affairs ?

Accepting in its entirety Cobden's doctrine that free trade is the
best form of international commerce, we were called upon to yield,
and have acted as though we did yield, undoubting faith to his
assurance that Great Britain, sixty years ago the leading commercial
nation in the world, had only to set the example, and every other
civilised community would follow it. Time has proved Cobden to be
utterly and hopelessly mistaken in that forecast, yet, shutting our
eyes wilfully to plain facts, we have proceeded as if his programme
was fulfilling itself in every detail, until we have divested ourselves
of all means to strengthen the bond of sentiment with Britons oversea
by the supplementary bond of material interest. We are not only
powerless in present circumstances to offer Colonial Governments
any substantial inducement to remain within the Empire, but we
are reduced to the humiliating confession that we cannot reciprocate
the handsome recognition which some of the Colonies have made
voluntarily of their obligations to the Mother Country. Canada has
led the way by according to British dutiable goods a preference of

1903 IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY 901

33^ per cent. At the conference of colonial Premiers last year, the
representatives of Australia and New Zealand agreed to recommend to
their Legislatures a preferential reduction of 25 per cent, in the duty
on British imports. Most striking of all, at the recent great con-
ference of the South African Colonies, comprising both Britons and
Boers, a similar resolution was agreed to.

These are overtures which, were it a mere matter of international
courtesy, it is plainly impossible for us to ignore ; but seeing that
they are momentous acts of Imperial polity, action upon them is
imperative. Are we simply to accept the boon and make no effort
to reciprocate it ? Is that consistent with national dignity ? And
what will be the reflex effect of such a course upon the bond of
sentiment ? Apologists for such a system of Peter's pence will justify
it by explaining it as a set-off against the share of Imperial defence
bestowed by the Mother Country upon the Colonies. Better keep
the two accounts separate. It was confusion about this reckoning
that brought about our North American troubles. It would be con-
stantly and naturally present to the mind of the colonial producer
that, while his own Government had given preferential terms to his
most formidable competitor, the British producer, no corresponding
advantage was afforded him in British markets. A searching strain,
this, upon sentiment. A writer in the Economist for the 23rd of
May argues that the Colonial producer should feel amply repaid for
any preference accorded to British commodities in the privilege given
to him by the Mother Country of a duty-free market. But how can
that be described as a privilege which is extended to every country
in the world, in accordance with a policy adopted avowedly in OUT
own interest ?

It is instructive to note the first impression produced upon our
rivals in the commerce of the world by Mr. Chamberlain's speech,
and to gather therefrom the estimate formed by minds not emascu-
lated by free-trade dogma of the effect of reconstructing our fiscal
system on Imperial lines. It is natural that the foreign public in
general, and the German public in particular, should not be anxious
to see any course taken which should increase the power and pro-
sperity of the British Empire. It is easy, therefore, to read between
the lines of the very general chorus of disapproval in the European
Press an indication of conviction of the far-reaching nature of
Mr. Chamberlain's plan for consolidating King Edward's dominions.

It would be premature to speculate upon the ultimate method
and details of this great project. Such extracts from the Australian
Press as have reached this country seem to indicate that quarter of
the Empire as the one where it has received the least cordial wel-
come. It is argued that the protective duties whereon the Australian
revenues depend are levied chiefly upon British goods, which form
by far the greater portion of the total imports; and it seems to

902 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

have been assumed out there, from the telegraphic summary of the
Birmingham speech, that the scheme adumbrated therein includes
the imposition upon all the countries forming the Empire of a hard
and fast Zollverein, over-ruling and interfering with the fiscal regula-
tions of Colonial Legislatures. No such project would deserve an hour's
discussion. Our Colonies are autonomous and self-governing. Their
fiscal policy is and must remain entirely within their own control, to
be regulated according to their peculiar requirements and conditions.
Inter-Imperial reciprocity can never be forced upon any self-govern-
ing Colony ; but the advantages of reciprocal trading must no longer
be withheld from any British community that is ready for and
desires it. But before it can be established, and before we can offer
preferential advantage to our own people over-sea, we must resume
the power which we voluntarily surrendered, and re-impose upon
the foreigner the same relative disadvantage which he has never
ceased to impose upon us. Many men will hesitate to alter those
one-sided terms which, being greatly to the advantage of certain
foreign States, have doubtless tended to keep them on good terms
with us. Well, we have a big concern to run, and we must choose
men to run it whose nerves are equal to incurring some risks. If a
tariff on foreign imports could be justly interpreted as an unfriendly
act, what civilised country in the world is not treating us at this
moment — has not always treated us — with the utmost unfriendli-
ness?

Will this involve us in a war of tariffs ? By no means. The
foreigner, it is true, may raise his tariffs against our products,
and thereby, according to orthodox Cobdenite doctrine, be inflicting
immense injury upon himself. But there will be no tariff war unless
we retaliate, which is unlikely. We simply shall exact from the
foreigner, who at present pays nothing in taxes and rates to the up-
keep of the Empire, a contribution in exchange for admission to our
markets, and these we shall keep freely open to British subjects,
whether home or colonial, who supply the sinews of Imperial rule.

For more than fifty years we have sought by example and
negotiation to convince the world of the doctrine of free markets :
we have not a single convert to show for all our pains. Are we
to go on crying in the wilderness or shall we proceed to put our
arguments to proof by demonstrating the virtues of reciprocity?
No demand ever made by theologians upon the credulity of their
disciples — by ecclesiastics upon the passive obedience of their flocks
— ever exceeded in extravagant disregard of human nature the
doctrine of ultra free-traders, that it is vicious to show preference
to men of your own race and land. During the fourth and fifth
centuries the chief, the only sure means of eternal salvation, was
deemed to consist in destroying and trampling upon the natural
affections.

1903 IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY 903

The first consequence of the prominence of asceticism was a profound dis-
credit thrown upon the domestic virtues. The extent to which this discredit
was carried, the intense hardness of heart and ingratitude manifested by the
saints towards those who were bound to them by the closest of earthly ties, is
known to few who have not studied the original literature on the subject. These
things are commonly thrown into the shade by sentimentalists who delight in
idealising the devotees of the past. To break by his ingratitude the heart of the
mother who had borne him, to persuade the wife who adored him that it was
her duty to separate from him for ever, to abandon his children, uncared for and
beggars, to the mercies of the world, was regarded by the true hermit as the most
acceptable offering he could make to his God.1

It is shocking to modern intelligence to contemplate the extent
and nature of the suffering caused by the eremite craze, which drove
tens of thousands of men to desolate their hearths in obedience to
the gospel as it was then interpreted. Patriotism, the solicitude
of every good subject for the welfare of the nation to which he
belonged, was extinguished in the private anxiety of the individual
to escape the wrath to come. Tertullian boasts of the utter indiffer-
ence of the good Christian to the affairs of the nation : ' Nee ulla
res aliena magis quam publica.' Something of similar fanaticism
overcame the patriotic instinct in the height of the free trade
movement. No terms could be found too scathing for those who
ventured to demur to the exclusive pursuit of cheapness and to
perceive something defective in statesmanship that excluded all
account of kin.

Just as, in course of time, the humiliating cloud of asceticism
was rolled away from Christendom, so, it seems, is a way of escape
now opened from the blighting influence of doctrinaire enthusiasts.
There is one ready and able to take the lead of that body of opinion
which has long been acquiring force in this country — the opinion of
men who repudiate as not only unnatural but dangerous the doctrine
which forbids the recognition of people of our own blood — citizens of
the same Empire — as entitled to consideration prior to aliens. They
do greatly err who suppose that this opinion is confined to persons of
leisure and independent means, thereby paying a very poor compli-
ment to the intelligence of the operative classes, for whose good will
and support they are so intensely solicitous. It is true that for many
years the advantage of unconditional free trade has been exclusively
put before working men by public speakers, and no attempt has been
made to explain why the working man is at least as well off in the
protectionist United States as he is in England. The reception which
Mr. Chamberlain's speech met with in Birmingham, the very Mecca
of Labour, is an indication that operatives have heads and hearts, as
well as hands. But there were not wanting symptoms of reflection
on the part of industrial communities long before Mr. Chamberlain
sounded the tocsin. In June of last year the employers and workmen

1 Lecky's European Morals, ii. 133.

904 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

composing the Board of Conciliation and Arbitration for the Iron and
Steel Wire Trade unanimously passed the following resolutions :

(1) That this meeting of the wire trade, consisting of both masters and men,
is of opinion that the time has arrived when consideration should be given to the
question of adopting some system of duties within the Empire which will give
preference to Imperial manufactures.

(2) That a copy of this resolution, together with the following memorial, signed
by both masters and men, be sent to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State
for the Colonies, and the President of the Board of Trade.

As was remarked by the president of the association, Mr. W.
Peter Rylands (a name not without significant memories in Radical
circles), ' Unanimity among all the manufacturers in one trade upon
a subject of this kind must carry weight, but when it is coupled
with the unanimous support of the workmen whom they employ, its
importance must be substantially increased.'

Launched with the authority of one whom men of all parties
acknowledge, whether openly or secretly, to be the greatest Colonial
Minister in English history, this mighty project must occupy the
chief place in political controversy till it is disposed of. Final
judgment thereon may be deferred, action thereon must be post-
poned, till the country has had its constitutional opportunity of
declaring its will. But the question can neither be shirked nor
shelved. It is one upon which the old frontiers of party are likely
to undergo considerable change ; not, it is probable, as the result of
mighty seismic spasms, but by the natural tendency of men to take
sides upon a clear and definite issue. As matters stand, people are
at their wits' end to preserve, or even to discern, the ancient lines
dividing Liberals from Conservatives. Except on the questions of
Home Rule and Church establishment, the difference between the
two parties has resolved itself mainly into a mutual pose, nourished
on tradition, and modified more or less by confidence in individual
leaders. It is said that the Home Rule bogey is to be laid to rest
by Mr. Wyndham's Bill, and that Irish disaffection is to be bought
up with the agrarian difficulty. However halting may be our faith
in the realisation of this vision, it is certain that Home Rule no
longer affords a clear ground of difference between parties. As for
the Church, the present complexion of the constituencies cannot
show disestablishment as a promising rallying cry for the Oppo-
sition.

The gauntlet has now been thrown down upon a fresh issue.
Public men are naturally shy about declaring themselves upon a
programme not yet authorised. Lord Rosebery, moved by his lofty
conception of Imperial responsibility and possibility, responded earliest
in a glow of instinctive sympathy. Free trade, he declared, was ' no
part of the Sermon on the Mount/ and he had never believed that
' we ought to receive it in all its rigidity as part of a divinely

1903 IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY 905

appointed dispensation.' For this indiscretion he has been sharply
brought to heel by Mr. Asquith, who says nothing, indeed, about ' a
divinely appointed dispensation,' but re-affirms the dogma that free
trade is 'the only fiscal policy,' and announces that advocates of the
new fiscal Imperialism will ' find arrayed against them the resolute and
undivided hostility of the Liberal party.' Lord Kosebery has obeyed
the crack of the whip with pathetic docility. He ' cannot conceal
his surprise ' at the interpretation put upon his speech at Burnley,
' nor can he conjecture what sentence in his speech can have afforded
any base ' for the inference that he viewed the new scheme with any
fevour. Not for the first time has he disappointed the expectation of
those who fancied that, having passed from the larval activity of
a Home Eule Minister into the meditative and detached stage of
chrysalis, he would one day stand forth the perfect imago — a states-
man who should raise Imperial statecraft above the fog wreaths and
baffling eddies of party.

While, therefore, there is not the slightest prospect of any
concurrence between the great parties of the State in undertaking
this practical scheme for consolidating the Empire, and as little
probability of unanimity within the ranks of either side, a new and
invigorating spirit has been brought into politics. Members of
Parliament and candidates for seats, whatever line they take upon
this question, should all feel grateful to him who has transformed
political life from a mere tournament of tactics into the battle-ground
of principle and purpose.

HERBERT MAXWELL.

906 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY

II

'I am not one of those who can natter themselves that our existing fiscal
system is necessarily permanent. New conditions of things have arisen since the
old free-trade policy was fought out ; and J can imagine contingencies under
which, not so much by way of protection as by way of retaliation, it might
conceivably be necessary for this country to say that it will not remain a passive
target for the assaults of other countries living under very different fiscal
systems. ... I can conceive some great fiscal change being forced upon us. ...
It would be war — fiscal war. . . . But material war is sometimes necessary ;
and it may be, but I hope it will not be, that fiscal war may prove in the history
of this country, some day or other, to be necessary also. . . . The other method
of a fiscal union (with the colonies) is difficult ; but if it were possible I should
look forward to it with unfeigned pleasure. If that were done, a trifling duty
upon food imports might be part of the general system.'

Mr. Sal/our to the Corn-tax Deputation, the 15th of May 1903.

' I have considerable doubt whether the interpretation of Free Trade which is
current among a certain limited section is the true interpretation. But I am
perfectly certain I am not a protectionist. ... I cannot believe that they
(Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright) would have hesitated to make a treaty of preference
and reciprocity with our own children. . . . We should insist that we will not
be bound by any purely technical definition of free trade ; that, while we seek
as our chief object free interchange of tirade and commerce between ourselves and
all the nations of the world, we will nevertheless recover our freedom, resume
that power of negotiation, and, if necessary, retaliation, whenever our own
interests or our relations between our own colonies and ourselves are threatened
by other people.' — Mr. Chamberlain at Birmingham, the 1.5th of May 1903.

THE speeches from which the above extracts were taken, delivered
in the same day, have focussed public interest ; they have diverted
public attention from matters purely local, have caught the eye
of the commercial and political world, and, broadening the prospect,
have given a new significance to the future. The effect of the
two speeches was different, largely owing to the circumstances in
which they were delivered. The speech of Mr. Balfour was a reply
to a protest and an appeal ; the speech of Mr. Chamberlain came out
of the blue — out of the unclouded sky of a great achievement and
the unchallenged eclat of a famous embassy. The Prime Minister
responded to a challenge — almost an attack ; the Colonial Secretary
was the herald of a new message, at least a message delivered in
new terms and under new conditions. The one appealed to the

1903 IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY 907

logic of the moment, the judgment of expediency; the other
summoned sentiment and imagination to the consideration of a
problem which had acquired vivid significance through recent experi-
ence, while at the same time it was a plant of no sudden growth or
startling origin. We have seen Mr. Chamberlain's idea in other forms
— as a Zollverein ; as a scheme for free trade between all parts of
the Empire, with a tariff for revenue against foreign nations. But,
like all ideas worth while and subject to national development,
it has become simpler in form and clearer in issue with advancing
years. What does the idea mean ? Briefly, it means reciprocity
between the British nations, and sufficient retaliation against our
foreign rivals to make that reciprocity possible and profitable. It is
a bold and fair issue, and it is one on which a great political fight is
possible ; it is sufficient to dwarf every other question. If it becomes
an election issue, it will draw to itself the public eye and the national
and Imperial interest to the exclusion of all else. The fact is obvious.
The tariff question invades every home, sits on every office door-step,
commands the anxious solicitude of every counting-house, and quickly
gets a grip of the working classes. And a tariff question which can
be reduced to a general proposition of, ' Stand by your own and make
the outsider pay ' is easily grasped in principle. As an election cry
it is reducible to a phrase. ' Reciprocity means give and take within
the British circle, and retaliation means the foreigner paying toll at
the Gate of Customs.' Crude though the similes be, they are easy to
understand.

That is the A B C of the position for the British elector so far as
the principle of Imperial reciprocity is concerned. The detail is a
matter of grave concern, and difficult beyond calculation to arrange.
Nor could the details of a scheme be arranged or proposed until the
colonies had made reply as to their attitude on the question of
principle. It is freely said : ' Oh, it's the very thing the colonies
want ; they will seize the opportunity fast enough ; they have
everything to gain by it.' But is it, and will they, and have they ?
It is not so easy to say. What are the prospects of a favourable
response? What Mr. Chamberlain proposes is not a preferential
tariff on the part of this country, but reciprocal consideration —
reciprocity. Now, take Canada first. Reciprocity is a thing which
every Canadian understands. He has been bred and fed on the idea.
Since he lost reciprocity — in the Fifties — with the United States it has
been as a creed to him to recover it. He has at last given up hope
of getting a reciprocity treaty with his southern neighbour, but
necessity has been a good teacher, and he grasps the principle
thoroughly — the poorest farmer's son understands it, it appeals
definitely to the mind of the most remote lumberman : he understands
it as he has never understood Imperial defence or even preferential
treatment. The Imperial idea is an hereditary duty to him, a loving

908 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

duty for which he would die voluntarily on due occasion ; reciprocity
is a policy by which he would live and for which he would strive
always. When the Imperial idea is united to reciprocal relations or
reciprocity, he sees an everyday basis for his sentiment and a
chance to better his condition within the circle of his patriotism.
Properly led, clearly instructed, patriotically inspired, he may be
trusted to respond generously to an Imperial policy. So far as
trade and tariff is concerned, he is amply educated for it.

The Australian is not in quite the same position. Until very
lately his land was a series of provinces with varying fiscal systems and
with sharp tariff antagonisms — as between New South Wales, which
was committed to free trade, and Victoria, which was a strenuous
upholder of protection. The tariff policy of the Australian Con-
federation is a compromise ; it has many of the features of the
Canadian tariff system. Both countries, as well as South Africa,
have found it necessary to resort to a wide application of the prin-
ciple of tariff for purposes of revenue, as it is impossible in such vast
and thinly-populated areas, where the cost of collection of revenue
is so great, to rely upon direct taxation. Expediency, not principle,
in the matter of tariff has prevailed. Mr. Chamberlain's proposals
will be viewed from that standpoint ; and behind the consideration
of the subject will be a sentiment at once consanguineous and
practical. The over-sea Briton will find many advantages in this
proposal for reciprocity. His produce will go to the country that
provides the best and cheapest means of transport and handling, it
will follow the trade routes protected by the Imperial Navy which
the colonist is coming to view as his own, within the boundaries of
security and insurance ; it will come to a stable market, behind
which is the highest and soundest national credit, to be made
sounder by his increasing trade ; it will come to a centre whose
markets will be less disturbed than any other save that of the United
States in the case of a European war ; it will travel along the lines
of least resistance. These things he will realise, and if he can enter
this market at an advantage, if his trade with the Orient be not
hampered by difficulties with Germany, he will hold both hands up
for preferential treatment — one consideration excluded. The one
consideration to give him pause is, What is the cost to him ? If he
gets preference here, how much must he pay there ?

One thing is sure, if England alters her fiscal policy she will
not do it as a gift alone, but as a means to a great end — the benefit
and profit of the whole Empire, and without sacrifice to any part,
where each bears his own heavy burden of development and adminis-
tration, and Britain bears the heaviest of all. If the policy is to
prevail, Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand must be prepared
to make their preference worth while ; it must be a real reciprocity,
an actual give and take, with the advantages indicated above to the

1903 IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY 909

good, with the prospects of a vastly developed inter-Imperial commerce
from which will flow the financial advantages of consolidated trade
interests and powerful Imperial credit. At the same time the over-sea
Briton is not unconscious of the possible effect of Imperial reciprocity
upon other nations. He will realise that the United Kingdom may
challenge a fiscal war. The action of Germany concerning Canada
has been a good object lesson. He probably also understands that the
foreigner will not bite off his nose to spite his face ; that if we need
him, he also needs us sorely. That the foreigner should expect to have
an open market here while at his gate toll must be paid is natural ;
that he should resent being discriminated against is also natural ; but
that the nations within this Empire should be considered as a fiscal
unit, as one commercial trust, should not seem to him unnatural. He
has been forced to realise that in viewing the action of the United
States towards its newly acquired territories. As for the United States,
no resentment against Mr. Chamberlain's policy will come from that
quarter. Her statesmen will approve. They would not approve if
the proposals meant danger to British trade or peril to British credit.
The preservation of British commerce and credit is vital to American
development. It is necessary to the United States that London shall
still remain the bourse of the world. Her financial interests are
immense, but because of vast speculation, of colossal enterprise, of
every penny being used for adventurous as well as conservative
development, her financial position is subject to grave fluctuations.
She gains now by the stability of British credit and British prosperity,
and relies upon it. That is her present attitude. In another
generation it maybe different. She will probably try to crush then,
where now she rivals and incites to greater development, shares more
and more in our industrial concerns. It is not probable that the
United States will enter on a fiscal war with us ; Germany may —
but may not, for reasons doing credit to her prudence if not to
her fairmindedness.

Since the 15th of May it has been said frequently by public
journals that Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain are at variance in their
views and their policy. I cannot accept that statement as accurate.
Mr. Balfour foresees the possibility of retaliation and Mr. Chamberlain
advocates Imperial reciprocity. There cannot be the one without
the other ; and Mr. Balfour regards the possibility of a fiscal union
' with unfeigned pleasure.' There is no non possumus on Mr.
Balfour's part, there is a bias in favour of fiscal union. But, bias or
no bias, there remains the anxious problem what the proposal for
Imperial fiscal union means to this country. No one can doubt the
gravity of the situation, but none should hesitate to face the issue,
and in the largest spirit. What is most to be feared is the crass
over-statement or under-appreciation of fanatical protectionists and
hidebound followers of Cobden, who himself was not hidebound.

910 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

Because our interests are so great, our trade so immense, we must
not assume that the risk lies altogether with us. We are enormously
wealthy ; our commercial plant is established, the ramifications of
our commercial and industrial energy are in every quarter of the
globe, and a mistake in policy — the loss of a few hundred millions —
would not ruin us. The loss of fifty millions would practically
cripple Canada or Australia. Imperial reciprocity is an attractive
idea, it appeals to the sentiments of our race ; yet we cannot have
a fiscal policy based on sentiment alone, and we have to face the
chances of the tariff-battle in Europe and the difficulties of adjust-
ment of Imperial Customs.

The fate of this new policy primarily depends upon the reply the
Colonies give. To my mind one thing seems convincing. The
moment jwhen^the corn-tax was taken off was the psychological moment
for Mr. Chamberlain's powerful appeal, and I am by no means sure
that the removal of the corn-tax was not a carefully arranged
preliminary. The small tax was a bone of contention, too small a
business to be reckoned as a policy — it was a war tax for revenue.
To have kept it on would have confused the issues. But in a general
scheme it would be but a detail, and would take its proportionate place
in I the broad question of national policy. Referring to an Imperial
fiscal union, Mr. Balfour said in his speech : ' If that were done, a
trifling duty upon food imports might be part of the general system.'
I think my inference from the evidence is reasonable, and the subject
must now be of dominating importance to the whole Empire, and a
serious problem to be solved by the free traders of this country, of
whom I am one. Personally, I think it well that the issue has come
now. The colonies have been making overtures, and in one case
giving preference for several years, and apathy or irritation, each
injurious, might have ensued if there came no final or definite
answer from us. The Colonies are better prepared to discuss fiscal
matters than we are, as is the case with every protected or semi-
protected country. There the incidence of tariff is the first thing that
every young politician and the mass of voters learn, and their minds
are prepared to grapple with the boldest proposition when presented.
We shall not be long in discovering what the Colonies are prepared to
do in the way of reciprocity : we shall be much longer in discovering
what the public of this country think or how they intend to act.
Meanwhile, the high-tariff advocates here must not translate the
suggestion of reciprocity into a campaign in the interests of Protec-
tion. The difficulties in the way of reciprocity are great, the
obstructions to protection are, I believe, insurmountable.

GILBERT PARKER.

]903

IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY

III

IT is just nineteen years since the sentiment of Imperial Federation
was materialised in the constitution of a League, presided over first
by the late Mr. "W. E. Forster, and afterwards by Lord Kosebery.
During these nineteen years Imperial Federation has remained, as
it was then — a phrase. But that is not to say that no progress has
been made in drawing together the far-scattered members of the
Empire, or in cultivating and strengthening the spirit of Imperialism.
As a matter of fact, the Empire never was so Imperialistic as it is
now. The intensity of feeling displayed, both in the Mother Country
and throughout the Colonies, in connection with Mr. Chamberlain's
reciprocity speech at Birmingham on the 15th of May last affords
remarkable proof of this. One is struck with the circumstance that
the fiscal problem with which Sir Kawson Eawson barred the way to
Federation in the days of the League, when it was under Lord Kose-
bery, bids fair to pave an avenue now to something more than mere
paper Federation. It is in this that Mr. Chamberlain offers the lead ;
and in relation to this matter let us avoid what Sir Thomas Browne
classified as the fourth cause of common errors, viz. ' A supinity or
neglect of inquiry, even of matters whereof we doubt, rather believ-
ing than going to see, or doubting with ease and gratis, than believing
with difficulty or purchase. Whereby either from a temperamental
inactivity we are unready to put in execution the suggestions or
dictates of reason, or by a content and acquiescence in every species
of truth we embrace the shadow thereof, or so much as may palliate
its good and substantial acquirements.'

In his opening address to the Conference of Colonial Premiers
last summer, Mr. Chamberlain said :

Our first object is free trade within the Empire. We feel confident — we
think that it is a matter which demands no evidence or proof — that if such a
result were feasible it would enormously increase our inter-Imperial trade ; that
it would hasten the development of our Colonies ; that it would fill up the spare
places in your lands with an active, intelligent, industrious, and, above all, a
British population ; that it would make the Mother Country entirely independent
of foreign food and raw material.

But Mr. Chamberlain also explained that free trade does not

911

912 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

necessarily mean the total abolition of Customs duties as between
different parts of the Empire. The exigencies of new countries, and
especially of the self-governing Colonies, must be recognised, and
the revenues of such countries must, for some time at any rate,
depend chiefly on indirect taxation. But when Customs duties are
balanced by Excise duties, or when they are levied on commodities
not produced at home, they are not protective, and are therefore not
contrary to the principles of free trade. Thus, then, free trade
within the Empire does not mean the abolition of all Customs duties.
While at the time of this writing the attitude of the Colonies
towards Mr. Chamberlain's Birmingham proposals is not fully known,
it is permissible to recall how Colonial opinions were revealed at the
Conference in London a year ago. At that Conference discussion was
raised by a motion submitted by the Premier of New Zealand in
favour of preferential tariffs. Then the matter was remitted to a
private meeting between the Premiers and the President of the
Board of Trade. A strong feeling was exhibited by the Premiers in
favour of making some definite advance towards establishing closer
trade relations between the Mother Country and the Colonies ; and
finally a resolution was adopted which expressed, i/nter alia —

That this Conference recognises that the principle of preferential trade
between the United Kingdom and his Majesty's dominions beyond the seas
would stimulate and facilitate mutual commercial intercourse, and would, by
promoting the development of the resources and industries of the several parts,
strengthen the Empire.

That this Conference recognises that, in the present circumstances of the
Colonies, it is not practicable to adopt a general system of free trade as between
the Mother Country and the British dominions beyond the seas.

That with a view, however, to promoting the increase of trade within the
Empire, it is desirable that those Colonies which have not already adopted such
a policy should, as far as their circumstances permit, give substantial preferential
treatment to the products and manufactures of the United Kingdom.

It is reasonable to assume, in the meantime, that this is still
expressive of general Colonial opinion ; and if that be so, the main
question is with regard to preference in the Mother Country. This
is just what the people of this country have got to think out, apart
from the doctrinaires. The proposition is that Imperial unity
and commercial union are inseparable. If Great Britain, as a nation,
is determined, along with her dependencies, to carry out to its grand
issues the idea of a comprehensive and cohesive British Empire, she
must make up her mind on this question of trade and commerce.
The keynote of Mr. Chamberlain's Birmingham address is that
Imperial unity involves commercial solidarity. That being so, every
advance made by the Colonies should be reciprocated. It is not the
purpose of this article to discuss the political aspects of Imperialism,
but to consider briefly the subject of Imperial reciprocity.

The fact, however, is that Imperialists cannot regard this

1903 IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY 913

question of preferential trade within the Empire from a purely
economic point of view. We are free traders, but, like Lord
Eosebery, we do not believe that free trade was part of the Sermon on
the Mount. We refuse to worship it as a fetish, or to accept it as
anything but a means to an end. The whole fiscal organisation of
the country is not to be regulated in order to further the reputed
principles of alleged free trade : free trade is to be adapted to the
national needs and advantages. The idea of reciprocal or preferential
trade may be regarded with horror by many sincere free traders, who
shrink from it as a form of protection which Eichard Cobden and
John Bright would have denounced. But we are not concerned with
what Eichard Cobden and John Bright would have thought and said
in their day and generation. It is not necessary for economic
sanitation to live for ever in the atmosphere of the Manchester
School. If Eichard Cobden had lived till to-day, he would have been
inspired by the spirit of the times, not muzzled by the traditions of
his youth. And while if he were now to speak all of us would
hearken and pay heed, that is a very different thing from listening
to those who protest, not what Eichard Cobden would think, but
what they think he would think. That which has to be considered
is not whether a reciprocal tariff with the Colonies would receive the
approval of the founders of the Manchester School, but whether it
offers any help towards Imperial unity. What we have to consider
from the Imperial point of view is not merely the effect on the
fiscal system of the Mother Country, but, as Lord Eosebery puts it,
' whether the system of reciprocal tariffs will really bind the Mother
Country more closely with her Colonies than is now the case.' If we
feel sure it will, then the change can be made with equanimity, even
with alacrity. And we need not fear foreign reprisals, because the
British Empire will then be the largest consumer in the world — too
good a customer for any country to quarrel with. -''

The adverse comments of foreign critics are of less interest to us afc
the moment than the comments of Colonial statesmen, journalists,
and business men. It is not the case that the Colonies would have
everything to gain and nothing to lose under an Imperial Zollverein,
because, in so far as they are dependent on Customs duties for
revenue, they would lose rerenue by the measure in which imports
from portions of the British Empire increased over imports from
duty- paying foreign countries. In 1902, the total of the foreign
trade of the United Kingdom was 877,630,000^., or nearly eight
millions more than in the previous year. Of that trade the propor-
tion between Great Britain and her dependencies is returned at
224,300,000^. ; which proportion is just about 26 per cent. In the
five years from 1898 to 1902 the increase in our Colonial trade was
18 per cent., and in our foreign trade 13^ per cent. But the
increase has not been wholly favourable to the Colonies. For

VOL. LIU— No. 316 3 0

914 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

instance, in the matter of imports, the increase from foreign countries
between 1898 and 1902 was 50,676,0002., or 13'5 per cent. ; and the
increase from British possessions was 7,170,OOOL, or over 7*2 per
cent. It has been, however, favourable to the Mother Country, for
while our exports to foreign countries in the five years increased by
27,824,000^., or 13'6 per cent., our exports to British possessions
increased by 27,400,000^., or 30'4 per cent. These are significant
figures. They show, for one thing, why the Colonies welcome the idea
of privileged entry into our markets, and they show, for another
thing, the increasing importance of the Colonial markets to the
Mother Country.

Writing a year ago in the pages of this Review, Sir Robert Giffen
said, ' Reciprocal or preferential arrangements between the Mother
Country and the Colonies are most dangerous, economically and
politically. It is a complete misconception that they are of the same
nature as a Zollverein, which is a measure of pure free trade, but
happens not to be possible for the British Empire as a whole.' It is
true that a Zollverein, or Imperial British free trade, is not possible
just yet, owing to the financial necessity and industrial infancy of
many members of the Empire. But, as a matter of fact, Great Britain
has not pure free trade herself. She has a tariff list of many pages,
including tea, coffee, cocoa, sugar, corn (till July), tobacco, liquor,
and a number of other articles. And a large proportion of the
commodities which feed our Customs revenue come from British
dependencies. Now, why would it be economically and politically
dangerous to forego such portion of our revenue as is contributed by
Colonial and Indian goods ?

At present we are fenced round by foreign systems of hostile
tariffs, of bounties and subsidies. It is quite true that the tariffs are
not directed against us solely, and that in each protectionist country
our free-trade system gives us an advantage over the products
of every other country except the particular country imposing the
tariff. But it is also true that protection in America and Germany
enables those countries from time to time to flood our own markets and
to supply our foreign customers, with their products in competition
with our own. And it is probably true that in the protective countries
there is a jealousy of our present methods and a desire to prevent our
further commercial expansion. We have had to take action against
the foreign bounty system as applied to sugar. We shall prob-
ably have to take action soon against the foreign subsidy system
as applied to shipping. It is tolerably certain we should not
have obtained international consent to discontinue the sugar
bounties if it had not been made plain that if they were not abolished
we would meet them with countervailing duties. Per contra, it is
more than probable that if we grant preferential duties on British
Imperial goods, we shall have overtures of concessions from other
countries in exchange for the same preferences. The effect of that

1903 IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY 915

would be a stimulus in the direction of free trade, and one main
economic reason why Imperial reciprocity may be justified is that
it will fructify in the real absolute commercial union that can only be
found under a Zollverein like that of the American Republic or the
German Empire.

The political reason for supporting preferential or reciprocal
trade within the Empire is that it will bring about a political
=unity which, whether we call it Imperial Federation or not, all the
members of the Empire seem at present to desire, and even to expect.
If such a unity is both possible and desirable, then it is certainly
worth paying something for. The Colonies cannot be drawn into one
fold without some sacrifice being made by the Mother Country. And
she can afford the sacrifice, especially if the sacrifice be only that
of the fetish of a figment of what men call free trade, without fully
considering what free trade means. Surely not even the ghost
•of Richard Cobden in the solemn if sacred precincts of the Cobden
€lub would deny the advantage of sacrificing something in order to
advance free trade within the Empire. Do not let us forget that
free trade followed the Scottish Union, the Irish Union, the American
Union, and the German Union. It cannot fail to follow the Union
of Greater Britain, which will be promoted by preferential trade. In
-effect, a preferential trade agreement is a commercial treaty, and
commercial treaties were inaugurated (or at all events supported) by
the apostle of free trade. A preferential treatment of the products
of the British Empire would neither necessitate nor justify the
imposition of excessive duties upon foreign products, whether of raw
material for the body or for the factory. Canada, for example, has
reduced the imposts upon British goods by one-third of her tariff
rates without raising the duties upon other goods. It is extremely
probable that foreign countries would object to, and perhaps be
decidedly angry at, preference being accorded to British Imperial
goods over theirs. Germany has given an indication of this in her
attitude towards Canada. But as foreign countries do not consult
our wishes and convenience in framing their tariffs, we need not
•consider them in arranging a British Imperial tariff. The British
Empire is as free to adjust its own fiscal relations as is the German
Empire or any other congeries of States.

The Colonies are, as we assume, all, if not clamouring at least
-eager for preferential treatment in our markets. It is true that they
are not as eager as they might be to share the financial burden of
Imperialism ; but the idea of partnership is novel to them, and what
the ties of blood are worth we have seen in Africa. If they make a
formal proposition to us for the institution of an Imperial tariff, can we
offer any sound objection to it ? There is the free-trade theory, of
course, but the prosperity and security of the Empire are superior even
to free trade, which is not a doctrine but a policy. If the safety of

3 o 2

916 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

the Empire demanded that we should abandon free trade, we should
have to abandon it. But there is no such demand, and the
reciprocal arrangement to which Mr. Chamberlain points is not only
not adverse to, but is actually conducive to, free trade. A concession
of preferential treatment to the Colonies would be a small price to
pay for whole-hearted Colonial co-operation in Imperial defence.
And who knows how soon all the resources of the Empire will be
taxed to safeguard even a corner of it? One cannot, with the
striking examples around us in both hemispheres, adhere to the old
free-trade belief that economic prosperity is impossible under pro-
tection. And, at the same time, one cannot perceive any possible
advantage in protection for this country. But may one not admit
the possible advantage of a moderate amount of protection for some
of the Colonies ? May not, indeed, a moderate amount of protection
for some of the Colonies be necessary to the preservation of our national
food-supply in time of war ? A small duty on foreign wheat, for
instance, may make all the difference between marketing the crops
of Canada as compared with the superior facilities of the United
States, and yet have no appreciable bearing on the cost of food. It
is no profanation of the economic gospel to suggest this, but plain
reason which demands that economic policy ought to be adapted to
circumstance. We have wheat lands and cattle lands in Canada,
in Australasia, and in India enough to keep us supplied with food for
all time, and to make us independent of foreign restiveness. It is
not economic heresy but common-sense to make the most of them.

This is one reason why it is a pity Mr. Eitchie should have
decided to repeal the corn-duty this year. It was not a protective
duty, nor was it intended to privilege any interests. But it was a
possible cover for preferential treatment of the Colonies. A re-
mission of the duty in favour of Canadian wheat was not in the
mind of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach when he imposed the tax last
year. But it was an idea in the minds of Canadian statesmen, who
are now disappointed that their dream is broken. Of course neither
Sir Michael Hicks-Beach nor Mr. Eitchie is to blame for Canada
entertaining hopes and expectations that were not intended to be
roused or encouraged ; but once again we are reminded that policy
should adapt itself to circumstance. Canada has been the first of
the Imperial children to differentiate in favour of the goods of the
Mother Country. Canada has been foremost among the Imperial
children in showing what she is willing to do for the honour and prestige
of the Empire. Canada has just shown to Germany how determined
she is to assert her fiscal independence and her adhesion to Imperial
preference. To have abrogated the small duty on corn from Canada
and India and Australia, while retaining it on corn from other
countries, would not have interfered much with Mr. Eitchie's
balance-sheet, but would have sent a wave of Imperialism through

1503 IMPERIAL RECIPROCITY 917

the Colonies. It would not have affected the price of American
wheat any more than a rise or fall in freights affects it, but it
would have stimulated the production in, and tightened the bonds
with, the Dominion. We have said that free trade is a means to an
•end. So might the corn-duty have been — and the end Imperial unity.
There is this further to be said in reply to those who would limit
the obligations of Imperalism — that if the Mother Country is com-
pelled, as she is even in existing circumstances, to defend any one
of her Colonies from attack or aggression, she is certainly at liberty
to offer to them any advantage she pleases or to accept any that
they offer.

BENJAMIN TAYLOR.

918 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

HOME RULE WITHOUT SEPARATION

THE time seems to have arrived for some earnest effort to settle the
chronic Irish difficulty. The Land Bill may do much, and much
already has been done in other directions. The Church in Ireland
has been disestablished. Wide Local Government has been given,
and the whole of the British political world has become determined
to content Ireland, if that be possible. Unnecessary to argue this
point. Ireland, when satisfied, would form a most potent factor in
the establishment of the Imperial system, with which Mr. Chamber-
lain is so strongly identified. The present Irish Secretary has
grasped with marvellous rapidity the intricacies of his task, and he
seems qualified, if anyone is, to solve the embarrassing problems that
beset him.

The object kept in view by those interested not only in Ireland
but in the internal peace of the United Kingdom is to devise some
settlement which shall satisfy the Irish without infringing on the
unity of the country.

The condition of the Liberal Party is very much like that
occupied by the Conservative subsequently to the repeal of the Corn
Laws. At that time Conservative fortunes were reduced to their
lowest point. The Party was split up into Peelites and Protectionists,
and the Liberal Government seemed to float in safety owing to the
weakness of their opponents. The moment arrived, however, when,
notwithstanding the absence of an organised Opposition, the Liberal
Party was defeated, and a Ministry had to be formed from the
wreckage of the Conservatives. The Conservative Party under Lord
Derby and Mr. Disraeli fully appreciated the crisis, and, though not
anticipating a long tenure of office, they accepted the responsibility
of forming an Administration. Ministers were found, some obsolete
and others untried, but they remained long enough in office to heal
the dissensions between Protectionists and Peelites. Though driven
from power within a few months, the Conservative Party became a
force in the State. It worked on until it has now held office for
a period almost unexampled. But it has been gradually losing
strength. Offices have been distributed on an aesthetic rather than-
on a popular and practical method. Mr. Chamberlain, the principal

1903 HOME RULE WITHOUT SEPARATION 919

personality of the Government, has indeed shown great capacity,
resource, and imagination, but both Conservative and Liberal parties
are shackled in general politics by the complex difficulties of Ireland.
Those difficulties once removed, parties would resume their natural
functions, and we should then have Whig and Tory, Conservative
and Liberal, again formed on the old lines.

A pamphlet, published anonymously in 1898, has adduced many
reasons in support of a proposal for the abolition of the present Lord-
Lieutenancy and the substitution of a Prince belonging to the
reigning family as the head of society in Dublin. It is premature
to go deeply into the writer's argument, but with his permission we
extract a long passage of his pamphlet giving his general ideas :

But if the Irish are so ready to welcome the casual visit of any member of the
Royal Family, how much more enthusiastic would be the reception of a Prince
destined to raise Ireland from the position of England's poor relative to that of
a prominent figure in the society of nations !

The Prince of Ireland should be at the bead of Irish society, taking no part
in the Government, except on the advice of Ministers. Being a permanent
institution, the Prince would do away with the fluctuating policy of Lords
Lieutenant, who change with the Ministry. A descendant of Royalty, he would
naturally command more respect than a member of the House of Lords, and
would found a real Court.

He would hold State functions, and distribute the honours decreed by the
Sovereign. Dublin would become the centre of a larger society. Young people
would there first make acquaintance with the world, instead of being forced to go
to London, where they are visitors, not natives.

Some idea of the brilliancy to which Dublin might attain may be derived
from the history of Florence under the Medici, Brussels under the Archdukes, and
in more modern times the Courts of Weimar, Dresden, Nancy under Stanislas,
Lucca, and Naples, while to-day Cairo attracts from all parts of the world a crowd
of pleasure-seekers.

The Prince of Ireland must also be provided with a suitable country seat
where to entertain his friends with country pursuits and pastimes.

To fix the income of the Prince of Ireland is, perhaps, premature, but with
the certain influx of long-promised English capital, and the sums to be saved by
the abolition of the Lord-Lieutenancy, a suitable salary on a large scale would be
easily provided. The establishment of a royal residence would mean the founda-
tion of a regenerating social influence, giving to Ireland a national existence in
harmony with her relations to the United Kingdom, and a permanent stimulus to
the enterprise and industry of the country.

But the social function of the Lord-Lieutenant embodied in the Prince of
Ireland, a form of independent administration would be required under the control
of the Imperial Government and Legislature.

For this purpose there should be a certain separation of administrative
institutions, and some autonomous adjunct to the Imperial Parliament.

The country should be provided with a local representative of the Imperial
Government, in the person of a Secretary of State, entrusted with the manage-
ment of Irish affairs. He would change with the Imperial Government, the task
of continuity being left to the Prince of Ireland, as it is in England to the
Sovereign. Certain departments could be represented in Dublin by the Parlia-
mentary Under-Secretaries, and the Irish administration thus composed would
reside at Dublin during the Parliamentary recess to inquire into the needs or
grievances of the Irish people.

920 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

To the Secretary of State would be entrusted the special care of the Home
Office, Treasury, Local Government Board, and Public Works, the departments
to be represented by the Parliamentary Under-Secretaries being :

The Foreign Office,

Colonial Office,

War Office,

Admiralty,

Board of Trade,

India Office,

Post Office,

Education Department,

while particular attention should be directed to the Board of Agriculture. The
existing specially Irish functionaries to be retained are :

The Lord Chancellor,

The Attorney-General,

The Solicitor-General.

The official body thus formed and resident in Dublin would afford the Irish an
easy method of stating their requirements, and would establish a continuous
channel of communication with the Imperial Government for the promotion of
Irish interests.

An impulse would be given to Ireland in the direction of an autonomy con-
sistent with the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, while the following pro-
posal would seem to complete the fabric of that autonomy :

For purposes of recommending legislation and giving to the Irish people the
means of an authoritative and compact exposition of their wants and wishes, there
should be formed an Irish Convocation, combining with popular representation
the best elements of every class of society. There would thus be constituted, as
suggested by Lord Salisbury in 1885, ' a large central authority ' in which ' the
wisdom of several parts of the country will correct the folly and mistakes of one.'

Subject, of course, to additions and modifications, the Convocation should be
composed thus :

(1) The whole of the Irish peerage, with the exception of those peers who,
under other titles, hold seats in the House of Lords.

(2) The Irish members of the Imperial Parliament.

(3) The bishops of both churches.

(4) The public functionaries above specified, together with certain judges,
Lord Mayors, and heads of universities.

(5) The chairmen or other representatives of the new County Councils.

The Convocation should assemble for a certain period before the meeting of the
Imperial Parliament, and should be opened by a speech from the Prince of Ireland,
drawn up by the responsible officers of the Government.

The Assembly should have for its president alternately the Lord Chancellor,
who would then, as now, represent the Ministry of the day, and a Speaker in
receipt of a salary, and chosen from the members of Parliament.

The duties of this body would be to appoint Committees, having the power of
Parliamentary Committees for private business in Ireland.

To discuss general measures for the benefit of Ireland, to be submitted to the
Imperial Parliament.

It would have no control of Imperial funds, the amount of irksome private
business of which it would relieve the Imperial Parliament contributing largely to
its own fee fund.

All Irish measures intended by the Imperial Government should be submitted
to'the Convocation, together with the proposals of private members. The de-
cisions of the Convocations should be recorded in the form of resolutions or of
addresses to the Crown, to be laid before the Imperial Parliament at its meeting
by responsible advisers of the Crown.

1903 HOME RULE WITHOUT SEPARATION 921

The proposals may be questioned; but they are certainly a
contribution to the solution of the problem. I will now proceed to
suggest a basis for an arrangement in conformity with the views of
the writer of the pamphlet, but perhaps more in keeping with the
present conception of parliamentary practice and tradition.

There appears to be considerable misconception as to the real
meaning of the principle of Home Rule and its possibilities.
Opponents represent it as the absolute separation of Ireland from
England. Hitherto it has only separated the Liberal Party. But
if we examine the idea without foregone prejudice, there appears to
be little difficulty in meeting the views of the real Home Eulers
without running any Imperial risk.

For the last fifty vears or more there have been in existence in
many countries Nationalist movements of a nature analogous to the
Home Kule asked for by the Irish. Germany by this spirit of Home
Rule has been welded into an Empire ; Italy by the same process
has been made a Kingdom. So has Belgium. So has Greece. So
have Servia and Roumania, while Montenegro and Bulgaria are
independent principalities. Home Rule was refused to Italy, and
Austria lost Italy. It was conceded to Hungary, and Austria kept
Hungary. Thus, where the Nationalist principle has been admitted,
great political problems have been solved with no injury except to
interests of a despotic and reactionary character.

Spain refused to give her colonies autonomy. In the first place,
she losj; the whole of her possessions in South America. More
recently from the same cause she has lost them in Cuba, Puerto
Rico, and the Philippines.

The United States of America might still have been united with
England had they been made autonomous. We preserve Canada,
Australia, and all our principal colonies by giving them a free hand
in their internal administration, and they are glad to remain united
with the United Kingdom in everything that concerns Imperial
interests.

Those opposed to Home Rule in Ireland are apprehensive of
anti-English movements if Home Rule were conceded. The land-
lords are afraid as well as the moneyed classes. Similar apprehensions
were expressed in the Ionian Isles before their annexation to Greece,
but since that annexation they have been orderly and progressive.
It may be safely averred that if Home Rule in Ireland had existed,
the interests of the late Irish Church, and perhaps now of the land-
lords, would have met with better treatment than at the hands of
the Imperial Parliament.

Ireland thus conciliated, there would no longer be an anti-
English party, but the nation would be divided naturally into Irish
Conservatives and Liberals, amongst whom the population of Ulster
would probably have great weight.

922 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

Home Eule, to be properly understood, should be examined in
detail and not with asperity. It is generally agreed that the
institution called the Castle is really a remnant of Home Kule, and
that the least attractive. Once place the Lord-Lieutenant in a
proper position by abolishing his political partisanship, and conferring
his office on a Prince of the Royal House, with the title of Prince of
Ireland, it would not be long before both England and Ireland would
rejoice in the change. The Prince would be above party and above
responsibility ; he would exercise a mitigating social influence, and
gather round him the best elements of Irish force and genius.

A Secretary of State for Ireland, generally living there, responsible
both to the Irish and Imperial Parliaments, and surrounded by
representatives of the different Imperial departments, would give to
Ireland and to Dublin a distinct national vitality.

The Parliament might be composed as follows :

(1) A House of Commons, containing double the representation
now given to Ireland in the Imperial Parliament. Two members
should be elected for each existing or future constituency, the
member receiving in each electorate the highest number of votes
being considered as also elected a member of the Imperial Parlia-
ment. The Irish House of Commons and the English House of
Commons should each meet once in the year, their deliberations
being restricted to matters concerning their respective native
countries. During the two or three months previous to the meeting
of the Imperial Parliament, the Irish House of Commons a,nd the
English House of Commons, the one sitting in Dublin and the other
in London, should both in England and Ireland respectively treat
and discuss matters appertaining purely and solely to England and
Ireland.

(2) The Irish House of Lords should sit at the same time as the
House of Commons and under the same conditions. Irish peers
should be given seats in the Imperial House of Lords. Bishops
both of the Protestant and Eoman creeds should be added to
this House in certain numbers. The Lord Chancellor should
preside over the Upper Chamber, and an elected Speaker over the
Lower House. In addition to the Secretary of State, the Imperial
departments should be represented in each Irish House by the
Imperial Parliamentary Under-Secretaries. Imperial questions,
such as the Army and Navy and foreign relations, except as they
touch local requirements, should be reserved for the Imperial
Legislature.

Neither House could carry any measure beyond the second
reading. When each had accomplished its local work, the Imperial
Parliament should be summoned ; and it would be desirable that
once in two or three years the whole Imperial Parliament should

1903 HOME RULE WITHOUT SEPARATION 923

assemble at Dublin. This would give to Dublin an international
position.

The Irish capital, headed by the Prince or by the Sovereign,
would thus be enabled to entertain the diplomatic representatives-
and English as well as Irish society, and would give to Irish trade
an impetus now impossible from the vicarious nature of its present
Court.

All measures having passed the second reading in the respective
Parliaments should be discussed in the Imperial Parliament — in
Committee, on report, and on the third reading. Anything injuri-
ous to the public welfare of the Empire would thus be checked and
modified. No doubt Dublin would profit greatly by this change, and
the Irish would be attracted to their homes in the country to which
they belong.

On the occasions when the Parliament assembled in Dublin, it
should be opened by the Sovereign in person, who would, in Ireland
as in England, be exempt from all responsibility or political imputa-
tion. By this means not only the substantial interest and the legiti-
mate pride, but even the vanity, of the Irish would be satisfied. In a
word, Ireland, admitted to a prominent share in the British Federa-
tion and Empire, would become reinvested with an individuality of
which it considers itself at present deprived.

It is not pretended by the foregoing remarks to offer a solution
of the great problem underlying the phrase 'Home Kule/ They
are designed merely to smooth the ground for further controversies,
by diminishing the exasperation animating the discussion as at
present carried on.

H. DRUMMOND WOLFF.

924 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

THE BOND-HAY TREATY

A NEW PHASE OF THE ANGLO-AMERICAN DISPUTE

THE Reciprocity Convention concluded last fall between the United
States and Newfoundland, and known as the Bond-Hay Treaty, is
BOW before the American Senate, awaiting ratification. Owing to
the press of business in the 'short' Session of Congress which
closed on the 4th of March, it could not be acted upon, but the
'long' Session which opens next December will not adjourn until
the following August, so there will be ample time then to consider
it. Meanwhile, Canada is leaving no stone unturned to induce the
Imperial authorities to disallow it, because its passage into law will
deprive the Dominion of the chief lever which she hopes to use in
enforcing an adjustment of the several other subjects of contention
between herself and the Republic, such as the Alaskan Boundary and
Pelagic Sealing disputes.

Newfoundland has no part in these problems, but is paramount
in the kindred issue of the Atlantic Fisheries Question. She stands
apart from both the United States and Canada in regard to it, and is
the opening wedge, as it were, which separates them more and more.
The one which secures her co-operation is practically guaranteed the
supremacy in these fisheries, and that is why there is such a
competition between them for her favour. The United States will
make a reciprocity treaty with Newfoundland because the agreement
provides for free bait for her own fishermen and renders her independent
of Canada, her chief rival. Canada opposes such a separate compact
and aims to force Newfoundland into political union with her,
thereby obtaining control of her fishery rights, and using them to
secure from the United States concessions which she could never
otherwise obtain.

It is an extraordinary circumstance that the two oldest and most
vexatious complications with which the latter-day diplomacy of the
Motherland has been beset, should be centred in the Island of
Newfoundland, the most ancient colony. One of these entangle-
ments is the French Shore Question, the other is this Atlantic
Fisheries Question. Both had their origin in the troublous times of
the eighteenth century, and the legacy of irritation and international

1903 THE BOND-HAY TREATY 925

bickerings which they have proved is an eloquent testimony to the
supineness or ineptitude of the British statesmen of those days, who
trafficked in the peerless fisheries of Newfoundland with every Power
that had to be conciliated.

It is needless here to refer in detail to the French Shore Question,
with which the British public are more or less familiar. But this
American problem, now forcing itself to the forefront, is one the study
of which cannot but be helpful to Englishmen who would learn the
basic facts of the difficulties in which the Empire is involved abroad.
Like the French Shore dispute, it arose from the prosecution of
the great cod fisheries on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland,
but in many respects it is much more involved, because it has now
become interwoven with the commercial, industrial, and political
interests of three countries — the United States, Canada, and New-
foundland.

Soon after Cabot's discovery of the Island in 1497, the fame of
its cod fishery spread through Western Europe, and every nation with
an Atlantic outlook sent fleets of daring voyagers to the Grand Banks
to ply that vocation, using the Newfoundland seaboard, only 100
miles distant, as their base of operations. When England annexed
it, France secured Cape Breton, and it was to protect her fisheries
that she incurred such an enormous expenditure in fortifying
Louisburg, the famous stronghold she created there. The Puritans
then settled in New England, the Dutch established themselves in
New Holland (New York), and the Spaniards found a foothold
farther south. From these colonies, as well as from the mother
countries, they pursued these fisheries, the boundless wealth of
which has met all draughts to this very day ; and the fishery enter-
prise was encouraged by each of these nations because it meant the
training of thousands of seamen to crew their navies. Under such
conditions friction and strife became inevitable. War or concessions
alone provided an escape from unceasing quarrels between the
fisherfolk. It was through these causes that France, by the Treaty
of Utrecht, in 1713, first secured a lodgment on the coast of
Newfoundland. But the New England Colonials adopted a different
course. Infuriated by the constant raids and insidious attacks of
France on their fishery fleets and seaboard, they seized the opportunity
of the war of 1742 to organise an expedition against Louisburg, and
though the enterprise was regarded as a foolhardy one, they accom-
plished the capture of the fortress, and achieved a success which was
described as having counterbalanced all the disasters which had fallen
upon the British arms in Europe.

Is it surprising that these Colonials, with the example of this
victory before them, should have in a few years developed that spirit
of resistance to British rule which culminated in their war of
Independence ? As an evidence of the importance of the fisheries,

926 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

even then, Lord North, in 1775, introduced a Bill in Parliament to
prevent the New Englanders from fishing on the Grand Banks, and
in the war which followed, the fishing fleets, British and American,
were harried until the whole enterprise had to be temporarily
abandoned. When the revolting colonies, in 1778, sought recog-
nition of France, one of the first articles of their treaty of that year
was a guarantee by the ' United States ' of fishing rights for French
subjects on the Banks of Newfoundland, as stipulated for by France,
a proof that the lesson of Louisburg had not been forgotten. Simi-
larly, when the Treaty of Paris, in 1783, closed the American war,
the United States took care to stipulate for the same fishery privileges
in and about Newfoundland as the Colonials had previously enjoyed.
The next year a treaty for a reciprocal and perfect alliance in
commerce and navigation between Britain and America was nego-
tiated, and by these two instruments the relations between the two
countries and their dependencies were governed until the war of
1812 abrogated all treaties. This time Great Britain, being the
victor, declared, at the Peace of Ghent, in 1814, that she did not
intend to renew these fishing privileges to the Americans without an
-equivalent, and the treaty contained no fisheries article. This pro-
hibition threw the Americans on their own resources, and they met
the emergency by a bounty to their fishing craft. In 1815 they
paid 1,811 dollars, which amount rose to the enormous sum of
149,000 dollars four years later, a convincing testimony to the
magnitude of the industry. During these four years the United
States fishing vessels were rigorously excluded from British waters,
and there is one case on record of a vessel being warned away when
sixty miles off the coast of Newfoundland.

The Treaty of Washington, in 1818, contains the very essence of
this whole dispute, as we understand it to-day. That treaty was a
compromise between the extreme views of both parties. The
Americans, hampered by the limitations upon their fishery privileges
by the war of 1812, were constantly violating the British laws, while
the British, in their sweeping construction of their sovereign rights,
were in danger of precipitating another conflict. Prior to 1818 all
negotiations concerning the fisheries had been based upon the theory
that Great Britain had a proprietary interest in the Bank, or deep-
sea fisheries, as well as in the coast, or inshore fisheries, and all
questions turned, not upon the latter so much as upon the former,
because the prosecution of these Bank fisheries was greatly facilitated
by the use of the Newfoundland coast as a base of operations, and to
secure outfits and supplies.

But now this position was abandoned, and Great Britain virtually
restricted herself to her coast fishery rights, the Grand Banks and
outer waters being admitted to be free to all nations. The United

1903 THE BOND-HAY TREATY 927

States, however, advanced a claim to inshore fishing, and the diffi-
culty was adjusted in this wise :

The United States fishermen were granted, for all time, a con-
current right —

(a) To take fish of every kind on (1) the western section of the south
coast of Newfoundland, (2) the west coast of Newfoundland, (3) the
Magdalen Islands, and (4) the coast of Labrador.

(6) To dry and cure fish on any of the unsettled south coast of
Newfoundland, or Labrador.

(c) To enter the other parts of the coast of Newfoundland and
Canada to shelter, effect repairs, purchase wood, and obtain water,
but for no other purpose whatever.

(d) In return for these concessions they renounced for ever the
right to fish within three marine miles of the coast of British North
America, not included in the above, and they agreed to be subject to
such restrictions as might be necessary to prevent their abusing the
privileges hereby reserved to them.

The effect of this treaty was that the Americans surrendered the
inshore fisheries, except on certain coasts, and secured the deep sea
fisheries. It might be supposed that this would have put an end to
all friction, and promoted amity and good will between the subjects
of the two nations. But it did not. Within a year or two arose the
famous ' headland ' dispute, an offshoot of the ' three miles limit/
The question was this : Should the line — three marine miles off —
follow the sinuosities of the coast and be drawn across the mouths of
bays where they are six miles wide, or should it be drawn from
headland to headland, barring out foreigners from all enclosed
' territorial ' waters, large or small ? The British authorities, in
Canada and Newfoundland, adopted the 'headland' doctrine, and
excluded the Americans from even the Bay of Fundy, in Nova
Scotia, Baie des Chaleurs, in Quebec, and Fortune Bay in Newfound-
land. Many difficulties and conflicts ensued, American vessels were
seized almost every year, and many of them were confiscated for
flagrant violations.

In 1839 the United States appointed a Commissioner, Lieutenant
Payne, to visit the fishing area and report upon the questions in dis-
pute. The American Government had all this time continued its
fishing bounties, and the previous year, 1838, they had risen to
314,000 dollars — a figure never subsequently attained. President
Van Buren, feeling that the returns were inadequate for the outlay,
ordered the inquiry as above, which resulted in a report that the
difficulties arose over the construction of the word ' bay ' in the
Treaty of 1818, and the 'shelter, wood, and water' privileges. In
1845 the British Government relaxed the prohibition against the
Americans entering the Bay of Fundy, owing to the proximity of
their own Maine coast, and in 1851 Daniel Webster, then the

928 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

Secretary of State, in a despatch on the subject, admitted that
the British attitude was very generous, and that the American
fishermen frequently violated both the letter and the spirit of the
Treaty of 1818.

These mutual concessions paved the way for the Elgin-Marcy
reciprocity treaty of 1854. This arrangement granted the United
States fishermen unrestricted access to British North American
waters and shores to catch and cure fish, while the United States
waters and shores north of latitude 36° were thrown open to British
fishermen on the same terms. The American fishermen thus
obtained the right to purchase bait and other supplies ; to land and
tranship fish ; to use the bays and harbours; to prepare, clean, pack,
and dry fish, and to enjoy sundry commercial privileges. It being
admitted that these concessions were of greater value than those the
British subjects could enjoy in American waters, the United States
granted free entry to its markets for many of the products of the
British North American colonies. This treaty worked very advan-
tageously to both parties, but the United States abrogated it in
1866, at the expiry of the twelve years for which it was originally
negotiated.

It had effectually disposed of all pending difficulties, allayed
friction between the two countries, and promoted a marked improve-
ment in their trade, and its abrogation revived all the unwelcome
drawbacks to national comity. The situation was soon embittered
by a renewal of the conflicts of the previous non-reciprocity period,
and within five years a new treaty had to be negotiated, in 1871.
This dealt with several features of commerce and navigation as
well as the fisheries issue, but it is with the latter only that we are
now concerned. The fisheries clauses revived those of the 1854 treaty,
and the Americans offered free entry to United States markets for
coal, salt, fish, and lumber, for a period of twelve years from the 1st
of July, 1874, in return for access to the British North American
markets. This offer was rejected, and then the United States agreed
to an arbitration, to be held at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1877, to fix
the sum, if any, which the United States should pay for the use of
these fisheries during the period in question. This arbitration tri-
bunal awarded the sum of 5,500,000 dollars, of which Canada received
4,500,000 dollars, and Newfoundland 1,000,000 dollars — a ridiculously
unfair division, but carried out because then, as now, Newfoundland's
real standing in the case was not appreciated.

The fishery clauses of this treaty were abrogated by the United
States in 1886, on the expiry of the twelve-year period, and im-
mediately the old-time troubles were renewed again. The seizure of
American vessels threatened serious international difficulties, and
propositions for yet another treaty were being exchanged by the
two nations. Newfoundland, now awakened to a realisation of her

1903 THE BOND-HAY TREATY 929

own peculiar advantages as a baiting and outfitting centre, opened
negotiations for a separate fisheries arrangement with the United
States, in 1877, when Ambassador Phelps intimated to Sir Ambrose
Shea, then Newfoundland's delegate in London, that his government
would cordially accept and act on the proposal. But the Imperial
Cabinet declined to sanction the project for an independent compact
by Newfoundland then, as plans were maturing for a reciprocity
treaty including Canada as well.

This instrument, known as the Chamberlain-Bayard Treaty, was
negotiated at Washington in 1888. Like its two predecessors, it
provided for fisheries reciprocity between the United States on the
one hand, and Canada and Newfoundland on the other, but it was
for no stipulated period, going into effect automatically on the United
-States removing the duty from fish and fish-oils, and being nullified
on her reviving these duties. It also permitted United States
fishing vessels entering for shelter or repairs, to unload, reload,
tranship, or sell their cargoes, and to replenish their outfits. It
further provided for the appointment of a mixed commission to
•delimit the coastline as to which the United States by the Treaty of
1818 renounced its fishing rights. The details agreed upon were
such as to exclude the Americans from all bays ten miles wide at
their mouth, and from certain specified ones fifteen to twenty miles
wide.

The United States Senate of the day being Republican, and hostile
to President Cleveland, rejected this treaty ; but the plenipotentiaries,
to prevent the prospect of friction while the treaty was under dis-
cussion, had arranged a modus vivendi, whereby the United States
fishing vessels could, for two years, enter Canadian and Newfound-
land waters, and by payment of an annual licence fee of 1^ dollar
per ton, purchase bait, ice, seines, lines, and all other supplies and
outfits, tranship their catch and hire crews. This temporary
.arrangement, it may be explained here, still continues in effect,
being renewed from year to year for the past fifteen seasons in the
hope that some opportunity will arise, through the negotiations
with one party or the other, for the framing of another treaty which
will meet with a more favourable reception at the hands of the
Senate.

The rejection of this Treaty of 1888, avowedly on the ground
that it granted too large concessions to Canada, caused Newfoundland
to revive her request for permission to negotiate a separate arrangement
covering the fisheries question, and in 1890 the Imperial Government
authorised Mr. (now Right Hon. Sir) Robert Bond, Colonial Secre-
tary of Newfoundland, to visit Washington for such purpose. He
succeeded in concluding with the late Mr. Blaine the draft instru-
ment which has since become historic as the Bond-Blaine Convention.
It was on the basis of permitting American fishing vessels to enter

VOL, Lin— No. 316 3 P

930 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

Newfoundland ports on the same terms as the local fishermen, in
return for the United States granting free entry to her markets of
Newfoundland fishery products. It also fixed certain rates of duties
on American foodstuffs and other commodities, but its purpose was
aptly epitomised as ' free bait for free fish.' When it was almost
completed, Canada protested against its being sanctioned by the
Imperial Government, and set forth very exhaustive reasons there-
for. It was represented as being a violation of the traditional
understanding that the British North American fisheries were to-
be regarded as a unit and administered and utilised for the financial
and diplomatic advantage of Canada and Newfoundland. It was
characterised as a departure from the sound policy of making
common cause against a common enemy, and the point was urged
that Canada should be given an opportunity to secure the same
advantages before it became law. Newfoundland's answer was that
there was no violation of established practice, inasmuch as there was
no injury to Canada's rights. Canadian fishermen now enter New-
foundland waters on the same terms as the residents, and the con-
cession to the Americans merely relieved them of the obligation of
paying a licence fee, and placed them on an equality with the
Canadian and local fishermen. Moreover, the fact of Newfoundland
securing such a treaty would not in any way prevent Canada en-
deavouring to obtain the same, and possibly succeeding, while on the
other hand it was hardly fair that Newfoundland should be deprived
of the benefits of such an arrangement because Canada could not
obtain them.

After careful consideration the Imperial Government decided
that it must recognise the force of Canada's protest, and withhold its
approval of the convention until, at any rate, Canada should have
had a fair chance to effect a similar compact. Naturally the New-
foundland Government was greatly displeased, and, with her existence
held to be depending, in a great measure, on her success in securing
this arrangement, she felt that an unfriendly act had been done
against her by Canada. She was then in the very throes of the
struggle with France, enforcing a Bait Act against these Gallic
rivals, and striving to rescue her one industry, the fisheries, from the
stagnation into which it had fallen through the bounty-fed com-
petition of the French on the one hand, and the closing of the
American markets on the other. Recrimination and bitterness
developed bad feeling on both sides, which rapidly grew into a
regular trade and fisheries war between the two colonies. New-
foundland refused bait to the Canadians or forced them to pay a
licence fee. Canada retaliated by levying a duty on Newfoundland
fish and oils entering her ports. This hurt Newfoundland very little,
her export to Canada being but trifling, whereas Newfoundland,
importing large quantities of foodstuffs and farm produce from

1903 THE BOND-HAT TREATY 931

Canada, retorted with a prohibitive duty on these, and diverted all
the trade to the United States. A most deplorable state of things
prevailed, and it required Lord Knutsford's personal intervention to
bring about a return to friendly relations.

This he did, notifying Canada that her opposition to the Bond-
Blaine Convention could not be maintained indefinitely. In a
despatch to the Governor-General at Ottawa, on the llth of February
1892, he sajs :

Your ministers will not fail to observe that the main ground assigned by the
Government of Newfoundland for the refusal of bait licences to Canadians is the
opposition of your ministers to the signature of that convention, the conclusion of
which Her Majesty's Government have postponed in consequence of that opposition.

While, however, Her Majesty's Government have, in view of the negotiations
about to be commenced at Washington, informed the Newfoundland Government
that the conclusion of the convention must be again deferred, they feel that in
justice to that colony they cannot postpone the ratification indefinitely, and should
your ministers not succeed in obtaining a satisfactory arrangement with the United
States, the attitude of Her Majesty's Government, in regard to the signature of
the convention, will have to be reconsidered.

In the meantime, in view of the deplorable results accruing both to the
Dominion and Newfoundland from the relations at present subsisting, I would
venture to urge strongly upon your ministers to consider, whether by personal
communication with the Government of Newfoundland and a mutual agreement
not to further discuss past controversies, some amicable arrangement cannot be
made.

Apart from the material loss to both colonies, involved in the obstacles which
have been placed in the way of their commercial intercourse and development, a
prolongation of the present strained relations cannot fail to produce an estrange-
ment of feeling between the people of the two colonies, which may seriously
endanger the friendly relations which should exist between the different possessions
of the crown, a result which I am confident your ministers would deplore no less
than Her Majesty's Governmeut.

I will only add that if representatives of the Dominion and Newfoundland
were to meet in this country armed with full powers to come to a conclusion on
the points at issue, I should gladly welcome their arrival and give my good offices-
with the object of devising some settlement which might be accepted as satisfactory
by both parties.

The negotiations he refers to were those which the Canadian
Cabinet opened with Washington in 1892 ; but they came to nothing.
Another attempt was made in 1894, but was equally fruitless. After
Sir Wilfrid Laurier attained power in 1895, a third trial was had,
and in 1898 the Joint High Commission was formed and met at
Quebec. Newfoundland, which had not been recognised at all in-
framing the treaty of 1871, and only unofficially by an 'agent' in
that of 1888, was now admitted to be a factor of sufficient import-
ance to be represented by a Commissioner ; and Sir James Winter,
then Premier of the Colony, was chosen. It is unnecessary to refer
to the failure of that tribunal to adjust the twelve distinct disputes —
ranging from the Banks of Newfoundland to the seal rookeries of
Behring Sea and from the St. Lawrence canals to the Yukon goldfields —

3 p 2

932 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

which were submitted to it. Canada had had her chance, and, as
Lord Knutsford observes above, ' the attitude of her Majesty's Govern-
ment had to be reconsidered.'

Daring the progress of the Boer war, Newfoundland did not press
for the fulfilment of that promise, but in the summer of 1902, when in
London for the Coronation, Premier Bond secured the sanction of
Mr. Chamberlain to reopen the Washington negotiations, and he
promptly concluded with Secretary Hay another convention to take
the place of that of 1890. It is no less a tribute to Sir Robert
Bond's personal abilities than an attestation of the merits of his case,
that he should have accomplished this after such a lapse of time and
in the face of so many changes in diplomacy and administration at
the American capital. The United States authorities have always
shown a disposition to treat with Newfoundland and are evidently
satisfied that she has something substantial to offer them which
Canada has not, and which, therefore, makes it impossible for the
Dominion to obtain a hearing.

The key to the whole situation is bait and a base for the pro-
secution of the fisheries on the Grand Banks. These banks are 100
miles from the Newfoundland coast, 500 miles from the Canadian,
and 1,000 miles from the American. Obviously, then, the ideal
location from which to pursue the Bank fishery is the south-east
coast of Newfoundland, which fronts on these submarine ledges.
That is why the rights which the Americans possess over the western
seaboard of Newfoundland are valueless to them nowadays, for that
coast is too remote from the Banks. But not alone does Newfound-
land afford a base for these fisheries. It provides the bait also. This
consists of small fishes — herring, caplin and squid — found in the
littoral waters and used to sheathe the hooks with which the deep-
sea fishes — cod," haddock, halibut and mackerel — are taken. The bait
fishes are netted by the coast folk and sold to the Bank fishermen,
who pack them in "compartments in their vessels, well covered with
ice, so that' they will remain fit to use for three or four weeks.
Successful fishing on the Banks is impossible without bait, and the
chief home of these small fishes is the Newfoundland seaboard.
During the season there are always scores of vessels — American,
Canadian, and local — in our harbours procuring this indispensable
adjunct, and many thousands of dollars are earned by the coast folk
in supplying them with 'stocks. Until 1888 the French, who make
St. Pierre-Miquelon their headquarters, were permitted to obtain
bait in our waters ; but as their fishery was subsidised by bounties
equalling 70 per cent, of the value of their catch, and they could
thus undersell us in the markets of Europe, we had in self-defence
to exclude them by our Bait Act, and now their fishery is not nearly
so valuable. The United States commercial agent (vice-consul) at
St. Pierre, in his report for the year 1901, says on this point:

1903 THE BOND-HAY TREATY 933

'Another blow to the trade of St. Pierre, and one which affected the
fisheries as well, was the passage of the now famous " Bait Bill " by the
legislature of Newfoundland. The bait business of St. Pierre was
once very valuable, and since the passage of this Act the fishing
business has been seriously hampered.'

The Americans, as already explained, obtain bait by paying a
licence fee of 1^ dollar per ship ton. One cause of their readiness
to make terms with us is the fear that otherwise we will enforce our
Bait Act against them too, and cripple their fisheries equally. Last
year all their banking vessels obtained stores of bait in our harbours,
besides which there were carried to New England during the winter
and spring 200,000 barrels of herring, much of which was for use as
bait by other sections of their fishing fleet. A strict enforcement
of our fishery laws against the American trawlers would leave them
helpless ; and they know it. Hence there is nothing like the
opposition in New England to a reciprocity treaty with Newfound-
land that there would be to one with Canada. The ' Yankees '
admit that Newfoundland is a competitor with whom they can carry
on their favourite game of a ' swap,' with an assurance of obtaining
some adequate return for what they give, but they regard Canada as
being desirous of getting all, and giving nothing in return.

Canada has no adequate bait supply. Her vessels procure this
essential in Newfoundland also, because of the greater abundance and
cheapness of bait there, as well as the proximity of that seaboard.
Only since Newfoundland enacted the bait law and provided ma-
chinery for licensing and regulating this traffic, has its full value to
the colony been disclosed. The result has been disastrous to
Canada's pretensions to be considered as the chief factor in this
fisheries dispute, because the Americans are familiar with the
statistics of the business, and when Canada approaches them with
proposals for fishery reciprocity, they meet her with the unanswer-
able contention that the baiting and inshore privileges they want
are possessed by Newfoundland, and not by the Dominion.

Briefly, the American position is this :

"We are willing to concede to Newfoundland free entry for her fish, to our
markets, because she can give us free bait, which we need for our own fishing
ventures. Moreover, Newfoundland is an island, separated from us by one thousand
miles of ocean, with unfrequent communication, and her farther shores fully a week's
run from ours. Therefore, as she ships to Europe most of the fish caught on her
north coast and on Labrador, only portions of her annual catch will be available
for competition with ours, and we can meet this competition by extending our
own markets. But with Canada the case is altogether different. She cannot give
us bait, and yet she prays us to grant her free entry for her fish. She has nothing
to offer us in exchange, and no status in the negotiations, except such as she
acquires from the fact that she has an interest, as a sister colony, in the bait
fisheries of Newfoundland. But, if we can obtain from Newfoundland alone the
concessions we need, in return for a grant of free markets to her, why should we
be expected to give similar concessions to Canada also for only the same privilege ?

934 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

The British North American seaboard is 5,290 miles in extent, Newfoundland
owning 2,100 miles of it. All of this area is settled by fisherfolk. Special bait is
not so requisite for coast fishing as for deep-sea work, and the total catch of the
Maritime Provinces — Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward's Island, and
Quebec — is valued at about 10,000,000 dollars annually. Nearly every part of
these provincial coasts is within daily railroad or steamship communication with
New England, and reciprocity with Canada would mean the flooding of our
markets with Canadian fish, which would undersell ours, because their industry
is conducted on a cheaper basis. The value of our own New England fisheries —
inshore and deep sea — is only 10,000,000 dollars a year, so the admission of
Canada's catch would simply double the quantity to be disposed of, and thereby
ruin our domestic industry. Under existing conditions we have to impose an
import duty of f per cent, a pound on all foreign fish, to enable our own fishermen
to compete with the cheaper caught product of Canada and Newfoundland, and
while we can probably successfully withstand the competition of 2,000,000 dollars
worth of Newfoundland fish, which would be about the utmost she could send us
under a free-trade arrangement, and in return for which we would get bait, it would
be utterly impossible for us to attempt to maintain our own fishing enterprise
against the incoming of 10,000,000 dollars worth of Canadian fish every year.

Canada is unable to meet this presentation of facts, because the
logic thereof is too strong ; but she puts forward the argument that
her fishery privileges are of some value, and that, furthermore, free
trade in fish should be granted by the United States in the interest
of the 80,000,000 of people of the Eepublic who are now compelled
to pay an exorbitant price for fish food in order to maintain a monopoly
of this business in New England. The British Isles, with a popula-
tion of 40,000,000, consume fish to the value of 50,000,000 dollars
annually. The United States, with twice the population, consumes
only 40,000,000 dollars worth, including therein the Atlantic and the
Pacific coast fisheries, the lake and river fisheries, and the southern
oyster fisheries. The consequence is that the great mass of the
American people is deprived of a cheap and nutritious article of diet.
Herring, for instance, which sell in England for a halfpenny each,
cost five cents (2|cZ.) in the United State?, and cod is almost as
dear as beef. These arguments are effective enough from the view-
point of the political reformer, but in the United States the doctrine of
absolute free trade has not much political force, and the rejoinder
of the American statesmen to Canada's plea is that they are not
prepared to impoverish their own deep-sea, inshore, lake and river
fishermen, to enrich those of the Dominion.

Newfoundland's position is that she is an independent, autono-
mous colony. She possesses advantages which the United States
wishes to enjoy, and she is prepared to trade in them with that
country. She has nothing to gain by allying herself with Canada
in this matter, because Canada is unable to absorb its own annual
fish production, and therefore Newfoundland would worsen her
circumstances, rather than better them, by pooling her interests
with those of the Dominion.

1903 THE BOND-HAY TREATY 935

Such is the actual status of this Atlantic fisheries dispute at the
present moment, setting out the respective relations of the several
parties thereto. But the question has a diplomatic aspect also,
regarding the foregoing as its industrial phase. Where it enters
the sphere of diplomacy and intrigue is as follows :

Canada is desirous of including Newfoundland in the Dominion.
But this colony is opposed to union, holding that it would not serve
her fishery interests. Canada's eagerness to bring about the federa-
tion is due to the fact that upon merging Newfoundland in the
confederation the fisheries would pass under the control of the
Dominion Cabinet at Ottawa. There would no longer be any
division of authority as between the two ; Newfoundland's special
identity would be extinguished, andlthe fisheries would be adminis-
tered as a whole and with one definite policy. The securing of this
advantage would enable Canada to close the whole of the territorial
waters of British North America, with all the fishery rights and
privileges appurtenant thereto, against United States' subjects, and
thereby jeopardise the very existence of the New England fishery
enterprise. This would provoke a furious outcry from Maine and
Massachusetts, in the prosperity of which States the fishery plays a
prominent part, and also from the United States Navy Department,
•which relies in a great measure on the New England ports for sailors
to man the warships. Consequently Canada would be able to obtain
excellent terms if she would then agree to reopen these waters to the
American trawlers.

The concession might be general fisheries reciprocity, or perhaps

an abatement of American contentions as regards the Alaskan

Boundary. At any rate, the leverage would be most important for

Canada, and therefore she will leave nothing undone to prevent the

Bond-Hay convention from being ratified. As Canada views it,

there is no doubt much to commend this policy, but Newfoundland,

which is to be the victim of the scheme, cannot be blamed if she

resents it as unfair to her. Sacrificed on the one side to promote

Imperial interests with France, she sees no reason why she should

be sacrificed on the other side to enable Canada to checkmate the

United States. In this crisis Newfoundland awaits the outcome of

the Alaskan Boundary Arbitration now in progress in London, which

must have an important bearing upon Anglo-American relations

generally, and those between the United States and Canada in

particular. Should the Bond-Hay Treaty be ratified when next

Congress meets, the oldest Colony looks for the Imperial Government

to fulfil the promise made by Lord Knutsford eleven years ago.

P. T. McGrKATH,

St. Johrif, Newfoundland.

936 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

CONQUEST BY BANK AND RAILWAYS

THE well-known phrase of the famous American leader ' War is<
hell ' must nowadays be qualified by the intensely appalling
adjectives of ' profitless ' and ' ineffectual.' The recent war in South
Africa has demonstrated, not only to what ruinous and colossal
figures the bill of expenses can run, but that, as a means of
acquiring or forcing one's interests in new territory, it is, at this
stage of civilisation, out of date and unsatisfactory. All the
expenditures of a so-called successful war produce nothing but the
necessity and obligation of undertaking still greater expenses to-
make the first step of the marcH of progress possible in a reduced
and devastated country. So that, notwithstanding what a nation-
may pay for the carrying-out of a successful war, the millions spent
in this way count for nothing, or less than nothing, as a p/ofitable
investment. The truth must be admitted that the time has passed;
when it was worth while going to war to acquire territory, whether
from savages or weaker nations. The costly war produces countless
and bleeding sores in the conquered peoples ; sores requiring a thick
coating of gilt before any hope may be obtained of establishing the-
foundations there among them for any progress or mutual benefit.

If, then, war is out of date for the purpose of conquest, what is-
there to replace it ?

In Egypt, England has unconsciously touched upon a great
principle of conquest by absorption, slow, but as permanent in its-
effects and as unchangeable as the Fates. In Egypt, England has-
gained control of the Nile and the finances, and she has become so-
intermingled with the government that the destinies of the two
countries are now inextricably intertwined. The acquisition of the
Soudan has reduced the question of Egypt to a secondary place,
since the control of the Upper Nile carries with it the power of life
and death over the Delta.

But it is to Kussia one must look for the conscious and intelli-
gent and consecutive development of this principle as applied to the
gaining or acquiring of new possessions. From the very earliest.

1903 CONQUEST BY BANK AND RAILWAYS 937

days the Russians have realised that commerce and finance were
the easiest and most sure methods of absorbing new territory. They
saw clearly that it was infinitely better to divert the stream of
everyday life little by little toward a new channel without in any-
way checking its force, than to boldly throw across it a dam of
war, diverting and scattering all its forces without having any new
channel for it to follow.

The whole story of the acquisition of Siberia is a wonderful
testimony to this idea, although it must be confessed that in its
earlier stages its execution was crude and lacking in that subtlety
that has characterised their later efforts. Undoubtedly there has
never been so great a tract of country acquired by a nation with so
little bloodshed. This is admitted even by the bitterest opponents
of the Russian advance towards the Pacific. Bloodshed has occurred,
but that it has done so has been a detail in the carrying-out of the
idea : it was no part of the original plan. Generally it arose from
the necessity of protecting traders in the new territories. Of course,
in the more southern regions of Central Asia, where Russia came
into contact with warlike races, conflicts naturally occurred more
frequently, and on a greater scale. But even here the policy was,
in the words of General Skobeleff, ' to strike hard, and keep on
hitting till resistance is completely over, then at once to form ranks,
cease slaughter, and be kind and humane to the prostrate enemy.*
Another great advantage which Russia possessed was the* faculty of
suiting her diplomacy and methods to the methods of the people
with whom she had to deal. If it was possible to obtain the desired
and necessary treaties from a country by conducting the negotiations
along the lines customary in that country, Russia was never one to
insist upon the red tape of St. Petersburg. And so there was never
a feeling of a great and impossible breach between the conquerors
and the conquered, such as one finds in India or Africa.

From the time when Yermak first entered into Siberia to dis-
cover new fields for the exercise of his powers, to the present time,.
Russia's progress in Asia has never ceased. To-day she can look at
the 4,833,500 square miles of Siberia, and reflect upon the sound-
ness of her policy, and the excellent method in which it has been
carried out. To quote from a writer who is not at all a Russophil —
Mr. Alexis Krausse — in his book Russia in Asia :

The doings of Yermak and of Chabaroff in Siberia aimed rather at the-
obtaining of fresh markets for Russian produce than at the increase of Muscovite
dominion ; and the subsequent invasion of Central Asia was brought about not by
any political designs on the part of Russia, but by the necessity of teaching a
lesson to the Kirghiz marauders who made the limits of the Orenberg steppe
unsafe to the caravans which traversed it in the direction of Khiva.

Interesting as has been Russia's work in Siberia, she had there-
no competition to fear from other nations, and was, therefore, able

938 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

to choose her own time for her operations, without dread of outside
complications.

It is, therefore, of more value to study closely Eussia's present-
day system of annexation, and to see in what manner it has been
brought up to date and improved to meet the competition of foreign
nations. This field of her operations lies, of course, in Northern
China. The first noteworthy difference of system we see is that
whereas in its earlier stages Kussia was content to allow separate
persons or bodies to control her commercial policy in Manchuria, it
has been deemed necessary now to consolidate the various interests
into a strong and serviceable weapon, ever ready to the hand of the
Government. This weapon of consolidated power is the Kusso-
Chinese Bank — a joint-stock corporation supported by Eussian and
Chinese capital. It is this bank that is gaining for Eussia the rich
province of Manchuria, the ' Garden of China,' and gaining it so
completely that even if Eussia withdraws politically from the terri-
tory, the Eussianising influence will still go on.

In the Eusso-Chinese Bank the Eussian Government possesses a
means of doing everything that is impossible for it to do as a
Government. It is the Mr. Hyde to Eussia's Dr. Jekyll ; no other
description will give so good an idea of the situation. That the
Bank, though outwardly a private business, is absolutely under the
control of the Minister of Finance, is evident from a perusal of the
articles of association.

While every care was taken to preserve the idea that the Bank
was as much Chinese as Eussian, every care was also taken to pre-
vent this being so in reality. Except for the name, the flying
together of the two flags on Bank property, and its appearance as a
Chinese authority in financial matters, the Bank is entirely and
wholly Eussian.

Once this mighty organisation was established and in working
order, it obtained the concession to construct the railway through
Manchuria, the district assigned to Eussia by the secret Cassini
Treaty of 1897.

For the construction of this road, the Bank formed the ' Chinese
Eastern Eailway Company ' — again observe the skill with which the
name has been chosen, suggesting that everything is Chinese,
nothing Eussian. This company has a capital of 5,000,000 roubles
(500,000^.), the greater part controlled by the Bank. The funds
for the actual construction were raised by bonds, guaranteed by the
Eussian Government, which doubtless held a large number of them.
While this is ostensibly a plain business transaction, proof is not
lacking that the railway has been built by the Government, acting
through the diplomatic screen of the Bank. In M. de Witte's
financial report for 1900 there appears the following significant item :
* 85,000,000 roubles for loans to private railways, on security of

1903 CONQUEST BY BANK AND RAILWAYS 939

bonds guaranteed by the Government.' Besides this, in the Budget
estimates for the same year appears a sum of 82,000,000 roubles for
the same purpose.

The following points from the published railway construction
agreement will show how close is the connection of the Eussian
Government with the undertaking :

The bonds of the railway company shall be issued as required, and only with
the special sanction of the Russian Minister of Finance. The face value and real
price of each issue of bonds, and all the conditions of the issue, shall be directed by
the Russian Minister of Finance.

The payment of interest on and amortisation of the bonds of the Manchurian
Railway shall be guaranteed by the Russian Government when issued.

The railway company must secure advances upon these bonds through, the
Russo-Chinese Bank, and not otherwise ; but the Government may itself directly,
if it choose, take up the bond issue as a Government investment or upon loan,
advancing upon the bonds the ready money needed by the company from time to
time.

Money received by the company for these bonds, no matter •whether it is
received through the agency of the Russo-Chinese Bank or directly from the
Government, or in any other manner, must be kept at such places as are
designated by the Russian Minister of Finance, and absolutely under his super-
vision and control.

The ready money thus realised may be expended by the company in payment
of various items of construction and on interest on bonds as the same come due.

Other points of interest in the agreement as published, deal with
the exemptions from taxation according to the regular tariff of goods
brought into China by this railway, and with the extension of the
Russian postal service over the Manchuria system, whereby the
Russian letter and parcel post shall be carried by the railway free of
charge. All these items would seem to prove beyond a doubt that,
save for diplomatic purposes, the railway is a Russian line — one of
the arms of that silent octopus, Russian conquest.

The Chinese Eastern Railway is to Manchuria what the Nile is to
Egypt ; the Russians have, in fact, constructed through this valuable
Chinese province a Nile of steel, capable of being extended in any
direction desired. In this respect the petrified Nile has a distinct
advantage over its watery prototype. And so subtly and carefully
have the Russian authorities moved in stretching out this forerunner
of an enforced civilisation, so perfectly have they understood that a
Chinaman who is allowed to ' save his face ' will accept subjugation
when he would not take it —at least quietly — were he forced to open
confession of his defeat, so graciously have they paid market value
for the land occupied by the railway, that this steel girdle has been put
around their world without a murmur. In nothing is this shown
more clearly than in the original railway convention, wherein it was
expressly stated that the line should avoid as much as possible
graveyards and the great towns. This has been done, the only
result naturally being that now the towns are either growing out

940 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

toward the railway station or else a new town likely to eclipse the
old town in importance is springing up at the station itself. Another
act of wisdom on the part of Kussia has been her readiness to pay
good wages for Chinese labour. As much of the labour is arranged
for through Chinese contractors, it is probable that the Chinese
workmen do not receive the full amount paid per head by the
Russians, but they are able at any rate to earn more money per day
than formerly. Many of the Kussian engineers are on the most
friendly and sympathetic terms with the Chinese of their districts.
This also does not fail of its effect. In this connection a quotation
may be made from the Novi-Krai, a Port Arthur newspaper :

It should be noted with a feeling of considerable satisfaction that, in peacefully
strengthening Russian influence in Manchuria, the successes achieved have-
exceeded all our expectations. Take the language question. Not more than
three years ago a Russian could not move a step without an interpreter, whereaa
now the latter is perhaps required in the more remote regions only which are at
a considerable distance from the railway.

Which is a striking demonstration in favour of conquest by bank and
railway.

The concession to the Chinese Eastern Railway Company re-
sembles the articles of association of a modern newspaper — wherein
all manner of privileges are included that may never be used — all
mining rights, carrying rights, &c., &c., are all set forth. But
perhaps the most important of all the powers granteo to the railway
is that contained in the article giving to Russia full right to safe-
guard the railway with any number of troops, there being no limit
specified as to their numbers :

The preservation of order and decorum on the lands assigned to the railway
and its appurtenances shall be confided to police agents appointed by the
company.

To meet with the letter of this clause, the Russian troops when
employed on the railway are given distinctive badges and known as
railway guards. They receive better pay ; otherwise there is no>
difference discernible between the railway guard and the regular
army.

Writing in 1901, I pointed out what is only now seeming to be
realised — that the effect of the line upon the ordinary life of the
people is enormous. Raised as it is on high embankments above the
muddy, water-covered plains of the southern provinces, it has
become the high road north and south, and a large percentage of
foot travellers now walk along the railway track instead of attempting
the often impassable roads. In the northern provinces, as I can testify
from personal observation, the embankments save enormous stretches
of country from inundation at the time of floods. When the Nonne
River near Tsi-Tsi-Khar was in flood some forty miles wide, the
country on one side of the railway line was almost dry, while on the

1903 CONQUEST BY BANK AND RAILWAYS 941

other side there was some twenty feet of water banked up and held
back. These also may be small things, but they are not without
their effect.

The railway and all its belongings are protected by the Kussian
and Chinese flags together ; thus the Chinese have less desire to destroy
property which ostensibly belongs to their own Government and over
which floats the protecting Yellow Dragon banner of China. Also
seeing the two flags so constantly together helps to impress the idea —
upon the ignorant peasants at any rate — that the Eussians and
the Chinese are practically one and the same power. Even in the
towns occupied by Russian troops it is customary on the central
tower of the town to have the two flags flying together, although in
the streets themselves few but Eussian flags are seen.

That Eussia has always been keenly alive to the value of
railways in acquiring territory may be seen in the skilful drawing-up
of the Railway Convention with China, and again also in the Russian
action with regard to the Chinese Northern Railway. In a despatch
from Sir Claude Macdonald, of the 19th of October 1897, are found
the following paragraphs relating to the Russian opposition to
Mr. Kinder's appointment to construct the Northern line :

M. Pavloff said that lie had no personal feelings against Mr. Kinder ; indeed,
thought him an exceedingly capable man. The reasons for the somewhat strong
representations which he had made to the Tsung-li Yamen against Mr. Kinder's
employment on the Northern Extension line were as follows :

Some months ago, shortly after the return of Li Hung Chang from his mission
to St. Petersburg, the Chinese Government had informed the Russian Minister
that they had no intention of continuing the Northern line ; but if at any time
they did continue it, owing to the particularly friendly relations existing between
the Russian and Chinese Governments, they would in the first instance address
themselves to Russian engineers and employ, if necessary, Russian capital. It
was therefore with considerable surprise and some alarm that he had heard that
the construction of the Northern line was to be actively carried out under the
superintendence of an English engineer and with English capital ; it was this
breach of faith on the part of the Chinese Government that had made him make
his representations to the Tsung-li Yamen stronger than he otherwise would have
clone ; he had told the Tsung-li Yamen that it would be more correct to entrust
railway lines which approached the Russian frontier to Russian engineers, and
added that he would consider it improper to entrust any lines which approached
the Burmese frontier to Russians. M. Pavloff said that there was no wish to get
rid of Mr. Kinder because he was an Englishman, but because he was not a
Russian; for he must tell me frankly that the Russian Oovernment intended that
the provinces of China bordering on the Russian frontier must not come under the
influence of any nation except Russia. M. Pavloff said it was not his desire or
that of his Government that Mr. Kinder should be retired ; on the contrary, they
would be glad to see him promoted, but to some other line. However, he hoped
that some arrangement might be arrived at which would satisfy all parties, and
he had suggested to the Chinese Government that the line might be commenced
at the northern end under the superintendence of Russian engineers, and meet
somewhere midway.

942 TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

In addition to M. Pavloff's opinions may be taken those expressed
by the late M. Easily in St. Petersburg to Mr. Goschen. In a
despatch dated the 28th of December 1897, the latter states :

M. Easily answered that naturally the Russian Government wished to arrange
that Russian engineers should be employed upon a line which would eventually
approach Russian territory.

The whole aim and idea of the Anglo-Russian agreement as to
spheres of influence in China, arranged in 1899, \vas to insure the
Russian nature of all the railways in or running into Manchuria.
The most important portion of that convention is as follows :

Great Britain engages not to seek for her own account, or on behalf of
Briti&h subjects or of others, any railway concessions to the north of the Great
Wall of China, and not to obstruct, directly or indirectly, applications for railway
concessions in that region supported by the Russian Government.

So much for the line itself and the military force it represents.
The Chinese saying with regard to the military profession runs
' You don't use a piece of good iron to make a nail or a decent
man to make a soldier.' In China the military profession has
always been considered as one of the lowest, while bankers and
merchants rank among the highest. In China banknotes were in
use at least as early as 1366, and a bank has more respect paid to it
than an army corps. Thus it is that while the Chinese in Manchuria
may fear the military strength of Russia, it is the Bank that has
won their respect and allegiance. The Bank has in many cases
superseded the original financial authorities. It receives the taxes
and pays the wages. Thus it occupies in the eyes of the taxpayer
the position formerly held by the Chinese authorities, and as it is
constantly extending its agencies into even comparatively small
towns, this impression gains ground fast. The old one and five
rouble notes from Russia have been put into circulation by the Bank,
and now pass pretty well everywhere in Manchuria. On several
occasions it has been found convenient in paying to the Chinese local
authorities their Russian subsidies to do so with cheques on the Russo-
Chinese Bank, payable to order. The signatures of the recipients of
the cheques are valuable restraints upon backsliding tendencies, and
the cheques are more probably to be found in the State archives
than in the vaults of the Bank. In this small way also the value of
the Bank as an influence for Russianising Manchuria is seen. The
Bank has a great deal of influence even in Pekin, where the manager
has interviews with the Dowager-Empress and discusses serious
questions with her Ministers. Perhaps the most striking proof of
the Russo-Chinese Bank's position was given when, on the same
day as the news of the signing of the evacuation convention
appeared, it was announced that some six or seven new branches of

1903 CONQUEST BY BANK AND RAILWAYS 943

the Bank would be opened at once throughout Manchuria. No
comment is necessary. In all the chief towns, there are special
representatives of the Russian Government besides the officials of
the Eusso-Chinese Bank.

From the earliest days of Russo-Chinese intercourse, the Russian
traders have had the right to go where they would in China, and
this right has been extended to include the right of Russian pro-
tection wherever they may be found — a great step in the right
direction. The Chinese administration and officials remain as before
apparently, though not in reality. As one of the Russian diplomats
said, ' We sow golden seed, but the tree which springs from the seed
bears us golden fruit.' And the Russians have found it much better
to allow the Chinese to administer the country while they administer
the Chinese. The general opinion prevails that Russia has not
enough men trained to administer such a province as Manchuria,
and that it is better that the present system of ruling through the
Chinese administration should be continued for many years, the
present officials being well in hand. It is perhaps due to the
Chinese determination, as reported in a Japanese paper, to reform
the Manchurian administration that one of the recent demands by
Russia upon China had its origin. According to the Japanese paper,
the authorities at Pekin had determined to remove the Governor-
General of Moukden, and wished to prepare the way for such a step
by some important changes in the personnel of his Staff. The
Governor- General of Moukden is an ardent pro-Russian in the
intervals of his eating and drinking orgies, and has good cause to
be so. To have him replaced by a new official would not be at all
welcome to the Russians.

Besides the parallel forces of the railway and the Bank, the
Russians have in Manchuria, as they had in Siberia, a valuable
adjunct in the Greek Orthodox Church, which is the only religious
body allowed to proselytise in Russia.

The green-domed churches follow closely the Russian advance,
and may be seen standing out clearly against the dull Manchurian
background. To quote the report of a recent writer on the views of
a Russian priest on this subject :

' You see,' explained the priest, ' we Russianise, and Christianise, and civilise,
by natural processes and silent influences. After they have been taught that
there will be no trifling with interference to authority (and we never teach the
lesson more than once) the people gradually come to like us. In our Church
affairs we do not offend the eye or ear of any of their Oriental prejudices, and
the Church gradually becomes pleasing to them. In precisely the same way
they soon get accustomed to our railway, and are quick to catch its practical
advantages. They find that if they are orderly and obedient to the common
authority, their treatment is precisely the same as that of all the rest of us.
And so gradually, and by natural adoption and adjustment, they become what
you would call Russianised.

944 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

Here in a nutshell is Russia's method of assimilating the people
of Manchuria, and when one adds to it the influence of the Bank, its
full power is easily seen. The idea has worked well. Manchuria is
Russianised — at least the greater part of it is — and even if there should
^ease to be a Russian in it to-morrow, it would be impossible for
Manchuria to resume its former Chinese condition. The advance of
civilisation cannot be so easily brushed aside ; the flood cannot be
turned back again.

The Russian occupation has brought far better conditions to the
people living in Manchuria. In December 1897, Colonel Browne,
Military Attache to the British Legation at Pekin, on his return from
a, journey in Manchuria, gave the following figures as the wages
then prevalent: A skilled labourer received 6d. a day and food,
a common labourer 3d. a day and food. The latter might be hired
by the month for 6s. Colonel Browne considered these wages high,
seeing that it was possible to live on a vegetable diet, as 95 per cent,
of the population do, for Id. per day. What, then, must be thought
of the condition of the people now? In 1901-2 the coolies
employed on the construction of the railway were receiving forty
kopecks (or 9^cZ.) a day, and in one district at least the wages were as
high as sixty to eighty kopecks. Thus, financially, they are better
off individually since the Russians descended upon the land to
possess it. The disorganised filth of the Chinese towns has been
transformed into a decent semblance of cleanliness, and where this
was impossible new towns with brick houses and broad streets lined
with trees have sprung up near the old cities.

It is true that brigands still exist, but they are far more under
restraint than before the Russian occupation, for since the advent
of the railway and the railway guard, the country through which the
line runs is pretty free of them.

To quote again from a recent writer :

Russian law, in the sense that all shall have justice regularly administered ;
Russian order, in the sense that murder and outrage hy robber bands and savage
clans shall cease ; Russian system, in the sense that regularity and method shall
succeed social, political, and commercial chaos : Russian law and order and system,
as thus defined, have come into Manchuria.

As to the financial condition of the country before the Russian
advent, the following quotation from Mr. E. H. Parker's letter to the
Times in May 1898 is very much to the point :

The best of the three provinces of Manchuria does not raise 120,000£ a year
In total revenue, and of this the foreign Customs is responsible for a very large half.
The lesser half has, moreover, to be eked out by unwilling contributions from the
Chinese provinces. The Russians will therefore have plenty of work to do, in
order to make the place pay its way. . . . The people will certainly give trouble
if the taxes are increased, but they may take to taxation more kindly if they find
they are getting their money's worth of law and order.

19C3 CONQUEST BY BANK AND RAILWAYS 945

And again :

No matter what the Russians do inland, all other sources of revenue must
necessarily improve, for they could not possibly be in a worse condition than they
are now.

Of the finances since the Kussian occupation it is difficult to
speak accurately, but in the end of 1901, when the railway was in a
very unfinished state, the traffic receipts on the Southern section of
the line for three months reached 700,000 roubles, or about 70,OOOZ.,
which would seem to indicate that there is much more money in the
country than formerly. It must be admitted by the enemies and
friends of Kussia equally that, whatever the inter national and diplomatic
results of Russia's ascendency may be, the population of the country
is far better off under the new regime. In one district the Russians
went so far as to establish a system of local self-government among
the Chinese on the Russian plan of village government. The
experiment was, however, in the opinion of most, a failure, but the
attempt is suggestive.

In all Russia's Manchurian policy there is only one weak point,
and that is to be found in the fact that Newchwang is a Treaty port,
and therefore out of the hands of the Russian authorities. Russia
has devoted a great deal of attention to the question of Newchwang,
and regards it as an all-important question in Manchuria. In the
recent demands made to China by M. Planpon, three of the seven
conditions deal with Newchwang ; two directly and one indirectly.
These are Articles 5 and 6, and Article 3. The last-named
stipulates that no new Treaty ports shall be opened without Russia's
consent. The two former deal with the payment of the Customs
revenues at Newchwang into the Russo-Chinese Bank and with the
Newchwang telegraph lines. The closing clause is perhaps the most
important of all. It demands that in Newchwang the Customs
commissioner and the Customs doctor shall be Russians, and that
on the Sanitary Board shall be a railway representative, a bacterio-
logist— presumably both Russians — and the Russian Consul, together
with the other Consuls. This would give the Russians five seats
on the Board, which will contain also two Chinese officials and the
foreign Consuls. This indicates the importance which Russia attaches
to the retention of her hold on Newchwang.

Newchwang has always figured in the various provincial conven-
tions concluded between the Russians and Manchurian authorities,
and the return of the town has been always refused in these treaties.
The question of Newchwang is so serious that it is worth fuller
consideration to see how Russia came to obtain her present position
in the town. From the Russian accounts it would appear that
Great Britain, in the person of the naval officer in command of
her Chinese Fleet, played absolutely into the hands of the Russians
VOL. LIU— No. 316 3 Q,

946 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

in this question. I have heard the same opinion expressed by
English persons of weight in Newchwang.

At the time of the Boxer disturbances in North China, the
Russians stationed a strong force at Inkou, where they have a large
concession of some two square miles, three miles above Newchwang
on the river, in order to protect the workshops and railway line.
A branch line of some fourteen miles runs to Inkou from the main
Manchurian line at Taschichou. There were also two Russian
gunboats on the river, but none of any other nationality. Rumours
as to a prospective Boxer attack on the town being current, both
the British and the Japanese representatives telegraphed for
gunboats — the one to Admiral Bruce at Taku, the other to Tokyo.
As a result a Japanese gunboat arrived, but Admiral Bruce was
not able to spare any warship, and was, besides, satisfied that the
Russians were in sufficient force to protect the town. So no British
aid was sent to Newchwang. When the Boxer attack began to
develop, the foreign Consuls were driven to ask for the protection
of the Russian troops ; and although the Japanese Consul considered
that he had sufficient protection in his one gunboat, for the sake
of unanimity he joined the other Consuls in giving a mandate to
Russia. Once this was given, events worked rapidly. The Boxers
were beaten and killed, and the Russian authorities took possession
of the Imperial Maritime Customs building and the offices of the
Chinese authorities. When protest was made as to the hoisting
of the Russian flag over the Customs house, the Russians explained
that, as they had driven out the Chinese, they were responsible
for the safeguarding of their property. However, the matter was
settled more or less amicably by the appointment of Mr. Bowra
to the post of Commissioner of Customs. The advent of Admiral
Alexieff from Port Arthur at the time of the occupation of
Newchwang enabled him to arrange matters very expeditiously.
The administration of the town was vested in the keeping of the
former Russian Consul, under the style of Commissioner, with
a mixed Russian and Chinese board. The secretary of the Russian
Consul became Consul, in order that the Treaty port nature of
Newchwang might be maintained. Since that time, when favourable
circumstances secured them the mandate of the Powers to enter
Newchwang, the Russians have remained there, have collected
the junk customs and dues, formerly the perquisite of the Chinese
Governor of Chihli, and are now anxious to obtain a firm grasp
upon the whole Customs revenue. If this revenue is paid into the
Russo-Chinese Bank, there are many chances that a great part of it
will be retained to liquidate some of the many Chinese debts to
Russia.

Russia wishes to remain in Newchwang, and so complete her
peaceful conquest of Manchuria; but if she cannot retain that

1903 CONQUEST BY BANK AND RAILWAYS 947

position, she has a drastic coup in reserve. In the large railway
concession mentioned above, lying some three miles up the river
from the Treaty port, Russia can easily construct a commercial town.
Possessing some two square miles of ground, with a frontage of great
depth of water right up to the bank, the concession is a valuable
one, besides being connected with the Manchurian Railway. That
some such idea has been present in the minds of the Russian
authorities may be concluded from various significant facts. First,
the size of the concession, which is far too large for a mere railway
branch terminus ; second, the opposition which the Russians have
presented to any attempt by non-Russians to buy land near this
concession — on this point there was quite a diplomatic warfare, at the
end of which Sir Claude Macdonald and the British Foreign Office
secured the recognition of the validity of the leases to the land in
this vicinity purchased by the British subjects in Newchwang.
The third fact of importance is that all particulars of a scheme for
the facing of the river front of this concession with stone to prevent
the eating away of the land has been under close discussion. The
concession lies right on a bend of the river, and as the river is very
swift and has a great depth, about 140 feet are washed away yearly.
The projected scheme for stone facing was to cost a million pounds.
While it is a natural thing to wish to save the concession from being
eaten away, it is foolish to suppose that so great an outlay would be
contemplated for the mere purpose of protecting a few railway shops
and station buildings. If that were all, it would be far cheaper to
move further inland and shift before the advancing river.

Once a town was established at Inkou, it would be an easy
matter to starve out Newchwang commercially. Much of the trade
from the interior of Manchuria is conveyed by junks down the river,
and it would be easier for them to stop there, three miles higher up
than they do at present. The export trade of Newchwang is carried
on not by resident merchants, but by Chinese from China proper,
who come north for the season only : it is probable that these
merchants would be quite ready to change their place of business to
any town where they could obtain special privileges. Special
advantages would be offered to the vessels bearing the import trade, and
Newchwang, the Treaty port, would be transformed into a collection
of desolate consulates. This at least is the Russian idea, and in
dealing with questions where the Russian idea means everything, it
is well to consider what their own point of view is. This sapping of
the value of Newchwang would remove the last weak point in Russia's
position in Manchuria, and it is interesting to note how great a part
the railway and the Bank play in the game for Newchwang. The
railway enables them to acquire a concession just at the right place,
while the recent demands with regard to the Customs revenues show
what part the Bank is to play.

3 a 2

948 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

The work accomplished by the Russo-Chinese Bank and the
Chinese Eastern Kailway, the modern substitutes for the fire and
sword of the old-fashioned conqueror, is indeed profitable. In return
for the expenditure of perhaps 50,000,000^., Russia has acquired the
economical control of a rich province more than three times the size
of the British Itles ; and has done it in such a way that nearly all
the expenditure has been applied directly to the development of its
wealth. The inhabitants now ' think Russian ' and almost recognise
the Russian flag as being as much their own as the Dragon banner.
Besides the province, the expenditure of this 50,000, OOOL has
bought 1,000 miles of well-built railway, two large towns, and all the
mining rights throughout the whole country. Not a bad bargain,
especially when one reflects that a successful war may cost nearly
200,000, OOOZ. and leave the conquered territory in such a state that
immediately another thirty or forty millions have to be expended to
make a fresh start. Under a system of acquisition such as practised
in Manchuria, an outlay not much larger than the post-bellum
grant mentioned above suffices for the whole operation. There is,
besides, no violent break, no necessity for delayed development.
Thus the new method, leaving out of account the saving in human
lives, has the advantage of economy and immediate results. It
would seem, therefore, worthy of adoption by other nations. If they
would sanction expenditure for peaceful conquests, they would find
it did not cost 25 per cent, as much as the cost of war.

Russia, naturally enough, is anxious to repeat her success, and
the chosen ground is North Persia certainly, South Persia possibly.
It is of interest to remember the Russo-Persian Agreement of
1888, in which Prince Dolgorouki obtained the refusal of any
railway concession in Persia for a period of five years. This shows
clearly how valuable the right of constructing railways is considered
in Russian diplomatic circles. In Manchuria the railway engineers
all speak confidently of going to Persia to construct a new rail-
way there, and not only engineers but also officers of the railway
guard.

The Russian official authorities, however, deny that there is at
present any intention of building railways, but admit that several
' roads ' are to be constructed. The idea is the same — first the roads,
then the railways, and always the Bank. In Teheran the British
Minister has to struggle against three Russian representatives — the
first, the Russian Minister ; second, the Russian General in command
of the Shah's Cossacks ; and the third, the manager of the Russian
Bank. Since through the last-named much money has been lent to
the Persian Government at critical times, it is obvious that the
Bank manager has no small influence in the capital.

In Abyssinia it was, and perhaps still is, hoped to do the same
work by means of the French railway and probably a special Franco-

1903 CONQUEST BY BANK AND RAILWAYS 949

Abyssinian Bank. However, that matter is at a standstill until a
more opportune moment presents itself.

The one country which has appreciated the Eussian system
sufficiently to try to imitate it is Japan. And it is in Korea that
she is beginning her work. Much of this is due to the far-sighted
view of the great Japanese financier and leader of commerce who is
responsible for a Japanese railway line from Fusan in the south to
Seoul and probably Wiju in the north. This railway, which is to
traverse the entire length of Korea, is ably seconded by the financial
and commercial interests possessed in Korea by Japan.

The mechanism of conquest by railway and bank may be thus
briefly stated : Select your country ; form a bank well under your
control, named jointly after your country and the selected one ;
appoint your bank officials with discrimination, and lay aside an
abundance of money ready for calls. Obtain for your bank as many
concessions as possible from your partner ; secure the concession of
the railway to be built by the bank, and be sure to give the railway
company a name symbolic of your partner's country. Have the
right to guard the railway clearly stated in some inconspicuous
clause, also take care to have the mining rights granted to you ;
build the railway with labour supplied by your partner, and secure
the support of the officials by dealing gently and generously with
them in their financial troubles. Never neglect to pay your work-
men well and care for them when injured or sick ; later, have the
taxes, and if possible the Customs revenue, paid into the joint bank ;
and always fly the flags of the two countries above all the bank and
railway property. Do all this consistently for two or three years, and
your success is assured.

So efficacious is this recipe that the success that inevitably follows
it may be perhaps powerful enough to give the process a firm standing
in the science of Conquest.

ALFKED STEAD.

950 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

'THE WAY OF DREAMS'

We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our li.tle life
Is rounded with a sleep. — Tempest, act iv. s. i.

' SUCH stuff" as dreams are made of! ' Has anybody as yet discovered,
I wonder, what this ' stuff ' really is ? By ' dreams ' I do not mean
those castles in the air which we are some of us in the habit of
building, almost unconsciously, as we walk about, wide awake, by
daylight, smiling and chatting with our neighbours, and feigning, it
may be — also half unconsciously — more interest than we really feel in
their worldly affairs ; but those real dreams — if dreams can properly
be described as ' real ' — which come to us during our real slumbers,
in the night-season ; strange medleys of fanciful imaginings and illu-
sions; wayward, grotesque, and often seeming to be utterly unaccount-
able ; which, try we never so hard, or be we never so confirmed in our
materialism, cannot always be attributed to the effects of lobster salad
or undigested cucumber.

I have read many learned books and dissertations upon the
subject of dreams — a subject which possesses a certain fascination
even for some of those who are no longer young or hopelessly
foolish — and I can remember once, when living in the ' near East/
attending a lecture, delivered by an American lady, upon the ' stuff'
of which they were made, in the course of which a lumpish, putty-
coloured object, looking something like a petrified sweetbread or a
cake of soap, embossed all over with serpentine flourishes and
twirligigs, was passed round amongst the assembled company.
Whilst I was holding this object in my hand, examining it absently
— the fair lecturer meanwhile calling our attention to sundry
depressions and excrescences upon its surface which she designated
by their correct scientific names — I learnt, with a thrill of horror,
that what I was thus ignorantly considering was nothing less than
a human^ brain ('adult male, and highly intellectual,' we were
informed), and no mere plaster cast of it either, but the ' genuine
article,' whereupon, being in a squeamish, hyper-sensitive mood, I let
it drop as though it had been a scorpion.

' The seat of Fancy and the throne of Thought ' did not, in

1903 'THE WAT OF DREAMS' 951

falling upon the floor, immediately shatter into a thousand frag-
ments, as I had feared, for it had been hardened and polished (we
were told) by an elaborate newly-invented process ; a process which
I learnt with regret could never be applied satisfactorily to the
living organ, so that it was ' neither the better nor the worse for
me ' when it was returned to the hands of the lecturer.

Nevertheless, I am sorry, now, that I behaved so foolishly, for had
I only held on to it for a little longer, whilst the lecturer was sparing
no pains to instruct me as to its marvellous functions and faculties, I
might, perhaps, have written with some sort of authority upon a
subject concerning which, in spite of the interest I have always felt
in it, I can now only count myself profoundly ignorant.

The most ignorant amongst us, however, may be an accomplished
dreamer of dreams, and without knowing anything about the ' stuff '
of which they are made, or whether the right or the left lobe of
the petrified sweetbread is responsible for their machinations, may
become familiar with their strange vagaries, and with the acute
sensations of joy, fear, melancholy, and horror with which they can
occasionally inspire us. The opening lines of Hood's 'Haunted
House ' recur to me at this moment :

Some dreams we have are nothing else but dreams,

Unnatural, and full of contradictions,
Yet others, of our most romantic schemes,
Are something more than fictions.

Some dreams, that is to say, convey to the mind of the dreamer
a mysterious sense of their own importance. We feel, instinctively,
that they are not quite as other dreams are, and those amongst us
who are interested in such matters may set ourselves the task of
looking out for whatever they may be supposed to portend, when,
helped by goodwill and propitious coincidence — or, as some may
prefer to believe, by neither the one nor the other — who can tell
what wonders may not come to pass !

I had a dream which was not all a dream,

this is an experience which most of us have shared with Lord Byron.

Other dreams, again,

The children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain phantasy,

mere odds and ends, and shreds and patches, of our waking thoughts,
reminiscent and derivative, remind one of those eggs which some
eccentric celibate parrots are given to producing when in captivity,
and which possess no germ that can ever possibly be coaxed into
hatching forth, so that one wonders why any bird should be at the
trouble of laying them at all.

I cannot agree with the poet Hood in thinking that such dreams

952 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

only as are associated with ' our most romantic schemes ' are ' some-
thing more than fiction.' Indeed, being something of a rhymester
myself, I fancy I can detect the real reason why these 'romantic
schemes' were ever introduced into the poem at all — a reason
altogether unconnected with my present subject.

For my own part, I have always found that these wanton mid-
night fancies were quite as stubborn as facts. With me they
absolutely refuse to be ' personally conducted,' and I have never
found it possible, by taking thought, to prearrange, or direct, their
course.

If you place your shoes in the shape of a ' T '

Your own true lover you will see.

This is a Sussex saying, which I can well remember hearing my
nursery-maid repeating, hard upon half a century ago, in my old
home, as she arranged two well-worn early Victorian slippers in the
required form. Some of these seemingly foolish old adages convey to us
the germs of an eternal truth, and, perhaps, in the case of this simple
servant-girl, the spell may have worked. But with me such pre-
parations have ever resulted in disappointment. No sooner did I
make up my mind to dream of any congenial person, than I was
sure to have palmed off upon me, for a midnight companion,
some individual of whom I had never been thinking at all, who was
absolutely unconnected with anything in the nature of a f romantic
scheme,' and with whom I was quite unaware that I had any ideas in
common. Often these uninvited visitants are not even persons in my
own walk of life, but those between whom and myself a 'great
gulf seems to be fixed in my reasonable waking hours; the Sultan
of Turkey (it may be), the Pope of Eome, or the butler of a distant
relative. In a word, it has ever been quite impossible for me to
dream ' to order.'

Here is a dream that ' was not all a dream,' for which I was quite
unable to account at the time. There is nothing sensational about
it, and it led to nothing, if not to some agreeable passing conver-
sation. It seemed to be in a limited sense, however, what I may call
' prophetic,' or was it only purely coincidental after all ?

Upon the eve of my first London dinner-party, and when I was
still in my teens, I dreamed that I was sent in to dinner with a very
old man. His frame was bent and decrepit, he walked with a stick,
and I perceived that, even in the days of his youth, he could not
have been ' dowered with the fatal gift of beauty.' Here ended the
' phantasy,' which, at the dinner-party upon the following evening,
was destined to become a reality. A young man who was to have
escorted me to the dining-room failed to appear, and after waiting
for some time, the hostess, with an arch expression, led up to me a
confirmed octogenarian, whose tottering footsteps I supported down-

1903 'THE WAY OF DREAMS' 953

stairs. His frame was bent and decrepit, he walked with a stick,
and I perceived that, even in the days of his youth, he could not
have been ' dowered with the fatal gift of beauty.' My heart sank a
little at first, but I soon found him excellent company.

He began by apologising to me for being so old, whereupon I
begged him ' not to mention it,' and told him of how I had been
warned in a dream of the fate that awaited me.

Then our conversation turned upon dreams in general, and
upon all their strange surprises and eccentricities, and he told me
how horrified he was at the notion of having been projected, quite
unintentionally, upon the previous evening, into the dream of a
young lady of seventeen who probably took him for a nightmare ;
particularly when, as now, the disparity in our ages forbade him to
hope that I could ever even consent to look upon him as a friend ;
but this, he said, was almost invariably ' the way of dreams.' He
told me also, what I have since come to have some experience of,
that, when he was a child, his dreams were quite like three-volume
romances, packed full of all kinds of adventures and hair-breadth
'scapes, so that it used to take him nearly the whole day to relate
them to his friends ; that, in middle life, he dreamed scarcely at all,
or that, when he did, he could seldom remember what his dreams were
about; but that now, in extreme old age, he had begun with his
three-volume romances again, and went dreaming on, mostly about
his childish days, and his old haunts, and the companions of that far-
off time, and that one of his frequently recurring nightmares, octo-
genarian though he was, took the form of his mother, who had been
dead for nearly seventy years, in the act of pursuing him up the
stairs of his boyhood's home, with a birch-rod in her hand, for he
had been born in the good old days when parents brought up their
children in accordance with the teaching of ' King Solomon the
Wise.' He was inclined to believe that much of the incongruity of
dreams was due to something irresponsive in the brain of the
dreamer. Something or somebody desired to communicate with
the sleeper, just as something or somebody might desire to play
upon a pianoforte or upon a stringed instrument. An attempt is
made, when lo, some of the notes are dumb, some of the chords
snapped. The result is discord instead of harmony. Or, some-
thing or somebody, having an important message to deliver, rings
at 'the front-door of a certain house. The lights are all out, and
nobody answers the bell, so there is nothing for it but to hammer at
the back-door, or throw gravel up at a bedroom window, and hence the
message often becomes garbled or misinterpreted ; and he thought
that this theory explained, in some measure, what he was pleased
to call the ' abortive -premonitory ' dream, as indeed some may con-
sider ihat it does. He believed that in the present instance my warn-
ing had been sent to me in order that I might have telegraphed

954 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

to the young man with whom I had been originally coupled by our
hostess, ' Don't forget your dinner-engagement this evening,' in
which case I should have been saved from the clutches of ' an old
creature like a chimpanzee.' Thence ensued badinage, and I believe
that if my belated cavalier had arrived at that moment and claimed
me as his own, I might have found his conversation rather dull and
commonplace !

I learnt afterwards that this agreeable old gentleman was well-
known as a raconteur and diner-out, and that he was famous for his
conversational powers. We tore ourselves asunder with quite a wrench
when the evening was over. I never met him again, and he must
have gone, long since, to a place where there is neither dining nor
giving of dinners ; but I have never quite forgotten him or his mid-
night visit, and I often think that his theory about premonitory
dreams may have had a germ of truth in it after all.

The late Laurence Oliphant, essentially a mystic, and acutely
sensitive to influences of which most of his fellow-men are supremely
unconscious, was also an inveterate dreamer of dreams, but, for
all his Scottish heritage of second-sight, and his wide experience
of occult phenomena, he admitted to me that he was unable to
account satisfactorily for dreams of the semi-prophetic (' abortive-
premonitory ') order, particularly when no good seemed to come of
them, and when neither sympathy nor rapport appeared to exist
between the dreamer and the person dreamed of. He gave me several
examples of remarkable dreams of this kind, amongst others the
following :

He was lying asleep in his lodging in Jermyn Street, shortly
after his return from Japan, and before he had become imbued with
the doctrines of the Prophet Harris. Here he dreamed that he saw
a strange man standing over him as he lay in bed, and gazing at
him with an expression of great intensity, as though in the act of
appealing to him, or imploring some favour of him. As is often the
case (and here is another of the strange ' ways ' of dreams) he was
perfectly well aware that he was dreaming, and one part of his brain
seemed, all the while, to be saying to another (I should have known
which, perhaps, if I had paid more attention to that lecture), ' By
what sign or mark shall we be able to recognise this man again if
he should ever appear to us in the flesh ? ' Thereupon he set him-
self to observe him carefully. At first sight he seemed to have
nothing remarkable about him. A fair, sandy-bearded son of toil,
of the kind that used to be called a ' navvy,' with grey eyes, having
in them a sad look of appeal. His shirt sleeves were turned up,
and with bare arms resolutely folded he continued to gaze down
fixedly at the sleeper. As he did so, Mr. Oliphant remarked that
in the middle of his forehead, and partly concealed by his unkempt
locks, was a large hole, such as might have been made by a pickaxe,

1903 'THE WAY OF DREAMS' 955

from which the blood was slowly dripping on to the white counter-
pane, and hereupon the dreamer suddenly awoke.

The scene now shifts to a virgin forest in America, whither some
eighty of the disciples of the Prophet Harris had repaired (Mr.
Oliphant amongst their number), in order that they might practise,
and live up to, their peculiar spiritual views far from the con-
taminating influences of the world, and when more than a year had
elapsed since the Jermyn Street dream. Mr. Oliphant had just set
out one afternoon for a ride, and was trotting briskly along a narrow
forest-pathway, when he heard sounds of voices, and came upon a
gang of English navvies who had been engaged in road-making upon
the outskirts of the forests, and were now tramping through it on
their way to the nearest town. They were under the command of
what is called a ' ganger,' who was shepherding them along like
cattle, mounted upon a shaggy pony. Suddenly, as they were about
to pass by, one man, stopping short, stepped out from amongst the
ranks of his companions, and looked hard at Mr. Oliphant, with an
expression betokening recognition and with mute appeal in his eyes.
It was the man of the Jermyn Street dream !

' Ah ! but had he a hole in his head ? ' (I could not prevent
interrupting.)

' No/ answered the mystic, as he combed his long beard with his
thin fingers, ' but wait ! ' and I waited accordingly.

Mr. Oliphant's horse, it appears, was fresh and restive, and in
order to make room for the navvies, he had moved out of the way upon
a rough bank which ran parallel with the path, where the animal
was now plunging and floundering in dangerous fashion, and all these
men with their pickaxes and rough voices only added to its nervous-
ness. Knowing that they would be sure to go, for rest and refresh-
ment, to a little beer-shop upon the confines of the Harris Settlement,
Mr. Oliphant decided to take his horse for a good gallop before
seeking to elucidate this mystery ; and here, I must say, I think that
he was wrong, although, in many respects, so wise in such matters,
because, by the time he came back, although he had been absent
for barely an hour, it was too late to find out anything. The hole
was already made in the poor navvy's head by the pick-axe of one
of his comrades, with whom he had quarrelled at the little beer-
shop, and as Mr. Oliphant had the reputation of being a leech as
well as a seer, it was to his log-cabin that he was immediately taken
by his companions, and here it was that he breathed his last, just as
the man who had dreamed of him so vividly more than a year ago
bent his bald head and entered the lowly dwelling. Mr. Oliphant's
Japanese boy was leaning over the prostrate form, and endeavouring
to restore animation, but without effect. The man was dead, and
with him died the secret of the raison d'etre of the Jermyn Street
dream, if it ever had one !

956 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

The story of this dream is irritating by reason of its incomplete-
ness. What rapport could possibly have existed between two men
who, one would have supposed, must have differed from each other
in every respect ? Might they have proved congenial to one another
if time had been given them to find it out, or were they both rein-
carnations of the same kind of animal, or had they been accidentally
changed at nurse ? Could the brain of one so pre-eminently sensitive
as Laurence Oliphant have proved ' irresponsive ' when the message
came to it, and was it thus bungled, or curtailed, or deprived of its
original meaning ? Or have we here only another instance of the
curious ' way of dreams ' ? These are questions that now can never
be answered.

One more example of the unsatisfactory premonitory dream, even
more provoking than the above by reason of its unaccountable
limitations.

This time I was myself the dreamer. Some of its details are
sordid and unpleasant, but for these I am not responsible. Having
dreamed it myself, I can, at any rate, set down correctly what
happened.

I was living alone in the country when the message came to
me, the other members of my family having gone abroad. The
month was November, and I recollect that the weather seemed to be
doing its best to make my solitude as gloomy as possible. But I
am fond of solitude, and, in spite of fog and drizzle, passed my days
in contentment. (E merely mention this to show that I was not in
any way depressed or down-hearted.) On the night in question
therefore, without having, consciously, arranged my shoes ' in the
shape of a " T," ' there was no particular reason why my dreams
should have been disagreeable, for I had been thinking of pleasant
rather than of unpleasant things.

I was no sooner asleep, however, than I found myself in a narrow
street, having an appearance of great poverty and squalor. There
was a thick yellow fog hanging over everything, which made me
fancy that it must be a street in London. I had, apparently, alighted
from some conveyance which had driven off, leaving me standing
upon the door-step of one of the most wretched-looking of the houses,
with my arms full of parcels and packages, which I was conscious
that I had brought with me for some particular purpose. By and by
the door opened, and I was aware of a female figure, in a print dress
and dirty mob-cap, shrinking behind it, as though from the cold.
Inside the passage was dark and narrow. I could see straight
through it and out into a small yard at the back, where some
tattered garments were hanging out upon a clothes-line. Dirty water
was standing in puddles in the dents of the uneven paving-stones,
and the whole atmosphere was pervaded by a sickly odour of soap-
suds, which I smelt very definitely with my mind's nose (for I suppose

1903 'THE WAY OF DREAMS' 957

the mind may be entitled to a nose as well as an eye). A feeling of
intense horror and repulsion now took possession of me, though
there was nothing visible that could inspire it to so violent a degree.
I seemed to be aware of the presence of something evil, or dangerous,
or both. Just then I heard a dull scraping sound, with occasional
heavy thuds upon the floor at my feet, and looking towards a room
opening to the right, I saw two men, dressed like undertakers, crouch-
ing down over something dark and oblong which they were pushing
through the door-way, apparently with some difficulty. With the
horror of I knew not what still growing, I turned to ask the woman
who had let me in what these men were doing? Without answering
me, she chuckled diabolically. I now looked at her face, which I had
not yet remarked. To my disgust I saw that the creature was what is
now described as a ' freak/ something deformed and abnormal. ' Bi-
sexual,' too, apparently (as I have heard that every true poet ought
to be !), having the beard and voice of a man, whilst wearing the
dress of an old woman ; a grotesque, drunken-looking face, like some
of those that one sees in Gilray's caricatures ; only, as dreams are apt
to intensify impressions, it seemed twice as hideous and revolting as
the ugliest of these. A sudden fear of this loathsome creature took
possession of me. I felt that I would even rather be in the presence
of the undertakers and their gruesome burden than remain where I
was, so I fled into the right-hand room, shutting the door of it
behind me.

There was nobody in this room, however, although I had distinctly
seen the undertakers with the coffin go into it. It was sparsely and
shabbily furnished. A threadbare carpet, with cabbage-leaf design,
a few chairs, a horsehair sofa and a dangling bead fly-catcher (all
these very distinctly revealed). The two windows, looking out into
the foggy, miserable street, were broken in some places, and mended
with pieces of brown paper. The curtains with which they were
draped looked as though they were only the skeletons or ghosts of
curtains, of white cotton, made with a mesh like fish-nets, and
absolutely useless as a protection either against light or cold.
(Something told me that I must take particular notice of these fish-
net curtains.) As I stood looking out into the street, I said to myself
how grey and melancholy everything was, out of doors, and how much
any touch of bright colour would relieve the drab monotony.
Scarcely had this occurred to me when a soldier of the Life Guards,
wearing the short undress scarlet jacket, passed by upon the
opposite pavement, a flashily-dressed young woman upon either
arm. This cheerful patch of colour seemed to bring with it a feeling
of relief by proving to me that I was still in the land of familiar
associations, and not quite cut off from the outer world.

Here ended the vision. It left an extremely unpleasant
impression upon my mind, from which I had not entirely recovered,

958 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

when something in the nature of a fulfilment came to pass — a fulfil-
ment which, as things turned out in the sequel, merely proved to me
that, in my dream, the point which might have been of some serious
importance to me had been carefully missed out.

More than a month had elapsed, and then, on a dim and foggy
afternoon, I found myself in London, upon the squalid door-step of
my dream, bound on an errand of charity.

I was laden with baskets and bundles, containing food and
comforts for an invalid, a poor woman who lay dying within, and,
lest it should appear as though I drew attention to this fact in a
spirit of self-complacency, I may mention (to my shame) that,
whilst contributing (as I hope) my fair share towards the support of
several benevolent institutions, this was the very first time that I
had ever indulged in what is called ' slumming,' and which has come
now to be so fashionable. My dream, therefore, could not possibly
have been the reminiscence of a previous experience. The person
who opened the door to me shrank back behind it, as I knew now,
with the object of concealing that hideous, unnatural face. I was
quite prepared for it, and there it was, sure enough, beard and all,
surmounted by the dirty mob-cap. Beyond the open door which led
into the small backyard the tattered ' washing ' was hanging out in
the damp ' to dry,' and, as in my dream, the whole of the ' entry
dark ' was redolent of tepid soap-suds.

Wondering what all this could mean, I turned instinctively to
the right, intending to go into the room on the ground-floor, but the
old woman — if ' woman ' she could be called — motioned to me to
follow her, beckoning and chuckling, and led the way up the narrow
stair. Here was a difference, and one for which I could not account
(but then, in dreams, one can scarcely ever account for anything).
All else, however, that met the eye, was precisely as I had foreseen.
There was the horsehair sofa, the drab, threadbare, cabbage-leaf
carpet, the dangling bead . fly-catcher. I turned to the windows,
mended here and there, where they had been broken, with brown
paper, and there, making a bright spot in the gloom, saw the young
Life Guardsman with his two sweethearts pass by in the fog, through
the spectral white curtains that looked like fish-nets.

But I will not incur the same reproach as ' a disciple of Dickens,'
to whom Mr. Herbert Paul alludes in his interesting Apotheosis of
the Novel under Queen Victoria,, and of whom it was said that he
would 'describe the very knocker off your door.' 'Le secret
d'ennuyer,' says Voltaire, ' est celui de tout dire.'

The poor woman whose sufferings I was endeavouring to relieve,
and who was little more than a girl, belonged to an unfortunate
class. Her short life, indeed, seemed to have been all misfortune,
and after listening to her pathetic story it was impossible to regard
her as anything but the victim of a singularly malevolent fate.

1903 'THE WAY OF DREAMS' 959

Having run away from home at fifteen to escape from the tyranny of
a cruel stepmother, she had erred, in the first instance, from
the same inducement as that which is said to actuate the cock-
robin when he sings at Christmas — ' from hunger, not from love,1
and afterwards in order to support an unhappy baby who, she
informed me, was ' now an angel in heaven.' A more trusting faith
in a future life, or in the inexhaustible goodness of Grod, I never yet
saw exemplified in any other human creature ; but then, of course,
she had read none of our latter-day religious controversies, and
having been ashamed to go to church since her fall, had never
become unsettled by hearing the belief in this paradise of poor
insured babies first questioned, and then graciously ' passed ' by
those who seek ignorautly to draw aside the ' veil of the Temple ' !
With this, too, and in spite of everything, an innate refinement and
an ineradicable natural repugnance to vice (accounting for want
of success in adopted profession), so that after talking to her, one
was tempted to wonder where next, for want of a more respectable
lodging, ' cette pauvre Pudeur sera-t-elle forcee de se nicher ? ' Never-
theless, she had been, for some years, completely in the power of one
of the most degraded of men, who knocked her about, appropriated her
ill-gotten gains, and was now secretly gobbling up all the good things
that I had hoped would have helped to restore her to health. This
creature having watched me as I entered the house — which I learnt
afterwards did not bear the best of reputations — had, on three separate
occasions made a plan to waylay and rob me, having taken a particular
fancy to my earrings. I had a sentiment about my earrings myself,
and so should certainly have resisted him, and then who can say what
might not have happened ? My first escape was due to my own un-
punctuality, or, rather, I arrived too soon — in broad daylight instead
of 'at mothy curfew-tide'; an hour unsuited to his enterprise.
Upon the second occasion I came accompanied by a servant; and
the third time, although all the other circumstances were favourable,
the would-be robber, having waited for me, concealed in a back room
(only separated from the one I was in the habit of visiting by flimsy
double-doors), until he was weary, fell into a drunken slumber, from
which, fortunately, he did not awake until some time after I had
departed. And yet, it is curious to note how my untrustworthy
' premonition,' like a horse at lunge, went circling round this un-
pleasant individual without ever touching upon him, when one would
have certainly thought that it was the bounden duty of one's own
dream to give one some word of warning. The aspect of the weather,
the squalor of the lodging, the strange being who opened the door,
the red-coated soldier passing in the street — the very pattern of the
carpet (merely unimportant accessories) — were, one and all, forcibly
insisted upon ; but although I was oppressed by a marked sensation
of horror at the time of my dreaming, no indication was vouchsafed

960 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

as to what the reason of this might be. In a word, if I was
fortunate enough to have escaped from what might have been a very
unpleasant experience, it was in no way thanks to my premonitory
dream. The fish-net curtains, as it happened, were of importance.
They were, indeed, the only property the poor invalid possessed, with
the exception of her tawdry wearing-apparel, and, but for them, she
might possibly have escaped from the villain who held her so
mercilessly in thrall. But these curtains had been netted by her
mother, in the days of her own innocency, and so she could not
bear the notion of leaving them behind. Twice she had set about
unhooking them, preparatory to taking flight, but he had surprised
her by returning unexpectedly, and, suspecting her design, had only
tightened his grip, knocking out one of her front teeth, upon the
last occasion, as a warning for the future, and now she was too ill to
leave her bed.

One perceives, therefore, a reason for the introduction of the
curtains into the dream, but why was this really dangerous man-
monster carefully omitted ?

The theory of my early octogenarian friend seems here to be
admissible, though I do not like to write myself down an irre-
sponsive dreamer. Something, however, must have interfered with
the satisfactory delivery of the warning. Would it be altogether
unreasonable to suppose that the brain of the sleeper might, on the
contrary, have been rather too susceptible to impressions, and that
more than one message arriving at the same moment may have
caused confusion, in the midst of which the more important pro-
nouncement became unintelligible? Outside the dominion of
metaphor this is a contretemps of almost daily occurrence.

Here is another dream of a perfectly straightforward kind, a
revelation pure and simple, concerning one who was of the dreamer's
own flesh and blood, though separated from him by ' leagues of land
and sea ' when the vision occurred. The person who related it to me
was, at the time of his dream, serving as a private soldier in Burmah.
Now he has adopted a more peaceful profession, and, departing slightly
from the letter of the Scripture, has turned his sword into a very com-
fortable Bath-chair, as being more remunerative and ' up to date '
than a ' ploughshare,' and this is how it happened that I became
acquainted with him.

He was lying asleep, one night, a la belle etoile, when he dreamed
that he smelt an extremely disagreeable smell ; ' You will know
what I mean,' he explained, ' when I tell you that it was exactly as if
some one was stirring up a dead body that had been in the water
some time with a long pole.' My thoughts immediately travelled
back to the shores of the Bosphorus, and to the old grey horse that had
' been in the water some time,' and that would float down from the
direction of the Black Sea, and establish itself, in a kind of pocket

1903 'THE WAT OF DREAMS' 961

in the stream, just under my bedroom window, and I saw in fancy
the caiqueji, with the long pole, trying to induce it to take its way
down the central current, towards the Marmora, and then I saw it
floating back to its old place, and there was the caiqueji prodding at
it again with his long pole ; so I knew exactly what he meant, and
he then went on to say that ' under clear water, like the sea,' he had
seen his father lying, and ' looking as if he was dead.' Hereupon
he awoke, and made a memorandum of the day, and the hour, and
the smell. The reader will, of course, divine the sequel, for this is
not the kind of dream that is apt to deceive. The father of the
narrator, whose business it was to help with the lading of cargo-
steamers at some port in Ireland, whilst leading a restive horse
along the quay, had been pushed into the water, and the accident
having taken place in the evening, his body was not discovered until
it ' had been in the water some time.' The day and the hour of the
occurrence — as will be doubtless foreseen — allowing for the difference
in time between Burmah and Ireland, tallied exactly with the day
and the hour of the dream ; and if the ' dream-smell ' should seem
to have been a little 'too previous,' this will be readily excused when
the correctness of the other details is taken into account. The
revelation is distinct and unmistakable. We have here no hammer-
ing at ' back-doors,' or throwing gravel up at ' bedroom windows.'
The brain of the sleeping warrior was evidently entirely responsive
to the ' wireless telegraphy ' which conveyed to him the message of
his father's tragical end.

There is nothing ' rare and strange ' in all this. If we are to
believe our friends and the newspapers, indeed, the dream merely
belongs to the ' common or garden ' class, and as such it may be
even deemed unworthy of having been recorded. Like the ' Psychi-
cal Society,' however, I only value evidence when it is 'at first hand,'
and I made up my mind, when I began this paper, that, with the
exception of such visions as were home-dreamed, I would only set
down those which had been related to me by the dreamers themselves,
and that of these I would narrate just half a dozen and no more, and
this happened to be the only one of its kind that occurred to me at
the moment, and that seemed to fulfil the required conditions.

Apart from those dreams of which the meaning appears to be
designedly shrouded in symbol or metaphor — of which Pharaoh's
dream in the old time, of the fat and the lean kine, and the full and
the withered ears, is an excellent example — there are those others
which may be held responsible for the common saying that ' dreams
go by " contraries." ' You dream, for instance, that somebody gives
you an onion (let us suppose), and behold, this is a sign that you
will shortly receive a present of a diamond ring ! (Or vice versa —
with me it has generally been ' versa ' !) Or else (it may be) you
dream that you are walking about in a public place without any

VOL. UIL— No. 316. 3 K

962 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

clothes on (not at all an uncommon form of nightmare !), and this
foreshadows that you are about to be invited to a Court ball, to
which you will go all dressed out in your best. Both these forms of
vision are very prevalent in the East. They are prevalent in the
West likewise (though to the East we must yield the palm in all that
deals with metaphor and symbol) ; but in East and West alike they
call for the services of an interpreter, for you can no more make
' head or tail of them ' unassisted than you can make a will without
witnesses, or cut off your own leg when under the influence of
chloroform. Now, here in the West, this interpreter is generally
merely a vulgar and irresponsible dream-book, accessible to all men,
and which attaches a similar meaning to all similar dreams without
any respecting of persons, whilst in the East it is a mystic being,
deeply imbued with occult lore ; a seer, living apart from his fellows,
and qualifying himself, by sacrifice and prayer, for his sacred mission.
More interesting results obviously follow.

But, if such dreams may not be rashly self-interpreted, neither
can they be with impunity altered, or even modified, in the telling,
merely to suit the fancy of the dreamer, as is exemplified by the
following story, related to me by a Turkish lady whilst I was living
at Constantinople.

This lady, whom I will call Sultane Khanoum, because this
did not happen to be really her name, dreamed one night, some
years previously, that she saw her son, a young Muldzim in a certain
regiment, led out with his hands bound with cords to an open space
in front of the barrack square, and there publicly shot. Having a
great affection for her son, and as the dream was extremely vivid, it
made a painful impression upon her, for, as she had no means of
knowing, at first, whether it was purely and simply prophetic or
premonitory, or merely metaphorical or symbolic, she feared that it
might betoken something decidedly unpleasant for him in the future.
She related her dream to her family in the morning, but as her
son was then present, being at home upon leave, she suppressed the
fact that he was the person who had appeared to her in such tragical
circumstances, fearing it might affect him disagreeably, but sub-
stituted in his stead one of his companions in arms, a young officer
in the same regiment, whom I will here call by the name Jof Haidar
Bey. Later on in the day she donned her yashmak and hurried off
to consult a soothsayer, one

far renown'd

For gifts of prophecy ; whose eyes, tho' blind,
Could peer into futurity, and find
The ripen'd fruit ere yet the seed was strewn,
And by fix'd stars and changes of the moon
Foretold our human destinies,

to whom she related her dream in the same terms, with Haidar
Bey in the principal rdle. After many prayers and incantations, the

1903 'THE WAY OF DREAMS' 963

grey-bearded seer, with bowed head and averted eyes, gave forth his
interpretation in solemn tones. And, behold, after all, it was one
of those dreams that always ' go by contraries ' ; so the poor mother
need not have been so frightened ! The fact that Haidar Bey
appeared in the dream as though bound with cords meant, when
interpreted, that his breast would shortly be covered with ribbons
and decorations ; whilst his being led out to execution signified that
he would soon be promoted to the command of his regiment, and
steadily advance in the favour of his imperial sovereign !

When Sultane Khanoum heard this she was exceeding joyful,
and rose up and clapped her hands, and cried out to the soothsayer,
* But it was not Ha'idar Bey ! What have I to do with his advance-
ment ? The dream was about my son, my oiun son ! ' ' Why then
did you deceive me ?' asked the interpreter in a hollow voice. ' Of
this folly you must now reap the consequences. The honours that
were intended for your son must descend upon the head of Haidar
Bey, and no power on earth can now deprive him of them,' and,
needless to say, this disappointing prediction came to pass, all in
due season !

And now, in conclusion, learn what may happen when the
dreamer too rashly seeks to interpret his (or her) dream without the
assistance of a qualified expert :

In the days of my youth I was invited to stay at an old country
house for Christmas and the I New Year, whither I went chaperoned
by a lady a good many years my senior, but who was still in the
prime of life, and accounted exceedingly handsome. The house was
filled with young people, only some few elders being of the party.
Upon the eve of the New Year these boys and girls professed to
wish to dive into the future, and all kinds of methods of doing this
were suggested and tried, some of them being taken from ancient
recipes which were preserved amongst the family manuscripts in the
well-filled library. As we separated for the night my chaperon, who
was in a very lively mood and had taken a leading part in the even-
ing's amusements, exclaimed suddenly, and as though by inspiration :
' Let us believe that whatever we dream to-night will really and
truly happen to us in the course of the coming year. There must
be no concealments, remember! And we'll all tell our dream?,
whatever they are, to-morrow morning at breakfast.' This was at
once agreed to by all of us, and so, in the bloom of second ' youth and
beauty, and radiant in her well-fitting toilette in the height of the
hideous fashion of that bygone day, she smilingly bade us good-night,
and vanished with her flat candlestick through the double doors
which divided her sleeping apartment from the long corridor.

Alas, what a contrast to the figure that emerged from those self-
same doors upon the following morning ! Pale and haggard, and
with black lines under her fine eyes, my poor friend looked quite

964 THE NINETEENTH CENTURA June

ten years older than upon the previous evening, and it was evident
that she had been shedding tears. She possessed such a highly nervous
and sensitive nature, and had dabbled so much in spiritualism and
the occult, that she was looked upon by us all as the one person who
would be quite certain to receive some kind of confidential com-
munication with respect to her future, and we feared at once, from
her altered manner, that the revelation had been unpropitious.

She looked so ill and miserable that we did not at once press
her to confide to us the reason, but some of us began to reel off the
dreams we had had — none of them at all remarkable — whilst hoping
that she would soon gratify our curiosity by doing the same. By-
and-by the spirit moved her to speak, and in accents that were
somewhat faltering at first, but which grew in firmness as she went
on, she told us of the revelation — as she fully believed it to be —
which had come to her upon this last night of the old year, in
response to her rash wish to pry into futurity. The simplicity of
her language, combined with her ill-suppressed emotion, carried
conviction with it, and we one and all listened to her words with
breathless interest.

The narration produced upon the assembled company, young
and flippant for the most part, and conscious that it had been invited
only in order that it should amuse itself, the same effect that the
tolling of a passing bell might possibly evoke at a picnic, or the
sight of a woman in widow's weeds at a Bacchanalian supper-party.
Everybody looked solemn for about two seconds. Then it seemed in
better taste to ignore what might have been accounted ominous in
the dream, and to look at it purely from the aesthetic side. A young
poet who was present said that it was ' a beautiful dream ' that any-
body might well be proud of, and proposed that the dreamer should
immediately write it down, whilst it was fresh in her mind, so that a
very limited number of copies might be printed (for private circula-
tion only), upon hand-made paper, and bound in white vellum, tied
with silk strings ' of the colour of a daffodil.'

The notion of these daffodil strings cheered up everybody except
the dreamer, who still wore the expression of a doomed creature.
She complied with the poet's request, however, and copied out the
dream in manuscript, and I believe a few examples of it were even
type-written, but no further effort was made to save it from oblivion.
I was presented with an early manuscript copy, so that I can 'give
the ' revelation ' here, in the dreamer's own words :

' It was summer,' the narrative begins, ' and I found myself saun-
tering about in the public gardens of a foreign city, a city I had
never been to before. I was dressed in a flowing Indian muslin,
embroidered with gold, which trailed behind me upon the grass,
and I was very pleased with the fit of it, and with my appearance
generally, being conscious that I was looking my best. By-and-

1903 'THE WAY OF DREAMS' 965

by the sun seemed to become oppressively hot, and I looked about
me for some shade. The sounds of solemn music reached my
ears at this moment, and, looking across the street which was nearest
to the gardens, I saw a magnificent cathedral, grey with age, into
which the people were nocking as though to assist at some religious
ceremony. I crossed the street, impelled by an irresistible impulse,
and entered the church. As I lifted the heavy leathern portiere
in front of the arched doorway, a sudden chill seemed to strike me
to the heart, and I said to myself that I would sit quite close to the
entrance, so as to be able to leave when I liked, without disturbing
the congregation, if this chill became unbearable. There appeared
to be no one in this part of the church. The interior of the building
was portioned off, and subdivided, by numerous heavy curtains and
carved oaken screens, so that I was unable from where I was to see
into the chancel. I seated myself in what looked like an old-
fashioned English pew, surrounded by dark panelling, and here I
remained, listening to the chanting of monks (as I supposed, for the
service was Roman Catholic) upon the further side of one of the
carved partitions. The light in the church was extremely subdued,
but when my eyes became accustomed to it I perceived that all the
curtains and draperies were of black funeral cloth, and I also
recognised that the organ was playing the solemn strains of the De
Profundis. No doubt, I thought, I was assisting at the obsequies
of some illustrious person. Just as I was wondering whom this
might be, I felt a sharp current of air upon my left shoulder, and by
a sudden glimmer of light I knew that the portiere of the principal
entrance had been pulled aside. I was surprised that the air from
outside, where all was sunshine, should strike so cold, and, turn-
ing round, I saw a male figure entering the church very quickly
as though in a great hurry. When my eyes recovered from the
sudden ray of light which had made the surrounding gloom seem all
the deeper, I perceived that this was the figure of Death, in the
horrid semblance of- a skeleton, though I could only see the upper
part of the body on account of the screens and curtains that came
between. The head, a " peelit skull," was surmounted by a kind of
postillion's hat, set jauntily upon one side. I have seen the same sort
of hat in the vignettes and culs-de-lampe in French illustrated books
of the eighteenth century, only there the figure that wears it is
usually a Cupid. In this instance a large cockade was attached to
it, and long streamers of black crape hung down at the back. The
shoulders of the figure were covered with a short cape, having several
collars, like those that used to be worn by hackney coachmen in by-
gone days, from beneath which I could see the bony fingers grasping
a small bow from which they were sending barbed shafts in all
directions. The figure took aim with great rapidity and without
pausing to watch the result, and as it did so I saw the naked ribs,

936 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

upon each side of the vertebrae, exposed by the lifting of the short cape.
Perceiving me, it hurriedly adjusted an arrow and took aim, but I
dipped my head and the shaft rattled harmlessly against the panelled
side of the pew. I perceived that it was a very short arrow — like
those that were once used in cross-bows — and that it was fledged
upon three sides of the head with black feathers. The figure
meanwhile continued its way very quickly, aiming to the right and
left as it went, and, passing through the heavy black curtains which
concealed the body of the church, was soon lost to view, an icy blast
following in its wake and blowing back into my face. Frightened at
what I had seen, though grateful for my own escape, I rose and left
the cathedral by the way the figure had entered it, thinking that,
thus, I should be less likely to fall in with it again, and, once more,
I felt the soft warmth of the outer air. I now strolled about in the
churchyard, letting my white dress trail behind me as I had done
before, and trying to read the inscriptions upon some of the ancient
monuments, which, being mostly in Latin, I only partly understood.
In this manner, and without being aware of it, I worked my way
round to the opposite side of the church, and here, quite near to the
principal entrance, I came, in the middle of a smooth grass-plot,
upon a newly dug grave. I went close up to it and looked down
into the damp cool earth, and said to myself that it was probably
intended for the departed person whose funeral rites were being
conducted inside the cathedral. Then, as I was turning to leave
the churchyard, meaning to regain the public gardens, I found that
the train of my dress had apparently become caught or entangled in
something ; a branch, or a clod of the rough earth cast up from the
grave, as I supposed, and, not wishing to tear the muslin by pulling
at it, I bent down to free it from whatever the hindrance might be.
As I did so, my fingers closed upon the head of a black-fledged
arrow, like the one from which I had escaped inside the church, by
which my dress had been literally pinned to the edge of the newly
made grave, and, glancing back in the direction of the cathedral, I
espied, crouching behind a grey tombstone, the same grisly figure
that had aimed the first shaft at me, his bony hands still grasping
the uplifted bow, and with a grin of triumph upon his horrible face.
The De Profundis then pealed forth so loudly from within the
church, that it seemed as though the solid earth trembled and
vibrated, and with a cry of terror I awoke from my sleep. All had
been so terribly vivid that it was some time before I fully realised
that it was only a dream, and a sense as of some overwhelming
calamity has oppressed me ever since ! '

Poor woman ! that New Year indeed opened miserably for
her, and 'all along of this sinister warning, for such she felt
assured that it must be. By and by, acting on the advice of friends,
and as the London season was about beginning, she plunged into a

1903 'THE WAY OF DREAMS' 967

little salutary dissipation, which proved temporarily beneficial. But
after Scotland, when the autumn fogs set in, she became in lower
spirits than ever. Her parting words, even when uttered between
tea-time and the dressing-bell, were permanently valedictory in tone.
She ate next to nothing, and went unusually often to church.
Those who were not in the secret imagined that she must have
developed some fatal internal malady. These symptoms became
aggravated as the months wore on, until it was only the poor shadow
of her former self, tearful, prayerful, and repentant of all past follies,
that stuck the final stamp upon the last of at least fifty small
packets, containing the souvenirs destined for her friends and
admirers, and which were to be duly registered and despatched so as
to reach their destination upon the morning of that New Year which
she felt convinced would never dawn for her !

Fortunately, however, these packages were never posted. A
week afterwards (by which time, as she said, she was 'beginning
to feel safe ') I surprised her in the act of endeavouring to remove
from them, with the help of hot water, those postage stamps which
were of the highest value. She looked bright and hopeful, as in the
old days. The terrible premonition, in a word, had come to nothing,
but had proved utterly bogus and unreliable, and my charming
friend, if she did not ' live happily ever afterwards,' lived more or
less happily for many a long year — long enough, at any rate, to
laugh at her former absurd fears.

Here we have an example of the ' message ' being delivered
plainly enough, with the circumstances and details, all set forth in
their proper order, and the brain of the sleeper upon the alert to
receive impressions, and yet the whole thing was nothing more or
less than a cruel practical joke. But this is ' the way ' of dreams !

MARY MONTGOMERTE CURRIE.

9(8 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

FREE LIBRARIES: THEIR FUNCTIONS
AND OPPORTUNITIES

DURING the last fifteen or twenty years a very important problem
has been gradually defining itself. And the problem, briefly stated,
is this : By what means and under what conditions can the various
agencies engaged and concerned in the work of public education be
so organised and co-ordinated as to form, for men and women
pursuing their studies collaterally with the business of daily life, an
efficient national system of advanced popular instruction ? A brief
review of the origin of these agencies, of their progress, and of
their present position may not only be of interest, but is a necessary
prelude to the discussion of the particular question which is the
subject of this paper.

It would not have required much sagacity to foresee that the
Education Act of 1870 would mark an era in social progress, and
would be the dawn of a new day for the masses. But the most
sanguine prophet would hardly have ventured to predict that it
could have effected in a single generation what it has effected. Of
those classes of the community which are now full of intellectual
enthusiasm and ambition, and which are devoting the evening hours
of lives spent all day in drudging behind counters and in city offices
to pursuing the same studies under the same teachers as the under-
graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, it found at least two-thirds
ignorant, and contentedly ignorant, even of the rudiments of Litera-
ture and Science.

While the Education Act was still in its infancy, another move-
ment was maturing. If the effect of the Act was to swell hundreds
into thousands, those hundreds had made their voices heard ; if the
effect of the Act was to awaken and inspire a new generation, the
preceding generation had prepared for its advent. About two years
before the Education Act was passed, the University of Cambridge, at
the instigation of Professor James Stuart, appointed a syndicate to
consider an application made to the vice-chancellor for the organisa-
tion of a scheme the object of which was to extend to certain
provincial towns teaching of a University character by University
men. It was to take the form of courses of weekly lectures, followed

1903 FREE LIBRARIES 969

by a class ; printed syllabuses approved by the syndicate were to
accompany the lectures ; questions on the subjects of the lectures
were to be set by the lecturers and answered on paper by the
students. At the end of the courses examinations were to be held by
examiners appointed by the syndicate, and as the result of them
certificates were to be conferred by the University. The application
was granted, and in the autumn of 1873 the lectures commenced.
Three courses, one on English Literature, one on Physics, and one
on Political Economy, were delivered at Nottingham, Derby, and
Leicester. The success of the scheme is sufficiently proved by its
subsequent history. Every year added to the number of the courses.
In 1880 there were 37 courses, the average attendance at the lectures
being 4,369, at the classes 2,624 ; the number of weekly papers 887,
and the number examined 572. The last returns, the returns for
the session of 1901-2, record the number of courses as 101, the
attendance at the lectures as 9,200, at the classes as 3,210, the number
of weekly papers as 15359, the number obtaining certificates after
examination as 638.

Not less remarkable and encouraging has been the progress made
by the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, a
society till recently under the control of a Joint Board appointed
respectively by the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and London,
but now incorporated in the University of London. The work of
this society is confined to the Metropolitan area and the suburbs.
Beginning in the autumn of 1876 with seven courses of lectures and
classes, and with 139 students attending them, it could record, ten
years afterwards, in 1886, no fewer than sixty-five courses and classes,
in average attendance at lectures 3,748, at the classes 2,020, with
806 students writing weekly papers and 482 obtaining certificates as
the result of examination ; these rising in the last session recorded,
that of 1901-2, to 195 courses of lectures and classes, with 15,407
students attending them, and to 2,257 students obtaining examination
certificates.

The lectures organised by the University of Oxford have always
been less systematic and of a more popular character than those of
the Cambridge and London branches. And if this has, unfortunately,
given a handle to those who have taken exception to the Extension
system as encouraging superficiality and smattering, it has not been
without compensating advantages. It has attracted many thousands
to the lectures who would otherwise have been indifferent to them ;
it has extended the area of the movement, and has thus been invaluable
as pioneering work. Its success has been truly extraordinary. In
1885, when the history of this branch of the extension practically
began, twenty-seven courses of lectures and classes were organised,
the average attendance at which was estimated at 6,000. Since
then every year has recorded progress. Centres have been established

970 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

in all parts of England. The last statistics, those for the session of
1901-2, record the number of courses organised as 190, the number
of active centres as 135, of lectures as 1,979, and the average total
attendance at the lectures as 20,862. It may be added that the
Victoria University is following in the footsteps of Cambridge,
London, and Oxford, and has now some fifteen centres in active
work. As provincial Universities are multiplied, there can be little
doubt that within their several areas there will be correspond-
ing activity in a similar direction, and that at no very distant time
every district in England, however remote, will have its centre of
Extension teaching. Nor is this movement confined to England.
It has already been initiated in Scotland ; and, as it has many
influential supporters both in Wales and in Ireland, it may be predicted
with confidence that the Universities of Wales and Ireland will,
before long, be engaged in the same good work.

But popular education has another side and other functions.
The University Extension lectures appeal only to adults, and neces-
sarily proceed on the assumption that the foundations of advanced
instruction have at least been laid. Without a degree of culture
which many thousands of those whom popular education is intended
to reach cannot be expected to possess, they would be practically of
little use. Nor are they always, for obvious reasons, financial and
otherwise, accessible even to those who might profit from them.
But in the summer of 1889, at the suggestion of Dr. Paton, of
Nottingham, and Mr. Percy Bunting, a Society was founded which
met the needs of these students. Its object was not merely to dis-
courage loose and desultory reading and the perusal of the worthless
and even deleterious literature in which young men and young
women, when left to themselves, are apt to indulge, but to make their
reading profitable by directing it to what is sound and instructive.
It went further : by suggesting the formation of reading circles to
meet together, under a leader, at certain times for prescribed courses
of study, it furnished a regular curriculum of instruction in any given
subject, and, by a very simple contrivance, all the information needed
for the profitable perusal of the books included in the curriculum.
Every month a magazine is published by the Society prescribing the
books to be read and containing a full introduction to each book
prescribed, together with a commentary and notes on any points in
it likely to present difficulties. Should a reader or the leader of a
circle require further assistance in his studies, he has only to write to
the head office and any questions he submits will be at once, and fully,
answered. The courses of study prescribed comprise all subjects con-
ducive to what may be called the liberal education of the young
citizen — Literature, History (ancient and modern), the elements of
Political Philosophy, Economics, Architecture, Geology, Physiology,
and the Laws of Health. For each course are prescribed three sets of

1903 FREE LIBRARIES 971

books — those required, that is, the books which the circle or indepen-
dent student undertakes to read through and with care; those
recommended, that is, books which may be read by those who desire to
extend their study ; and, lastly, those works which it may be useful
to consult. And the courses are adapted to all classes of readers.
There is an Introductory Section for working men and women
designed to initiate them in systematic reading, the books prescribed
here being of the simplest kind, such as George Eliot's Silas
Marner and Wyatt's English Citizen : His Life and Duties. The
books required are obtainable at the lowest discount prices at the
central office ; and the fee, which includes the three numbers of the
magazine guiding the reading, is sixpence per annum. Next comes
the Young People's Section, the books here, in the first division,
being made to bear simply and attractively on Nature study, in the
second, on the duties of citizenship, while the third comprises selec-
tions from the poets, and tales likely to be pleasing to the young,
as well as wholesomely influential. A few shillings would purchase
all the books required here ; the entrance fee is one shilling a year
for members of a circle, and eighteenpence for members not belong-
ing to a circle.

For more advanced students are provided what are called General
Courses. These, as arranged for the present year, are grouped under
the headings of Social Science, the Growth of our Colonial Empire,
Early Man and his Life, Biography, Travel, the History of Venice,
Novels, Essays, and Poetry, together with a Holiday Section, the object
of which is to invest excursions and pleasure trips with intellectual
and artistic interest by recalling the association of the places visited
with eminent men, with historical scenes, and with their presentation
in works of art. Last come the special courses. Some of these are
in History — the making of the modern European nations, Europe
since Waterloo, English history from the death of John to 1660;
some in Literature — English literature of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, Dante, Shakespeare, Thackeray, Browning ; one
course is on Oriental and Greek history, one on Egyptian
Archaeology, another on the elements of Architecture. Science is
represented by a course on Physiology and the Laws of Health ;
Sociology, by Kuskin, as a social teacher ; while Scott's historical
novels represent that important branch of literature which occupies
the borderland between fiction and history.

When we add that in every one of these courses, with, I am
sorry to see, the exception of English Literature, the utmost
care has been taken to select, as required books, the cheapest and
best books on the several subjects, that the works recommended for
extended study and reference have been chosen with equal judg-
ment and competence, it will be seen how invaluable is the guidance
here provided, at the cost of a few shillings, for everyone who chooses

972 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

to seek it. That a Society which supplies what this Society supplies
should during many years have had a hard struggle for existence
is indeed surprising. But its statistics lately have been most
encouraging, and show conclusively that it is making way, if slowly,
yet steadily. In the session of 1901-2, its last completed session,
the members enrolled in the young people's section were 6,387, in
the general courses 3,989, in the special courses 1,550, while its
honorary and miscellaneous members number 1,659, making a total
of 13,585.

Here, then, we have an institution, the potentialities of which
are sufficiently apparent from what it has already achieved. For
fees ranging from sixpence to two shillings annually, any child, or
adult in England can be taught to read with system and profit, can
be guided by experts — some of them among the most distinguished
specialists of our time — to the best books on any given subject ; can
be supplied with many of these books at nominal prices, often for
little more than a few pence ; can, by being furnished with lists of
books recommended for collateral and supplementary study or for
reference, be taught how to utilise the public libraries and find their
way about the catalogues ; can be shown how easily and simply a
practice, scarcely less deleterious to the mind than dram-drinking
is to the body, the practice of loose and purposeless reading, may be
transformed into a means not merely of self-education, but into a
source of one of the highest and purest pleasures possible to man.

We come now to another institution, the history of which illustrates
the enormous progress in capacity for rational and intelligent
recreation made by the general body of the people during the last
few years. In 1841 John Borthwick Grilchrist left his fortune in
trust ' for the benefit, advancement, and propagation of education and
learning in every part of the world, as far as circumstances permit.'
In accordance with this provision the trustees have, among other
applications of the income, arranged, each winter, several series of
popular lectures, chiefly on scientific subjects. The success of these
lectures has been phenomenal. In granting a course of lectures to
any particular town, the trustees make it a condition that the largest
hall in the town should be secured, and these halls, no matter
what their size may be, are crowded. No course in 1902, esti-
mated by the total attendance, was attended by fewer than 2,000 ;
the highest point reached was 10,500, the average exceeding 4,000.
The total attendance at the thirty courses of five lectures numbered
135,659. The lecturers were all of them distinguished men, dealing
solidly and methodically with the subjects severally undertaken by
them : the master of Downing College, Cambridge, for example, dealt
with 'Brain and the Apparatus of Mind,' Professor Seeley with
' Volcanoes,' and Dr. Waldstein with ' Labour and Art in English
Life, illustrated by Greek Art ' ; and perhaps nothing could be more

1903 FREE LIBRARIES 973

significant than the fact that this last lecture was one of the most
popular, and was attended by large audiences which at one time
numbered 2,000. I cannot but remark in passing that it seems a great
pity that the trustees should not allow these lectures to be extended
to literary, historical, and social subjects. We may safely assume
that a popular audience who could be attracted by such a theme as
Dr. Waldstein's would be at least equally attracted, and perhaps
more benefited, by lectures on some of our own national classics or
national heroes.

Whatever conclusions may be drawn from all this, it is quite clear
that a new era in popular progress has defined itself, that social
legislators and philanthropists are face to face with new duties, with
new responsibilities, with new needs. The million are in literal
truth now standing, so far as educational capacity is concerned, where
half a century ago those who filled our old public schools and our
two Universities used to stand, but under very different conditions.
It was sufficient in those days if eight years at Eton or Rugby,
and four at Oxford or Cambridge, made a youth a gentleman or a
scholar, or both. Nothing more was required either of him or of
them. That theory has vanished, or, if it lingers, lingers only with
those who are far in the rear and whom nobody heeds. The inevit-
able must be accepted ; with necessity there can be no contention.
The problem which the Universities and those at the Universities
who regulate advanced education have to solve is how to reconcile
the esoteric system and ideals of the old academic regime with the
new ideals, as yet no doubt only half defined, which a world not
altered merely, but transformed, is instinctively formulating, and will
imperiously vindicate. The problem awaiting solution at the hands
of educational legislators outside the older Universities is how, out of
a weltering chaos of material and of opportunities, to educe system
and concentrate what is dissipated.

In the institutions and societies which I have described we have
all that might develop, under favourable conditions, into an efficient
popular system of advanced secondary education co-extensive with
the kingdom, so accessible that it should exclude no one who desired
its discipline and guidance, so regulated that it should, in graduated
courses, meet and satisfy the requirements of every citizen who
desired to pursue his or her education collaterally with the work of
daily life. What some twenty or thirty thousand young men and
young women are now doing, as many more, and as many more
indefinitely multiplied, might, with proper encouragement, be
induced to do, with proper provision, be enabled to do. A beginning
at least has been made, and the beginning is the important, the
all-important thing. Neither fire nor fuel can generate itself, but,
once produced, there need be no limit to the energy of the one
and to the accumulation of the other. We have the fire and we

974 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

have the fuel. Enthusiasm and ambition of this kind when once
kindled are contagious. If fortune favour, spark catches from spark
and flame feeds flame. But fortune must favour. Of the final
triumph of the movement, the history of which I have been sketch-
ing, of the ultimate attainment of its ends and the realisation in
fulness of its ideals, there can be no doubt at all. It depends on
ourselves whether we shall witness them. And now I come to the
main object of this paper.

No one can doubt that the establishment and rapid multiplica-
tion of free public libraries is, from a social point of view, the most
important single event of our time ; that the influence exercised by
these institutions is of as much power to thwart and defeat the
efforts of educational philanthropists and legislators as it is of power
to further and confirm them. With these institutions, judiciously
regulated, as their allies, the societies whose history I have sketched
might soon expand to the full measure of their usefulness and
service ; with these institutions pursuing, as they are now pursuing,
not merely an independent course, but a course too often in a
diametrically opposite direction, the work of these societies can only
effect what it does effect with difficulty and by a counter effort.

A glance at the present position of the free libraries, at their
constitution and at their economy, will show what a colossal power
for good or for evil we have in them. The history of them is as
interesting as it is significant. Their origin is no doubt to be traced
to the stimulus given to municipal life by the great Act of 1835;
but their inception was due to the efforts of three philanthropists
whose names can never be mentioned without reverence by the
friends of social progress : William Ewart, during many years member
for Dumfries ; Joseph Brotherton, who represented Sal ford, and whose
services as an enlightened and disinterested public servant in most
troubled times are still remembered at Manchester ; and Edward
Edwards, then an assistant librarian in the British Museum, with
whom the project seems to have originated. The result of their
efforts was the Free Libraries Act, passed in August 1850, and the
result of this Act was the establishment of free libraries in Liverpool,
Manchester, and other leading cities. Since then, slowly at first,
afterwards less tardily, and between 1870 and 1895 with increasing
rapidity, they have made their way. During the last few years the
movement has received an extraordinary impetus from the unprece-
dented munificence of Mr. Passmore Edwards, and more recently
from what appears to be the limitless patronage of Mr. Carnegie.
These institutions now number in the United Kingdom 518, all
supported out of the rates ; and this estimate does not include the
local branches of the greater libraries, such as those at Leeds, Bir-
mingham, Liverpool, and Manchester. Every year will add to their
number, and it seems certain that before long there will be no town

1903 FREE LIBRARIES 975

and no district, either in the larger cities or in the country, without
them. Every librarian, subject, of course, to the council whose
servant he is, has practically a free hand, and the library under his
control takes its colour and its policy from him ; the selection, for
example, of the books, the encouragement of serious as distinguished
from frivolous readers, and the assistance given to them in their studies.

As, however, the library is supported by the ratepayers, the
books obtained are necessarily such as the average ratepayer and
his children and dependents would be likely to appreciate ; these are
necessities, the rest are luxuries. And, unhappily, in most of the
smaller libraries necessities so much predominate over luxuries that
the measure of the intelligence and literary merit displayed in the
books is pretty much that of the taste and discernment of the average
ratepayer and his dependents. Many of the libraries — I speak
of the smaller ones — are so completely under the thralldom of those
who only seek such recreation as ' shilling shockers,' newspapers, and
the ordinary comic rags afford that they cannot but be regarded as
unmixed evils. Even where things are not so bad as this there can
be no doubt that there is more than one great evil common to all
these institutions. They encourage habits of reading for the mere
purpose of killing time ; they form and confirm the practice of
intellectual dissipation ; they introduce boys and girls, and half-
educated young men and women, to poems and fictions which,
though not actually immoral and warranting inclusion in the Index
Expurgatorius, inflame their passions and imaginations, and have a
most disturbing and unwholesome effect ; and they place in their
way, often with the most disastrous results, works on religious and
moral subjects for the perusal of which they are not ripe. No one
who keeps an eye on the casualties recorded in the daily papers can
have failed to notice, not only with what increasing frequency the
suicides of young men and even mere boys are occurring, but how
often, in the letters and messages justifying with flippant sophistry
their crime, we have ample testimony of the demoralisation caused
by the perusal of works never intended for youth, and which but for
these libraries would not have come into their hands.

That these institutions have failed to effect what it was hoped
they would effect, that as they are at present constituted they are
open to gross abuse, and are in fact so abused, that many of them do
as much mischief as good, and that in all of them important reforms
and modifications must precede any serious aim at educational
efficiency, is admitted nowhere more unreservedly than by many of
the librarians themselves. What these libraries may be reasonably
expected to do, and in what way they may be of service to popular
education, to the movement of which I have spoken, will be best
indicated by considering those who resort to them.

By far the largest number are, of course, those who read only for

976 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

recreation and amusement, and who confine themselves to such books
as afford them what they seek — light literature, novels, and news-
papers. It would not be desirable, even if it were possible, to ignore
the claims of such readers. If rubbish be popular and in demand,
rubbish must be provided, or the ratepayer has a grievance. But
such rubbish should be reduced to a minimum. To flood the libraries,
a very common practice, with third- and fourth-rate novels, either in
the form of presentation copies by the authors or in the form of
remainders or job lots going cheap at the booksellers', admits of no
excuse. As these readers are not discriminating and, except when
their attention has been directed by current reviews to a particular book
— Miss Corelli's or Mr. Hall Caine's last, for example — will fall on what
fare they find, a wise librarian will stock his shelves with fiction
which is, at least, wholesome and of merit or distinction. As fiction
undoubtedly has or may have great influence on the young and impres-
sionable, more care should be taken than commonly is taken in its
selection. It is most important that those responsible for its supply
should know the nature of the fiction they introduce. In many of these
libraries, partly owing to the inadvertence or ignorance of the librarian
and committee, and partly from the sheer impossibility of inspecting
the myriad issue of the popular Press, currency is sometimes given to
publications of the vilest kind. I have already said that this class of
readers must be provided, and amply provided for, and that it is
necessary to recognise that they will always form a majority of those
who frequent these libraries. But what these readers are not entitled
to, and what it is monstrous to suppose they are entitled to, is what, in
the case of most libraries and of all the smaller ones, they practically
possess — the control over what the libraries supply. I cannot speak
from statistics, but I should probably not be exaggerating if I said that
more than two-thirds of the money expended on these institutions
is expended in catering for the tastes of those loungers whose reading
is entirely confined to light novels, magazines, and ana. The
simple truth is that our boasted progress among the masses — I am not
speaking of the minority and of the better class, but generally — has
resulted in little more than in exchanging one form of dissipation for
another, intellectual dram-drinking for physical, the sensational novel
or racy skit in the free library for the tankard or quartern at the public-
house bar. And the one is as bad as the other. Nothing so unfits
a man for the duties of life, for concentration and for healthy activity,
as habitually indulging in this sort of anodyne and stimulant — for it
serves both purposes, and both purposes to the same demoralising
effect. In the last procession of the ' unemployed ' it is at least
significant that a large number of them emerged from the free
libraries to fall into the ranks, and, the procession over, extinguished
their cigarettes to resume their novels and magazines in the free
libraries again.

1903 FREE LIBRARIES 977

With the next class, the miscellaneous readers who occasionally
travel out of novels into history and solid literature, we approach
a class which deserves serious attention, for it is only a step from
them to those who read, un systematically it may be, not simply for
amusement, but for information and improvement. Out of both
these classes will, in all probability, develop, with proper encourage-
ment, young men and young women able and willing to profit from
regular teaching. And, lastly, come the students proper, those who
are preparing for examinations and pursuing studies with a definite
object, whether with a view to Government posts, to degrees in the
London or provincial Universities, to certificates in the Oxford and
Cambridge ' Locals,' or in connection with the Extension Lectures
or the National Home Eeading Union. These are the readers whose
interests should be the chief care of the free libraries, for whose
use the libraries are, or should be, principally intended.

To these classes the librarians stand in different relations. As
students for examination have their reading prescribed for them,
and are necessarily reading under guidance, they require nothing
more than the provision of such books as may be of service for
collateral information. And these books they have a right to
demand, even if the average ratepayer or telegraph boy be docked of
the last fascinating batch of shockers and skits. But their relation
to the second and third classes of readers is very different. Here a
competent and intelligent librarian may be of incalculable service, not
merely to individuals, but to the cause of popular education. And
his duties are two-fold : to do his utmost to see that, commensurately
with the means at his command, his library is in the highest state of
efficiency ; that, in literature, what is classical predominates over what
is mediocre, that the last new monograph on an author is not in the
place of the best attainable edition of that author ; that third- and
fourth-rate criticism and poetry, going cheap or obligingly presented
by its authors or publishers, are not conspicuous ; that in history and
science the works selected have been the result of consultations with
experts in each, and that philosophy and theology are not represented
as they are commonly represented on the barrows in Farringdon Street.
Few things are more lamentable than to see an intelligent working-
man wasting his time and energy in reading useless and inferior
books, such as entirely-superseded scientific treatises and cyclopaedias,
or histories long deservedly sold for waste paper, simply because they
fall in his way and he knows no better. In many of these libraries
the cases are loaded with this and similar lumber ; ' for it looks so
bad,' as a librarian once observed to me, ' to see empty shelves.'

But if a librarian has to cater, he has also to advise and guide, or
at least it is open to him to do so. Educated people who are con-
versant with books little know what difficulty novices find in getting at
books on a given subject, and in knowing how to use them when found.

VOL. LIII— No. 316 3 S

978 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

If philanthropists — I submit it with all respect — instead of continuing
to assist in scattering these libraries broadcast over the country, would
substitute some provision for rendering those already existing really
efficient and beneficial, they would supply a want more urgent than
their multiplication. And it is not difficult to specify what is needed ;
it has just been indicated — provision for enabling readers to know how
profitably to avail themselves of the treasures placed at their disposal ;
provision for an adequate regular supply of the best books in leading
subjects of study, and for securing the services of properly trained
and properly qualified librarians. The first need would be largely met
by the endowment of a course of five lectures, at the service of any
public library which might choose to apply for them, the first dealing
generally with books and how to use them, the others forming general
introductions to the study, say, of Poetry, of Criticism, of History and
Political Philosophy, of Economics, of Theology and Ethics, each
including a list of the books which might be most profitably studied
or consulted. I am very sure that there is no large free library
to which such a course of lectures would not be a great boon, and in
which they would not be of real service.

Most and perhaps all of the principal libraries are happily so
fortunate in their librarians that nothing is left to be desired
except what the librarians themselves desire, ampler opportunities
and ampler means for being serviceable to serious readers. But
it is, too often, far otherwise with those in the control of the
smaller libraries — in other words, with the majority of those
who fill these most responsible posts. As such posts are now so
numerous, and as they will probably increase in number every
year, it is surely not too much to require from those who become
candidates for them what is required from candidates for other civic
appointments — certificates of competency, guarantees of general and
special qualifications for their work. In the case of assistant
librarians such certificates are actually required. This is due to the
efforts of that admirable society, the Library Association, the object
of which is to promote the better administration of libraries and the
efficiency of librarians. With this object it has instituted classes for
instruction in Bibliography and Literary History, in Cataloguing, in
Book Classification and Shelf Arrangement, and in Library Manage-
ment, requiring also a knowledge of Latin and French, and granting
certificates as the result of an examination in these subjects. In one
or two of the American Universities preparation for this profession
is a recognised function of the teaching body, and Chairs of Biblio-
graphy have been established. Our own Universities are not likely
to follow their example, nor is it at all desirable that they should do
so. The technical qualifications proper and necessary in assistant
librarians are no doubt requisite in their chiefs, but they are so far
from constituting all that is needed in men filling posts of this kind

1903 FREE LIBRARIES 979

that they may almost be said to be of secondary importance. Of all
classes of pedants bibliographers and mechanical martinets are the
worst and most hopeless ; and such pedants would in nine cases out of
ten be the inevitable result of a faculty in Bibliography. The type
of men required for chief librarians is that commonly represented
by those who have had a public school education, who have gradu-
ated in Honours at one of our leading Universities, who, with
liberal tastes, practical good sense, and business capacity, have added
to their academic discipline and attainments a knowledge of modern
languages and literature, as well as an intelligent general interest in
all that is stirring in the world around them. To such men a few
months would suffice for the special and technical instruction
necessary to fit them for their duties. At present, no doubt, the
incomes are not sufficient to attract men like these ; but on the
principle that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well,
especially under conditions that what is not done well is almost as use-
less as if it had been left undone, it is surely worth asking whether,
in important centres at all events, such men should not be secured.
A very small addition to the rates would raise these incomes to the
average value of a College Fellowship or an Assistant Mastership at
a public school. This is, it must be admitted, a counsel of per-
fection, and, if ever it be adopted, cannot, for obvious reasons, be
adopted at present.

Meanwhile what I venture to urge is this, that as long as the free
public libraries pursue an independent course, and continue to
subordinate the interests of education and intellectual activity to the
demands of those who have no part or concern in either, they will not
only defeat the ends for which they were designed, but they will thwart
and counteract all that educational legislators and philanthropists
are striving to effect. Their most important function is the en-
couragement and promotion of popular secondary instruction, and
the dissemination of what is conducive to the moral and intellectual
improvement of the masses. Their proper policy is alliance and
coalition with those agencies which are engaged in that work — with
the University Extension Departments of the Universities, with the
National Home Heading Union, with the Administrators of the GK1-
christ Educational Trust. There is no reason at all why these libraries
should not co-operate systematically and on principle, as some of
them are now doing occasionally, in the work and aims of these
agencies. What is more natural than that, where the means of
education are provided, those who would turn them to account should
have the opportunity of doing so ? What so preposterous as to ac-
cumulate books, and with every facility for putting them to profitable
use, to suffer them to remain idle or abused ? It is a proof of the
lethargy and indifference prevalent in many, and I fear in most, of
these institutions that so far from encouraging the efforts of the

3 s 2

980 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

Home Beading Union the librarians will not even give publicity to
its appeal for members, though repeatedly and emphatically urged to
do so, among others by the late Lord Chief Justice and the present
Master of Downing College. It is a matter of common experience
to find that in districts where University Extension centres are
established the only people who take no interest in them are the
librarians and councils of the public libraries, not because of any
hostility, but simply because they have no conception of the lectures
having any relation to the functions of the libraries.

The recently established University of London which, epoch-
marking alike in its constitution, its policy, and its aims, will in-
fallibly, before many years have passed, revolutionise civic education,
might, with advantage, extend the surveillance which it exercises
over other educational bodies in the metropolis to these institutions.
It already undertakes the organisation and control of the University
Extension lectures, and such surveillance would therefore be
work very germane to that in which it is now engaged. It might,
for example, assist in the selection of books, a most important
function, by providing experts in the different subjects of study,
whose business it should be to ascertain and specify what works
should be chosen and what rejected. It might undertake the
occasional inspection of the libraries, have some voice in the election
of librarians, and in the economy generally of the libraries. It
might suggest and supply short courses of lectures on appropriate
subjects. In the case of new libraries being founded, or additional
grants conferred on those already established, it might with propriety
be consulted. But these are details, and details adjust themselves.
The point of importance is that the libraries should be in touch
with the University and the University with the libraries. If what
is here suggested were initiated in London there can be little doubt
that it would be followed elsewhere.

I am not pleading for any interference with the recreative side
of these institutions. It would indeed be hard and in the highest
degree absurd to attempt to place restrictions on the readers who
find in these libraries welcome and legitimate relaxation from the
toils and cares of daily life. Men and women engaged from morning
to evening in arduous work, jaded it may be, and half worn out,
cannot be expected to seek anything but amusement. And who
would grudge it them, whatever frivolous form it might take ? In
the case of forty, perhaps, out of every hundred for whom the
librarians have to cater, the mere pastime craved has been fairly
and hardly earned. But the case here stated rests on the remaining
sixty. Of these, twenty probably are sauntering losels, who prefer
bad novels to honest work, and to whom these libraries are an un-
mingled evil. The other forty consist of those in whose cause
and in whose interests this article has been written.

1-903 FREE LIBRARIES 981

In conclusion, let me repeat that this question of the public
libraries — their present condition, their future prospects — is one
which deserves what assuredly at present it has not received —
very serious consideration. It is important politically, it is
important socially. On a truly colossal scale they are powers
for good or powers for evil, and as they are now constituted there
can be little doubt on which side the balance inclines. There are
some questions, the decision of which may with safety be left to the
general body of the people, certain subjects in which it is both an
intelligent and competent guide ; but education is not one of them.

J. CHURTON COLLINS.

982 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIPES

SISTER

I SHOULD not venture to write even a few words on this subject,
which has been talked about and written about amongst us so long,
and by so many persons ' of light and leading,' but that (so far as
I know) it has not been discussed in print by any woman. I do not
know what is the view taken of it by those women who regard
themselves (and I would speak with all respect of them) as the
pioneers of female progress. I hope they do not include the
legalising of these marriages in England in their list of desirable
changes. But I should think it probable that many, if not most, of
them do. And so I write rather as the spokeswoman, if I may be
such, of women who do not speak on platforms or attend public
meetings, but occupy the normal position of our sex in this country
— the position which it will always occupy, despite any possible
changes in the machinery of national life.

And first I would offer a few words, with all humility, on the
religious aspect of this question. It is not for me to speak as a
theologian or a Biblical scholar. But it does not appear to me that
the question is one either of theology or Biblical scholarship. They
who accept the authority of the canonical Gospels cannot (I submit)
ignore the importance, in regard to this controversy, of our Lord's
express setting aside of the ' precept ' attributed to Moses, in a yet
graver question than this concerning the relations of the sexes. I
understand that the import of the texts St. Matt. xix. 3-8, St.
Mark x. 2-9 is not in dispute, whatever be the case with the verses
immediately following in those Gospels. If in the question of
permitting divorce Christ expressly overruled Moses, a fortiori it
would seem impossible for Christians to base Christian obligations in
the matter of marriage upon the ' Mosaic ' law. Our supreme
authority sets aside Mosaic ordinance in the graver case, and refers
His disciples to an older and Divine law. It would follow that
references to the Book of Leviticus are not in place as laying down
the law for His disciples in the lesser case. Such references may
indeed be made, as showing the light in which marriages of affinity

1903 MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER 983

were regarded in the Jewish Church and nation. But it cannot be
argued that since Leviticus says this or that Christ says so too.

But what does concern Christian people most deeply is to collect,
from all sources they can reach, the mind of Christ. Now, no one
disputes the substantial accuracy or the practical authority of our
Revised Version of the New Testament ; no one disputes the general
trend of primitive Christian tradition in the matter of marriage. It
is not a question of textual scholarship, nor of minute acquaintance
with the scanty records of early Christian society. As Christians we
endeavour to collect, from the New Testament as we have it and from
unquestioned primitive tradition, the counsel and the ordinance of
our Lord concerning marriage.

And we find Him sounding no uncertain note for us. In that
vital question of divorce, whatever be the precise import of one
Greek word used by one of His reporters, the whole purport of His
counsel is in restraint of natural, human self-will and self-pleasing.
He refers us to a primeval Divine law which, according to Him,
establishes the indissolubility of marriage, however much its dis-
solution might be desired by either or both spouses ; and He indicates
unmistakably that the law is the same for man and wife. And I
believe all Christians are agreed that the general ' note ' of Christ's
teaching is one of restraint of natural impulses — especially in regard
to the strongest of human passions. The question remains, of
course, where restraint is to come in.

Our Lord refers to the primeval Divine ordinance as governing
His view of the whole subject. But to this it will be replied
nowadays, that for many persons amongst us Christ's reference
to Genesis has no authority whatever — Genesis has no authority ;
Christ Himself has no authority ; Genesis embodies rude and early
Hebrew tradition, of no more weight than the rude and early
traditions of other peoples. Christ spoke merely as a man and a
Jew accepting the earliest, and not the subsequent, traditions of
His nation. From all this I appeal unto Caesar — the Csesar of
modern science. My contention is that it matters not to the present
argument whether the nature and authority of this (supposed
primeval) marriage law derive (as according to Genesis they derive)
from a revelation made by a personal Divinity for the good of man-
kind, or from the evolution of ages of human society, which have
threshed out what mankind have found beneficial for themselves.
To some persons, indeed, these alternative hypotheses seem merely
the statement of two aspects of the same fact. On either the
sanction of the law is in its proving good for men ; it is binding for
that reason, both on Christian and scientific grounds. And therefore
I claim that, whether people accept Christ's authority or not, the law,
whether revealed or evolutionary, is ' holy, just, and good,' and ought
to be obeyed.

984 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

' But you are speaking ' (it will be answered) ' of the general law
of the indissolubility of wedlock — not of the prohibition of certain
marriages. Now, whatever be held as to the sanction, in the ex-
perience of the race, of the indissolubility of wedlock (and there may
be two opinions as to that), it is a far cry to the forbidding marriages
of affinity/ No doubt ; but I shall humbly endeavour to show why
(as it seems to me) these two laws — or rather these two clauses of
the marriage law — are of kindred significance and obligation.

It does not come within my present purpose to discuss the first
of them, otherwise than to insist upon the significance of its
restraining force. According to it men are not permitted the liberty
in relinquishing their partners of the other sex which animals
exercise. Whether the general principle admits of exceptions or
not is not here discussed ; but the principle stands out clearly — that
individual wishes are not to be supreme in the matter. Now, in
what stands the reasonableness of this ? What is its claim upon the
human conscience ? Apart from the word of Christ, which suffices
for Christians, it stands in nothing but this — that experience has
proved that individual passion, if not restrained, works havoc for
humankind, and most signally in the relations of the sexes. These
things are not so with animals ; but it would seem that since man
was man things have been so with us ; and so they are plainly
before our eyes at this day.

I suppose it is unquestionable that all anthropological and
ethnological science impresses us with the fact that human progress
is a record of slow steps upward from the brute level. One position
after another was won by the wonderful differentiating force (so to
speak), the ' variation ' whose origin is still lost in mystery ; and in
no particular have its victories been more momentous than in the
development of the human relations of the sexes. It was only by
virtue of these that family life in the course of ages became possible ;
and the best family life has only emerged by degrees. We should
revolt now from the manner of existence compatible with polyandry,
or (most Europeans would add) polygamy either; and however
people may fail to realise it in their own lives, it is not and cannot
be denied that true family life, as developed in Christian and
civilised nations, is the best product of human evolution yet reached.
Science recognises, no less than the Church teaches, that in the
family is the germ of all human well-being, the foundation of a truly
human polity.

Now, the point I would insist upon here is (as has been said) that
all this achievement has taken place in virtue of restraint put upon
the passion between the sexes. We are told that the etymological
significance of the word ' Paradise ' is ' a wide-open park, enclosed
against injury, yet with its natural beauty unspoiled;' and thereafter
' a safe-fenced garden, wherein the wicked shall not enter.' Even so

1903 MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER 985

our earthly Paradise of a righteous family life, the nursery of all
good things for mankind, must be fenced. Its very existence depends
upon its being a space marked off, where the flame of passion shall
be under rule and order.

To me (says Dean Church) the relation of the sexes, the passion of love, is as
much the crux of our condition as pain. . . . How strange, how extravagant,
how irrationally powerful all over the world, how at the root of all the best
things of life, how at the root of its very worst ! Strange, ambiguous, perplexing
lot for creatures made in the image of God.1

The flame is beneficent, but maleficent too ; it is a glory and a
shame, creative and destructive ; it cannot be allowed free play over
the whole field of human life. Accordingly, the best human societies
have long ago marked off certain regions where it shall not enter.
The relations of parents and children, of brothers and sisters, have
long been sacred from it. The present question before us is whether
our fenced Paradise, our enclosure called 'the family,' shall still
extend, as at present it does, beyond the field of blood-relationship to
that of relationship ' by affinity,' as it is called — i.e. the kinship of a
married person to the kindred of his or her spouse.

It would be idle to pretend that the prohibition of marriages of
affinity has the sanctity of the prohibition of marriage between the
nearest blood-relations, or that its breach can or ought to excite the
horror which would attend incest. But what I (and, I hope, many
whose opinion is of greater weight than mine) contend is, that to
annul the prohibition of marriages of affinity is a distinctly retro-
grade step for us English people to make from the position which
we have reached among mankind. It is surrendering a bit of the
field of life to the domination of passion which, in the interest of the
family, the greatest of human institutions, had been fenced off from
that domination. I say ' in the interest of the family,' for in the best
family life the husband and wife are one — ' they twain one flesh ' in
ancient Scriptural language — and an important element in this identity
of life and feeling is that each spouse adopts the relationships of
the other unchanged. To this level we have attained ; but how shall
it be kept if the disturbing factor of passion be admitted where by
adoption it had been excluded under the severest ban ? To take
the instance presented to us : the husband under our existing law
takes his wife's sister to be his sister — i.e. it is impossible that
marriage should ever take place between them ; and the fraternal
relation, which he has adopted, is amongst us secured from passion
by the most stringent and time-honoured of sanctions. But suppose
the sanction annulled in fraternity through affinity. The wife has
grown sickly ; she has asked a young, pretty sister to help her in her

1 Letter to Mr. Mules : Letters of R. W. Church, Dean of St. Paul's, edited by
his daughter.

986 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

family cares, and she becomes aware that the ' fraternal relation ' is
waning, and that a feeling abhorrent to it is growing up between
the two persons she has loved and trusted most. Can anyone say
that there is no degradation of family life, no stepping down, in all
this ? Yet it, or cases very like it, might become common ; and,
because of the peril of this, one of the purest and most delightful
of relationships which have developed in civilised life must cease if
this proposed change in the law be made. I am sure hundreds of
sisters-in-law would bear me out in saying that the relation between
brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law is one of the flowers in this vale of
tears; it is the fraternal relation with a difference; it has a
fragrance of its very own, for there is what we call 'romance'
in it, quite apart from love-making. I well remember my old
friend, the late Mr. Gr. S. Venables, enlarging, with an enthusiasm
which was rare in his reserved speech, on its peculiar blessing
and charm. All this must disappear, of course, if we relax the law
which holds the husband's relations the wife's, and the wife's the
husband's.

' Oh, yes,' it is answered, ' all this pretty talk of a new fraternal
relationship added to the old, as a fresh bloom upon the old stem of
life — this is all very well for rich people who can afford to dally
with life. But this that we advocate is a poor man's question ;
poor widowers cannot afford charming sisters-in-law with decency.
It is better to allow the sister-in-law to become the wife in
the family, for live in it, very often, she must after the first wife's
death.' Now, if it were the case that the change in the law advocated
is absolutely necessary, under unavoidable conditions, to secure
working people in this country from concubinage, it would be a very
grave question whether even such considerations as I have adduced
above should weigh against the change. But, in the first place, no
such ca^e for change ought to exist at all. None of our arrangements
ought to be such as to thrust us upon the alternative of a general
lowering of family life (as it is contended here would be the case)
by the permission of certain marriages, or the promotion of con-
cubinage in certain classes of the community. And, next, I do not
believe that any such case for change does exist ; on the contrary,
there is strong reason to believe that the plea advanced is chimerical.
As is well known, the evidence of the clergy, from their parochial
experience, goes to show that the instances in which a working man
takes his sister-in-law as his concubine, since he cannot make her
his wife, are very rare. (I myself have spent many years in the life
parochial, and my experience is fully in keeping with this.) On the
other hand, if we are to relax the law on the ground that illegal
connections, with or without a form of marriage, are occasionally
contracted, in defiance of the law, amongst working people now, we
should have to legalise connections which would revolt all English

1903 MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER 987

decency. This is well known to those who go in and out amongst
working-class families. Adultery is rare — probably has a lower
percentage than in the classes socially above them ; but offences
against family decency are, as might be expected in view of the lack
of proper house accommodation, much more frequent than in the
upper classes. All this is surely an argument for amending that
lack of proper accommodation in working-class dwellings which is a
disgrace to this country, and not for legalising the indecencies which
result from it.

But I do not — I hope other opponents of this proposed change
do not — rest our case upon the evils we forecast from it in the single
instance in which it is at present advocated. I am utterly unable to
understand how persons forming part of the Legislature of this great
country can propose to deal with one of the fundamental laws of
human society in this piecemeal fashion. I have spoken throughout
of ' marriages of affinity ; ' I only take one such marriage as
an instance. I am unable to see upon what principle, if a man's
marriage with his sister-in-law be permitted, his marriage with his
stepmother (his father's widow) can be forbidden; or a woman's
marriage with her son-in-law; or any other of the marriages of
affinity now forbidden by law. English feeling would, I believe,
revolt at present from the particular developments last named —
probably from others too — but upon what rational ground ? Upon
that of the peace, decency, and decorum — in a word, the honour — of
family life as established amongst us, which is the very ground
upon which we oppose any change in the law at all.

We feel, as we ought, great concern for those who, under the
sway of one of the strongest influences that warp men's judgment,
have persuaded themselves that these particular marriages ought to
be legal, and have evaded or set at defiance the law of their own
country on the ground that it must and shall be altered. But this
concern can be no ground in itself for altering the law. The law
must first be shown to be bad in itself.

Much has been made of the concern which our great colonial
communities have in this question in the Mother Country. Now we
have the deepest respect for those great communities. In many
respects they can and do give us lessons. But in a question like
the present, I submit, it is neither wise nor fitting that the Mother
Country should be dragged in the wake of the Colonies (I use the
words in no opprobrious sense). The ideal of life in the Colonies is
necessarily a very imperfect one as compared with that of the Mother
Country. We have a long and varied past, and our community at
this day embraces many elements, social and educational, elements
of refinement and culture as well as of practical experience, which
the oldest of colonial communities do not and cannot possess. If we
look to the history of the English race in the past, and on its various
constituents at present, it seems simply grotesque that England

988 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

should alter her marriage law because her Colonies have altered
theirs. The eminent and learned German Catholic theologian, Dr.
Dollinger, was wont to say, ' I look upon the Church of England as
the great bulwark of true religion throughout the world.' Even such
is the State and nation of England among the nations of the world
for the wise and far-sighted ordering of life and polity. Let not
England abdicate her place. But the Colonies are great and self-
governing communities ; the Mother Country has long ceased to
dictate to them in internal affairs, and she must respect their
arrangements therein. This, in the case now debated, might surely
be done by a provision that all marriages contracted by bona-fide
members of colonial communities in their own colony should be
recognised in the Mother Country, and the issue of such marriages
be deemed legitimate here.

I cannot forbear entering protest against certain pleas recently
put forward in this controversy. The palpable evils of a dual
marriage law for Church and State (evils, I believe, now increasingly
manifest in Italy, for instance) are cited by advocates of change in
our law as arguments on their side, i.e. by the very persons who
would introduce duality ! Such was the line taken lately by Lord
Chetwynd in a series of letters, printed conspicuously by the principal
organ of * society ' in the newspaper Press. Apparently, this strange
reasoning is designed to force the conclusion that they who uphold
the present and only existing law must surrender to a new one. But
this is to beg the whole question. Never was ' the thin end of the
wedge ' more legitimately opposed than in this matter.

If such a subject as the marriage law is to be dealt with by us at
all, let it be in a thoroughly business-like, deliberate, and consistent
way. Let evidence be taken, by persons duly qualified, from persons
competent to give it as to the evils and disadvantages alleged to
follow from the existing law. And let the whole matter be put
before the whole country at a General Election. I am fully aware
that all this will appear to the advocates of the particular measure
before us as unnecessary, pompous, dilatory, and cumbersome. It is
such a simple, small change, say they, which we ask for. It really
would make hardly any outward difference in our social life, and it
would improve morality. I have tried to controvert both these pleas,
and also to show that, though the particular change now advocated
be a matter of detail, a principle, and that a momentous one, is really
involved. Most persons, when they vehemently desire some change
in order to get their own way, are apt, whether they are interested
as principals or advocates, to think it a simple and obvious thing
that they ought to get it. It is for others to look at the matter in
a broader light, no matter whether they are called obstructionists
or any other hard names, or laughed at as pompous, irrational con-
servators of old-world ideas.

THEO. CHAPMAN.

1903

AN UNPOPULAR INDUSTRY

THE RESULTS OF AN INQUIRY INSTITUTED BY THE WOMEN'S
INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL INTO THE CAUSES OF THE UNPOPU-
LARITY OF DOMESTIC SERVICE

SOME years ago Miss Clementina Black, writing in this Keview upon
' The Dislike to Domestic Service,' declared it to be ' generally
admitted' that young women of the working class had become
' imbued with a distaste for domestic service.'

In the intervening years persistent reiteration has established
this general admission upon the footing of an accepted fact ; and
whether we agree with those who count such a distaste as a ' sort
of depravity/ or incline with Miss Black to look upon it as a
' natural, reasonable, and well founded ' revolt against a system of
' total personal subservience,' we are all more or less concerned
about a fact that threatens to revolutionise the whole machinery
of domestic life.

It seemed to the Women's Industrial Council that, although
so much had already been said and written upon the great
'problem,' a systematic inquiry might throw a valuable and
interesting light upon the causes which render the largest industry
for women so unpopular. Accordingly a schedule of questions
was prepared and distributed among persons likely to hold
opinions of their own on the subject, or, more important still,
likely to reflect the opinions of girls who might, but do not, enter
domestic service.

If the sole or main object of the inquiry had been to elicit
definite answers upon plain matters of fact, the schedule of questions
could not, it must be confessed, be regarded as a model. It is,
indeed, frankly open to the severe criticism with which it met
in some quarters ; the most cutting, perhaps, being those of the
mistress who calls the questions a ' fandango of nonsense,' and the
servant who writes against several of them, ' I do not understand.'

The nine questions asked cover a wide area, and are largely
speculative in character; they are further complicated by anno-
tations and sub-questions, characterised in one reply as 'little
homilies ' and condemned in another as ' hopelessly involved.'

The committee having charge of the inquiry were, however,

989

990 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

fully conscious of these defects and anomalies ; but the object
being to arrive at a consensus of opinion upon a difficulty acknow-
ledged to be largely sentimental, it seemed desirable that the
questions should not be framed upon too statistical lines, but tend
to encourage thought and suggest remedies. All things considered,
the results may be deemed by no means unsatisfactory. Of the
500 forms sent out, 127, or roughly 25 per cent., were returned —
a response far in excess of that usually accorded to inquiry forms,
even of the most cut and dried type.

The 127 replies came from the following sources :

Mistresses 44

Heads of training institutes, teachers of

domestic economy 25

Branches and members of the Women's Co-
operative Guild 18

(Kris' Club leaders 10

Housekeepers and servants . . . .10

Eegistry offices 6

Students (male) 6

Masters 2

Professional women 2

Anonymous persons ..... 4

127

The value of this list lies in the diversity of experiences and
point of view from which the replies were written.

Thus among the mistresses are to be found the chatelaine of a
mansion ruling a retinue of well ordered maids, the mistress who
can afford only the doubtful * help ' of a succession of small daily
drudges, and the mistress who is her own servant. It includes also
the mistress who finds no difficulty whatever in getting and keeping
her maids, and the mistress to whom the servant problem is an ever
active trouble. Many of the mistresses were at considerable pains
to ascertain and record the minds of their maids upon the questions.

The opinion of heads of training institutions and teachers of
domestic economy is valuable as presenting the point of view of
workers upon the raw material, if one may so call it ; these workers
look, naturally, more to the perfection of mechanism in domestic
work than to the social relationship which begins to enter into the
question after the servant has once embarked upon her work under
the roof of a mistress. Many of these replies express not merely the
opinion of the individual signing the schedule, but the official
verdict of the committee or organisation represented by the signer.
One comes from the male head of a large Technical Institute.

Of the eighteen replies from branches and members of the
Women's Co-operative Guild, it may be said that the opinions of the

1903 AN UNPOPULAR INDUSTRY 991

working-class mothers of the best and most thoughtful sort is here
represented. These replies present the collective dictum of some
hundreds of women, many of whom have had personal experience of
domestic service ; most of whom have daughters who must become
wage-earners in some capacity or other, and all of whom are adepts
in the discussion of industrial and social questions. They come
from factory towns, rural villages, urban centres, and suburban
districts, and the guilds have mostly devoted one or more meetings
to the discussion of the schedule.

Leaders of Girls' Clubs, especially those who made a point of
collecting the actual opinions of the club members themselves,
arrive at the answers from still another standpoint. For the most
part the clubs are composed of girls who have deliberately, or by
chance, chosen some occupation other than domestic service, and
their reasons for this choice go quite to the root of the matter.

The ten schedules filled up by servants offer particularly in-
teresting results, including some quaintly and strongly expressed
reflections upon the ' slavery ' of domestic service. Here, for
instance, is a reflection upon the question of efficiency v. incompe-
tence : ' Many will not know (how to work properly) as they say
it doesn't do you get more added to your work once you do things
nicely you are kept to it. No doubt some do (know their work) and
others say the simples (sic) get the best of it.'

And again, ' On and off duty would do a good deal of good ; on,
on, hour after hour makes life a misery.'

Another speaks with an experience of eleven ' places/ and,
avoiding a categorical reply to the questions, raises one or two
points not covered by them. Touching, for instance, the 'Penny
Novel,' she says : ' Servants' money will not allow her to buy books
very often, though they are cheap ; but if the lady bought a few
cheap books that are worth reading on purpose for the servants
would it not put a stop to a great deal of the penny novel reading
that is doing so much harm ? '

Sunday hospitality, cheap and insufficient food, discourteous
speech to servants are all touched upon in these replies, and all
may in some degree have contributed to build up a vague dislike.

The Eegistry Offices for the most part feel the pressure of the
ill-balanced supply and demand too keenly to judge patiently. ' I
certainly know by my own experience as each year slips on they
(servants) are getting scarcer and the demand more,' is a lamentation
echoed in each of the six replies.

The remaining replies have each a separate value, and will be
referred to when the questions come under consideration. The
six male students give perhaps the least illuminating answers ; they
certainly lend colour to the cherished feminine conviction that some
questions are beyond the grasp of male intelligence.

992

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

June

The questions were nine in all, but as these may be grouped
into three main divisions it is not necessary to repeat each one in
extenso.

Nos. 1, 2, and 6 dealt with the conditions of work, and asked
whether the unpopularity of domestic service was due to the work
in detail (Question 1); its monotony (Question 2); or the unor-
ganised conditions regarding hours, leisure, and system of work
(Question 6).

Questions 3, 4, 7, and 8 dealt with the desirability, the
difficulty, and the monetary value of training and the weakness
of insufficient knowledge on the part of mistresses.

Question 5 asked, ' Is it the social status ? ' Question 9 com-
pared the method of remuneration usual in domestic service —
monthly payments, board and lodging — with the weekly wage of
other employments, and asked whether this prejudiced parents
against service as an industry for their girls.

TABLE I

Question

Yes

No

Yes
Qualified

No
Qualified

No reply

Total

1..

11

89

8

3

16

127

II.

41

30

85

5

16

127

in.

54

19

18

3

33

127

IV.

37

21

30

20

19

127

V.

62

13

27

3

22

127

VI.

42

9

48

11

17

127

VII.

6

75

8

9

29

127

VIII.

86

6

18

4

13

127

IX.

17

62

13

7

28

127

Total

356

324

205

65

193

1,143

GENERAL SUMMARY OF EEPLIES TO ALL QUESTIONS

Table I. represents the general impression conveyed by the
answers to each question. The columns devoted to 'qualified'
answers include many reflections upon side issues for which the
' little homilies ' before mentioned are to some extent responsible.
For example, to the question : ' Is it the social status ? ' is appended
the sub-question : ' Have not the nurses also taught us that it is
the women who give the social status to the work, not the work
which stamps the woman ?' One lady writes: 'I believe that the
nurses have both gained and also keep their status on account of
the training necessary ' ; and a Secretary to a M.A.B.Y.S. branch
thinks the unpopularity is ' partly ' due to the status and adds, ' The
shop girl looks down on the "slavey," and I am told brother Tom
will walk out with sister Jane, the shop girl, and not with sister
Mary, the maid. At least we might allow servants the title " Miss." '

1903

AN UNPOPULAR INDUSTRY

993

A servant reflects thus : ' A thorough, nurse teaches a great deal, but
a bad one is as loathsome as a leper.'

193 answers are scheduled as giving 'No reply'; this does not
mean, however, that in 193 cases the question is not answered at all.
The column includes papers not categorically rilled up, many of
which are nevertheless valuable in themselves.

THE QUESTIONS— GBOTJP I— CONDITIONS

Question

Yes

No

Yes
Qualified

No
Qualified

No reply

Total

I. Details

11

89

8

3

16

127

II. Monotonous

routine .

41

30

35

5

16

127

VI. Hours and gene-
ral conditions

42

9

48

11

17

]27

Total .

94

128

91

19

49

381

The first questions of Group I. endeavoured to find out whether the
actual details of domestic services were distasteful to girls. The table
given above shows that 89 out of the 127 agree in considering that
girls as a rule like house work. Some few consider that laundry and
cooking are not popular branches. The Honorary Secretary to a large
society having to do with the welfare of girls considers that it is not
the work in ' detail ' but ' in general.' ' Girls now regard it as menial
and therefore infra dig. as compared with business employments.'
A mistress remarks that the question is one of temperament, but
that 'probably the slipshod management of the majority of working
class homes indisposes the children brought up in them from taking
interest in household work.' All agree that girls find much
enjoyment in attending a domestic economy class.

The replies to the question whether the monotonous routine is
in fault show a far more divided opinion and a larger percentage of
qualifying remarks. Very generally these take the form of pointing
out that the monotony of surroundings rather than of routine is
disliked. Factory work is monotonous, but it is done amid the
bustle and companionship of a workroom, whereas the general
servant leads a life of great loneliness unless the mistress takes her
into the centre of family life and confidence. Eestraint rather than
monotony is generally considered the chief drawback. This
question and Question 6 must be taken together, since a mono-
tonous occupation carried on in comparatively short spells is
bearable, but extended over an indefinite number of hours, and
with uncertain and inadequate periods of relief, becomes unbearable.

As will be seen from the table, there is strong agreement that
the long hours and lack of liberty are prime causes of the un-
popularity. Many answers, indeed, put lack of personal liberty as

VOL. LIII— No. 316 3 T

994 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

the chief cause. The head of a registry office writes : ' Mistresses are
sometimes of opinion that every waking hour of the servant belongs to
them, with the exception of a few hours stipulated for at the time of
engagement ; consequently the servants have no time for themselves
— even for needlework — except it be stolen!

f Want of liberty,' says the Honorary Secretary to a M.A.B.Y.S.
branch. * Not merely liberty to go out, but liberty to be natural, to
dress as she pleases, to receive visitors, &c. The fear of being unkindly
treated, and of not getting enough to eat. The natural dislike of a
girl to leave home ; vague prejudices of this kind deter a girl from
going into service. That she finds she has to work seven days a
week, and her work is " never done," induces her to leave service, if
she has entered it, unless she is fortunate enough in her first place
to be treated with consideration.'

The servant cannot help contrasting her employed day with that
of her sister working in a factory or workroom, where work ceases at
definite hours, and whose evenings, Saturday afternoons, and
Sundays are free. ' A factory girl has plenty of companionship,
and is protected and emboldened by the presence and the public
opinion of large numbers of her own class, which is sometimes
organised by trade unionism. The domestic servant is hampered,
too, in her chances of marrying by her mistress's objection to
" followers." That objection also implies a general moral censorship
from which the industrial worker is free.'

That forty-eight replies come under the head of * qualified ' assent
is due to the fact that Question 6 was particularly overshadowed by
the sub-questions before alluded to. Under the main question, ' Is it
the conditions of work ? ' suggestions as to improvement were invited,
which, while tending to obscure the main question, opened the way
to many characteristic dissertations upon the general condition of
service. The sum total of these may be aptly epitomised in this
sentence from the reply of a woman's co-operative guild member :
' The facilities now given for the development of mental capabilities,
the tendency to protest against restriction, the desire for change
and opportunities for wider social intercourse, not being consistent
with the general conditions of domestic service, are the cause of its
unpopularity.'

The second group of questions touches a matter of growing im-
portance in all branches of female labour. In effect, the questions
merely summarise the problem which faces the parents of every girl
who must earn her own living : Is it worth while to spend time and
money upon making a girl an efficient industrial worker ? In the
particular industry under discussion the solution of the question is
further complicated by the curiously widespread belief that a
knowledge of household work comes to all women by the light of
nature, and that they therefore need no training in the technical

1903

AN UNPOPULAR INDUSTRY

995

GROUP II — TRAINING

Question

Yes

No

Yes
Qualified

No
Qualified

No reply

Total

III. Does the fact that un-

skilled workers get work

easily make training

unnecessary ?

54

19

18

3

33

127

IV. Is it the difficulty of

training ?

37

21

30

20

19

127

VII. Is the difficulty of putting

training to use as a

means of wage earning

after marriage a draw-

back? ....

6

75

8

9

29

127

VIII. Do mistresses from lack

of knowledge expect too

much ? .

86

6

18

4

13

127

183

121

74

36

94

508

sense of the word. This belief is referred to, though not endorsed,
in the majority of replies to Question 3. It is generally conceded
that a well-trained servant is appreciated, though not to such an
extent as greatly to improve her wages. In fact, so badly balanced
is the supply and demand that, as a large majority of the replies
denote, the unskilled can get work quite as easily as the skilled.
The demand nowadays, exclaims one despairing lady, is ' not for a
competent girl, but for any sort of a girl.'

Question 4, regarding the difficulty of procuring training — if
desired — resulted in some interesting replies. The initial difficulty
seems to be that parents do not think it worth while to spend
time and money upon training for their girls. In the class
from which domestic servants are generally recruited the real or
apparent necessity for immediate wage earning is a strong factor in
the disregard for preparation. The consensus of opinion expressed
by heads of Polytechnics and other institutions offering training in
housewifery, shows that such training as now exists in these
institutions does not attract pupils of the servant class, and does not
encourage pupils to enter service. ' Bright girls look down upon
service . . . and prefer to take up other kinds of work. Parents
who have a stupid girl, who is not bright enough for anything else,
think she will do nicely for domestic service.'

It is fair to say that one lady head of a Polytechnic dissents from
this general view, and thinks that a domestic economy course does
incline girls to service. Institutional training is generally condemned
as too mechanical to produce real efficiency.

It will be noted that an overwhelming majority of the replies
to Question 8 are in the affirmative. That mistresses ignorant
of domestic management and organisation abound, is abundantly
testified. An interesting social reflection is made by a lady who has

3 T 2

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

June

much personal knowledge of young servants. ' A new class of
employer of servants seems to have arisen during the last fifty years,
a class who cannot afford to keep enough servants to do the work
and yet who expect to keep up the standard of comfort prevailing in
their homes before marriage.' Another view is presented in two
replies, and takes the matter into the region of the unfathomable
sex question. ' A woman is not always happy in her methods of
controlling other women, and this accounts for many small tyrannies,
petty rebellions, and frictions. The "master" may speak sharply,
give unreasonable orders, unnecessary trouble ; on the whole, as
from him, it is not resented. Let, however, the mistress do the
same (or much less), and at once there will be trouble.' Thus writes
a lady whose study of the question is by no means superficial.
' Women lose many of their finer attributes in dealing with paid
servants ; how to get the most possible out of them is the thought
of most,' says a working woman who has herself been a servant.

A cook in a private family goes to the root of the whole un-
ending struggle between employer and employed, in a sentence
the unconscious cynicism of which is curiously confirmed by a
schoolmistress in a country district. Says the cook : ' Most ladies
don't want girls that know their work and that is why the unskilled
get the work, for they get them to do anything, where girls that
know their work won't do it.' Says the schoolmistress : ' Mistresses
are glad to get young girls whom they can train to their own liking,
as the experienced ones are independent and want too many
privileges.'

Here is a pretty text for a treatise upon the rights of labour
and the wickedness of ' Ca Canny ! '

GEOTJP III — STATUS AND WAGES

Question

Yes

No

Yea

Qualified

No
Qualified

No reply

Total

V. Is it the social

status ?

62

13

27

3

22

127

IX. Do parents pre-

fer a weekly

wage ? .

17

62

13

7

28

127

Total

79

75

40

10

50

254

These two questions were perhaps the most direct in the whole
schedule, and consequently the replies to them are the least dis-
cursive of the series. In reply to Question 5, ' Is it the social
status ? ' the response in the larger number of cases yields a plain Yes,
emphasised by such remarks as, ' The first and greatest cause,' c The
crux of the whole question,' and ' most decidedly,' or qualified by such
observations as ' This affects generals only, not better class servants,'

1903 AN UNPOPULAR INDUSTRY 997

' Something to do with it, but not much.' One lady of wide experience
says, ' Servants feel bitterly that as domestics they come lower down
in the social scale than " young ladies " in business. My servants
have confessed to me that when away for summer holidays they
hide the fact of their being servants.'

The six men students are all emphatic on this one point, and
by a unanimous vote agree that ' This more than all else put
together is the cause of unpopularity, coupled as it is with a
serving badge — "the cap.'" Hardly any of the sixteen persons
who reply in the negative to this question give any reason for
their belief.

Question 9 presents a difficulty which the majority of replies
affirm does not exist, except in rare cases. It is pointed out that
weekly wages are becoming much more general in domestic service,
and that the working classes are well accustomed to distinguish
between real and nominal wages. As Miss Collett shows in her
' Keport on the Money Wages of Servants,' ' while the relations
between mistresses and servants are very little affected by the rate
of money wage agreed upon, the active competition of employers
and the free movements of domestic servants secure fpr the latter
the full market rate for their services,' and this fact is well known
to working class parents. On the other hand, several club leaders,
having to do with factory girls, give it as their opinion that parents
do consider a weekly wage, brought in to the family purse, of greater
advantage than the monthly payment, over which the girl herself
has a spending power.

The fact that in the working classes calculation of earnings is
based upon a weekly wage was amusingly illustrated by a little
incident that happened to the present writer, who was once accosted
in the street by a small maiden, whose diminutive figure was clad
in ' cut down ' garments of dingy hue, her hair screwed into a
tortured wisp of tidyness, and her rosy soap-shining face one pucker
of anxious calculation. With most flattering confidence the hurry-
ing little feet stopped short in front of me, and a childish voice
asked, 'Please will you tell me how much ten pounds a year is a
week ? ' She had evidently been to seek her first ' place,' and, like
many another adventurer into the fields of industry, found awaiting
her an economic problem difficult to solve. I am always a little
proud to remember that I could give her the answer straight away,
and that I did refrain from asking her any questions in return.

SUGGESTED REMEDIES

The Women's Industrial Council, in making their inquiry, hoped
also to receive some suggestions that would lead to better organisa-
tion, if not to practical reform. For the most part, however, the

998 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

replies leave a depressing conviction that a really practical remedy is
yet to seek. One lady well known for her wide interest in industrial
questions writes : ' The subject troubles me a good deal, both
practically and theoretically. ... I like the theory of limited
hours, but I am sure it is quite impracticable for " in-workers."
Under existing conditions it would never be tried except by a few
enthusiasts. ... It seems to me a profoundly unsatisfactory social
arrangement, yet I shall never have the courage to try any other,
or even much modification.'

Another of even greater authority upon economic questions
concerning women propounds in three epigrammatic sentences what
appears like a vicious circle of negations : ' Domestic service will
never be willingly accepted by the majority of young women until
it becomes a non-resident calling.'

' It will never attain a condition satisfactory to the employer
until it becomes a highly trained calling.'

' It will never become a highly trained calling until it assumes
conditions that attract, instead of repelling, workers of the best
class.'

Between this pessimistic timidity on the one hand and this
emphatic pronouncement on the other, there is an agreement in
which practically all the replies join — namely, that a remedy must
be sought chiefly in the direction of a non-resident system of house-
hold service.

Increased facilities for training in housewifely knowledge, both
in elementary and secondary schools, is urged by many, while the
present system of education is condemned by some — as not only
inadequate to meet the necessities, but the cause of the trouble.
1 But even the person of most violently conservative tendencies, who
thinks to find in the modern educational system an explanation of
the scarcity, the inefficiency of the domestic maid-servant, and
her increasingly exigent attitude, will hardly be bold enough
nor futile enough to advocate retrograde educational conditions.
For good or ill, for content or discontent, we stand committed to
advance.'

^Residential training schools — not training homes, as at present
existing — to which entrance shall be by scholarships or apprentice-
ships, graduating from the elementary school, and carrying certifi-
cates of merit, seem to some a prime necessity in restoring dignity
to the industry.

One of the several ladies who send thoughtful essays instead of
categorical answers to the questions instructively points out some
of the differences between modern household ways and those of the
days before service became unpopular. The rapid comings and
goings of visitors and guests, the innumerable cheap bric-a-brac with
which houses are crowded, and the unending demands these things

1903 AN UNPOPULAR INDUSTRY 999

make upon the maid's adaptability and patience. ' It is not,' she
says, ' that the old times were better, for there is another side to
these changes, which bring life and desirable energy with them, but
it is evident that in adjustment to the times the remedy must be
sought.'

Finally, it is left to the gentlemen to provide both the least and
the most practical suggestions.

The six male students agree that what is needed is an effective
reduction of hours of work to — say — sixty per week.

Sunday afternoons, and one afternoon every week free, and the
day's duties to cease at 7.30 P.M. !

The secretary of a large technical institute thinks a residential
school would supply good mistresses with good servants, but would
not affect the bad mistresses and the general servants.

The proprietor of a large registry office in a printed leaflet
launches out into truly masculine impatience against a condition of
things that apparently causes him much professional difficulty.
' Here we have, not a mass of people without employment for them,
but a mass of employment without people for it ! Was ever there
such a crass absurdity ? ' He has a remedy, and it is ' simple '
and worthy of a Virginian planter of a hundred years ago. Poor
relief should be denied to healthy women under forty, and to women
having grown-up daughters out of work, unless sufficient reason is
shown why employment (in service) cannot be found. Ladies should
induce their husbands to dispense with female clerks, and never to
employ females (young or old) for occupations absolutely masculine.
They should boycott refreshment-rooms and restaurants served by
young women, and not deal anywhere where it is reasonable to
suppose that they are being deprived of a domestic servant. All
dressmakers out of work should be urged into service; and 'all
public institutions for the poor, such as board schools, orphanages,
&c., should be required to train suitable young girls in such a way
as to fit them for domestic service '

An American author who has given considerable study to the
question as it affects the United States has embodied in a novel, a
copy of which he presented to the Council, a scheme which advocates
the formation of an ' army of industry ' to make good servants out
of available material and then supply these servants to mistresses.
The * army ' would be organised and controlled by a limited liability
company, and would offer as attractions to the young women, free,
practical specialised training, certificates, protection against abuse,
security of regular hours, and good wages (only non-residential
workers would be supplied), holidays, a residential club, and a suitable
uniform. To mistresses would be offered a guarantee that ' army '
servants would be reliable and efficient.

The whole scheme is carefully worked out and contains many

1000 THE NINETEENTH CENTUR7 June

practical points, but would possibly prove more acceptable to
American than to British housewives.

Another gentleman provides a scheme for an association of
mistress and servants upon co-operative lines which, properly
organised, should do much to check many of the present evils and
disadvantages of the industry, and something also towards encourag- .
ing girls to enter service by offering sick pay, hospital and convales-
cent tickets, holiday pay, &c., and securing training, free registry,
and desirable situations. An association somewhat on this line has
been working in Glasgow with moderate success for two or three
years.

CONCLUSIONS

Although no statistical importance can be claimed for the result of
this inquiry, and although it is not proposed to dogmatise upon any
aspect of the difficult problem propounded, it may be claimed that
some light is thrown, as from a many-faceted lantern, upon its most
puzzling feature, and that the answers contribute somewhat to its
better understanding.

The unpopularity of a person, of a cause, or of an occupation may
be a matter of fact, capable of being proved by numerical definition ;
but the reasons for such unpopularity can only be arrived at by a
consensus of opinion expressed without regard to statistical bearing.
Thus, there emerges from this inquiry a very definite confirmation
of the fact that domestic service is unpopular; and a general
agreement upon sufficiently broad lines and from sufficiently ex-
perienced sources as to the causes of such unpopularity.

These are shown to be, not industrial but social, not inherent,
but real and strong. Household work per se is not found to be
distasteful to girls, although it should be more fully recognised that
there is in every rank of life a proportion of women to whom a
liking for the washing of pots and pans does not come naturally.
* But the disposition in that direction is certainly inherent in
the sex.' The chief causes may be found in the stigma of inferiority,
lack of liberty, the intolerable burden of personal subservience, and
the opening up of pursuits which offer the reverse of these things.

' I look upon the unpopularity of domestic service among working
women as socially a most healthy sign/ writes a lady whose con-
demnation of the inquiry was outspoken and complete. ' It is a sign
that the struggle for escape from galling social chains, for personal
liberty to choose their own pursuits, in which the educated woman
of the last century engaged with such brilliant and lasting effect,
will not end until all women shall have adjusted their lives to the
newer standard thus set up. The present system, with its good and
bad features, is responsible for the present difficulties.'

The change to better systems will not come without suffering ;

1903 AN UNPOPULAR INDUSTRY 1001

it will hardly be hastened by any partial scheme or organisation,
however well intentioned. To quote finally from one more reply,
' The trend of working class opinion is leading towards reforms in
the conditions of domestic service, and it appears that the most
useful and least dangerous work which educated people can do just
now is to promote and popularise opportunities for training.'

CATHERINE WEBB.

1002 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

STONEHENGE
AND THE MIDSUMMER SUNRISE

EAELY in the morning of midsummer day people go every year to
Stonehenge to watch for the sunrise. Standing by the ruins of the
central trilithon, behind the big flat stone which is called the altar,
they look out north-east through one of the openings in the outer
circle of stones, over the avenue which is marked for a quarter of a
mile by parallel bank and ditch on each side. Some little way down
the avenue stands a solitary stone, the ' Friar's Heel,' pointed at the
top; and an observer looking from the altar sees it standing up
above the line of hills which make the distant horizon. But if one
retreats a little up the slope behind the trilithon the peak of the
Heel-stone comes down to the horizon, and tradition says that it
marks the place where the sun rose on midsummer day when Stone-
henge was built. Nowadays, if the watchers are so fortunate as to
find the low eastern sky free from cloud and haze, it is very plain
that the first gleam of sun appears well to the north of the peak of
the Heel-stone, and it is some seven days before or after midsummer
day when it rises directly over the stone. But inasmuch as the place
of sunrise on that day depends upon the distance the sun goes north
of the equator, and as that depends on the inclination to the equator
of the plane of the earth's orbit, we want only a change in this in-
clination to alter the place of the midsummer sunrise, and make the
Heel-stone fulfil its reputed purpose. Supposing, then, that we are
able on the one hand to show that it is probable that the building
was laid out to point accurately to the sunrise, and on the other
hand to learn what was the actual inclination of ecliptic to equator
at different epochs, it is a very simple matter to fit a date on to a
given place of sunrise, and to say, Thus is the date of building
determined from astronomical considerations.

Now the use of a process like this is apt to lack something of the
rigour which one expects to find in arguments based upon the most
exact data of astronomy. No less an authority than Professor
Flinders Petrie has come to grief in adopting it. There is a very
interesting book of his, unfortunately out of print, which tries to

1903 STONEHENGE AND THE MIDSUMMER SUNRISE 1003

sum up the evidence from all sources for the date of Stonehenge.
To the astronomical evidence which he brings forward he allows,
indeed, no great weight ; but it deserves none, which comes
about in this way. Professor Petrie measured, with an accuracy
which is at least as great as the rough-hewn stones will bear,
the direction of the peak of the Heel-stone from the point behind
the great trilithon whence it appears on the horizon line. He
was fortunate to catch a midsummer sunrise free from haze, and
measured how far the sun now rises north of the trilithon-Heelstone
line ; he calculated what change in the inclination of the ecliptic
would suffice to account for it, and with the known rate of change
how many years that would represent. But so strong in his mind
was the idea that the Heel-stone was the sunrise mark, that he over-
looked the fact that the change is taking place in the wrong direction,
that the sun now rises further south than it has done in all historic
or moderately prehistoric time, for the last ten thousand years at
any rate, and yet it still rises north of the stone. He applied the
correction with the wrong sign, and found 730 A.D. If his figures
are right, but for this error of sign, we find that the trilithon-Heelstone
line points to the sunrise, not of 730 A.D., but of about 3000 A.D., a
date for the building obviously too late. In fact his work shows
that there is one very definite thing about Stonehenge that is
certainly to be proved astronomically, that to an observer standing
behind the great trilithon the sun never yet began to rise immediately
over the Heel-stone, unless the downs which make the horizon have
very greatly changed.

But the difficulty of proving anything definite upon the matter
at all is shown by the two assumptions that we have already been
compelled to make, that the sunrise was viewed from a certain spot
exactly behind the central trilithon, and that it was the first tip of
the rising sun for which they looked. Suppose that it was the
middle of sunrise that was accounted important, when the sun was
half above and half below the line of distant hills over the stone ;
the conditions are very nearly fulfilled to-day. If it was the com-
pletion of rising, when the sun just cleared the hills, then one might
put back the date some two thousand years. It is very clear that
since in these latitudes the sun rises sloping-wise, there is trouble
ahead for any theory that cannot do something more than guess what
stage of the sunrise the builders of Stonehenge desired to mark.

It might well seem that this is as far as one can go. From Petrie's
measures the middle of sunrise was over the stone a quarter of a
century ago ; nearly two thousand years ago the sun completed its
rising over it, more than a thousand hence it will begin to rise over
it ; for thousands of years a watcher from behind the altar might
have seen the sun rise close to the indicating stone. And who shall
say that the builders of Stonehenge required any more than that, if

1004 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

indeed it is not pure chance that there is any connection with the
sunrise at all ?

Before one admits that Stonehenge was so carefully built that the
date of its building is now recoverable from its orientation, it may be
pertinent to ask, what is the evidence that ancient buildings were
orientated with great care ? One thinks at once of the pyramids of
Grizeh, and of the care which their builders plainly took that they
should lie square to the cardinal points ; of the theory, which has
found some favour, that the long ascending passage in the great
pyramid was directed to the pole star of the time ; and perhaps of
the wilder notion that the pyramid before it was finished to its final
shape served as a great observatory. And if it is scarcely fair to
argue that the natural plan of a builder who cared for symmetry
would be to place the lines of a square building north and south,
east and west; if one finds in the work a deeper astronomical
significance, it is a significance which is found in the plans of
present-day observatories. The fundamental direction is north and
south ; the essential plane is the plane of the meridian ; the pole of
the sky lies in it, and the stars in their daily courses have reached
when they come to it their highest points. One is concerned with
the culminations of the stars, and with the sun at noon.

But a glance at the plans of many ancient buildings for which it
is now claimed that their foundations were laid astronomically
reveals the fact that they have in general nothing whatever to do
with the meridian, and the exponents of orientation theories have
found an explanation of this in the supposition that it was not the
culmination of a heavenly body, but its rising or setting that was of
chief account in old times. To this view some of the translated
inscriptions certainly seem to lend support ; it is asserted that the
sun at rising, noon, and setting had three distinct names. To Ea,
the sun god at noon, ' Tmu and Horus of the horizon pay homage
in all their words.' And without laying stress on any of these
identifications — for some recent work suggests the horrid suspicion
that anything may be identified with anything else according to
fancy ; witness Lanzoni's twenty-four variants for Hathor, as an
addition to Plutarch's equation Isis = Mut = Hathor =Methuer, as
Lockyer gives it — it does seem possible to adopt as a working
hypothesis the idea that in Egypt the sun and the stars were noted,
and perhaps worshipped, at their rising and setting rather than at
their meridian passages. If it were so, one can imagine an explana-
tion for the feature which is characteristic of many Egyptian
temples, the narrow central passage running from the ' naos ' or
shrine, clear through the complexities of the inner and outer courts,
strictly defined by narrow pylons, and sometimes continued beyond
the temple down a long avenue of sphinxes. The temple was an
observatory, dedicated to the worship of one of the heavenly bodies,

1903 STONEHENGE AND THE MIDSUMMER SUNRISE 1005

and the straight passage from the shrine pointed to the place where
it rose or set.

Now this theory has one incontestable advantage. Every line
drawn at random must point to the place where some conspicuous
star rose or set at one epoch or another. The dates of Egyptian
history are so remote, and their uncertainty for the early period is
so great, that we have to deal with lapses of time which are no
small fractions of the precessional period of 26,000 years, in which
the pole describes a circle in the sky nearly fifty degrees across.
The distances from the pole, and therefore the places of rising of all
the stars, are always changing, and in the course of a thousand
years they change a great deal; the same temple which would in
1500 B.C. point to the rising of Spica would 1700 years later serve for
Procyon. If one would identify a certain temple with a star, one
must know the date of the temple and see if there is a star that fits
it, or inversely discover by guessing or otherwise the star that was
deified, and put back the date of the temple building to correspond.
How infinite are the possibilities of the latter process may be read
in Sir Norman Lockyer's work, The Dawn of Astronomy, and how
effectively the results may be criticised, in the Edinburgh Review
thereon.1 There are in the scheme of identifying temples with stars
two fatal weaknesses : in nearly every case it is necessary to go back
far beyond the date which archaeologists have fixed for the building,
because it is absurd to go far forward, and there is no star to suit at
the accepted date ; and very often the star which is thus found is
curiously inconspicuous ; one cannot believe that its appearance on
the horizon, which is mist-laden even in Egypt, would have
furnished a spectacle that wanted a vast and splendid temple for its
celebration.

But among the countless temples of Egypt there are a few, and
one of them the most magnificent of all, the temple of Amen-Ra at
Karnak, that seem to be related to the sun. Any temple in the
latitude of Thebes that points within twenty-six degrees of east or
west will catch along its axis the rays of the rising or the setting
sun on one day or another of the year ; but these temples have a
special orientation. They point to the sun at the solstices, at mid-
summer or mid-winter, the days when the sun rises and sets further
north or south than at any other time of the year. To the temple
of Amen-Ra Sir Norman Lockyer devotes a whole chapter. The
orientation is 26 £ degrees north of west; it points nearly to the
place of sunset on midsummer day ; not exactly, for an observation
in 1891 showed that the centre of the sun now sets behind the
southern wall of the propylon, even if one is watching from a point
on the axis two or three hundred yards from the shrine towards the
entrance. The difference may, of course, be explained by the slow
1 Edinburgh Review, October 1894.

1006 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

change in the inclination of ecliptic to equator to which reference
has already been made. Here is the description of the building and
the suggestion of its use :

From one end of the temple to the other we find the axis marked out by
narrow apertures in the various pylons, and many walls with doors crossing
the axis.

In the temple of Amen-Ra there are seventeen or eighteen of these apertures,
limiting the light that falls into the Holy of Holies or the sanctuary. This con-
struction gives one a very definite impression that every part of the temple was
built to subserve a special object, viz. to limit the light which fell on its front
into a narrow beam, and to carry it to the other extremity of the temple — into
the sanctuary — so that once a year when the sun set at the solstice the light
passed without interruption along the whole length of the temple, finally illu-
minating the sanctuary in most resplendent fashion and striking the sanctuary
wall. The wall of the sanctuary opposite to the entrance to the temple was
always blocked. There is no case in which the beam of light can pass absolutely
through the temple.

What, then, was the real use of these pylons and these diaphragms ? It was
to keep all stray light out of the carefully roofed and darkened sanctuary ; but
why was the sanctuary to be kept in darkness ?

If the Egyptians wished to use the temple for ceremonial purposes, the
magnificent beam of light thrown into the temple at the sunset hour would give
them opportunities and even suggestions for so doing. For instance, they might
place an image of the god in the sanctuary, and allow the light to flash upon it.
We should have ' a manifestation of Ra ' with a vengeance during the brief time
the white flood of sunlight fell on it.

The picture is convincing. Whatever may be the ultimate ver-
dict on the star temples, one is almost persuaded that we have in
the temple of Amen-Ra the very type and ideal of a temple fitted
for sunset ceremonies on midsummer evening. The enclosed and
darkened sanctuary, the rigid limitation of light by pylons and
gateways all along the length of a very long axis, the subservience
of the design to the preservation of a central passage straight and
unencumbered, are the criteria by which we should judge a solar
temple. The exactness of workmanship of what remains must be
the measure of our confidence that its builders worked with mathe-
matical accuracy.

In a paper not long since presented to the Royal Society, Sir
Norman Lockyer and Mr. F. C. Penrose described ' An attempt to
ascertain the date of the original construction of Stonehenge from
its orientation.' Let us examine their results in the light of the
interpretation which the authors have given of the methods of old
astronomical building, exemplified in Egypt and in Greece. The
whole of the argument rests upon the assumption that Stonehenge
was a solar temple.

The chief evidence lies in the fact that an ' avenue,' as it is called, formed by
two ancient earthen banks, extends for a considerable distance from the struc-
ture, in the general direction of the sunrise at the summer solstice, precisely in

1903 STONEHENGE AND THE MIDSUMMER SUNRISE 1007

the same way as in Egypt a long avenue of sphinxes indicates the principal outlook
of a temple.

These earthen banks defining the avenue do not exist alone. As will be seen
from the plan which accompanies this paper, there is a general common line of
direction for the avenue and the principal axis of the structure, and the general
design of the building, together with the position and shape of the Naos, indicate
a close connection of the whole temple structure with the direction of the avenue.
There may have been other pylon and screen equivalents as in ancient temples,
which have disappeared, the object being to confine the illumination to a small
part of the Naos. There can be little doubt also that the temple was originally
roofed in, and that the sun's first ray, suddenly admitted into the darkness, formed
a fundamental part of the cultus.

It is difficult to imagine a building more utterly unlike in plan
an Egyptian temple than Stonehenge. Within a circular bank of
earth, three hundred feet across, is a smaller circle of thirty equi-
distant stones supporting lintels. This is the boundary of the
building proper, a surprisingly perfect circle. Within are the
remains of five trilithons, and a number of small upright stones
which seemed to have formed two more circles. The trilithons
stand in the form of a horseshoe • they are the only part of the
building which is not perfectly symmetrical about a point, the
centre ; the only part, therefore, which can be said to have an axis.
The axis of the horseshoe passes pretty closely through the centres
of two opposite openings in the outer ring of stones, and points
towards the sunrise. When a line is drawn to show it on the plan
it is fairly evident ; take the line away and there is only the general
symmetry of the horseshoe of trilithons about one diameter to dis-
tinguish it from any other of the fifteen diameters of the circle that
pass through pairs of opposite openings in the outer ring. The
horseshoe is fifty feet across ; the whole building a hundred.
Where is there in these proportions any likeness to the temple at
Karnak, with its passage twenty feet wide running straight and
open through a building about fifteen hundred feet by seven hun-
dred ? The ' pylons and other screen equivalents which have dis-
appeared/ the roof and the darkness, exist nowhere but in sugges-
tion. It is easy to understand how, to bring an appearance of
verisimilitude into the comparison, it was essential to dwell upon
the avenue.

Two parallel banks with their complementary ditches, about fifty
feet apart, form the avenue. It starts from the earth circle nearly,
but according to Petrie not quite opposite the opening in the outer
ring of stones that faces the trilithon and the altar stone, and it runs
north-east towards the midsummer sunrise. With the single
exception of the Heel-stone there is no stone standing within it now,
and no sign that any has stood there in the past ; no evidence of
pylons to limit the view, or indeed of anything, save its identity of
direction, to show that it formed an integral part of the stone

1008 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

building. It is just a pair of low earthen banks running steadily
down hill, out of sight altogether from the point behind the trilithon
whence the sunrise is watched. Where is the likeness here to the
view from the shrine of Amen-Ea of the furthest pylon of the temple
1,500 feet away, seen through innumerable doors ? Yet despairing
of being able to find an accurate orientation for Stonehenge itself,
when some stones had fallen, and others were leaning, and all was
rough, and the whole building was only 100 feet across, Sir Norman
Lockyer and Mr. Penrose have based their estimate of the date of
foundation — 1680 B.C. — entirely on the orientation of the avenue,
determined as follows. They pegged out as best they could the
central line between the low and often mutilated banks, and
measured the bearings of two sections of this line near the beginning
and the end. The values differed by only six minutes of arc, so the
avenue is remarkably straight even in its present imperfect state.
But:

This value of the azimuth, the mean of which is 49° 35' 51", is confirmed by
the information, also supplied by the Ordnance Survey, that from the centre of
the temple the bearing of the principal bench mark on the ancient fortified hill,
about eight miles distant, a well-known British encampment named Silbury or
Sidbury is 49° 34' 18", and that the same line continued through Stonehenge to
the south-west strikes another ancient fortification, namely, Grovely Castle,
about six miles distant and at practically the same azimuth, viz. 49° 35' 51".
For the above reasons 49° 34' 18" has been adopted for the azimuth of the
avenue.

There is something uncanny about this argument. The authors
are trying to find the place of a pre-historic sunrise by assuming
that the avenue pointed to it. They measured the direction of the
avenue, and found that the measures agreed so very nearly with the
Ordnance Survey measure of the direction of their mark — presumably
on the highest point — at Sidbury camp, that they adopted the latter
measure rather than their own ; in other words, they agreed that
the avenue is directed very exactly to Sidbury. Henceforward one
cannot leave Sidbury out of the argument. As against the theory
that the avenue pointed to the sunrise there is the fact that it points
to Sidbury. The latter is no more likely to be accidental than the
former. There are two courses open to us. On the one hand we
may suppose that the avenue was drawn to lead over the down to
Sidbury camp, and had no intentional relation to the place of sun-
rise. On the other hand we may suppose that Sidbury is in the
sunrise line not by accident but by design ; that it forms an integral
part of the solar temple of Stonehenge. And since the camp
occupies the summit of a steep and isolated hill, while Stonehenge
lies on a wide and gently sloping down, it is plain that the camp
end of the Stonehenge-Sidbury line must have been fixed first, and
the site of the temple determined by prolonging the line sunrise-

1903 STONEHENGE AND THE MIDSUMMER SUNRISE 1009

Sidbury till it struck a suitable place on the down. There is
nothing impossible in this ; the question is, Can it be said to be so
probable that one is justified in finding a date for Stonehenge from
the direction of the line so drawn ? Which is the greater impro-
bability, that the Stonehenge-sunrise line was laid out so that it
passed over the peak of Sidbury hill eight miles away, so nearly
invisible from Stonehenge by reason of an intervening down that Sir
Norman Lockyer thought that the latter formed the local horizon,
and makes no mention of having seen Sidbury over its top, though the
Ordnance Survey party could do so ; or that the line of an avenue set-
ting out from Stonehenge straight towards Sidbury happens to point to
the place where the sun rose at a date which is perhaps as likely as
any other for the foundation of the building, seeing that archaeology
unaided can tell practically nothing on the subject ?

If preference be given to the first alternative, and we assume
that Stonehenge really was so placed that Sidbury marked the point
where the sun rose on midsummer morning, the question still
remains, Was it done so accurately that it is worth measuring
accurately now, and drawing from the measures an exact statement
of date ? It may well be objected that in our climate Sidbury is
probably not visible from Stonehenge at sunrise once in twenty years,
and that the likelihood of a long delay in drawing out the plan of
so great a work would very soon have induced the builders to adopt
a line near enough for their purposes though not for ours. Another
objection is that Stonehenge is a ' rude stone monument ' : Karnak
emphatically is not : very probably it is the finest piece of building
that the world has seen. It is straining analogy almost to the
breaking-point to argue from one to the other, and treat Stonehenge
as a solar temple because perhaps the shrine of Amen-Ra at Karnak
was. And lastly there is the grave difficulty that everything
depends upon guessing right what is to be considered the critical
phase of the sunrise or sunset. Sir Norman Lockyer has assumed
that for Karnak the moment of sunset was when the sun's centre had
just reached the horizon ; for Stonehenge sunrise was the moment
when the first tip of the sun appeared above the hill. It was
necessary to adopt these precise yet different phases for the two
cases, because any other assumptions would have led to results
obviously absurd. The unconfessed discrepancy of treatment tacitly
confesses how arbitrary is the process.

One may well doubt whether anything is gained by these
attempts to help out the deficiencies of archaeology with the aid of
astronomy. Archaeology is all the worse if an uncertain date is made
to masquerade as a certainty in plumes borrowed from astronomers ;
and astronomy, which has a character for accuracy to lose, is apt to
lose it in the company.

ARTHUR R. HINKS.

VOL, LIII— No. 316 3 U

1010 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

WES SEX WITCHES, WITCHERY, AND
WITCHCRAFT

INTRODUCTION.

IT was just a casual word, dropped by a chance acquaintance, which
first aroused in me an active interest in witchcraft. The subject
had always exercised a fascination over me — chiefly from the mystery
which underlies everything in connection with it, baffling science to
frame laws which can adequately define it, and leaving us free to
place our individual construction on its causes and effects. It is a
fundamental truth that everything in the universe must be governed
by laws, but in investigating witchcraft we are stopped at the outset
by finding that like causes do not produce like effects, that the
unravelling of one mystery in no way helps towards the solution of
a second.

A few years ago I should have used the word 'superstition,'
in connection with witchcraft, as a mere matter of course ; but now,
having listened to so many stories bearing on this subject, having
interviewed so many people who have themselves been under the
spell, having even conversed with those supposed to be gifted with a
power emanating direct from the devil himself, I am disposed to
question the appropriateness of applying this word to a belief which,
strange though we may consider it in this century of advanced
education and civilisation, does nevertheless hold a firm place in the
hearts and minds of many of the less sophisticated, as well as in the
intellects of some of the more thoroughly educated people.

Credence in the supernatural dates from prehistoric times,
and we may easily trace instances of this from the time when Moses
thundered his denunciation ' Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live/
almost without a gap down to the present day ; but it was probably
in mediaeval times that witchcraft was most indulged in, most feared,
and more often visited with gruesome results — as far as the witches
were concerned.

It will be remembered that John Knox was once accused of being
a wizard ; and for what ? Because nothing but sorcery, so it was

1903 WESSEX WITCHES 1011

said, could account for Lord Ochiltree's daughter, ' ane damosil of
nobil blude,' falling in love with him, ' ane old, decrepit creature of
maist base degree of ony that could be found in the countrey.' In
the year 1537 Lady Janet Douglas was burned at Edinburgh, with
the taint of being a witch. It often happened in those days that
a person became famous through being able to identify certain
marks on certain people, which were supposed to go with, and be
inseparable from, the properties of witchcraft. Mr. John Bell, a
minister of the Gospel at Gladsmuir, in his Discourse on Witchcraft,
said : ' Sometimes it is like a little teate, sometimes but a bluwish
spot, and I myself have seen it in the body of a confessing witch,
like unto a little powder-mark of a blea color, somewhat hard, and
withall insensible, so as it did not bleed when I pricked it ' !

Many of our poets have taken the subject as their theme, most
of them treating it as being full of horrible, revolting incidents.
Rowe's lines are particularly suggestive of morbid imagination :

At length in murmurs hoarse her voice was heard ;

Her voice beyond all plants, all magic, fear'd,

And by the lowest Stygian gods revered :

Her gabbling tongue a muttering tone confounds,

Discordant, and unlike to human sounds ;

It seem'd of dogs the bark, of wolves the howl ;

The doleful screechings of the midnight owl ;

The hiss of snakes, the hungry lion's roar ;

The sound of billows beating on the shore ;

The groan of winds among the leafy wood,

And burst of thunder from the rending cloud,

'Twas these, all these in one.

Practically all prose writers who have touched the subject have
been to the pains of condemning witchcraft in no half-hearted terms.
Gilfillan speaks of a witch as ' A borderer between earth and hell,'
while Martin Luther, with his intolerance of the thoughts of others,
his prejudice regarding things which he was either ignorant of, or
did not personally agree with, says : ' Witchcraft we may justly
designate high treason against Divine Majesty, a direct -revolt
against the infinite power of God.' Goethe, showing a broader grasp
of the subject, gives this definition: 'The demonic is that which
cannot be explained by reason or understanding, which is not in one's
nature, yet to which^it is subject.' Goldsmith, in a little essay on
Deceit and Falsehood, evidently has it in his heart to pity the
supposed witches who, either rightly or wrongly, suffered the extreme
penalty for acts which they may, or may not, have been the cause
of. In sarcastic strain he ends his essay :

If we enquire what are the common marks and symptoms by which witches
are discovered to be such, we shall see how reasonably and mercifully those poor
creatures were burned and hanged who unhappily fell under that name. In the
first place, the old woman must be prodigiously ugly ; her eyes hollow and red ;
her face shrivelled ; she goes double, and her voice trembles. It frequently

3 u 2

1012 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

happens that this rueful figure frightens a child into the palpitation of the heart ;
home he runs, and tells his mamma that Goody such a one looked at him, and he
is very ill. The good woman cries out, her dear baby is bewitched, and sends for
the parson and the constable. It is, moreover, necessary that she be very poor.
It is true, her master, Satan, has mines and hidden treasures in his gift ; but no
matter, she is, for all that, very poor, and lives on alms. She goes to Sisly the
cook-maid for a dish of broth, or the heel of a loaf, and Sisly denies them to her.
The old woman goes away muttering, and perhaps in less than a month's time,
Sisly hears the voice of a cat and sprains her ankles, which are certain signs that
she is bewitched. . . .

The old woman has always for her companion an old grey cat, which is a
disguised devil too, and confederate with Goody in works of darkness. They
frequently go journeys into Egypt upon a broom-staff in half an hour's time, and
now and then Goody and her cat change shapes. . . .

There is a famous way of trying witches recommended by King James the
First. The old woman is tied hand and foot and thrown into the river, and if she
swims she is guilty, and taken out and burned ; but if she is innocent she sinks,
and is only drowned.

Then, drawing attention to the improved conditions which existed
in his own time, he concludes with the words : ' An old woman may
be miserable noiv, and not be hanged for it.'

Until a few years ago, when I commenced serious investigations,
I had looked on witchcraft as a defunct, historical delusion ; and I was
surprised, not to say startled, when I discovered that it was far from
dead, but existed still as a firmly rooted belief amongst a large pro-
portion of the older people. ' Do I b'lieve in them witches ? ' said
an old man to me once. ' Why, of course I do ; don't they
speak o't in the Bible ? And if s'be as such things did come about
then, why shouldn't we find 'em now ? '

I have spent many a pleasant hour listening to some of these
mysterious tales, chiefly from the lips of the older men and women,
but occasionally from people of less than middle age. They tell
them, too, with such perfect sincerity, such ingenuous whole-
heartedness, that to doubt the narrators' actual belief in their state-
ments would be simply narrow-minded bigotry.

Since the time when laws were framed to protect reputed witches
from receiving the summary justice with which their acts were
formerly met, at the same time punishing those who set themselves
up as ' witch doctors ' or ' conjurers,' the people have maintained
a discreet reserve on the subject ; and it is only by gaining their
complete confidence that they can be induced to speak out plainly.
However, by unconditionally promising that, in any second-hand
expression of their stories, neither names nor localities shall be men-
tioned, I have usually found it a comparatively easy task to obtain
from them the fullest particulars, even including the names of
people still living, and the places of their residence.

Some of these stories are of a character which will scarcely bear
repetition, not because they are obscene, but because they are frank

1903 WS88SX WITCHES 1013

in unconventional details ! The main facts of those that I re-tell
are absolutely true, and the licence which I have allowed myself is
merely that of weaving them into sufficient consecutiveness to merit
the name ' story ' being applied with significance. Many of the
narrators being still alive, I have altered all the original names, both
of people and places, in order that actual identification may be a
matter of impossibility.

The ancient language of Wessex (some people prefer to call it
a dialect) is rapidly becoming extinct ; in fact, it is open to doubt
whether anyone now living can give us more than a faint approxi-
mation of the original, excepting, perhaps, Thomas Hardy in his
inimitable Wessex novels. Some words still in use bear the true
ring, and a few of the idioms are retained, but the contamination
of board-school education has ruined all chance of our ever hearing
it again in its purity or completeness. The everyday speech of
Wessex, which passes muster as a dialect, is but a fragmentary
relic of a bygone language — dead as its originators.

The difficulty attending all attempts to reproduce even the
present-day mixture is necessarily great, many of the voice inflec-
tions being so subtle in character as to defy ordinary spelling ;
unless, indeed, we resort to the unlimited use of accents and
diphthongs — a procedure which would prove tedious, both to reader
and writer. The orthography used in the following stories is based
on the phonetic value of what may be heard at the present time,
and I accordingly offer no apology for any spelling which may not
be identical with that of other writers.

THE EPISODE AT WOODLANDS.

Widow Cotton had lived for many years in the village of River-
ton, and was looked on by most of her neighbours as a being gifted
with abnormal powers — a person to be feared and revered in the
same breath. She had been a martyr to chronic rheumatism for
fifteen years, the last ten she had been entirely bed-ridden. Her
age was a mystery, even to herself, but it is certain that she cannot
have been far short of ninety ; her unimpaired memory of events
which happened during the early part of last century giving colour
to the supposition.

She was regarded as an authority on such matters as manorial
boundaries, and it was by asking some trivial question about a right-
of-way that I first made her acquaintance. From then on I used
to pay her occasional visits, taking her papers to read, or spending
an hour or two in chatting with her. From ordinary, everyday
subjects I gradually led her on to talk of witches and witchcraft ;
naturally reticent, like most of her class on this subject, it was some
time before I was able to induce her to speak openly and without

1014 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

restraint, but after a time I gained her confidence and drew from
her many a tale of weird, scarce-credible fact.

Once, soon after I first knew her, I asked some rather leading
question, and instead of replying she eyed me suspiciously for a
moment or two and then said, ' Have'ee ever heerd anybody say as
how I be mixed up wi' witches an' their ways ? '

Very honesty made me admit that I had heard people say she
knew more than most of her neighbours about such things ; and I
believe this very admission made her trust me the more, for she
must have known what the common talk about her was.

' Tidn' true then/ she said ; ' I bain't no wiser nor what others
be ; 'tis a cruel lie, that's what 'tis, to make out such wicked stories
about a poor wold bed-ridden 'oman like I. I've a-kep' my eyes and
years open goin' dhrough life, whereas most o' the folk hereabout do
keep their mouths agape, an' their eyes and years closed.'

One evening I found her in a rare humour for talking, and on
asking her if she knew of any case of ' overlooking ' near Eiverton,
she gave me the following story :

' 'Tmust be close on sixty year ago, when I wer' still but a young
'oman, that me and my husband went to live wi' Varmer Voot to
'Oodlands. My husband wer' carter, an' as ther' wadn' a house
empty there-right we was forced to go and live into a house joinin'
'Oodlands Dairy, best part o' a mile from the varm. These dairy
wer' let to a dairyman name o' Lock; he, an's wife, an's eldest
daughter did do all the work, for 'twer' but a small dairy, look, an' so
the two cottages what did go wi' the dairy was lef empty. The one
we went to live in, an' the t'other wer' rented to Varmer Tuck's
shepherd — Varmer Tuck's land joinin' on to Maester's.

' We was all very good friends indeed, an' did use to meet very
often evenin's an' talk an' chat together, an' never s'much's a breath
o' wind come between us. Well, one marnin', bout of a ten o'clock,
Mrs. Lock come into kitchen an' vlings herself down into chair,
dhrows her apron over her head, an' sets-to cryin' fit to empt' her-
self.

' " Why, whatever have a-upset 'ee ? " says I. " Don't'ee take on
so," I says, "ther's a good 'oman ; tell I what 'tis what do worry'ee."
' " Sarah," says she, twixt her bouts o' sobbin', " 'tis hagrod, that's
what we be. I ain't said nothin' to nobody about it 'cos I doesn'
dare to speak o't; but ther', tidn' no mortal use to bide still no
longer, for we be just losin' everything. Dhree pigs be dead an'
buried, an' now the mare be took curious-like, an' we be feared she'll
make a die o't, too."

' I quieted her down all's ever I could, an' by'm'by she got more
cheerful] er-like an' went on whome again. The same evenin' I
telled Shep's wife about 'en, an' 'stead o' she sayin' anything, she just
bed quiet an' said nothin' at all. I never thought upon it then, but

1903 WJSS8EX WITCHES 1015

afterwards I remembered that she turned s' white's a sheet, an' looked
same's if she wer' goin' to faint.

' Bout o' a dhree days later Mrs. Lock come in again an' says to I,
" Thic ther' mare what I told'ee on have a-died in the night, an' now
two o' the cows be got rafty an' 'ont gie down their milk. Ah !
Sarah," she says, " we be overlooked, that's what the manin' o't is, an'
if we caint find out who 'tis what've a-put these evil wish on us,
we'm bound to lose all what we've a-got."

' Who should chance to come by the house at that moment but
Nance Bridle. Don't suppose you've ever heerd tell o' she, an' she
be dead an' buried years ago now, but she wer' always looked on as a
terr'ble cunnin' 'oman; an' I says to Mrs. Lock, says I, " Ther's
Nance a-goin' by house now, let we goo an' ast she about it, for 'tis
likely enough she can tell we who 'tis as have a-done these evil
to'ee."

' Well, I opens the door an' holleys at her. " Nance," I says,
" will'ee come in yhere half a minit, someone d'want to speak to'ee ? "
So back she comes, an' when 'er gets inside 'er says, " Marnin',

o */ *

Mrs. Lock, beautiful marnin's marnin', 'tis a gr't pity that folks
should think ill o' one another when Zun d'zhine s'bright."

' Lor ! how Mrs. Lock did open her eyes to be sure when Nance
spoke they words, an' she stammers out, " Why, that's just what we
did want to speak to 'ee about ; somebody have a- wished ill o' us, an'
Sarah yhere says as how you be a terr'ble cunnin' 'oman to find out
'bout things."

' Nance Bridle did use to get about the country wi' a basket o'
odds and ends, buttons, stay-laces, wools for darnin' an' such like
things, an' she did traipse about from place to place sellin' one thing
yhere an' another ther' an' so made enough money to keep herself
respectable. She took the strap o' the basket off of her shoulder, an
set 'en down on floor, sets herself down into a chair, an' turnin' to
Mrs. Lock, says : " So you've a-lost dhree pigs, Mrs. Lock, an' the
roan mare be dead an' buried, an' now the cows 'on't gie down their
milk ? 'Tis a real bad job for 'ee, that 'tis, an' I says to myself as I
come along the hroad this marnin', 'I be terr'ble sorry now for poor
folk up to 'Oodlands Dairy, that I be.' "

' Mrs. Lock wer' struck all o' a heap when Nance says this, 'cos
she knowed Nance couldn't a-heerd about the cows, even s'posin'
anybody had told her about the pigs an' the harse ; but she pulls
herself together a bit an' says, " Now however did 'ee learn about we
an' our trouble, Nance ? "

'"Never you mind, my dear," says Nance, " I be a seventh
child o' a seventh, I be, an' I do get to hear about things what
other folk don't so much as dream of."

' " True," says I, " 'tis Gospel truth what you've a- spoke, an' seein
as you do know all about things, tidn' scarcely worth while for we to

1016 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

waste good breath tellin' 'ee anything further. PYaps, then, Nance,
you can tell we who 'tis d'do l these piece of ill-wishin' ? "

' " No," Nance do hreply, " I caint tell 'ee who 'tis, but I d' 'low 2 1
can show 'ee \ "

' " Now, Mrs. Lock," said Nance, " do you go and draw a bucket
o' water out o' well, an' bring 'en yhere-right, an' mind an' see as
'tis a clean bucket, an' clean water ; an' he must be brim-full."

' So Mrs. Lock goes out to get the bucket o' water, an' when she
wer' gone Nance turns to I an' says : " Sarah," she says, " you've a-
knowed I this many a year — long enough to be sure as I 'ouldn't play
no hokey pokey games wi' 'ee ; if I don't show'ee who 'tis as have
a-wished these evil thing thee can'st call I a liar."

'When Mrs. Lock comes back wi' the bucket o' water, Nance
takes 'en an' puts 'en down on doorstep ; then she stirs 'en roun' wi'
her arm, an' when he've a-settled down, an' got quite still-like, she
says : " Now then Souls, come an' look into 'en, an' tell I what you
do see ; only don't speak it out loud, but under you breaths-like."

' We all dhree bends over 'en, but for some time we caint see
nothin' ; then, all of a sudden, Mrs. Lock calls out an' drops into a
chair, her face all of a sweat. I never says anything but jist goes on
lookin'; and presently I sees a face stand out s' dear's a potegraph,
an' who do 'ee think 'twer', sir — why 'twer' Shep's wife, she what did
live next door ! I see 'en 's plain 's what I d' see you now, sir,
an' I wer' took all of a tremble-like, an' couldn' a-spoke a word, no
not to save my life.

1 " Well," says I when I wer' got over the fright a bit, " an'
whoever 'd a-thought as she wer' such a wicked 'oman ? What be us
to do now, Nance ? "

' " I can gie 'ee somethin'," says she, " what '11 likely stop 'en ;
but I caint be quite certain sure about it."

' She opens her basket an' fetches out a paper parcel about so
big over as a orange, an' gies 'en to Mrs. Lock. " Yhere," she says,
" you go an' put these into chimney o' Shep's house when the folk
be all out ; tie a piece o' string on to 'en an' hang 'en up 'bout o' a
dhree foot high, but be sure you don't look inside the paper. If thrc
don't stop it, you send an' let I know, an' I'll bring 'ee a stronger
charm."

' That same evenin' we kep' watch, an' when Shep's wife went
out wi' a basket hung on to her arm, we steps in an' hangs up the
charm same as Nance said for.

' Nex' marnin', after Shep wer' gone to 's work, Lizbeth she
comes over to I an' says, " I ain't had a wink o' sleep all night, my
arm be that painful," an' she rolls up her sleeve an' shows me her
arm. Twer' black's a cwoal an' swelled up dreadful. " Can'ee make
out what's come wi't?" she asks. " No, that I caint," says I. " I d' 'low 2
1 Do do = does. 2 Do allow.

1903 WESSEX WITCHES 1017

you'd best go up to Eiverton an' show 'en to Doctor ; p'r'aps he can
gie'ee somethin' to ease 'en a bit." Off she goes, an' by'm'by back
her come again wi' a bottle o' stuff, for to rub into 'en. Every
marnin', reg'lar, for a whole week, she goes up to show 'en to Doctor, an'
after another week'd a-passed her arm wer' pretty nearly well again.

' Now all that time everything wer' goin' on all right in the
dairy. The cows gied down their milk same's ever ; the new harse
what Dairyman'd a-bought got the better of's lameness ; and the
fowls never stole 3 their nestes, but dropped their aigs in fowl-house,
same's should.

' Ther* wer' a kind o' queer feelin' crope up 'tween Lizbeth an'
me an' Mrs. Lock, an' for some time we never s'much's spoke a word,
nor wished each other the time o' day. Then, one marnin', Lizbeth
comes to me an' says, " My arm be all right again now ; I caint
think what wer' got wi' 'en, an' Doctor couldn' tell I, nuther ; twer'
some terr'ble strong stuff what he gied I to rub into 'en. Doctor be
a terr'ble clever man I b'lieve."

' The nex' day wer' a Zunday, an' me an' John we starts off early
for to go an' see my sister what do live up to Kinson, look. Twer'
latish when we got back, an' pitch dark, but we seed a light movin'
about in barkon, an' John says to I : " Whatever be 'em up to, then,
out in barkon wi' a light these time o' night ; bes' go an' see what
they be up to I d' 'low." * So in we goes, an' ther' wer' Dairyman an's
wife bendin' over summat on the ground, an' jist as we come up he
says : " Taint a marsel of use to bide about an' look at 'en ; her's
dead — so dead's a nit." And ther', stretched out on ground, wer'
the new black harse what they'd a-bought, stiff an' stark.

' Lor, that wer' a night's work, an' no mistake. John an' Dairy-
man wer' out an' about all night, an' me an' Mrs. Lock sat up in
the kitchen an' bwoiled kittle for to make 'em a drop o' tea every
now an' again. As soon as twer' light Dairyman comes in an' says :
"I be off to try an' find Nance Bridle, same's she said for, an' we'll
see whe'r or no she be able to tell us what to do."

' John went off too, for to see to's harses, but Mrs. Lock 'ouldn'
let I out o' her sight. " No," she says, " you bide along o' me till
William do hreturn ; I 'ouldn' bide alone in these house, no not if
'twas ever so."

'Twer' gettin' late in the afternoon when Dairyman got back,
an' he wer' pretty near tired to death, but the look on's face wer'
cheerful-like. " Gie I a mouthful o' vittuls," he says, " an' then I'll
tell'ee what we've a-got to do."

' Me an' Mrs. Lock was all of a tremble to hear what he'd a-got
to tell o' ; but we was forced to wait a bit, for he bed ther' chawin's
bread an' vinny,5 an' grinnin' to's self every now an' then.

* To ' steal ' a nest = to lay eggs in some hidden spot. 4 Do allow.
5 Cheese with blue-mould.

1018 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

'When he'd a-satisfied's hunger he looked up an' turned to's
wife. " Ellen," he says, " go an' get I the pig-killin' knife, thic new
one what I bought in to Darchester last Saturday."

' Lor, how we two did jump to be sure, 'cos we thought, look, he
wer' for goin' in an' makin' short work o' Lizbeth. " No, William,"
says Ellen, " thee shaint do no such wicked thing ; no, not for all
the pigs an' fowls an' harses in the wide world."

' " Don't thee be a fool, 'oman," says Dairyman, " do thee go an' get
the knife, an' quick about it."

' While she wer' gone to get 'en, Dairyman turns to I an' says,
" Be your man whome ? "

' " Yes," I says, " I d' 'low 6 'er be."

' " Then go an' ast 'en to come in yhere. An' will you please to
go out in garden an' bring in a bit o' sage-green, a good han'full o'
peppermint, an' 'bout o' a twenty-five or thirty chepholes ? 7 Put 'em
all in the crock an' fill 'en up 'bout o' a dhree parts full o' water, an'
hang 'en up over vire."

' I does what Dairyman do say for, an' he an' John goes out into
barkon, takin' thic gr't ugly pig-killin' knife along wi' 'em. In
'bout o' a ten minutes back they comes, Dairyman wi' a lump o'
summat red in's hand which he takes an' plops into crock. " Thic
be poor wold Blossom's heart," he says, " thic be ; an' we've a-got to
let 'en zimmer for a good half-hour."

' Then he turns to my man, an' says : " John," says he, " I d'want
you to go an' ast my cousin James if he'll lend I his little maid
Jessie for a bit ; say I've a-got a bit o' a job for she to do. An' as
you do come back-along you make she pick out o' hedge a few
score o' maiden tharns — don't you pick 'em, mind, but make she
do it — an' see as they be maiden tharns an' not wold 'uns o' last
year.

' " Stop half a minute," he says, as John wer' for makin' off. " As
you do come by shop, bring I on sixpenny worth o' brand-new pins,
what ain't never been stuck into nothin' in their lives. We'll do the
thing proper," he says, " same's Nance twold I to do't."

' When John come back wi' Jessie we'd got everything ready.
Blossom's heart wer' got cwold an' wer' so tough's a bit o' leather ;
an' we'd a-put 'en on to a dish. " Now then, Jess," says Dairyman,
" come an' sit in these chair, an' stick so many o' the tharns as you
can into these side o' the mare's heart." An' when she'd a-done that
he turned the heart round an' twold Jess to stick the other side full
o' pins.'

I interrupted Widow Cotton for a moment to ask a few questions
about the thorns. What did she mean by maiden thorns, and not
old ones of last year's growth ?

'Maiden tharns be tharns what've a-growed the same year as
6 Do allow. " Young onions.

1903 WJESSEX WITCHES 1019

they be picked ; wold tharns 'ouldn' be no good an' 'ouldn' work the
spell, look. An' they'm bound to be picked an' stuck in by a
maiden 'oman, an' that's why Dairyman sent for Jess, 'cos he knowed
she wer' a little maid as he could be sure about, seein' as she wer'
but twelve year wold come next tater-diggin'.'

' And the pins ; were they bound to be new ones ? '

' Oh yes, to be sure ; wold pins 'ouldn' have no virtue lef ' in 'em
to draw blood.'

She then continued her story : ' When the heart wer' finished,
an' stuck right full o' pins an' tharns, he did look for all the world
like a 'idgehog, or a parcupine as they do call 'em, an' we tied 'en
roun' wi' a piece o' string, an' bed an' watched to see when Shep's
wife did go out.

' Shep wer' to work a bit away from the house, an' every evenin'
his wife did use to take 'en up a can o' tea. We hadn' very long to
wait before out she comes ; an' when she wer' gone out o' sight we
all goes in to her house an' hangs Blossom's heart up in chimney,
so far as Dairyman could reach up, an' ther' we let 'en bide.

' Of course I know'd t'ould be all right, but all the same I couldn'
bear to think upon the trouble what wer' comin' over the poor
'oman. Sure enough, afore many days wer' passed, she wer' took
bad, an' wer' forced to bide in bed an' send for the doctor. He
come an' seed her, an' sent her all manner o' stuff into bottles —
strong stuff too, I d' 'low.8 She had one bottle for to take, an' another
for to rub in, an' a third for to goggle wi' — but it all wadn' no use —
doctor couldn' do she no good ; clever as they may be, they caint do
nothin' to stop it when a body have a-got a spell like this a-put on
to 'em.

' For two months she peeked an' pined, got thinner an' thinner,
worser an' worser, till she couldn' so much as turn herself over in
bed. Then, one evenin' late, Shep came in an' asked I if I'd please
to come in, 'cos his missus wer' sinkin' terr'ble fast. I didn' much
care about the job, for 'tis ticklish work interferin' wi' they what
be under a spell, but when I thought upon the poor 'oman a-lyin'
ther' wi' nobody to attend to 'en like, I thinks to myself, " Yes,
I'll go, an' take the risk o't."

* Lor', how she'd a-altered to be sure ! She wer' got that thin
you could pretty nigh see dhrough 'en, an' she bed ther' coughin' fit
to spit her lights up. I bed up wi' her all the night, an' just as
the marnin' wer' breakin' she looks up at I s'pittyful, an' says, " I
be goin' fast now," she says, " I d'know all about it, but I tell 'ee
straight, Sarah, I couldn' help myself; I wer' forced to do it. Will
'ee please give Shep a call, I d'want to speak to 'en."

' I holleyed to 'en to come s'quick's he could, but afore he could
come up the stairs she wer' gone whome to her rest. I did all as

8 Do allow.

1020 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

was necessary for the poor body, an' then I tells Shep I wer' goin'
back to make a cup o' tea, an' asked he to come over an' have a cup.
" By'm'by," he says, " I'll come in by'm'by ; an' thank'ee kindly for
what you've a- done for I."

' D'rectly I come out o' house I seed Dairyman ; he'd a-got a
terr'ble scared look on's face, same's if he'd a-seen ghostesses ;
an' he says to me, " Sarah, what's a-goin' on in ther' ? When I
came out o' house, 'bout of a half-hour ago, I seed a gr't bird draw
out o' top o' chimney — put me in mind o' a gr't black owl. He sot
upon top o' the chimney for a minute or two, flappin's gr't black
wings, and then fleed away straight's a line for 'Oodlands Copse."

' " She's dead," I made answer. " Lizbeth's dead an' stark ; I've
just been doin' the needful for her."

' " What," says he, " do'ee mean to say as she be dead ? Then
I tell'ee what 'tis ; thic bird what I seed wer' she sure enough, an' I
d' 'low 9 twer' her spirit-like goin' whome. I'll go in an' tell the missus
all about it." '

Widow Cotton paused and rubbed the back of her horny, mis-
shapen hand over her eyes. ' Ah, sir,' she said, ' tis a terr'ble thing
to be witness of when any person be put under a spell.'

' And what about the pigs and cows ? ' I inquired ; ' were they all
right after that ? '

' Yes, oh yes,' she responded, ' they never had any more trouble
wi' their cows an' that so long's ever we knowed 'em. John an' me
bed ther' close on five years after Shep's wife died, an' ther' wadn'
so much as the death o' a nestletripe that I can mind o'.'

' You said that you had known Nance Bridle for many years.
Do you know of any other instances of her power over witches ? '

' Why, yes, sir, a plenty. I can mind when I seed her the first
time, at my aunt's house up to Buston, when Charl wer' took bad —
but 'tis gettin' late, sir, make so bold ; but next time you do come
to see I I'll tell'ee how twer' wi' Charl Gollop.'

So, with the promise of hearing another story from her, I took
my leave, determining to pay her another visit at an early date.

How CHARLES GOLLOP WAS ' OVERLOOKED.'

A week passed before I once more found myself in Widow Cotton's
cottage, eager to hear the story of her first acquaintance with Nance
Bridle. After some conventional inquiries as to the state of her
health, and the mutual retailing of a little of the current gossip, she
commenced her story :

' It must have been ten or twelve years earlier than the time I
told'ee of, when I an' John went to 'Oodlands, that I first met wi'
Nance. I wer' a maiden then, an' wer' out to service.

9 Do allow.

1903 W ESSEX WITCHES 1021

' So when they gied I a week's holiday, 'stead o' I goin' whome,
I made up my mind I'd pass the time wi' my Aunt Alice. She an'
Uncle did rent the dairy at Buston from Squire 'Ood — an' a pretty
dairy it was, too, to be sure. I don't know whe'r you was ever to
Buston, sir ? But, 'tis a terr'ble out-step place, ten mile from
Darchester, an' only one carrier a week, to an' fro.

'Twer' winter time, an' dark, when carrier stopped at the top o'
the lane for me to get out, an' I wer' just about shrammed with the
cwold. Aunt opened the door to my knock, an' I could see at once
she wer' all of a fluster-like.

' " Ah, Sarah," she says, "'tis but a awkward place you've a-come
to, an' 'tis a deal o' trouble you'll find we in."

' "What's the matter, Aunt?" I says. "Is one o' the childern
bad ? " You see, sir, I knowed how she wer' took up wi' the childern,
an' I guessed at once what wer' the cause of her worry.

' " No, not yet" she says, " but I be afeared to make a boast,
seem' as what have already befalled. But come on in, child; supper
is ready an' waitin', an' after we've a-had our fill I'll set-to an' tell'ee
all about it."

' Grollop wer' sot down in chimney-corner, nursin's head in's hand,
an' he did but turn 'self an' grunt out " 'Evenin' to'ee, Sarah," 'stead o'
gie'n me a kiss as her did always used to do. Charl, their woldest
bwoy, wer' sot down over-right Uncle, but he roused hisself an' met
me wi' a half-ashamed kiss — he wer' fourteen year wold, look, an'
bwoys be bashful at that age — leastways, they did used to be.

' We had our bit o' supper, but Charl an' I wer' the only ones
as het into it rightly, Uncle an' Aunt seemin's if every mouthful
'ould choke 'em. When I'd a-had my fill, Aunt, wi' tears in her
eyes, an' kind o' half-whisperin', said, " Sarah," she says, " 'tis evil
times be come upon us, child ; the fact is we be overlooked by some-
body or other — who 'tis d'do 10 it we caint be sure, but I've a-got my
thoughts." An' she shook her head meaningly.

• " I tell'ee I 'on't believe it, Mother," says Uncle ; " I 'on't believe
no such wicked thing o' folks."

'"What is it then, Aunt?" I asks; 'cos I wer' curious-like
to know what really wer' the matter, seem' as how they had but
spoke in parables, like the old ancient people in the Testament.

' " Everything's the matter," Aunt replied. " The whole place
is under a spell. It began 'bout o' a month ago wi' the calves
refusin' to suck ; then the butter 'ouldn' come, no matter how long
we did churny ; then the chicken' stopped layin', all at one time.
Yesterday, wold Bill Parsons hatched's leg into a hole goin' over
Cas'way, an' put's knee out o' place — an' now, the next thing'll be
the childern. Oh, they'll be took, they'll be took," she sobbed, "an'
we shall be lef desolate."

10 Do do = does.

1022 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

' Charl went on up to bed, an' before very long we went on too ;
an' I wer' that tired out I slep' like a log, as the sayin' is.

' Nothin' happened in the night, but the nex' marnin', as we was
sot down to breakfast, Charl got up all of a sudden an' started
ditherin' like a leaf; then he set-to holleyin', an' goin' up to wher'
a gr't old-fashioned chair stood in the earner o' the kitchen, he
lay down an' started climbin' in an' out o' the rungs o'n,11 for all
the world like one o' they water-snakes twistin' in an' out o' the
rushes.

' " Ther'," says Aunt, " didn' I tell'ee how t'ould be ? Oh, my
poor bwoy, my poor bwoy ! "

' Up gets Uncle, an' walks over to wher' the bwoy wer' to.
"Stop it, will'ee?" he says. "Stop it, Charl, else I'll set-to an'
warm'ee." Charl never took no notice o' what Uncle said to 'en,
but just kep' on goin' in an' out o' the rungs. Then Uncle picks
up a stick an' gies 'en a pretty clout or two across's back ; but all
'twas he holleyed the louder, but never stopped's antics.

' That made Uncle kind o' feared that Charl wer' really over-
looked, an' he turns to Aunt an' says, " I be goin' to see if I caint
meet wi' Nance Bridle ; she's a cunnin' 'oman, she is, an' if anybody
can find out the rights o' this business, 'tis she."

' In bout of a hour an' a half Uncle comes back wi' Nance in the
trap, an' all the time he wer' gone Charl just kep' on climbin' dhrough
the chair, till it made I pretty near giddy to bide an' watch 'en.

' Nance come in an' wished us the time o' day, an' then turned
to Charl. " Poor child," she says, " to think that anyone could be so
wicked as to torment a bwoy like that ! There, my dear," says Nance,
talkin' direct to Charl. " do you come an' talk to I, there's a good
bwoy." But Charl only went on the faster wi's games.

' " Can'ee tell I what we'd best to do ? " asked Uncle.

' " Ah, that I can," replies Nance ; " I can show'ee the way to
find out who' tis d'do it ; an' I can gie'ee a charm to stop it, too.
Now, to-morrow marnin', so soon's ever you do come downstairs, you
take an' put a bezom across the doorway ; then you bide still an*
watch, an' see what do happen. The witch- 'oman, whoever 'tis, 'on't
be able to come in door, but'll bide outside an' call out. When
you've a-found out who 'tis, you take an' put these charm under her
bed-clothes, 'pon top o' the mattress, look, only be sure an' see as she
don't know you've a-done it." And Nance brings out of her pocket a
little waxen figure wi' a lot o' pins stuck into 'en ; she showed 'en to
us, all but the face, an' that she said we must not look at. She
wropped 'en up into a piece o' paper an' tied 'en wi' a piece o' string
an' gied 'en to Uncle. " To-night," she goes on, " when you do go
upstairs to bed, you put a whip athirt the staircase ; that'll stop her
from comin' up I d' 'low, whatever shape she do come in."

11 Of 'en = of him.

1903 WESSEX WITCHES 1023

' Uncle an' Aunt thanked Nance for her words o' comfort, an'
Nance went off whome-along.

'Ther' was eight cottages handy to the Dairy, the folks what
lived in 'em working mostly for Squire 'Ood, but in one o'm lived a
wold widey 'oman named Ann Blain. She wer' past work, an' lived
on a small pension what Squire's mother had a-lef her by will.
Now the nex' marnin' Aunt put the bezom across door, same's Nance
said for, an' we bed an' watched to see who should come. You see,
sir, most all the folk did send up marnin's for their drop o' milk,
an' we thought it likely enough that the wicked-'oman 'ould come
among the rest.'

'But,' I interrupted, 'what about the boy Charl; was he still
climbing in and out of the chair rungs ? '

1 No, sir, to be sure not ; he quieted down very soon after Nance
lef , an' wer' all right in the afternoon-part. Well, as I was sayin',
we waited an' watched. First goin' off come Mary Snook, the carter's
wife : but she seed the bezom an' steps over 'en into dairy — so we
knowed it wadn' she. Then come dhree little childern, an' they never
took no notice o' nothin'. Then come Ann Blain, the wold widey-
'oman what I twold'ee of, but 'stead o' she comin' in same's other
folks'd a-done she bed outside an' cried out, jist same's if anybody
wer' a-beatin' o' her.

' Uncle, he went out o' door an' asked she why she did bide ther'
an' holley so, an' as she hadn' no hreply to gie'en he says : " Ah, 'tis
you we've a-got to thank, is it, for doin' us all these kindness ? You,
what've a-had many a drop o' milk free ; aye, an' more'n one score
o' aigs gied'ee.'* '

' Down she goes on her knees, plop. " Maester," she says,
" dont'ee go to be hard on a poor wold 'oman, dont'ee now. If s'be's
you'll look over it these time I swear to'ee I'll never do nothin' but
pray for'ee on my bended knees whiles ever ther's breath lef in my
wold body. Missus," she says, catchin' sight o' Aunt, " do'ee now 'cede
for me, a poor wicked 'oman, wi' the Maester yhere, an' beg 'en to
show's mercy."

' Uncle always wer' a tender-hearted man when twer' anything to
do wi' a 'oman, an' so after frightenin' her a tidy bit, an' showin' her
the charm what he'd a-got, he promised not to punish her these
time.

' She never gied they no more trouble wi' her evil practices, but
I can mind when they left, an' Dairyman Palmer took on the dairy,
all the mishtie you can think o' came to he. The pigs never farr'd
till days late, an' then twer' a trip o' little better than nestletripes ;
the cows got rafty an' hooked one another ; all the cats got drownded
in the water-wheel, an' the hrats carried away all the chicken. Oh,
twer' terr'ble what went on at that dairy.

' Palmer knowed, o' course, as someone wer' wishin* them ill, but

1024 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

although he asked all the neighbours who it could be, none o'em
'ouldn' tell on the wold widey-'oman.

' But one marnin', when Palmer wer' goin' over Cas'way to fetch
the cows, 'er seed a gr't white hare come lopity-lop all across groun',
an' he folley'd 'en, an' seed 'en run into Ann Blain's cottage ; an' he
took to's heels an' runned after 'en, an' when 'er wer' come in 'er
seed wold Ann a-vlung down into a chair, a-pantin' same's if her
heart 'ould burst. 'Course 'er knowed, d'rec'ly minute, who twer' as
had a-ill wished 'em, an' so 'er goes to Conjurer Baker, a cunnin'-man
what did live out on Afpul Heath, an' gets he to give 'en a spell, an'
that wer' the end o' Ann Blain.'

' And you mean to say,' I queried, ' that she had taken on the
form of a hare ? '

' Ah, a hare, sure enough,' replied Widow Cotton. ' Dont'ee know,
sir, as they witches be able to change theirselves into the shape o'
any animal pretty near ; but 'tis mostly a hare or a black cat they
do hidey in.'

'Is there any way to distinguish a witch from any ordinary
woman ? ' I asked.

' Well, ther', I can tell 'em fast enough, but I 'on't go so far as
to say that anybody can tell 'em. They do most always wear
summat red about 'em — maybe a red hat or a red cloak when
they be out walkin', an' they've a-got a funny way in their walk —
'tis more like a wamble than a proper step.'

HERMANN LEA.

1-903

THE INCREASE OF CANCER

AMONG the maladies which affect the human race there are three
classes which are so largely responsible for premature death that
.they are not only to be looked upon as subjects of interest and dis-
cussion among medical men, but must be recognised as matters of
grave national concern. For this reason the zymotic and tuberculous
diseases have long engaged the attention of the statesman as well as
of the general public, and much has already been done to identify
the causes and to diminish the insanitary conditions which lead to
their occurrence, so that many of them can now be classed under
the title of preventable disease.

Eecently attention has been directed to the third class — the group
.known under the generic term of ' malignant growths ' — and it may
not unreasonably be hoped that a closer study of the conditions
-under which these arise may lead, in this case also, to methods of
prevention, if not of cure.

The steady increase in the mortality from cancer during the last
.thirty years is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history
of medicine. In England the death-rate from cancer, which was in
1890, 67-6, had in 1900 risen to 82'8 per 100,000 living; an increase
in round numbers of 4,500 in the annual total of deaths from this
disease.

The following figures show more exactly the bearing of this
xieath-rate :

Death-rate from Cancer per 100,000
living in 1900

Proportion of Cancer deaths
to 100 deaths from all causes

Proportion of Cancer deaths to 100
deaths from all causes of persons
of thirty-five years of age and up-
wards

82-8

4-5

8-5

It will be seen that the disease caused nearly one in twenty of
the whole number of deaths in the year, and rather more than one in
twelve of the deaths of those over thirty-five; in 1890 the propor-
tion of the latter was only one in twenty.

The steady yearly increase in Ihe mortality from cancer is the
Tnore striking from the fact that it has manifested itself at a period
'during which hygienic conditions have in every way improved.

VOL. LIU— Xo. 316 1025 3 X

1026 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

>

Moreover, the great advances of surgery during the same time have
enabled operations for the removal of the disease never before
undertaken to be performed with success. From this point of view
it would, therefore, appear that the increase of the disease has been
even greater than the larger mortality would indicate.

The constant growth of the proportion of deaths from malignant
disease which has been observed in England is equally noticeable in
Ireland, which has always had a comparatively low cancer mortality,
but where the recent increase has been great enough to induce the
Kegistrar-General to issue a special report on the subject. Further,
it is not in the United Kingdom alone that the death-rate from this
terrible disease grows steadily year by year ; the same phenomenon
is exhibited in almost every other country in the world. This is
shown by the following table, which gives the death-rate from
cancer in 1890 and 1900 in the countries named :

Death-rate from Cancer per 100,000 Living.

1890 1900

Ireland 46 61

Prussia 45 61

Holland 79 91

Norway 61 84

The above figures, showing a growth of more than 30 per cent, in-
a period of ten years, cannot but be extremely alarming, and lead to
the impression that if the rising tide cannot be checked cancer will,
within a measurable period, be as great a scourge as the worst
plagues of the Middle Ages.

It must, however, be admitted that it is doubtful whether there
has been a real increase in the number of deaths quite as large as
the comparative rates would lead us to suppose. Three facts have
been suggested which may go to explain the larger figure which
appears opposite to the heading ' Deaths from Cancer.' First, it is
said that the older statistics were extremely imperfect ; secondly,
ttat the mortality from other diseases is now less than formerly, and
therefore more survive to the later periods of life; thirdly, that
improved methods of diagnosis have enabled many cases to be
identified which were not formerly classed as cases of cancer. The
first two points appear to be of little value. The statistical errors
would probably not be all in one direction ; nor does there appear to
have been any sufficient increase in longevity in the last ten years
to justify the assumption that an apparent increase in cancer could
be assigned to this cause.

It is, however, no doubt true that greater knowledge and
accuracy in dealing with disease lead to the result that many deaths
are now properly registered as from cancer which in former years
would have been ascribed to another cause. The truth of this is
shown by the fact that it is not external cancers which have so

1903 THE INCREASE OF CANCER 1027

largely increased, but those in the more inaccessible parts of the
body, and for that reason more difficult to recognise. So far as these
cases are concerned, then, the expansion of the death-rate is apparent
rather than real. At the same time, it is scarcely probable that
diagnosis has been so steadily improving from year to year as to
account for the annual growth of the figures. The truth appears to
be that there has been a considerable increase in the deaths from
cancer, but not so great as the figures would at first sight lead us to
believe.

While, however, this is a matter of considerable interest to
students of statistics, it must not be forgotten that it has no bearing
on the amount of cancer at present prevailing. Could it even be
established that the whole of the increase in the death-rate is only
apparent, this would merely show that the disease was more common
in past years than was supposed, and not less common now than the
figures indicate; the grave fact is, that cancer was the cause in
England and Wales alone of 26,721 deaths in 1900. When, in
connection with this, it is remembered that the only hope of relief
is to be found in the complete removal of the growth at an early
stage, and that the disease is not to be cured or its progress stayed
by any means at the disposal of medical science, it is evident that
every possible investigation should be made which offers any hope
of leading to the discovery of the cause. For it is clear that then
only will it be possible to effectively treat this terrible malady.
It may reasonably be hoped that in this, as in so many other cases,
the discovery of the antidote will follow closely upon the identifi-
cation of the poison.

The search for the cause of cancer has been considerably delayed
by the view being long held that no such specific cause existed.
For years the battle raged between the supporters of the rival
theories of the constitutional and of the local origin of the malady,
but neither party, at that time, had any suspicion of the existence
of a definite external agent. The constitutionalists regarded this
disease as a typical example of the result of a constitutional, i.e.
hereditary, taint, and consequently took a hopeless view both as
regards prevention and cure. The localists, considering malignant
growths as the frequent result of a continuous local irritation, saw
no reason for looking further for an explanation of their origin.

Both these views have been much modified as with the advance of
medical science the conditions have been better understood. First, it
has been gradually recognised how large a proportion of the deaths
of individuals over forty is the result of cancer, and it has, therefore,
become increasingly evident that the probabilities are in favour of a
sufferer from this disease having one or more relations numbered
among its victims. Further, the whole attitude of medical science
towards what was known as hereditary disease has greatly changed in

3x2

1028 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

recent years. While it is admitted that anatomical and physiological
peculiarities are inherited which may predispose the system to the
attacks of special disorders, it is now denied by many qualified observers
that any disease is ever directly transmitted from parent to child.
Many diseases once considered among the most marked examples
of hereditary maladies are now recognised to be infectious. Con-
sumption, long considered a typically hereditary disease, is now
known to be entirely due to the action of a special bacillus intro-
duced from -without, and it is understood that the hereditary element
only comes into play in so far as it may provide a suitable soil for
the development of the microbe.

The result of this general change in the point of view from which
constitutional diseases are now regarded is that a definite outside
cause for cancer is being sought for more than ever before. By
many it is thought that the disease must be of bacterial origin, and
careful examination is continually being made with the view to
isolating the special micro-organism, although hitherto without
success. Others consider that over-indulgence in certain articles of
diet, such as meat, fish, salt, or raw vegetables, invites the onset of
the malady ; while it must be admitted that there are some who still
see the cause in mental anxiety or faulty hygienic surroundings.

I shall have to refer again to most of these theories, no one of
which has found general acceptance — a matter which is not surprising
when it is considered that in almost every case the opinion has been
founded on a very limited number of facts. It will be easily under-
stood that the deductions of even a highly skilled observer are
likely to be erroneous if they be drawn mainly from the cases which
have come under his individual observation, even if in some instances
the number of these is large. A wider outlook would appear to be
necessary in order to arrive at some definite conclusion, and in
attempting to discover the etiology of a disease such as the one
under consideration it is desirable to examine the statistics of deaths
among large masses of people living under various conditions.

With this view I have recently made a series of calculations
based on the recorded death-rates in most of the principal countries
of Europe, as well as in some parts of the United States, and on
the next page will be found the crude death-rate from cancer for
various countries (mostly for the year 1900).

These figures show how greatly the incidence of cancer varies in
different countries. While, however, some interesting inferences may
be drawn from this fact, there are at least two reasons why the
comparison of the death-rate from this disease in one country with
that in another, would not give results which would be entirely trust-
worthy. In the first place, it must be observed that in some States
the deaths from certain forms of tumour are included which in other
countries are not comprised under the heading of cancer, and it is

1903 THE INCREASE OF CANCER 1029

Death-rate from Cancer per 100,000 Living.

England and Wales 82'8

Scotland 81-0

Ireland 61'0

France (towns only) l 104'0

German Empire " 72'7

Austria 704

Italy 62-1

Switzerland3 132-0

Holland 91-3

Norway 84-5

United States (registration area) . . . 60'0

thus not always certain what diseases exactly are classed under this
heading. Secondly, the strictness of the laws concerning registra-
tion varies immensely in different States.

For these reasons I determined to take each country separately,
and to investigate the incidence of cancer by examining the death-
rates in its different divisions as compared with one another. The
results so obtained were extremely interesting, and threw much light
on the causes which underlie the development of a high mortality
from malignant disease. The full tables which have been published
elsewhere 4 are too long to be included in this article, but some of the
figures will be found below. At the same time, I propose to explain
the mode of calculation adopted and to point out what were the
principal conclusions which resulted from the inquiry.

In each country the districts taken were those into which the
State was ordinarily divided. In England, counties; in France,
departments ; in Germany and Austria, states and provinces were
separately considered. A division into smaller units would be
desirable, but could not be undertaken in this first inquiry.

In each district chosen the population, total number of deaths
from all causes and deaths from cancer in one year were, except in
one or two cases, obtained from official sources ; and from these facts
the proportion of cancer both to the population and to the general
mortality was obtained. The resulting figures were in each country
compared with one another, and not with tho?e of any other State,
thus avoiding the sources of error already referred to.

One other calculation was absolutely necessary in order to arrive
at correct results. Cancer is essentially a disease of the latter half
of life; the deaths below thirty are quite inconsiderable, between
thirty and forty they are comparatively few, while from forty to

1 Cancer et Tumeur.

2 Neubildungen.

3 No official figures being available for Switzerland, the figure given is the one
stated by Nencki.

* Britiili Medical Journal, the 18th and 25th of April, the 1st, 8th, and 15th of
May, 1903.

1030 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

seventy the susceptibility to this disease increases rapidly in each
decade. At the same time, populations vary greatly in age-
distribution, one area often containing a far greater number of
persons over forty than another of similar size. It was not
sufficient, therefore, to calculate the number of deaths from cancer
compared with the number of inhabitants of the district under con-
sideration, but it was further necessary to calculate the proportion
which those deaths bore to the total mortality in persons of adult
age.

In the figures given below it will be observed that capital cities
have usually been omitted from the calculation ; this is because
these, with their numerous hospitals and infirmaries, attract many
patients from a distance, and present a mortality from cancer far in
excess of the real incidence of the disease among the citizens.

The great variations in the mortality from cancer in different
districts is well shown in England and Wales, where the highest
rate of 108, in the county of Huntingdon, contrasts with one of only
GO -6 per 100,000 in the county of Monrnouth. A careful com-
parison of the death-rates from cancer in English counties among
persons over thirty-five years of age was prepared by the Kegistrar-
General in 1895, and the table so prepared is the best that can be
used for an investigation of the question in this country, as the
annual reports since issued show that the counties presenting the
largest number of deaths continue to be the same.

The following list gives the average rate for the whole country
and for the six counties (omitting London) having the highest
rates :

Corrected Death-rate from Cancer per 100,000 Living, Aged Thirty-Jive
Years and Upwards.

England and Wales 184-4

Huntingdon 2157

Cambridgeshire ...... 201'2

Sussex . . . , . . . .3999

Warwickshire ...... 197-G

Cumberland ....... 191'4

North Wales 191-4

From these figures it was not possible to draw any very definite
conclusions, the question in England being somewhat complicated
by the small size of the counties and the facilities of communica-
tion, conditions which often lead to sufferers from a slow disease
like cancer dying in some part of the country at a distance from
their homes. It will be impossible to form a really accurate
estimate of the incidence of malignant disease in each of the
counties of England until all deaths in public institutions are
transferred by the registrars to the districts from which the
deceased came. At the same time, it will be found that the con-

1903 THE INCREASE OF GANGER 1031

elusions derived from the examination of statistics of other countries
are not contradicted by those of England.

More valuable information is to be gained by the study of cancer
mortality in the different parts of France, Germany, and Austria.
For all of these accurate and official figures were obtainable, both of
population and of deaths from various causes, from which it has been
possible to make the necessary calculation. In France, although
there are no statistics for the absolutely rural districts, figures are
given for all towns, even for the very small places known as ' chefs-
lieux d'arrondissement,' and the aggregate mortality in all of these
may be fairly taken to represent the general incidence of a disease in
the department to which the towns belong.

In the table given further on will be found a list of those divisions
in France, Germany, and Austria which show the highest mortality
from cancer, together with the average mortality in the whole
country.

The figures are extremely instructive, and the statistics of these
countries appeared to afford important indications, both negative and
positive, as to the causation of malignant growths.

First, it will be observed that in each of these three States there
are, as in England, distinct areas of high cancer mortality ; these, it
may be mentioned, have been equally well marked for many years,
and contrast with others in which the proportion of deaths from this
disease has been persistently low. This fact suggested that the cause
of the malady was not to be found in some condition which is likely
to be equally distributed over the whole country, such as local irrita-
tion, mental anxiety, or defective hygiene. The first conclusion to
be drawn was that the disease apparently owes its origin to a specific
cause, endemic in certain localities.

The second point which is noticeable is that all the districts of
high cancer mortality are districts in which beer or cider is largely
consumed. In Bavaria, which heads the list in Germany, it is well
known that more beer is consumed per head than in any State in the
world ; while the province of Salzburg has the largest consumption
of beer of any Austrian province. The fact, however, was most
striking in France, where the contrast was very marked between the
departments of high cancer mortality, in all of which beer is largely
drunk, and the departments in the centre and south, where the death-
rate from cancer among the wine-drinking population was persistently
low. The second conclusion, then, was that the consumption of beer
(and perhaps of cider) has a distinct influence on the development of
cancer.

One other matter deserves great attention. In each of the three
countries the areas in which the deaths from cancer are most
numerous comprise extensive forest lands and are altogether well-
wooded districts, abounding in water, whether in the form of lakes

1032

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1903 THE INCREASE OF CANCER 1033

or streams. In fact, this is the chief geographical feature which,
these divisions have in common. While varying greatly in geo-
logical conformation, in elevation, climate and rainfall, the north-
eastern departments of France, the States of Bavaria and Baden in
Germany, and the provinces of Salzburg and Tyrol in Austria, as well
as the country along the Upper Danube, resemble each other
in being the most thickly wooded portions of their respective
countries. It may here be noted that Sussex and Warwickshire, the
best-wooded English counties, are among those having the highest
death-rate from cancer.

The third conclusion, therefore, was that the specific cause of
cancer is most likely to be found in well-watered districts covered
thickly with woods.

A similar estimate of the local distribution of cancer was made
for almost every country in Europe for which sufficient facts were
available to form a basis for the calculation, and also for those States
of the United States of America in which registration of death has
been made compulsory. As a result, it was found that the con-
clusions arrived at were in no case contradicted, and were mostly
confirmed.

In addition, a few other points resulted from the inquiry, which
may be shortly referred to. There appeared to be no evidence that
the distribution of cancer was much influenced by geological con-
formation, climate, rainfall, or elevation ; wherever this had appeared
to be the case other facts could usually be found to explain it.
Neither did an increased mortality appear to be caused by the
consumption of any of the various articles of food to which much
influence in the production of the disease has been ascribed; nor
did there appear to be any special relation between the distribu-
tion of cancer and that of tuberculosis or malaria, as has been from
time to time suggested.

On the other hand, certain races seemed to have a greater
susceptibility than others to cancer, a tendency especially marked
among peoples of Teutonic or Scandinavian origin, while an ex-
ceptionally low mortality was most often noted among Celtic or
Sclavonic peoples. This fact appeared at first sight to lend strong
support to the view of a hereditary predisposition to the malady.
In the United States, however, death-statistics have been carefully
calculated for each nationality separately, and it is remarkable to find
that in that country the frequency with which people of different
races suffer from malignant growths is altogether altered and the
order of susceptibility often reversed. As an example, the pro-
portion of deaths resulting from cancer among persons of Norwegian
or Bohemian origin in the United States is exceptionally low, while
both in Norway and Bohemia it is unusually high. This suggested
the probability that it is not race alone, or chiefly, but the habits and

1034 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

environment of 'different peoples, which determine the greater or less
susceptibility to the disease.

The three positive conclusions as to the cause of cancer which
resulted from the above-explained statistical inquiry may now be
examined a little more in detail.

The suggestion that cancer owes its origin to a specific cause as
individual as that which causes scarlet -fever, typhoid or tuberculosis,
is not by any means a new one. For many years past attention has
from time to time been called to this view, with its almost necessary
corollary that the disease is to some extent infectious.

The credit of having been the first to bring to the notice of the
public the apparently contagious character of cancer in some cases is
due to Arnaudet, a doctor in the small village of Cormeilles, in
Normandy. Arnaudet made a careful study of the topography and
chronology of cancer, first in his village, and then in those of the
neighbourhood. In Cormeilles itself, he found that in a street of
fifty-four houses seventeen of these had furnished no fewer than
twenty-one cases of cancer. In neighbouring villages similar facts
were observed, and he arrived at the conclusion that the disease was
propagated either by direct contagion, or by infection through water,
or through cider made with infected water. Another ' doctor,
Fiessinger, found in the small town of Oyonnax that the yearly
deaths from cancer among the 4,500 inhabitants dwelling in 500
houses were three or four, while a group of three houses at the end
of the town supplied a contingent of five cases in four years. In
none of these cases, it may be said, were the victims related to one
another. Since this time numerous similar groups of cases have
been reported in this country, as well as in France, and the subject
of ' cancer houses ' is one which is constantly being brought to the
notice of the medical profession. A recent investigation by a
committee of inquiry into cancer in Germany brought to light
several instances in that country ; and others were reported to the
Registrar-General for Ireland, and are cited by him in the report to
which reference has already been made. All these facts were
•extremely suggestive. In addition, instances have not been wanting
of cases where the contagion was apparently direct, as in husband
and wife or other near relatives.

In that part of my inquiry which dealt with the incidence of
cancer in the United States a fact came under notice having a very
striking bearing upon this point.

The death-rate from the disease among domestic servants in that
country between forty-five and sixty-five years of age is double, and
above sixty-five three times the average. Among nurses also the
rate is almost equally in excess. This exceptionally high mortality
•among women who are more likely than any others to be brought

1903 THE INCREASE OF CANCER 1035

into intimate contact with sufferers from the malady affords the
strongest evidence of the contagious character of cancer.

In the course of the statistical investigation it was found that
in every country, without exception, there were limited districts in
which a high mortality from malignant growths was persistent ; while
instances came under notice in which in those districts there were
smaller areas which appeared to be foci of cancer, and in which the
death-rate from this disease was extraordinary. The latter fact was
observed in certain parts of France, Switzerland and Italy, and
similar instances were noted by the German statistical committee
already referred to. I think, therefore, that there can be no doubt
that cancer owes its origin to a specific infectious cause. Whether
this belongs to the class of micro-organisms to which so many
similar diseases are known to be due it is impossible at present to
say ; but it is highly probable that some such organism will before
long be discovered. It is fairly certain that a prolonged exposure to
the contagion is required for the production of the disease ; and it is
not improbable that some superadded condition, such as a local
irritation, may be necessary to stir the infective cause into activity,
even after it has gained access to the body. This is said to be the
case in leprosy.

With regard to the curious fact of the influence of beer in
promoting a susceptibility to cancer the evidence appeared to be
extremely convincing. In so far as there has been a real increase in
the mortality, it may not improbably bear a direct relation to the
increased consumption of beer in recent years. The amount con-
sumed in the United Kingdom, which was twenty-seven gallons per
head in 1885, was thirty-one and a half gallons in 1900; and in the
German Empire the consumption rose in the same period from
ninety to one hundred and twenty-five litres per head. In countries,
such as Italy and Hungary, in which the consumption of beer is
small the mortality from carcinomatous disease is far below the
average. In France, the fact has already been mentioned that beer
is largely consumed in those departments in which the cancer-rate
is exceptionally high (although cider also is here one of the staple
drinks), and it may be pointed out that the rate is particularly low
in many of those departments in the wine-growing districts in which
beer is an unusual luxury. It was also noted that the two towns in
France in which most beer per head is consumed, Kouen and Lille,
have a high death-rate from the disease. In the latter, if the official
figures may be depended upon, both the cancer-rate and the
consumption of beer are exceptional. In Germany, from a return
lately made to Parliament, it appears that Bavaria, Baden, and
Wiirtemberg are the three States showing the largest consumption
of beer, and it will be seen that these all figure in the list of those
having a high cancer-rate. In Austria, Salzburg is stated to be the

1036 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

province in which, most beer is consumed, followed at some distance
by Bohemia and Upper and Lower Austria. In no country could
any instance be discovered in which a large consumption of beer was
accompanied by a low cancer mortality.

No decided explanation of the influence of beer on the production
of the disease under consideration can be given at present. It is
fairly certain that it is not due to its intoxicating quality, as a
similar effect is not observed in the case of other alcoholic beverages.
It is, of course, possible that the beer may sometimes contain some
deleterious ingredient, such as arsenic, which may predispose to the
disease, but this is scarcely likely to be the case all over Europe ;
and with regard to the influence of arsenic, it may be noted that
cancer is not very common among the arsenic-eaters of Styria.
The effect of beer is most probably to be accounted for by the fact
that the specific infective cause of cancer finds an entrance into the
drink either through the water from which it is made, or perhaps,
not improbably, from the malt itself.

The fact observed in the countries for which the figures have
been given above, that regions of high cancer mortality were also
for the most part regions of woods and forests, was noted also in
other countries. The disease is extremely prevalent in the timber
districts of the United States and Norway, as well as among the
population of the wooded parts of Switzerland.

In addition to the facts already given with regard to Germany,
it is noteworthy that in Bavaria the wooded portion of the State is
the one showing the highest cancer mortality. The same fact
obtains for that division of Baden which includes the Black Forest,
as compared with other parts of the Grand Duchy. In North
Germany also, where on the whole the death-rate from cancer is not
high, the Duchy of Brunswick is an exception in this respect, and,
as is well known, this is a thickly wooded country, the preparation
of timber being one of its chief industries.

The fact was even more noticeable that populations inhabiting
bare districts deprived of timber furnished comparatively few cases of
the disease. In Switzerland, the canton Ticino is almost alone in
exhibiting a low cancer mortality, and this canton has been almost
entirely deforested. Again, in Austria, the province of Dalmatia,
which has now no forest land, shows the lowest cancer-rate in the
whole of the Cis-Leithian empire, while the provinces with the
highest death-rate from this disease are all among those most thickly
wooded.

In our own country, while Sussex and Warwickshire, and, it may
be added, Devonshire, have an alarming number of deaths from
malignant disease, the bare lands of the Black Country are among
the lowest on the list ; similarly, the death-rate from cancer in the

1903 THE INCREASE OF CANCER 1037

West of Ireland, which has been almost entirely deforested, is
extremely low. The facts on this point were everywhere so striking
that they seemed to establish beyond question that a focus of cancer
infection is to be found in regions abounding in woods and water.

Occasional references have previously been made to the fact of
the frequency of death from cancer among persons living in houses
surrounded by trees. Lloyd Jones, writing (in 1899) on the various
conditions under which cancer was observed in Cambridge, says :
' Proximity to trees, especially large ones, is connected in some way
with the prevalence of cancer. The part of the town which is most
free from cancer is singularly devoid of trees and vegetation, while
the disease is very prevalent in well-wooded parts of the town and
among houses hemmed in by trees.' He does not, however, appear
to have followed up this observation, nor does this seem to have
struck him as a more important influence than many other points to
which he refers, such as soil, elevation, &c.

Similar facts had been noticed by other observers, both here and
on the Continent, especially by the French surgeon Noel, who, in
the year 1897, published a paper on the subject suggesting that
cancer was due to infection from a disease of trees known in France
as Cancre des arbves. Noel's theory lacks proof, and seems to rest
chiefly on the analogy of name and character between the vegetable
malady and malignant growths in man. Very strong evidence
would be required to prove that a tree parasite could be directly
implanted in the human subject. A more probable explanation is
that the same conditions which promote the growth of the fungus
producing tree canker are also favourable to the development of the
infective cause of cancer.

Whatever may be the exact explanation, the geographical dis-
tribution of carcinomatous disease leaves little doubt but that the
regions described are centres of infection. From these centres it
seems probable that the disease may be widely distributed by the
streams and rivers flowing through them, and this may account for
the fact, so often noticed, that cancer is especially prevalent in some
river valleys, although not in others.

It is now extremely desirable that a careful examination should
be made of cancer mortality in these wooded districts, but in smaller
areas than I have been able to compare, and thus gradually to narrow
the circle of inquiry until the exact spots can be found in which
the disease is most persistently endemic. Moreover, it would be
valuable to ascertain whether any special description of tree pre-
dominates in these localities.

In addition, if the consumption of beer has as potent an
influence in leading to the development of malignant disease as
would appear, it is absolutely necessary to settle beyond question

1038 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

from what constituent of the beverage the maleficent influence is
derived.

While it is to be hoped that the research which is everywhere
being conducted in laboratories may soon lead to the discovery of
the cause and cure of cancer, I suggest that the above-mentioned
points may meanwhile well occupy the attention of those interested
in the public health.

ALFRED WOLFF.

1903

THE TAJ AND ITS DESIGNERS

ALL who Lave seen the great masterpiece of Indian architecture, the-
Taj at Agra, or know it by illustration and description, are familiar
with the legends which ascribe its conception to the genius of some
obscure Italian architect, and its exquisite inlaid decoration to
Austin de Bordeaux, a French adventurer, who was employed for
some years at the court of Shah Jehan. The readiness with which
the tradition has been accepted as history by European writers is
comprehensible, for every European who gazes at the ethereal beauty
of the Taj must feel some pride if 'he can bring himself to believe
that the crowning glory of one of the most brilliant epochs of Indian
art owed its inspiration to Western minds. Nevertheless, it must be
confessed that the credence generally given to this vague romance
does more credit to our imagination than to our historical sense,
or artistic judgment. Indian art is still very little understood by
Europeans. We feel and admire the decorative element in it, but
deny to it higher imaginative qualities. Thv? Indian art which we
know and understand best is the least important part of it. It only
comprises those accessories of Indian domestic life which, however
beautiful they may sometimes be, lose all their artistic significance
when detached from the surroundings for which they are intended,
and invariably suffer artistically from the interest we take in them.
We have been unable to follow the trend of Indian artistic thought
beyond this decorative constituent quality, because from this point
it becomes much more abstract and abstruse than our own. And
no one will ever get further in his understanding and appreciation of
Indian art without forsaking that stolid attitude of ignorant con-
descension with which the ordinary European, and more especially
the Anglo-Saxon, treats everything Oriental which he does not
understand. If, throwing aside preconceived notions and insular
prejudices, we approach Indian art with the same spirit as animated
the European pioneers of Sanscrit research, we shall like them find
ourselves revelling in new fields of wonder and beauty, the fairyland
of Eastern romance and poetry. We should then see how ridiculous
we, and the educated Indians who follow our example, make ourselves
by importing European pictures and sculpture in the belief that we

1039

1040 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

are thereby throwing a flood of Western light upon the darkness of
the East. The spirituality of Indian art permeates the whole of it,
but it shines brightest at the point where we cease to see and under-
stand it.

If India has not produced a Phidias or a Kaphael, it has created
the most imaginative architecture in the world. Such painting and
sculpture as there have been in Indian art are nearly always strictly
subordinated to the architectural idea ; they never detached them-
selves or degenerated into drawing-room accessories, as we now
understand the ' fine arts.' Everything connected with the history
of the Taj is important to the student of Indian art, for the Taj is
the consummation of a great artistic development, the traditions of
which remain alive even at the present day. The truth or otherwise
of the legends I have referred to is of cardinal importance, for if it
be accepted that an Italian or French artist designed the master-
piece of the Mogol epoch, there would be much force in the theory
that the Indian requires the aid of a higher Western intelligence
to perfect his artistic ideas. Let us then consider carefully the
historical and artistic grounds on which these traditions rest. The
circumstances which led to the building of the Taj are well known
and need not be given in detail. The death in 'childbed of Mumtaz
Mahal — ' the Crown of the Palace' — Shah Jehan's favourite wife in
A.D. 1629 ; the distracted grief of the Emperor, and his resolve to
build her a monument which should be one of the wonders of the
world. He sent for all the best architects of his empire, in consulta-
tion with whom he inspected and rejected many hundreds of designs.
At last one design was accepted, a model of it was made in wood,
and from this model the Taj was built.

So far all accounts agree. But as to the name of the architect
selected we have, on the one hand, the unanimous statements of
contemporary Indian writers, and on the other a story related by
a Spanish priest, Father Manrique, who visited Agra ten years after
the Taj was begun. The former agree that the design was made by
Ustad Isa, a celebrated architect who, according to one account
(preserved in the Imperial Library, Calcutta), came from Shiraz, and
according to others, from Rum, which may mean either Constan-
tinople or some part of Asiatic Turkey. The style of the Taj points
to the probability that his native place was Shiraz, though it is quite
possible that he may have been employed by the Sultan of Turkey
at Constantinople. Father Manrique in his description of the Taj,
then under construction, relates the following story, told to him by
Father Da Castro of Lahore, who was the executor of the obscure
Italian who thus claimed to have designed the Taj :

The architect was a Venetian, named Geronimo Yerroneo, who came to India
with the ships of the Portuguese, and who died at Lahore a little before my
arrival. Of him a report was current that the Padsha, having sent for him and

1903 THE TAJ AND ITS DESIGNERS 1041

made known to him the desire he felt to build there (at Agra) a sumptuous and
grandiose monument to his defunct consort, the architect Verroneo obeyed, and ia
a few days produced various models of very fine architecture, showing all the
ekill of his art ; also that, having contented his Majesty in this, he dissatisfied him
— according to his barbarous and arrogant pride — by the modesty of his estimates;
further that, growing angry, he ordered him to spend three krors, and to let him
know when they were spent.

Now in estimating the comparative historical value of these two
versions it must be allowed that the absence of any mention of
Verroneo in the contemporary Indian accounts does not necessarily
discredit his story, for it is well known that Mohammedan writers
often omitted from their works any facts which might bring honour
to their religious opponents. On the other hand, Verroneo's
story contains so many of the wildest improbabilities that it is
extraordinary that Anglo-Indian writers should have accepted
it with so little hesitation. In the first place it is necessary
to consider that in the tjpe of adventurers ' who came with the
ships of the Portuguese ' to India in the seventeenth century and
entered the service of the Great Mogpl, one would not expect to find
the transcendent artistic genius such as the designer of the Taj
possessed. Bernier, the French physician, who resided several years
at the Mogol court during the reign of Aurungzebe, incidentally
throws a sidelight on their character in his description of the famous
Peacock Throne, a part of which was designed by a Frenchman
(supposed to be Austin de Bordeaux) who, 'having circumvented
many Princes of Europe with his false gems, which he knew to
make admirably well, fled to the Mogol court where he made his
fortune.' Verroneo seems to have been less successful in the latter
respect, but he certainly contrived to emulate Austin in making for
himself a fictitious fame, which has lasted to the present day. At
the time when the Taj was built the position of the Franks, as
Europeans were called, was by no means what it was in the days of
Akbar and Jehangir, the two preceding emperors. They were mostly
employed in the artillery or in the arsenals, and Bernier tells us that
in his time they were admitted with difficulty into the service ; and
that, whereas formerly, when the Mogols were little skilled in
the management of artillery, they received as much as two
hundred rupees a month and upwards, their pay was now limited
to thirty-two rupees. The Jesuits, who had enjoyed great favour
under his father and grandfather, were bitterly persecuted by
Shah Jehan. He deprived them of their pension, destroyed
the church at Lahore and the greater part of that of Agra, de-
molishing a steeple which contained a clock heard in every part of
the city. Only a short time before her death Mumtaz Mahal, who
was a relentless enemy of the Christians, had instigated Shah Jehan
to attack the Portuguese settlement at Hooghly. After a desperate
VOL. LIH — No. 31 G 3 Y

1042 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

resistance the Portuguese were overwhelmed. Two thousand, includ-
ing women and children, took refuge on a warship and perished with
the crew, as the captain blew up the vessel rather than surrender.
Five hundred prisoners, among them some Jesuit priests, were sent
to Agra. With threats of torture the Empress endeavoured to
persuade the priests to renounce their religion. On their refusal
they were thrown into prison, but after some months they were
released and deported to the main Portuguese settlement at Goa.
Their books, pictures, and images were destroyed by orders of
Mumtaz Mahal. Her hatred for the Christians is perpetuated on
her tomb in the mausoleum itself, which bears the significant
inscription, ' Defend us from the tribe of unbelievers ! ' From
Bernier we learn that no Christian was allowed inside the mausoleum,
lest its sanctity be profaned.

In the face of these facts it would require the very strongest
corroboration of Verroneo's story to make it credible that Shah Jehan,
whose lifelong devotion to his wife was the strongest trait in his
character, had chosen one of these hated unbelievers to be the chief
designer of her monument. As a matter of fact Father Manrique's
account is entirely uncorroborated by any other contemporary European
writer. Neither Tavernier, who saw the commencement and com-
pletion of the Taj, nor Bernier, make any mention of Verroneo,
or suggest that the building was in any way the work of a
European. Bernier, in his description of it, expressly implies that
he looked upon the Taj as a purely Indian conception, for he naively
confesses that though he thought 'that the extraordinary fabric
could not be sufficiently admired,' he would not have ventured to
express his opinion if it had not been shared in by his companion
(Tavernier), for he feared that his taste might have been corrupted
by his long residence in the Indies, and it was quite a relief to his
mind to hear Tavernier say that he had seen nothing in Europe so
bold and majestic. Thevenot, who saw the Taj in 1666, affirms that
this superb monument is sufficient to show that the Indians are not
ignorant of architecture ; and though the style may appear curious
to Europeans, it is in good taste, and though it is different from Greek
or other ancient art, one can only say that it is very fine. The
absence of any reference to Verroneo in the accounts of these three
minute and impartial chroniclers of the Mogol times is very strong
evidence that his story was partly or wholly a fabrication ; otherwise
it is impossible to believe that they would not have known and
mentioned the fact that the chief architect was a European.
Verroneo's finishing touch regarding the spending of 'three krors '
is in itself suspicious. If he really had been in such a position
his fame would have been known far and wide among his fellow-
Europeans, for it was only the highest nobles of the Court who were
entrusted with the expenditure for the Great Mogol buildings. The

1903 THE TAJ AND ITS DESIGNERS 1043

Badahah Nama mentions the names of the two nobles who actually
superintended the Taj — Makramat Khan and Mir Abdul Karim.

Father Manrique and the three writers I have mentioned are the
only Europeans who have recorded contemporary knowledge of im-
portant facts connected with the Taj. It is unnecessary to refer to
later accounts, borrowed more or less from them. While history
affords practically no evidence in support of Verroneo's claim to
immortal distinction, the Taj itself is the most convincing proof of
the impudence of the assumption. The plan follows closely that of
Huinayni's Tomb, built by Akbar nearly a century earlier. Neither
in general conception nor in the smallest detail does it suggest the
style of the Italian Kenaissance, which a Venetian architect of the
seventeenth century would certainly have followed. If Verroneo's
design had been executed we should doubtless have had some kind
of orientalised version of the church of Santa Maria della Salute of
Venice instead of the Taj. It is inconceivable that Shah Jehan, a
man of cultivated artistic taste, surrounded as he was by all the most
accomplished architects of the East, would have engaged a European
to design a building in a purely Eastern style.

The Indian records relating to the Taj are unusually precise and
detailed in the information they give with regard to the architects
and workmen. The artistic history of the period, and the style and
workmanship of the Taj, all testify in a remarkable way to their
accuracy and the falseness of the theory that Europeans directed
the design of the building. The places given in the Calcutta
Imperial Library manuscript as the native towns of the principal
architects and decorators — namely, Shiraz, Baghdad, and Samarkand — -
indicate precisely that part of Asia which was the cradle of the art
represented by the Taj. The mention of Samarkand is especially
interesting, for it is known that Tamerlane, after his invasion of
India in A.D. 1398, carried off all the masons who had built tlie
famous mosque at Ferozabad (since destroyed), in- order that they
might build another like it at Samarkand. Most probably they were
the descendants of these masons who came back to India to build
the Taj.

Before discussing Verroneo's story, it will be interesting to
analyse it in order to separate the truth which may be in it from
the falsehood. It is highly probable that Verroneo was one of the
many architects who submitted designs for the Taj. They were
doubtless in the style of the Eenaissance, which was then the
architectural style of Italy. Shah Jehan examined them with
curiosity and expressed some qualified praise, which Verroneo mis-
took for approval. The anger of the Padsha on hearing of the
estimates and his order ' to spend three krors' clearly points to the
indirect oriental method of rejecting a proposal, and it is quite
certain that Verroneo heard nothing more of his commission from

3 Y 2

1044 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

Shah Jehan. He returned to Lahore and poured the garbled account
of his doings into the too credulous ears of Father I)a Castro, who
retailed it as history to his fellow priest.

Father Manrique is also responsible for the statement that
Augustin, or Austin de Bordeaux, was employed in the 'internal
decorations ' of the Taj. Hitherto every European writer has taken
this to mean that Austin superintended the magnificent inlaid work
technically known as pielra dura, which is the most striking feature
in the decoration of the building, external and internal. There is a
good deal of plausibility in the theory, though most authorities have
been puzzled by the manifest inconsistencies which tell against it.
The technical similarity of the inlay of the Taj to the pietra dura
of the Medicean Chapel at Florence was noticed by Bernier, though
he does not suggest any connection between the two. At the back
of the throne chamber in the Dewan-i-am at Delhi there is a large
piece of very realistic pietra dura work, undoubtedly Florentine in
style. But, except for the silly chatter of native guides, who used
to point out the panel of Orpheus as the portrait of Austin himself,
there is not a vestige of historical evidence to connect him with it.
Fergusson has shown that this panel (lately brought back from
South Kensington and restored to its place by Lord Curzon) is a,
traditional Italian rendering of the classical story which can be
traced back as far as to the catacombs at Kome. Sir George Bird-
wood, however, in his Industrial Arts of India, accepts the theory
that Austin was responsible for the Taj decorations, as well as for the-
pietra dura work at Delhi, though in a later article in the Journal
of Indian Art he says that ' it is quite impossible that the men who
devised such artistic monstrosities (the Delhi panels) could have-
been the same as those whose hands traced in variegated pietra dura
the exquisite arabesques of the Taj.'

Whoever the designer may have been, it is certain that the
Delhi pietra dura was directed by some fourth-rate European artist.
They are just as ill-adapted and out of harmony with the place they
occupy, as the Taj decorations are marvellously contrived to beautify
it. It is impossible to explain away the inconsistency of attributing
the authorship of the magnificent Taj decorations, which are, as Sir
George Birdwood says, 'strictly Indian of the Mogol period,' and the
commonplace Florentine work at Delhi to one and the same person.
This statement of Father Manrique can be explained in another
and much more satisfactory way. We know from Tavernier that
Austin was a silversmith, for he mentions that Shah Jehan had
intended to employ him in covering with silver the vault of a great
gallery in the palace at Agra. The French jeweller mentioned by
Kernier in connection with the Peacock Throne is generally supposed
to be Austin. Now the Taj originally possessed two silver doors,
said to have cost 127,000 rupees, which were taken away and melted

1903 THE TAJ AND ITS DESIGNERS 1045

down when the Jats sacked Agra. Before the existing marble screen
was erected, the sarcophagus of the Empress was surrounded by a
fence of solid gold, studded with gems. Surely the obvious and
most satisfactory explanation of Austin's connection with the
' internal decorations ' of the Taj is that he was occupied with gold
and silver work ? Such work would be part of the internal decora-
tion, and yet it would have been executed outside, so that the
sanctity of the tomb would not have been profaned by an unbeliever.
Why should we make a French jeweller, goldsmith, and silversmith
responsible for Italian and Indian pietra dura work, when there
were both jewellers' work and gold and silver work on which he
might have been employed ?

In my opinion the Delhi pietra dura has been wrongly attributed
to Shah Jehan's reign. It has all the appearance of eighteenth-
century work, and, as far as I am aware, there is no evidence worth
considering to show that it existed previous to the reign of Aurung-
cebe. It could not have been executed in the latter reign, because
the naturalistic representations of birds and animals was a violation
of Mussulman law, and would not have been permitted by that
bigoted monarch. If the date ascribed to it is correct, it is more
than astonishing that Aurungzebe, who mutilated all such representa-
tions at Fatepur Sikri, should have spared them at the back of his
own throne in the Delhi palace, for an old drawing, still in existence,
shows that most of the inlay was in a good state of preservation down
to 1837. It would certainly coincide with all the probabilities of the
case to attribute it to one of the later Mogol emperors, or the early
part of the eighteenth century.

If we dismiss from our minds all these obscure and inconsistent
legends about Austin de Bordeaux, it will be quite easy to see that
the inlaid work of the Taj was the natural consummation of a great
artistic movement purely oriental in character, initiated by Akbar,
the progression of which can be traced in existing Mogol buildings.
Arabian workmen first introduced mosaic work into India. The
kind of mosaic generally practised by the Arabs was tesselated
work, technically known as Alexandrinum opus, which consisted of
thin pieces of marble, coloured stones, glass, or enamelled tiles cut
into geometric patterns, and closely fitted so as to cover the surface
of a wall or floor. The technical difference between this and pietra
dura, or true mosaic, is the difference between overlay and inlay.
The Arab buildings were generally of brick, and the original inten-
tion of the mosaic was to give a surface of more precious material to
a building of brick or common stone. The preference of the Arabs
for geometric patterns is explained by two reasons. First, the
Arabs belonged to the Sunni, or orthodox sect of Mussulmans,
observing the strict letter of the law which forbade the representa-
tion of ' the likeness of anything which is in heaven above, or in

1046 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

the earth beneath.' Secondly, the geometric design lent itself
admirably to the character of the materials employed, and to the
speedy and effective covering of a surface by this process. Now when,
the Arabs, or those who had learnt from them, began to work on>
buildings constructed chiefly of marble or fine stone, the inlaid
work would naturally take the place of the other, because it would
be superfluous and inartistic to decorate marble or stone with an
overlay of the same material. Again, when the Arabian art of the
orthodox Sunni school came into close connection with the unorthodox
Shia, or naturalistic school of Persia, we should certainly expect
to find representations of natural forms taking the place of geometric
patterns. These are exactly the conditions which prevailed in;
India in the century which preceded the building of the Taj. Even-
long before that time, in the oldest Saracenic mausoleum in India,,
the tomb of Altamsh, which belongs to the thirteenth century, the
red sandstone of the walls is inlaid with geometric tiles of white
marble. In the buildings of Fatepur Sikri (date about 1571 A.D.)
we find frequent examples of overlay and not a few of inlay. A little
later, in the gateway of Akbar's tomb at Sikandra, inlaid work is
extensively used, though as yet still confined to geometric patterns.
But twenty years afterwards, in the tomb of the Persian adventurer,.
Itmad-ud-daulah, the grandfather of Mumtaz Mahal, at Agra, the
style is so far technically perfected that the inlaid work not only
includes elaborate scrolls of conventional Arabian design, but the
familiar motifs of Persian painted decoration, such as rosewater
vessels, the cypress, the tree of life, and various other flower forms.
The date of this building is about A.D. 1622.

The similar progression from geometric to naturalistic forms may
be traced in Italian mosaic. But the synchronous development of
two similar schools in Italy and in India is nothing more than one of
those coincidences which often lead historians to wrong conclusions.
The later Italian inlayers imitated the work of Italian fresco and
oil painters. The Indian inlayers likewise imitated the work of
the Persian artists who founded the Indian school of painting of the
Mogol period. The step from the Itmad-ud-daulah to the Taj is
simply the change from a conventional school of Persian painting to
a more developed and more realistic one. This is only what we
might expect if we remember Shah Jehan's resolve that the
Taj should surpass every other building in the world. That
there was a strong naturalistic tendency in the Indian painting
of the Mogol period is known to all who have studied this interesting
phase of Mogol art; It is very clearly shown in a series of exquisite
miniature paintings of Jehangir's time, now in the Government Art
Grallery, Calcutta, which I fortunately rescued from the unapprecia-
tive hands of a Mohammedan bookseller a few years ago. They
include portraits of the nobles of Jehangir's court and some studies

1903 THE TAJ AND ITS DESIGNERS 1047

of Indian birds, drawn and painted with a fidelity and delicacy which
would do credit to a Japanese master. On one of them, sealed and
signed by Jehangir himself, there is a note, written by the Emperor,
to the effect that it was painted by Ustad Mansur, ' the most cele-
brated painter of this time,' in the nineteenth year of his reign (A.D.
1624, six years before the Taj was begun). The borders of three of
these paintings are ornamented with floral designs which, making
allowance for the different technical treatment required by a different
material, are of the exact type of the Taj decorations. No one who
studies these remarkable paintings and compares them with the
floral decoration of the Taj would hesitate to say that it was the
work of this Persian school, and not any European model, that the
Indian mosaic workers were imitating. It might possibly have been
these same paintings, prized so much by his father, that Shah Jehan
gave as patterns to the workmen.

No doubt it is true that here and there in Mogol art one meets
with a detail which suggests European influence. It was a time of
great artistic activity, and in such times any living art which comes
into contact with another exchanges ideas with it. But the
European element in the Mogol style is far less strongly marked
than is the oriental in Italian art. During the whole period of
Italy's close commercial intercourse with the East, her art industries
were very strongly impressed with oriental ideas. It would be easy
to find in Italian art a dozen instances just as striking as the
similarity (which is a similarity of technique and not of style)
between the pietra dura of Florence and that of the Taj. No one
suggests, on that account, that Indian artists came to Italy to*
instruct the Italians.

It is probable that long before the building of Itmad-ud-daulah's
tomb the art of inlaying had been learnt by Hindu workmen and
become absorbed into Indian art through that wonderful power of
assimilation which Hinduism has always shown. Some Indian
records of the Taj mention the name of one Mannu Beg, from Mum,
as the principal mosaic worker ; but, in the list of the principal work-
men given by the Imperial Library manuscript, five mosaic workers
from Kanauj, all with Hindu names, are entered. That they were
artists of great reputation may be gathered from the fact that
their salaries ranged from 200 rupees to 800 rupees a month. The
best Agra mosaic workers of the present day are also Hindus, and in
many parts of Northern India the artistic traditions of the Mogols
are still kept alive by Hindu workmen.

The Mogol style is a symphony of artistic ideas formed into an
interchanging harmony by the fusion of Hindu thought with the art
of the two rival sects of Mohammedanism, the Sunni and the Shia.
Kuskin's criticism of Mogol architecture as an ' evanescent style '
is a very superficial one. The great development of Mogol art

3048 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

represented by the Taj died out because during Aurangzebe's long
reign the bigotry of the Sunni sect was in the ascendant, and the
Shia and Hindu artists were banished from the Mogol court. But
before Aurungzebe's accession the traditions of Mogol architecture
were firmly established in the more distant parts of his dominions,
and there they survive to this day, absorbed into the great cosmo-
gony of Indian art, and only prevented from continuing their
natural evolution through the fatal want of artistic understanding
which has made the dead styles of Europe the official architecture of
India.

The Taj has been the subject of numberless critical essays, but
many of them have missed the mark entirely, because the writers
have not been sufficiently conversant with the spirit of Eastern
artistic thought. All comparisons with the Parthenon or other
classic buildings are useless. One cannot compare Homer with the
Mahabharata, or Kalidas with Euripides. The Parthenon was a
temple for Pallas Athene, an exquisite casket to contain the jewel.
The Taj is the jewel — the ideal itself. Indian architecture is in much
closer affinity to the great conceptions of the Gothic builders than it
is to anything of classic or Renaissance construction. The Gothic
cathedral, with its scuptured arches and its spires pointing heaven-
wards, is a symbol, as most Eastern buildings are symbols. But the
Taj stands alone among Eastern buildings : for it represents in art the
same effort towards individualism, the struggle against the restraints
ef ritualism and dogma which Akbar initiated in religion.

Everyone who has seen the Taj must have felt that there is
Something in it, difficult to define or analyse, which differentiates
it from all other buildings in the world. Sir Edwin Arnold has
struck the true note of criticism in the following lines :

Not architecture ! as all others are,
But the proud passion of an Emperor's love
Wrought into living stone, which gleams and soars
With body of beauty shrining soul and thought ;

.... as when some face
Divinely fair unveils before our eyes —
Some woman beautiful unspeakably —
And the blood quickens, and the spirit leaps,
And will to worship bends the half-yielded knees,
While breath forgets to breathe. So is the Taj.

This is not a mere flight of poetic fancy, but a deep and true
interpretation of the meaning of the Taj. What were the thoughts
of the designers, and of Shah Jehan himself, when they resolved to
raise a monument of eternal love to the Crown of the Palace — Taj
Mahal ? Surely not only of a mausoleum — a sepulchre fashioned after
ordinary architectural canons, but of an architectonic ideal, sym-
bolical of her womanly grace and beauty. Those critics who have

1903 THE TAJ AND ITS DESIGNERS 1049

objected to the effeminacy of the architecture unconsciously pay the
greatest tribute to the genius of the builders. The Taj was meant
to be feminine. The whole conception, and every line and detail of
it, express the intention of the designers. It is Mumtaz Mahal
herself, radiant in her youthful beauty, who still lingers on the
banks of the shining Jumna, at early morn, in the glowing midday
sun, or in the silver moonlight ! Or rather, we should say it conveys
a more abstract thought, it is India's noble tribute to the grace of
Indian womanhood — the Venus de Milo of the East.

To the art student nothing can be more fascinating than the
endeavour to analyse the artistic thoughts of different countries and
different races. But England as a nation has a concern in trying
to understand Indian ideals. For it is neither by railways and
canals, sanitation and police, coal-mines and gold-mines, factories
and mills, nor by English text-books, and the real or imaginary
fusion of Western and Eastern culture, that we shall build for our-
selves a permanent Indian Empire. Nor should we flatter ourselves
that British justice is creating in India a lasting sense of gratitude
for British rule. The very uprightness of our rule is slowly but
surely creating an Indian Question which, though it seems smaller
than a man's hand to-day, may fill the Eastern horizon to-morrow.
When India has grown out of its political infancy it will yearn for
something more than just Jaws and regulations. India is governed
by ideas, not by principles or by statutes. Concrete justice, as repre-
sented by the complicated machinery of the British law, is to the
Indian a gamble in which the longest purses and most successful liars
win. Abstract justice, as it was personified in the Great Queen,
the mother of her people, touches India to the quick. That one
idea has done more for Indian loyalty than all the text-books of the
Universities or Acts of the Governor-General in Council. It was
only an idea that roused India in 1857, and before an idea which
touched the profounder depths of Indian sentiment all the Western
culture in which we believe might be swept away as dust before a
cyclone and leave not a trace behind.

E. B. HAVELL.

Government Selwol of Art, Calcutta :
April 1903.

1050 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

INDUSTRIES FOR THE BLIND IN EGYPT

COUNTLESS readers have lately Lad their attention drawn to the report
issued by Lord Cromer which points to the great financial prosperity
of Egypt. England may well be proud of the way in which justice
and right have taken the place of cruelty and wrong.

It is marvellous what has been accomplished in the past in a
land which so lately was groaning under the weight of oppression.
Much remains to be done in the future, and some may possibly be
interested to hear of an effort, small and insignificant, as many might
consider it, but yet one which has bright hopes for the future. In
these days, when fashionable people rush off to Cairo merely to
plunge into a foolish vortex of frivolity which might as easily have
been indulged in nearer home, and behave in such a manner that
observant natives rightly or wrongly conclude that, after all, our
standard of morality is not much higher than their own, it is not to
be anticipated that such butterfly visitors will pay much heed to the
needs of the poor in Egypt. There is, however, a class of persons
here whose forlorn figures are very conspicuous, and for whose
benefit the more advanced humanity of the "West should be utilised.

Owing to various causes — chiefly to superstition, dirt, and neglect
— ophthalmia causes most melancholy results in the East, and blind-
ness is very common. Living in a state of isolation from his fellows,
what a sad fate has the blind man, who is often nothing but a hope-
less, helpless beggar. It is true that the Mohammedan religion
encourages its followers in bestowing alms on those deprived of the
blessing of sight, but it stands to reason that idleness is not conducive
to the happiness of life. It is action which quickens the pulse,
banishes care, and gives a sense of satisfaction unknown to the mere
idler ; consequently it is a terrible misfortune when an infirmity
like blindness is permitted to debar the sufferer from the satisfaction
of feeling that he has done an honest day's work. In Western lands
blind persons are helped to rise triumphantly over physical disability,
and it is well known what hardworking useful lives many have been
assisted to enjoy. We hope that brighter days are now in store for
the sightless in Egypt. Three years ago the Ministering Children's
League, a society which enlists young people, with their elders, as

1903 INDUSTRIES FOE THE BLIND IN EGYPT 1051

helpers of the poor and suffering, established an Industrial School
for the Blind in Alexandria. It was then but a small venture. A
teacher of wicker-work had been procured from England, as there
was no possibility of finding such an individual in Egypt. It was
a great pleasure to me to be allowed to assist in the opening ceremony
of this institution, which was carried on at first in the casement-
rooms of a house almost opposite the railway station. This spring
I was again in Alexandria and was present at an ' At Home ' given
by the Committee for the purpose of inaugurating the start of the
school in a building entirely devoted to the purpose of providing
for the needs of blind lads. Koomy though it is in comparison
with our former premises, it is not unlikely that we shall shortly
have further to enlarge our borders, as nowadays the institution is
proving a very popular one, the work done within its walls not only-
being excellent in quality but most attractive to customers. Fortu-
nately, when starting this Industry for the Blind our Society not
only provided happy employment for them, but it had also the good
fortune to supply a need. Egyptian basket-work is entirely different
from our own, and not adapted to the requirements of Europeans,
consequently they were dependent upon the goods imported from a
distance. It was therefore a boon to customers to be able to choose
articles made on the spot, and to give orders for any of peculiar size
or shape. The work done is not now confined to mere baskets, as
quite a variety of objects are exhibited for sale, such as wicker-work
tables and armchairs, &c., and it is greatly to the credit of the
English teacher, who naturally has many difficulties to contend with
in a land differing from his own, that the lads so quickly attained
their present standard of efficiency. Nothing, perhaps, can prove
more clearly the popularity of the institution than the way in
which the funds of the Society have, during the last two years, been
augmented by the sale of wicker-work. In 1901, 76£. was realised
by the boys' work, in 1902 nearly 1401., whilst in the current year
some 75£. is already accounted for, from the 1st of January to the
beginning of April, through sales and orders, giving a good promise
of over 2001. being earned in 1903. It is consequently confidently
hoped that within a comparatively short period this institution will
be entirely self-supporting, and now vistas of future usefulness are
opening out. The difficulty of constantly begging for charities,
however excellent may be their object, is known by painful expe-
rience to many of us. It is therefore a relief to think that a work
so benevolent in character as that of giving occupation to the blind
may possibly spread into various towns in Egypt, as it has done in
many European cities, and give employment to a large number of
people without requiring the expenditure of money, after the work
has once been properly set going. On the occasion, of my last visit
to Alexandria, a committee was held to consider whether there

1052 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

would be a likelihood of introducing work for the blind into fresh
centres, with the result that it was discovered that both at Mansourah,
a city of some importance on the Nile and in which there is a very
fair proportion of European residents, and also at Tantah, the need
for the introduction of this work was fully realised. In the former
town great eagerness was shown to commence operations as quickly
as possible, and a suitable teacher is now being sought. Lack of
knowledge of Arabic naturally adds greatly to the difficulties of an
English instructor ; but in this case such difficulties will be lightened,
as a Mansourah lad is now learning English as well as wicker-work
in the school in Alexandria, and is likely to prove of much service
as an interpreter. It is hoped that before very long another centre
of work may be opened in Tantah, where the members of the Ameri-
can Mission have an important station.

It is not unlikely that some readers may be acquainted with the
work established in over 230 workhouses and lunatic asylums in Great
Britain, known as the Brabazon Employment Society. This association
has proved in the most gratifying manner that industries, even when
carried on by most aged and decrepit persons, can yet be made to pay
in a remarkable manner. It required a certain amount of capital to
start the undertaking, but for some years the work has not needed
any pecuniary support. Grants are given from the Central Fund to
start this enterprise in fresh institutions, but these grants are repaid
in the course of a comparatively short period through the sale of the
articles made by the infirm inmates. The experience I have gained
in my connection with this Society ever since its commencement
makes me feel extremely hopeful about the future of industries for
the blind in Egypt. It is true that the Brabazon Employment
Society owes much of its success exclusively to the large band of
voluntary workers who have willingly and devotedly given up a great
deal of time to the work, thereby earning the gratitude of thousands
who but for these kindly offices would have passed their days in a
state of helpless inactivity, productive of much wretchedness. The
change for the better in the condition of some of the inmates, owing
to the introduction of the association is almost incredible, and it has
won very favourable opinions from those who have the welfare of
the unfortunate at heart. Over and over again Boards of Guardians
have tendered their thanks in very flattering terms to workers in
this Society, so it is little wonder if I am sanguine with regard
to the enterprise set going in Egypt, and I trust that before many
years have passed there may be a centre of happy activity for
the blind in many cities in that most interesting Eastern land.

M. J. MEATH.

1903

LAST MONTH

THERE has been a strange fascination in the spectacle presented

to us on the political stage during the past month — the kind of

fascination felt by the onlooker on the shore as he watches a gallant

ship battling against the forces that are sending it to destruction.

It is in such a fight that the Ministry are now engaged, and the

wonder no longer is that so many dangers should so suddenly have

overtaken them, but that they should have escaped so far from

their inevitable fate. For the moment they are like a ship caught in

the conflicting currents of the maelstrom. Their course is no longer

a straightforward one in which they have to hold their own against

an open enemy. From every side and quarter they are assailed, the

heaviest blows coming from those of their own household. That

they are staggering blindly to their doom is obvious to everyone. And

yet so far they have outlived the storm, and their friends declare

that the end is not yet. Eighteen years ago the country was looking

on at a similar spectacle. Mr. Gladstone's Government — the great

Government of 1880 — had reached the end of its resources. Its work

was done and its credit exhausted. All the world knew that there

were divisions in the Cabinet, and even the authority of the Prime

Minister seemed to be on the wane. Bat outwardly Ministers held

their own and commanded something like their normal majorities in

the House of Commons. That they were under sentence of death

was generally admitted, but that they had still at least some months

of life before them was what most men believed. Secure in this

conviction, one unhappy editor of a daily newspaper resolved to slip

away for a summer holiday to Norway before the threatened storm

broke. Fifteen days later, when high up in the Arctic Circle, he

heard that the Gladstone Ministry had fallen and that Lord Salisbury

was at the head of a new Administration.

That misadventure of mine in 1885 has taught me to avoid rash
predictions with regard to politics, and I shall not even pretend to
say that what happened eighteen years ago may happen again. The
truth is that in a crisis like that through which the country is now
passing no one can foretell events from day to day. There is a
strong conviction among the partisans of the Ministry that, despite

1053

1054 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

their ugly experiences, they are safe in the support of their huge
majority. The General Election, these soothsayers declare, will
not take place before the autumn of 1904 at the earliest, and in the
meantime Mr. Balfour and his colleagues will be able to mend their
ways and recover their lost prestige. It is a comforting doctrine for
the uncompromising supporters of the Government, and they do well
to cling to it as long as they can ; but they will scarcely deny that
accidents happen even to Ministries with big majorities. For my
own part I remember 1885, and am content to abide my time. One
point at least is clear when we compare the case of the present
Ministry with Mr. Gladstone's eighteen years ago. Not even the
1880 Government, with the Egyptian fiasco scored up against it,
was in greater difficulties both with friends and opponents than
those which confront the Ministry of to-day. We have only to
recall the story of one day during the past month — Friday the 15th
of May, truly ' black Friday ' for Mr. Balfour — in order to establish
this fact. I cannot remember any day to be compared with it in my
own experience of political life. To begin with, the perplexed sup-
porters of the Government were informed in that morning's Times
that Mr. Balfour had knocked the keystone out of the arch of his
education scheme for London by reducing the number of borough
council members on the new education authority to a ridiculous
minority, and by giving the London County Council an absolute
majority of votes on the governing body. One need not pause
here to discuss the wisdom of this change in a Bill which had been
read a second time by an overwhelming majority in the House of
Commons. The point to be noted here is that the thick -and-thin
supporters of the Government learned, to their dismay, that it had
yielded in this summary fashion to its opponents upon a measure
of first-class importance. It had not even waited for the debates
in Committee to begin before executing this remarkable volte face.
In the afternoon of the same day it was the hard lot of the Prime
Minister to have to receive a deputation from his own supporters
of an almost unprecedented character. The deputation was not
one composed of the waverers who hang upon the skirts of all
political parties. It represented the central body of Conservative
opinion, the Old Guard of the army of which the Prime Minister is
the commander-in-chief. It was as though the Sultan's Bodyguard
in the Yildiz Kiosk had suddenly confronted him with demands and
menaces. The deputation was not only numerous but exceptionally
influential. Its leader was Mr. Chaplin, the incarnation of orthodox
Conservatism, and not long ago a Cabinet Minister in the present
Government ; he was supported by a great body of M.P.s, and by
the venerable Duke of Eutland, practically the last survivor of the
band by whose co-operation Mr. Disraeli was enabled to climb to
the Premiership and to reconstruct the Tory party on its present

1903 LAST MONTH 1055

lines. And what was the language which these men of light and
leading addressed to their own Prime Minister ? Men must have
rubbed their eyes in astonishment when they read Mr. Chaplin's
speech in the next day's Times, and noted the cheers with which
it was punctuated. Was it possible that it could be Mr. Chaplin
who spoke these words ? — ' If that was to be the practice of the
Conservative party or of Conservative Governments in the future,
he could only say, although he had fought and done his best for
them throughout the whole of a very long career, that it was a
party to which he began to think he should be ashamed to belong.'
And is it possible that the Duke of Kutland joined in the ' loud
cheers ' with which this declaration was received ? Nor was the
close of Mr. Chaplin's speech less vigorous than the words I have
just quoted : ' He might ask if the Government, in what they had
proposed, had considered the position of those gentlemen who had
followed them so splendidly in the House of Commons. It was a
choice of evils — between some loss of credit and reputation, he was
afraid, to his Majesty's Government, and a lasting injury — it might
be the destruction of the great historic party whose forces had been
entrusted to their care.' Like Macbeth, Mr. Balfour must have
felt as he listened to Mr. Chaplin that the thanes were flying from
him.

The purpose of the deputation was to protest against the remission
of the corn-tax which formed one of the essential features of what
the Times described as Mr. Kitchie's ' successful electioneering coup.'
I ventured a month ago to suggest that the success of this brilliant
bit of latter-day electioneering strategy had still to be proved, and I
seem to have been right in doing so. The remission of the duty on
corn has given satisfaction to nobody except those opponents of the
Government who openly delight in each successive blunder that it
makes. It has covered Ministers themselves with ridicule and con-
fusion, as a reference to last year's Budget debates will establish ; it
has justified up to the hilt the line that was then taken by the
Opposition ; and above all it has shaken, if it has not destroyed, the
confidence of the agricultural party in the Government which they
regarded as being peculiarly their own. And for what reason have
Ministers taken this suicidal course ? By their own admission they
have done so because they have been frightened by the result of the
by-elections. They have denied the significance of those elections
in their speeches, but they have admitted it by their action. In the
hope of recovering the ground which they have lost, they have
reversed their own policy because the tax which they fought so hard
to set up a year ago has ' lent itself to misrepresentation in the
constituencies.' It is difficult to speak in adequate terms of this
grotesque incident in the history of the Government. Perhaps, how-
ever, all that need be said is that Mr. Chaplin's language regarding

1056 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June-

it will find an echo in the breasts of a great many people who have
little sympathy with that gentleman's views on most questions.

Yet damaging to Ministers as were the change of front on the
Education Bill and the deputation on the corn-tax, the third incident
of that wonderful Friday was far more ominous. This was the speech
of Mr. Chamberlain to his constituents at Birmingham. By common
consent it was a remarkable speech, but it was also one the inner
meaning of which it was difficult to grasp. One fact, indeed, was
made very clear — that was that the widespread rumours which
alleged that Mr. Chamberlain was not in agreement with the majority
of his colleagues on the subject of the corn-tax were well founded.
A great part of his speech was, indeed, an argument in support of
Mr. Chaplin's contention. The Colonial Secretary, it is true, did not
' let himself go ' as Mr. Chaplin did. He did not attack his colleagues
for what they had done, but he dwelt with care and emphasis upon
an argument which, if it were sound, was fatal to the policy expounded
on the same afternoon by the Prime Minister. Mr. Chamberlain';*
contention is that, in order to keep the Empire together, this country
must make certain fiscal concessions to the Colonies, and to Canada in
particular ; and the whole burden of his argument went to show that
in the corn-tax we possessed the means of gratifying the Canadians
without serious loss to ourselves. One cannot doubt that the argu-
ments he used at Birmingham had previously been used in the
Cabinet. The fact makes the decision at which that body arrived
when it agreed to Mr. Ritchie's Budget all the more astonishing.
Mr. Balfour must have felt that he had been wounded a second time
in the house of his friends when he read the Birmingham speech. It
is difficult to see how the most sanguine of his supporters, after
grasping the significance of the events of the 15th of May, can
cherish the illusion that it is still possible, in the time that lies
before them, for Ministers tore-establish their position in the country
or to recover their reputation in the House of Commons. No
Ministry ever received in so brief a space of time successive blows of
such weight as on that day fell upon Mr. Balfour's Administration.

Bat Mr. Chamberlain's speech, apart from the damage which
it did to his own Government, deserves the serious consideration
of the country. He spoke in a strain of lofty superiority to
his colleagues and rivals in English politics. He treated with
contempt the various questions which have been engaging the
attention of the country since he sailed on his historic mission to
South Africa. The problem of national education, the by-elections,
Irish land purchase — what trifles were these with which to distract
the attention of statesmen from the great issues of the times !
What, in fact, were the mere .parish politics of the United Kingdom
in comparison with the Imperial questions with which it had been
his lot to deal during his tour in Africa? He had been absent for

1903 LAST MONTH 1057

months from the arena of mere party politics, and he declared that
he found it difficult, after his strange and fascinating experience of
a larger world than that which is to be found in the House of
Commons and its precincts, to plunge once more into the partisan
controversies of the moment. Yet even in his lofty isolation he did
not forget to play his old card. If he was weary of office and its
responsibilities, and ardently sighing for the moment when he could
sing his Nunc dimittis, he was not prepared to hand over the reins
of authority to an unpatriotic Opposition. It was the old story of
1900 over again— the repetition of the calumny which at that time
sufficed to procure for Ministers the overwhelming majority which
they have turned to such poor account. If Mr. Chamberlain really
wishes to be believed when he tells us that he is sick of the squabbles
of factions, and anxious to breathe a purer air than that of mere
party, he must begin by showing that he is not incapable of doing
justice, in some degree at least, to his old opponents. He cannot
pretend to think that all the members of the Liberal Party are
' little Englanders ' and the ' friends of every country but their own.'
Because a handful of extreme men have chosen to take a course
which has been openly and strenuously repudiated by the majority
of Liberals, he cannot claim the right to brand the entire Opposition
with complicity in a policy which they have notoriously refused to
adopt. His attempt to do so was the weak feature in a remarkable
speech, and it threw a curious light upon his claim to speak as a
man who had risen above the plane of party politics. He would
have been wiser if he had refrained from this rather foolish attempt
to confound Lord Eosebery with Mr. Labouchere and Lord Spencer
with Mr. Bryn Koberts.

Yet, if one excepts this portion of his speech to his constituents,
one must admit that it was a notable utterance. Apparently it was
intended as a personal manifesto addressed not to one party merely,
but to the people of Great Britain. It was an attempt to lead them
from the questions of domestic policy, which since the close of the
war have engaged their attention, to the consideration of problems
infinitely vaster. When a man tries to do this, even though his
temper may be uncertain and his sense of fairness, where his political
antagonists are concerned, weak, he deserves to have a careful hearing
from those to whom he speaks. Any statesman who speaks his
mind, whether it be at Chesterfield or at Birmingham, upon the great
problems that affect the future of our race is entitled to such a
hearing. Mr. Chamberlain has a ' vision splendid' of the future of the
Empire as it may be if its sons are true to themselves, and he has used
all his powers and his unrivalled directness of statement in trying to
make his fellow-countrymen see that vision for themselves. It has
been painted for us before by men who were pioneers in the path in
which the Colonial Secretary now treads, but nobody has yet painted
VOL. LIII— No. 316 8 Z

1058 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

it in the hard clear colours which he has used ; nobody has been so
definite in his exposition of the means by which the vision itself is
to be realised. For all this Mr. Chamberlain deserves the credit that
is due to the man who is not afraid to speak his mind boldly and
clearly upon one of the greatest problems with which the states-
men of to-day have to deal. With startling suddenness he has cried
' Halt ! ' to the march of parties, and has directed the attention of
his fellow-countrymen to a question that in his opinion far outstrips
in importance any of those with which Parliament is now busying
itself. It is hardly surprising that it has taken the country, and
even the professional critics, some time to recover from the surprise
which this remarkable speech has caused them.

As usual in such cases, foreign onlookers were the first to realise
the full meaning of Mr. Chamberlain's utterance. To them it was
clear from the first that the Colonial Secretary was inviting his
fellow-countrymen to deal directly and in a practical way with the
question ' Shall we or shall we not have a united Empire ? ' For years
past many of us have talked of the unity of the Empire as something
to be yearned after, worked for, and in the end achieved. But even
those who have been most pronounced and enthusiastic in their
devotion to the idea of Imperial unity have shrunk constantly from
any attempt to put forward a practical plan for achieving that unity.
Twenty years ago it was my good fortune to be in constant and close
association with that great Imperialist Mr. Forster, the true founder
of the movement for the federation of the Empire. Again and again
I have heard him declare that his purpose was not to formulate any
plan of federation, but to foster the sentiment of unity among all the
branches of the Empire. ' It will be time enough,' he used to say,
' to consider the means by which the Empire is to be united when
we have created a desire for unity among its members.' Mr. Forster
died without being allowed to witness more than a very partial
realisation of his hopes. But we who survive are more fortunate.
In the dark days of 1899 and 1900, when England was staggering
under the load of the task she had undertaken in South Africa, we
saw the sentiment of Imperial unity spring up with a growth as
rapid as that of Jonah's gourd. There is no need to dwell upon its
manifestations. From every part of Queen Victoria's dominions we
received proofs of the ties of deep affection by which our kindred
beyond the seas felt themselves bound to their Sovereign and to the
parent race from whose loins they came. The outside world, as we
know, looked on in astonishment, and in some cases with uncon-
cealed chagrin, at a spectacle which they had never thought to witness.
The hope of the wise men among them had been that, at the first
sign of danger to the Motherland, the Colonies of Great Britain
would make haste to renounce their connection with her and to set
up on their own account. What they did see was the very opposite

1903 LAST MONTH 1059

of this. The cry of ' England in danger ! ' seemed to cause a deeper
emotion in the most distant portions of the Empire than in London
itself, and from all the lands over which the banner of England waves
there came instantly and spontaneously such demonstrations of loyalty
and affection that the dullest could see that the British Empire was
no longer a mere phrase on paper, but a visible and substantial
reality.

It is upon the foundation thus laid amidst the strain and stress
of the South African War that Mr. Chamberlain, I conceive, has
based the new policy which he propounded at Birmingham two weeks
ago. ' Here,' he says in effect, ' is an Empire which has sprung into
real existence. It was founded, in the first instance, by your fathers,
it has been built up by your brothers, and it has just shown how it
loves the Mother Country and how it desires union with it. Do you
wish to keep it, to bind it closely and permanently to our own land,
even though you may have to make some sacrifice in order to do so ;
or will you refuse to suffer even a trivial loss to secure so glorious an
end, and leave what might have been the greatest Empire the world
has ever seen to be slowly and surely dissolved by the inevitable
processes of time ? ' This is practically the appeal that he has made
to his fellow-countrymen, and in making that appeal he has openly
put forward, as a measure of practical politics, the scheme by which
he conceives all the different portions of the Empire may be bound
together. So far as his appeal is concerned, there are very few persons
in this country, I imagine, who will not listen to it with sympathy
and approval. The ' Little Englander,' despite Mr. Chamberlain's
invective, is an almost extinct creature. Few even of those who were
most strongly opposed to the war in South Africa have failed to
learn the lesson taught by the wonderful uprising of our kinsmen
three years ago. We had then in its fullest force a demonstration of
that sentiment of loyalty, kinship, Imperial unity — call it what you
will — that Mr. Forster used to declare was the essential preliminary
to any attempt to formulate a scheme of federation. But what about
the practical scheme that Mr. Chamberlain proposes as the natural
consequence of the demonstration of the Empire's desire for unity ?
Is it wise, is it practicable — above all, is it one that will commend
itself to the British people ? These are the questions which men
must ask themselves now that the Colonial Secretary has made his
own views known.

It is no easy task that is imposed upon us by this declaration of
policy. It is certainly not one that can be performed by a mere
reference to old shibboleths, though these shibboleths will necessarily
play their part in the controversy to which we have been invited.
There are a great many sound Imperialists in this country who
believe that, after all, what one may call Mr. Forster's policy is still
the true one to pursue in our relations with the Colonies ; that is

1060 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

to say, they look to the ties of kinship, affection, and unity of interest,
rather than to treaties or tariffs, as the surest means of binding the
several portions of the Empire together. These men can point, in
justification of their view, to what happened three years ago, when,
from Vancouver's Island to New Zealand, the outlying portions of
the Empire made haste to stand beside us in the hour of danger.
Is it necessary, they ask, to try to force the pace ? Shall we not do
better to continue that slowly-moving policy from which we have
already derived such good fruits, and from which we may reap a yet
more abundant harvest in the future ? Mr. Chamberlain's reply to
them is to point to the case of Canada, and to what is happening
there at this moment. Canada's desire to give some trade advantage
to Great Britain has been shown in a practical way, and now she is
threatened with retaliation by Germany, which claims to stand on
the same footing as this country so far as tariff relations with
Canada are concerned. No one can deny that in putting forward
this case of Canada Mr. Chamberlain has played his very strongest
card. Everybody must resent the claim of Germany to interfere in
the arrangements between Great Britain and one of her own Colonies,
and everyone must desire to help Canada if she is forced into a tariff
war with Germany. But it is notorious that hard cases make bad
law. The case of Canada is very hard, but the statesmen of England
must see to it that they do not make matters worse by adopting a
remedy that might only make confusion worse confounded. The
mere tax upon corn, which Ministers threw away with such light
hearts in their last Budget, would hardly afford the Colonial
Secretary the means of compensating Canada for her sacrifices on
behalf of Imperial unity. Mr. Chamberlain himself, indeed, regarded
that tax as nothing more than the ' thin end of the wedge,' and in
his speech he invited his audience to contemplate something much
bigger and more important — a Zollverein for the whole British
Empire. This is the practical outcome of his appeal to the nation.
We are asked to decide whether we shall reverse the fiscal policy
which during the last half-century has made us the richest country
in the world, and go back to the days of protection. Once more,
therefore, the lists are opened for the renewal of the old tournament,
and the battle which Gladstone, Bright, and Cobden believed that
they had fought out to the very end is to be renewed under new
conditions and the inspiration of new motives. How it will end no
one can say. The question which is at issue is not one to be answered
in haste. It is far too grave in its character to be treated lightly.
Mr. Chamberlain himself does not seem to have realised all its many
aspects and its possible consequences, if one may judge by his speech
at Birmingham. But at least he can claim to have set the ball
rolling, and to have touched a sensitive chord in the hearts of his
fellow-countrymen by the appeal that he has made to them to

1903 LAST MONTH 1061

subordinate all other political questions to that of the salvation
of the Empire. How that appeal will be responded to, it is as
yet too soon to say. One thing, however, is clear, and that is
that it cannot, as I have said, be decided by the mere repetition of
old shibboleths. We shall have to consider anew and carefully not
only the relative advantages and dangers of such an Imperial
Zollverein as Mr. Chamberlain has suggested, but those of a strict
adherence both to the spirit and the letter of our free-trade faith.

Up to the moment at which I write, those who have discussed
the Chamberlain proposals have been almost uniformly hostile to
them. A condensed report of a speech by Lord Kosebery at Burnley
did, indeed, lead the wiseacres of the Press and the Lobby to believe
for a few hours that the last Liberal Prime Minister of England had
gone over to the side of protection. If that had been true, the case
would have been serious ; but, as a matter of fact, Lord Kosebery's
language did not justify the interpretation put upon it by men who
are always ready to seize every opportunity of misrepresenting his
opinions, and an emphatic repudiation of the statement that he had
endorsed Mr. Chamberlain's proposal, which he issued immediately,
put an end to the idea that we were about to witness a new exodus
from the depleted Liberal Party. Since then the Spectator, which
has so long been Mr. Chamberlain's chief supporter in the Press, has
pronounced emphatically against his scheme, whilst the support that
it has received has been relatively insignificant. But the controversy
which he has raised will have to be fought out, and fought out upon
modern lines. The world has not been standing still since Cobden
converted Peel. We are face to face with conditions not even
dreamed of sixty years ago, and the friends of free trade must bring
modern arms of precision into use if they are to combat with success
the new and formidable assault which has been made upon the
principles they have been so long content to regard as irrevocably
fixed. Those of us who are most firmly convinced that in the
interests not only of Great Britain,] but of the Empire as a whole, our
free-trade policy ought to be maintained, must admit that a mere
appeal to the old formulas and shibboleths will not suffice to secure
us the victory in the new struggle to which we have been challenged.

I have spoken already of the change of front which was forced
upon Ministers with regard to the London Education Bill. The
measure in its first state, as presented to the House of Commons, was
so ludicrously bad that it was difficult to understand how anyone
could be expected to take it seriously. Its primary object seemed to
be to destroy the London School Board, and the only offence which
anyone had been able to allege against that body was that it had
been only too successful in the performance of the great task entrusted
to it. Its second purpose was, apparently, to snub the County
Council and to afford fresh proof of the fact that his Majesty's

1062 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

Ministers prefer the glorified, but by no means reformed, vestries
now called Borough Councils to the great central authority for the
administration of the affairs of the metropolis. Finally, it was clear
from every line of the measure that the great object of its authors
was to remove the educational system of London as far as possible
from the control of the public. The public was to pay the piper ;
but the last thing that it was to be allowed to do was to call the tune.
How such a Bill as this ever came into existence, how any Minister
could be found so fatuous as to present it to Parliament in the belief
that it would be accepted by that body, it is impossible to conceive.
Nobody, save the merest party hacks on the Ministerial side, has
had a word to say in favour of this extraordinary measure. Even the
clerical party shuddered at the thought of handing over the education
of London to the vestrymen of Westminster and Kennington, and
before Mr. Balfour could get his Bill read a second time, he had to
promise that it should be amended in many important particulars.
The chief part of the amending process consisted in the throwing
over of the Borough Councils, the County Council being given the
clear majority in the new body. This amendment has satisfied
nobody : it has been assailed as strongly by some of the most orthodox
of Conservatives as by the leaders of the Nonconformist party. But
Ministers have been victorious in the division lobby, thanks entirely to
their command of the Irish vote. One wonders why they should have
made such efforts in order to attain such ends. They have destroyed
the London School Board without cause or excuse ; they have cut off
the London ratepayers from that close contact with the educational
system under which their children are brought up that they have
enjoyed for more than thirty years, and that has had so good an
effect alike upon parents and children ; and they have given us as
the new educational authority a chaotic body, the composition of
which is liked and defended by nobody and whose future policy no
one can pretend to foretell. At the moment at which I write it is
announced that Ministers have at last recognised that they can no
longer command a majority in favour of their scheme, even as it has
been modified in Committee, and that they are prepared to make
fresh concessions to public opinion. A more deplorable record of
blundering, miscalculation, and weakness than that which they have
piled up against themselves in connection with this measure it would
be impossible to conceive.

In the meantime, it does not seem that the battle out of doors
over the measure of last year is dying down. On the contrary,
the party of passive resistance among the Nonconformists has
developed an unexpected degree of strength. Many names of
importance — not those of political agitators, but of men held in
universal respect in the Free Churches — have been added to
the list of those who are prepared to accept joyfully the spoiling

1903 LAST MONTH 1063

of their goods for the sake of a great principle, and it is in the
highest degree unlikely that any of those who have announced
their determination not to pay the Education Rate under the Act
of last year will be deterred from the course they propose to take
by the legal opinions which declare that if they unite together for
mutual support they will be guilty of conspiracy. A Hyde Park
demonstration of exceptional magnitude has given the Noncon-
formists of London an opportunity of displaying their sympathy with
their co-religionists in the country, and all things seem to show that,
whether we like it or not, the agitation over the Act of last year will
be prolonged and serious. It may not effect the object immediately
aimed at, but it cannot fail still further to weaken the Government.

The other great measure of the Session, the Irish Land Bill, is
still under consideration in the House of Commons. The second
reading was carried by the overwhelming majority of 443 to 26 ;
but the defects of the Bill remain what they were, and in spite
of this huge majority there is no more real love for the measure
than there was when it was first introduced. At the best, it is
accepted as a painful and hateful necessity, and the injustice of
the scheme to those who will have to contribute to its cost with-
out deriving any benefit from it has been pointed out by many
critics. For the .moment the electors seem, however, to view this
side of the question with profound indifference. It would almost
seem that, so far as money is concerned, they have reached the
state of mind of the gambler at Monte Carlo, to whom coins are
mere counters. We are spending money so freely that a little
more or a little less in the way of national expenditure makes no
impression on the public mind. The reaction from this unhealthy
mood is yet to come. The astounding success of the Transvaal
loan does not seem to indicate that we are drawing near the end
of our resources, or that our credit has suffered in the international
market. Thirty-five millions was the amount of the loan, and the
amount actually subscribed was nearly twenty times that sum. Mr.
Chamberlain's statement on the subject of the loan and the finances
of the Transvaal was a lucid exposition of the financial position
in South Africa, and there is no doubt that it contributed to the
remarkable success of the loan itself.

Certain events connected with our relations with Russia have
exercised a disturbing influence during the month. Early in May,
Lord Lansdowne was questioned in 'the House of Lords as to the
interests of this country in the Persian Gulf. In his reply, after
touching upon the question of the Baghdad Railway, he declared
emphatically that this country would regard the establishment of a
naval base or a fortified port in the Persian Gulf by any other Power
as a very grave menace to British interests, and one which would
certainly be resisted by all the means at our disposal. This declara-

1064 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

tion, couched in the clearest and most emphatic language, has been
universally interpreted as a warning to Kussia. Outsiders cannot, of
course, say what provocation it was that induced Lord Lansdowne to
launch this diplomatic thunderbolt. In itself it recalls the statement
made during Lord Rosebery's premiership on the subject of the Nile
Valley, and it is possible that Lord Lansdowne has the same justifi-
cation for his warning to Russia that Lord Rosebery had for his
warning to France. But of this the outside world knows nothing.
What it does know is that Russia has received blunt notice that she
must keep her hands off the Persian Gulf, and that England has
been pledged by the Foreign Secretary to a course of action which
may at any moment bring us face to face with our most formidable
rival in Asia. But it is not in the Persian Gulf only that Russian
diplomacy is causing trouble. The story of Manchuria, as it has
been set forth chieBy on the authority of the Peking correspondent
of the Times, introduces us to a new chapter in the history of the
Russian advance in the Far East. It is not a chapter that furnishes
pleasant reading for anybody. Russia undertook to evacuate Man-
churia and the Treaty port of Niu-chwang on the 8th of April last.
She has not done so, but instead of fulfilling her engagements she
presented a new series of demands to China on the 18th of April,
making these new demands the condition of her withdrawal. When
news of her action became known, there was much indignation over
what was regarded as her bad faith, not only in this country, but in
the United States, and the American Press spoke out with even more
than its usual frankness on the subject. Thereupon the Russian
Government solemnly assured the English and American Ambassadors
at St. Petersburg that she had not made the alleged demands upon
China. A few days later the value of this official denial was established
by the fact that Mr. Conger, the American Minister at Peking,
received from the Russian Charged' 'Affaires in that city ' an official
copy of the demands in the original Russian, written in his own
hand.' It is needless to expatiate upon this story, one that is only
too familiar in the chronicles of Russian diplomacy. That she has
any intention of releasing her grasp upon Manchuria, or of permit-
ting any other Power to have free access to Niu-chwang, unless she
is compelled by force to do so, is hardly to be believed. The interests
of this country, the United States, and Japan are identical. Public
opinion in all three countries, and nowhere more forcibly than in
America, condemns the shameless ill-faith shown by Russia, and
Englishmen in the East are hardly less severe in their condemnation
of our own Government for allowing itself to be duped by Russian
declarations. The time, it is evident, is coming when we shall have
to face another crisis in the Far East, and take such measures as may
be needed to save what remains to us of our trade with Manchuria
and the adjoining provinces of China.

1903 LAST MONTH 1065

The King's tour abroad came to an end early in the month. Its
most important episodes, however, fall within the limits of this
month's chronicle. His Majesty's visit to Home was an unequivocal
success, and he was received with a welcome which proved that
amongst all classes of Italians there was a real desire to acknowledge
the substantial nature of the ties of friendship which unite England
and Italy. But it was his visit to Paris in the early days of May
that was the most important political incident of his journey. Grave
doubts had been expressed as to the way in which he would be
received in the French capital, and one or two Parisian journals did
their best to provoke a demonstration against him whilst he was the
guest of the nation. Happily, these attempts failed, as they
deserved to do, and the reputation of the French people for a natural
politeness was fully maintained. His Majesty's reception on his
arrival, it is true, was courteous rather than warm ; but the King
was fortunately able to overcome any coldness that existed on the
part of the populace, and he had the satisfaction of knowing that
before he left Paris he had established himself as a popular favourite,
and had put an end to that estrangement which has existed too long
between the French people and this country. The attitude of the
officials of the Republic, from President Loubet downwards, was, it
need hardly be said, everything that could have been desired.
Nothing was spared by them in order to make the visit a success.
But it was the reception at the Hotel de Ville, and the simple but
cordial words spoken by his Majesty there, which secured the success
of his visit and won for him the warm regard of the crowd in the
streets. Of the political consequences of the visit it is too soon to
speak. Nothing appears to have been settled as yet with regard to
the return journey of President Loubet to London, but it is to be
hoped that some announcement on the subject will before long be
made. The French people evidently expect and desire that this
visit shall take place, and London would receive the President with
genuine enthusiasm. In the meantime, important declarations
have been made in the more serious portion of the French Press as
to the steps that are needed to bring about a complete reconciliation
between the two countries, and there is nothing in these declarations
which need stand in the way of that policy of pacification which the
wise men of both nations desire to pursue. Since returning to his
own country, King Edward has paid a State visit to Scotland, and
the old Palace of Holyrood has once again been the scene of those
Court festivities to which it had so long been a stranger.

Among the events in Greater Britain none has been more
important than the strike of the men employed on the Victoria
State Railways. This was a distinct attempt to put pressure upon
the Government for the benefit of a single class of the industrial
population, but if it had proved successful, it seems probable that

1066 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

every industry would have suffered in the same way, and that the
country would have been placed at the mercy of an aggressive
Socialism. As it was, the railway system was for a time disorganised,
and the community at large exposed to great inconvenience and
serious loss. But in the crisis the Government stood firm, and was
supported by the Parliament of the Colony. The demands of the
strikers were refused, and anti-strike legislation introduced. This
show of firmness, coupled with the fact that public opinion pronounced
strongly against the strikers, brought the men to their senses, and
the trouble ended almost as quickly as it had arisen.

In the Near East the situation has been during the month both
threatening and perplexing, though there is. happily, reason to
believe that the acute dangers which existed a few weeks ago are
temporarily, at least, subsiding. There has been fighting of a
sanguinary character between the Sultan's forces and the insurgents,
and at least one serious outrage has been committed. This was
the blowing up of the Ottoman Bank at Salonica by dynamite
bombs, a crime which caused loss of life as well as grave destruction
of property. The Sultan has expressed his indignation against those
who are secretly supporting the insurgents, in a note of such
exceptionally strong language that the Powers have intervened to
induce him to withdraw it. That pressure has been put upon the
Macedonians to restrain them from further action seems evident
from the fact that during the latter portion of the month outrages
have ceased, and there has been comparative quiet. A change of
Ministry at Sofia promises to contribute to the maintenance of peace.
The new Cabinet, under General Petroff, declares that its mission is
to establish a good understanding with the Porte. If it should be
able to do this, the immediate danger in Macedonia will have passed
away.

One minor incident of the month deserves notice before I close
this chronicle. I refer to the impetuous, if not intemperate, attack
which the Bishop of London made upon Mr. Hadden, the Vicar of
St. Mark's, North Audley Street, because the latter had officiated at
the marriage of Mr. Vanderbilt, the well-known American. Mr.
Vanderbilt had been divorced from his first wife, and the Bishop
was pleased not only to regard his re-marriage in one of the churches
in his diocese as a grave scandal, but to threaten Mr. Hadden with
a vigorous manifestation of his displeasure for the part he had taken
in the ceremony. It is strange that the Bishop should have been so
forgetful of the law of the land as to take this ill-advised action.

o

The right of divorced persons to be re-married in church has not only
been established by ancient usage, but is expressly confirmed by the
statute law of the realm. It is true that this law provides that a
clergyman may, if he likes, refuse to re-marry a divorced person, and
that he is not to be subject to any ecclesiastical censure for this

1903 LAST MONTH 1067

refusal. But it also provides that no clergyman who does perform
the marriage ceremony in the case of a divorced man or woman is to
be subject to any ecclesiastical censure for doing so. It was this
clause in the statute law which the Bishop chose to ignore when
he made his very indiscreet attack upon a man whose character is
above reproach. One can only hope that the Bishop has now
discovered his mistake, and that he will make full amends to the
clergyman whom he has so wantonly attacked in defiance of that
law to which, in common with every other subject of the Crown, he
owes obedience. So long as the Church enjoys the advantage
of being ' established ' by the law of the realm none of its dignitaries
is entitled to raise its law above that of the land.

WEMYSS KEID.

1068 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June

LORD KELVIN ON SCIENCE AND THEISM

THE recent speech of Lord Kelvin, as reported in the daily news-
papers, upon the subject of ' the creating and directing Power which
science compels us to accept as an article of belief,' seemed so im-
portant and interesting as coming from such a man, that, having
the pleasure of his personal acquaintance, I wrote to ask him for an
authentic and authoritative version of it from his own hand which
might be placed upon record in these pages.

I received the following answer to my request :

15 Eaton Place, London, S.W. :
May 5th, 1903.

Dear Mr. Knowles, — I am glad you think that the little I said in
University College last week may be useful. According to your wish,
I now send you, enclosed, a report from the Times altered to the
first person and a little amplified by inclusion of the substance
of my letter which appeared in the Times last Monday.

Yours very truly,

KELVIN.

With reference to Professor Henslow's mention of ether-granules,
I ask permission to say three words of personal explanation. I had
recently, at a meeting of the Koyal Society of Edinburgh, occasion
to make use of the expressions ether, atoms, electricity, and I was
horrified to read in the Press that I had put forward a hypothesis of
ether-atoms. Ether is absolutely non-atomic ; it is structureless, and
utterly homogeneous where not disturbed by the atoms of ponderable
matter.

I am in thorough sympathy with Professor Henslow in the
fundamentals of his lecture ; but I cannot admit that, with regard to
the origin of life, science neither affirms nor denies Creative Power.
Science positively affirms Creative Power. It is not in dead matter

that we live and move and have our being, but in the creating and
directing Power which science compels us to accept as an article of
belief. We cannot escape from that conclusion when we study the
physics and dynamics of living and dead matter all around. Modern
biologists are coming, I believe, once more to a firm acceptance of
something beyond mere gravitational, chemical, and physical forces ;
and that unknown thing is a vital principle. We have an unknown
object put before us in science. In thinking of that object we are
all agnostics. We only know Grod in His Works, but we are absolutely
forced by science to believe with perfect confidence in a Directive
Power, — in an influence other than physical, or dynamical, or elec-
trical forces. Cicero (by some supposed to have been editor of
Lucretius) denied that men and plants and animals could come into
existence by a fortuitous concourse of atoms. There is nothing
between absolute scientific belief in a Creative Power, and the
acceptance of the theory of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. Just
think of a number of atoms falling together of their own accord and
making a crystal, a sprig of moss, a microbe, a living animal. Cicero's
expression 'fortuitous concDurse of atoms' is certainly not wholly in-
appropriate for the growth of a crystal. But modern scientific men
are in agreement with him in condemning it as utterly absurd in
respect to the coming into existence, or the growth, or the continua-
tion of the molecular combinations presented in the bodies of living
things. Here scientific thought is compelled to accept the idea of
Creative Power. Forty years ago I asked Liebig, walking some-
where in the country, if he believed that the grass and flowers that
we saw around us grew by mere chemical forces. He answered,
' No, no more than I could believe that a book of botany describing
them could grow by mere chemical forces.' Every action of free will
is a miracle to physical and chemical and mathematical science.

I admire the healthy breezy atmosphere of free thought through-
out Professor Henslow's lecture. Do not be afraid of being free
thinkers ! If you think strongly enough you will be forced by
science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion.
You will find science not antagonistic but helpful to religion.

In conclusion, I have the pleasure to move a hearty vote of
thanks to Professor Hen slow for the interesting and instructive
lecture which we have heard.

Lord Kelvin's deliverance recalls to my mind the frequent dis-
cussions on the subject of Theism at the meetings of the Metaphysical
Society, which I attended (as its founder and secretary) for so many

1070 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY June 1903

years. The acutest minds of our generation debated there, over and
over again, the great questions which are beyond the reach of
demonstrable proof, and contributed to the common stock their
'guesses at truth' with entire and confidential freedom. The
agnosticism of Huxley, the materialism of Tyndall, the atheism of
W. K. Clifford, the scepticism of Fitzjames Stephen, the 'posi-
tivism ' of Frederic Harrison, were opposed by the faith of Cardinal
Manning, Father Dalgairns, Dr. Ward, Bishop Thirlwall, Bishop
Magee, Archbishop Thomson, Mark Pattison, F. D. Maurice, Euskin,
Gladstone, the Duke of Argyll, Dr. Martineau (whom Tennyson held
to be ' the greatest among us '), and many others.

Lord Tennyson himself — who sat so loose to the ordinarily accepted
forms of Christianity — formulated in those days his own personal
creed, and I reproduce it here in order to set the belief of a King of
Poetry alongside that of a ' Prince of Science.' It has been already
published in this Review,1 and runs thus :

' THERE'S A SOMETHING THAT WATCHES OVER
US; AND OUR INDIVIDUALITY ENDURES : THAT' S MY FAITH, AND
THAT'S ALL MY FAITH'

To cardinals and archbishops Tennyson's

creed seemed sadly insufficient ; but Martineau said of it, ' Yes I God
and immortality — a sufficient basis for religion ; ' and Ward (that
' most generous of all Ultramontanes ') used to declare, ' In these
days one must be thankful for a Theist.'

JAMES KNOWLES.

1 See Nineteenth Century, January 1893.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertatce
to return unaccepted MSS.

INDEX TO VOL. LIII

The titles of articles are printed in italics

ABB

A BBOTT (G. F.), Macedonia and its
J\. Revolutionary Committees, 414-

429
Abyssinian Question, The, and its

History, 79-97
Ackroyd (William), Radium and its

Position in Nature, 856-864
Agitation against England's Power,

The, 353-389
Agricultural Education in the

Netherlands, 466-475
Agricultural Parcel Post, An, 253-263
Alexandria, School for the blind in,

1050-1052
Alpers (0, T. J.), The New Zealand

Elections, 849-855

America, South, Europe and, 581-586
American industrial enterprise and the

demand for capital, 98-106
American Manufactures, The

Success of, 390-402
Anderson (Sir Robert), The Crusade

against Professional Criminals,

496-508
Anti-duelling movement in Austria

and Germany, 678-685
Army reform, Mr. Brodrick's scheme

for, 514, 515
Arthur (Sir George), Loyalty to the

Prayer Book, 567-576
Athanasian Creed, The, and Liberal

Churchmanship, 577-580
Atlantic fisheries and the Bond-Hay

Treaty, 924-935
Austen's (Jane) Novels, Another View

of, 113-121

Autonomy for Ireland without separa-
tion, 918-923

"DAGHDAD and Persian Gulf Rail-

D way, The, 892, 1063

Barnett (Mrs. S. A.), The Beginning

of Toynbee Hall — a Reminiscence,

306-314
Benson (Arthur C.), Sir Oliver Lodge

and our Public Schools, 41-47

CAS

Berkeley (George F. H.), The Abys-
sinian Question and its History,
79-97

Birrell (Augustine), Some more Letters
of Mrs. Carlyle, 813-820

Bismarck, the German Emperor, and
the Social Democrats, 755-772

Blind, The, in Egypt, Industries for,

. 1050-1052

Bond-Hay Treaty, The : a New
Phase of tJie Anglo-American Dis-
pute, 924-935

Book-knowledge and common-sense
education, 315-329

Brahmin doctrine of reincarnation, its
influence on Hindu conduct, 446-
452

Bright (Charles), The Present Position
o/ Wireless Telegraphy, 299-305

British and American manufacturers,
their methods compared, 390-402

British Army recruits and the national
physique, 797-805

British Colonies and the Mother
Country, Mr. Chamberlain's advo-
cacy of commercial reciprocity be-
tween, 897-917, 1056-1061

British Navy, Training of officers for
the, 340, 341

British Philistinism and Indian Art,
198-209

Budget, The, 892-896

Bulgarian plots and Macedonian
revolution, 414-429

/CABINET, Powers of the, and in-
\J fluence of the Sovereign, 177-189
Cain's Wife, Who was ? 330-336
Canada, South Africa, and Western
Australia as wheat-growing coun-
tries, 670-677

Cancer, The Increase of, 1025-1038
Carlyle, Mrs., Some More Letters of,

813 820

Cassels (Walter R.), The Ripon
Episode, 26-40

1072

INDEX TO VOL. LIII

CAT

Catholic doctrine and the Church Dis-
cipline Bill, 533-554

Chamberlain, Mr., his visit to the
Cape, 345, 346, 517 ; a glance at his
career, 708-719 ; speech on fiscal
concessions to the Colonies, 897-917,
1056-1061

Chapman (Hon. Mrs.), Marriage with
a Deceased Wife's Sister, 982-988

Child labour and the Berlin Labour
Conference, 523-527

Christian doctrines as expounded by
the Bishop and the Dean of Ripon,
26-40

Church, The Crisis in the, 533-554 ;
reply to, 747-754

Church's Last Chance, The, 555-566

Churchill (Lord Randolph) and the
Tory Democratic Party, 132-142

Cimabue, The Beal, 453-465

Classical education and the relative
importance of Greek and Latin,
210-224

Clergy, The, and the Education Act,
1-13

Clifford (Mrs. W. K.), The Search-
light: a Play in One Act, 159-
176

Collins (J. Churton), Free Libraries :
their Functions and Opportunities,
968-981

Colonising South America, 581-586

Conquest by Bank and Railways,
with examples from Russia in
Manchuria, 936-949

Conservatives and the ' Fourth Party,'
132-142

Constitution, Our Changing — ' The
King in Council,'1 177-189

Corn-growing in British Countries,
670-677

Corn Laws, The Effect of — a Reply,
264-274 ; a rejoinder, 476-483

Courtney (Leonard), What is the
Advantage of Foreign Trade ? 806-
812

Cox (Harold), The Effect of Corn
Laws — a Reply, 264-274 ; a re-
joinder to, 476-483

Crackanthorpe (Montague), on criminal
sentences, Reply to, 496-508

Crawfurd (Oswald) on English drama,
Reply to, 614-627

Creation of man, theory of two races,
the ' Sons of God ' and the earth-
born, 330-336

Creative Power affirmed by Science,
1068-1070

Crime, Prevention of, versus Punish-
ment of Criminals, 496-508

Crisis, in the Church, The, 533-554 ;
reply to, 747-754

Cross (J. W.), The Financial Future,
98-106

ENG

Cmsade against Professional Crimi-

nals, The, 496-508
Currie (Lady), ' The Way of Dreams'

950-967

T\ECEASED Wife's Sister, Mar-
-L^ riage with a, 982-988
Delhi Durbar, The, 337-340
Didactic fiction as illustrated by the

novels of the Bronte sisters, 484-495
Domestic service, Causes of the un-

popularity of, 989-1001
— how to make it more attractive,

284-289
Douglas (Langton), The Real Cimabue,

453-465
Drama, Literary Critics and the,

614-627

' Dreams, The Way of,' 950-967
Duel, The, in Germany and Austria,

678-685
Dutch farming and agricultural educa-

tion, 466-475
Dyer (E. Jerome), Corn- growing in

British Countries, 670-677

(R. Cl. Bachofen von), The
** Duel in Germany and Austria,

678-685
Education Act, The Clergy and the.

1-13
Education Act, The Nonconformists

and the, 14-25
Education Act, The, and the Educa-

tion Bill for London, 149-154, 403-

413, 511, 512, 887, 888
Education Authority for London,

The New, 403-413
Education Bill for London, The, 1061-

1063
Education in India, and the proper

method of art teaching, 198-209
Education in public schools, replies to

Sir 0. Lodge's criticisms of, 41-53
Education, The Disadvantages of,

315-329
Egypt, Industries for the Blind in,

1050-1052
Egyptian temples, Orientation of, and

Stonehenge, 1002-1009
Eltzbacher (0.), The Disadvantages

of Education, 315-329; The Social

Democratic Party in Germany,

755-772
England's Power, The Agitation

against, 353-389
English and Russian Politics in the

East, 67-78
English Church, The, its doctrine and

ritual, 533-580
English drama and English literature,

Estrangement between, and its

remedy, 614-627

INDEX TO VOL. LIU

1073

ETH

Ethiopia, ancient and modern, 79-96
Europe and South America, 581-586

FAMILY LIFE, The sanctity of, as
affected by marriage of blood-rela-
tions, 982-988

Farm and garden produce, The need
of a parcel post for, 253-263

Financial Future, The, 98-106

Fletcher (Frank), Sir Oliver Lodge
and our Public Schools, 48-53

Food, The Price of, in Our Next
Great War, 122-131

Foreign Trade, What is the Advan-
tage of? 806-812

Forgotten Adventurer, A, 834-848

Foster (Sir Michael), The Growth of
the Local Government Board, 107-
112

' Fourth, Party," The Story of the :
III. Its Nirvana, 132-142

Free Libraries : their Functions and
Opportunities, 968-981

Fremantle (Dean) and the Bishop of
Bipon on the Incarnation, 26-40

French appreciations of Pascal, 225-
240

From this World to the Next, 645-
650

Froude (J. A.) and the Carlyle Remi-
niscences and Letters, 814-820

Fuad Pasha, The Political Testa-
ment of, 190-197

GERMAN and Russian rivalry in
Asia Minor, 362-385
Germany, The Social Democratic

Party in, 755-772
Germany, Venezuela, and the United

States, 340-344
Gladstone (Miss Annie), Another View

of Jane Austen's Novels, 113-121
Gorst (Harold E.), The Story of

' The Fourth Party : ' III. Its

Nirvana, 132-142
Gorst (Sir John), Social Reform : The

Obligation of the Tory Party, 519-

532

Government departments, their func-
tions and relative importance, 107-

112
Greek, The Study of, 210-224

HALIFAX (Viscount), The Crisis in
the Church, 533-554 ; reply to,
747-754

Handley (Rev. Hubert), An Appeal to
the Dean and Canons of West-
minster, 577-580

Hardie (J. Keir), The Independent
Labour Party, 686-694
VOL. LIII — No. 316

JAN

Harischandra (Narayan), Reincarna-
tion, 446-452
Harrison (Frederic), From this World

to the Next, 645-650
Harrison (Mrs. Frederic), Mistress and

Maid, 284-289
Havell (E. B.), British Philistinism

and Indian Art, 198-209 ; The Taj

and its Designers, 1039-1049
Headlong Hall, Crotchet Castle, and

other novels of Peacock, 651-664
Heaton (J. Henniker), An Agricultural

Parcel Post, 253-263
Higgins (Alfred), The Monuments in

St. Paul's Cathedral, 786-796
Hinks (Arthur H.), Stonehenge and

the Midsummer Sunrise, 1002-1009
Hobson (J. A.), his book on Imperial-
ism criticised, 806-812
Home Rule without Separation, 918

923
Human personality, Mr. Myers's book

upon, reviewed, 628-644, 645-650
Hunter (Sir Robert), The Present

Position of the Licensing Question,

695-707
Hutchinson (James G.), A Working

Man's View of Trade-Unions, 290-

298

TMPERIAL DEFENCE and the food

1 supply, 122-131

Imperialism and foreign and colonial

trade, 806-812

Imperial Reciprocity, 897-917
Indian architecture, history of the Taj

Mahal at Agra, 1039-1049
Indian Art, British Philistinism and,

198-209
Industries for the Blind in Egypt,

1050-1052
Intellectual training in public schools,

41-53
Ireland, Prince and Parliament for, a

new solution of the Home Rule

problem, 918-923

Irish Bogs, A Future for, 876-882
Irish Land Bill, The : ' A Scheme of

Pernicious Agrarian Quackery,'

721-737 ; The Latest : Is it the

Last? 738-746
Irish Land Conference, 348, 349, 739-

746
Irish Land Laws, The 'Horrible

Jumble ' of the, 599-613
Irish Land question, 889-891
Italian paintings falsely attributed to

Cimabue, 453-465

JANSENISM, Port Royal, Pascal,
U and Angelique Arnauld, 225-240
4 A

1074

INDEX TO VOL. LIU

JEB

Jersey (Countess of), A Forgotten

Adventurer, 834-848
Jones (Henry Arthur), Literary

Critics and the Drama, 614-627

TfELVIN (Lord) on Science and

-** Theism, 1068-1070

Kenyon-Slaney clause of the Edu-
cation Act, as affecting clerical
management of Voluntary Schools,
1-13, 19, 25

Kesteven (W. Henry), Who was
Cain's Wife ? 330-336

King Edward VII.'s holiday tour, 883-
885, 1065

' King, The, in Council,' Our Chan-
ging Constitution, 177-189

Kitchener (Lord), Lord Eosebery's
proposal concerning, 347, 348

Knowles (James), Lord Kelvin on
Science and Theism, 1068-1070

Kolli (Baron de), his scheme for the
restoration of King Ferdinand VII.
of Spain, 834-847

T ABELS, 62-66
-" Labour Party, The Independent,

686-694
Laity, Rights of the, and the Church

Discipline Bill, 533-554, 555-566,

567-576

Land Conference in Ireland, Recom-
mendations of the, and the Irish

Land Bill, 738-746
Land purchase in Ireland, Probable

results of Mr. Wyndham's Bill for,

721-737
Landlord and tenant in Ireland, and

' dual ownership,' 599-613
Last Month, 143-158 ; 337-352 ; 509-

518; 708-720; 883-896; 1053-1067
Lathbury (D. C.), The Clergy and

the Education Act, 1-13
Lea (Hermann), Wessex Witches,

Witchery, and Witchcraft, 1010-

1023
Ledger (Rev. Edmund), The Canals

of Mars : are they Seal ? 773-785
Licensing Question, The Present Posi-
tion of the, 695-707
Liquor Question, The, and the Pro-
hibition party in New Zealand,

849-855
Literary Critics and the Drama, 614-

627
Local Government Board, The Growth

of the, 107-112
Lodge, Sir Oliver, and our Public

Schools, 41-53
London Congestion and Cross- Traffic,

821-833
London Water Bill, 153

MUR

Low (Sidney), Our Changing Consti-
tution— ' The King in Council,'
177-189

Loyalty to the Prayer Book, 567-576

MACDONELL (John), South
American Republics and the
Monroe Doctrine, 587-598

Macedonia and its Revolutionary
Committees, 414-429

McGrath (P. T.), The Bond-Hay
Treaty : a New Phase of the Anglo-
American Dispute, 924-935

Mallock (W. H.), The Gospel of Mr.
F. W. H. Myers, 628-644

Manchuria, Russian absorption of,
936-949

Manners and morals of modern
Society, 54-61

Marconi's oceanic telegraphy, its
present position, 299-305

Marriage with a Deceased Wife's
Sister, 982-988

Mars, The Canals of : are they real ?
773-785

Maxwell (Sir Herbert), Imperial Re-
ciprocity, 897-905

Meath (Countess of), Industries for
the Blind in Egypt, 1050-1052

Medd (John C.), Agricultural Educa-
tion in the Netherlands, 466-475

Menelik, Emperor of Abyssinia, and
the unification of Ethiopia, 79-97

Midhat (Ali Haydar), English and
Russian Politics in the East, 67-78

Midsummer Sunrise, Stonehenge and
the, 1002-1009

Military training and national
physique, 797-805

Miller (Sir Alexander), The ' Horrible
Jumble ' of the Irish Land Laws,
599-613

Misnomers in common parlance, 62-
66

Mistress and Maid, 284-289

Molesworth (Sir Guilford L.), The
Effects of the Corn Laws — a Re-
joinder, 476-483

Monroe Doctrine, South American
Republics and tJie, 587-598

Monteagle (Lord), The Irish Land
Bill :—The Latest : Is it the Last ?
738-746

Monuments in St. Paul's Cathedral,
786-796

Morris (Judge O'Connor), The Irish
Land Bill : A Scheme of Perni-
cious Agrarian Quackery, 721-737

Mortality from cancer, The increase
in, 1025-1038

Murray (Capt. Stewart L.), The Price
of Food in our Next Great War,
122-131

INDEX TO VOL. LIU

1075

MYE

Myers (Mr. F. W. H.), The Gospel of,
628-644

•RATIONAL PHYSIQUE, The
-*•*' Deterioration in, 797-805
Natural history observations on the

raven, 241-252, 430-445
Netherlands, Agricultural Education

in the, 466-475

Newfoundland, Canada, the United
States, and the fisheries question,
924-935
New Letters and Memorials of Jane

Welsh Carlyle reviewed, 813-820
New Zealand Elections, 849-855
Nonconformists, The, and the Edu-
cation Act, 14-25

OBITUARY : Archbishop Temple
and Dr. Parker, 157, 158 ; Quintin
Hogg, M. de Blowitz, 352
Oliphant (Laurence), his weird dream

and its fulfilment, 954-956
Optical illusions and the Canals of
Mars, 773-785

PARCEL POST, An Agricultural,
253-263
Parker (Sir Gilbert), Imperial Recipro-

city, 906-910
Parliament and politics, 347-352, 509-

518, 708-720, 886-896, 1053-1064
Parliament, Labour representatives in,

686-694

Pascal, Port Royal and, 225-240
Paul (Herbert), The Novels of Peacock,

651-664 ; The Study of Greek, 210-

224
Pauncefote (Hon. Maud), Washington,

D.C., 275-283

Peacock, The Novels of, 651-664
Peat-bogs of Ireland, their utilisation

for generating electric power, 876-

882
Periodic classification of the elements,

The position of radium in the, 856-

864
Persian Gulf and British interests,

Lord Lansdowne's declaration con-
cerning, 1063-1064
Political Testament, The, of Fuad

Pasha, 190-197
Ponsonby (Hon. Lady), Port Royal

and Pascal, 225-240
Prayer Book, Loyalty to the, 567-

576

Premonitory dreams, 950-967
Professional Criminals, The Crusade

against, 496-508
Protestant Churchmen, Lord Halifax,

and clergy discipline, 747-754

SOU

Public-houses and the new Licensing

Act, 695-707
Public Schools, Sir Oliver Lodge and

our, 41-53

1DADIUM and its Position in
-"' Nature, 856-864
Ramsden (Lady Guendolen), Is Society

Worse than it was ? 54-61
: Raven, The, 241-252, 430-445
Reciprocity, Imperial, 897-917
Reformation, The English, and its

ideals, 560-564
i Reid (Sir Wemyss), Last Month, 143-

158; 337-352; 509-518; 708-720;

883-896; 1053-1067
Reincarnation, 446-452
Ripon Episode, The, 26-40
Rogers (Rev. J. Guinness), The Non-
conformists and the Education

Act, 14-25
Romanising clergy and Protestant

laity, 533-554, 555-566, 567-576
I Russia and England in the Far East,

155, 156, 353-389, 1064
• Russia and Manchuria, acquisition by

means of bank and railway, 936-

949
Russian and English Politics in the

East, 67-78

CT. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, The
*•* Monuments in, 786-796
Salvation Army colony at Hadleigh,

665-669
Sankey (Lieut.-Gen. Sir Richard), A

Future for Irish Bogs, 876-882
School authority for London, how

should it be constituted ? 403-413,

511, 512
Science and Theism, Lord Kelvin on,

1068-1070
Search-light, The : a Play in One

Act, 159-176
Shah Jehan and the designers of the

Taj Mahal at Agra, 1039-1049
Shee (George F.), The Deterioration

in tlie National Physique, 797-805
Singing, The Lost Art of, 865-875
Smith (R. Bosworth), The Raven, 241-

252, 430-445
Social Democratic Party in Germany,

The, 755-772

Social Experiment, A, 665-669
Social Reform: The Obligation of

the Tory Party, 519-532
Society, Is it worse than it was .l 54-

61
Somerset (Somers), Europe and South

America, 581-586
South American Republics and the

Monroe Doctrine, 587-598

1076

INDEX TO VOL. LIU

STA

Stanley (Hon. E. Lyulph), The New
Education Authority for London,
403-413

Stead (Alfred), Conquest by Bank and
Railways, with examples from
Russia in Manchuria, 936-949

Stonehenge and the Midsummer Sun-
rise, 1002-1009

Swinton (Capt. George S. C.), London
Congestion and Cross-Traffic, 821-
833

TAJ, The, and its Designers, 1039-
4 1049

Taylor (Benjamin), Imperial Recipro-
city, 911-917

Technical education and trades-union-
ism, 295-298
Telepathy, Phantasms of the dead

and of the living, and hypnotism,

628-644
Theism, Science and, Lord Kelvin on,

1068-1070
Tory Democrats and the Conservative

party, 132-142
Toynbee Hall, The Beginning of — A

Reminiscence, 306-314
Trade Unions, A Working Man's

View of, 290-298
Trades Union Congress, The, and the

Independent Labour Party, 626-694
Traffic in London streets, Remedies

for the congestion of, 821-833
Tuker (M. A. E.), The Lost Art of

Svnging, 865-875
Turkish reform, Views of Fuad Pasha

upon, 190-197
Turkish reforms, Russian intrigues,

and English policy, 67-78

UGANDA Railway, 153, 154
United States, Life at the capital
of the, 275-283

United States, The, European Powers,
and South America, 341-344, 581-
586, 587-598

University Extension lectures, free
libraries, and the advance of educa-
tion, 968-981

Unpopular Industry, An, 989-1001

T7AMBERY (Prof. A.), The Agitation
V against England's Power, 353-
389

WOK

Venezuela, dispute with Great Britain
and Germany, 143-149, 340-344,
516, 581-586, 587-598

Vocal music, Modern, The short-
comings of, 865-875

Voluntary schools and clerical manage-
ment as affected by the Education
Act, 1-13, 14-25

WALTON (J. Lawson), The Crisis
vn the Church : a Reply to

Lord Halifax, 747-754
War, Our next Great, The Price of

Food in, 122-131
Warwick (Countess of), A Social

Experiment, 665-669
Washington, D.C., 275-283
Webb (Miss Catherine), An Unpopular

Industry, 989-1001
Wellington monument in St. Paul's

Cathedral, The, 791-796
Wessex Witches, Witchery, and

Witchcraft, 1010-1023
Westminster, An Appeal to tJie Dean

and Canons of, 577-580
Wheat, Prices of, as affected by Corn

Laws, 476-483

Wheeler (C. B.), Labels, 62-66
Whitechapelas seen from its University

settlement, 306-314
Wimborne (Lady), The Church's Last

Chance, 555-566
Wireless Telegraphy, The Present

Position of, 299-305
Witclies, Witchery, and Witchcraft,

Wessex, 1010-1023
Wolff (Dr. Alfred), The Increase of

Cancer, 1025-1038
Wolff (Sir H. Drummond), Home Rule

without Separation, 918-923
Womanhood as depicted by Jane

Austen, 113-121
Woman's Franchise, The, in New

Zealand, as affecting the Liquor ques-
tion and Bible -reading in schools,

849-855
Women's Industrial Council, Inquiry

into causes of the unpopularity of

Domestic Service, 989-1001
Working classes, The, and war prices

for food, 122-131

Working Man's View of Trade-
Unions, A, 290-298

0

AP The twentieth century

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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY