they welcomed and approved those of its provisions which were calculated to limit or restrain the liquor-traffic, especially its frank acceptance of the Direct-Veto principle and those clauses designed to effect material reduction in the number of houses, a diminution of the hours of sale on week-day and Sunday, heavy penalties for breaches of the law, and a system of efficient inspection. The opposition of the Alliance was entirely directed to those clauses which created new vested interests, and exchanged a license granted for one year only for a license granted for ten years. Had the ten-years' clause been dropped, they would have accepted

Our main proposal, the Direct Veto, has now been adopted by the Government of the day. Mr. Gladstone puts the Direct Veto into his election address. The attitude of the Govern

ment is the natural result of the progress of public opinion. "We are not likely, therefore, to surrender our impregnable postion with regard to the main plank of our platform at the call of license reformers who cannot agree among themselves about a substitute; we shall insist upon the Direct Veto forming an integral part of any licensing scheme that may be brought forward as a final settlement. The Direct Veto does not interfere with, but is entirely supplementary to, any licensing authority, however constituted, and fits in with any and every change that may be made in the future."

THE MANCHESTER PROPOSALS.

The Rev. James Halpin, in the pages of the Month (London) for February, presents an article entitled "The Licensing System and the Manchester Conference." Of the Gothenburg system and the system of Local Option (or Direct Veto) he says there is much merit in each, and that there are many who think such drastic measures necessary. On the other hand, he finds that many of those most interested in the social and religious welfare of the people do not believe that either of these systems can be made available in England. Of the Bishop of Chester's plan, he says:

That the scheme, or indeed any modification of the Gothenburg system, would be preferable to our actual licensing system is beyond question; whether it is the best and most suitable is a matter about which there will be much difference of opinion. To take one critic, more or less hostile, the Bishop of Manchester does not quite agree with his brother of Chester. He is not prepared to hand over the management of public-houses to the public bodies suggested; nor does he think that the British tax-payer is ready to advance the amount required for equitable compensation, and to set up the new establishments contemplated, and finally he believes that a simpler and sounder system may be found in the proposals of the Licensing Conference held at Manchester some time ago. It is to these proposals chiefly I desire to call attention."

The reverend writer says that in this Conference, held about two years ago, the two Bishops-the Bishop of Salford and the Protestant Bishop of Manchester-took a leading part, and that the proposals of the Conference deserve more attention than they have thus far secured. He says:

"They may be taken as representing what the more moderate reformers demand; they are set before us in practical shape, for they have been embodied in a Bill; they deal with such vexed questions as compensation and licensing bodies, and we may conclude that something on their lines may be hoped for in the near future. The following are among the chief features of the proposals: The Councils, town and county, are constituted the licensing authorities, and they are to appoint out of their own body a licensing committee; in lieu of compensation, actual licenses would run for a period of seven years, any new licenses that may be granted would be put up for sale at auction; and they would be granted only in a certain proportion, relatively to the population." Proposal 5 of the Conference is to limit licenses which may

be granted at the expiration of the seven years' time limit, as follows: In boroughs-One license if the population be under 1,500; two licenses if over 1,500 and under 3,000; three licenses if over 3,000 and under 4,000; and one additional license for every additional thousand. In districts not boroughs-One license if the population be under 900; two if the population be over 900 and under 1,200; three licenses if the population be over 1,200 and under 1,800; and one additional license for every additional 600. 'Provided, however, that if the ratepayers of any given district decide by a three-fourths majority that no license shall be issued for the sale of intoxicating liquors in such district, none shall be issued."

Mr. Halpin observes that the proposals are quite similar to those embodied in Mr. Bruce's Bill, which he considers a commendation in itself. He continues:

"Without a large reduction of licenses in every part of the Kingdom there can be no adequate remedy, nor, indeed, appreciable change for the better. But that brings us face to face with the question of compensation-a question which must be solved at the outset. Both the proposed measures deal with it, and on the same principle—that of a time-limit. It is on that principle,. I think, or on some similar compromise, that the question must be ultimately solved

The question of the licensing authority is another matter about which diversity of opinion prevails. Local-optionists, and generally those who would be described as holding extreme views, are strongly in favor of boards elected ad hoc, and directly by the people. On the other hand, there seems a strong prejudice against the multiplication of local boards. In the proposals we are criticising a special sub-committee ad hoc is to be appointed by the Council. In one of the conferences it was suggested that simultaneously with the election for the Council, there should be a special one ad hoc for the licensing committee.

"The Direct Popular Veto Clause of the proposals goes some distance to meet the views of the party of prohibition. The clause would probably but rarely come into operation; but there is some comfort for prohibitionists in the thought that even the most moderate people are prepared, in given circumstances, to give the public the right of self-protection to the fullest extent, if they choose to use it.

DEADLOCK IN TEMPERANCE REFORM.

Under the above caption, George Wyndham, M.P., follows Mr. Caine in the pages of the Contemporary; the special object of his paper being to present the scheme proposed by the Bishop of Chester for the solution of the liquor-problem in England. He, however, enters into a very general discussion of the whole question, and seeks to show that the plan proposed by the Bishop is the "fine contrivance" by which the 'deadlock" between the Moderates and the Extremists may be broken. In his introduction, he says:

"By private example and public exhortation the pioneers of temperance have done much for the welfare of their countrymen. Within the sphere of Parliamentary action they have been less successful. In this connection it is indeed impossible, unless ironically, to speak of the temperance movement at all; since for many years the condition of temperance legislation has been one not of movement, but rather of stable equilibrium, resulting from the divergence of aim and vigor of purpose brought by the various schools of reformers to the task. So lame a conclusion to much fervor and hard work is the more disappointing when we reflect that on many preliminary issues there is no longer any difference of opinion. The chances of successful temperance legislation would at first sight seem greater than those of any other contemplated reform. For not only the existence of the evil to be dealt with, but also its magnitude is universally admitted. The normal development of public opinion upon any social ill has in this matter reached and passed the point at which the State is bound to interfere.".

After briefly reviewing the statistics of drunkenness and its consequences, as set forth in reports to Parliament and elsewhere, Mr. Wyndham proceeds to say:

extreme men on a method of giving effect to this desire, nothing has been done in the first direction, and little in the second.

It is, unhappily, safe to predict that, in the continued absence of any agreement, the future will prove as barren as the past. The outlook is, indeed, blacker than it has been for years; for each of the two parties has recently pledged itself more deeply to principles which the other is determined to reject. Unless, therefore, some new road can be discovered which both may follow with honor, at least for some little way, the present impasse is certain to endure.

What chances have moderate reformers along the lines they have hitherto pursued? The essence, broadly speaking, of the proposals put forward in 1888 by the late Government, and in 1890 by Lord Randolph Churchhill, lay in the transference to a local authority, popularly elected, of all control over the liquortraffic. So far the policy met with a more or less friendly reception. The contingent provision, on the other hand-viz., that the non-renewal of licenses, not for misconduct of the holders, but solely in the interest of residents, should be accompanied with compensation, provoked such a storm of opposition that the whole scheme had incontinently to be dropped. In the face of such defeat, inflicted on a powerful Government, flushed with a recent and signal victory at the polls, none but the most sanguine can believe that, within any near term of years, imperial or local funds will be devoted to extinguishing annual licenses.

The writer proceeds to say that in 1890 another scheme of the Government, whereby a portion of the money derived from fresh taxes upon liquors might be applied by local authorities for buying and suppressing the cheapest and worst of the public-houses, fared no better than the other. He thinks the prospects of the advanced reformers no more promising. Admitting that a small majority of the new House of Commons stands pledged to the Direct Veto (the principle of prohibiting the sale within a delimited area, upon the vote of a certain proportion of the ratepaying inhabitants), he nevertheless believes that the resistance to this scheme will be so potent as to defeat it, and that, even should the measure be agreed to as a principle, there would be such differences in regard to the proportions of the majority that should decide upon the question of local prohibition and upon the abolition of a business without compensation, as to render agreement upon a detailed plan impossible.

The writer does not formulate in detail the plan proposed by the Bishop of Chester, but we glean from his discussion thereof that it is virtually the Gothenburg system, as modified and improved upon by Norway. As the readers of THE LITERARY DIGEST are already quite familiar with this system as applied both in Sweden and Norway,* it is unnecessary to go into any of the details here. Mr. Wyndham quotes approvingly from the Report of the Lords' Committee, 1879, setting forth the advantages of such a system:

"I. The control of the local authority over the issue of licenses. "2. A great diminution in the number of public-houses, and an improvement in their convenience, healthfulness, and manage

ment.

"3. By the provisos that no individual should derive any profit from the sale of intoxicating drinks, and that the managers should keep a supply of good tea, coffee, and other refreshments, it is hoped that the present drinking-houses might gradually assume the character of eating-houses and workmen's clubs-places of harmless resort."

The writer points out that as the company which would have absolute monopoly of the trade of a town, is allowed to make only 5 per cent. profit for itself, there would be no inducement to multiply the number of public-houses or to make any efforts to secure liquor-buying patrons; and that employés, while receiving a regular salary, would also be allowed a percentage on sales of food and non-intoxicants, but none on spirits or beer. He continues:

"The system would in England still be open to the objection that such bodies (local authorities) draw a portion of their income from licensing fees. This difficulty is met

by leaving the discretion as to the number of licenses, at all events * For a lucid explanation of the system as applied in Norway, see THE LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. IV., No. 8, p. 202.

for the present, in the hands of the magistrates. The immediate results following upon the adoption of the scheme in any town can hardly be overestimated. The number of public-houses might be reduced from 50 to 75 per cent. in a day, and the character of those remaining completely changed in the course of a few weeks. The substitution of large cafés on prominent sites for gin-shops in slums would of itself alter the whole tone of those public resorts to which, upon any reasonable forecast of the future, the jaded workers of large towns will continue to repair for change and refreshment after a day of sameness and fatigue.

Here, then, is a plan which will at once reduce the number of public-houses, and reform their character; which goes far to solve the difficulty of compensation, and avoids that of paying fees to licensing authorities; which, as a crowning recommendation, can be tried to-morrow, without change in the present machinery of control, and without prejudice to future changes."

RESTRICTION A PUBLIC NECESSITY.

The Lyceum (Dublin), in its issue for January, replies editorially to an article in the Irish Times defending the action of the Vintners' Association, against the strictures of the Lyceum, in its December number.* The following paragraph is quoted from the Times:

'Is it necessary to say that there is not one word in any public document issued by the Association or in any speech made upon its platform which excuses an allegation that it claims at any such position [the right to dictate Parliamentary elections and legislative action]? The trade place themselves in no attitude towards society that society hitherto has not been willing to accord them. Society has not shown an inclination to proscribe this trade, or sanction the principle of coercing men to be abstemious to the extent of teetotalism. The coercion is the point at which society finds the difficulty, and not the influence which a comparatively limited class can in the constituencies exert. There is in the minds of those who write in a different sense a false fundamental notion of what the Legislature is. It does not exist for the purpose of controlling the wills of rational people against liberty, even for their good. It has no such function, and if it strove to exercise it the result must be discredit of its own authority and repute. It is the extravagance of agitation which discards persuasion, and asks for closed shutters and the utter confusion of local option, which must be repudiated, not by the trade only, but by all who desire to see the community manfully moral, and the self-control that exists such as shall be worthy of a free people."

It

Upon this the Lyceum makes the following comments: "This passage sums up the best of the arguments which the advocates of the liquor-traffic urge in its defense. The Legislature has never been invoked for 'coercing men to be abstemious to the extent of teetotalism.' It has been invoked for the purpose of preventing them from getting drunk; and if drunkenness be a crime against society, it has rightly been so invoked. Again, it is wholly beside the point of controversy to assure us that the Legislature does not exist for the purpose of controlling the wills of rational people against liberty, even for their good.' is not the control of rational wills acting rationally that the advocates of reform demand, it is the control of human wills which are acting irrationally. Last year, in the City of Dublin, 11,651 persons, of whom 3,453 were women, were arrested by the police for drunkenness, and 3,870 persons, of whom 1,936 were women, were arrested for drunkenness and disorder. It is for the benefit of this melancholy total of 15,521 out of our city population of 350,000 that social reformers call for the intervention of the Legislature. If it is the business of the Legislature to check public crime, it would appear that there is nothing fundamentally false' in the notion these reformers entertain of the functions of the Legislature. We do not propose that any one should

be forced to be abstemious. We ask no more than that he shall not be tempted to drink. Free Trade in liquor, the abjuring of that pernicious principle,' which 'prevents the grant of new licences to quote the words of the Vintners' Conference-means the existence of a body of traders who compete with one another in the sale of intoxicating drinks-whose interest it is to promote the largest consumption of such drinks which their business ability can compass. : We object wholly to a liquor-traffic in which it is to the interest of one man to induce his neighbor to drink.

"That restriction is needful we can convince ourselves

in the most fashionable business streets of the city. We shall easily find a point from which we can obtain a view of five or six gaudily equipped public-houses within a radius of a few hundred

*For the Lyceum's December article, see THE LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. VI., No. 11, p. 286.

yards, each with its attractions ostentatiously displayed. The rational requirements would be met by any one of these establishments. It is only by 'pushing a trade' that they can all maintain themselves. In the poverty-stricken quarters of the city, where the public-house, with stately cut-stone front and flaring lights, flourishes in the midst of the dismal homes of penury, disease, and vice, a tithe of these establishments would suffice to supply the drink which their present customers can rightly afford to buy, and which duty to wife and children would permit. They can only maintain themselves in competition by promoting a consumption which is fatal to the poor."

CRISIS IN THE BRITISH WOMEN'S TEMPERANCE ASSOCIATION.

The February issue of Wings (London), the organ of the British Women's Temperance Association, has a leading editorial in relation to a change in the policy of the Association, proposed and advocated by Lady Henry Somerset, its distinguished President. We quote:

That which finally renders it imperative for us to break silence is, (1) the reiterated statements made every week on the platform and in the public press concerning what Lady Henry Somerset calls her 'Do Everything Policy, which some desire to introduce into our Association; and (2) the recent issue by the president of a paper entitled 'Outline of the Progressive Policy of the B. W. T. A." and of a New Year's letter to the Branches, in which a one-sided view of the relations between herself and the executive committee is presented, rendering all reticence on the part of that body henceforth not only useless, but pusillanimous."

Wings sees two main points in the present difficulty which the Branches of the Association have to decide: (1) Shall the Association continue to work solely for temperance, or shall it become a Woman's Society with temperance for a basis, but embracing Woman's Suffrage, the Labor Question, Peace and Arbitration, the Opium Question, Social Purity, and all branches of social reform? and (2) Shall the president practically supersede the executive committee and arrogate to herself the functions of that committee?

As to the first question the attention of the Branches is directed to the fact that they are federated together to fight intemperance and promote total abstinence, in which they have already done good work; and that at present their best concentrated effort is needed for that work alone.

"To the B. W. T. A. has been entrusted the sacred task of combating intemperance and its root-the liquor-traffic. . . It is our constant regret that so much has to be left undone. How, then, shall we further the cause by taking up in addition such difficult problems as Labor, the Suffrage, etc.? To the reasonable mind this policy must appear nothing short of suicidal, and in no way could we more effectually nullify our influence and play into the hands of the liquor-traffic.

"Again, subjects upon which a wide diversity of opinion exists, if adopted by our Association, are bound to cause serious division in our own ranks and to alienate from us many women who would gladly remain with us in Temperance work alone.”

In this connection Wings quotes approvingly a note of warning from this side of the ocean. The White Ribbon (Pittsburgh), one of the organs of the non-partisan W. C. T. U., Mrs. Joseph D. Weeks, editor, says:

"If Lady Somerset could have the faintest conception of the ceaseless dissension, the infinite injustice to faithful temperance workers, and the alienation of true friends of the W. C. T. U. that resulted from Miss Willard's determination,' cost what it may,' to link party politics and women's suffrage to the W. C. T. U. of this country, she would hesitate long before attempting to carry out the same policy on the other side of the Atlantic."

As to the second question, Wings says:

Lady Henry Somerset has apparently not realized the fact that in England all societies are governed by their executive committees and not by their presidents.

Very serious, therefore, is the crisis which confronts our Association, and heavy is the responsibility which rests upon our Branches. It is a responsibility which we must not dare to cast off by the pleasing assertion that our president is a God-inspired woman, and that we should follow her lead whether we understand her plans and aims or not. Each of us may be ought to be-a God-inspired woman, with God-given powers of reason, judgment, and common sense, and for the use of these we shall be held responsible.

W

POLITICAL.

THE IRISH HOME-RULE QUESTION. HATEVER comments are made, or may be made, on particular aspects of Mr. Gladstone's new Home-Rule Bill, it is generally agreed that the measure, on the whole, presents the distinctive and comprehensive scheme of autonomous government for which the people of Ireland have been struggling for so many years—that it is in fact an Irish HomeRule Bill modeled to fully satisfy Ireland. The manifesto issued by Michael Davitt and John Dillon, endorsing the Bill in the name of the Nationalist members of Parliament, gives formal expression to their view.

After the Parliamentary election of last July, some critics of Mr. Gladstone predicted that when he came to deal practically with the Home-Rule issue, he would be influenced more or less by certain artful purposes, and bring in a rather temporizing or equivocal piece of legislation. But the advocates of Irish Home Rule have not shown much apprehension on this score in the discussion that has been going on since last July. The articles from the Home-Rule point of view in the latest magazines are marked by the same spirit evidenced by Davitt and Dillon since the introduction of the Bill. The Home-Rule writers all express confidence in Mr. Gladstone's good faith, and signify a conviction that the friends of their policy must accept what Mr. Gladstone offers as the final solution of Ireland's problem.

IRELAND'S DUTY.

Mr. John O'Callaghan, in an article "On the Eve of Home Rule" in Donahoe's Magazine for February, writes;

"If the Bill passes it is to be regarded as the last word on the subject by the Imperial Parliament. It will not be like a land bill, or a labor measure, or any other reform, which, if defective in some points, can easily be amended. It will be regarded as final, and the capacity of the Irish people for self-government will be judged by the results which they achieve under it, whether it be a generous measure or the reverse. If they fail to make their country prosperous under Home Rule, nobody will stop to inquire whether the failure may not be due to the unfavorable conditions by which Ireland may have been hampered in the Home-Rule Bill."

Another Home-Rule writer, John J. O'Shea, in the Catholic World for February, gives like counsel, and recalls some pertinent words of Mr. Parnell's in support of it:

"The followers of Mr. Parnell cannot surely go beyond Mr. Parnell's own delimitations. The dead leader whom they are constantly invoking gave, in the names of his colleagues and the Irish people, his adhesion to the Constitution which Mr. Gladstone proposed in 1886. Speaking on the second reading of the Home-Rule Bill, on June 7, 1886, Mr. Parnell said:

"I now repeat what I have already said on the first reading of the measure, immediately after I heard the statement of the Prime Minister: that we look upon the provisions of the bill as a final settlement of this question, and that I believe that the Irish people have accepted it as such a settlement. I think my words upon that occasion have been singularly justified by the result. We have had this measure accepted in the sense I indicated by the leaders of every section of National opinion, both in Ireland and outside Ireland. It has been so accepted in the United States of America, and by the Irish population in that country, with whose vengeance some honorable members are so fond of threatening us. Not a single dissentient voice has been raised against this Bill by any Irishman-not by any Irishman holding National opinionsand I need scarcely remind the House that there are sections amongst Irish Nationalists just as much as there are even among the great Conservative party. I say that as far as it is possible for a nation to accept a measure cheerfully, freely, gladly, and without reservation as a final settlement-I say that the Irish people have shown that they have accepted this measure in that

sense.

IRISH MEMBERS AT WESTMINSTER-A SCOTCH PROTEST.

Of all the questions involved in the proposed Home Rule legislation, none excites more serious discussion than the question of retaining Irish members at Westminster after the establishing of the Irish Parliament at Dublin, Mr. R. Wallace, a

Scotch Member of Parliament, writes with a good deal of spirit on this subject in the New Review for January:

"I happen to be a devoted Irish Home-Ruler, none more so. But I am a Scotchman first and an Irishman, if I can, afterwards, and from what I hear and notice, I am beginning to fear that under this coming Irish Home Rule-Bill unlucky Scotland, so long snubbed by England, is next going to be oppressed by Ireland.

The thing that is frightening me is this proposed retention of Irish members at Westminster. I understand that this subject rises into the region of high constitutional politics, quite transcending the ordinary wit of man. With this part of it, therefore, I do not pretend to meddle, and am content to leave it to the like of Mr. Morley, Mr. Balfour, Sir Ughtred Kay Shuttleworth, Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, and the other statesmen in the House. But I do wish to say how alarmed I am at the prospect of Irish members having full power over Scotch affairs at Westminster, while we are to have none over theirs at Dublin, although in my mind's eye I see my superior English colleague raising his eyebrows and telling me that I need not worry or trouble my thick head about the matter, as England is going to be in the same boat, and will keep everything right. I am not so sure about that, however

During the late election I was careful to test the feeling of my fellow committeemen on this very point, both among my own constituents and a large number of other constituencies where I did electioneering work. I found that while they were ready and eager to concede the utmost possible amount of Home Rule to Ireland, they were dead against letting Ireland manage her own affairs to her own mind at Dublin, and also ours along with us, and in spite of us, at Westminster. I was returned to Parliament distinctly pledged to resist such an international iniquity.

"We may, probably shall, be taxed, against our will by Ireland. Talk of taxation without representation! Can there be a worse form of it than that a tax should be forced upon us, in spite of our protestation, by the members of a Dublin Parliament not one of whom, of course, we have had a chance of electing? We might as well be taxed by France or Germany.

Or take Disestablishment. The ideas of religious equality and of finally extricating civil life from theological and ecclesiastical entanglements are making progress in Scotland, and a time may come when we want to disestablish our Church: But by that time Ireland may be in an opposite frame of mind.

The same with the rest of our legal system; our laws on marriage, a civil contract to the Scotch, a sacrament to the Irish; our laws on land, where they might prefer peasant proprietary, while we had got to municipalization, or something even more advanced; our industrial system and the laws regulating the relations of capital and labor, where they might be Individualist, while we were Collectivist; the subject of female suffrage, denominational education, and every special question arising out of every special emergency;-in every one of such cases, and a score of others that might be enumerated, Scotch opinion, desire, or decision might be injured, thwarted, or arrested by the interest or the caprice of an Irish Parliamentary party.

"At present we have a check on possible Irish tyranny. Though only six dozen to Ireland's nine, we have sufficient power of reprisal to protect ourselves. If Mr. Healy hits me on Edinburgh, I can counter him on Dublin. Hence mutual respect arising from wise fear. But if my hands are tied behind my back, and Mr. Healy finds me in some dark Parliamentary lane, I do not know in what shape I may emerge.

Home Rule all round,' however, is the most popular solution of the difficulty. Indeed, one ingenious Autonomist suggests that it will be a very good thing to arrange for Irish control of British business, so that the mischiefs arising from it may force the Nation forward to Home Rule all round. Surely this doing evil that good may come is the very superfluity of political naughtiness. When your leg is broken I believe it is a great comfort to have it scientifically set and brought right again. But am I to break my leg on purpose?"

The New Review prints also a reply to Mr. Wallace's article by J. E. Redmond, a prominent Irish member of Parliament. Mr. Redmond recognizes the gravity of such objections as those that are raised by Mr. Wallace, but argues that " if Irish members are to be retained at Westminster at all, they must be retained for all purposes "-that is, that the Irish members should vote on all questions coming up in the Imperial Parliament. He thinks that the best solution is Home Rule for each country-home Parliament for Scotland and Wales as well as for Ireland. As a present expedient, he advises that the question of Irish representation at Westminster be postponed until the Home-Rule Bill is passed, to be taken up in another year

Politically there cannot be an Irish nation and at the same time a British nation which includes Ireland. Between the views of the Irish Home-Ruler on the one side, and the British and Irish Unionist on the other, there can be no possible compromise.

At various times during the present century have Irishmen, in greater or less number, called for repeal of the Union. Never has it been clearer than at the present time that the ultimate end at which modern Irish repealers are aiming is complete separation; and never was there a time when it would have been more discreditable than now for the people of the United Kingdom to fling from their shoulders the responsibility for the good government of Irishmen. The exercise of this responsibility may be arduous, but upon its continued exercise depends the maintenance of right, of justice, of peace in Ireland. That country is torn with dissension. The Protestants of prosperous Ulster, sworn never to forego the privileges which in their own countries Englishmen and Scotchmen enjoy; the pretensions of the Roman priesthood to establish by the worst sort of all tyrannies and the grossest illegality their own political supremacy; the hatred of this ecclesiastical power, and of every vestige of the British connection, by the Parnellites, are the three most powerful forces at present dividing Ireland. Amongst them all justice is done and the peace is kept by the authority of the people of the United Kingdom, which includes Ireland, and by that authority alone.

"No one now has any excuse for remaining ignorant of the

spirit and motive power of Irish disaffection manifested throughout the present generation. Risings in Ireland, invasions of Canada, Land Leagues and National Leagues in Ireland and America, dynamite in England, and, more dangerous perhaps than all, a deliberate and prolonged attempt from within to paralyze the House of Commons, have all been tried. They have been the means by which a great conspiracy has been steadily working to achieve its end-viz., the separate and independent nationhood of Ireland."

A writer in the Quarterly Review says:

"Whilst the Radicals in Great Britain recommend and defend Home Rule by constant appeals to vague moral sentiment and the abstract principles of some impossible political philosophy, the Conservatives have appealed to nothing but hard and homely facts and conclusions which common sense draws from them, and they have set themselves to grasp the facts with a business-like and virile intelligence. They have replied to the fire of rhetoric with the cold water of history and with the lessons of practical prudence which statesmen have been taught by experience. An English Home-Ruler is reported to have recently said this: If Ireland were only eleven hundred miles away, there would never have been any difficulty in granting her Home Rule. The rights of a nation are not a question of distance.' A Conservative will reply, 'This is precisely what they are. In a case like this they are a prosaic question of mileage. That is what you forget and that is what we remember. We fight the battle of facts, you of fancies. Facts have been the foundation of the British Empire hitherto, and our mission is to prevent your fancies from replacing them.'

"On the Home-Rule Bill may hang the fate of England as a first-class Power. Disintegration, once begun, may take its place as an established chronic evil in the Constitution of the British Empire; and demands for various autonomies may become perennial, so that returning travelers, from the Oriental tour, may well inquire what is the actual limit of their nationality. Conservatives are now commissioned to maintain the rank of England in the world, and the unlimited supremacy and power of Crown and Parliament in the United Kingdom.'

MR. GLADSTONE-A SPECIMEN CRITICISM.

The Tory denunciations of Home Rule as a policy continue to be spiced with bitter criticisms of Mr. Gladstone and his lieutenants. Of these criticisms an interesting specimen is afforded in Mr. W. S. Lilly's article on "False Democracy," in the January number of the Nineteenth Century:

"Mr. Morley appeared at an opportune time to reveal the prin

ciple implicit in the successive Reform Bills, whether brought in and passed by so-called Liberals playing for popular favor, or by so-called Conservatives trying to trump their opponents' best cards. The Rousseauan or Jacobin doctrine of the political equivalence of men-any man equal to another, Quashee nigger to Socrates or Shakespeare, Judas Iscariot to Jesus Christ'-supplies the only principle on which those measures can be justified. I defy any man to find in them any other principle, or simulacrum of a principle, than this. And it equally justifies the further 'reforms' which the New Radicalism demands, and which Mr. Gladstone promises. A principle is the strongest thing in the world, and this principle now dominates English official' Liberalism, which, by a law arising out of the nature of things, must follow where it leads.

"Aristotle pointed out, long ago, that the demagogue and the Court favorite are not seldom identical men, and always bear a close analogy. They rise by the same devices; and the same drawn sword hangs over their necks. The man whom King Mob delights to honor is the man who will flatter him most adroitly. In this art Mr. Gladstone is not surpassed by the most extravagant of the Revolutionary orators. Like them he appears to believe that the populace can do no wrong. On that terrible 20th of June, when 30,000 ruffians, the elite of Parisian blackguardism, marched upon the Tuilleries to the cry of Ca ira, and poor, bewildered Louis the Sixteenth naively asked help of the National Assembly, Vergniaud answered, with the greatest seriousness, that it would be doing an injury to the citizens to suppose them capable of bad intentions.' Mr. Gladstone's apology for the [Irish] Plan of Campaign was conceived in a precisely similar spirit. He declined to see in. that abominable conspiracy to break the law anything more than a substitute without authority for the law.' How can you say,' he demanded, that those men were wrong who, by the Plan of Campaign, saved people from eviction and starvation ?'* With Mr. Morley he now regards the poorest and most ignorant of Her Majesty's subjects as forming the nation.' To these he opposes 'the classes,' and he inquires, Are the classes ever right when they differ from the Nation?' It is an odd fate that has converted this eminent and highly gifted person into the chief preacher of these general principles of democracy,' as he termec. them, to which, at the beginning of his career, he hoped this country would oppose a more organized, tenacious, and determined resistance than any other country which is prominent upon the great stage of the civilized world.'"

THE STABILITY OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC. Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (6 pp.) io Deutsche Rundschau, Berlin, February.

TH

HE Army Bill, which found such able supporters as the Prussian Major-General z. D. and the Turkish Lieut.General, Freiherr von der Golz,§ afforded Count Caprivi the opportunity, at the first sitting of the Military Commission on the 11th of January, of making a critical presentation of the political and military situation in Germany.

The Chancellor insisted emphatically on the peaceable aims of the Triple Alliance whose members have nothing to wish for, while in France and Russia the conditions are essentially different. Contrary to the idea that the recent Panama scandal had cooled Russian sympathy for France, the Chancellor contended that the Czar would regard France as an eligible ally, even under a Dictator. Whether there exists a written treaty of alliance between France and Russia, or whether military coöperation alone is contemplated-in either case Germany must reckon on having to make war on two fronts at once. The Pan-Slavish organs are very outspoken, and they have formulated, among others, the expression that the way to Constantinople is no longer across Vienna, but through the Brandenburger gateway. On the other hand, continued the Chancellor, these conditions call for amendments to the Triple Alliance which are earnestly to be desired, but which, in the face of growing influences in Italy, could not be confidently relied on. The details with regard to the organized military forces in the respective countries referred to, were designed to show the attitude of the allies, who lay great stress on the acceptance of the army proposals, holding that the Empire *Speech at Hampstead, July 1, 1888.

Speech at Liverpool, June 29, 1886.

The State in Its Relations with the Church. edit.).

S Vide THE LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. VI., No. 14,

ol. ii. 389 (4th

cannot incur the responsibility to the country for the continuance of the present condition of affairs. And weighty as may have been the remarks of the Chancellor in general, it must be insisted on afresh here that, even if the military proposals be realized, the full support of the allied Governments will be needed. It would be a great mistake to suppose that the present aspect of affairs in France will in any way tend to weaken that country. When the "psychological moment" arrives France will be united.

If the Panama scandal still dominates the interior politics, it is evident now, as at the outset, that it is men of the Andrieux and Paul Déroulède stripe, and their allies in the Boulangist and monarchical camps who have guided the movement, and this not with the object of exposing and punishing fraud, or of purifying the political atmosphere, but simply with the design of making political capital out of it. As we have already insisted, the design to use these incidents as argument for the contention that France has been demoralized by republican institutions is a failure. It is certain, however, that Boulangists, Bonapartists, and Orleanists, in anticipation of the coming elections, deem the circumstance opportune for assailing republican institutions. And it is at least so much in their favor that a large proportion of the electors have sunk money in the Panama Canal, and might be counted on to vent their indignation at the ballot-box if their losses could be in any way attributed to the dishonesty of the republican Government. Now, there can be no doubt that there have been gross irregularities in which persons of political distinction have been implicated, but it is a long way from this admission to the conclusion that the French Republic is on the eve of dissolution.

The French Republic has been a dozen times doomed by Dolitical augurs with whom the wish was father to the thought, but she has always come out of her difficulties with renewed vitality, while those who, like Boulanger, calculated on getting command of the Ship of State as soon as she got into the breakers, have themselves been washed overboard. One need only contemplate the living pretenders-the Count de Paris and Prince Victor Napoleon-for a moment, to reach the conviction that there is no immediate probability of the reinauguration of the Monarchy or the Empire. For the maintenance of European peace it is essential that law and order continue to prevail in France, and that the tumultuous element, represented by Andrieux and Déroulède do not acquire too much prominence. Even this danger is insignificant in comparison with what is to be apprehended if the Anarchists and their allied foes of social order should attempt to utilize the opening made by the Boulangists for putting their own revolutionary schemes into execution. President Carnot's record, however, is a guarantee for the prompt suppression of all street-rioting. It is gratifying, too, to observe that all the efforts of the Boulangists to couple Carnot's name with the Panama scandal have proved a complete failure. But what does impress itself upon us in our review of the Panama affair is the personality of the accuser. To him is applicable in its broadest sense the epigram of the censorious Roman poet: Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes?"

66

A Curious Political Proceeding in Sweden.-The oddest political movement now making in the world is going on in Sweden, à propos of the extension of the right of suffrage. The masses in Stockholm and throughout Sweden have acted as if universal suffrage existed in that country. They have voted to make believe, as children say when they have plays beyond their years, and have elected an assembly, the Folke-Rigsdad, which will sit at the same time as the regular Rigsdad. The former will study the questions of universal suffrage and social reforms, and will transmit to the latter, under the form of wishes or wants, a summary of its labors. Here is an original method of consultation and a form of pressure on tardy public powers, which it is desirable to see imitated in countries where they imagine that all sorts of political problems can be solved by revolutions.-Juliette Adam, in La Nouvelle Revue, Paris, January 15.