JESSE COLLINGS, M.P.

by the clergy of the towns, they might e even now save the establishment. The Mamelukes of the English social hierarchy are, however, faithful to their salt; not even the imminent prospect of their doom can induce them to go over to the winning side. Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone! It is much to be feared that the reconstruction of English rural society will take place on a basis of distinct hostility to what represents, at least, an aspiration after a National Church.

The Next British Election.

This year 1892 is to witness the British general election. All political interests are dominated by that fact. As the day of decision approaches, there is anything but a spirit of exultation on either side. The Liberals are not going into the contest with anything like the enthusiasm with which they swept all before them in 1868 and 1880. Recent events in Ireland have somewhat damped their zeal. They will go forth to battle with a foregone assurance of victory, but the "fizz" is out of them. They have three dangers: (1) Mr. Gladstone's health, and Mr. Gladstone is now in his eighty-third year; (2) the perpetuation of the Parnellite schism in the home-rule ranks; and (3) the development of a labor party which would be color-blind as to party differences. The Conser vatives have three advantages: (1) An administra. tive record that is much better than any one, expected; (2) a united cabinet; and (3) a program of legislation that does not involve a second general election before it can get into operation. Notwith

JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P.

Mr.

the ministers will shorten by a whole session their legal lease of life. Twice in recent years administrations have tried by a snap dissolution early in the year to capture a fresh majority. Mr. Gladstone failed in 1874 and Lord Beaconsfield in 1880. Balfour is too ardent a septennialist to sanction a premature dissolution. The certainty that prevails at Downing Street that the Liberals will have a majority in the next Parliament naturally predisposes ministers to make the very uttermost of their present opportunities. The general election, then, we may take it, will not come off until after harvest,

unless, of course, some entirely unexpected event should occur. If the Liberals were left leaderless and in confusion, it might be considered worth while appealing to the country before November. But, failing that, the present Parliament has probably nine months still to go.

Respite.

All parties will need the whole nine Nine Months' months, and more, before they are quite ready to go to the country. The Conservatives have to get their Irish local government measure into operation, the Liberals to adjust their differences with the labor party, and the Irish to end the internecine feud which is being carried on over Mr. Parnell's grave. Nothing that has happened of late years has done so much to justify Mr. Arthur Balfour's supercilious estimate of the Irish as clever but utterly impracticable children, as the insane infatuation of the quarrel about Mr. Parnell after Mr. Parnell's death. "Politicians and "statesmen " who are capable of prolonging an utterly barren feud, apparently for the sheer delight in oratorical shillelagh play, on the very eve of a general election, when the destinies of their country are to be decided for the rest of the century by the votes of the British householders, may be patriotic and high-spirited, and magnificently gifted with eloquence and genius, but they have no common sense. Reading the reports of the operations of the "Pig Buyers' Association," which carried Waterford election for Mr. Redmond and against Mr. Davitt, Coleridge's familiar lines recur, with a variation:

Down the river there plied, with wind and tide,
A pig with vast celerity;

And the devil looked wise as he saw how the while
It cut its own throat. There! quoth he, with a smile,
Goes the hope of a Home Rule majority.

The sepa

The election at Waterford, at which the Waterford and the "Pig Buyers' Association" returned Mr. Parnellites. Redmond by 1,775 votes against Mr. Davitt, who polled 1,229, is the first break in the uninterrupted series of home-rule victories at the Irish elections. It was unfortunate, but not unforeseen. No one but Mr. Davitt had even a chance of carrying Waterford for home rule. Mr. Davitt was opposed to making the attempt; but finding it necessary for the sake of Ireland, he flung himself with characteristic gallantry into the fray. ratists first broke his head, and then, by a campaign of intimidation, broke down the opposition of the home rulers. Mr. Davitt wrote two days before the poll, intimating plainly that the result was settled long before the ballot-boxes were opened, and the declaration of the voting on the day before Christmas amply justified his forecast. The Unionists, of course, are delighted. Waterford gives them, at the eleventh hour, a glimmering of hope. Had Waterford gone the other way, there was every prospect that the Irish party would have come up from the polls as solid as in 1886. As it went the other

way, there will be two Irish parties-one for home rule, the other for separation. As every vote given to the latter party is an intimation to the British voter that home rule will not settle the Irish question, the Conservatives naturally regard the Redmonds, Harringtons, and their group as an even more useful part of the garrison of the Union than Mr. Chamberlain and his myrmidons.

The Irish

The damage thus inflicted upon the cause Association of Ireland by the suicidal devotion of an of France. Irish faction to the memory of a dead man will not be outdone by the somewhat fantastic mission of Miss Maud Gonne to Paris for the purpose of founding an association of the "Friends of Irish Freedom " among the descendants of Hoche's expedition. Miss Gonne is one of the most beautiful women in the world. She is an Irish heroine, born a Protestant, who became a Buddhist, with theories of pre-existence, but who, in all her pilgrimages from shrine to shrine, never ceased to cherish a passionate devotion to the cause of Irish independence. She is for the Irish republic and total separation, peaceably, if possible; but, if necessary, by the sword-by anybody's sword, that of France and Russia not excepted. She was in St. Petersburg in 1887, having travelled from Constantinople alone. Everywhere her beauty and her enthusiasm naturally make a great impression; and although she is hardly likely to be successful where Wolfe Tone failed, her pilgrimage of passion is at least a picturesque incident that relieves the gloom of the political situation.

Before the old year was out it made anEnglish Diplomatic other vacancy in the ranks of those whose Changes. word stands for that of England abroad. Sir William White has speedily followed Lord Lytton; and the British embassy at Constantinople was vacated almost as soon as the embassy at Paris had been filled by the transference of Lord Dufferin from Rome. Sir William White was an exceedingly able but unconventional diplomatist. A huge man, with the voice of a bull and something of the vehemence of Squire Western, he had forced his way up by sheer ability from a very subordinate position in the consular service. No one was less of a typical diplomatist than Sir William White; he had, however, great knowledge of languages and considerable knowledge of men. He was faithful and zealous, full of industry, and entirely free from the buckram with which many ambassadors fence themselves from the outer world. The Russians regarded him with despairing envy, and nicknamed him the English General Ignatieff. His death, however, but anticipated by a few months his retirement; for his part had practically been played out. Sir Robert Morier has been transferred from St. Petersburg to Rome, where he will put in the rest of his time before his retirement. Lord Vivian will succeed him at the embassy on the Neva, but it will be many years before the newly-appointed minister from

for the undue laxity of his own life. Be that as it may, the prince has his reputation still to make, whereas the praises of the princess are in every mouth. The genial influence of a true-hearted girl is often the making of a man, and the nation may at least feel satisfied that on the female side the crown of England will lose none of its lustre during the next two reigns.

Since then the prospective bridegroom has sickened and died. It is a truly sad occurrence, and it calls for respectful sympathy. But considered as a pub lic event it is not, as the London papers have called it, a "tragic" occurrence. The death of Rudolph, the Austrian crown prince, was tragic indeed, and

THE LATE PRINCE ALBERT VICTOR.

Victor, he had never been popular. A month ago nobody thought of entertaining fears for the health of the heir, and there was still some anxiety for the convalescent George. It was thus that Mr. Stead wrote, on January 2, in frank, good-natured expression of what the English people were really saying and feeling:

The recovery of Prince George from his slight attack of typhoid fever has been accompanied by the announcement of the betrothal of Prince Albert Victor to the Princess Mary of Teck. Every one congratulates the prince; a good many people profess themselves as sorry for the princess. The eldest son of the Frince of Wales may be misjudged, but he is not generally believed to be very bright. He has, perhaps, been too much sat upon by a father who was anxious to make up by severity to his son

THE PRINCESS MAY OF TECK.

an event fraught with most momentous political consequences. And the death of the Emperor Frederick of Germany was painfully tragic. But it is travesty to make tragedy out of the death of Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale. The succession is now vested in Prince George, who, though less amiable than his brother, is far more popular. If he too should die, the Duchess of Fife would be the heir to the throne. The British nation is not concealing its eagerness to have George married at once; for it has no yearning after the Duke and Duchess of Fife. The duke's untimely fate has had far more interest as a social than as a political event. The real question that interests Britishers is, Whom will Prince George make haste to espouse?

The month has seen the demise of several The Late Cardinal men of rank and authority, including Manning. the Khédive of Egypt and the heir to the British throne; but the death of Cardinal Manning in some sense overshadows the other losses. He was probably, next to Mr. Gladstone, the most influential man in England. He enjoyed universal respect and esteem. So humane was he, and so courageously devoted to the welfare of the masses, that his personal influence did very much to lessen the breach between the workingmen and the Christian religion, of which he was so noble an exemplar. Tens of thousands of London workingmen revered and loved him, and his efforts in their behalf have materially bettered the condition of other thousands. His philanthropic sympathies were boundless, and he respected true manhood and honest endeavor, without regard to creed or profession.

man was more conversant than he with European politics. He had made himself an authority upon the Eastern question, and had a scholar's knowledge of the races of southeastern Europe. He was an economist of high rank. As a literary critic he was esteemed in Belgium and France. The King of Belgium valued him as an adviser. He was the most conspicuous professor in the University of Liège. As a moral and religious reformer he was known everywhere in Europe. He had lately been made a baron by King Leopold. To young scholars from America and England he was a most genial and helpful friend.

Affairs in Russia.

Of the Russian famine there is little to report, excepting that it continues; that the Russian people are making great sacrifices and displaying great personal devotion in relieving their suffering fellow-subjects; that the subscriptions from England are almost inconceivably paltry; and that M. Dournovo, the Russian Minister of the Interior, will have to go. He is practically vice-emperor so far as the famine is concerned. He ought to be the eye and ear of the Czar, as well as the hand by which the autocrat executes his will. The experience of this year shows that he is hope. lessly incompetent and unfit for his post. When the governors of the provinces warned him of the certainty of terrible distress, he insisted that they should take a more optimist view of things-that, in short, they should keep the Czar in the dark. That is the way stupidity sometimes comes perilously near high treason. Such a disaster as the famine cannot be countered by such an overgrown Tchinovnik as M. Dournovo. Unfortunately, it is the habit of Russia to begin her serious campaigns with blockheads in command. It is only after repeated defeats that she discovers her Todlebens, her Skobeleffs, and her Gourkos.

Count Caprivi

While the Czar is bewailing the conseand his quences of portfolioed incapacity, the Treaties. Kaiser has been filling the air with pæans of thanksgiving over the capacity of his chancellor, who, for the exploit of revolutionizing the commercial system of Central Europe, has just been created a count. Prince Bismarck has growled, in an interview, against the grave abandonment of protection; but his thunder does not even sour the milk of the chancellor-count, who has succeeded in a single month in propounding and in carrying into execution a new system of commercial treaties, which lays the foundation for a Central European customs union. These treaties, abandoning the older system of strict protection, were framed upon the basis of equivalent tariff reductions, and constituted an approximation to a more extended zollverein. The treaties include, in the first place, the members of the Triple Alliance. To these were added Switzerland and Belgium, and to these, again, are to be added Bulgaria, Servia, and Roumania, while hopes are held out that in time Holland and Spain may