virtue of the majority of our newspapers savours too much of Monsieur Tartuffe with a dash of Chadband thrown in.

I rejoice at the protests that are rising, and that will continue to rise, against the gambling habit, which is one of the curses of our race. But if we are really in earnest about this matter, it is not with baccarat that we should begin. In England there are only two popular gaming hells -the turf and the Stock Exchange. To betting and speculation, baccarat bears the same relation that in the sphere of temperance Chartreuse bears to beer and gin. To extirpate the use of Chartreuse would not abate by one decimal the sum of England's intemperance, and to abolish baccarat and all gambling at cards would not by itself produce any appreciable effect on the serious gambling of our time.

The outcry against the Prince for playing at baccarat at Tranby Croft was natural enough in certain quarters, although, even there, it partook to some extent of exaggeration, considering the apparent indifference with which the Prince's devotion to the turf has been regarded all these years. But no one who studies the undercurrents of English life can have failed to notice that there has for some time been a rising tide of moral dissatisfaction with the extent which gambling has been spreading amongst us. This is best shown by the increasing strenuousness with which the clergy have spoken out against gambling, in Convocation, and out of it, and the zeal of the police in raiding gambling clubs and betting dens. Neither clergy nor police represent the section of the nation most zealous in moral questions. They are official, they dislike too much zeal, and they are too closely connected with the powers that be to bestir themselves too diligently in raising ethical difficulties of this kind. When the chairman of the watch committee rents the grand stand, and the patron of your living keeps a racing stud, there is, to put it mildly, not the same temptation to lift one's voice on high in testimony against betting and gambling that assails the Nonconformist minister, or the Methodist preacher, who believe that the turf is as the vestibule of hell, and the painted cards are the devil's prayer-book. But of late years police and parsons have been very busy about gambling. Convocation, both in York and in Canterbury, has been drawing up reports on the subject, declaring that war to the death must be waged with this moral pestilence, and demanding all manner of remedies, from a Royal Commission to an Act of Parliament. One reverend reformer was so far carried away by his pious zeal some time ago, as publicly to call upon the Prince of Wales to place himself at the head of a crusade against the plague of gambling! The evil had increased, was increasing, and must be abated. A bishop told a lamentable story of a child found crying in the street, because "I had twopence for father's beer, and I put it on a horse and lost it," and a horror-struck M.P. related with bated breath that even a clergyman had excused his overdrawn banking account because a little speculation relieves the monotony of a country parsonage." Sir Richard Webster, the Attorney-General, lifted up his voice to protest against the national vice, and Nonconformists saw, with almost indignant surprise, that they were being outstripped by the clergy in the agitation against gambling. The police on their part had made raid after raid upon betting houses, crowding the cells with a miscellaneous multitude of gamblers. Magistrates declared that they were determined to put gambling down. "It is most lamentable," said Mr. Vaughan at Bow Street, "this betting; I regard it as a curse to the country, because I see how young men are lured until they fall into a state of misery and destitution." Sir John Bridge,

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senior metropolitan magistrate, declared "that the evil done by the keepers of gambling houses was something terrific. There was nothing to which dishonest men attributed their dishonesty so much as to gambling and racing."

The Judges on the Bench said the same thing even more strongly. Mr. Justice Manisty declared that he was perfectly appalled by the extent of gambling. He did not hesitate to say, from his experience as a judge, that "there was no greater evil in society, and none which caused more misery and ruin in families. The practice of gambling has been carried to a frightful extent." One bishop went so far as to suggest the advisability of every merchant, banker, or tradesman dismissing every betting man from his establishment. National conferences were suggested. An ex Home Secretary asked Mr. Matthews if he was prepared to bring in a Bill to strengthen the law. Mr. Matthews said that the Government would bear the question in mind. The growth of the popular zeal against gambling was logical and consistent. It attacked equally lotteries in bazaars, pitch and toss in the streets, betting on the tape, baccarat, and speculation on the Stock Exchange. The late Baron Huddleston, speaking of the speculative transactions at "bucket shops," said "this vice is worse than gambling on the green cloth, or betting on horses." While it is permitted," said Mr. Justice Manisty, "the notion of putting down gambling in certain cases is a complete farce."

It is a

Nothing can be more admirable than all this outburst of a healthy moral sentiment against gambling. sincere and unmistakable evidence of a national conscience, and of the gradual formation of a standard of social morality immensely in advance of that which existed a few years ago. But it is easy to see, with the public opinion of the best part of the community in this healthy state of vigour, what a shock was occasioned by the spectacle of the Prince of Wales, the Heir to the Throne, sitting as banker at baccarat, and presiding night after night over a gaming table, which, if it had been set up in any public-house in the land would have rendered all those present, the Prince included, liable to be run in to the nearest police station.

In politics and in morals, as well as in war, everything depends upon the psychological moment. The baccarat scandal at Tranby Croft five or even three years ago would have excited comparatively little remark. Occurring when it did, it made a sensation that vibrated through the whole country, and provoked an outcry which was perfectly natural and for the most part perfectly justifiable.

But if there was one section of the community which should for very shame have kept silence, it was the press. Nothing recurs more constantly in all the speeches that have been delivered in the course of the agitation against gambling, than the declarations of all the authorities as to the great source and cause of the spreading evil. It has been recognised on all hands that it was the newspapers which pandered to the passion of the people for gambling, that it was the newspapers which constantly fanned the flame by the pains which they took to disseminate the "latest betting," and that it was the daily press of the land which contributed more than almost any other factor to inoculate the community with the mania for betting, against which the magistrates, judges, and the clergy were up in arms. Several years since I urged the desirability of making the publication of the odds a punishable offence, and although at that time mine was but the voice of one crying in the wilderness, it is possible that a majority in

the next Parliament will be pledged to legislate in this sense. But notwithstanding all the protests of the reformers, the newspapers continued, and continue to this day to do all that journalism can to foster the national vice. Day after day, before the eyes of all their readers, were flourished forth, with every appetising detail, all the items of information that could tempt men to bet. Prophets were paid handsome salaries for the purpose of encouraging the credulous to put their money on horses warranted to win. "Straight tips, "finals," "latest from Tattersall's," and all the rest of it, appeared as punctually as the leading article, or the Parliamentary reports. Some newspapers, which had at first stood out against it, driven by the stress of competition, were compelled to give in. Editorial scruples were overridden by proprietorial necessities, and all the protests of all the clergy failed to diminish by a single paragraph the space devoted to betting news.

It might, then, have been fairly expected that these habitual and hardened offenders, each one of whom actively did more to encourage and universalise betting than all the bankers at baccarat that ever sat, might, from a mere sense of a common failing, have done their best to screen the Prince. He had but done for his own amusement in a private house what they were doing constantly in open day before all men for filthy lucre. Far from showing a generous sympathy for a brother gambler in difficulties, it was the press which took the lead in holding up the banker at Tranby Croft to public execration. With a few notable exceptions, the journalists gave cry after the Prince, like a pack of hounds when they strike the trail of a fox. An edifying spectacle indeed! From the extreme teetotal standpoint it is a sin to take a glass of beer, but it does not lie in the mouth of a gin-sodden drunkard to lecture a man who washes down his dinner with a pint of "bitter." It is well to be zealous against gambling, but it is well also to be consistent, and it is still better to be just. And much of the censure passed so freely upon the Prince was not only inconsistent with the constant daily practice of his critics-it was also cruelly unjust. By a curious perversity the Prince was severely censured for offences which he did not commit, while that which was deserving of all praise received no recognition. The Prince, for instance, is most frequently condemned for having forced an unwilling host to allow baccarat to be played under his roof. There is not a word of truth in this story. It rests entirely upon a mistake made by Mrs. Wilson, when in the flurry of cross-examination she omitted an adjective. Mr. Wilson never objected to baccarat being played at Tranby Croft. What he objected to was the playing at baccarat for high stakes. His wishes were respected. No high play was allowel. Yet, owing to that mistake, what eloquence has been wasted!

That is not the only point in which the Prince has been the victim of most unfortunate misconceptions. The ways of examining and of cross-examining counsel are a mystery to non-legal minds, and it is not at all surprising that the public should have put a false construction on the extraordinary laxity with which the Prince's evidence was taken. If it had not been for the two questions asked by a juror when the examination was over, the Prince would have left the witness-box without having said anything about the very points on which it was most important he should have given evidence. There was a third question, which most unfortunately for the Prince did not occur to the mind of the juror, but which it was most important the Prince should have been asked. That is the question whether it was he who had divulged the Tranby Croft secret. Every one

knows that he has been saddled with that act of bad faith. Various detailed statements are current in society which would lead you to imagine that the breach of faith, instead of being committed in secret, had taken place in broad daylight, on the very housetop of the world in the presence of an army of reporters. Of all the stories most firmly accepted amongst us, is the tale that His Royal Highness told the fatal secret to a lady, who in turn told another lady, who, finding an opportunity of paying off old scores, smote the culprit in the presence of his friends with the cruel facts full in his face, and so forth and so forth. The only colour for this tale which the judicial proceedings supplied, was the fact that the Prince was not asked whether or not he had divulged the secret. As subsequent witnesses were asked that question, charitable gossip assumed that the silence of counsel in the Prince's case was arranged in order to spare the Heir-Apparent an additional humiliation. Considering the efforts made by the SolicitorGeneral to transfer the shame and disgrace attaching to his client to the shoulders of the Prince, this theory of prearranged silence is rather difficult of belief. But as a matter of fact I am in a position to state, on the very highest authority, that there is not a word of truth in the whole story from beginning to end. It was not the Prince who revealed the secret, and if it had been known that the other witnesses were to be asked that question, he would also have been afforded an opportunity of denying the imputation on oath. He was the first of the Tranby Croft party examined, and when he left the witness-box no hint had been given that this question was to be put to any witness. The moment the rest of the party were put in the box and examined on this point, the Prince saw the disadvantage in which he was placed, and appealed to his legal adviser to be allowed to re-enter the witness-box in order that he might have an opportunity of rebutting on oath an imputation which he felt all the more keenly because it was utterly groundless. In law courts, however, lawyers are supreme, even over the Heir to the Throne. The Prince's urgent application was overruled, and so the trial came to a close without any opportunity being afforded him of clearing up the suspicion which had gathered darkly over him on this particular point.

Such is the statement which 1 am authorised to make. The facts, of course, do not lie within my own knowledge; but I have received the above information from two sources which leave no doubt as to its accuracy.

The most heinous crime committed by the Prince, it is said, was his carrying counters about with him. It never seems to have occurred to these severe moralists that so far from this being a monstrous aggravation of the Prince's offence, it is quite the other way. What were these counters, stamped, as we have been told, by a friend with the Prince's crest? "Gambling tackle is the usual reply, and their presence is regarded as in itself sufficient to convert the place where they were used into a gaming hell. But that simply is not true. A moment's reflection will suffice to show that so far from these counters making things worse, they distinctly minimised the evils of the gaming table. Counters are not necessary for playing baccarat. The counters really were nothing more or less than a kind of pasteboard currency, one counter standing for a pound, a different one for £5, and so forth. Now what is it that constitutes the fatal fascination of the tables at Monte Carlo? Is it not universally admitted that it is the glitter of the gold, or the massive silver "cart-wheels," to say nothing of the notes which, spread out before the eyes of the players, intoxicate them with a frenzy that lures even the most

austere to try their luck? If play at Monte Carlo were conducted exclusively by counters, much of its dangerous seductiveness would disappear. Clearly, then, by bringing with him the plain, unromantic counter as a substitute for gold and notes, the Prince did what could be done to render the game with which he amused himself as innocent as possible for the inexperienced onlooker.

But the most scandalous injustice of all to which the Prince has been subjected has been in the abuse heaped upon him by the admirers of Sir W. Gordon-Cumming. Without attempting in any way to extenuate the Prince's offence in not reporting the offender to his commanding officer-an offence for which he has publicly apologised-is it not as clear as day that in refusing to shield his guilty friend, and in insisting that he should be publicly exposed if he did not place himself for ever out of the reach of similar temptation in the future, the Prince was really undertaking the unpleasant but necessary duty of an upright judge? In the society over which he presided on that occasion there is practically only one law. To cheat at cards is the only sin recognised as mortal. All manner of other sins and uncleanness are forgiven freely according to the peculiar ethics of Society, but cardsharping-never! When the accusa

tion was brought to the Prince, he found himself compelled to choose between the strait and narrow path of insisting upon the maintenance of the only ethical standard left, or to take the broad and easy road of allowing that last remnant of a sense of right and wrong doing to be trodden underfoot. The Prince, to do him justice, never seems to have hesitated. It may be that he imperfectly realised the risk of insisting that justice should be done though the heavons fell; but he saw his duty a dead sure thing, and, like Jim Bludso on the burning boat, he went for it there and then. Had he done as many others would have done under the circumstances-nay, as many others have done-hushed it up, Sir W. Gordon-Cumming would have been still free to practise his peculiar arts at the card tables of society, but His Royal Highness would have avoided an ugly scandal which has brought him no small annoyance. In a small matter he took the same stand against the offender against his social ethics as the Irish hierarchy took against Mr. Parnell, and as the Nonconformists of England have taken against Sir Charles Dilke. That assuredly ought to have been more generously recognised by the exponents of the moral sense of the community.

The fact is, of course, that ordinary folk are all at sea, because, for the most part, they do not understand, and therefore cannot appreciate, the immense distinction which Society makes between gambling fairly and gambling unfairly. "They are all gamblers alike," says the ordinary man, who never played at baccarat in his life; "perhaps one did cheat, but all gambling is more or less dishonest, and why make such a pother about Sir W. Gordon-Cumming's conduct ?" Society will never understand that to at least thirty out of the thirty-nine millions in this country it is as absurd to condemn Sir W. Gordon-Cumming and to let his fellow gamblers off as it would seem to a vigilance committee in the far West to hang a thief who stole a horse and to acquit his mate who merely stole a mare.

Probably the majority of the Methodists in the country if polled to-morrow would decide that the man who kept the bank at baccarat was distinctly a worse criminal than the player who surreptitiously increased his stakes. In dealing with the ethics of the gamester these good people are out of their depths. It is as if they were discussing what happens in space of four dimensions. This

is the real explanation of the Cumming cult, and, silly though it is, it is not at all difficult to understand.

We see just the same thing in the Forest of Dean, where good men in Church and in Dissent are supporting a perjurer of a much worse description than Cumming on much the same grounds. Their charity leads them to ignore the weight of evidence that convinced judge and jury, and their unacquaintance with the profligacy of the corrupt society in which he lived naturally predisposes them to doubt the antecedent possibility of acts which, to those who know the man, seem all but inevitable under the circumstances.

The other day a popular Wesleyan minister addressed a congregation in Leeds on the baccarat scandal. The newspaper report brings out very clearly the point of view of the non-cardplaying public. The minister, says the reporter, had the sympathy of his audience in his plain, outspoken address. "Waiving aside the comparatively immaterial point of Sir William Gordon-Cumming's innocence or guilt, he called attention to the evil example of the Heir-Apparent to the throne, but for whose action the game would never have been played. We are glad," said he, "to be loyal to the Throne and to the Prince, but we have a right to demand that the future King of England shall set an upright example, and obey those laws which he expects his subjects to respect. The working men were strongly urged to avoid those evils which seem to prevail so much amongst the upper classes, and the prayers of all were asked that the Queen might be comforted in this sore trouble."

That kind of sermon has been preached all over England, and, after all, it is natural enough. It is only those who are accustomed to go into the water who appreciate the significance of going out of your depth. Those who hold it wrong to bathe at all, and who have never wet their feet, can hardly discriminate between those who never venture out of their depths and those who do. That, they will say, is a mere detail-" comparatively immaterial.' What business has any one to go into the water at all, especially one who, from his position, ought to set the example of remaining on dry land?

The extent to which the Prince is devoted to play has been much exaggerated. For ten years he has never touched a card in any London club. No one, of course, can pretend that the Prince has used his influence to abate the plague of gambling, but he has in his kindhearted way often interfered in order to dissuade young friends of his from playing high. It will be replied, the Prince has often played high himself. But height is a question of degree. In the Nineteenth Century this month, Sir James Stephen, discussing the question of wherein lies the principal moral objection to gambling, states the views of Society accurately enough when he says:

The principle appears to me to be perfectly simple, and not very difficult to apply. It is that gambling, like any other thing, is a question of degree. A bet for one man is unobjectionable if it is a matter of shillings, for another man it may be of no harm if it is a matter of pounds; but questions of degree of this sort must by the very nature of things be decided by the people whom they actually affecta man must decide for himself how much he can afford to lose, and if he is wise he will not exceed his limit.

But, it will be said, the Prince has exceeded his limit. If it were not so we should not hear so much about his immense debts-debts which it is confidently declared were incurred at the gaming table. But what proof is there that the Prince has any debts, much less debts incurred at the gaming table? What proof is there that he has ever lost heavily at play? His friends assert that

he quite as often wins, and at the end of the year his gains and losses are pretty evenly balanced.

And now that I have broached this subject of his alleged debts, I may as well go on to repeat the statements made to me on the highest authority. The matter, of course, is one upon which no outsider can possibly have personal knowledge. All that can be done in such a matter is to gather up the current rumours which find credence in the best-informed circies such as that frequented by members of the Privy Council and the like-and to ask at headquarters what is the actual truth. You can be refused information, of course, or you can be deceived. But in the latter case the responsibility for the deception does not lie with you-it lies with those on whose authority you publish the assurances which you receive.

I am in a position to give the most absolute contradic

tion to the whole series of falsehoods which have been disseminated so diligently in certain quarters. So far from the Prince being waterlogged with debt and embarrassed by obligations to money-lenders, I am assured on the highest authority that the Prince has no debts worth speaking of, and that he could pay to-morrow every farthing which he owes. I am assured on the same authority, and with equally definite emphasis, that there is not a word of truth in the oft-repeated tale of the mortgage on Sandringham said to have been granted first to Mackenzie and then passed on through the Murriettas to Baron Hirsch. The whole story is a fabrication, and is on a par with similar tales which represent the Prince as being financed by Israelites of more or less dubious honesty.

Further, it follows as a necessary corollary from this that, as there are no debts, there has never been any application to Her Majesty to supply funds. No funds were needed, for the debts do not exist. Not only has the Queen never been appealed to, but no idea of making such an appeal has ever been entertained at Marlborough House. All the ingenious card-castle of caricature and of calumny raised upon this legend, of which I reproduce some Australian illustrations, falls to the ground. As for the report, half credited with a sort of shuddering horror, that it might be necessary to apply to Parliament for a grant to defray the Prince's debts, that also may be dismissed. No such grant has been thought of, for the simple fact that the Prince is not in debt.

Such an assurance, given to me for publication on the very highest authority, will be read throughout the Empire with pleasant surprise. It is hardly too much to say that almost every one believed exactly the opposite, nor would I have printed the above statement if I had not received it from one who was undoubtedly in a position to know, and who, as a gentleman and man of honour, is incapable of misleading the public.

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II. THE POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SCANDAL.

When I was down last month in Northampton I was astonished to find how vehemently the Prince's conduct was condemned by plain country folk, who probably do not know the difference between baccarat and bagatelle. Look here," said a farmer to me over the supper-table, "I hope you will make it plain that such as he will never be allowed to sit on the throne. We don't want any gamblers to reign over us." The question of the guilt or înnocence of Cumming was to them perfectly immaterial. If they did not exactly say that the infamy was in the gambling, not in the cheating, they stoutly maintained that it was more infamous for the Prince to gamble than for the baronet to cheat, and the opinion was freely

expressed that if evenhanded justice were done without regard to persons, H.R.H. ought to be in the lock-up The opinion of these straightforward quiet countryfolk. was echoed with more or less modification in quarters of unimpeachable Conservatism and loyalty. It was not merely the baccarat they said, but the kind of life of which this was an illustration.

Rightly or wrongly, there is a suspicion in the minds of many simple folk that the private life of the Prince of Wales, especially in relation to the other sex, is not a subject to which any one can allude without casting a reflection upon His Royal Highness. It is in vain that you ask for tangible facts or verified instances to support the dark cloud which in their minds hovers round the Prince's head. They smile when you quote the Prince's declaration, made nearly thirty years ago, when he said, "I cannot divest my mind of the associations connected with my beloved and lamented father. His bright example cannot fail to stimulate my efforts to tread in his footsteps." Perhaps so," they reply; "but if so, then the Prince has somehow missed his way." It is this uneasy sense of a background of a life of self-indulgence which has given force and volume to the outcry against baccarat. It is absurd to imagine that the average Englishman, who regards the turf as national institution, and inscribes a Bible text over the Stock Exchange, would have made such a fuss over a mere game of cards. In most cases when his critics are pressed, they take refuge in the other deadly sins, which they seem to believe are or have been in high favour with the Prince and his entourage. But it is unfair to hang a man for swearing because you are morally convinced he spent his youth in horse-stealing; and there is very little logic in the condemnation heaped upon the Prince for playing baccarat, when the offences in the mind of his assailants are of an altogether different category. "It is all of a piece," they growl. "We have never had & chance before, and he shall have it hot now." This fashion of punishing the Pope for Cæsar's crimes, and of slanging the Prince of Wales after he has become a grandfather for the sins of his youth, is, however, most unjust and misleading. It is detrimental to the interests which it seeks to serve, for, even supposing all the current gossip to be correct, the exaggerated condemnation passed upon baccarat contrasts so much with the silence observed about the other things, as to imply that card-playing is far more heinous than other offences which, although not judicially proved, are nevertheless almost universally assumed to be true.

The comments of the Times and the Standard, among others, proved that sentiments usually denounced as Puritan and Methodist have gained a lodging in quarters hitherto unsuspected of such sympathies. As the Lord Chief Justice reminded the jury, we are no longer living in the days of Stuart and Tudor, and princes must expect that their actions will be criticised in a spirit very far removed indeed from the sycophantic loyalty that prevailed before the Commonwealth. But they might at least be consistent in their moralising. When the Gloucester Congregationalists took upon themselves to reprove the Prince for card-playing, without apparently caring to say one word in condemnation of the infinitely more flagitious conduct condoned at their very doors by some of their own body in the Forest of Dean, the cynic can hardly repress a smile. However much we may discount these deliverances, there is no doubt that the resolutions passed by representative religious associations are at least indicative of the set of certain steady currents of public opinion. Hence I reproduce here a

resolution passed unanimously by the Methodist New Connexion Conference which met at Leeds last month :That the Conference feels bound to express its deep sorrow at the recent revelations in a court of law, of gambling and cheating in gambling, by those who occupy high positions in society, and from whom, therefore, a high example of virtue should proceed. But it is most concerned that His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales should have been so prominently and intimately involved in these disreputable proceedings. The Conference feels that such encouragement of vice and immorality by one from whom the nation has a right to expect impulse and encouragement to its higher life is fraught with great danger to its future well-being. It earnestly hopes that all such practices by one who aspires to be the King of a Christian people will henceforth cease. The Conference rejoices to observe, in the discussion arising out of these proceedings, that the moral sense of the country demands that those who occupy positions of trust and authority should be men whose character and conduct entitle them to public confidence.

Note in this resolution the curious phrase describing the Heir-Apparent as "one who aspires to be the King of a Christian people." In the minds of these good menwho represent congregations in all parts of the landthe Right of Succession has already become attenuated to a mere aspiration which may or may not be gratified.

The seriousness of all this, and its bearing upon the future of the Monarchy, cannot be disputed, but its full significance can only be adequately appreciated when we take into account the immense change that has come over the world since the Prince of Wales was born. In those days the English-speaking world was two-thirds Monarchical and one-third Republican. To-day it is twothirds Republican and only one-third Monarchical. Every day the English-speaking folk, who are to all intents and purposes under Republican institutions, grow comparatively more numerous. There is no active Republican propaganda at home. Mr. Bradlaugh is dead. But the influence of the Republican communities beyond the sea has made itself felt even in the most courtly circles. Democracy is triumphant. France is a Republic in name as well as in fact. Spain was a Republic a short time ago, and may be a Republic to-morrow. The fall of the unobjectionable Dom Pedro cleared the last remnant of Monarchy out of the Western Hemisphere. All our great colonies, although content enough with a Sovereign like the Queen, regard monarchy and monarchs from a purely democratic standpoint. Hence the air, like that in a fiery mine, is charged with explosive gas, in which a single serious scandal-I do not mean such an affair as this game of cards-might act like the match which the miner strikes to light his pipe. And a Prince who has surrounded himself with boon companions more worthy of Prince Hal in his unregenerate days than of Prince Albert, and who amuses himself in a fashion that exposes him to risk of exposures before the Courts, acts exactly as such miners used to do until they were literally killed into observing the elementary precautions of safety. The difference between the England of to-day and the England of George IV., is the difference between a coal-pit free from gas and one which has has been filled with carburetted hydrogen. In the former you can smoke in safety all day long, in the latter a single match may wreck the mine.

III. THE SECRET SOURCE OF ALL THE MISCHIEF.

How comes it that, after fifty years of such a reign as that of Her Majesty, we should now be landed in this disagreeable difficulty? The cause, we are told, is not far to seek.

It is to be found in the character of the Prince of

Wales. But we must go beyond that. For character itself is largely influenced by, if it is not altogether the product of circumstances. What, then, are the circumstances which have contributed to fill Europe and America with contemptuous laughter at the spectacle presented by the Heir to the Throne? The truth I take it is this. The Prince of Wales occupies a position which exposes him to temptations against which human nature is not proof, because it deprives him of the balance weight which would have enabled him to stand firm.

Every human being has not only a natural inclination to sin, but also a very potent detestation of being bored. And by our Constitutional arrangements we have succeeded in placing the Prince in a position where he must of necessity be bored inexpressibly. All day and all year long he is doomed to an endless sentry-go of monotonous and soul-wearying ceremonial. His social duties have frequently been descanted upon, and they are onerous and exacting enough to occupy almost all his waking time. But after dinner he gets a respite, and then le Prince s'amuse-with such results as we see. No doubt a man of exceptionally strong character might create for himself out of all this Sahara of Royal functions an oasis of enjoyment, or a man of imbecile mind might come to regard the reception of addresses and the laying of foundation-stones as the chief end of man, and one for which it was worth while having an immortal soul incarnate in the flesh. But the Prince is neither a genius nor an imbecile, and so it comes to pass that he is simply bored, and has sought his distractions at the card-table, and in times past in those pleasures of the senses which are apt to transform themselves into Deadly Sins.

It is impossible to cast even a cursory glance at the Prince and his alleged shortcomings without being struck by the close analogy which exists between his position and its outcome, and the position of women in modern society and the results which necessarily follow therefrom. The Prince, like the fine lady, is set on a pedestal apart. The one has the surface homage of conventional loyalty, the other the equally beautiful mockery of customary chivalry. No one contradicts the Prince, no one contradicts a lady. Both Prince and fine lady are habitually treated as if such creatures were "much too good for human nature's daily food." They are pampered and amused, and taught from infancy to attach an altogether ridiculous degree of importance to outward appearance.

Rights

The parallel is so exact that there are whole passages of Mary Wollstonecraft's admirable treatise on the " of Woman," which without the alteration of a syllable might be reprinted as explaining how it is that the prayers of the Church have never been answered in the case of the Prince of Wales. Women, like the Prince, suffer from the mock homage with which they are surrounded; they are sacrificed to the dominance of man, as the Prince of Wales has been sacrificed to the Constitutional machine. Deprived of all direct share in the responsibilities of government, never consulted as intelligent beings about the solution of the problems of State, shut up to the mere drudgery or the frivolity of life, their character deteriorates. We have mended matters to some small extent in the case of women; we have left it as bad as ever it was, or worse, in the case of the Heir-Apparent. And as we have sown, so have we reaped. If we really wish to improve things, we must change all that and that right speedily. The Prince is frequently contrasted, very much to his disadvantage, with his father. But the Prince Consort was king in all but in name. He was constantly saddled with the responsible duty of advising his wife in all the gravest affairs of State. He was "in the swim" and