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THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN,

AND HOW IT IS CONDUCTED.

MR. HILLIS. writing in the Review of Reviews of New York, warns the Republicans that in the Western and Middle States the silver men are prosecuting a campaign of education with a zeal that knows no bounds. 1. BY THE POPULISTS.

He says:

Much is being said about the campaign of education. Unfortunately, unto the present moment the education has been largely on the part of the Populists. The zeal of the silver orator is something to stir the wonder and alarm of all intelligent men. Like the zealot of old, the silverite rises yet a great while before day to compass one convert before milking his cows or finding his way into the fields. All day long he hastens his footsteps that he may have an hour in the evening for visiting some unconvinced neighbour. He returns from the field to take up the argument where he dropped the thread in the morning. He counts himself the divinely ordained apostle of the new financial movement. He goes to church on Sunday to obtain inspiration for prosecuting his mission during the week. Farmers' picnics by streams and in groves are held. The bicycle race, the horse race, the wrestling match and the silver debate increase the crowds. The outline of a single address given to an assembly of farmers in a country schoolhouse in Iowa will interpret the methods and arguments used throughout the entire West.

The chief feature of the speaker's address was his charts. Upon one end of a blackboard was written an estimate of the number of millions of bushels of oats raised this year by the farmers of Iowa, and a further estimate of the value of the crop at the market price of 13 cents a bushel. The Populist portrayed the farmer working like a slave through eight months of the year to produce this 13-cent bushel of oats, while the railway in a single day and night hauled the grain to Chicago, where it receives 7 of the 13 cents as its recompense. Now the first cent of the seven extorted, will, urged the orator, take away all hope of the farmer paying the interest on his mortgage; the second cent will take from wife or daughter woollen dress warm against the winter; the third will take the boy and girl out of school and college and condemn them to the drudgery of the farm-hand or housemaid; the fourth cent will take away all possibility of purchasing the review, the newspaper, the book, and drive men back to barbarism. When the orator reached this point in his discussion the audience was inflamed to the highest point. At that moment self-interest and prejudice armed his listeners against all arguments for sound money. Had the Republican committee been there when the assembly dispersed to present each farmer with a library devoted to the exposure of the silver heresy, even the multitude of books would not have availed for reversing the farmer's judgment or convincing him that the gold standard is not responsible for his misfortunes, or that free silver is not the unfailing panacea for all his ills.

In many of the rural districts class hatred and sectionalism are invoked against McKinley and the Republican party. The farmer is told that the reason why the railroads extort seven cents. out of the thirteen paid for the bushel of oats is that the railroad must pay interest on watered stock representing two or three times the cost of building the road. Now the argument of the Populist is that this water must be squeezed out of the stock before the farmer can hope for better rates. As a means to this desired end it is urged that since railways cannot increase the fare of three cents a mile, the success of free silver will throw the railway into the hands of a receiver and force an entire readjustment.

II. BY THE REPUBLICANS.

The Honourable Theodore Roosevelt contributes to the Review of Reviews of New York a paper on the Vice

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I am a good American, with a profound belief in my countrymen, and I have no idea that they will deliberately lower themselves to a level beneath that of a South American Republic by voting for the preposterous farrago of sinister nonsense which the Populistic-Democratic politicians at Chicago chose to set up as embodying the principles of their party, and for the amiable and windy demagogue who stands upon that platform. Many entirely honest and intelligent men have been misled by the silver talk, and have for the moment joined the ranks of the ignorant, the vicious and the wrongheaded. These men of character and capacity are blinded by their own misfortunes, or their own needs, or else they have never fairly looked into the matter for themselves, being, like most men, whether in "gold" or "silver" communities, content to follow the opinion of those they are accustomed to trust. After full and fair inquiry these men, I am sure, whether they live in Maine, in Tennessee, or in Oregon, will come out on the side of honest money. The shiftless and vicious, and the honest but hopelessly ignorant and puzzleheaded voters cannot be reached; but the average farmer, the average business man, the average workman-in short, the average American-will always stand up for honesty and decency when he can once satisfy himself as to the side on which they are to be found.

If the accusation of larceny on a large scale occupies the first place, the charge that Mr. Bryan stands for anarchy comes next. Speaking of the Chicago programme, Mr. Roosevelt says:

A platform which declares in favour of free and unlimited rioting, and which has the same strenuous objection to the exercise of the police power by the general government that is felt in the circles presided over by Herr Most, Eugene V. Debs, and all the people whose pictures appear in the detective bureaus of our great cities, cannot appeal to persons who have gone beyond the unpolished-stone period of eivilisation.

The men who object to what they style" government by injunction," are, as regards the essential principles of government, in hearty sympathy with their remote skin-clad ancestors who lived in caves, fought one another with stoneheaded axes, and ate the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. They are interesting as representing a geological survival, but they are dangerous whenever there is the least chance of their making the principles of this ages-buried past living factors in our present life. They are not in sympathy with men of good minds and sound civic morality. It is not a nice thing to wish to pay one's debts in coins worth 50 cents on the dollar, but it is a much less nice thing to wish to plunge one's country into anarchy by providing that the law shall only protect the lawless and frown scornfully on the law-abiding.

The third weapon in the Republican arsenal is to represent their opponents as Populists, and to identify Mr. Bryan with Mr. Watson, whom the Populists nominated for the Vice-Presidency:

Mr. Watson belongs to that school of southern Populists who honestly believe that the respectable and commonplace people who own banks, railroads, dry goods stores, factories, and the like, are persons with many of the mental and social attributes that unpleasantly distinguished Heliogabalus, Nero, Caligula and other worthies of later Rome. Not only do they believe this, but they say it with appalling frankness. They are very sincere as a rule, or at least the rank and file are. They are also very suspicious. They distrust anything they cannot understand; and as they understand but little this opens a very wide field for distrust. They are apt to be emotionally religious. If not, they are then at least atheists

of an archaic type. Refinement and comfort they are apt to consider quite as objectionable as immorality. That a man should change his clothes in the evening, that he should dine at any other hour than noon, impress these good people as being symptoms of depravity instead of merely trivial. A taste for learning and cultivated friends, and a tendency to hathe frequently, cause them the deepest suspicion. A wellto-do man they regard with jealous distrust, and if they cannot be well-to-do themselves at least they hope to make matters uncomfortable for those that are.

Thrift, industry and business energy are qualities which are quite incompatible with true Populistic feeling. Payment of debts, like the suppression of riots, is abhorrent to the Populistic mind. Such conduct strikes the Populist as immoral. Mr. Bryan made his appearance in Congress with two colleagues elected on the same ticket, one of whom stated to the present writer that no honest man ever earned $5000 a year; that whoever got that amount stole it. Populism never prospers save where men are unprosperous, and your true Populist is especially intolerant of business success.

If a man

is a successful business man he at once calls him a plutocrat. Altogether Mr. Watson, with his sincerity, his frankness, his extreme suspiciousness, and his uncouth hatred of anything he cannot understand and of all the elegancies and decencies of civilised life, is an interesting personage. He represents the real thing, while Bryan after all is more or less a sham and a compromise. Mr. Watson would at a blow destroy all banks and bankers, with a cheerful, albeit vague, belief that thereby he was in some abstruse way benefiting the people at large. And he would do this with the simple sincerity and faith of an African savage who tries to benefit his tribe by a sufficiency of human sacrifices.

III. THE CHANCES OF THE CANDIDATES.

In the North American Review for August, Senator W. E. Chandler writes upon "The Issues and Prospects of the Campaign" from the Republican point of view. He takes, as might be expected, the gloomiest possible view of Mr. Bryan's candidature. Mr. Chandler is a bimetallist himself, but he strongly supports Mr. McKinley, who is charged with the execution of the mission of the Republican party. This mission the Senator defines as follows:

Its mission just now is to prevent Repudiators, Anarchists, Socialists, and other enemies of organised society from achieving the first success in the work of tearing down the whole social fabric upon which rest the peace and prosperity of our country.

A very different paper is the Hon. Josiah Quincy's careful calculation of the electoral chances of Mr. Bryan. It is impossible for Englishmen to follow him intelligently in his analysis of the probable balance of votes in each State, but there seems to be a good deal of sense in his conclusion, viz. :

There are a large number of voters who are thoroughly tired of the old political parties and of the leadership which has controlled them, and before the campaign is over they may be strongly attracted by the prospect of bringing about political disruption through the election of Mr. Bryan. With the old political fences so completely down, and in the face of conditions so chaotic, there is no warrant for any assurance as to the result of the election in November.

CONSOLATION IN ADVERSITY.

Another article in the North American Review, Mr. Julian's survey of the political issues raised in the Presidential election of 1852, has a bearing upon the present contest. The facts to which he calls attention will probably be used to comfort the hearts of Mr. Bryan's followers if he should be defeated:

Nineteen-twentieths of the voters of the United States in 1852, only a little more than ten years before Lincoln's preliminary proclamation of emancipation, voted for the finality

and sacredness of the surrender made by Congress in 1850, and for the suppression of the freedom of speech as a means to that end; while only one-twentieth had the courage to claim their souls as their own. These were disheartening facts after a quarter of a century of anti-slavery agitation.

THE VIRTUES OF THE REPUBLICANS.

There are five articles in the Forum bearing on the question of the hour in America; but although the writers are all positive enough in asserting the soundness of their own views, they do not leave us much further forward than we were before. General Horace Porter, in

a paper entitled What the Republican Party Stands

For," says:

The result of the approaching election will affect so directly the material interests of every citizen, that it seems certain this year that party uniforms will be worn lightly and that party lines will be largely obliterated. It will be a year in which the Republican party may expect to lose few deserters and gain many recruits. While Democrats are always strong in their party allegiance, it must be remembered that among them there is a very large class of patriotic and public-spirited men whose pride in the honour and prosperity of the country rises above all partisanship. These may follow their party to the verge of the precipice, but they will refuse to leap with it into the chasm below. All signs point to the belief that in this era of independent voting this class of Democrats will be found ranged on the side of sustaining the national credit, by casting their ballots against the free and unlimited coinage of silver and in support of an honest gold standard; while they will also support such tariff measures as may be reasonable and just, and so framed that the specific may be substituted for the ad valorem duties.

THE SINS OF THE DEMOCRATS.

Senator S. H. Cullom, writing on "Blunders of a Democratic Administration," winds up his exposition of the manifold iniquities of the Democrats as follows:

Fidelity to the Constitution, to liberty, to the national honour, to honest money, to the great doctrine of protection-union, liberty, national honour, home industry, a circulating medium for all the people, equal to the best in the worldthese are the watchwords of the Republicans, the embodiment of the party's faith, and the foundation of our national growth and prosperity. The struggle for the Union and liberty has passed into history. Our national honour has been painfully involved and frightfully jeopardised during the present Administration. Home industry has been paralysed, idleness enforced, and the Treasury bankrupted by the folly of misguided Democracy since the party last came into power. The remedy lies in the people again entrusting the conduct of affairs to the control of the Republican party, upon a platform of sound money and reasonable protection to American industries and labour-when prosperity will return.

Senator S. Morrell, writing on "The Free-Coinage Epidemic," expresses the utmost confidence as to the result of this election:

The theory of the American Constitution-trust in the people-will not be, as it never has been, impeached, and the public credit will be heroically sustained, though assailed by a minority formidable by its proposal to establish a cheap foreign silver standard of money on the ruins of wrecked and discarded gold, and dangerous by the extent of the selfish legions summoned or impressed for its support.

THE CONFIDENCE OF THE WEST.

Mr. C. S. Gleed, of Topeka, Kansas, replying to the view which Mr. Godkin has expressed about the antagonism between the West and the East, maintains that the West has no antipathy to the East, and even in this paper Mr. Gleed shows what may be regarded as the Western hoof when he says:

Speaking of power, I do not believe that the time has yet arrived when any part of this country comes anywhere near a

proper appreciation of the power of our nation. If this power is comprehended anywhere, it is in the West, and not in the East. The whole East wholly underrates the resources and capabilities of the country. The East certainly does not appreciate what this country is able to do if necessity requires. It would not be the burden for us to maintain free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, regardless of the rest of the world, that it has been for France to take care of the debt saddled on her by the Franco-Prussian war, nor would it be half so difficult as it was to take care of our own debt after the civil war.

ITS ORIGIN.

Mr. Van Dyke, of Los Angeles, California, in a paper bearing the title, "The Financial Bronco," endeavours to explain how it is the East fails to convince the West as to the soundness of its financial opinions. Ignorance -sheer ignorance-is, in his opinion, responsible for much:

Not one in ten of the silver men in the Far West knows that the silver dollar is to-day a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, except where otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract. One may assert it a thousand times and they will not notice it or believe it, because all the silver books, papers, and orators say it was made legal tender for only five dollars by the Act of 1873. One must go beyond that mere assertion and show how it was reinstated by the Act of 1878,-which was not changed in that respect by the Sherman Act, and that the repeal of the Sherman Act repealed only its purchasing clause. Of the few who know this the majority say that the exception clause destroys it. They do not know that the Supreme Court of the United States more than thirty years ago decided that contracts for specific money are good.

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The mere danger that he may be elected, and may so act, is quite enough to frighten every owner of property in the United States, and readily accounts for the crisis that has arisen. The farmers throughout the West are deeply in debt. They have generally mortgaged their holdings, which it must be recollected are freebold, for their full value. They cannot carry on their business profitably at present prices, and they hope that free silver would lead to a great rise in prices, and so relieve them of their crushing embarrassments; and the condition of the planters and other landowners in the South is very similar. Broadly speaking, the farmers throughout the United States are debtors, not creditors; and, consequently, the great transfer of property from the lender to the debtor would immensely benefit them.

THE PROBLEM OF THE WEST.

A thoughtful article in the Atlantic Monthly for September deals with the problem of the West from the historical philosophic point of view. The writer, Mr. J. F. Turner, says:—

We are now in a position to see clearly some of the factors involved in the Western problem. For nearly three centuries the dominant fact in American life has been expansion. With the settlement of the Pacific coast and the occupation of the free lands, this movement has come to a check. That these energies of expansion will no longer operate would be a rash prediction; and the demands for a vigorous foreign policy, for an interoceanic canal, for a revival of our power upon the seas, and for the extension of American influence to outlying islands and adjoining countries, are indications that the movement will continue. The stronghold of these demands lies west of the Alleghanies.

In the remoter West, the restless rushing wave of settlement has broken with a shock against the arid plains. The West has been built up with borrowed capital, and the question of the stability of gold, as a standard of deferred payments, is eagerly agitated by the debtor West, profoundly dissatisfied with the industrial conditions that confront it, and actuated by frontier directness and rigour in its remedies. The frontier opportunities are gone. Discontent is demanding an extension of governmental activity in its behalf. In these demands it finds itself in touch with the depressed agricultural classes and the working men of the South and East. The Western problem is no longer a sectional problem; it is a social problem on a national scale. The old West, united to the new South, would produce, not a new sectionalism, but a new Americanism. It would not mean sectional disunion, as some have speculated, but it might mean a drastic assertion of national government and imperial expansion under a popular hero.

THE TRUTH ABOUT LOMBARD STREET. SOME PLAIN FACTS FOR MR. BRYAN AND HIS FRIENDS. MR. W. R. LAWSON, writing in the Contemporary Review on 66 American Currency Cranks," calls attention to the grotesque misconception which prevails at the Democratic Populist headquarters as to what Lombard Street really is :

Knowing something of the real Lombard Street, he believes that impartial, unbiassed Americans will be glad to learn how widely it differs from its Chicago caricature.

A MYTHICAL VAMPIRE.

The Lombard Street of Populist stump oratory is the headquarters of the gold monopolists, the temple of dear money and low prices, the happy hunting-ground of creditors, mortgagees, landlords, financiers, and the whole "of that predatory and piratical element" which, in the elegant language of a Kansas delegate, "loots the Treasury, stifles commerce, paralyses industry, and plunders the world." Lombard Street is the universal enemy against which a holy war is to be proclaimed by all the bona fide producers, with the tramps and demagogues at their head. Possibly not a single orator who helped to draw this fancy picture and to pile lurid colours on it has ever seen Lombard Street, or read a plain account of its actual business. If they had to spend a day in it, they might be surprised to find that it is not paved with gold, and that there is less show of metallic money in it than in Chicago itself. It might astonish them further to discover that its favoured monopoly is the very freest of free trade; that its alleged tyranny over silver-using countries is in the nature of things an utter impossibility; and that its bloodsucking propensities are restrained by a glut of money which makes lenders there thankful to earn as much interest in a year as they would get in a month, or even in a week, in the Western States.

WHAT LOMBARD STREET ACTUALLY DOES.

The real Lombard Street deals in money of all kinds and qualities; not gold money alone, or silver money, or paper, but any form of monetary material. It deals honestly all round, and, by so doing, it has become the monetary centre of the world. It undertakes to convert at sight the currency of any country into that of any other country. In the process it uses very little gold, and can turn over millions sterling with less handling of coin than takes place every day in a second-rate Californian city. Gold as such has had little to do with the prosperity or the power of Lombard Street. Silver might have served equally well if it had been adhered to with equal persistence and had its market value been as jealously safeguarded. It was not the yellow metal, but the standard and its strict maintenance that possessed the magical virtue.

ITS ATTITUDE AS TO CURRENCY.

In the real Lombard Street the precious metals are secondary factors. Its fundamental and distinctive basis is creditscientific credit, the most highly organised that the world has ever seen, the most widely ramified and the most skilfully

operated. That is the secret of Lombard Street's influence. Might it not be advisable for the Wild West, before raising the standard of revolt against it, to try to understand it? Are the Western men perfectly sure that it has been their enemy and oppressor, and that they would be much happier without it? Secondly, can they release themselves from it by political declamation? And if they could, are they thereby to get rid of all their troubles-mortgages, debts, bad markets, and hard times?

In the Wild West they talk glibly of extinguishing Lombard Street, but to all other civilised nations that would be an inconceivable misfortune. Lombard Street is the financial clearing-house of the world-not because of its gold standard, but because of its world-wide commercial and financial relations. It is a vast telephone exchange for monetary purposes, by which all parts of the globe are brought into financial touch with each other.

The Western men have got it into their heads that Lombard Street is the golden Juggernaut that has crushed silver. It is on a gold basis certainly, but it has never raised a finger to hurt silver or to discourage the use of it by countries which preferred it. Lombard Street has always said in such cases, "Have a silver standard by all means, and make the best you can of it, so long as you let those who prefer a gold standard also do the best they can with theirs."

If we have succeeded in giving a clear idea of the distinctive functions of Lombard Street it will be evident that there is no occasion for it to discriminate against silver as an international form of money. All forms of money find a natural and useful place in its operations.

ITS ONE AND ONLY TEST.

These are truisms in Europe, however unpalatable they may be in Chicago. Moreover, our monetary standard has little to do with them, and it might be materially modified without affecting them. The Populist threat of free coinage at sixteen to one, so far from being alarming to Lombard Street, would hurt it less than any other part of Europe or America; far less than it would hurt Chicago, and infinitely less than it would hurt Mr. Bryan's own State of Nebraska, for the simple reason that Lombard Street could sooner than any other disturbed quarter adapt itself to the change. It is the most fluid of all markets, the most difficult to coerce or restrict, and the quickest to readjust itself to changed conditions. Of all outsiders, it has least interest in the vagaries of cheap moneymongers, being farthest removed from their reach. Whatever they offer it-gold, silver, greenbacks, Sherman notes, or commercial bills-it will take at the current market price, no more and no less.

THE CONVICTION OF DR. JAMESON AND CO. A DANGEROUS DEVELOPMENT.

MR. EDWARD DICEY contributes to the Fortnightly Review an article on this subject, in which he expresses misgivings that have occurred to many minds as to the extraordinary development which the principle of the Foreign Enlistment Act has received at the hands of the Lord Chief Justice. Mr. Dicey says:

QUESTIONED.

I think it well to point out that there are various aspects of the Trial at Bar hardly justifying the general approval with which its result has been received. These aspects, as I hold, may involve very awkward consequences, and I greatly doubt whether, when the sensation of immediate relief has passed away, the trial in question will be regarded as redounding to the credit of British law, of British administration, or of British policy. It would be absurd for me to discuss the technical legal issues on which the case turned.

According to the interpretation now placed upon the Foreign Enlistment Act by the Trial at Bar, the Englishmen who sympathised with Kossuth in Hungary, with Mazzini and Garibaldi in Italy, with Ledru Rollin and Louis Blane in France, and who aided and abetted their attempts to overthrow the established governments of their respective countries,

would, one and all, if the ruling of the Court had been accepted in their day, have been guilty of criminal offences against the law of England. I do not wish to mention names of individuals. Most of us-I myself amongst the numberhave seen cause of later years to modify the opinions of our hot youth, of the days when we, as young men, "dreamed dreams" with respect to political refugees. But this much I can honestly say, that if as late as 1870 the Foreign Enlistment Act had been understood to render it impossible for Englishmen to show active sympathy on behalf of foreign revolutionists without rendering themselves liable to be punished as criminals in the Courts of their own country, the Act would have had as little chance of being passed by the British Parliament as Doctor Barnard, a few years before that date, had of being convicted by an English jury for having conspired against the author of the Coup d'Etat. I am not saying that this popular sentiment was right, I am only saying that it did exist, and that the mere fact of its existence would have been fatal to the passing of the Act in question, if it had been even rumoured that it might be construed as debarring Englishmen from "aiding and abetting" foreigners who had risen in insurrection against their own established governments.

It is worth while to consider how the principles enunciated in the recent trial would work in practice, under contingencies of by no means improbable occurrence. Supposing the Turks should elect to put down the Cretan insurrection by the same system of wholesale massacre and outrage by which they restored order in Armenia, there would, in all likelihood, be foreign expeditions fitted out to assist the insurgents.

Does any one imagine that in such a case as this persons who were risking their all in order to aid an oppressed population, struggling, and rightly struggling, to be free, should be sent to gaol like Dr. Jameson? Mr. Dicey rightly thinks that such a doctrine would be repelled with horror by the national conscience, yet it follows logically from the Lord Chief Justice's ruling.

APPROVED.

This is brought out very clearly by the enthusiastic comments of the editor of the National Review, who heartily endorses the doctrine which, before six months are over, will recoil with crushing force upon one, at least, of his own most idolised friends. He says:

It has been the function of Lord Russell as the trampler on frivolous technicalities to put his heel on this great Rhodesian stand-by. The following exposition of the law of the Foreign Enlistment Act from his lips shows that the promoter of an illegal expedition is in the eyes of the law in the same boat as the leader of it. For once the scapegoat system receives no sanction from the law :-"What must be proved to constitute an offence under the statute? It must be proved as the foundation of the offence that a person has, without the license of the Queen, in a place within her dominions where the Act is in operation, prepared or fitted out a military expedition to proceed that is with the intention that it should proceed-against the dominions of a friendly State. It is not necessary to constitute the offence that it shall proceed, or shall have proceeded. The cardinal point is the intention. The offence is complete if the person prepares, or assists in, or aids and abets the preparation with that intention. . . If that foundation is established, the statute applies, and these consequences follow:First, every person engaged in such preparation, or fitting out, or assisting in it, or aiding, abetting, counselling, or procuring it-that is to say, aiding, abetting, counselling, or procuring the preparation." It will not, we think, be denied, even by Rhodesianism incarnate, that Mr. Rhodes' promotion of the raid brings him weil within the law thus expounded. Indeed, a very strong primâ facie case exists against the millionaires which the Government, to our minds, incur a grave responsibility in disregarding, and if, for reasons of policy, which have not been divulged, it is decided not to prosecute Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit, a very damaging blow will be struck at the independence of British law, of which we hear so much on the strength of its success in dealing with comparatively small men.

REFLECTIONS ON THE SESSION.

THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT FAILURE. Blackwood in its article entitled "The Last Chapter of Party History," makes no bones about emphasising the fiasco of the Education Act. It says:

Here we see an administration at the head of a commanding majority, conducted by men of consummate ability and great parliamentary experience, strong in numbers, strong in brains, and strong in their acquaintance with business, completely foiled by a feeble minority numbering only one man in its ranks who has any claim to be called a statesman of the first class. The fact itself is of immense significance.

The causes of this one great failure we have endeavoured to trace with brevity. They are three in number: miscalculation, obstruction, disorganisation. The first was really very trifling, an wit out the other two would have done no harm. The second was the immediate and obvious agent in bringing about this unfortunate result. The third is a legacy from 1886, when a reconstruction of the party system became necessarya reconstruction which is still in progress, and therefore necessarily the source of some embarrassments. Great allowances must be made for the leader of a party during this period of transformation. But it cannot go on for ever. Either it must terminate very soon, or some new way of carrying on the Queen's Government must be found. Deference to sections which are in the party, but not of it, may be carried so far as to make confusion worse confounded, and even perhaps to check the more complete amalgamation of other and more congenial elements.

MR. GREENWOOD'S LAMENT.

Mr. Greenwood, in the Contemporary Review, wrings his hands bitterly over what he regards as the sacrifice of a great opportunity by the Unionist Ministry. He has never been able to reconcile himself to the commanding position which the Liberal Unionists have been allowed to occupy in the Cabinet, and he sees in the history of the late Session only too much to justify his forebodings. He is naturally wroth at the release of Daly, the dynamitard, and he can hardly speak for tears concerning the Irish Land Act. He says:

Everybody who knows the new Irish Land Bill also knows that much in it signifies, and clearly signifies, a complete abandonment of Conservative principle for the Gladstonian idea.

But far worse than any betrayal of Irish landlords is the extent to which Ministers have weakened the parliamentary party system. As to this he is quito certain :

It is not as if our party system-for which no one has yet suggested a tolerable substitute-remained at the end of the first session of the new Parliament no weaker than at the beginning. It is distinctly weaker than when this Parliament met; and it has been weakened at its foundations. I can but think that a great opportunity-one which, if turned to good account, would have made at least one Coalition glorious-has been misused.

MR. CHAPLIN'S FAILURE.

The Editor in his monthly survey falls foul of Mr. Chaplin, whom he regards as one of the failures of the Ministry. He says:

Mr. Chaplin has shown himself to be quite incapable of understanding the principle or expounding the details of even a secondary measure, and his conduct of the Rating Bill left everything to be desired-in fact, he treated it as a mere peroRating Bill. It is to be hoped that the London Water Bill with which we are threatened next year will be confided to different hands. Mr. Hanbury, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, has disappointed the expectations encouraged by the acumen and zeal which he has displayed for some twenty years as a Treasury critic, and Mr. St. John Brodrick has

failed to get a single one of the important Military Bills entrusted to him on to the Statute Book, which must be due to a singular want of diplomacy.

A WORD TO MR. BALFOUR.

An anonymous writer in the Fortnightly Review in an article entitled, "The Schoolmaster of St. Stephen's," takes upon himself to hint mildly that Mr. Balfour is not quite up to his work, and that he had better endeavour to improve next session. Speaking of Mr. Baliour's leadership, he says

In his anxiety, perhaps praiseworthy, certainly not imperceptible, to avoid the tendency to play to the gallery which characterised his former associate, Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Balfour at times seems in danger of mistaking a highly superior indifference to the public opinion of the Chamber which he leads for independence and strength in its leader. The consequences revealed themselves with increasing frequency as the session drew to its close. The weekly droppings of journalistic gush may, unless Mr. Balfour is careful, have the proverbial effect of the water falling on the stone, and may yet undermine instead of assuring his position. Perhaps, therefore, it may not seem impertinent to suggest that when Mr. Balfour's visit to Hawarden has closed, it would not be altogether lost time if, instead of the strains of Wagner at Bayreuth, the sands of St. Andrews, or the levels of Berwick, the leader of the House of Commons were to cultivate, under the auspices of Sir William Harcourt at Malwood, the genius and the traditions of the parliamentary management whose most successful exponent was the jaunty and virile master of the contiguous Broadlands.

ENGLAND AND THE EASTERN QUESTION.
VARIOUS VOICES.

A WRITER Styling himself Ypsiloritis in the Contempo rary Review argues strongly in favour of England adopting the cause of Greece.

ENGLISH POLICY IN GREECE.

He maintains that recent events have completely destroyed any illusions at Athens as to the policy of Russia or of France :

French influence, once paramount in Greece, is now as dead as that of Russia has been for the last thirty years. The Greeks now look exclusively to England; and it is to be fervently hoped that this tendency, remarkable for its unanimity and strength, will not be disregarded. Love of liberty, civilising power, commercial aptitude, seafaring habits -all mark the Greeks as the only element in the Levant which offers a sure foothold to English policy. The Slavs are irrevocably committed to subservience to Russia.

If Crete is not now blockaded, if her sons can confidently hope for the satisfaction of their just demands, this is due to the supreme resolve of the great statesman who presides over the destinies of England, to be no longer a party to the maintenance of the most iniquitous rule which ever disgraced Europe. It is a departure so important that it will leave his name indelibly marked on the foreign policy of this country; it already centres in him the blessings, the confidence, and the hopes of those healthy elements in the East, upon which alone the prestige and power of England can safely rest.

IN ARMENIA.

Professor W. M. Ramsay, writing on "The Two Massacres in Asia Minor," draws a parallel between the massacre sanctioned by Diocletian and the massacre of the Armenians in our own time. The latter he evidently thinks the worse of the two. The conclusion of his article is that unless we are prepared to deliver the Armenians, we had better get them killed quickly.

That it should be burned alive in thousands, slain in tortures in thousands more, killed by famine and nakedness

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