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Two MANIFESTOES BY SIR JOHN GORST.

SIR JOHN GORST, always a bold man, has broken his own record by the appeal which he has just made to public opinion to force the hand of his colleagues, and compel them, however reluctant they may be, to face the duty of educating our people. The audacious article which he has contributed to the North American Review for October is a manifesto of the first order of political significance a significance but thinly disguised by its publication as far away as New York, as if it were merely an essay on the prospects of education in England. That we are not exaggerating will be admitted by every one who reads Sir John Gorst's article.

(1) INSTANT ACTION: "THE ONLY HOPE."

The Vice-President of the Privy Council begins his plucky appeal to the nation to bestir itself energetically in a campaign against the ignorance and backward state of public instruction by the following clear and vigorous statement of the case:

The chief obstacles to the progress of education in England are party spirit and religious intolerance. Proposals for educational reform are discussed and decided, not in a philosophical spirit, but with all the acrimony of partisans. Yet it is admitted that the case is a very urgent one; that England is engaged in a struggle with her foreign competitors not only for the supremacy, but even for the very existence of her industries; that her workers are worse instructed than their rivals, and are on that account going to the wall; and that better education, both elementary and technical, is vital to the continuance of her prosperity. It is the fact that in both town and country elementary instruction is so backward that, even if adequate technical schools were provided, the mass of the people are unfitted to take full advantage of them. Yet, notwithstanding all this, English statesmen will postpone reform indefinitely if they can see their way to secure a party advantage thereby. The only hope is that public opinion may appreciate, before it is too late, the position of education, both elementary and technical; may become agreed as to the direction in which development ought to take place, and may force Parliament and the Government to grapple with the difficulties which have to be overcome.

66 THE SACRIFICE OF OUR CHILDREN."

There are two obstacles which hinder the full measure of success being attained by the Education Act:

The first is the short time which the children remain in the elementary schools. Till recently, the age for exemption from full-time attendance at school was ten. It is now eleven, and in some boroughs has been raised by by-laws to as much as thirteen. The value of the child's labour is too great a temptation to parents and employers, and the general interest the community have in keeping children longer at school is not sufficiently realised to counteract this strong motive. But if we choose to sacrifice our children at so early an age to the necessities of their parents or to the industries of the country, we must not expect to find them so apt to receive technical instruction as the German or Swiss child who has been kept at school to the age of fourteen. Until the school age is raised, English children cannot be turned out by the borough Board schools as well equipped for further instruction as the Continental children who are to be their future rivals.

THE BADNESS OF VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS.

The staunch Church Tory will rub his eyes with amazement and horror on reading what his own VicePresident of the Council has to say about the Voluntary schools. Proceeding in his indictment of the existing system, Sir John Gorst says:—

The second obstacle to complete success is the fact that the School Board system in boroughs does not cover the ground.

Of seven children educated in boroughs, three are educated in Voluntary schools, as against four in Board schools, and these Voluntary schools do not in general possess the means of giving so efficient an education in secular learning as the Board schools.

The education in Voluntary schools, he points out, must necessarily be below the mark, because they starve their teachers and scrimp the teaching of the scholar. To quote his own words:

Upon an average in boroughs the Voluntary school managers spend from local sources ten shillings per child in average attendance, while Board schools spend twenty-five shillings, a difference of fifteen shillings per child: and thirteen shillings of this difference is accounted for by a difference in the amount spent on the teaching staff. The teachers in Voluntary schools are paid lower salaries, the assistants have lower qualifications, the proportion of children to teachers is greater, and child labour is more extensively employed.

THE INADEQUACY OF AN IMPERIAL GRANT.

He scouts the idea that there can be any diminution of the cost of School Board teaching, and he ridicules the notion that a beggarly dole of 4s. per child will bring the Voluntary schools up to the level of the requirements of the nation:

A grant of four shillings per child, which is all that is likely to be obtained from the Imperial Exchequer, would go a very small way towards placing the two classes of schools upon an equality; besides this, it is not reasonable to suppose that the cost per child in Board schools will be arrested at the figure of twenty-five shillings. It has increased greatly since 1870, and no one can say precisely where it will stop. To attempt to limit by a hard and fast line the cost of elementary education is as absurd as to attempt to limit the cost of a gun or warship. The rivalry of nations is continually increasing the cost of these instruments of war, and the rivalry of nations may continually increase the cost of education.

Sir John Gorst would saddle the ratepayers with the duty of paying for denominational education:

It is evident that if the Voluntary schools are to be maintained in a proper condition of efficiency the managers must have more money.

THE RUIN OF OUR RURAL DISTRICTS.

From the town schools, Sir John Gorst proceeds to consider the rural schools, and here he finds the condition of things far worse. The general level of education is far below the city standard. The rural Board schools are worse than the Voluntary schools, and-oh, cruel blow from a Tory Minister of Education !-we are expressly told that the Church schools in rural districts "hold their own without further pecuniary support":

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There is no part of the country in which education is more necessary to the preservation of English industry. Mannfacturing districts are still struggling against their foreign competitors, and are in many cases holding their own; but the agricultural interest is already beaten. The greater part of the food of the English people must of necessity be supplied by foreign competitors. But not only are bread and meat, the great staples of agricultural production, imported from abroad, but such articles as eggs, poultry, butter, and vegetables, which might be produced in unlimited quantities at home, are supplied to a great extent from Normandy, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark.

THE LANDED INTEREST'S HATRED OF EDUCATION. But the passage in Sir John Gorst's manifesto which will create the greatest stir in Ministerial circles is that in which he boldly denounces the landed interest as the chief obstacle to the education of the people. He says:If any one contrasts the elementary and technical instruction

imparted to the children of the peasantry in these countries and in England, as well as the amounts spent by the respective Governments thereon, there is no reason for surprise at the defeat of English agriculture; and it is impossible to refrain from asking whether better education of the people would not tend more to the relief of agricultural depression than remedies like bimetallism or protection. The understandings of all those who are connected with the cultivation of the soil appear to be darkened. The landowners exhibit that dislike to intellectual development which is characteristic of a territorial aristocracy; the farmers regard the imitation of the methods of their forefathers as the highest agricultural art, and scoff at the teachings of science; and the labourer's children are turned out of school to scare crows when eleven years old, and often by the connivance of the school attendance officers, who are After under the thumb of the farmers, at a much earlier age. leaving school the children get no further instruction; they have no means of keeping up the little knowledge they have obtained; and in a few years they forget everything they have learned, and are often incapable even of reading and writing. How can such a population compete with the French agriculturists, carefully trained in schools and colleges in the art they are to practise? The mere distribution of a capitation grant from Government amongst the country schools would not raise rural education. Unless ear-marked and appropriated to specific purposes, it would all go in relief of subscriptions and rates.

AN APPEAL TO PUBLIC OPINION.

Sir John Gorst concludes his article as follows:It is obvious from this survey of the condition and prospects of education in England that the early attention of the Government and of Parliament to this subject is most urgently demanded; but if every attempt to promote the reform and development necessary for the progress of education is to be received in the spirit of party politicians, and to be recklessly thwarted for the sake of a party victory, and if the difficulties which have been pointed out are to be made greater still by the infusion of sectarian and religious animosity, it is very improbable that a system of education can be established which will enable the workers of England to compete on fair terms with their foreign rivals. Public opinion has, however, already, to a considerable extent, removed questions of foreign policy and of the national defence from the party arena; it may do the same for national education, and compel both parties to shape their policy with a due regard to national interests.

(2) THE NEEDS OF VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS. Having spoken his mind in the North American Review for October to the Western half of the English-speaking world, Sir Joha Gorst now, in the Nineteenth Century for November, addresses the Eastern half. His subject is, "The Voluntary Schools," and whatever breath has been left in the high and dry old Tories after they have read his American manifesto, will be taken away by this.

IN THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES.

He begins with a short review of Governmental connection with elementary education in this country. He recalls Lord John Russell's Education Bill of 1853, which was permissive, and applied only to boroughs, enabling the Town Councils, acting through a Committee which might include other than Town Councillors, to give rate-aid to every public elementary school. Country schools were to receive State-aid. The Bill was coldly received and was dropped. A dash of cynicism appears in the remarks that the Government, judging "that the education question was ripe for being hung up for some years by a Royal Commission," appointed a Commission accordingly in 1858; and that its recommendations "shared the common fate of the recommendations of Royal Commissions; no attempt was ever made by the Government to carry them into effect." But they did suggest

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most pernicious change," that the State-aid should be given on the system of payment by results which the Commission had proposed as a basis for rate-aid.

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FRIENDS OF VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS NOT WISE." Mr. Forster's Bill is next contrasted with the finished Act passed by him in 1871. Both proceeded on the "fatal error" of making every rural parish an independent school district. In towns the School Board was intended by the Bill to be elected by the town council and in rural parishes by the vestry. "If county and district councils had been in existence in 1870, it is impossible to believe that parishes and vestries would have been elected" for this purpose. The Board was to grant rate-aid to local Voluntary schools as it saw fit, subject to conditions approved by the Education Department. Sir John reminds his friends that they are responsible for the change they now so much deprecate :

The two fundamental changes which the Bill of 1870 underwent in passing through Parliament, both of which were brought about by the friends of Voluntary schools, were:

(1) That the local education authorities were to be independently elected, and that education was to be thus separated from the other functions of local self-government.

(2) That the new authorities were to be deprived of the power of using the machinery of the existing schools for the establishment of a comprehensive scheme of National schools. They were to set up a rival system.

IN PRAISE OF SCHOOL BOARDS.

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The result has proved that the friends of Voluntary schools were not wise in rejecting the provisions of the Bill which rendered possible a concord between the representatives of the ratepayers and the managers of Voluntary schools. School Boards in the towns and populous places have well performed the duties put upon them by the Act of 1870. They have constructed a system of elementary education which is inferior to that of other nations only because of the early age at which children are withdrawn from instruction. They have, not unnaturally, pushed and extended their system in every direction; they have regarded efficiency before economy, and have never spared the rates out of regard to the necessities of their districts other than educational. Unless some radical change can be speedily made in the position of Voluntary schools in School Board districts, all of them, except such as the strong religious feeling of their supporters can succeed in keeping on foot, must shortly disappear.

THE TWO THINGS NEEDFUL IN RURAL DISTRICTS.

In the country districts "the Voluntary schools are in no danger of extinction." Rural School Boards are often a costly and dismal failure. The country parson, "with all his alleged shortcomings, is generally a better manager than they." To put them in his place would be a mistake. "To improve country schools, Board and Voluntary, two things are requisite-more money and better organisation." The parish is too small an area for real organisation. Federated School Boards are the exception:—

Church schools dare not federate, for fear of losing their subscriptions. People will subscribe to their own village school who would, it is believed, cease to do so if the school became merged in a diocesan federation. Only a county education authority could form an effective nucleus for common action amongst the individual schools of the country.

But in the towns, Voluntary schools want "money and organisation" just the same as in the country, but the Board schools are amply provided with both. Where is the needed money to come from?

WHAT IS NOT POSSIBLE.

Can the difference-in London of twenty-five shillings and in provincial towns of twelve shillings per child

be reduced by curtailing expenditure in School Boards?

It is said that they are extravagant. They are probably not so economical as they would be if they were responsible for the general finance of their district as well as for its education; but there is little doubt that, on the whole, the ratepayers get excellent value for their money. Increased economy will not do much.

"Neither is it possible that the cost of education can be arbitrarily fixed in advance, as some persons have suggested," for

It depends on the cost of buildings, the price of apparatus, and the salaries of teachers. These are regulated by the law of supply and demand. . . It is thus impossible to place a limit on the cost of education. The State may fix its contribution, the power of the School Board to rate may be restricted, but there must be some authority behind whose liability is unlimited if the efficiency of the Board schools is to be maintained.

Sir John has even less mercy for the proposal to restrict School Boards to teaching “elementary" subjects only.

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In many places the Boards have higher grade schools. Until some better public provision is made for secondary education it would be the height of folly to stop these laudable efforts, highly popular among the ratepayers concerned.

These higher schools, moreover, make a profit and so diminish the general cost of education:

But so long as our industrial population is so inferior in elementary and technical knowledge to their rivals in other countries, any attempt to lower the quality of education is dangerous to our national interests, unless we could persuade other nations to step down to the same low level.

FIVE CONDITIONS OF AID.

Sir John Gorst reiterates, in conclusion, that the Voluntary schools in towns, to be preserved in efficiency at all comparable to Board schools, must be provided with means something like equal. For fifty years friends of Voluntary schools have been unable to make up their minds whether rate-aid would destroy the religious character of the schools. The article closes with five "conclusions":

1. An additional State subvention, given in towns to Board and Voluntary schools alike, will not redress the existing inequality in their resources. Whatever is given to the Voluntary schools must either be withheld from the Board schools or be such as the latter possess. Whether it is possible to persuade Parliament to give to schools, because they are Voluntary, exceptional grants, which are neither now nor in the near future to be extended to Board schools, or whether, after so many schemes of rate aid have been proposed and none accepted, it is now possible to devise something which Parliament will adopt, are questions for the party politician.

2. The aid must be adequate. It must be sufficient to enable the managers of Voluntary schools to give an education as efficient as that of the Board schools. Some plan will also have to be devised to secure that the aid will go to the school, and not to the subscribers.

3. The aid must be elastic. It is impossible to regard the existing cost of education as a maximum which will never be exceeded. If the cost in Board schools increases, the Boards have the rates to fall back upon. The managers of Voluntary schools must have a source of income capable of simultaneous augmentation.

4. The aid must be permanent. Any relief given now to Voluntary schools which might be withdrawn a few years hence will only ensure their destruction .. Its permanence can only be relied on if it is the result of a common understanding.

5. Lastly, the managers of Voluntary schools must make up their minds to accept, along with increased grants of public money, increased public control. If aid come from the State, Parliament is sure to impose conditions with the view of securing the application of the special grant to increasing the efficiency of the schools. If from the rates, the representatives of the ratepayers must have some sort of voice in the management of the schools. Managers must submit to such conditions as ratepayers may properly require for securing the efficiency of the secular education in their schools; the only thing which they cannot surrender, and for which they must stand out to the last, is full liberty to teach their distinctive

religious doctrines to the children of their own communion.

MR. DIGGLE ON NON-BOARD SCHOOLS. MR. JOSEPH R. DIGGLE writes in the National Review on "The Government's Opportunity." He remarks on the slightness of the effort made by either side to inform the popular mind, and is evidently amused at Sir John Gorst "enlightening public opinion in England" by writing in the North American Review. To assist in the guidance of the nation Mr. Diggle offers his suggestions, all but exclusively, in the interest of non-Board Schools, as he prefers to call Voluntary Schools. Better organisation and more money are two principal needs of these schools, neither of which the defunct Bill adequately

met.

HOW TO FEDERATE NON-BOARD SCHOOLS.

What is wanted is to make Federation of non-Board Schools inevitable and speedy. In every school district, howsoever defined, the organisation of the non-Board should be commensurate with that of Board Schools:

Every non-Board School has now a recognised body of local managers. The Council of the Associated Schools might spring naturally out of these recognised bodies. All Government and Local Grants should be paid into the common fund of the Federation, to be used by them for the common purposes of the schools, either allied or to be allied to the Federation. It should be compulsory upon the Council of the Federation, as it is now permissive upon School Boards, to delegate the administration and management of the schools to local managers; and, in this delegation, the conditions and purposes of the Trust under which the school was originally erected should be preserved intact. There might be placed upon the Councils of the Federated Schools representatives of the ratepayers of the area concerned, wherever local grants from the rates were made, in order that the expenditure might be regularly supervised and guarded. These representatives might be nominated by the County Councils or by any public body having an equivalent authority to act on behalf of the general body of ratepayers.

RATE-AID FOR NON-BOARD SCHOOLS.

The need of more money is not met by the special aid grant of 4s. per child, which Sir John Gorst declares to be all the Government can offer:--

The evil springs from the fact that all public elementary schools, rendering as they do an equality of service, do not receive in return an equality of recompense. Local aid is diverted by the law directly to the support of one set of schools, and indirectly to the destruction of the others. And yet the latter schools minister to the wants of a majority of the people. What is needed is a simple readjustment of the law which will enable non-Board Schools to receive in common with Board Schools their fair and proportionate share of local assistance as they now do of State-aid.

NO HOSTILITY TO SCHOOL BOARDS.

Mr. Diggle concludes by emphasizing three things which he thinks the Government ought to do:

First of all the Government should take measure to allay the apprehensions aroused by what was undoubtedly a most

unfounded, but none the less dangerous, misrepresentation; namely, that their action was inspired not so much by love of non-Board, as by hatred of Board Schools. It ought to be made perfectly clear that the policy to be followed is one of equal treatment all round, and that simple justice to nonBoard Schools is not only compatible with, but essential to similar justice to Board Schools.

PLAN FOR A NEW COUNTY AUTHORITY.

The second point is the formation of a neve lucation au ority. The Education Department which Liberals profess to admire most highly is not, Mr. Diggle reminds them, an elected body. His own scheme is also nonelective:

There is no reason to doubt but that a county education authority formed out of existing local authorities, e.g., the County or District or City Councils, the School Boards, the Councils of Federated non-Board Schools, representatives of institutions giving Secondary or University Education, &c., would furnish a more popular and effective authority than any which now exists. The principle of the formation of such composite educational bodies is not a novel and untried principle. It is simply the extension to a wider area, and to more complex interests, of the habitual practice of the Charity Commissioners which is uniformly approved by Parliamentary sanctions.

ORDINARY TEACHERS AND RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION.

The third point is evidently the difficulty of religious teaching, concerning which Mr. Diggle emits the following oracular sentences:

In the third place, there is no necessity to endanger the harmonious working of every public elementary school by introducing into the schools, for a specific purpose, a new class of teachers, not appointed by the local managers, but by some outside persons or authority. The frank recognition of parental rights in the matter of religious education imposes upon the managers of schools the corresponding obligation to safeguard those rights and to give effect to them in the ordinary conduct of the school. But it is essential to the proper and effective conduct of the school that the ordinary teachers should be competent to give the full recognised instruction of the school. This is the method adopted in industrial schools, and it is equally applicable to ordinary schools. The London School Board tind no difficulty in adopting a so-called undenominational system to the denominational requirements of the Jews, and there is no reason why a denominational system should not be equally flexible in the case of the undenominationalists.

EDUCATION BY HYPNOTISM.

DR. R. OSGOOD MASON writes in the North American Review for October on "The Educational Uses of Hypnotism." He quotes a striking instance of education-one might almost say conversion--brought about by hypnotic action:

In the summer of 1881 there was at the Salpêtrière a young woman of a deplorable type--a criminal lunatic, filthy in habits and violent in demeanour, and with a life-long history of impurity and theft. M. Auguste Voisin, one of the physicians of the hospital staff, undertook to hypnotise her at a time when she could be kept quiet only by the straitjacket and the continuous cold douche to the head. She would not look at the operator, but raved and spat at him. M. Voisin, however, kept his face close to hers, and followed her eyes wherever she moved them. In ten minutes she was asleep, and in five minutes more she passed into the sleepwalking or somnambulic state, and began to talk incoherently. This treatment being repeated on many successive days, she gradually became sane when in the hypnotic condition, though she still raved when awake. At length she came to obey in her waking hours commands impressed upon her in her trance -trivial matters, such as to sweep her room-then suggestions involving marked changes in her behaviour; finally, in the hypnotic state, she voluntarily expressed regret for her past

life, and of her own accord made good resolutions for the future, which she carried out when awake; and the improvement in her conduct and character was permanent. Two years later M. Voisin wrote that she was a nurse in a Paris hospital, and that her conduct was irreproachable.

This is, we are told, an unusual but not a unique case. Dr. Mason would apply similar treatment in cases of mental deficiencies, evil habits, and vicious tendencies, shown in childhood or youth.

There will probably be greater readiness on the part of the public to entertain these proposals of educational hypnotism when our hypnotisers become saints or our saints turn hypnotisers. A high state of habitual and elevated self-control is a condition without which control over others should never be allowed.

UNIONISTS AND CHURCHMEN.

THREAT OF AN "INDEPENDENT PARTY."

"A LAYMAN," writing in the National Review, delivers his soul of a bitter complaint against the Unionist Party for its treatment of the Church in the last Session of Parliament. Churchmen had jubilant hopes from the triumphant majority they had largely helped to return to power. But alas! "For the Church of England the Government did nothing,-nothing except (to be studiously accurate) the pissige of a Bill to alter the boundaries of the diocese of Bristol." The fate of the Benefices Bill, and above all of the Education Bill, leads the writer to what he feels to be the irresistible conclusion "that the greater part both of the Government and of the party are indifferent to the interests of the Church and to the wishes of Churchmen." This plaint is pathetically repeated again and again. "There seems to be a large body of opinion in the Unionist Government and Party indifferent to religious Government." The financial clauses of the Education Bill and its collapse suggest to the aggrieved writer that the Government "belong, at present at any rate, to that baser class of insolvents who promise a percentage and pay nothing!" No doubt, he grants, Unionists oppose Disendowment, but apart from this negative aid, "Unionist friendship seems to become a very insignificant sentiment." And let not Unionists imagine that the dread of Disendowment will always ensure the support of Churchmen :

Such calculations do not take account of the feelings of a section of the younger and more ardent clergy. To them Disendowment has no horrors; and Disestablishment has considerable attractions. As yet they are not, in most cases, supporters of either, but they do not care so greatly that they may not come to think it is possible to sacrifice too much for the establishment. The opinions of a number of clergy, moreover, are on general politics quite divergent from Conservatism. Some members of the Christian Social Union, who are strong not, indeed, in intellectual force, but in their zeal and in their high personal standard of virtue and piety, favour much which Conservatives regard as socialistic. Evidently a few more Sessions like the last would suffice to alienate from the Unionists the support such men have sometimes given to them as the friends of the Church.

The threat of secession with which the article began is renewed. "Even the extreme course of forming an Independent Party, which would divide the strength of Unionists at elections, might not be impossible." This menace-which if meant seriously would be welcome news to Liberals and Liberationists-is evidently intended to spur on the Government to more practical devotion to the Church. The conclusion of the whole matter is, "Let us grumble to-day, that we may be spared the temptation of revolting to-morrow."

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The article by "Diplomaticus" attacks Lord Rosebery's policy in dealing with the Eastern Question. He goes over the old ground, generally accusing the Liberal Prime Minister of ignorance of the conditions of the problem with which he had to deal, especially of ignoring the drift of Russian policy. He makes one point against him, namely, that in which he contrasts Lord Rosebery's recent warning against Italian action with the assurance which he gave to Lord Salisbury when he went to the office that he would have the support of the nation, even if he took united action. "Circumstances alter cases," Lord Rosebery would reply, and isolated action which might have been somewhat safe in 1895 might be midsummer madness in 1896. The only new thing in "Diplomaticus's" article is that in which he declares that Lord Rosebery missed the chance of doing anything for Armenia when he refused to join Russia, France and Germany in intervening on behalf of China against Japan. Prince Lobanoff, "Diplomaticus" says― accordingly made overtures to the British Government to join in an intervention in China, with a view to keeping Japan off the Asiatic mainland. I understand that he intimated to Lord Rosebery that he might make almost his own terms for the support demanded of him. Never had a British Minister a more splendid opportunity of achieving a great coup. Had he seen clearly at that moment, or if seeing clearly had he acted with courage, the Eastern Question would have been settled to-day. Under these circumstances there was no Power or combination of Powers to say him nay. He adopted neither of these courses, but simply peddled away at his scheme of reforms in the infatuated belief that, as soon as it was completed, the Sultan would adopt it, or British gunboats would know the reason why.

This may be true, or it may not; but there is a further question, namely, as to how far the responsibility for refusing to co-operate with Russia was due to Lord Rosebery or to his colleagues? A very persistent rumour at the time had it that Lord Rosebery almost wrecked his Cabinet by the vehemence with which he pressed his recalcitrant colleagues to embark upon the intervention to which Prince Lobanoff invited him.

BY MR. E. DICEY.

Mr. Edward Dicey, writing upon "Lord Rosebery's Resignation" in the same Review, has very little to say that is new. Speaking of Lord Rosebery, he says:

After all, he contrived to keep the Liberals in power for a year-and-a-half after Mr. Gladstone's retirement, and to have done so is an achievement no other Liberal Premier could have accomplished.

He does not think that Lord Rosebery's career as a Minister, or even as a Prime Minister, is necessarily at an end. He may or may not be a great statesman. In all times and all countries great statesmen are very few in number. But his lordship has many of the qualities which, in such a country as ours, enable a man to play a very high and even brilliant part in public life. Apart from his advantages of rank, repute, and fortune, he possesses a cool head, a sound judgment, a knowledge of the world, a faculty of lucid and telling statement, a gift of writing, and above all a keen understanding of the British public, of its prejudices, its likes and dislikes, its aims, ambitions, convictions and aspirations. Given these advantages and these qualities, and Lord Rosebery

might well be excused for applying to himself the remark of Mr. Cecil Rhodes after his resignation of the Cape Premiership, and of saying "my political career is not ended but only beginning." But if this anticipation is to be justified by events Lord Rosebery must take his stand on one side or the other.

Therefore, as Mr. Dicey is a Liberal Unionist, he considers that Lord Rosebery ought to stand where Mr. Dicey does. He concludes his article as follows:

I would respectfully say to the late leader of the Liberal party, your place is not temporarily only, but permanently, in the ranks of those who uphold the rights of property, individual liberty, freedom of contract, the maintenance of the Union, and the Imperial mission of the British Empire; in the ranks, to put the matter more concisely, of the Conservatives, not of the Liberals. "A MERE CRITIC."

In the Progressive Review for November, the editor deems it the best way to promote the cause of Liberalism by publishing a carping criticism of Lord Rosebery, of whom he finds it difficult to say one good word, with the exception of the following guarded admission as to his critical abilities:

We do not deny for one moment Lord Rosebery's powers as a critic, and never was his critical ability seen to greater advantage than in his recent able Edinburgh speech. But a good critic is usually a bad leader, especially where human and moral considerations are involved, and the specific charge against Lord Rosebery through his whole career is that excepting in organising jingo expeditions, he has invariably appeared in the guise of a mere critic.

The chief contention of the writer is that the choice of Lord Rosebery's successor must be made by a vote of the whole party:—

As to leadership, it would be criminal folly for genuine Liberals to keep silence now. The essential point is this: the disastrous experiment of 1894 must never be repeated. Had Lord Rosebery been a ten times stronger man than he has proved to be, his career would have been vitiated ab initio from the manner of his appointment. A party which professes to be democratic must elect its leader in the best way actual conditions will permit. For a leader to be chosen by the outgoing Prime Minister and the Queen, aided by a cabal of selfinterested political intriguers, is fatal to the peace, union, and dignity of a party, especially of a soi disant party of progress. The first duty, therefore, of the Liberal party is to provide for the formal election by the party of its chief, and to set its heel once for all on private nominations and back-stairs' intrigues.

BY "A CONSERVATIVE M.P."

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"A Conservative M.P.," writing in the National Review, greatly exults in the Liberal divisions made evident by Lord Rosebery's resignation. He recalls the fact that twelve occupants of the Liberal Front Bench attended Lord Rosebery's Edinburgh meeting and voted for his return to the Leadership. He specially remarks on Mr. Asquith's expressed conviction that Lord Rosebery was the only fit successor to Mr. Gladstone." He concludes that "these eminent Radicals" do not wish to see Sir William Harcourt leader of their party. How then, he asks, can the tactics of the Opposition be harmonious, even with the leadership left in suspense? In any case, Lord Rosebery weighs more with the country than any other of the Radical chiefs-as witness the effect of his speech on Armeniaand if on the eve of a General Election he were to insist on his conversion-of-the-predominant-partner line of argument on Home Rule, would not he shiver the party into such equally opposing fragments that only the polls could readjust? However that may be, “the most sanguine of Radicals cannot deny that the present detachment of Lord Rosebery will help to discredit what may be

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