within the fold of what he regards as the Catholic faith, did not lure him into taking any liberties with what he considered the well-established boundaries of his Church. His decision concerning Anglican Orders, although it has been somewhat fiercely resented by those who had deluded themselves into the belief that the Pope would try to convert the steel wire of the Roman fold into an elastic band, was only one more proof that the Pope is too logical, consistent and veracious to snatch at an apparent advantage by any straining of the well-established law of the communion over which he presides. His interven

tion on behalf of the Italian prisoners in Abyssinia showed his desire to play the part of general mediator and intercessor, even on behalf of those whom he believes have usurped his patrimony and despoiled the inheritance of the Church. And his utterances on behalf of International Arbitration have shown once more how keenly alive he is to the movements which tend towards the realisation of the Christian ideal.

After the Pope there is probably only one man who might exercise as much influence for good or evil upon the welfare of human segments large enough to include hundreds of millions of units. The Chinese Empire presented in 1896 a spectacle of singular interest. To our Western eye that huge yellow ant-heap is almost as unknown as if its denizens were a colony of termites. In the midst of that bewildering and multitudinous expanse of undistinguishable human cheese mites, there stood out in 1896 one man-and one only. Li Hung Chang's journey through Europe and America has familiarised the Western world with the personality of the only Chinese mandarin who may possibly be able to do anything in China. Yet Li Hung Chang's past career does not justify any very sanguine confidence as to his capacity to do much. When Gulliver visited the king of Liliput, he tells us that the king exceeded his subjects in stature by about the sixteenth of an inch, a circumstance which of itself was sufficient to strike awe into the beholder. But the mass of Chinese humanity is too immense for it to be impressed by Li Hung Chang. His genius for statecraft and his talent for the governing of men may exceed that of all other Chinamen by much more than one-sixteenth of an inch, but it is insufficient to give him power to mould the destinies of that ancient empire. One thing only appears certain, viz., that despite what are apparently the earthquake shocks of military and of naval defeats, or of domestic revolutions, the tough old Middle Kingdom which existed in splendour long before our ancestors had even been visited by the Romans, and which had laws, civilisation, and science before Moses was discovered among the bulrushes by Pharaoh's daughter, will continue to exist as an integer in the world's affairs. The Yellow Kingdom is like yellow clay: you can mould a bit of it for a time, you can punch holes in it, but you can't get rid of it, and although you may make bricks out of bits of it with which you can build houses, you cannot shape the great mass into any image of your own choosing.

Returning to our own Empire, there confronts us the figure of a man whose proportions have long loomed so large before mankind that he may be for the present spoken of almost as if he were a monarch in eclipse. Cecil Rhodes is the one great man whom the Colonies have produced who has played a leading part in Imperial policy. Until the beginning of this year his career had been almost without a reverse. From the position of a consumptive undergraduate to that of the foremost man in Greater Britain, he had mounted step by step almost without stumble. Difficulties he had

had, but he surmounted them. Of enemies there was no lack, but he had either bought them off or defeated them in fair fight. From victory unto victory he plodded on, until there was no man in all the English-speaking world in whom foreign nations learnt to recognise more completely and conspicuously the Imperial spirit of our Imperial race. He was the man who in an age when the nations were smitten with a lust for territorial extension had extended his empire more widely than any king or emperor, and extended it too over richer territory, and, at the same time, with less loss of life and treasure. We are too near the African Colossus

adequately to realise how his imposing figure impresses the imagination of outsiders. To Frenchmen, Germans, Americans, and also to our own Colonists, Cecil Rhodes is British South Africa, and British South Africa is Cecil Rhodes.

At the beginning of this year the failure of the Johannesburg insurrection, accentuated by the unfortunate effort of Dr. Jameson to force the hatching of an addled egg, by bringing his high pressure incubator to bear from the outside, administered the first check to a career hitherto unprecedentedly prosperous. Probably the very uninterrupted continuity of previous success unfitted him for dealing promptly and successfully with the different situation which then confronted him.. It is one

thing to play a great and Imperial role, it is another thing to readjust yourself promptly to circumstances when the Imperial statesman finds himself detected in a conspiracy which has failed. Many Imperial statesmen have taken part in conspiracies a thousandfold less defensible than the very innocent one on which Mr. Rhodes embarked when he endeavoured to secure the federal union of South Africa by financing a Reform movement and promoting an insurrection in Johannesburg. That Johannesburg ought to rebel as soon as it had a fair chance is an axiom which no Englishman or American can for a moment dispute; but what communities ought to do, and what they actually will do, are two very different things. Mr. Rhodes' repu'ation at the prezent moment suffers chiefly because on this occasion he did not know his facts. It was right and proper for him as a Johannesburg capitalist to support with his purse and with his counsels the movement for reform which would in the natural course of things culminate in revolution. It was quite inevitable under the circumstances that he should have believed that his country would forgive him, if, having a somewhat superannuated High Commissioner at his side, he had exercised and ever delegated to another the attributes of sovereignty which are constitutionally vested in the High Commissioner. But whether he was right or wrong in coming to this conclusion does not affect the judgment which men will pronounce upon his greatness. Wherein he appears to have failed has been in under-estimating the resistance which had to be overcome, and in overestimating the value of the material with which he had to work. The reputation of Cecil Rhodes throughout the world to-day is not in the least impaired by the fact that he entered into a conspiracy to bring the Transvaal into federal union with the other South African States. It is affected somewhat by the fact that having decided to play the revolutionary rôle, he failed to provide adequately the revolutionary means, and that when the conspiracy had failed, he did not discern with sufficient promptitude the necessity for readjusting his position to the necessities of the constitution. When a Privy Councillor and the occupant of a high office is revealed as having promoted a revolutionary conspiracy which has failed, the laws of the game necessitate an immediate abandonment of his constitutional position. This Mr. Rhodes recognised in surrendering the Cape Premiership; but although he admitted the same thing in relation to the Managing Directorship and Privy Councillorship, he left the application of the principle to his friends. A frank acknowledgment in public of the extent to which the Johannesburg movement was his own handiwork, although it would have had immediate risks, might have obviated most of the disadvantages which have accrued from the gradual unfolding of the ramifications of the conspiracy. It must be admitted that Mr. Rhodes, so far as he was personally concerned, made no secret of his share in the matter. To the pressure brought to bear on him from influential quarters to make him conceal the truth, he replied with dogged persistency, "I am not going to tell any lies about it. I have not broken into a church," which was his way of phrasing the wide distinction which exists between a revolutionary conspiracy and felonious criminality. But the general public had no opportunity of hearing Mr. Rhodes's private conversation.

Since his return to Africa Mr. Rhodes has done much to vindicate his prestige. Hastening at once to the heart of the empire which he had founded, he found himself almost immediately confronted by a formidable native

rising. The Matabele had only been partially disarmed, and the majority of the nation had never actually confronted their conquerors in open battle. It was inevitable, therefore, that when an opportunity arose they would try to throw off the yoke of the white man. This they did after Dr. Jameson and his police were shipped off to England. In the long and trying campaign which ensued, Mr. Rhodes bore the hard ships of the war with equanimity and good humour. Those who saw most of him have come home full of admiration over the imperturbable good temper and the cheery composure with which he made the best of things. There never was any danger which he did not confront,

there never was any misfortune which he did not endeavour to mitigate. As a result, although his resig nation was accepted and he was only a simple citizen in the midst of other citizens, his personal ascendency gained ground daily, until when the war came to a close the natives refused to recognise any one but Mr. Rhodes himself as the Chief of the Whites. His action in venturing unarmed into the camp of enemies who might easily have made him a captive, or used him as a hostage, was but the most conspicuous of many acts of bravery and of wisdom which have convinced his fellow-countrymen that he of all others is the man for South Africa. When Mr. Rhodes returns, as he is expected to do next month, in order to give evidence before the Select Committee, he will come as the representative of all British South Africa, which, having seen him under fire and

in adversity, is more enthusiastically devoted to him to-day than it was in the zenith of his prosperity.

It has hardly fared so well with another conspicuous figure in the British arena. 1896, which brought to Mr. Rhodes in January humiliation and defeat, but which before it closed has almost re-established him in popularity and power, has reversed the order of its gifts to the British statesman who is most closely associated with Mr. Rhodes. January saw Mr. Chamberlain at the very summit of popularity and prestige. Never before had "Pushful Joe" shown such resource, alertness, vigor, and audacity as he displayed in dealing with Dr. Jameson and the German conspiracy which Dr. Jameson's raid unmasked. It is true he displayed the faults of his qualities. Some of his references to Germany were hardly those of a prudent and tactful statesman; but on the whole, the cheers which greeted Mr. Chamberlain wherever he showed himself in public testified to a popular appreciation of his qualities which for some His time past has been perceptibly on the wane. method of dealing with the Boers can hardly be characterised as happy. He began with winking at, if not actually approving of, the conspiracy carried on for the purpose of securing the success of an insurrectionary movement in Johannesburg. The moment that the movement miscarried, he won quite an unexpected amount of kudos by jumping upon Dr. Jameson. Then after a time he endeavoured to secure from the Boers concessions which would give us tolerable security for a settled state of things in the Transvaal. His despatches show that when he telegraphed to the High Commissioner to use vigorous language in support of the Uitlanders' de:nands, he appeared to be heading straight for war. The High Commissioner, however, was not in a warlike mood, and instead of applying any pressure whatever, he returned to Cape Town and reported nothing could be done. Thereupon began the final stage of Mr. Chamberlain's evolution, which, although it may have been inevitable, can hardly be regarded as heroic or even satisfactory. Two Englishmen who refused to sign the petition to President Kruger offering to sacrifice their civil rights, are still in prison at Pretoria, and none of the others were allowed to escape until they had been severally mulcted of a heavy money fine. But all that Mr. Chamberlain has lost in popularity and power may be recovered if before the Select Committee he is able to prove that he has acted with the straight. forwardness of a British statesman. That he had full cognisance of much of the conspiracy which he afterwards condemned is probably true; nor will any one blame him for sympathising heartily with any effort to assist a population which is struggling, and rightly struggling, to be free from the oppressive and corrupt government which denied it representation, and saddled it with fifteen-sixteenths of the whole taxation of the State. the public will be slow to forget, and will never forgive, any attempt to deceive it by a resort to subterfuges, the object of which would be to deny the facts and to throw the whole of the responsibility upon the shoulders of others. If Mr. Chamberlain had guilty fore-knowledge of the preparations to aid and abet the insurrection at Johannesburg, if he had given Mr. Rhodes reason to believe he heartily approved of and sympathised with the attempts being made to bring the Transvaal into line, all would be forgiven him if it were frankly owned and manfully defended. Of course, it would entail, as in the case of Mr. Rhodes, the loss for a time of his Ministerial portfolio. That, however, is a bagatelle compared with the doom that would overwhelm him if, should he have

But

had such knowledge, he endeavoured to conceal the fact by any shirking before the Committee, either on his own part or on that of those who might be wanted for the purpose. But in the case of Mr. Chamberlain and in that of Mr. Rhodes, 1896 leaves the final verdict to 1897. If they stand together in truth, they may stand altogether. If, however, either of them should allow his steps to stray in such devious ways as the tempting suggestion that the revolutionary conspiracy of 1895 was no more than a continuation of the policy of Lord Loch, then they will not stand, but fall. One or the other or both, whichever flinches from the ordeal.

So far then as the survey of the great personages of the world is concerned, the passing year cannot be said to have made any great reputations. It has impaired one or two, others have remained stationary, while others again are still undergoing a period of probation which is not yet ended.

III. THE TESTING OF INSTITUTIONS. With respect to institutions, the gifts of 1896 have been of the same undecided character. The year has established and confirm d the power still possessed in this democratic age by the autocratic principle. At this moment France is but a prefecture of St. Petersburg, and the whole of Europe is practically powerless before the Assassin who reigns in Turkey. On the other hand, in the United States of America there has been a very remarkable vindication of the principle of democratic Government by the vote of the masses of the people, and in the visit of the Tsar to Paris we have a not less significant recognition of

which all crowned heads, our own included, hastened to hob-nob with Napoleon III. when he mounted the Imperial throne over the corpse of a murdered Republic. From the herd of mediocrities who scramble for portfolios in Paris with much the same zest and motive that gutter-snipes scramble for halfpence in our streets, no great man has emerged. But it has been sufficiently demonstrated that the scrambles for office which now pre-occupy the attention of French politicians can be carried on without disturbing the stability of the State. Russia long looked askance at the Republic, fearing that in the perpetual procession of Ministers which file and defile, form and reform on the French stage, materials were not afforded of sufficient stability on which to base even a working understanding. At last the experience of a quarter of a century sufficed, and the visit of Nicholas II. to President Faure may be regarded as the formal proclamation to the world that autocracy finds

the French Republic a workable, practicable system of Government, which Emperors may find it well not only to tolerate, but to utilise.

On the other hand, the position of Russia is a not less striking demonstration of the stability of an autocracy. The establishment and consolidation of Russian ascendency, both in Europe and northern Asia, has been not by any means the least conspicuous achievement of 1896. It is more remarkable that this work, which found appropriate symbolic representation in the magnificent ceremonial of the coronation at Moscow, has not been interrupted or endangered by the disappearance of the only man who contributed anything of a personal element to the enthronement of Russia. Prince Lobanoff has passed away, leaving no one in his place but a young Emperor whose character is still an unknown quantity, and who so far has manifested no qualities except caution and an anxious desire to abide by the traditions of his father's reign, modified by the best. advice which he can obtain among the advisers who surround his throne, He supported Prince Lobanoff, he supports

De Witte, but favourites outside his own family he has none. He is feeling his way, but although the Autocrat is as yet like a political x, the value of which is unknown, Russia is the overlord of Europe beyond the utmost ambitions even of Nicholas I. It is a curious comment upon all the imaginings of the fervent Republicans and humanitarians of the last half century, that 1896 should have enthroned the youngest descendant of the Romanoffs, not merely as Sovereign Lord of an Empire stretching from the Baltic to the Yellow Sea, but made him virtual suzerain of two continents. Mankind will not, however, grudge the survival, or even revival, of autocracy if the one-man power is used to prevent the millions from cutting each others' throats. It is notable that the dominance of Russia in the councils of Europe is based upon the universal conviction that Russian policy has the maintenance of peace as its first object. Even the Russo-French Alliance, of which so much is talked, is recognised an understanding entered into by Russia for the purpose of guaranteeing the good behaviour of France, and of averting the danger of war which arose from the mortified amour propre of the French people. It is somewhat paradoxical, but not less indisputable, that Europe by covering herself with armour and providing her whole population with instruments of slaughter, has so enormously increased the perils of war as to make the preserving of peace the most passionate pre-occupation of all the sovereigns of Europe. Who can say how many wars we should have had since the Emperor Frederick died, if the young War-Lord at Berlin, instead of having to put an armed nation in motion, had found ready to his hand a compact efficient army of, say, 100,000 fighting men, who could be launched, east, west, north, or south without dislocating the whole framework of society throughout his empire?

as

The believer in popular representative Government with its formula of government of the people by the people for the people, turns with a sigh of relief to the imposing spectacle that was presented last November, when the American nation mustered its millions of adult males at the polling booth, and decided one of the most complex and difficult of economic and moral problems by the mass vote of its whole population. The election of Mr. McKinley as President was the result achieved after months of political education in which the whole continent was the school-house, and seventy millions of people the scholars. To fight out the issue of gold versus silver on such a battlefield is in itself so gigantic an undertaking as to throw into the shade all previous attempts in the way of the political education of the masses. Cobden did something of the same kind when he fought and won the battle of Free Trade by appealing to the English middle class; but the English electorate of 1846, compared with the American electorate of 1896, is very much as the falls of Lodore are to the falls of Niagara. The issue is by no means so simple as it seemed to Lord Salisbury at the Guildhall Banquet. It is characteristic of Conservatives to regard a Liberal as the exponent of all villanies and an incarnate breach of the Decalogue; but there was quite enough of the evil element on the side of McKinley to justify many honest men in supporting any opponent on any platform which would enable them to assert the rights of the people against the monopolists. The American presidential election remains on record as one of the best things of the year 1896. It was

vehemently contested, but it was a contest of reason and of argument. The whole nation was polled out with less display of physical force than used to be seen in a single rotten borough in England in the old times. The result, no doubt, was a very bitter disappointment to many persons who had buoyed themselves up with the belief that they were about to inaugurate the millennium by electing Mr. Bryan. But when the people saw the result of the poll, it was as with Satan contending with Gabriel in the Garden of Eden, who read his lot in the

celestial sign

The fiend looked up and knew

His mounted scale aloft: nor more; but fled,
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night.

In like manner it would seem that the shades of industrial depression have vanished and the whole of the federated States are humming with the welcome sound of reviving trade.

At home 1896 has not done much for the nation which was the foremost pioneer in the development of Parliamentary Government. It may be that things must be worse before they get better, and from that point of view, no doubt, 1896 has led us somewhat further into the morass in which we welter owing to the break-down

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 1892.

of Parliamentary Government. The experience of last session convinced Mr. Balfour, the leader of the House of Commons, that it is impossible under the new conditions for Ministers to carry any lengthy bill through Parliament if it be pertinaciously opposed. In this melancholy estimate it is understood Sir William Harcourt entirely concurs. The result is that men of both sides are beginning to recognise that the ordinary methods of legislation must be reconsidered. this point of view 1896 has tended to ripen public opinion by the very evidence it afforded of the paralysis of the existing system. Party Government in the old sense seems to be becoming more and more impossible,

From

and if there is to be any legislation at all, it I will have to be carried on by agreement between the two front benches, while only a certain percentage of the days of the session will be left open for party When confighting. tentious bills are introduced they will be fined down to an irre

ducible minimum of clauses, and one of those clauses will delegate to a Government department the right to frame such provisions as are necessary for giving effect to the will of Parliament. We are in a process of evolution, and 1896 has not afforded very clear light as to whither we are going. But so far as we can see, our pro