she has made herself responsible for the good government not of Asia Minor exclusively, but of the whole of that great space upon the map, including the principal parts of Arabia, which is known geographically as Turkey in Asia.' The engagement comprises a pledge to defend Armenia against Russia. To discharge these pledges British troops have their choice of evils. They must march over hundreds of miles of land and a great mountain chain, or be transported thousands of miles by sea with the task of effecting a landing on hostile territory at the end. In Central Asia England is committed to the coercion of millions of warlike barbarians in a country which the British mission has broken into pieces, and added to the anarchies of the Western world.' In India the financial burdens have been increased and the popular liberties diminished.

6

Mr. Gladstone enumerates all the fresh burdens accumulated on the back of a pre-existing obligation to settle the affairs of nearly a fourth of the entire human race scattered over the world.' He inquires how the added load is to be borne. He thinks it was an unfortunate decision of Germany to annex Alsace and Lorraine. But at any rate Germany reckoned upon proportionate contributions in men and money for the defence of the empire, from the new members of the empire as from the old. Asia Minor, and Egypt, and Cyprus will send no recruits to the British army, or, at all events, no money to pay them. Zululand and the Transvaal will not be outworks to guard the British dominions, but positions themselves needing protection. What is meant by these extensions of the British Empire simply is that Great Britain will have to furnish so much more money, and so many more soldiers. Rely upon it,' the Midlothian electors were warned on November 25,the strength of Great Britain and Ireland is within the United Kingdom. Whatever is to be done in defending and governing these vast colonies with their teeming millions, in protecting that unmeasured commerce, in relation to the enormous responsibilities of India, must be done by the force derived from you and your children; derived from you and your fellow electors in the land; from you and the citizens and people of this country.' The responsibilities which are the British heritage, Great Britain will not repudiate. But they are heavy enough already without insane' additions to the burden by continuing with the limited store of men and funds which these islands can supply to enlarge and extend our responsibilities and our dangers all over the surface of the earth.' Mr. Gladstone demands that 'regard be had to the relation between the work to be done and the strength we possess in order to do it.' The resources to be drawn upon are limited; the encumbrances laid upon them tend, with a Government like the present, to become unlimited. Doubtless the country, as Ministers affirm, is very strong. 'Thank God, it is!' But Mr. Gladstone's argument is that, whatever its strength, the annexations made by the Conservative Ministry are no addition to that strength, but a drawback. He asserts that none

6

they would have been still a heavy load upon British means which, if great, are yet not greater than British duties.

Recent British foreign policy has rendered the kingdom weaker than before in proportion to its liabilities. It has also involved, Mr. Gladstone shows, dangerous encroachments on constitutional privileges and on the integrity of British finance. He charges upon it the violation of the traditional rule that although the law allows a duration of seven years to Parliament, yet it should not sit to transact more than the business of six Sessions.' If the present Government has departed from that custom, and is about to convoke Parliament for a seventh Session, Mr. Gladstone and the country clearly understand the reason to be that Ministers fear to challenge, by a dissolution, the nation's judgment on their policy. Mr. Gladstone grounds the custom of dissolving Parliament before its full term has run out, on the temptation a Parliament on the inevitable brink of the grave would feel to flatter particular groups and cliques of persons in relation to what are sometimes called harassed interests.' We confess the reason seems somewhat remote. The custom of dissolving before the seventh year is ended being notorious, the temptation to intrigue with threatened interests would seem to be as strong in the sixth Session as in the seventh. The custom nevertheless we fully believe to be indisputable. Opponents of Mr. Gladstone have adduced instances in which Parliaments have sat for seven Sessions. They have adduced none in which they have sat for more than six years. The number of Sessions is an accident. A Session may endure for a fortnight, or for twelve months. As Mr. Gladstone has replied to his critics, the essence of his argument is that it is altogether against precedent to prolong Parliament for the business' of more than six Sessions. Mr. Gladstone's fact is better founded than his explanation of it. There is something ungracious in withholding from the country to the last moment its right of pronouncing approval or disapproval of the manner in which its representatives have executed their trust. That by itself would ordinarily account for the convocation of a new Parliament at least a year earlier than the law requires. But in truth a Government must have been extraordinarily apathetic, or must have existed in times extraordinarily placid, which does not find it to its honour or convenience to ask of the nation an early ratification of its acts. In this natural instinct of British statesmen is to be found the motive for not exhausting the last breath of a House of Commons. It is an instinct which, with every reason for its exercise in the present instance, the existing Government does not feel at all inclined to obey. We almost wonder that its friends have not betaken themselves to arguing that the sense of the country is already clearly in its favour; that it would be mere waste of energy to put the nation to the trouble of declaring itself a moment earlier than the law compels. In the meantime the popular opinion is likely to agree with Mr. Gladstone's suggestion that Government postpones dissolving

There is 'the chance of striking some new theatrical smoke, the chance of sending up some new rockets into the sky, the chance of taking some new measures which would again carry misgiving and dismay to the hearts of the sober-minded portion of the nation-I believe at this time the great majority of the nation-but which, appealing to pride and passion, would always in this, as in every other country, find some loud-voiced minority ready to echo back its ill-omened sounds.' The country has a constitutional right to be consulted with all possible speed on its assent to, or dissent from, the measures which have removed it far away from the position in which it stood when this Parliament was elected. That is what the country would find desirable and convenient. If the common course is abandoned, and the Parliament is to sit more years than any Parliament within the memory of man, the only possible explanation can be that the deviation from the common course is found desirable and convenient, not by the country, but by its Govern

ment.

The nation owes that infraction of its common privilege of judging each new stage in a ministerial policy to the exceptional novelty of the policy the present Cabinet has pursued. To the same cause both Parliament and the nation at large owe the growing habit of this Government of withholding necessary information on its measures until too late for any advantage to be gained from the facts for purposes of criticism. The Government, as Mr. Gladstone said in the Edinburgh Corn Exchange, never makes disclosures at the time they are wanted, and at the time that is regular. It appears to have but one rule for choice of opportunity, and that is, Convenience to itself.' In finance especially it is never convenient for a Government like the present to state its wants and its liabilities in regular course. Those liabilities have been incurred without the authority even of Parliament, much less of the nation. If the bill were sent in while the measure for which it is being incurred was still proceeding and incomplete, the power by which it has been ordered might be withdrawn. Ministers themselves know so little of the circumstances of the schemes into which they rush, that they can no more estimate the cost at a given time than a City of Glasgow Bank shareholder could have estimated his responsibilities.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he made a candid apology for his hand-to-mouth system of financial estimates, would have to avow that neither he nor his colleagues know any better than the public what an enterprise signifies, and what is the natural end. It is impossible to lay down the lines of a systematic regular Budget when the undertakings of which it is to defray the expenses are absolutely indefinite. But it is one reason more for repudiating a policy like that the Government has pursued for the last two years that, as one of its necessary consequences, the country is obliged to be perpetually paying sums on account. Never was the nation's ledger

they would have been still a heavy load upon British means which, if great, are yet not greater than British duties.

Recent British foreign policy has rendered the kingdom weaker than before in proportion to its liabilities. It has also involved, Mr. Gladstone shows, dangerous encroachments on constitutional privileges and on the integrity of British finance. He charges upon it the violation of the traditional rule that although the law allows a duration of seven years to Parliament, yet it should not sit to transact more than the business of six Sessions.' If the present Government has departed from that custom, and is about to convoke Parliament for a seventh Session, Mr. Gladstone and the country clearly understand the reason to be that Ministers fear to challenge, by a dissolution, the nation's judgment on their policy. Mr. Gladstone grounds the custom of dissolving Parliament before its full term has run out, on the temptation a Parliament on the inevitable brink of the grave would feel to flatter particular groups and cliques of persons in relation to what are sometimes called harassed interests.' We confess the reason seems somewhat remote. The custom of dissolving before the seventh year is ended being notorious, the temptation to intrigue with threatened interests would seem to be as strong in the sixth Session as in the seventh. The custom nevertheless we fully believe to be indisputable. Opponents of Mr. Gladstone have adduced instances in which Parliaments have sat for seven Sessions. They have adduced none in which they have sat for more than six years. The number of Sessions is an accident. A Session may endure for a fortnight, or for twelve months. As Mr. Gladstone has replied to his critics, the essence of his argument is that it is altogether against precedent to prolong Parliament for the business' of more than six Sessions. Mr. Gladstone's fact is better founded than his explanation of it. There is something ungracious in withholding from the country to the last moment its right of pronouncing approval or disapproval of the manner in which its representatives have executed their trust. That by itself would ordinarily account for the convocation of a new Parliament at least a year earlier than the law requires. But in truth a Government must have been extraordinarily apathetic, or must have existed in times extraordinarily placid, which does not find it to its honour or convenience to ask of the nation an early ratification of its acts. In this natural instinct of British statesmen is to be found the motive for not exhausting the last breath of a House of Commons. It is an instinct which, with every reason for its exercise in the present instance, the existing Government does not feel at all inclined to obey. We almost wonder that its friends have not betaken themselves to arguing that the sense of the country is already clearly in its favour; that it would be mere waste of energy to put the nation to the trouble of declaring itself a moment earlier than the law compels. In the meantime the popular opinion is likely to agree with Mr. Gladstone's suggestion that Government postpones dissolving

There is 'the chance of striking some new theatrical smoke, the chance of sending up some new rockets into the sky, the chance of taking some new measures which would again carry misgiving and dismay to the hearts of the sober-minded portion of the nation-I believe at this time the great majority of the nation-but which, appealing to pride and passion, would always in this, as in every other country, find some loud-voiced minority ready to echo back its ill-omened sounds.' The country has a constitutional right to be consulted with all possible speed on its assent to, or dissent from, the measures which have removed it far away from the position in which it stood when this Parliament was elected. That is what the country would find desirable and convenient. If the common course is abandoned, and the Parliament is to sit more years than any Parliament within the memory of man, the only possible explanation can be that the deviation from the common course is found desirable and convenient, not by the country, but by its Govern

ment.

The nation owes that infraction of its common privilege of judging each new stage in a ministerial policy to the exceptional novelty of the policy the present Cabinet has pursued. To the same cause both Parliament and the nation at large owe the growing habit of this Government of withholding necessary information on its measures until too late for any advantage to be gained from the facts for purposes of criticism. The Government, as Mr. Gladstone said in the Edinburgh Corn Exchange, never makes disclosures at the time they are wanted, and at the time that is regular. It appears to have but one rule for choice of opportunity, and that is, Convenience to itself. In finance especially it is never convenient for a Government like the present to state its wants and its liabilities in regular course. Those liabilities have been incurred without the authority even of Parliament, much less of the nation. If the bill were sent in while the measure for which it is being incurred was still proceeding and incomplete, the power by which it has been ordered might be withdrawn. Ministers themselves know so little of the circumstances of the schemes into which they rush, that they can no more estimate the cost at a given time than a City of Glasgow Bank shareholder could have estimated his responsibilities.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he made a candid apology for his hand-to-mouth system of financial estimates, would have to avow that neither he nor his colleagues know any better than the public what an enterprise signifies, and what is the natural end. It is impossible to lay down the lines of a systematic regular Budget when the undertakings of which it is to defray the expenses are absolutely indefinite. But it is one reason more for repudiating a policy like that the Government has pursued for the last two years that, as one of its necessary consequences, the country is obliged to be perpetually paying sums on account. Never was the nation's ledger