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A WORKMAN'S

A funeral in Scotland, a funeral on an autumn day, the funeral of an old man. Could aught be more full of melancholy? The predominant feeling about the Scottish mountains is their great, strange, and awful loneliness. A little church standing between high lone hill and deep lone sea; a bitter wind and alternate sun and shadow; the gravestones mostly overgrown with melancholy weeds; nearly two score figures clad in decent black standing around an open grave, some of them very old men with stern faces, as knowing that soon they themselves shall die, and yet no fear of death in one of them; the probationer of the Scottish Church offers up a simple prayer in his harsh, but reverent voice, and all is finished; the world is done with Neil Makinnon.

Together Mr. Robertson, the probationer, and Robert Makinnon took their way from the melancholy scene. Mr. Robertson felt very much embarrassed. He was very earnest, he had a good heart, he wanted to say some word of consolation to his companion, whom he knew sorrowed deeply because he sorrowed silently. Yet he could find no word to say. It is hard to be filled full of sympathy but to be able to find no expression for it, to pity the deep grief of the man whose soul is in bitter pain and yet to be stricken with a paralysis of awkwardness. Thus, while the heart of the young priest spoke love and consolation, his tongue discoursed of the sullen day and the bitter wind, and then, finding that his talking seemed to divert the mind of his companion from its sorrow, he talked away, anyhow and on anything. At last, awkwardly enough, being a young man, and apt to go plunging forgetfully into all kinds of topics, he stumbled on the name of Norman Firebrace, and saw not how swiftly Makinnon's cheek flushed and paled.

"It is good for the country, I think," he said, "that so many should be sent away to be happy in

America or Australia."

Then Makinnon broke silence. "Good for the

country; aye, when it is good for a man to have the life blood drained from his heart."

"Do you not believe in emigration?" asked the startled probationer, " for a few years ago 'thou shalt cause the people to emigrate" was the first and great commandment."

"In emigration, yes, but not in driving out men and women from their homes when home is the one thing they care for."

But is not the wish to remain in one place foolish? All places are alike to God, and should be alike to the wise man."

"Mr. Robertson, if it comes to that, what is not foolish? To spend a life heaping up gold is foolish; to pursue ambition is foolish; philosophers tell us that the pursuit of philosophy is the most foolish thing of all. May it not be that to till a piece of ground your fathers tilled, to live beside the same mountain where your fathers kept their sheep, is the wisest thing of all? You are a Highlander, Mr. Robertson, although Lowland bred, and you have seen here and there one of our people who has a piece of land upon which he can live, a hill pasture, a comfortable lot. Now, answer me, is there a lot upon earth that man would change for his?"

"In that you are right. He would not leave his farm, although it only just yielded him the very scantiest living, to be made emperor of all the West. But still emigration is a good thing."

SECRET.

"So is religion; but religion is not good if you ar only allowed to choose between the hangman and the priest."

The probationer would doubtless kave found some argument, but at this moment a turn of the road brought them face to face with a tall, stout, redfaced man, who was hurrying along, evidently, from the working of his features, in great agitation. "Well, Mr. Clarkson, whither away so fast?" cried the young clergyman.

Mr. Clarkson stopped and tried to speak, wiping all the time his brow, over which the perspiration was running down. "Mr. Robertson," he gasped at last, "will you kindly tell me that I am a scoundrel, an idiot, a villain." In spite of his ferocity, his voice had a pleasant English ring about it. "Mr. Clarkson !"

"Yes, Clarkson, that's me. Clarkson is the name of the man through whom children are turned out into the cold; it is through Clarkson that a woman of eighty is dying on the roadside; Clarkson has sent helpless families into the poorhouse. That's Clarkson, that's me. What will my little woman say?"

And Clarkson, forgetting the profession of the man to whom he spoke, began to curse in a wholesome and thoroughly English style. I think that the recording angel winked, and did not set down these curses on the wrong side of Mr. Clarkson's account. Perhaps they even got into the other side and appeared as blessings. For here was Mr. Clarkson, as good an English farmer as ever reared sheep and cattle, brought to this wild place to improve Mr. Firebrace's estate. Improvement he found to consist, not in clearing the land of stones and weeds, but in clearing it of men. Had Burns really gone, as once he intended to go, to the himself as much at home as Mr. Clarkson in his occuWest Indies as a nigger-driver, he would have found pation of crofter driver. To see the dumb misery

To be

of men, to hear the wailing agony of women, and the piteous cries of the young children was to this good man utter agony. He himself had wife and children. The bad years and crushing rents, that have ruined so many good farmers, had driven him to act this dreadful part in the ungenial North. But he could not do it. An honest man will rather drive a scavenger's cart than fill the office of an evicting factor. a paid oppressor of the old and poor is the depth of human degradation. Iscariot sank no further. In wrath, Mr. Clarkson sought out Mr. Firebrace and asked to be relieved from his engagement. Mr. Firebrace replied at once by threatening an action for breach of contract. Such an action would have left him without food or home for his family. And so he argued, as we all argue in the hour of temptation, "If I don't do it, another will," and he went on with his detested duties. At last he could proceed no further. His soul rose within him, and he felt as if he would go mad. To the Rev. Mr. Robertson he always told his thoughts and his troubles, for although the one was a rough and swearing farmer, and the other a somewhat narrow and timid young clergyman, these two men had the strong unity of an honest nature and a warm heart.

"Come with me, now," said Mr. Clarkson; "you will see something that, perhaps, will make you understand what I feel," and he strode fiercely along until the three men came to a miserable hut by the roadside. Half-a-dozen labourers were at work unroofing it. On the highway were a few tables, chairs, benches,

with bedding and pots. One old woman, one young woman, almost as old from a life of futile toil, two men, father and son, three or four children stood or sat, looking on as if they had no interest in the operation. Yet how could we describe their grief? The phrase "broken. hearted" is so easy to write, so hard to understand One here and there knows what it means, and he will understand, but not the others. Had you only taken these people a few miles away, say, to the other side of the hill, they would have b en in bitter sorrow. At least once a week as many of them as could would have climbed that hill to look back on the old place. They would have spoken of it in such hushed tones as the Jews spoke of their shining city while they wept by the sad waters of Babylon. But to drive these people to America or to send them into a smoky, swarming city out of the fresh breezes of their loved grey mountains was a cruelty than which hell has none more bitter and ingenious.

To see this," whispered Mr. Clarkson to his com panions, "and to know that for fifty years Scotland has been full of scenes like this is to wonder at the power of Scottish religion. It is the most wonderful thing in the world. Any other land than this would have run with blood. Had I been that young man standing there, and had he been Clarkson, God forgive me! but I think Mrs. Clarkson would have been a widow."

It is, indeed, a thing most wonderful, a thing to be boasted of by Scotland and the Scottish Churches, that, during all this long and weary war of the lords of the soil against the peasants of the soil, not a drop of blood has been shed by the peasants. Many men, women, and children have perished in the conflict from hunger, and cold, and disease: and their deaths lie at the door of the Scottish nobility. But with a pride and faith high and strong as their own great mountains the Scottish peasants have said, "We leave our vengeance to God."

While the three men stood, stern and silent, con

templating the work of destruction, carriage whee's were heard coming swiftly along the road. The carriage contained Mr. Firebrace and the young lady, his daughter, whom we have seen before at the landing. place.

Now, you, 'cre," shouted the coachman to the miserable ejected family, "can't you remove your things out of that? Don't you see as you blocks the way of a gentleman's hosses? Come, stir your stumps.

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Listlessly and slowly the poor people took their furniture out of the road to make room for the carriage of the man who had evicted them. Miss Fire brace looked with curiosity and interest on the scene. Is her woman's heart moved, or has she a heart at all? She has a heart, but it is not moved. And little blame to her is her lack of feeling; for she has been brought up to accept as a theory of life the most damnably untrue axiom ever uttered-"The poor do not feel." That axiom, openly stated or tacitly understood, rules among the upper part of the middle classes. They cannot imagine feeling in 1ags. Tra gedy must be clothed in fine linen and smell of wondrous spices. Thus Miss Firebrace thought of the scene that it was a pity the beggars were not more picturesque and their rags more gaudy.

Mr. Firebrace called to him the man whom he had appointed to improve his estate, and who had been cursing him so eloquently.

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Clarkson, your work is progres. ing?" "Well, sir, it won't progress any further as my work."

↑ Mr. Clarkson, I am a calm man and a moderate

man, but by -too far!"

sir, take care you don't provoke me

"Well, sir, I won't say what I think of you in your daughter s face."

Miss Firebrace bowed gracefully, and fixed her full, bold eyes on the man's face and smiled, not haughtily, but with a quiet disdain. This man and his emotions rather interested her than not. Mr. Firebrace did not smile. He was clever and haughty, gross in figure, passions, and temper-a self-male man who had made himself badly. As is the manner of such men, he dominated all around him, and opposition made him terrible. So he looked at Mr. Clarkson and his face was flushed and his eye dangerous.

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"No," Clarkson went on, having roused himself to the issue, and being determined to face it out; "you may do your worst, but you wou't terrify John Clarkson." By I will do my worst, and I will terrify you." Clarkson cou'd say no more. Had Miss Firebrace not been there, his strong English temper might have risen. and his employer might have heard an opinion of all he was and did that would have tingled his ears. But Clarkson was a true Englishman in his respect for women, and he forbore. So the rubbish" was cleared away from the rich man's path, and the carriage rolled away. As the horses began to move Firebrace caught sight of Robert Makinnon's face and slightly started. Makinnon smiled as he turned, and asked his friends if they would go on.

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For all that man's seeming greatness," he said to himself, "he is in my power, and he knows it." (To be continued.)

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WE require the practical enthusiasm of the social reformer and the keen vision and quickened sympathy of the statesman to remove the social and

economic barriers that block the onward and upward march of the people. Free access must be had to the land, and all those restrictions must be set aside that doom so many of the people to the In other inconvenience of swinish habitations. words, the enormous unearned increments that find their way into the coffers of the idle and unindustrial few, at expense of the toilers and spinners, must be diverted into legitimate channels.—G. A. D. Mackay, Greenock.

THE Land to the Church :-"I can't bear you, as the sea said to the leaky ship."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.-A friend remarked:-"Circumstances alter cases." "I wish," said Abraham, who was at this time a struggling lawyer, “I could get hold of some cases that would alter my circumstances."

"Providence usually helps those who help themselves," but it is also quite true, as we have it in one of Shakespeare's gems, "Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer'd."

DON'T overtrade. Keep within your means. Load your tray so that it will carry.

A HATTER advertises that "Watts on the Mind' is of great importance, but that what's on the head is of greater."

If the child of an honest man in a Highland Lut is worth sixpence what is the value of a pauper princeling in Windsor Castle?

THE DEMOCRAT.

"THEY HAVE RIGHTS WHO DARE MAINTAIN THEM."

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A Real Tory Government. The aristocratic nobleman and the most

plutocratic capitalist are now the chiefs of the Government, and the Tories ought to be satisfied. But they are not happy. They have no longer confidence in their own principles that they doubt the possibility of carrying out their programme. Lord Salisbury's policy is to insist upon rents being paid, whether produced from the land or otherwise. If necessary, the British, taxpayer is to provide them, as, indeed, he provides for the cost of the Glenbeigh evictions. These evictions have thrown a lurid light upon the policy of unjust exactions, and the effect on public feeling is not favourable to the stability of the Government. Mr. Goschen does not inspire the struggling masses with confidence. His antecedents in connection with the purchase of the telegraphs and Egyptian finance show that capitalists have everything to hope, and that the people can expect nothing but an increase of their burdens from a financier whose actions have been so advantageous to his own class and so prejudicial to the public interests.

Organisation versus Programme.

The St. James's Hall meeting of London Liberals and Radicals was satisfactory to its promoters so far, at all events, as outward appearances are concerned. Mr Bradlaugh was called upon to pronounce a benediction on the happy union, and to anathematise all who suggested any impediment in the way. "Organisation! Organisation!" was the burden of the cry of the speakers, but they all seemed to forget that organisation without a programme that will appeal to the people is useless. To keep a

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PRICE TWOpence.

certain number of more or less worthy gentlcmen in more or less lucrative posts may be a very laudable object, but it is one to which the country will never respond.

Burmah.

The "blessings" of British rule are to be extended to Burmah, but it is exceedingly doubtful whether this rule will prove so beneficial to the natives as most people imagine. In Burmah wages are a shilling a day; in India, where British rule has so long existed, they are fourpence-halfpenny a day. Our occupation of the country, instead of benefiting the people, will bring down their wages to the rate that is paid to the natives of India. Whoever may benefit from "the development of the resources of the country," of which we hear so much, it is not likely to be the industrious Burmese.

No Confidence.

It seems that the headship of the Prince of Wales does not inspire confidence in the proposed Imperial Institute. A Conservative paper writes:- "The faintest shadow or hint, we do not say of jobbery or corruption, but even of financial muddling or mismanagement, must be absolutely excluded. Unless this confidence prevails in the fullest measure, it is probable that the sum demanded by the Prince of Wales will not be raised, or that, if raised, its expenditure will be followed by irritation and disappointment." To speak plainly, we have some doubt whether this complete reliance does at present exist. The question naturally arises, why should we spend hundreds of thousands annually to support rovelty when

the superintendence of the highest royal personage, next to the Queen, does not impart that confidence which is necessary to success?

Flunkeys.

Some men are born flunkeys, others are flunkeys by profession. The decision of the men of Oldham that the Queen has done nothing to merit Jubilee rejoicings shows that flunkeyism is at a discount in that part of the world. Not so at the Mansion House, where Mr. George Shipton enlarged on the goodness of the Queen to the working classes. The Queen, according to Mr. George Shipton, deserves a Jubilee gift. The Jubilee gift that would suit some persons best is a suit of livery and a packet of hair-powder. They could then attire themselves in costume suitable to the part they are accustomed to play.

A Good Stroke of Business.

In supporting Canon Blackley's motion for compulsory insurance, the Hon. Mr. FinchHatton, M.P., said "That if they could get rid of the annual expenditure of £8,000,000 in poor relief, and at the same time give a healthy moral lesson to their labourers, they, as farmers, would do a very good stroke of business. (Hear, hear)." Yes, indeed it would cause the eight millions to be diverted from feeding the poor to swelling the coffers of the rich. But Mr. Finch-Hatton, M.P., is mistaken in supposing that it would be a good stroke for the farmers. The only persons benefited would be the landlords. Canon Blackley proposes to compel every young man from 18 to 21 to pay in a certain sum weekly. Thus money would be extracted from young people just at the period of life when they should be actively employed in using all their talents in providing

a home or a business, and if possible both.

An Interesting Discovery.

Mr. Goschen has found out why it is Irish farmers do not prosper. It is "because there is that antagonism between landlord and tenant that the lan lords are unable to carry

out those measures for the improvement of agriculture which, in other countries, are their first duty and their first privilege.” Mr. Goschen would probably argue that lambs being scarce, the reason must be the hatred of sheep for wolves. But even a Tory audience could hardly believe Mr. Goschen's prediction that if Irish landlords were to "withdraw, there would be many calamitous results." The results would be just as disastrous to Ireland as those which followed St. Patrick's command that Irish reptiles should "withdraw" from the Emerald Isle.

The Round Table.

The Knights of the Round Table have displayed little chivalry, but much prudence. As they could not agree, they determined not to quarrel, and this course is wise and patriotic. Every politician out of office is waiting to see how the cat jumps before he says anything, and it is the duty of every Democrat to see that if possible the cat shall have a fair chance to jump the right way. The cat will jump right if not frightened by party cries. the Round Table had come to an agreement, If the Knights of the cat would have been driven upon the lines they laid down, which would certainly have been more or less wrong. The fact is, Liberal politicians and Radicals are beginning to recog nise the blunder which has been made in forcing public opinion. When a flock of sheep is tending in the right direction, it is better not to hurry them. Time is often lost in forcing the pace. We shall get Home Rule without Separation, without Land Purchase, and without a First Order.

'Et tu Brute."

Bute has been giving to the land question much attention and study. He has now appointed a valuator to "revalue" his Bute farms, which, when compared with other farms in neighbouring districts, were held at a very moderate rent. This rent, however, he has been advised to reduce, and has reduced it 25 per cent., or from about thirty thousand to

We believe that for some time past Lord

Now if this is a something in memory of Lady Flora Hastings, Bute's farms what that sweet lady who was murdered by the envy and malignity of that Court about which Alfred Tennyson is paid to say such pretty things? Her story has not been forgotten, and many an honest man and woman would subscribe to a Flora Hastings Memorial. She was one slain by

twenty-two thousand. fair reduction on Lord would be a fair reduction on many estates not far from his? We should say about 75 per cent. Lord Bute is not quite like other lords. He is both thoughtful and generous, and a man who sincerely wishes to do right. Let us ask him, then, to pursue the question that he has begun to consider. Let us ask him solemnly to put it to himself whether the laws of eternal justice entitle him to those enormous revenues created in Cardiff by no work of his. If one nobleman such as he declared for truth and right, he would be honoured while history had a voice to declare for the great and the good. Lord Bute is a man of large possessions in land, and large intellect. We recommend to that intellect the question of the justice of those possessions. Let him re-read "Progress and Poverty," and ask himself then what we ask now.

What John Bright Does Not Sec. John Bright does not believe in the appointment of working men as magistrates. We regret this, but we are not surprised. John Bright has done good work in his day, but his day is finished. He laid down certain lines of Liberalism not exactly narrow, but still not broad. His ideal was the transference of all power, place, and profit, to the middle classes. They were the elect of the earth-for them was the land of milk and honey. But Democracy has flowed over that and beyond it. We recognise class no more in politics than we do in the Church. Before God and before the State all men are equal. And in every department of the State all men should be represented. Justice will never be thoroughly done, law will never be perfectly executed until working men sit on the magistrates' bench. At present the rich judge the poor-we must give the poor an opportunity of judging the rich.

Flora Hastings.

Now that we are erecting memorials to everybody and everything should we not erect

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What the Snobs Pay the Nobs.

They are too candid in America. A New York man has advertised in the papers that he wants to get into "society," and that he is willing to pay handsomely for the privilege. In Britain he need not have advertised. In fact, the pushing of rich people into society is as much a trade as the selling of coals. Those of our aristocracy who are not shamefully rich are shamefully poor. These latter often gain a precarious, but honest, living by introducing the snobs to the nobs. Let a man have made a fortune from the milk of the wooden cow, by selling shoddy for cloth, by exporting idols to the heathen, or any other equally profitable and patriotic business; at once he becomes fired with the noble "hambition hof knowin' a dook." He has only to "lend" the duke's impecunious cousin a cool thousand and the thing is done. There are even darker methods by which young gentlemen of this door-ushering sort pursue their interesting vocation.

Mercantile Jack.

Every now and again somebody puts in a word for Mercantile Jack-the virtuous souls of the newspapers are stirred within themand the thing drops. Mr. Chamberlain made a gallant crusade in his favour. But he failed; nor do we quite believe that his zeal was altogether according to knowledge. He relied too much on statistics and too little

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