are all the same-all bad to the unfortunate workers of the East End.

Mr. Goschen says that suggestions are made to him to propose a tax upon cats. We can better that advice. Let him impose a tax upon mashers Cats are useful, mashers are not.

One suggestion that often comes to a Chancellor of the Exchequer is to tax amusements -to put a tax, say, upon theatre tickets. If the tax were confined to the tickets for stalls and boxes in certain West End theatres it would not, at any rate, be a tax upon brains.

Parliament wishes to restrain the railways from their present shameful and constant abuse of their numerous privileges. But, according to Lord Bramwell, this is sheer and rank robbery. His phrase is, "Plunder is in the air." Well, if plunder is to restrain men from plundering, the sooner plunder comes from the air to the earth the better it will be.

Betting has been prohibited on the racecourses of Paris. If this were done in

Britain a good proportion of our old nobility would be driven to the workhouse, for that is their only means of subsistance.

Mr. Jennings, M.P., lately spoke upon the condition of the navy, and he spoke very sensibly. He said that the curse of our navy is the useless people who hang on to it, and take a huge salary for doing less than nothing,

for doing actual mischief. It is a remarkable thing in regard both to our army and navy that we get far less for our money than any other country under the sun.

Lord Wolseley said of the axes supplied by our Army Department that they were fit for nothing except to break eggs. At the same time, we would like to see them tried on the heads of those who supplied them. We would not grudge the loss if it relieved the country

implements.

"The young lady of Niger,

Who went out for a ride on a tiger;
They returned from that ride
With the lady inside,

And a smile on the face of the tiger."

The attempt to increase the rate by raising the salary of the Clerk to the School Board from £1,200 to £1,400 a year was a barefaced attempt at robbery, and that a resolution in favour of the advance could have been carried, after seven hours' discussion, shows the determination of plunderers of the public purse to have our money or our life. This fortunate clerk commenced his duties on a fixed salary of £800, which has been raised at various times to £1,200. In three years he will have to retire on a pension equal to two-thirds of his salary, and in the meantime he is to have an "assistant," which is, of course, always necessary when a man has to spend a large income. If any of the members who voted for this fraud are again returned to the board, it will be the fault of the ratepayers.

Had the Round Table come to any agreement it would have produced but little effect. The nation is not in a mood to accept dictation from politicians or parties; it is determined to work out the Irish problem for itself.

Mr. Chamberlain truly said that Mr. Gladstone is the only man who can unite the Liberal party. And why is Mr. Gladstone the only man? Because he is the prince of opportunists who sees more clearly than anyone else what is possible at the moment, and can adapt himself more readily than any other statesman to the changing circumstances of the time.

Mr. Gladstone is one of those rare politicians who can recognise and reverence a principle while he holds action in abeyance until circumstances make the application a possibility. Mr. Gladstone not only sees further than other people into the future, but he sees more clearly into the past. He is always the first to recognise the errors which time and events bring to light in his own policy. While his doughty

lieutenants have been defending the blunders which he made last spring, he himself kept silence until the time came for their effectual repudiation. He now starts afresh on firmer ground.

History is being made very rapidly just now. New and effective plans of campaign are adopted daily, and our vivacious fellowcountrymen across the Irish Channel scarcely require an hour's notice to be prepared to meet the Castle authorities on any ground which they may choose for a contest.

The arrest of Father Keller and his conveyance to Dublin was made the occasion of a triumphant procession. Faithful chroniclers relate that at Cork this "prisoner" was "met by a vast concourse of people. The Mayor and members of the Corporation, with their insignia of office, were present, attended by macebearers, for the purpose of presenting an address, which was read by the Mayor." At Dublin "the Lord Mayor presented an address

which welcomed Father Keller as a prisoner of Judge Boyd (groans) and the landlord cabal." The "prisoner was taken to the Imperial Hotel in the state carriage of the Lord Mayor, and so vast was the greeting that it took threequarters of an hour to get him through the acclaiming crowd. No one but Father Keller himself could maintain order; at his request the police were kept out of sight, and on his persuasion the people were orderly and well behaved.

Thus it is that a coercional Government is mocked and jeered throughout the land which it professes to rule, and where it is practically powerless. The "landlord cabal" are beginning to see that it is only through the lenient consideration of the national leaders that any rent at all is paid.

The Irish people having thus shown such a remarkable capacity for helping themselves, other people are rapidly making up their minds to help them.

Events have marched on so quickly that politicians are left far behind, and panting opportunists endeavour in vain to make a show of leading where they are actually unable to keep alongside.

These events are most cheering to all true Democrats. They indicate the rapid approach of the time when the rights of the people will triumph over privileged interests, party organisations, and the misdirected power of one-sided governments. The last election was apparently a popular defeat; it was in reality a popular triumph. It showed that the people discerned more clearly than their rulers the consequences of the crude propositions which were offered for their acceptance. While a real, genuine, and universal application of Home Rule becomes daily more popular, the ill-considered concessions made to powerful interests are daily receding from our view. No one now imagines that the Irish Members will be excluded from Westminster; that British credit will be used for the purchase of Irish land; that a First Order will be established; or that Ireland will be subjected to a tribute instead of remaining a partner in taxation.

The nation and Mr. Gladstone himself saw that all these features of the scheme were blunders almost as soon as they were propounded, and these errors would have been more promptly dropped but for the obtuse perversion of some of Mr. Gladstone's supporters, who were unable to perceive that intelligent criticism is more useful to a leader than blind Fartisanship.

Respecting the immediate course of events, so far as political parties are concerned, we are

not anxious inquirers. We are satisfied to know that public opinion, now aroused, will not permit such monstrous injustice as the reward at the public expense of landlords, whose callous indifference to the claims of justice and humanity is the darkest page in the world's history during the present century. We know that the power of the British nation will not be much longer employed in hurling industrious tenants from homes built with their own hands, and whose only fault is that they cannot pay impossible rents. We know that public opinion will no longer permit the idea of separating the democracy of Ireland from the democracy of other portions of the empire, and that the people will henceforth work together to emancipate themselves from those burdens which circumstances have made intolerable and which education and enlightenment have shown to be unjust.

In the meantime the Government pursues a policy of brutality and imbecility. It announces the most atrocious intentions, and allows itself to be covered with ridicule through the weakness of its administration.

The Liberal Unionists are taxing the patience of the country beyond all endurance by sitting with Liberals and supporting Toryism of the worst type.

The Liberal party now know that they have nothing to hope and nothing to fear either from Tories or Dissentient Liberals. The power of the Liberal party will depend upon their own vigour and just appreciation of popular necessities. They have lost the Whigs, they have lost the classes, and it may therefore be hoped that we have seen the last attempt to "conciliate powerful interests."

These interests can only be conciliated by robbing the people, and the people are now so wide awake that new forms of robbery would be unprofitable.

Neither can matters continue without change. It is becoming daily more apparent that want in the midst of abundance, and starvation in sight of food, is caused mainly by unjust legislation, and that the evils from which we suffer can be removed only by reversing the action which has caused them.

No party, whatever name it may adopt, will receive the permanent support of the British people unless it recognises this necessity for action, and proceeds promptly to remove evils which have become intolerable.

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A WAR ship costs a million sterling. That sum spent in improving the sanitary condition of a city will reduce the death-rate by 1,667 persons per annum, and save 33,330 cases of sickness every year.

There are three classes of people who believe in Free Trade in Land. First there are those who, seeing what numerous advantages have been and are being pro luced by the Free Trade principles which Adam Smith defined, to which Richard Cobden devoted his life and his fortune, and which Sir Robert Peel finally reduced to actual and beneficent facts, imagine that what is good in some things must be good in all. So at various times free trade in slaves has been put forward as a cure for the evils of slavery and free trade in rum as a cure for national drunkenness.

Free Trade as understood by some is not and cannot be a cure for the evils of landlords. It is not really Free Trade. It is only the freedom to change monopoly from a bad form to a

worse.

There are those-and they are many-who think that no legislation could make matters worse, and they are ready to let all try their hands at law making and law changing who have a taste for such matters. It is needless to show how weak and unsatisfactory is such a state of mind. Happy is it for those people themselves that the general world is made of sterner stuff. But either of these two classes may, and can be, met with reason. We are able to convince the too ardent Free Trader that land is by no means free and never can be free, that it is limited, for one thing, by certain inconvenient rules as to size, so much of it having been made, and no more of it by any possibility being likely to be made. We may even arouse the indifferent man to enthusiasm, to a sense that one effort made for humanity is better than a dozen efforts made for himself.

But there is one last, large class, whom we can neither arouse to enthusiasm nor awaken to conviction. Or, rather, it is better to say, that they are so convinced on one side that they support the other with all the enthusiasm and intelligence they possess. We wonder that the many good and honest men who believe in Free Trade in land are not startled and alarmed by the cordial co-operation which is being given to them by the landlords. These have been as much surprised as rejoiced to see men so able and enthusiastic fight their battles. They know what their allies do not know. They see that landlordism has grown weak, and is daily growing weaker. Its enemies multiply. On all sides, able and convincing speakers are thundering against its

robberies in the past, and its tyranny in the present. All at once, a powerful agency appears for its protection and support. Landlordism has always accepted everything it has been offered, no matter whence, or how, it came. Landlordism, therefore, accepts the Free Land League.

What does Free Trade in land mean? It means that, for a high price, the landlords are willing to take in a large number of partners, who will be entitled to a share in the profits of their enormous past, present, and future robberies. Hodge, the farmer; Smith, the commercial traveller; Brown, the small shopkeeper; will all-for a consideration-be entitled to a share of the plunder hitherto enjoyed by Cecils and Cavendishes. The landlord "long firm " is increasing its partnership, the robber chiefs are augmenting their hordes.

The impertinence of all this is, that the people of this country are asked to bless those men who are seeking to make their bands broader and stronger. We admit at once that some men, many men even, would profit. If land was sold in small allotments, a class of peasant proprietors would arise, as industrious and as frugal as the peasants of France. It is true that they would lose in taxation what they would gain in rent, but it is also true that, so great is the fascination of holding land, that to get it, and to keep it, men will endure the most numerous and cruel difficulties. But why should the peasant have to buy his land at all? The Scottish crofters well understand that difficulty. They do not wish to hold land of their own. They wish to hire it from the State, to have the State as their landlord, and to pay to the State their rent. It is almost a mockery to offer to the ordinary peasant ground to buy. He might, after years of toil, lay past enough money for the purpose, and after other toilsome years gain enough more to enable him to stock it. But by that time, the better part of his life would have passed away; it would have been entirely wasted, as far as gaining any good for himself, by his toil. The earth was always there; he might during these years have been working upon it, and have been reaping its fruits. If the peasants of Britain allow themselves to be swindled by any scheme which will take half a life time's work out of them, before they can see the least fruit for all their toil, then the peasants of Britain deserve their fate. But we do not

think they will thus allow themselves to be deceived. They are more awake than the deluded landlords imagine. At some near election they will show their power, and will demand their rights.

But if Free Trade in land would be injurious to the peasants, it would be still more hurtful to the artisans of our mighty cities, and to those who go down into the bowels of the earth to dig for the coal and the ore upon which our industries depend, as a man depends upon meat and drink. If there had been Free Trade in land, who would have been benefited by the extravagance of certain noble peers who have mortgaged everything they could mortgage? If in the wild heat of their youthful extravagance, these gentlemen had been able to sell their mines they would have sold them. And to whom would they now have belonged? They would have been held, perhaps, by money lending Christians instead of money lending Jews. Would the miners be a bit the better, or a penny the richer? Not they. The mines would have been held then, as they are held now, on "a purely financial basis." And your financial Christian differs precisely, and no more, from your financial Jew than six differs from half a dozen. If the change is to be made from the present system of mine holding to one founded on Free Trade, there is not a living miner has any more interest in it than the dead miners long buried and forgotten, who toiled all their lives at the most dangerous of human avocations, and perhaps died in the workhouse.

Equal interest has the question for our city workmen. What these want is better houses at cheaper rents, more wages to pay these rents, and immunity from taxation, which should fall upon the land as naturally as the sunlight falls upon it. How are these advantages to be brought about by Free Trade in land? How will Free Trade in land cause wages to rise? The cause of the fall in wages is the enormous competition wherever work is adoing. Will Free Trade in land remove that? Not a whit. It will not take straw from the

one

back of the already overburdened camel. It does not give man what is his natural right, free access to the land, without which right all our social system, from the bottom to the top, is in an unnatural state. The population of the country is daily growing less, the population of the city is daily growing greater. Does anyone think that the majority of those who leave the country prefer the city? They do not. They go because they must go. If starvation is before them, starvation is also behind them,

And so in they come, and population goes up while wages go down. Yet there is land enough, and to spare. There is fertile and unoccupied land enough to feed over and over again the starving city population-only they cannot get at it. And Free Trade in land proposes to add a few more feet to the wall which shuts them out from their natural rights, and this it pretends to do in the name and for the sake of the people. The Free Traders add insult to injury when they tell us this.

Free Trade in land exists in America, and in America is a failure. It has created a race of men such as Jay Gould and the Vanderbilts, who are as useful as that aristocrat of nature, the potato bug. They devour the substance of the people, and give nothing back to the people. They control the railways and the telegraph lines, and, blessed as America is in many a great and noble thing, she is cursed in a land grabbing plutocracy, ever seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of their country. When we remember how enormous is America, how immense its wealth, how deep and degrading the poverty of many of its children, we see and understand what Landlordism wishes to present to us as a new and beneficent reform.

Let us reject this gift of the Greeks. It really means an increase of all the evils that we already suffer. We want, and must have, the land for the people, not for an increased body of landholders.

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