The instruction that "Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox which treadeth out the corn" represents a principle so just and sensible that we might suppose it would rarely, if ever, be disregarded. But so far is this from being the case that we find the legal and social arrangements of modern society mainly consist of contrivances for muzzling working men and securing the produce of their labour for those generally idle persons who are privileged to create laws and customs.

How thoroughly the upper classes have succeeded in securing for themselves the good tl.ings of this life at the expense of the producers, might be illustrated in various ways, but a brief official statement, recently made to the Local Government Board in reference to the outbreak of diphtheria in Farnham rural sanitary district, will perhaps show how matters stand as forcibly as more elaborate statistics. The report states that the consumption of milk amongst the families of the upper classes was found to be five pints daily. Amongst the families of the working classes the consumption was four-fifths of a pint daily. Milk is not an article usually consumed in excess, and therefore when it appears that the working classes obtain less than one-sixth of the quantity which is consumed in families where the supply is unstinted, it shows that the working classes, whose labour produces our food and drink, are muzzled to the limit of one-sixth of their normal consumer's capacity. Indeed, it is clear that our working-class families are usually limited in a similar degree in all their expenditure. Their incomes are rarely a sixth part of the incomes of those above them, and thus, with regard to all articles of consumption and enjoyment, they are restricted to a sixth or even a lesser proportion of that which others enjoy, and which is necessary to the proper development of mankind.

That this limitation and excessive muzzling of the working classes is the result of artificial restraints is obvious from the fact that class differences are in exact proportion as society has moved on from its original condition. In the earlier stages of communities nothing of the kind is seen. It does not arise until society becomes divided into classes, and the classes pursue their own interests regardless of the public welfare. Then the muzzling process begins, and is usually carried to a degree

which leads to the disruption and dissolution of the community.

Society is now divided mainly into two classes -a small and privileged minority who consume for each family five pints of milk daily, and a large majority of working families who obtain four-fifths of a pint daily. Common sense would seem to indicate that legislative arrangements, if unequal, should be made to turn in favour of those who are industrious and needy. They should certainly not be especially favourable to those who are already the best provided for. But what do we find? That almost every Act of modern legislation is in favour of the privileged few at the expense of the many. Look at the Commons Enclosure Act of 1845. What did that do? It took the common lands of the country, which were giving life and happiness to thousands of working families, and gave them-to whom? To the poor, whose families got only four-fifths of a pint of milk per day, and naturally wanted more? No! These poor people, who had chiefly used and benefited by the lands as they stood, were wholly disregarded in the distribution, and the lands were given to those who already had more land than they could use. In each parish the common lands were given to men in exact proportion as they already possessed land. The poor and needy had none. If a rich man owned half the parish, he had added to his possession half the common land; if he owned all the enclosed land in the parish, all the common land was given to him. Thus the muzzles of the working classes were tightened, and the rich have been enabled to enjoy an unparalleled degree of luxury and abundance, secure that the working classes, who produce this abundance, may see it with their eyes, but may not partake thereof.

It might have been supposed that property consecrated to the poor by the hand of charity would have been held inviolate for their benefit; so far from this being the case, elaborate arrangements have been made for extracting the value of public charities for the use of the rich. Charities which provided almshouses, or food, or clothing for the poor have been devoted to the purposes of education, for one of the leading principles of modern economic science is that to give to the poor is contrary to all sound principles, while to give to the rich is the truc object of enlightened civilisation. Not

only must we correct the mistaken ideas of our charitable ancestors, who thought that the physical wants of the poor were proper objects of our regard, but in transferring charities of this kind to educational purposes, it was arranged that the rich should get the proceeds in the same manner as they obtained the common lands. By adopting two very simple principles, the object of transferring the charities to the rich was successfully accomplished. Education is in no case to be free, and its benefits are to depend mainly upon the competitive principle. The universal demand for payment shuts out at once the very poor from the educational charities, and competition excludes the working classes from its higher benefits, because it is obvious that the children of a family limited to four-fifths of a pint of milk daily cannot compete with those families who are provided with five pints per diem.

In like manner all Government appointments open to competition naturally fall into the hands of the privileged classes, who can carry off in competition anything they choose to go in for, and, as a matter of fact, they leave to the working classes only those employments which involve so much work in proportion to payment that the privileged classes do not care to have them.

We have thus seen that land, charities, and Government appointments go to the rich under unjust laws designed to secure these benefits to the privileged classes. In addition to this our legal arrangements are so made and administered that the power of law is applied mainly, nay, almost exclusively, for the benefit of the rich. Law is made so costly by unjust limitations and arrangements, which fill the pockets of the rich, that it is wholly beyond the reach of the poor. This statement will be best confirmed and illustrated by an actual case. A working man who had saved up a hundred pounds bought a field at the bottom of which are several large trees

A JUBILEE

In this month of June, when the glory of summer and the promise of harvest should make humble and thankful every heart, we are asked by the Government of Great Britain to offer a solemn insult to Almighty Providence we are asked to give to a poor, human creature the honour we should give to the Creator. Against this we wish to protest earnestly and with all solemnity.

which he believed were included in the purchase, a belief which was supported by the opinion of many persons who are well acquainted with the locality. The adjoining landowner, much to the surprise of those who are interested, claimed these trees, and defied the small proprietor to touch them. To decide the question of law would cost many hundreds of pounds, and it is quite beyond the power of the small owner to enter on such a contest.

Is this costly law, inaccessible to the poor, an unavoidable necessity? By no means let us imagine that a dispute of this kind happened in a community composed wholly of working men, it is obvious that such a community would provide some simple method of settling such disputes within a moderate cost and with probably far greater chances of a just decision than is possible under a system where wealth and ability are ruthlessly employed to crush poverty and conceal truth.

During the first fifty years of the present century, landowners and farmers were rapidly increasing their wealth by the action of unjust laws, which made bread dear in order to make landlords rich. Farmers during that period usually made twice as much profit on their farms as the wages paid to the whole of their labourers, and yet landlords and farmers were constantly conspiring to reduce wages. In order to keep down wages, landlords tacitly agreed to refuse land to small working farmers, except at rents twice or three times as large as those paid by gentlemen farmers. By this cruel, selfish, and short-sighted policy thousands of able and industrious working men were driven from the country and now supply corn and cheese to our own markets from distant lands, while millions remain in a state of distressing poverty because they are deprived of the natural fruit of their labour, which they would obtain but for the artificial and unjust restrictions placed upon their industry. (To be continued.)

PROTEST.

We have hitherto looked upon the mirthful side of the Jubilee celebration. It is, indeed, a matter to move men to laughter. Here we are, a nation of business men, of men who pride themselves upon being moved by no sentimentality, and carried away by no false enthusiasms; yet we erect arches, beat drums, wear flowers, and shout ourselves hoarse, because an elderly lady has for fifty years acted

as a gilded knob to our social edifice. The thing is so strange, so absurd, that in contemplation of it we cannot afford to laugh at the heathen tribe that stole a warming-pan and worshipped it as a god. We are no more absurd than they. Henceforth we must regard the heathen as men and brothers in more than flesh and blood. They have the one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin-the touch of absurdity.

But the time has come for carnest and stern thought upon the matter. Over this year, and especially over this month, there should be written in the British calendar, "Why?"

Why do we sober Englishmen, and still more sober Scotchmen, celebrate with profound solemnity the fact that a certain Victoria Guelph has for fifty years drawn a huge income from toiling Britain? To that question there is no answer known to common sense.

Those who pretend to answer the question shirk it. "The Queen," they say, "has been a good woman." For our own part, we are quite ready to grant as much. She has been a good woman of the most commonplace goodness. She has been loyal to her husband; she has catered for her children with that greed which is common to a female Christian and a female lion; she has been thrifty and saving, and she has gone with respectable frequency to church. These are her virtues. They are the virtues of nine out of ten of the women of England. Among the washerwomen of London struggling heroically to feed their children among the poor needlewomen sewing for farthings and fighting with hunger to save their souls-among the gentle sisterhood who minister to the poor and the sick, are thousands upon thousands whose noble and shining greatness make all the common and petty virtues of Queen Victoria seem as a rushlight in the splendour of noon. On the other hand, she is not without her vices, although these, like her virtues, are of the pettiest. She is haughty in her own small way. Many a tale is told with laughter and smirks of her insistance upon some little point of absurd etiquette. She has the tastes of a Mikado. Nothing would so delight her as to retire to some splendid retreat to which her Ministers should come on bended knees and with bandaged eyes, crying, "A people implores your Majesty to have mercy and to smile upon them."

Lord Beaconsfield understood her as he understood all humanity. He laughed at her and flattered her. He became her favourite, this wily Jew, and if ever his real life and his real letters are given to the public he will have a great revenge for his self-humiliation. But

the public already begins to understand her. It sees how veteran statesmen have to follow her to the end of the land to get her commands. It makes a profound impression upon a sensitive people when Mr. Gladstone stands shivering on the sea-shore with the winter winds blowing through his white hair, in order that he may obey the caprices of this Royal lady.

She delights in such acts. Having no real power she uses with haughty strictness the appearance of power. The mad, dead King of Bavaria, when he was offended with an officer used in the solitude of his own chamber to hold a court martial over a marionette officer, sentence him and hang him, revenging on the miniature dummy the feelings caused by the living man. In a lesser degree the same feeling possesses Britain's Queen that possessed Bavaria's King. She cannot order a statesman to Newgate or Tower Hill, but she can drag him in summer heat and winter snow to the Isle of Wight or to Scotland. And all she can do she does. Some of our statesmen may feel with satisfaction the unsevered muscles that join their heads to their shoulders and thank heaven that she can do no more.

This pride of isolation has of late shown itself in another and a most remarkable way. The Queen has a taste for circuses. We have nothing to say against such a taste. Circuses are a very good amusement and a very harmless amusement for grandmothers and grandchildren. But the extraordinary thing is that Queen Victoria must have the performance all to herself. To ordinary and sane people half the enjoyment of a circus is in the presence of thronging spectators. Oh, it is delightful to see children there with their bright eyes and their ringing laughter. But no such joy is known to Queen Victoria. A circus is not a circus to her if horses do not jump, if clowns do not jest, and acrobats do not perform their feats for her and her alone. A healthy mind trembles at the thought of such morbid loneli

ness.

The fact is that our Queen is only good for a Queen. Royalty is bad. Kings and queens have ever been the worst, the vilest, and the most wretched of mankind. Poets call Victoria the daughter of a hundred kings. So she is. She is the daughter of a line of men and women whose record is shame, who flourished and bloomed as flowers of the dunghill. Queen Victoria had, perhaps, little inclination, and had certainly no opportunity, to be as her ancestors were. These are evil days for monarchs Eleven years after Victoria came to the throne it seemed as if the day of kings and queens

had set for ever. Europe was filled with tumbling thrones and flying princes. At that time Her Majesty was guided by her husband, a man who knew how to read the signs of the times. His whole life was passed in advertising Royalty. He even forced his wife to treat her subjects with moderate consideration. And so the throne stood and will still stand-for a little.

But advertisement may be carried too far. In her case it has been carried too far. The Jubilee advertising agents-like poor Mr. Smith -forget that the people possess, thanks to the School Boards, some knowledge of arithmetic. and some power of calculation. They can also think. And so they ask themselves this question, "Should this nation rejoice that it has been ruled by the Queen, or should the Queen rejoice that she has ruled?" On the nation's part there is a feeling that it could have done as well with any other queen and better still with no queen. There has been in this age much work adoing and the accomplishment of many mighty things. But these the Queen has not helped, and she could not have hindered them if she would. She is the gilded fly on the mighty wheel. And the wheel goes on whether she is there or not.

And so we protest against the solemnities that are about to take place in Westminster Abbey. What do they mean? This is the

interpretation of them: "Oh, Providence, I thank Thee that through me, Queen Victoria, the skies have yielded gentle showers and the fields their fruits-that because I was Queen in Britain science has multiplied the powers of nature-that because I sat upon the throne literature and art have made glorious the age that because I drew half a million annually philanthropy has worked to bless the melancholy lot of the poor and the sick, and that because I wore a crown true religion has spread through all the continents of earth and the isles of ocean."

All that is flat blasphemy. Yet, as a nation, we are guilty of it. The spending of £17,000 to make our great national church gorgeous for the occasion is blasphemy flaunting itself in shameless and flaming colours. A queen who is nothing and a shadow presenting herself to Providence as the embodiment of all the greatness and the wonder of the age, thousands of pounds being spent in the church of the humble Galileans while the poor, who are the Galileans' brethren, are starving all around! Oh, fearful hypocrisy oh, dreadful blasphemy, enough to draw upon our land the curse of heaven!

We, at least, protest. The whole matter is dishonourable to the Church, and degrading to the State. The historian of the future will call it-Barbarism in the Nineteenth Century.

did not commit assassination, but they blessed the assassins.

Now those who made these grievous charges knew well one thing that many are apt to forget. It is the most natural thing in the world that men, situated as the Irish members were situated, should have innocent intercourse with murderers, that they should work side by side with those who harboured the most abominable designs. A great social movement brings forward to its aid all classes and kinds of men. The patriot whose every thought is noble and whose every word is generous must sometimes find himself standing side by side with men moved only by wild or sordid passions. In countries like Ireland misrule has done its most evil work in producing a race of men whose one idea is hatred of those who made them what they are. These men are the material out of which grows a healthy and horrible plant of assassination. Who is to