consists in the fact that they provide responsible and authoritative organisations with whom matters can be decided. Where there are no trades unions labour disputes often assume violent forms. Perhaps the fact will soon be realised in quarters where it is not now understood that the power to crush working men is really of no use to anybody. Where it exists it will be exercised injuriously so long as human nature remains what it is. The nearer men are reduced to a state of slavery, the worse it is all round. Experience abundantly proves that an actual state of slavery is far worse than freedom, even from the employers point of view. Slave labour is more costly, more troublesome, and more uncertain than free labour. Just as we advance to freedom, fullness and intelligence, on the part of workers, so will the work of the world be carried out with energy and success.

The legitimate business of trades unions is the same as the proper object of legislation, to prevent the adoption of arrangements which may be beneficial to persons or classes, but injurious to the community. Up to this point the action of trades unions is beneficial, the moment they go beyond it they create the evils which they profess to prevent.

No better (or worse) illustration of the evil effects of misconducted trades unions can be found than in the action of barristers in the conduct of their trade union, which is one of the oldest and most elaborate in existence. Their arrangements are so atrociously unjust that they have thereby paralysed the whole process of law, and made it so costly and complicated that it is beyond the reach of the greater part of the community. As to the influence of their trade society on barristers themselves it has created greater inequalities than exist in any other profession, and failures so largely predominate that it is probably about the most disappointing profession into which any man can enter.

t

cannot approach to what it should be so long as unjust legislation and unequal administration are allowed to prevail and oppress industry as it now does. It is satisfactory to see that the Trades Congress gave great emphasis to the subject of Parliamentary representation; without this little will be gained, nothing will be held. On this topic the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Congress speaks as follows:

"Workmen have demanded and possess political freedom. They, by a majority, are masters of the situation, and by that fact are alone responsible for industrial self-regeneration. It is now futile to longer complain of indifference to the workers' welfare by other classes, as might justly have been done when they were monopolists of political forces. Idle regrets, ceaseless complaints about being the eternal hewers of wood, the carriers of water, no longer hold good. The workmen of to-day have full scope and power to make themselves all they should be. If, however, the new position has come too suddenly to be appreciably utilised, still the hearts, minds, and sympathies of the toilers should be directed to the task of how best to elevate, to make fit for the larger work, the men in their own ranks. There will be small chance for a just recognition of the claims of our poorer population until it is adequately represented in the House of Commons by men who know and have experienced the struggles, the privations, and necessities by which the. life of the operatives is constantly surrounded."

The great danger which now besets trades unionism is that its leaders will be too cautious. They have obtained a status of great value, and wealth, whatever form it takes, is always timid. It will be constantly urged that this valuable position must not be imperilled, and efforts will not be wanting to limit action in a manner which would soon render the unions powerless for good. Theoretical proposals will never find acceptance with English working men, but practical propositions, even if far-reaching, must be boldly discussed, and acted upon if found to be just. That a revolution is coming no one doubts. Whether it will be beneficent or blast

son, 'The Glendale martyr,' " and another in London. During the last four years not one Sassenach or laird dare shoot a deer in their midst." Mr. Kenneth Davidson, Black Isle, pawkily observed that the men in his district intended to fight, but they were rather inconveniently near Fort George. Mr. Mackay was even less guarded. He openly avowed that if the myrmidons of landlord-made law attempted to re-inforce it the islanders would resist by force of arms.

Not less vigorously was the administration of justice in the Highlands condemned. Not merely is the law landlord-made law, but its administrators are but too frequently the landlords' "factors" and lackeys. The procuratorsfiscal, and even not a few of the sheriffs, bear a strong family resemblance to the "Varlet Marcus" of Roman story :-

Nor lacks he fit attendance; for close behind his heels,

With outstretched chin and crouching pace the client Marcus steals;

His loins girt up to run with speed, be the errand what it may,

And the smile flickering on his cheek for what his

lord may say.

Where'er ye shed the honey the buzzing flies will crowd;

Where'er ye fling the carrion the raven's croak is

loud;

Where'er down Tiber garbage floats the greedy pike And wheresoe'er such lord is found such client still

ye see;

will be.

circulation of any Liberal newspaper in the world" bestowed on it ten lines and a half, while adorning its pages on the same occasion with one column and a half in relation to the Greek gipsies at Hull.

J. MORRISON DAVIDSON.

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THE FREE LAND LEAGUERS AGAIN. This highly accredited ring of Radical reactionaries recently celebrated their first annual meeting at the National Liberal Club. Mr. Arthur Arnold, the President, took the chair, and much sophistry and not a little trumpetblowing ensued.

The League has one hundred and six M.P.'s on the roll of its vice-presidents a fact which its spokesmen seem to think ought to satisfy the public of its economic soundness. Quite the contrary! An imposing array of legislators standing sponsors for any scheme affecting the institution of landlordism raises the strongest presumption that it is hollow, delusive, or a snare for the feet of the people. Landlordism is visibly tottering to its fall, and its ill-gotten gains are bound before long to drop like a ripe apple into the nation's mouth.

Do the Free Land Leaguers propose to expedite this process? By no means. By free land they simply mean that land shall be free to those who have the money and the inclination to buy it. To the ninety-nine men in the hundred who have neither money nor credit. the soil will remain quite as inaccessible as before. Primogeniture, entail, and the general obstacles that beset conveyance at present greatly impede the purchase of land by the nouveaux riches in this country. Our Stock Exchange gamblers consequently feel it to be a great wrong that they are not permitted to "operate" in land as freely as their predatory brethren in the United States or the Australian Colonies. Mr. Arnold and his friends are likewise scandalised at the deprivation, and will spare no effort to help them to what they want.

This, need we say, is not the ideal of the Land Resumptionists. We would make the land free to the poorest son of Adam to the extent to which he could cultivate it to his own

and the public advantage; but neither the poorest nor the richest should have the smallest power to buy, sell, or mortgage an inch of the common inheritance of "the people." Land may be let by the community to individual cultivators or bodies of cultivators on fair and reasonable conditions, but no other relation or transaction affecting it should be tolerated for a moment. If a Rothschild or a Goschen desires to become a tenant he will just be entitled to occupy so much of the soil as he can satisfy the Local Authority that he can properly till by himself or with the aid of his family, neither more nor less. The Duke of Argyll and the Duke of Sutherland would probably, under the Land Resumption dispensation, find themselves, for the first time in their lives, earning an honest, if somewhat frugal, income as State crofters. The consciousness that they had ceased to be robbers, and had become public benefactors, would amply compensate them for any loss of supposed ducal dignity which they might sustain. "The light of the body is the eye; if, therefore, thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light. Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?"

It will thus be seen that Land Resumptionists and the so-called Free Land Leaguers are opposed toto celo. We abolish landlords small and great, and leave only State tenants. Rent paid to private individuals "for leave to toil" becomes a thing of the past. Instead of the "three profits" system spoken of by Lord Beaconsfield, divisible among landlords, farmers, and agricultural labourers, there will be but one order of cultivators and one profit divisible among the entire community.

The Free Landlord Leaguers, on the other hand, seek, as far as in them lies, to accentuate all the evils of landlordism by bestowing on it a free hand. They desire the people to exchange feudal for capitalist fetters. For our own part, we prefer to bear the whips of the aristocrat to the yet more terrible scorpions of the plutocrat. Landlordism gives power to individuals not so much over the land as over the people on the land. Now, we would any

day much rather fall into the hands of the Duke of Buccleuch than into those of Mr. Winans. The "bold Buccleuch" would be ashamed to make war on "pet lambs," but the capitalist land-grabber and land speculator knows no shame. Just as the four-acre farmers of Ancient Rome, the glory of the Republic, were crushed out by capitalist speculators in land who cultivated the soil by the labour of immense gangs of slaves, to the eventual ruin of the State, so is free capitalist landlordism slowly, but surely, destined to drain the very life-blood of our own people.

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A DEMOCRAT'S LETTER
TO THE

CHILDREN OF THE UNITED KINGDOM.

you

I dare say you have often joined in singing "God Save the Queen," and of men being loyal to their king or to their have heard queen. There have been men in bygone times who believed that kings and queens reigned by what was called Divine right, that is, they not only believed that the great God meant us to have kings and queens, but also that He meant this or that very man or very woman to be our king or our queen, no matter how unfit that man or that woman was to rule over us. The people who did not believe like this would now and then rise up against the king who was reigning over them, and put him down from his throne, because they did not like his ways of going on. Then those men who believed that that king had been reigning by divine right, and that he ought still to be reigning, would hold to him in his downfall, and make even more of him than they did before; and some of them would go into battle for him, to try to get him back his crown, or in other ways go through great dangers and losses for his sake.

Now, beautiful stories and beautiful poetry have been written about these men, in praise of their loyalty, and their faithfulness, and their self-devotion. And they may well be praised; bravery, and concern for the unfortunate, and thought for others, are things to be admired; but what I do not admire was