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common sense, and throw people out upon the road because they cannot do impossibilities? And why should the claim of the tradesman be probably limited by the discretion of a judge, and the claim of the landlord be forced on without any consideration? For his claim the tradesman has supplied a valuable consideration. The landlord has supplied nothing. The unjust character of his claim is what makes him so fierce in exacting it.

LORD CARNARVON's equipage when he was appointed Lord-Lieutenant cost the country £2,769 18. 8d. Lord Aberdeen's equipage cost the same, even to the eightpence. To fit out Lord Halsbury and Lord Herschell the country has had to spend nearly £3,700, and the Irish Lord Chancellors have cost nearly £2,000 between them. No less than £100 was spent on special packets between Kingston and Holyhead. Whenever the Prince of Wales goes to Boulogne or returns to Folkestone the State has to pay £40. I made the same trip in the company of a peer of the realm a few weeks ago for about as many pence. The Prince of Wales, however, is heir to the Throne. But why should England pay whenever the Grand Duke of Hesse comes to visit us? And why, O why, is the silver streak made costly to us whenever the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg visits the Continent? Last year the Grand Duchess ordered a boat, and changed her mind at the last moment. The result is a charge for demurrage of £14, in addition to £40 charged for the actual journey. For the life of me I do not see why this particular portion of the travelling expenses of remote members of the Royal family should be borne by the country. The privacy of the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburgh is of no public advantage, and why we should pay for a packet when we do not pay for a railway train one fails to understand. The Prince of Wales does not charge for his hansoms to the Treasury. Why should his great aunts make the taxpayers bear the cost of their transit to and from England? Mr. Labouchere will probably have something to say on the matter, and he will do well to argue that the Grand Duchess is too dear to us at £134 a year.-County Newspaper.

MR. ARNOLD frankly told the Commissioners at the outset of his evidence that he did not suppose that familiarity with school work and management is practically considered at all in the appointment of inspectors by the Education Department, and that he thought that the great bulk of the inspectors might well be drawn from the ranks of the elementary teachers. This is largely the system in force on the Continent, and of the two systems, said Mr. Arnold, "I very much prefer the foreign system, and I always have preferred it since I first saw it." This manifestly raises a very large and important question, and it is evident that several members of the Commission were not a little startled by Mr. Arnold's decided expression of opinion upon it. No inspectors have ever been appointed by the Department from the ranks of schoolmasters, and if we may judge from the tenour of Sir Francis Sandford's questions, the idea is greatly at variance with the accepted traditions of the Department. Sir Francis Sandford

seemed to think that in dealing with large boards inspectors who had been schoolmasters would be at some disadvantage in many important respects as compared with the present class of inspectors. But Mr. Arnold replied frankly, "I do not feel sure whether for dealing with school boards on the questions on which the inspectors now have to deal with them there is any great advantage in the present class of men."

THE SPEAKER'S SANCTION has now been distinctly given to the use of language in the House of Commons which threatens violent opposition to the action of the Legislature. The following report should be carefully noted:-Col. Saunderson: I distinctly and repeatedly stated in Ireland that if the House of Commons passed a law which handed us over to the tender mercies of hon. gentlemen opposite on the whole we should be justified as a last resort to appeal to force. ("Oh, oh.") I repeat that again in the House of Commons. (Laughter and cheers.) Mr. Sexton: I rise to order, Mr. Speaker. (Cheers.) I wish to ask you, Sir, whether an hon. member of this House is entitled to declare that in the event of the passing of a certain law in Parliament, he and his followers would be entitled to resort to arms against it. The Speaker: The hon. and gallant member has said nothing on that point which calls for my intervention. (Ministerial cheers.)-Sir W. Harcourt: Do we understand, Sir, that the language which the hon. member has used is not out of order, because he said distinctly that, if the Parliament of England passed a law which is objected to by a considerable portion of the people of the country, those people will be justified in resorting to force? It is a most important question, which should be understood on both sides of the House. (Cheers.) The Speaker: The right hon. gentleman the member for Derby asks me if I think it right to omit taking notice of the words used by the hon. gentleman. The words used by the hon. and gallant member were that if a certain event happened he would think it necessary to have recourse to a particular line of action. That is clearly not a point in which I can interfere. (Ministerial cheers.) It has nothing whatever to do with the debates in this House.

THE LAND QUESTION means hunger, thirst, nakedness, notice to quit, labour spent in vain, the toil of years seized upon, the breaking up of houses, the misery, sicknesses, deaths of parents, children, wives, the despair and wildness which spring up in the hearts of the poor, when legal force, like a sharp arrow, goes over the most sensitive and vital rights of mankind. All this is contained in the land question.

-Cardinal Manning.

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ON WEEDING OUT WEAKLINGS.-The Observer makes the following observations:-It has been noticed both in France and in England that a fourth generation of townspeople of the slumliving order is exceedingly uncommon. In three generations the race dies out, and the civic population is kept up by immigration from the country. We read that every night the Embankment is crowded with wretched weaklings huddling together on the benches and under the arches of bridges, hungry, half naked, and so cold that they find appreciable warmth in a blanket of old newspapers. The tendency of all modern charities is to keep these miserables alive. In a state of savagedom they would die. Weaklings are rarely seen in the tribe, for by the operation of the struggle for existence they disappear, leaving only the fittest, according to Sir George Campbell's definition of this, to survive. It is the same everywhere. The wounded are nursed, and permitted to continue weakened a race. The incurable are coddled. The progress of disease is arrested. All this is highly to be commended from a civilised and humane point of view, and, of course, it would be a sad day for the world when any other ideas prevailed. Yet if "homiculture "is to be practised in the hard Gradgrind fashion, all such weaklings should be permitted to drop behind in the race for life. Indeed, in the heroic state of the future they will be weeded out, just as the gardener plucks the poorer seedlings out of his beds in his eagerness that none save the best specimens should survive.

AS A MATTER OF SHAME it had been held up that the Irish-Americans subscribed money to the National funds, and for the support of hon. members. If that was shame, he for one gloried in it. It was no shame to the hon. member for Morpeth (Mr. Burt) that his great services to his fellowworkmen should be recognised. If the hon. and gallant member for North Armagh would visit America, and make himself acquainted with the aspirations and sacrifices and desires of Irish men and women, even the triple brass of his Orangeism would be penetrated. These subscriptions of Irish Americans were made because of an undying love for Ireland, and as a fine to relieve them of the annual tribute paid by the Irish of America to the landlords of Ireland. The Report of a Commission appointed by a Tory Government contained the statement that at least £1,000,000 a year was remitted from America to parents and relatives in Ireland. Did the hon. and gallant member and his friends refuse any portion of their rack-rents because they were paid to some extent in American dollars? Irish men and women in all parts of the world were poor, and remained poor, because they helped their fathers and mothers at home to try to fill the maelstrom of rack-rents. Even Irish servant girls subscribed American dollars that they might kill the vulture that fed upon the vitals of the people at home.

-T. P. O'Connor.

WORKING MEN AND THE MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL-A deputation from his workmen waited upon Mr. Adamson, and informed him that they

had arranged to work at least two extra hours per week, the amount earned during that time to be deducted by the firm and invested for the men in the capital of the Manchester Ship Canal Company. If the employees of 1,000 other firms of equal magnitude could be found to follow this example, hardly any other subscriptions would be wanted. It only remains for the workmen of each establishment to organise a system on the same basis, and communicate with the directors of the Ship Canal Company, when the whole matter may be got into working order. This noble action of the working men affords a striking contrast to the timid course of capitalists who will risk none of their wealth in an enterprise calculated to benefit the community. It also shows how some working men might become independent of capitalists by efficient combination and judicious enterprise.

LET him (Lord Randolph) get up, or let somebody else get up for him-any one would do it, if he told them to do it (laughter)—and say that he, on behalf of this country, did not care one straw whether the Russians or the Turks were at Constantinople, and he would have gone a great way to settle the Eastern Question and promote the peace of the world (hear).—Sir Wilfrid Lawson.

THE House of Lords, I have always understood, represents, or is supposed to represent, what is called the principle of hereditary legislation. Now, what exactly that principle is I will confess to you that from a very early period of my life I have never been able to comprehend-(laughter)—unless indeed, it does rise to the dignity of a principle that persons should be entrusted with the lawful and sacred power of making laws for one of the greatest and most magnificent empires upon which the sun has ever shone, not only when nobody knows that they are fit for it, but when everybody oftentimes knows that they are perfectly unfit for it. During the 13 years which have passed away since I first entered into that ancient and august assembly I cannot remember one single solitary occasion upon which upon any party and political question I have had the good fortune to vote in the majority in that House (laughter)-and as for five years before that time I was the law officer to a Government which had not the good fortune to agree with the majority in that House either, I cannot be expected in candour to speak with fanatical or even enthusiastic admiration of the course which their lordships have thought fit to pursue in the last 20 years.-Lord Coleridge at Sheffield.

DEFINITIONS are often difficult, and in an endeavour to define the difference between Socialism and Positivism, Mr. Ellis, as chairman of a meeting of Positivists, became confused to the extent of comicality. He said: "While Socialism, like Positivism, claimed to be an international doctrine, there was an important difference between them. Socialism, whatever it might say about fraternity and equality, rested at bottom upon a sentiment of hatred and jealousy for all those who did not belong to the proletariat, and who did not, doubting their expediency, accept Socialist doctrines. Positivism,

on the other hand, tried to impregnate all classes with the spirit of fraternity; it was based on a sentiment of sympathy and toleration for all classes and all creeds. Socialism aimed at the regeneration of society by the assertion of rights; Positivism, on the other hand, relied upon the recognition of duties. That was the cardinal distinction between the two systems. Socialists regarded the social problem as purely economical, Positivists knew it to be religious, and, therefore, to be solved only by religious means." It is not an uncommon thing for good people in their desire to "impregnate all classes with the spirit of fraternity" to begin by denouncing others as animated by a "sentiment of hatred and jealousy"; such a proceeding is, however, more usual than useful, and when Mr. Ellis goes on to state that "Socialists regard the social problem as purely economical," he puts the cart before the horse in a manner that is positively funny. In doing this Mr. Ellis may be very positive, but he is far from being correct.

COLONEL FORBES, R.M., during the hearing of one of the cases resulting from the Belfast riots, stated that he had received an order from the

Attorney-General to send all the prisoners for trial

and to refuse bail. Mr. M'Erlean said the conduct

of the Attorney-General was illegal, and it would appear that the days of the notorious Strafford had returned.

A CRY FOR HOME RULE.- Archbishop Croke, in sending to the Irish Parliamentary Fund £360, received from Dr. Cleary, the Roman Catholic Bishoy of Kingston (Canada), as a tribute of sympathy and sustainment from his flock and others, Anglicans, and Presbyterians, in the effort for Ireland's right to self-legislation, points to Bishop Cleary's picture of happy, home-ruled Canada, and asks conversely-How can we Irish be happy in our native land, since we do not enjoy the fruits of our industry? The lands we laboriously till are not our own, and the laws we are expected to obey not of our own framing. The fields on which we live and labour belong for the most part to those who despise us and hate us, while the fruits of our industries are in a great measure consumed by a favoured and frivolous oligarchy, who have done nothing to produce them, and, our laws, manufactured by strangers, are enforced often at bayonet point by foreign mercenaries, or Irish born slaves, in the interest of a petted and pretentious class, instead of for the use and benefit of the whole people. How can we be happy? We are strangers and castaways in our own land.

HENRY GEORGE.-A greater compliment could not be paid Mr. Henry George than the words used by Major Grace: "If the city will get as good a man as Henry George for Chief Magistrate," says Major Grace, "I will go out of office with a feeling of confidence that the reforms begun will be in conscientious hands, and if we never get a worse man at the head of affairs here New York will be peculiarly blessed with good fortune." This testimony is all the more valuable coming from one whose own record in the office is synonymous with that of the best government New York has had in a generation.

NOTES ON THE MONTH.

NATURALLY the talk of the month is of Prince Alexander and the Arch Rogue of Russia. We will confess that the more we meditate upon the matter the less we understand it. At present all that can be said is that the Prince has shown himself to be a young gentleman of great prudence. His father made a speech to some reporter or other in which he pointed out his son as devoted to duty and death. The Prince has got away safe and sound, and report belies him if he has not made a very pretty little competence out of the business of being king. By this time he and his property are in complete safety, and the world is disappointed of a martyr. Indeed, the world is beginning to have a dim suspicion that all along it has been swindled out of its sympathy, and that a play has been acted which, to the public, seemed a tragedy, but, to the principal actor and to those select few in the confidence of the stage manager, was an exquisite farce.

charmed with the original idea of kidnapping a WE regret to inform those who are so much great man in the very midst of those whose duty it was to protect him that it is not so original as it seems. Alexander Dumas, in the "Vicomte de Bragelonne," records how his great hero, Monsieur midst of the Puritan army and carried him to the D'Artagnan, kidnapped General Monk in the very Hague, where he was so impressed by the virtues of King Charles II. that he restored him to "the

throne of his ancestors."

man.

Ir will not be surprising if the Revolutionary Party in Russia, able and daring as it is, improved upon the Czar's new political method. In a state like Russia, where all is governed from one centre, if you hold that centre you control all. The Russias revolve around the Czar. Now, let us presume that the Czar is what he is, a-well, a timid Let us further presume that the Revolutionary Party has virtues that in Britain we can hardly understand, because these virtues only thrive in the bleak airs of oppression. Our Puritan forefathers, those great and stern founders of our liberty, had them. These virtues will in Russia urge men to form a plot and elect one of their number to betray them, so that while they cheerfully go to death or to Siberia, he will gain the confidence of the Government, and thus be able, under the guise of a traitor, to serve his party. At present many who seem the most devoted servants of the Czar, and are nearest to his person, are affiliated to a secret society, or, rather, to an association of secret societies that laugh at the police because there is rarely a police secret that they do not know. The ability, the virtue, and the steadfast policy of these people has never been surpassed. What they have to do is to gradually exclude from the service of the Czar those servants who are not affiliated to them. Some morning as the Czar is rising from his bed they will calmly announce to him that he is a prisoner. He will be shown, too, a supreme argument in the shape of a long, keen, glittering dagger. In appearance he will be a

sovereign, in reality he will be a slave. He will seem to rule armies, fleets, and countries, but he will obey the slightest wish of the secret committee. He will not breathe his conditions, for on the first whisper of it he would die. All this can be done, and may be done, and the Czar of Russia will have himself to thank if it is done. Kingship is a delusion, and the king who breaks the delusion or shows others how to break it is like a ropemaker weaving a rope for his own neck.

TURN we from the sham king to the real monarch of the age-too often deposed and in beggary when he should have power and plenty. His Majesty King Workman has been making himself heard. Working hands and working brains-there is room in the earth for these and for these alone. At Hull the Trades Unionists have spoken bold and noble things. It looks as if the swindle of "Practical Politics" is being found out. For by "Practical Politics" those speakers and writers who so fluently used the term, did not mean what it was practical for the working man to attain, but that the working man should so occupy himself with petty legislation as to have no time for a broad and thoughtful survey of his whole position. He was to advance on the long mile of reform by measuring every inch in every foot of it. Not that we despise petty legislation. Only working men know the safety and the comfort that may be brought into their life by many a small and seemingly unimportant reform. But, at the same time, he who allows himself to be paid with a halfpenny when he can get a shilling shows no particular wisdom. Our working men have meditated too much on the crust and too little on the loaf. As a result, "Practical Politics have come to mean legislation about how much of the crust the working man should get, whilst those who praised and applauded the " common sense and moderation" of these pratical politicians calmly appropriated the loaf for themselves.

WORKING men all over Britain have advanced at least this far, that they see how dependent upon each other are town and country. The landlord who in some Highland glen, unknown to the map, unnoticed by the guide book, evicts a helpless family, inflicts a wrong not only upon that family of his fellow beings, but he strikes a blow at society in Glasgow or in Birmingham. These people were, in their small way, customers to the town. They needed clothes and farm implements and with these the town supplied them. Now they have to make way for deer, which do not use woollen clothes and iron spades. But more and worse, they compete in the town with the townspeople for what work and bread-scarce enough it is-may be going. In order that sportsmen shall be able to shoot deer and grouse, the workmen of the cities have their trade upset and disarranged and have to go idle and hungry.

WE are no bigots against sport. If it is right to kill a tame bullock or a household hen, it is right to kill wild deer. And we will even go so far as to admit that there are parts of this country fit for little else except the chase, But the extent to

which the pursuit of game has been carried in our country is a shameless crime. Not a deer in all the waste land is killed but at the expense of the sorrow and pain to the working classes. Look well on the game that comes from the Highland hills, and is hung in shop windows to tempt the petted appetites of the luxurious rich, and think that it is has not been bought with money alone, but with tears and blood and sin and shame. To obtain it women

and children have been thrust out into the winter snow, while the husbands and fathers have been fighting in far-offlands. Look at it long and well, and consider; for it means the ruin of men, the shame of women, and the death of children. The peasants crush the eggs in every nest they see, and if they do are beginning to regard it as a sacred duty to how. Who can blame them? The very least these not poison the deer it is because they do not know people suffer from the vermin is to have the crops eaten by them which are their only support. In the Highlands hundreds of men, after a day's toil in the fields, have to sit up all night watching for fear their poor crops are destroyed by beasts and birds that they dare not shoot.

LORD LONSDALE is to be congratulated for having solved in his own person the problem of how to reconcile the Church and stage. He is at once the dispenser of enormous Church patronage and the protector of a young person well-known to the gilded youth of London and elsewhere by her nimble heels and general audacity of style. With the same hand that knocks down this young person's husband he signs the deeds that set up shepherds to rule over the sheep of Christ.

The Church, the bride of Christ, in stainless white,
In old and saintly vision, lovely stands :
What colour wears she now when these her priests,
Preferment beg from a stage bully's hands?

HAD Christ been living to-day he would not have preached on the priest and the Samaritan, he would have taken his proverb from Mr. Bradlaugh and the popular churches. We cannot be classed among Mr. Bradlaugh's worshippers. We believe him to be in many things hard and narrow. But this must be said of him, that seldom has the British public had a more faithful servant. Hardly a month passes but Mr. Bradlaugh brings forward some wrong from which the people suffer, and by long, strong, energetic insistence upon it, forces its consideration. How many Christian gentlemen have been aware of how the miners lived and what they suffered, yet it was left to this sceptic, against whom the churches have bellowed until they are tired, to bring forward the hard case of these men to the pity and the help of their countrymen. How hard that case is, only those can realise who know the mining districts. Pay-twelve shillings a week. Work-the dreariest, dullest, hardest, man can do. Food-bought at shops in which the mineowners have an "interest "bad and dear. Danger-constant, terrible. Tenure--the arbitrary will of partial overseers. Houses-damp, ruinous, reeking with the sick fumes of vile sanitation. Amusements the infidel lecture and the gin shops. We should like to take to these places a 'few of our zealous but misguided leaders who are

perpetually reminding us of our duty to the heathen, and ask them how they dare send abroad to convert a decent, orderly, civilised people like the Chinese, when we have at home scenes like these, equalled in few savage countries and surpassed in none. Yet it is here that we behold our land laws working to perfection, the gain of these poor people going to the minelord. The daily morning and evening prayer of such unfortunates should be for deliverance from famine, pestilence, and the land laws.

Ir looks as if Art were seeking enfranchisement. This month has seen a movement begun that will do much to break the monopoly of artists miscalled national. This movement has been made and is supported by men honoured through all the bounds of the artistic world to set up an institution in opposition to the Royal Academy, which shall be distinguished by the largeness and the breadth of its sympathy, as the Royal Academy is distinguished by its narrowness and its shams and littlenesses. It shall represent, not the views of a clique, but the art of a nation. In this age Art should be revolutionary. There are times when Art, serene and glad, has but to fill itself with the joyous inspirations of every golden day and to reproduce them on canvas. Such times are not ours. Art and Democracy have one enemy and one struggle. They must fight together against the vast, senseless forces of wealth and fashion that would crush

them both. The triumph of Art will come with the triumph of the Democracy. The production of a great painting will then be like the winning of a battle. The village, the city, the country, will applaud the national or the local artist. And in his strong efforts for higher thoughts and subtler tints he will be supported by an enthusiasm in those for whom he paints, hardly less noble and informed than the enthusiasm that is in himself. The teach

ing with which Ruskin has saturated all the finest minds of the age cannot be carried out when men

in obstructive methods, to complain to the country that business is being obstructed-the only business being the desire of idle men to be off shooting pheasants. What has really being done is that a number of patriotic members have painfully, thoroughly, and minutely examined into the various methods of misspending public money. Long may such obstruction flourish!

EVERY TORY VOTED.--Let not working men ever forget the fact. A wise and beneficent eviction of Irish tenants who were charged rents measure was brought into Parliament to stop the that flesh and blood could not pay. That Bill was lost, and we have the authority of the Tory Prime Minister for saying that against it every Tory voted. The landlords have now in their hands the power of eviction, and they will evict. During the last half century the Irish landlords have, by means of their evictions, crowded the British towns with hundreds of thousands of Irish peasants, utterly upsetting the laws of trade, making work scarce and taxes heavy. Talk of emigration! Why the emigration of the Irish people from the Irish land to the British workshops has been a curse heavier than half-a-dozen wars. Not that we grudge a But we do grudge the Irish landlords every penny share to the poor evicted people of what we have. of their devilish gain that they have gotten in carrying out this devil's work.

Land reformers have good reason to thank God and take courage. They have converted to their inhabited by the most religious and valiant people doctrines the whole Highlands of Scotland, a land who ever battled for a good cause. Three books are read and studied in the Highlands as they are Catechism, and the "Progress and Poverty" of Henry read and studied nowhere else the Bible, the buy pictures only to outbuy and outshine their neigh-three by heart. At Bouar Bridge, away in the far George. Many Highlanders can almost repeat all bours. We have great painters and great pictures, but they exist not because of any help they had from the age, but because they scorned the it under foot. So, too, with our poets, with Browning, Tennyson, Rossetti, Arnold, Swinburne-they have appealed to what in the age was higher than the age and they have conquered. Art and Demo-long to their mountains. The listeners were fired cracy must conquer in the end. The question is, shall the conflict be long or short, shall we fight with all our soul and strength, or half-heartedly, and with futile arms?

age

and trod

IN Parliament we have had during this month a politician as leader of the House of Commons whom we may describe as a cynical professor of the immorality of politics. He uses principles as men use ballast, to be taken in and thrown out as required. And so well have the Conservative party been educated, that where Disraeli used to veil his cynical politics with some slight show of decency, Churchill presents to Parliament and to the country a brow of unbelief, bare and unabashed. It requires an audacity almost sublime for Churchill, the arch-leader of obstruction, the supreme artist

north, in the very heart of a country infested with landlords, deer, and other vermin, has been held by them a great meeting of protest. The that belong to the Celts, as the swift torrents bespeakers had all the boldness, vigour, and eloquence

with that enthusiasm that make the Celts so terat which the long-divided Celts meet again to form rible and so great. This meeting marks the point a League of Liberty. Their Union will be irresistible. It will ally itself with the strength and the prime of the English workmen. Its motto will be: THE BROTHERHOOD OF ALL WHO WORK; THE SUPPRESSION OF ALL WHO ROB THE WORKERS. We live in an age of great things. Powers long hidden are coming to light in their splendour and their terror. The might of the working classes is like the giant of the Eastern fable, who, by an enchantment, was confined within a little ball. But, when let loose, first he rose as a thin smoke, which grew and grew until it filled the Heavens. Then the smoke solidified into a giant that no power could conquer-if he could guard himself from cunning intrigues,

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