members to Parliament, who are devoted to her interest, and can and will enforce her wrongs. The Scotch members are without aim, unity, or eloquence, and therefore the Governmeut imagine that with Scotland they may do as they please. There are, however, the people to reckon with, and the public will not stand tamely by and see the British forces employed in the exactions of unjust rents, the imprisonment of their trusted leaders, and the confiscation of cradles and collie dogs. The Year of Jubilee. The preparations for that great event, when, for the fiftieth time, Her Gracious Majesty will sheer the national sheep, go merrily and briskly on. Drudge the toiler and Fudge and Smudge, the toiler's proprietors, have been given gracious leave to rejoice together. The Mayoress of Grovelton cannot sleep o' nights for thinking. that her husband is to be made Sir Lickspittle Littlebrain. Oh, let us. be joyful. Just to think that this stout, little, ancient dame has for half a century done us the honour of taking our money. Does not France envy us that glorious privilege of the great and free? does not Uncle Sam sigh to have the proud distinction of paying to some family a few millions of yearly dollars? Here is the cry with which the poor should greet the splendid occasion: "God bless your Majesty, you and yours take the living of twenty thousand families, and we loves you for it, we does." Somebody has suggested that our noble Queen should celebrate her fiftieth pay day by giving a year's income to the unemployed. That is the gentleman, we fancy, who thought that the moon was lit with London gas. The Bishops' Trades Union. The Bishop of London probably by this time regrets that he forbad one of his clergymen to enter a Dissenting pulpit. For our own part we feel very grateful to his lordship. He has supplied us with an apt, appropriate, and striking illustration of our contention that the Church of England is one of the most perfect Trades Unions in the world. Not only must the non-Trades Unionist clergy be kept out of the Union workshops, but the boycott must be employed to prevent the Union clergy from filling the pulpits of those who are outsile of the great corporation. It would not dɔ to allow Church of England clergymen tɔ appear in the Tabernacle or the City Temple. Comparisons are not only odious, they are dangerous, and if people began to ask themselves what was the difference between clergyman who received state pay, and one who didn't, that corner stone of undefilel religion, that proud result of all the lives of the saints and the sufferings of the martyrs, the income of the Archbishop of Canterbury, might be in danger. Therefore, his Lordship of London is right to carefully guard, even with the boycott, his Trade Union. Working mea, go ye and do likewise. Balfour's Consolation. a From the bottom of our soul we pity the farmers. This month has shown a state of despondency lower than which they can hardly sink. But, to say the truth, they no mɔre dare to thoroughly examine their position and reckon all their losses than face an angry ghost. Many farmers cannot have mile a penny of profit since 1880, and they are paying rents from their capital. The Scottish farmers made an appeal to that heaven-born Secretary for Scotland, Mr. Arthur J. Balfour. That gentleman gave them a dose of official sympathy that will last many of them all their lives. First he tried to prove to men almost desperate with impending ruin that they were not badly off at all, and then, with a vastness of calm impudence that makes us hope much from his political future, he said that landlord and tenant were business partners, and that their partnership could only be broken with mutual consent. Mr. Arthur J. Balfour is a man quite capable of telling Sinbad the Sailor that the Old Man of the Sea was not the least bit of a burden, and that Sinbad had no right to throw him off his shoulders unless he first got his consent. Truly, Providence and the Tory Government have sent a great man to govera Scotland. Windsor Castle for Widows. The French people, besides putting the Crown jewels up to auction, are about to turn the royal palaces to various useful purposes. 'Tis a great and bright example. Never do we see Windsor Castle as an advertisement of soapsuds or other wise without thinking of the poor needlewomen of London. What a health resort that would be for destitute widows and their families! Could we use Windsor for the purpose, and divert to its support a part of that sum spent by Royalty in corrupting the pure tastes and simple habits of the country, think how noble would be the result!. Pale cheeks would glow with rosy health, emaciated forms would be filled with bounding strength, and the sad at heart would sing for very joy. Windsor would be in the London streets, and courts, and lanes, a holy and a happy name. To the Corrupt Majority of New York. The hour of George will come. An Easy Task. With the blowing of many trumpets Mr. Schnadhorst has been appointed director-general of the Liberal conscience of England. We wish Mr. Schnadhorst joy of what is the easiest matter in the world-if he sets the right way about it. It is not natural that London should be anything other than Democratic. All great capitals are so except London, and, perhaps, Pekin. The fact is that London has very little, if anything, to gain from ordinary Liberalism. But let the Liberal party construct a programme of Home Rule for London, taxation of London land for the benefit of the London people, and the appropriation of London charities to the London poor, and he will find London as ready as Paris to fight for It takes a good deal to make religious newspapers understand-at least, those with a fair circulation and good advertisements-that progress and poverty are not joined together by a decree of Almighty Providence. But even they have been somewhat startled by the thronging crowds that clamoured to be allowed to invest their hundred and thirty millions of money in Guinness's brewery. They have an uneasy suspicion that if while Jerusalem was starving opulent Pharisees had rushed to invest in a tipple manufactory, the dread "woe unto you" of Jesus would have echoed through temple courts and city streets until every soul was stirred to hate, or fear, or shame. You see, the fact is so tremendous that not even religious newspapers can realise it. Therefore, they indulge in platitudes which amount to this: "We are miserable sinners, but fourteen per cent. is very good." Precedents. There is a vast and almost unexplored. treasury in our old Acts of Parliament. Colonel Fraser hunts out authority for preventing the Socialists doing what it has been our proud boast that every Briton is free to do. Away in Skye, Sheriff Ivory drags out of the dustbin of Parliament an ancient Act to prevent a few crofters looking on while he practises his atrocities on children and helpless old women. Now if one forgotten Act be revived why not another? They have the power now, and can revive what Acts they please; some day the power will be ours, and we will surely find unrepealed Acts enough for all our purposes. The East End Defence Alliance. This alliance has been formed for the purpose of denying inconvenient facts. Property ex suffers when disease and distress are posed; therefore it must not be mentioned, and if mentioned it must be denied. It is the old story. Why should the comfortable classes be disturbed and disquieted by unpleasant facts? If more poor people crowd into the East-end rents will rise and wages fall. Thus property gains both ways, and if the people cannot live they will die in accordance with the rules of political economy, and thus the difficulty will settle itself. We should get on very We should get on very well but for charity-mongers who distress us with revelations and lessen our rents by warning the poor not to come into our traps. Selling Light. The churchwardens of St. Edmund's, in the City of London, have hitherto received three guineas a year as an acknowledgment for light obtained through the window of a bank which overlooks the churchyard. A short time since the lease of these lights expired, and such was the anxiety of the devout churchwardens to increase the revenue of the church that they raised the charge for the light from three guineas to fifty pounds per annum. Village Settlements. Sanity begins to be felt in the settlement of the land and labour questions. In New Zealand has been begun a system that we hope to see imitated from China to Peru. To the unemployed of Auckland are given small farms of about fifty acres to be held on perpetual lease. Further, the tenant is lent a small sum of money at seven and a half per cent. A bonus of fifty shillings is allowed him for every acre he clears. And if he is absolutely destitute, he is permitted to earn a little money at roadmaking and other work necessary for the general improvement of the district. Already two hundred men have accepted the chance, and so successful is the scheme that it is to be widely extended. This for us is a veritable bit of blue sky. It shows how deeply our teaching is taking possession of practical minds, more especially in Greater Britain, where men have not to clear away the accumulated prejudices of centuries before they are allowed to do honest work. That there should be a single person in the vast Anglo-Saxon world who is at once needy and willing to work is a grim comment on the wisdom of all our wise men. Coal Duties v. Taxation of Ground Rents. The Metropolitan Board of Works have expended ten millions sterling on London improvements of the sum received from coal duties. The coal tax is exacted from the poor and industrious classes and expended for the benefit of the rich and the idle. The outlay has added to the value of land, and yet landlords have not been called upon to contribute. The value of building ground in London is £16,000,000 per annum, a thirty-fifth part of which would provide the £450,000 annually obtained from the coal duties. By a fair tax on ground rents, the improvement of London might be continued without increasing the general rates and without continuing to tax the poor man's fire. A tax on ground rents would fall upon those who benefit by the expenditure, and it would be advantageous to landowners to continue the improvements by such a tax rather than suspend operations, the carrying out of which adds to the value of their property. Lord Randolph was quite right in saying that the coal duties must not be con tinued; he was quite wrong in suggesting that improvements should be suspended. Burmah. The Burmese war, upon which the Tories entered with such a light heart, is proving a difficult and disastrous business. We cannot compel men to trade with us, and the war with Burmah will probably have the same deterrent effect on trade as the China Wars. Before our advent, the Burmese were a happy, contented, and prosperous people. One of the arguments for the war was founded on the fact that in Burmah wages were one shilling per day, whereas in India similar labourers receive There are twenty seven Established fourpence halfpenny, and it is supposed that churches in the City of London in which the low wages leave a better chance of profit to attendance on the 24th of October was less the trader. This, of course, is a delusion, for than 100. Most of these churches have large the amount of wages regulates the volume of revenues, and the ground which they occupy is trade. The monstrous part of this war is that of enormous value. It is probable that the we tax the men of India, who are getting four-largeness of the revenue attached to these pence halfpenny per day, in order to fight Burmah and reduce wages there. The whole business is wicked and foolish. It is worse than a crime-it is a blunder. The London meeting to support the candidature of Mr. Henry George was cheered by the presence of Miss Taylor, who has returned to England with her health greatly improved and with an evident intention of continuing to the canse of Radical politics the magnificent services which she rendered in former times. Her denunciation of the chronic corruption connected with English politics was very telling. The meeting was also addressed by the Rev. Stewart Headlam and Messrs. Manville, J. Walker, W. Saunders, J. C. Durant, and others. Mr. Maddison, the president of the Trades Union Congress, took the chair, and made a sensible speech. We hope some day to see Mr. Maddison in Parliament as representative of the class to which he belongs. There is a sprinkling of Tory representatives among the Trades Unions who usually devote themselves to paralysing every movement in the direction of obtaining representation for labour in Parliament. It is to be hoped that the more sensible majority, who recognise the vital necessity of Parliamentary influence, will not allow themselves to be stultified by a handful of men who place party before principle. Some of these men are prepared to sacrifice their order at the instigation of the "upper classes," whose fascinating influences they are unable to resist. Parliament must be the battle-ground between justice and privilege, and justice will be defeated in the future as in the past if working-men are absent, for experience shows that "the absent are always in the wrong." churches and the smallness of the duties was at the bottom of the strenuous protests against their removal when it was proposed a few years ago to place the parsons and churches in new localities. We are sick of hearing the Irish called a degraded race. Oppression makes any nation more or less degraded. After the Norman invasion of cut-throats that gave us an aristocracy, here is how a Welsh writer speaks, not without truth, of ourselves: "Who dares compare the English, the most degraded of all nations, with the Welsh ? In their own country they are the veriest slaves of the Normans. In our country, whom else have we for our herdsmen, cobblers, skinners cleaners of our dog-kennels, ay, and our sewers, but Englishmen?" Now, if we put in Irish for English, this elegant description would be just what some of our own scribes say and keep saying about our fellow citizens in Ireland. We do not deny that there is much Irish degradation. What we do say, is that it comes not from the Irish nature, but from our misrule of Ireland. We require, and must have, Home Rule for Ireland without separation or land purchase. -:0: law is just which has only a private end, or which Ir is a maxim of Catholic philosophy that "no benefits only a particular person or part of the community; for the public or common welfare is the essential end of just law." It is also laid down that each person in the community has the right to some determinate and equitable share of the property first given in common by Nature." Applying these principles to land, Lacordaire says: "Take away from man the domain of the land and of labour, what will there be left but a slave? For there is but one definition of a slave-it is the being who is neither master of land nor of his own labour." CHURCHILL'S CONSISTENCY. Mr. Disraeli created a new part in the drama of British politics. It was a great and brilliant part, conceived with splendid audacity, and played with consummate skill. Yet the rules and maxims by which he played are very old and very simple. "Be sure of what you want and then get it, no matter how; honest means are safest, but dishonest means are surest, and the man who would succeed must not stand on trifles." Men often play such a part in common affairs, and other men name them with various discourteous titles. But, happily for society, few men ever really carry thoroughly out a great dishonest ideal. They have occasional lapses into honesty, and these ruin them. To play the Disraelian part needs so vast a want of conscience that not many are by nature fit for it. For the want of conscience is a valuable talent, and by its means Mr. Disraeli achieved a marvellous success, and is now worshipped as the tutelary saint of a mighty party. But when once any party is successful imitators soon appear. It is a great ambition to rule the gentlemen of England, to have dukes to fetch and carry, and an old nobility applauding to the echo every stupid word you choose to utter. Thus, when the great actor left the scene, and went away to eternity, perchance to muse upon the foolishness of men, another soon came forth to take his place, and to wear his honours. Lord Randolph Churchill made his bow. Much was against him. He was a middle-aged man, who had shown no particular virtues and talents, he was.shamefully ignorant of politics and of history, he was not an orator, and his wit was of the clumsiest. A good debating society would hardly have endured his speeches, and in the ordinary course of politics he might by great good luck and extraordinary efforts have achieved at sixty a secretaryship of State. But some advantages he did possess. He knew himself, he knew his audience, and he possessed in a degree almost equal to Mr. Disraeli the talent of a want of conscience. Besides all this, the old leader had made things very easy for the new leader. The education of the party had been completed, and it no longer possessed a moral sentiment. Henceforth the Conservative party would exist, not to maintain and advance a mighty principle, but as an unlimited liability company to turn the Liberals out of office and to keep them out. The great earl knew that progress offends many men and many interests. These naturally join together to form a great party of opposition. They hate reform, but they hate reformers more, and are always willing to use any hated reform to injure the far more hateful reformer. To offer these people a principle would be absurd. You must supply them with weapons and lead them against the enemy, and in place of principle trust to their bitter and undying hate. Few Conservatives know much about politics, they only know that they detest the Liberals. Their leaders and their press do not argue, they revile. Lord Beaconsfield was just the leader for this ignorant and angry host. He supplied them with brilliant epigram and biting satire, with sounding phrases and ingenious conceits, and although they only understood the half of all he said, they clapped their hands and shouted till the echoes rang. But the same audience that will rapturously applaud a fine comedian would often enjoy far better a fellow who comes on to the stage and makes grimaces. This Lord Randolph Churchill clearly perceived. He was not a great actor, but he could make grimaces. When that idea struck him he saw in a single flash his future and his greatness. The right man and the right party having been brought together, it only remained for the man to make himself leader of the party. Here again the imitator found useful the wise maxims and great example of his spiritual father. Mr. Disraeli laid it down as an axiom that to gain power in a party you must cause the party to fear and detest you. Lord Randolph Churchill speedily made himself the nightmare of the Conservatives. The effect was immediate and startling. His leaders dreaded him more than they dreaded all their opponents together. They surrendered; they gave him all he wanted; impudence was once more triumphant. Disraeli hounded Peel to his grave, Churchill hounded Sir Stafford Northcote to the House of Lords. The Conservative party has always contained some honest and simple gentlemen. Being by nature dull, they dislike all flippancy, and having been brought up to honour and obey the ten commandments they especially dislike Lord Randolph Churchill. But when once they are conquered they make the best of tools, and Lord Randolph Churchill has completed their conquest. They have now only to shut their eyes and open their mouths to shout. It took Mr. Disraeli years to make this class his own; Lord Randolph Churchill has gained them in weeks, so complete and thorough has been their education. His lordship |