'In the absence of Lord William Bentinck,' wrote Sir James Graham to Wilson, I cannot hesitate to declare that I know his impression to have been that, on that trying occasion at Valeggio, by your signal personal courage you saved the Austrian army. The post to be defended was the key of the position -the greater part of the Austrian army having crossed the Mincio. The Hungarian guards were wavering: the French advancing with the utmost energy. You walked backwards and forwards, I understood, between the Austrian ranks; and by your encouragement, and still more by your example, you prevented them from giving way. . . . As previously at Dresden and at Leipzig, so on the Mincio with Marshal Bellegarde, in the face of contending armies, your personal daring and cool courage were conspicuous, and greatly contributed to turn the fortune of the day. I can say no more than repeat the opinion entertained by Lord William Bentinck, that never was the honour of the British army and character more signally upheld than by you at the battle of Valeggio.'

Passing note may be made of evidence that Wilson was more than merely beau sabreur. He possessed keen political insight. Fifty years were to run before the idea of Italian unity should be realised; but here is what Wilson wrote in his journal six weeks after he crossed the frontier.

I did not at first think the Italians concerned themselves much about their political existence. I was wrong. They did feel the value of nationalisation. Fifteen years' connection under a good government would have formed Italy again into an independent and powerful State. The edict for its dissolution has at length been issued. I lament the fiat, although I cannot wish its failure at this time.

With the abdication of Napoleon, Wilson's active service came to an end, and he was placed on half-pay; but there was plenty of adventure in store for this restless spirit. Henceforth he was a man with a grievance. Whereas foreign Governments had made much of him, and perhaps spoiled him, his own chiefs, civil and military, seemed to ignore his services. In default of regular employment he got into serious mischief. Being in Paris in 1816, he was deeply moved by sympathy, first for Marshal Ney, on whose behalf he published a passionate appeal to the British public, and next for General Lavalette, who lay under sentence of death for an offence similar to Ney's. Lavalette managed to escape from prison, like Lord Nithsdale, by the time-honoured, always romantic, device of exchanging clothes with his wife; but out of Paris he could not get, for a minute description of his striking personality had been posted up at every gate and circulated in the provinces. Wilson gave him asylum in his own house; and planned the fugitive's escape in concert with a civilian named Michael Bruce and Captain Hely Hutchinson (afterwards third Earl of Donoughmore), an officer on full pay in the Army of Occupation. Wilson obtained a passport for Lavalette under a fictitious name, lying often and boldly in the process, fitted him out with new clothes and carried him safely to the frontier in his own cabriolet. The offence was a very serious one; for the plot must

have been detected had not Wilson availed himself of his rank and influence as a British general. Nevertheless, popular sympathy was all on the side of the offender. Wilson was tried before a French tribunal; the whole case against him was given away in a letter which he wrote to Lord Grey,12 and which was intercepted; he was sentenced to and underwent three months' imprisonment.

Wilson's next scrape was a more serious one. Always a reckless champion of the oppressed, he ardently espoused the cause of Queen Caroline, and made himself conspicuous in the scenes caused by her return to London in 1820.

13

The Queen died in 1821, but the unhappy ferment she had caused during her troubled life was not allayed immediately. Her remains were conveyed to Brunswick for burial, and their passage through London was the occasion for dangerous rioting. At Cumberland Gate, where the Marble Arch now stands, a barricade was thrown up, and the escort was pelted with stones. The troops prepared to fire, and did so, killing two men ; but not before Sir Robert Wilson had passionately called upon the soldiers to disobey their officers. For this offence he was dismissed from the army without trial. A Liberal historian has denounced 'the folly of the Ministry in assenting to his dismissal; their reasons for doing so are fully set forth in a letter from the Duke of Wellington to Lord Liverpool.14 An officer of the army cannot claim the right of trial by court-martial, and recent instances abound of the services of officers being dispensed with by the Sovereign. But Wilson was not inclined to take his punishment lying down.' A bold and fluent speaker, he had been member for Southwark since 1818. From his place in the House of Commons he challenged the prerogative of the Crown to dismiss officers without trial. Failing of redress, he sought relief for his injured feelings in those scenes in which he knew so well how to find it he took service as a volunteer in the war in Spain of 1823.

When the Whigs at length came into power in 1830 Wilson's case had long been a party question, and he was restored to the army with the rank of lieutenant-general, antedated to 1825. But the same clearness of conviction-the same scrupulous sense of obligation to proclaim it—which had perhaps been the chief hindrances to his earlier career, brought Sir Robert once more into misfortune. He denounced the Reform Bill of 1831 as the initiatory measure of a republican form of government,' and resigned his seat in Parliament. He found his new patrons every whit as relentless in enforcing party discipline as his old ones had been in military matters; they deprived him of the colonelcy of his regiment, worth 1,2001. a year. However, this was restored to him four years later by Lord Melbourne's Government; and in 1842 he received his last appointment as Governor and 13 Walpole's England, i. 623.

12 See Annual Register, 1816.

14 Wellington's Despatches, 3rd series, i. 180.

Commander-in-Chief at Gibraltar, whence he returned to die at a ripe age in 1849.

He was buried beside his wife in Westminster Abbey-a place of sepulture now reserved by the nation as the supreme honour for those who have served her with most distinction. It had no special significance in regard to Wilson, who, though he had never spared himself and had done much splendid work, probably found a resting-place among heroes only in virtue of his title as an old Westminster boy.

If I cannot claim to have succeeded in the purpose with which I set out—namely, to trace to its source the secret of Wilson's disfavour with his chiefs, military and political-I think cause has been shown why the memory of this dauntless soldier should not be clean blown away.

HERBERT Maxwell.

1904

JAPANESE EMIGRANTS

COMMERCIAL Success has generally been the dominating factor in securing a nation's greatness. Its progress has been constantly westward, first from Asia to Italy, then from Italy to Spain, France, and England. Two hundred years after the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England their descendants had crossed the American continent, and President Polk, having obtained Oregon from England and California from Mexico, began to think about trade between the United States and China. In furtherance of this, and in order to obtain a coaling-station and protection for the crews of shipwrecked whaling ships, Commodore Perry was ultimately sent to Japan, with the results that are so well known, though it was not then by any means understood what a great opportunity for commercial enterprise was offered by the countries bordering on the Pacific, where about two-thirds of the human race reside.

During the last generation the development of these countries has been unexampled in history. Japan has become a world power, whilst her imports from the United States alone have increased sixfold during the last ten years. The trade of Shanghai has risen from seventy-eight million to five hundred million taels annually, whilst such towns as Seattle have grown from little more than a sawmill to a flourishing city of over 100,000 inhabitants. Of late there has been an added impulse given to this movement. The United States, in accordance with their manifest destiny, have departed from their traditional policy and annexed Hawaii, followed by the Philippine Islands. This has caused a marked rise in land values. The value of land in San Francisco, after remaining for some time stationary, has during the last year or two trebled in value, and the population of this town alone increased in 1903 by 60,000 inhabitants. In fact, everything now goes to show that the greatest commercial activity during the next fifty years will be in the Pacific trade, instead of on the Atlantic seaboard or on the shores of the Mediterranean.

In this development of trade the Japanese must inevitably play a leading part, whether from their commercial foresight or forced by the necessity of existence, for in Japan the increase of the means of subsistence has by no means kept pace with the increase of the

population. It will be a surprise to most people that the calculations of the Bureau of Agriculture of the United States show that the area of Japan suitable for cultivation is about one-third of the size of the State of Illinois, and yet so industrious and skilful are the Japanese agriculturists that this limited area suffices for the support of nearly forty-five millions of people, increasing at the rate of nearly five hundred thousand per annum. Consequently, of all the civilised nations of the world Japan most needs colonies. Formosa she has already obtained, but she requires and is entitled to a more extended sphere.

At the present time, when the valour of the Japanese soldiers and the foresight of their generals is engrossing so much attention, it may not be out of place to consider what the Japanese emigrant is like and what he is doing. In the first place it is necessary to clear our minds of a very widespread misconception. The Japanese are not Chinese. As a nation they have derived much of their arts and literature from China, mostly by way of Korea, but they are only very distantly related to the Chinese, from whom they are physically and linguistically distinct. The Magyar and the Finn are their nearest relatives in the great family of nations, and, like the Japanese, are sprung from that great Samoyede race which still wander on the shores of the Arctic Sea.

We have all of us heard of the opposition to foreign labour there is in some of the countries washed by the Pacific Ocean. Parts of Queensland have suffered severely from the restrictions enforced on Kanaka labour, whilst many of us can remember the so-called Sand Lot' agitation against the Chinese in San Francisco, which was probably as unfair an agitation as modern history records. The Chinaman had been accustomed to seek a livelihood on the Pacific Slope, at any rate from the time following the conquests of Cortes, when the Spaniard began to settle in the city of Mexico, and it was the plodding industry of the Chinaman which resulted in the construction of the railway which brought the Anglo-American. The objection urged against the Chinaman is that he does not come to settle, and, in addition, it must be confessed that whilst employers of Chinese labourers admire their docility and profit by their unfailing industry, the Chinaman does not appeal to those with whom he is brought into the relationship which exists between Capital and Labour. He continues to wear Asiatic dress and to regard his employer and fellowworkers with that calm and irritating superiority that is often shown by the man who is conscious of his ancient lineage to the nouveau riche. This exclusiveness renders it impossible to get on friendly terms with a Chinaman, who always remains the same incomprehensible Asiatic he was when he first landed in America. Chinese labour is, in fact, a good bridge that most desire to forget as soon as it has ceased to be useful. At the present time the Chinese in California number about seventy thousand, of whom about thirty thousand are in San Francisco; from small beginnings many of them have gradually