with Lord Rosebery-which are supposed by the ignorant to have been responsible for his exclusion from the Premiership. The plain fact is that there were no intrigues, but that Sir William Harcourt's colleagues in the Cabinet, not one man or one section, but almost one and all, came to the conclusion that, admirable as Sir William's qualities were in many respects, he was not a man under whose Premiership it would be possible for them to work with comfort to themselves or advantage to the country. The page of history will, I think, show conclusively that this, and this only, was the cause of his being passed over in 1894, and the cruel charge which has been brought against some of having intrigued against him, either for their own advantage or for any other reason, will then be finally refuted.

So much for an incident to which much importance seems to have been attached by Sir William's biographers. I think they do him an injustice in attributing this importance to it. Sir William had a distinguished and brilliant career, and no one will think that it was less happy in its ending because he died without having worn the thorny crown of the Premiership. He had many fine qualities as a man, and, though he had his defects of temperament, they will not diminish the affection of his friends or the admiration of those who knew him only in public life. He was staunch in his devotion to his party, even when he was most disappointed with some of its internal developments. In private life he was wholly admirable. Above all, he was second to none in his regard for the dignity of the House of Commons, and this, perhaps, was why he won so large a measure of the affection and esteem not only of his friends, but of his opponents, in that illustrious body.

WEMYSS REID.

Postscript. Since the above was written the country has been startled by the wanton and unexampled outrage committed by the so-called Baltic Squadron of the Russian fleet upon the English fishingboats in the North Sea. The outrage in itself was so completely without excuse, and was so cowardly and wicked in its character, that it is almost impossible to regard it in any other light than as the act of a madman. Certainly it is difficult to believe that any officer of any civilised State in the world would wilfully attack a harmless fishing fleet, belonging to a friendly Power, and subject it to savage bombardment from a powerful flotilla of ironclads. The Russian Government, it may be confidently anticipated, will lose no time in making all the reparation in its power for an incident which has brought discredit upon its flag, and which might seriously have jeopardised the peace of Europe. But whilst there can be no doubt as to our receiving the reparation which is due to us for this

extraordinary outrage, there is another aspect of the matter of which it is impossible to lose sight. Ever since the war with Japan broke out ships bearing the Russian flag have interfered very seriously with British shipping in different parts of the world, and have done so even after their acts have been disavowed by the authorities at St. Petersburg. In short, we have seen on the high seas, what has so often been seen in the Far East, acts committed by Russian agents not only without the sanction of their Government but in express opposition to its professed intentions. Now that these acts have assumed the tragical character of the incident in the North Sea, it is difficult for any civilised State to tolerate the possibility of their recurrence. If unarmed vessels are to be exposed to the attacks of a powerful foe whose reason has apparently given way under stress of panic, the ocean highways of the world will become impassable. In these circumstances it becomes the duty of other maritime Powers, and obviously of England first of all, to take the necessary measures for policing the seas and for preventing the possibility of any repetition of the scandalous outrage of which Admiral Rozhdestvensky and the force under his command have been guilty. English seamen look for protection to their own Government and their own fleet, and that protection it is impossible to withhold from them.-W. R.

1904

LAST MONTH

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II

ELEVEN years ago, the present writer, when fresh from Australia, set forth in these pages views which were held at the time to be rashly prophetic, but which, in the course of the last month, have become the commonplaces of the fiscal controversy. These were, firstly, that the cause of Protection and the cause of the Empire were inseparable Without pledging ourselves to tax any particular product or to adopt any catchword, we must-so it was maintained-in discussions at home, cease to speak of 'Free Trade' (so-called) as if it were a mandate from Heaven like the Ten Commandments. It must be conceded that a business expedient might suit one time or country and not another. Moreover, since all our Colonies admitted Protection to a position of equal dignity with Free Trade in their discussions on the subject, England could still less claim for her own system a Sinaitic sanction if she desired to be taken seriously by the Colonies when she spoke of closer union with them in the interests of the Empire.

It was, secondly, maintained that the cause of the Empire was the cause of the working man everywhere throughout our borders. He it is, and not the capitalist, who would be fatally injured by a break-up of the Empire. With this conclusion before our eyes the weakness of the Gospel of cheapness becomes apparent. It is not a question of securing cheap food for the labourer so that the capitalist may secure a cheap type of working man. On the contrary, it is a question of so adjusting our financial system that the very expensive Anglo-Saxon type may survive in comfort; that is the business of an Anglo-Saxon Government, and everything else must give way to that consideration. So-called Free Trade, it was argued, implied unlimited competition; and under unlimited competition the Englishman must necessarily give way before cheaper types; just as the rabbit would eat up Australia if the sheep were not 'protected.' Union is strength; and without independence (which we are rapidly losing, if we have not already lost it) cheap goods are a delusion and a snare.

Mr. Balfour's methods of thought and speech are so dispassionately

Nineteenth Century, June 1893.

speculative that the singleness of his mind on the fiscal question, as displayed in all his recent deliverances from Sheffield to Edinburgh, is not apparent to many of his adherents. Though he is a man of many words and even many speeches, and in spite of being often credited with a bewildering gift of saying nothing and saying it gracefully and convincingly, he has, on this subject, been so definite and so restricted that he might almost be called Single-speech Balfour. All the ingenuity of Opposition members has been exerted to conceal the fact that, so far as he goes, he has been clear and emphatic. With infinite skill he has confined his energies to holding his Government in office while the slowly moving mind of the country has time to grasp that the one thing he asks for is Retaliation.

Mr. Chamberlain, unhampered by the cares of office, has been able to urge his cause-our' cause one should rather say-with equal definiteness and with equal frequency of utterance; and has asked for more.' While Mr. Balfour, with characteristic caution, would be content, for the present, to secure the defensive position of Retaliation, Mr. Chamberlain, with equally characteristic impulse, has pronounced for the more belligerent right to 'Preference.'

Neither statesman will as yet venture to call himself a Protectionist ; and, perhaps, for a man of action, the word is somewhat too risky to be adopted for fighting purposes. Nevertheless, when Mr. Balfour makes it clear that the interests of the country call for Retaliation, and Mr. Chamberlain eagerly advocates Preference, we are not far from the protection that the present writer called for eleven years ago.

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Retaliation + Preference Protection; the equation is complete. Meanwhile the Tories hold office while the country thinks. The Tory Cabinet does not give complete satisfaction to its supporters (as what Cabinet ever did ?), yet if we imagine what use its opponents would make of power, if the country were to place power in their hands, we shall easily reconcile ourselves to a long continuance of Tory Government. None the less must it be recorded that the party will utterly destroy its power for good if it allows any coquetting with 'Home Rule on the sly,' of which there have been lately some ominous signs.

Assuming, however, that the party, as a whole, is not in sympathy with any fresh movement in favour of plundering England for the benefit of Ireland, and finds itself free to face the problem of fiscal reform, there is no party that could face it with better chance of success. It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the difficulties: difficulties are made to be overcome; and to this end Mr. Balfour's mind and Mr. Chamberlain's mind are complementary. Supposing that we had only to deal with the United Kingdom, we should still have to remember how materially things have changed since 'sixty years ago,' when a not less stupendous fiscal revolution was effected. As

Mr. Balfour has himself pointed out, the 'vested interests' disturbed by the abolition of the Corn Laws were mostly the interests of highly placed people. To a man with considerable accumulations of personalty it was not a matter of life and death to maintain the existing system. Even to many a landlord dependent on his land for his income the question presented itself as one of principle rather than of immediate profit and loss. There are many solvents of opposition in such circumstances. But when nothing less than next week's living is at stake the complexity of the situation is intensified.

Still more is it intensified when we have to deal, not only with the tangled web of commercial interests in these islands, but with similar tangles in three continents. To revert for a moment to Australia, we see a continent larger than the United States of America, but with a ridiculously small population, a mere fringe, numbering some three millions. The land cries aloud for population. Who keeps it out? It is not a ready-made country that we see; on the contrary, it is a country that needs capital more than any other country on the face of the earth. Who frightens capital away? Capital is the mother of labour everywhere, and most of all in Australia. So far as a sympathetic observer can judge of a situation from the distance of 12,000 miles, Protection has been misapplied in the Commonwealth. It often happens that a sound principle is misapplied; and there is nothing discreditable in admitting the fact. It seems clear that the resources of a great continent are being wasted in the attempt to make a manufacturing country where Nature has placed an agricultural country. Hence we have a tiny fringe of population artificially restricted to the great cities, whose existence is a terrible burden to the land. If this conclusion is sound, the fiscal problem in the Commonwealth will take shape as a struggle on the part of the land to regain the ascendency which a mistaken policy has conferred upon the cities. There, as here, the working man will decide. It need hardly be indicated that a very small measure of Mr. Chamberlain's 'preference' would give the country party a stake in the conflict which it has not so far realised, and would open up a future of boundless prosperity for Australia. At present it is clear that the continent is half strangled. South Africa has a peck of troubles of her own; no doubt Canada would have a great deal to say. The case for an Imperial conference on what the Colonies want, and what England has to offer them, is overwhelming.

The newspaper topics started in the dead season are useful indications of what in the opinion of their shrewd proprietors is likely to excite popular attention-to 'catch on,' as the popular phraseology has it. For this autumn, in place of the sea serpent, we have had two main subjects tried-the everlasting marriage question, succeeded by the religious, or quasi-religious, discussion of 'Do we believe?' Neither of them, perhaps, has thrown out any illumination, or,