Land Bill into the House of Commons.

Mr. Gladstone's

measure overthrew once for all the doctrine of the landlord's absolute and unlimited right. It recognised a certain property or partnership of the tenant in the land which he tilled. Mr. Gladstone took the Ulster tenant-right as he found it, and made it a legal institution. In places where the Ulster practice, or something analogous to it, did not exist, he threw upon the landlord the burden of proof as regarded the right of eviction. The tenant disturbed in the possession of his land could claim compensation for improvements, and the bill reversed the existing assumption of the law by presuming all improvements to be the property of the tenant, and leaving it to the landlord, if he could, to prove the contrary. The bill established a special judicial machinery for carrying out its provisions. It allowed the tribunals thus instituted to take into consideration not merely the strict legal conditions of each case, but also any circumstances that might affect the claim of the tenant as a matter of equity. Mr. Gladstone's great object was to bring about a state of things by virtue of which a tenant should not be dispossessed of his holding so long as he continued to pay his rent, and should in any case be entitled to full compensation for any substantial improvements which his energy or his capital might have effected. Mr. Gladstone, however, allowed landlords, under certain conditions, to contract themselves out of the provisions of the bill, and these conditions were so largely availed of in some parts of Ireland that there were more evictions after the bill had become law than before it had yet been thought of. On this ground the measure was actually opposed by some of the popular representatives of Ireland. The general opinion, however, then and since was, that the bill was of inestimable value to Ireland in the mere fact that it completely upset the fundamental principles on which legislation had always previously dealt with Irish land tenure. It put an end to the reign of the landlord's absolute power; it reduced the landlord to the level of every other proprietor, of every other man in the country who had anything to sell or hire. It decided once for all against Lord Palmerston's famous dogma, and declared that tenant-right was not landlord's wrong. Therefore the new legislation might in one sense have well been called revolutionary.

On

The bill passed without substantial alteration. August 1, 1870, the bill received the Royal assent. The second

branch of the upas-tree had been hewn down; but the woodman's axe had yet to be laid to a branch of a tougher fibre, well calculated to turn the edge of even the best weapon, and to jar the strongest arm that wielded it. Mr. Gladstone had dealt with Church and land; he had yet to deal with university education. He had gone with Irish ideas thus far.

CHAPTER XXIV.

6 REFORMATION IN A FLOOD.'

ON June 10, 1870, men's minds were suddenly turned away from thought of political controversy to a country house near the Gad's Hill of Shakespeare, on the road to Rochester, where the most popular author of his day was lying dead. On the evening of June 8, Mr. Dickens became suddenly seized with paralysis. He fell into an unconscious state and continued so until his death, the evening after. The news was sent over the country on the 10th, and brought a pang as of personal sorrow into almost every home. Dickens was not of an age to die; he had scarcely passed his prime. Born early in February 1812, he had not gone far into his fifty-ninth year. No author of our time came near him in popularity; perhaps no English author ever was so popular during his own life. To an immense number of men and women in these countries, Dickens stood for literature; to not a few his cheery teaching was sufficient as philosophy and even as religion. Soon after his death, as might have been expected, a certain reaction took place, and for a while it became the fashion to smile quietly at Dickens's teaching and his influence. That mood too will have its day and will pass. It may be safely predicted that Dickens will be found to have made a firm place in English literature, although that place will probably not be so high as his admirers would once have claimed for him. Londoners were familiar with Dickens's personal appearance as well as with his writings, and certain London streets did not seem quite the same when his striking face and energetic movements could be seen there no more. It is likely that Dickens overworked his exuberant vital energy, his superb resources of physical health and animal spirits. In work and play, in writing and in exercising, he was unsparing of his

powers. Men who were early companions of his, and who had not half his vital power, outlived him many years. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, although his own desire was to be laid quietly in Rochester churchyard. It was held that the national cemetery claimed him. We cannot help thinking it a pity the claim was made. Most of the admirers of Dickens would have been better pleased to think that he lay beneath the green turf of the ancient churchyard, in venerable and storied Rochester, amid the scenes that he loved and taught so many others to love.

Nothing in modern English history is like the rush of the extraordinary years of reforming energy on which the new Administration had now entered. Mr. Gladstone's Government had to grapple with five or six great questions of reform, any one of which might have seemed enough to engage the whole attention of an ordinary Administration. The new Prime Minister had pledged himself to abolish_the_State Church in Ireland and to reform the Irish Land Tenure system. He had made up his mind to put an end to the purchase of commissions in the army. Recent events and experiences had convinced him that it was necessary to introduce the system of voting by ballot. He accepted for his Government the responsibility of originating a complete scheme of National Education. Meanwhile, there were many questions of the highest importance in foreign policy waiting for solution. It required no common energy and strength of character to keep closely to the work of domestic reform, amid such exciting discussions in foreign policy all the while, and with the wartrumpet ringing for a long time in the ears of England.

Mr. Forster's Education Bill may be said to have been run side by side with the Irish Land Bill. The manner in which England had neglected the education of her poor children had long been a reproach to her civilisation. She was behind every other great country in the world; she was behind many countries that in nowise professed to be great. For years the statesmanship of England had been kept from any serious attempt to grapple with the evil by the doctrine that popular education ought not to be the business of a Government. Private charity was eked out in a parsimonious and miserable manner by a scanty dole from the State; and as a matter of course, where the direst poverty prevailed, and naturally brought the extremest need for assistance to educaion, there the wants of the place were least efficiently sup

plied. It therefore came about that more than two-thirds of the children of the country were absolutely without instruction. One of the first great tasks which Mr. Gladstone's Government undertook was to reform this condition of things, and to provide England for the first time in her history with a system of National Education. On February 17, 1870, Mr. Forster introduced a bill, having for its object to provide for public elementary education in England and Wales. Mr. Forster proposed to establish a system of School Boards in England and Wales; and to give to each board the power to frame bye-laws compelling the attendance of all children, from five to twelve years of age, within the school district. The Government did not see their way to a system of direct and universal compulsion. They therefore fell back on a compromise, by leaving the power to compel in the hands of the local authorities. Existing schools were, in many instances, to be adopted by the bill, and to receive Government aid, on condition that they possessed a certain amount of efficiency in education, that they submitted themselves to the examination of an undenominational inspector, and that they admitted a conscience clause as part of their regulations. The funds were to be procured, partly by local rates, partly by grants from the Treasury, and partly by the fees paid in the paying schools. There were of course to be free schools provided, where the poverty of the population was such as, in the opinion of the local authorities, to render gratuitous instruction indispensable.

The bill at first was favourably received. But the general harmony of opinion did not last long. Mr. Forster found, when he came to examine into the condition of the machinery of education in England, that there was already a system of schools existing under the charge of religious bodies of various kinds the State Church, and the Roman Catholic Church, and other authorities. These he proposed to adopt as far as possible into his scheme; to affiliate them, as it were, to the Governmental system of education. But he had to make some concession to the religious principles on which such schools were founded. He could not by any stroke of authority undertake to change them all into secular schools. He therefore proposed to meet the difficulty by adopting regulations compelling every school of this kind which obtained Government aid or recognition to accept a conscience clause, by means of which the religious convictions of parents and

children should be scrupulously regarded in the instruction given during the regular school hours. On this point the Nonconformists as a body broke away from the Government. They laid down the broad principle that no State aid whatever should be given to any schools but those which were conducted on strictly secular and undenominational principles. Their principle was that public money, the contribution of citizens of all shades of belief, ought only to be given for such teaching as the common opinion of the country was agreed upon. The contribution of the Jew, they argued, ought not to be exacted in order to teach Christianity; the Protestant ratepayer ought not to be compelled to pay for the instruction of Roman Catholic children in the tenets of their faith; the Irish Catholic in London or Birmingham ought not to be called upon to pay in any way for the teaching of distinctively Protestant doctrine

Mr. Forster could not admit the principle for which they contended. He could not say that it would be a fair and equal plan to offer secular education, and that alone, to all bodies of the community; for he was well aware that there were such bodies who were conscientiously opposed to what was called secular education, and who could not agree to accept it. He therefore endeavoured to establish a system which should satisfy the consciences of all the denominations. But the Nonconformists would not meet him on this ground. They fought Mr. Forster long and ably and bitterly. The Liberal minister was compelled to accept more than once the aid of the Conservative party; for that party as a whole adopted the principle which insisted on religious instruction in every system of national education. It more than once happened, therefore, that Mr. Forster and Mr. Gladstone found themselves appealing to the help of Conservatives and of Roman Catholics against that dissenting body of Englishmen who were usually the main support of the Liberal party. It happened too, very unfortunately, that at this time Mr. Bright's health had so far given way as to compel him to seek complete rest from parliamentary duties. His presence and his influence with the Nonconformists might perhaps have tended to moderate their course of action, and to reconcile them to the policy of the Government even on the subject of national education; but his voice was silent then, and for long after. The split between the Government and the Nonconformists became something like a complete severance.