Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN L . 9 , , ^ V 6- w C-'t t^^t ^--Cxu^' / v,, i^-scl I < ^" ' ^ ! _ ^ _ v/ f r " % "/* ^/* * o ,. STEAY SHOTS I.OSnON : miXTKD BT Bi'OTTISU'OODE AM> CO.. XE\V-STKKET 8QCAHB AJiU PAUl.lAME.Vr 6TUKET STRAY SHOTS POLITICAL, MILITARY, ECONOMICAL, AND SOCIAL BY SIR EDWARD SULLIVAN, BART. AUTHOR OP 'FKEE TRADE BUBBLES' ' PROTECTION TO NATIVE INDUSTRY' 'HAPPY ENGLAND' 'THE FROTH AND THE DREGS' 'OUR ECONOMIC CATOS ' ETC. LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1884 All rights resffred INTRODUCTORY. A MAN with what Lord Granville calls a ' cross-bench ' mind is of no use to either political party ; but the fact that he forms his own ideas of public policy, morality, and honour, is no reason why he should not be able to see as far through a brick wall as those who take their political opinions at second hand from their leaders. The ' cross-bench ' mind may be a nuisance, but T really think it is more respectable than the purely party mind. We comfort ourselves with the idea that we are much better off than any of our neighbours, because our govern- ing class is composed of men of fortune and position perfectly independent of salaries and patronage; in a position to consult their will, and not their necessities. But what is the use of having the richest Cabinet that was ever brought together, if these same rich men divest themselves entirely of their political consciences, and vote black is white and white is black exactly as their leaders desire them ? Cicero's wish, that l every man should have written on his brow what he really thought of the affairs of the State,' can never be realised ; but at the same time it is 2768 vi INTRODUCTORY. rather startling, not to say shocking, to contrast our friends' and neighbours' private expressions on political questions with their public votes ! The number of those who take to politics as a profes- sion, as others take to the law, the Church, the army, physic, or trade, and who scramble and fight for the plums of office, is very small : about fifty on one side and fifty on the other play at the ' tug of war,' and try to pull each other over the line and take the prize. There is a good deal of ' business ' in politics and, as in all other professions, ' business ' pays better than anything. Probably the most successful instance of pure profes- sional business in our political annals was the Midlothian campaign. The invective, the solemn appeals to hu- manity and justice the assumption of noble motives, the insinuation of base ones the suggestions, the suppressions, the exaggerations, the perversions, the denunciations the passion, the poses, the general dramatic effect combined to make it a great success. Those who got office by it naturally speak of it as one of the grandest triumphs of speech ever achieved. To those who merely look on, and have since tested it by results, it bears a comical re- semblance to the ' chop and tomato sauce ' oratory of the immortal Buzfuz ! I misti-ust entirely the assumption of superior motives. When a man claims to have greater humanity, or a higher sense of right or wrong, than his neighbours, I simply don't believe him. A man who parades his motives may generally be written down a rogue. I believe we are all impelled by much the same motives, INTRODUCTORY. vii and I believe these influences have regard chiefly to No. 1. In politics especially motives are always suspect. There is no more honour in politics than there is in gallantry. The duty of dishing your opponent is far more imperative than that of serving your country. England is the land of Prigs, of Pecksniffs, of Uriah Heeps, of Pharisees of all kinds : there has always been a more impudent parade of motives in England than in all the rest of the world besides ; but under the recent dis- pensation the increase of this pestilent sham has become quite shocking ; the growth of ( superior persons ' is actu- ally portentous ! Every transparent party dodge is now made a peg on which to hang superior motives, and no earnest statesman dare eat his political fig without in- voking the name of the Prophet. Whilst these letters were in the course of publication, a discussion was raised in a local newspaper as to whether the writer was a Liberal or a Conservative. As the writer has never solicited the vote and interest of any free and enlightened constituency, and never intends to do so, the question has no practical importance. But no honest man likes to sail under false colours, and if the public care to know the political faith of one who belongs to ' no party,' they are welcome to it, and whether they find it Liberal or Conservative, wise or foolish, practicable or impracticable, does not much signify. I believe that Gladstoneism is the national enemy : That it is inconsistent with patriotism, with pride of race, with empire. I believe it is opposed to every single quality of the viii INTRODUCTORY. English race that has contributed to make them famous. I believe it has already poisoned the very life-springs of the national character, and, if persisted in, will bring the British Empire to rapid and complete ruin. I believe the scuttle out of the Transvaal was the most disgraceful incident in the Imperial history of England. I believe that if that disgraceful act had not familiar- ised the nation with dishonour, the desertion of Sinkat and Tokar, of Berber, Khartoum, and finally of Gordon himself, would have been impossible. I believe the Boer Treaty was the first public step in the decadence of England. I believe that since the days of Charles II. no such disgraceful treaty as that of Kilmainham has ever been negotiated by a British Minister. I think the practice of buying the votes of * faddists ' of all kinds, and of the revolutionary party generally, with Imperial interests and with the interests of the com- munity, is by far the most widely ruinous and the most unprincipled system of bribery that has ever been adopted by any government in the world. I believe Gladstoneism has made the Repeal of the Irish Union inevitable : That it has ruined Egypt : That it has unsettled India : That it has fanned class antipathies to a heat never before seen in this country : That it has everywhere brought the honour of England into contempt : INTRODUCTORY. IX That it is a policy of ' cant and re-cant : ' That it will ruin the Empire. My common sense revolts against the reign of exuberant verbosity. I prefer the orator who uses ten words to explain facts, to the orator who uses a thousand words to confuse facts. I think the qualities of a judge are far more valuable in a statesman than those of an advocate. I believe the most demoralising influence a country can be exposed to, is that of a Minister who has the marvellous power of persuading himself and those about him that what is absolutely black one day is absolutely white the next. I despise the ' chalk ' Liberalism that consists in A compelling B to give something to D, whilst A gives nothing at all to D himself. I despise the Liberalism that is profuse of the interests, and rights, and property of others, but is greedy of its own. / I believe, as a matter of fact, that the House of Lords does its work better than the House of Commons. I don't believe the bishops do any good in the House of Lords. I believe that a State Church conduces to order and decency in public worship. I am in favour of female suffrage. My common sense tells me it is the height of folly and injustice to refuse the franchise to hundreds of thousands of educated intelligent persons, many with vast posses- sions and responsibilities, the chief actors in our social life, merely because they are women ; and to grant it X INTRODUCTORY. to hundreds of thousands of uneducated, irresponsible persons, merely because they are men. I would treat disease and drink as a question of police, according to the dictates of humanity, experience, common sense, and science. I am in favour of the Contagious Diseases Acts. I am in favour of the Vaccination Act. I am opposed to the abuse of liquor, and in favour of the use of it. It appears to me monstrous that a man who does not want to drink a glass of beer should have the power of preventing another from drinking one who does. My common sense tells me that it is not more wicked to drink a glass of beer on Sunday than on Saturday or Monday. I believe that drink is the damning curse and disgrace of the English people. I believe that the prevalence of intemperance amongst women in England has no parallel, and never has had, in the world. To describe the most drunken nation as the most civilised is absurd. I believe a drunken woman is ten times a greater curse to society and to humanity than a drunken man. I would not, like the Eonians, kill a drunken woman : but I would make it very hard for her to drink. I would make it penal to serve women with drink in a public-house. I believe the proper way to meet the disease of drunken- ness is by trying to make the lives of the workers more bright and hopeful, by opening to them every respectably- conducted place of amusement and instruction on Sunday. My common sense tells me that it is a monstrous INTRODUCTORY. xi injustice to close the British Museum and the National Gallery to the British nation on the only day in the week it is in their power to enjoy them. I am strongly in favour of compulsory elementary education. I think Government grants should be based on the number that pass the lower standards : not on the few that pass the upper standard. I think that applying 'high pressure' education to pauper, ill-nourished children is cruel and stupid, and will certainly make education unpopular. I would abolish capital punishment : but would flog for cruelty and brutality. I would punish, most severely, the use of false weights and measures, and adulterations of all sorts and kinds, especially of food and drink. I believe that ' rings ' and ' middle men ' stand between the poorer classes and the full advantages of cheap food. I believe that social reform improved dwellings, im- proved sanitary arrangements, better cooking, wholesome food, and drink, education, amusement, &c., &c. conduce far more, a hundred times more, to a nation's happiness than political reforms. * Quid leges sine moribus vanse proficiunt ? ' I consider the greatest and most imminent danger to the fabric of society is the immense abyss that separates rich and poor : in the concentration of land and money into very few hands. I would rather see 100 men with 1,OOOZ. a year each, in land and money, or 1,000 men with 100?. a year each Xll INTRODUCTORY. in land or money, than one man with 100,000/. a year. I believe that, call it by what name you like, those fiscal conditions cannot be right that throw our land out of cultivation, and drive our industries abroad. I believe that the distribution of wealth is of more importance than the accumulation of wealth : That employment is of more importance than cheap- ness ; quality than price. I believe that in all industrial communities it is neces- sary to protect the employment of the people : That unrestricted foreign competition is fatal to the vested interests of labour. I believe that in exaggerated, artificially encouraged competition, especially in foreign competition, will be found the chief causes of our increasing national misery. The statesman who diminishes the necessity for com- petition adds ten times more to the happiness of his fellow- countrymen than the statesman who increases the necessity for it. I believe the efficiency of both army and navy are far below the standard required to insure the national safety. Our national duty is fully comprised in Mr. Cobden's now famous letter to Earl Russell : ' I would, if necessary, spend 120 millions to maintain an irresistible superiority over France at sea.' And in Stephen Decatur's famous toast : * Our Country ! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right ; but our Country right or wrong.' CONTENTS. POLITICAL. PAGE CONSISTENCY 3 II. A TEBE is KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS . ... 6 III. MORAL COURAGE 10 IV. THE PALACE OF TRUTH 17 V. A FOOL'S PARADISE 22 VI. PRIDE OP RACE 27 VII. THE BALLOT IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ... 32 VIII. THE HOUSE OF LORDS 34 IX. STATESMANSHIP 36 X. A FRESH DEPARTURE 40 XL CORRUPT PRACTICES 43 XII. WHO ARE MY BRETHREN? .45 XIII. THE LAND ACT 50 XIV. THE HOUSE OF LORDS 67 XV. THE CLOTURE 76 XVI. RUNNING WITH THE HARE AND HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS 83 XVII. DEBASEMENT 85 XVIII. GERMANY . . . 88 XIX. PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE 95 XX. WEALTH. 101 XXI. MILITARY POLICY IN THE SOUDAN 104 XXII. Two MANDATES 107 XXIII. POLITICAL WHITE ELEPHANTS . 113 xiv CONTENTS. PAGE XXIV. NEMESIS 115 XX V. STATE-AIDED EMIGRATION 119 XXVI. THE DUKE'S STATUE '.124 XXVII. GLADSTONEISM . . . 128 MILITARY. XXVIII. AN OPTICAL DELUSION .137 XXIX. REGIMENTAL OFFICERS 138 XXX. AN ARMY IN ITS TEENS 144 XXXI. THE UNITED SERVICE 156 XXXII. THE HOUSEHOLD CAVALRY 167 XXXIII. MILITARY REFORM. A SUGGESTION . . . . 172 XXXIV. PREMATURE ENLISTMENT 177 XXXV. Two ARMIES . 1 ' asks Mr. Bright. ' Certainly not,' reply the passengers ; ' but we should have a much higher opinion of the judgment of the captain if he had taken these necessary precautions when he was warned the storm was gathering, instead of waiting till it burst upon us.' ' When mutiny or piracy is attempted,' again asks Mr. Bright, ' would you object to the captain exerting his power and putting- the troublesome men in irons ? ' ' Certainly not,' reply the passengers again ; ' but when it was evident to all of us the mutiny was hatching, we should have been better pleased if the captain and officers had not apparently sympathised with the mutineers and encouraged them to come to extremities.' * Would any man,' says Mr. Bright, ' prefer the loss of the ship to the infringement of his own democratic ideas of freedom ? ' This is a question I would rather not answer, but it is beyond doubt that there are numbers, and even in responsible positions, who do not hesitate at any moment to run the ship into the greatest danger in order to further their own democratic ideas of freedom. * Men whom a lifeboat has dragged out of a vessel going to pieces on the rocks must not complain too loudly if they lose some of their property in the process,' says the fortunate Lord Derby, who has lately sold his large Irish property at probably double its present value. Per- haps not ; but the passengers may certainly complain, and CONSISTENCY. 5 loudly too, if they have cause to think that it was the obstinacy and incapacity of the officers that ran the ship on to the rocks and made the use of the lifeboat necessary. But really has it come to this ? Has national ship- wreck come upon us so quickly that an ex-Cabinet Minister already describes Great Britain as ' a vessel going to pieces on the rocks,' from which the passengers must be thankful to escape, even with the loss of their property ? Certainly the Birmingham speeches provide us with some startling surprises. ' I do not pretend to be a Democrat,' said Mr. Bright : ' I never accepted that title.' Mr. Bright, then, will not lead the Democrat army in person. He prefers to point out the way it should go and await the result. ' March on, brave army, and when you've won the battle let me know.' When I came to the sentence in which Mr. Bright asks his hearers whether they did not ' feel that something like a great calm had come over the country,' I was fairly puzzled. I rubbed my eyes to make sure that I was awake. I could only explain it on the supposition that Mr. Bright had visited a music-hall and carried away the nonsensical joke of some nigger clown ' Yah, yah, how you am this day to-morrow ? ' The population of Ireland is about equal to the population of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Let us for a moment suppose that the same condition of affairs existed in Lancashire and Yorkshire that now exists in Ireland; that the county members and 500 or 600 citizens of the better class were imprisoned in Manchester and York gaols without trial ; that the Radical papers were suppressed ; that respectable women were arrested, children imprisoned for whistling seditious airs ; that men dare not pay their rents or fulfil their contracts ; that tradesmen were ' Boycotted ' and ruined for supplying necessaries to the unpopular class ; that women had their hair shaved off for being seen speaking to a policeman ; that every day men and women were threatened, murdered, 6 'STRAY SHOTS.' mutilated, cattle maimed and destroyed; that 40,000 troops were employed in evicting tenants and safe- guarding foxhunters ; thai the judge declared from the bench that ' lawlessness, terrorism, and deliberate com- bination for the perpetration of deadly crime stalked undetected ; ' if this was the present condition of Lan- cashire and Yorkshire would Mr. Bright venture to speak so pleasantly of the ' great calm that had come over the country ' ? and is not Ireland as much a part of the United Kingdom as Lancashire and Yorkshire ? Let us look the matter in the face. Ireland contains about one-fifth of the population of the United Kingdom. By far the larger proportion of this population are in a state of rebellion against the law ; not only are they in a state of rebellion, but they are in a state of successful rebellion, and Mr. Bright asks us to be thankful for a great calm. More than this, he calls upon us to be thankful that we are in the hands of those under whom these things have come to pass. But do we not know, does not every man know, does not Mr. Bright before all men know, and know as certainly as he knows that the sun sometimes shines in the heavens, that if the present condition of Ireland had existed under the Government of Lord Beaconsfield there would not have been stumps enough in the country to accommodate him and his friends in their holy duty of denouncing the tyranny, the incapacity, the treason, the &c., of those who had made such things possible, and to demand their impeachment ? II. A TREE IS KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS. Is it permitted to one who belongs to neither political party, and who does not care twopence who are the ' ins ' and who are the 'outs,' provided the country is fairly A TREE IS KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS. 7 governed, to inquire what fruit we have gathered from the great Gladstonian tree that was planted amid such general acclamation three years ago ? Has it been altogether a different kind of fruit, sweeter and more palatable than that borne by the tree that preceded it, or is it very much the same, only a trifle more sour and indigestible? I know I shall be told that where Mr. Gladstone is concerned no inquiry is allowed ; that the rules that apply to ordinary politicians do not apply to him; that, in fact, where in other mortals we look for results, in him we must not only be satisfied but thankful for intentions. This is a very comfortable argument for those ' waiters on Providence,' as Mr. Labouchere calls them, f who consider they will best serve their own in- terests and best insure their re-election by giving an un- qualified and undeviating support to Mr. Gladstone.' It is of course no argument at all for heretics like myself, who can only see in Mr. Gladstone a most astute, eloquent, various, and, I must add, unscrupulous party leader. Good intentions are admirable in every one, but it does not do to forget they are so common that a certain thickly-populated place is said to be paved with them ! But there are other reasons why many in the country are curious to check the results of Mr. Gladstone's three years' dictatorship. The campaign in which he accom- plished the overthrow of Lord Beaconsfield was not con- ducted within the ordinary lines of party contests. The buttons were ostentatiously removed from the foils. It was a duel a mort. The simple ' ote-toi de la, que je m'y mette ' that, in tones more or less polite, is the usual war-cry of contending political parties, was in this case replaced with invective and denunciation of the most vindictive and personal character. ' I should almost lose faith in humanity,' said a member of the present Govern- ment, ' if the English people did not sweep this infamous Government from the place they occupy.' The fierce denunciations of Warren Hastings by the managers of 8 'STRAY SHOTS.' the Great Trial are the only parallel to the personal in- vective hurled at Lord Beaconsfield by his opponents at the last general election. * What a wicked man Warren Hastings must be,' was the quiet remark of Warren Hastings to a friend as he listened to Sheridan's great speech. * What wicked men we must all be ! ' was doubtless the remark of the members of the late Govern- ment as they listened to the charges of inhumanity, blood- guiltiness, &c., that were hurled at them by their accusers. Leaving on one side promises and ' good intentions ' let us look actually at results ; let us see what constitutes the great difference between the ' infamous ' Government that was swept away by the last general election and that which has succeeded it. Let us try and ' know the tree by its fruits : ' 1. Irre- sponsible utterances : ' Hands off, Austria,' * evictions are tantamount to death,' 'the Chapel Bell,' &c.; 2. The failure of the commercial treaty with France ; 3. The Dulcigno difficulty ; 4. The repeal of the Peace Preservation Act ; 5. A reign of terror and horrible outrage ; 6. The Land Act; 7. Acts of repression the most severe and most sweeping ever known in Ireland ; 8. The Kilmainham Treaty; 9. The Arrears Bill; 10. Our crowning disgrace in the Transvaal ; II. The ridiculous squabble with the House of Lords; 12. The bombardment of the forts of Alexandria; 13. The burning of a portion of the city; 14. The break-up of the European Concert ; 15. The despatch of 30,000 men to Egypt ; 16. The despatch of the Indian Contingent to Egypt; 17. The blood-guiltiness of Tel-el-Kebir, of Obeid, of Trinkitat, of Teb, and Tama- nieb; 18. The stamping out the national rising in Egypt; 19. Hoisting Humpty-Dumpty on the wall again; 20. The sham trial of Arabi ; 21. The Jingo parade of troops through the streets of London; 22. The Bradlaugh scandal, three times renewed ; 23. Consternation amongst the Anglo-Indian community ; 24. Increased manufactur- ing and agricultural depression ; 25. The Cloture. A TREE IS KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS. 9 Well, I believe this is a fair catalogue of the political incidents of the last three years. Naturally, those who think everything must be for the best in this best of Governments will see everything to be proud of in it all ; but to me, I confess, it appears very commonplace, very unsatisfactory, in no single respect an improvement on the last Government, or any Government preceding it. In spite of all that was promised, of the deafening flourish of Radical trumpets, there has been nothing grand or noble in it. On the contrary, to my understanding, it bears the unmistakable stamp of childishness and petulancy. It appears throughout to have been inspired and directed by two distinct motives a desire to undo, at any cost, all that the preceding Government had done ; and a desire to fulfil the impossible programme of Midlothian. It was childish to insult Austria and apologise the next day ; it was childish to use phrases that directly stimulated Irish outrages ; it was childish to force a quarrel on the House of Lords, when the House of Lords was right; it was childish to repeal the Peace Preservation Act, when it became necessary almost immediately afterwards to apply to Parliament for two Acts of repression far more stringent; it was childish to expect to advance the prosperity of Ire- land by an Act that absolutely arrested the investment of capital in that country, and stopped entirely the sale and distribution of land. It was almost like * setting fire to your bed in order to kill a flea' to stake the peace of Europe on the Dulcigno adventure. If it was so right to send 30,000 men to guard the gates of India in Egypt in 1882, why was it so wrong to send 30,000 men to guard the gates of India in Afghanistan in 1879 ? If it was so patriotic an act to employ Indian troops to prevent the Egyptians holding Egypt in 1882, why was it almost treasonable to employ Indian troops to prevent the Russians taking Constantinople in 1879? The cases are quite different, I am told. It may be so, but the objects were the same ; but it is not the difference in the cases 10 'STRAY SHOTS.' that makes these acts absolutely right in the one case and absolutely wrong in the other. The difference is in the men that did them. What was merely a choleric word in the captain is treated as rank blasphemy in the soldier. It would be comical, if it were not so serious a matter, to note how swiftly the wings of Nemesis have overtaken those who so fiercely accused the late Government. Scarcely three years have elapsed, and already the very men who charged them with inhumanity, blood-guiltiness, and Jingoism have to explain away the burning of Alexandria, the blood-guiltiness of Tel-el-Kebir, the march through London, whilst one of the most violent of their number actually lectures the inhuman party on the inconvenience of ' indulging in the ill-directed impulses of humanity ! ' And Jingoism ! Ye Gods ! Why, the parade of troops through the streets of London was the most startling, not to say slightly vulgar, exhibition of Jingoism this country has ever witnessed. Naturally the people wonder, and some of them say, ' Why, this fellow that did cast out Jingoes has proved to be himself the very Prince of the Jingoes ! ' III. MORAL COURAGE. WE are not accustomed to look for a higher standard of moral courage in our public than in our private friends ; but, for the life of me ; I cannot see why we should neces- sarily expect a lower one. In private life, if a man is better informed than his neighbours, he is expected, when asked, to give the advantages of his superior knowledge to those who are still wandering in error. We should not think much of his moral courage, or, indeed, of his honesty either, if he gave advice contrary to his con- MORAL COURAGE. 11 victions, merely because he thought it would be more popular. If we expect a certain amount of moral courage in our private friends, why should we not look for it in our public ones ? Why should we not expect our re- presentatives and our governors to give us their honest convictions on social matters, whether they add to their popularity or not? It is very disturbing to feel that the advice that is given us is more often dictated by the influence it will have on our votes than on our welfare. The question must already have occurred to many of us how long any Government can continue in a course in which squeezability is the rule and moral courage the exception. I declare that in the four momentous questions that have lately occupied the attention of Parliament and of the country viz., the Contagious Diseases Act, the Vac- cination Act, Local Option, and the Sunday Opening of Museums there appears to have been a want of moral courage on the part of those who are kind enough to act as our representatives and as our rulers that is positively alarming. Nobody, of course, is fool enough to expect heroism in such matters, but it certainly is startling to see respected members of Parliament voting against their consciences in order to keep their seats, and honoured members of the Government throwing their principles to the winds in order to keep office. I am afraid there is no doubt that the principle of that wretched Kilmainham Treaty has come to be recog- nised as an axiom of Government by the present dominant race of politicians. Compromise in any shape and with anybody is found to be a more effective weapon than firmness. 'Mr. Parnell is steeped in treason,' says some member of the Government. ' Sheridan is the organiser of murder and outrage,' says Mr. Forster. 'No doubt,' says the Government, 'but Mr. Parnell can command votes, arid we want them.' ' Mr. Stansfeld is an enthu- 12 'STRAY SHOTS; siast,' say most sensible men, ' the mouthpiece of a noisy fanatical minority.' ' Certainly he is,' says the Govern- ment, * but Mr. Stansfeld commands votes, and we want them.' * If Mr. Hopwood's views on vaccination are conceded,' say all the men of science and medical ex- perience in the country, 'the scourge of small-pox will frightfully increase.' ' It appears very probable,' says the Government, 'but Mr. Hopwood has votes, and we want them.' ' The museums and galleries ought to be opened to the public on Sundays,' says almost every man of liberal thought and education in the country. * Of course they ought,' says the Government, ' but the Sabba- tarians have votes, and we want them.' Allowing for a certain number of honest fanatics, worthy descendants of those poor creatures of old who passed their lives standing on pillars, in walking from place to place with peas in their shoes, or in some other equally useful occupation, is it not a fact that every educated man, Liberal or Conser- vative, possesses the inward consciousness that the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, the trifling with the Vaccination Act, the assent to the principle of Local Option, the refusal to open museums and other places of amusement and instruction on Sundays, is .each one a distinct triumph of ignorance, bigotry, and fanaticism, and a distinct slap in the face to reason, justice, humanity, and common sense ? There is a disease more loathsome in itself, and more shocking in its hereditary effects, than any other that human flesh is heir to. By it the sins of the father are visited on the children to the third and fourth generation with an intensity that exists in no other disease ; thou- sands of infants perish miserably of it every year, or grow up blind, or deaf, or crippled, their life poisoned at its very source. ' It is a disease imposed by a merciful Providence as a punishment for vice,' say the fanatics, ' and it is a sin to attempt to diminish it.' ' It is a vice of civilisation,' says common sense, ' and it is the duty of MOKAL COUEAGE. 13 humanity to try and minimise it.' Well, a few years ao common sense and humanity were in the ascendant, and by the advice and assistance of some members of the present Government certain police regulations were sanc- tioned by Parliament, with the object of arresting the spread of disease. In the towns in which these Acts have been in operation it has diminished more than one-half. There has not been a single complaint of tyranny, in- justice, insult, or abuse of power. The inhabitants of these towns of all classes and denominations, of all shades of religion and politics, especially the miserable victims of disease themselves, are in favour of the continuance of these Acts. Of the nineteen members who represent the boroughs included in the Acts, not one can be found to say a word against them. If the much-vaunted local option could be applied in these boroughs, the Acts would be maintained almost without dissent. Suddenly, just when these Acts seemed firmly established, when humanity was reaping the benefit of them, when the time actually seemed approaching for extending their advantages to other portions of the community, the condition of affairs is reversed. At the first blast of the brazen trumpet of the champion of contagion the Government to a man abandon their defences, throw down their arms, a,nd range themselves under his banner. Why is this ? How is it that the moral courage of these political Bob Acres has oozed out of the fingers at the first note of Mr. Stansfeld's challenge ? How is it that the very men who have assisted to pass these Acts, who have year after year spoken and voted for them, appear now to be struck with remorse, and hasten with shame and horror to repudiate them ? Have the conditions of the social problem altered ? Has any new light been thrown upon it ? Is there any new moral meaning in it ? ' Moral ! no, by my troth, I have no moral meaning. I mean plain holy thistle.' It is not a question of moral at all, it is simply a question of plain holy Parliamentary votes ; nothing more nor less. We 14 'STRAY SHOTS.' have been told in enigmatical language that ' the resources of civilisation are not yet exhausted ' may we number science, medicine, philosophy, humanity, common sense amongst the resources of civilisation ; or are we driven to acknowledge what really appears to be the case, that they are to be found only in the hangman's rope ? One hundred years ago Dr. Jenner discovered the virtues of vaccination. Every succeeding year has proved by facts that cannot lie that he has conferred on mankind an incalculable blessing. Only twenty years ago the French erected a statue to him in Boulogne as one of the greatest benefactors of humanity. It is almost certain that if vaccination had been universally and carefully practised, the small-pox would ere this have been stamped out ; but now, whilst all the world is trying to improve and extend its blessings, to make it compulsory in the fullest possible sense, an agitation, apparently sanctioned by the Government, is gaining ground in England to do away with its compulsory clauses. Kilmainham again ! The anti-vaccinationists are in a certain sense the enemies of their species ; they are removing the most effectual safeguards against a terrible disease ; but never mind, they command a certain number of votes in Parliament, and if they will only give their votes where they are wanted, they may, to use a forcible expression, * do as they d - please ! ' We all know that of the vices of civilisation drunken- ness is the most widespread and demoralising, and that it is the first duty of every Government to control it by police regulations, or by any other reasonable means, to the utmost of their power ; but hitherto all Governments have recognised the fact that it is the abuse, not the use of stimulants that is to be warred against, and that it would be the height of tyranny to give to the majority the power to deny to the minority the use of stimulants that to many of them are as necessary as food itself. Suddenly the reasons and arguments that have hitherto influenced MOKAL COUKAGE. 15 the decisions of all previous Governments are thrown to the winds, and the tyranny of the majority proclaimed in its most offensive form. Why is this ? Why do the very men who have hitherto unanimously and conscientiously opposed it, now give it a unanimous support? Why? Is it not a mere waste of time to ask the question? Kilmainham again. A convenient compact between those who command votes and those who want them . We English boast that we have the finest collection in the whole world of works of art, of pictures, and antiquities, of everything that can interest, instruct, elevate the human mind. Our National Gallery, our British Museum have no equal. -For six days in the week they are thrown open to the nation without restriction and without charge ; the only thing against it is that these are the very six days on which the nation cannot enjoy them. Out of the four millions, more or less, who inhabit this vast city, it is probable that ninety-nine out of every 100 persons above the age of thirteen earn their bread by the sweat of their face, or gain their living in some way by long and exhaus- tive work. For six days of the week, from six to nine in the morning to five or six in the evening, the clerks, the tradesmen, the shopmen, the working classes, the domestic servants, are at their work. They have neither time during the day nor vigour or inclination in the evening to visit picture galleries and museums. But they have one holiday in the week, they have one day on which they have leisure to improve their minds, and get bright glimpses of the world of art and beauty ; but this is the very day on which they are not allowed to do so. This, the only day on which the nation can enjoy the national collection, is the only day on which the national collec- tions are closed closed as completely as if they did not exist. Virtually, the one lounger, who plays all the week, says to the ninety-nine, who work all the week, ' The national collections are open to you from Sunday to Sunday, and if you cannot visit them on those days you 16 'STRAY SHOTS; shall not visit them at all. You shall not visit them on the only day it is possible for you to do so.' Can any position be more impertinent, more selfish, more fanatical, more contemptible ? Is it a position that would be toler- ated for one minute in any country in the world but prig- ridden, hypocritical England? * We will not have the Sabbath desecrated,' say our sham pietists ; ' we will not have the guardians of our national collections employed on the Sabbath,' say our sham humanitarians. We will not tolerate the saturnalia of the continental Sabbath in our Biblical land ; but is it the fact that the hundreds of thousands who are forbidden to visit the museums and picture galleries, the Tower, the Crystal Palace, the Zoological Gardens, therefore go to church? Is the comfort and convenience of thirty or forty employes to be preferred to the comfort and conve- nience, and instruction, and civilisation of the nation ? Is the much-dreaded continental Sabbath really less respect- able, less orderly, less civilised than the ideal Sabbath of our sour Sabbatarians? Would the saturnalia of the museums, the picture galleries, of the Crystal Palace, &c., be really more horrible than the saturnalia of drink that is still the chief Sabbath observance in many of our great cities ? Leaving out the cheerful, health-giving, humanis- ing Sabbath enjoyment that we see in France, in Belgium, in Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, Spain, America, let us look at our neighbour Holland. Can the strictest Sabba- tarian hope to see anything more orderly, more sober, more correct, more respectable than the Sabbath in Amsterdam or the Hague? And yet every place of amusement is open, and you may even go to the theatre and see Sarah Bernhardt in ' Fedora.' Now, why is it that, instead of advancing in these matters on the broad highway of common sense, and in- telligence, and civilisation, and tolerance, and experience, as every other nation in the world is advancing ; instead of treating drink, disease, and Sabbath recreation in MORAL COURAGE. 17 accordance with the ' Great Law of Reason that guides our lives,' are we steadily retrograding, and placing our necks under the yoke of fanatics and enthusiasts, of strong- minded women and weak-minded men ? Why is it don't we all know ? Because the plain common sense of English- men is emasculated by the sham assumption of superior motives. Because professions pay better than practice. Be- cause rhetoric has supplanted reason. Because now more than ever words are employed to conceal thoughts. Because we are not allowed to see things as they are, but as they are described. Because there is no reality in our politics. Because Parliament, instead of being a ' Palace of Truth,' is, as Anacharsis said of the Forum at Athens, ' a place men have established to impose on each other.' Because the spirit of the Kilmainham Treaty pervades our politics. England has had Ministers with more or less moral courage, who, when necessary, could speak to Parliament and the country in the ' Scythian Phrase,' and tell them in words concise and resolute what reason and common sense required of them. In those days faddists and fanati >s stood on one side ; there was no market for their wares. But all this is now reversed ; reason and common sense are put out of court ; the * Scythian Phrase ' is replaced by * exuberant verbosity.' Compromise wins the race ! Moral courage is nowhere ! IV. THE PALACE OF TRUTH. ' WE must bear in mind,' said Sir John Adye at the con- clusion of a most soldierlike speech at Woolwich, ' that we have also to guard the interests and consult the feelings of the people of Egypt, and as we have a predominating influence in that country it must be exerted for their wel- fare.' ' The people,' said he, ' are for the most part a 18 STRAY SHOTS.' quiet, inoffensive, hard-working race employed in agricul- tural occupations ; they have been grievously governed in days gone by, and it is our duty now to see that they are freed not only from military despotism but from despotism of all kinds.' I believe most Englishmen will heartily accept this view of our national obligations in Egypt; and there- fore I hope Sir Charles Dilke's reply to Mr. O 'Kelly, * that Her Majesty's Government has no concern with any question that may have arisen between the Turkish Government and Baker Pasha with regard to his appoint- ment in Egypt. We consider we have no responsibility in the matter ; we have not taken any steps to inform ourselves because we disclaim all responsibility,' is not the last word on the subject. It concerns the honour of England that we do not allow our nominee the 'Humpty Dumpty ' we have just set on his wall again to impose on his subjects the most galling, the most cruel, the most intolerable form of military despotism yet devised the despotism of a mercenary army, and such an army as it promises to be ! composed of the sweepings of the Levantine cities, and the cut-throats and blackguards of all Europe. For 4,000 years, probably for 40,000 years, the Egyptians have known little but oppression in some form or another : but I cannot conceive any form of oppression more terrible than that now threatened by the mercenary army of Tewfik. The Circassians and Turks, and blood-suckers generally, that Arabi's rebellion scared from their prey, beat the people with rods. Their own sovereign now threatens them with scorpions. But is it really true that a mercenary army under a soldier of for- tune is absolutely necessary to keep Tewfik on the throne? Cannot the absolute ruler of five millions of subjects find even 10,000 men ready to stand by his cause ? If he can't, we seem to have got hold of the wrong man, and should have been wiser to have left Arabi alone. I never remember a war about which so much abject THE PALACE OF TKUTH. 19 nonsense, so much wretched hypocrisy, such persistent perversion of facts, have been employed as in the present one. No doubt the advocates and apologists of the Government feel bound to explain and defend the extra- ordinary volte-face that has converted the fierce denouncers of Jingoism into very Jingoes themselves, but they don't do this by attributing the war to every imaginable cause but the real and evident one. We have, indirectly, caused the destruction of one of the most prosperous cities in the East. We have paralyzed trade throughout a vast region; we have stamped out what many believe was a genuine national rising against intolerable tyranny and extortion ; we have expended many millions of money and sacrificed many hundred of lives, and slaughtered many thousands of Egyptians, and now we are asked to believe that we have done all this with no selfish or aggressive motives, with no regard whatever for British interests. But, if we have not been fighting for British interests, in God's name, what have we been fighting for ? ' Oh,' says the statesman of e superfine morality,' ' you have been fighting the battle of Europe, the battle of Egypt, the battle of peace ! ' What nonsense ! ' Jupiter vient sur la terre Pour la combler de bienfaits ; II est arme du tonnerre, Mais c'est pour dormer la paix ! ' Don't we know that Europe with five millions of armed men is perfectly able to fight her own battles herself, and can't we see that Egypt would very much have preferred being left to fight out her battles her own way ? To ask us to believe we have been ' fighting for peace ' is like asking us to believe the moon is made of cream cheese. What have we done that our Ministers should prescribe for us such abject twaddle and nonsense ? Why, we all know, even the most credulous of us, that we have been fighting in this case, as we always have fought in every other case, and as I hope we always shall fight, for British interests, c 2 20 STRAY SHOTS.' and for British interests alone. And when we are told we have been fighting for some other reason we know it cannot be true, for no Minister of England, however powerful, would ever venture to risk a man or a horse in any war that had not British interests, directly or in- directly, as its object. If ordinary Jingoism, that only fights for British interests, be a disease, as we are told, what are we to think of that extraordinary development cf Jingoism that insists on fighting the battles of other nations whether they wish it or not ? Suppose we could induce our rulers to enter the ' Palace of Truth,' what a curious contradic- tion we should hear to many of the official utterances outside. Well, then, now that we are in the ' Palace of Truth,' what was the real cause of the war? Oh, of course, it was the old story British interests. England had placed Tewfik on the throne, and British interests, British prestige, required that we should keep him there. British interests compelled us to put an end to anarchy in Egypt, British interests compelled us to protect our road to India, and British interests prompted us to look after the pockets of our bondholders, and to prevent any other nation occupying the country. Was there no other cause beyond British interests that tended to hasten on the war in Egypt? Oh, yes ; a very important one, but one we don't talk much about outside. Our kind friends at Birmingham, who keep a constant watch on the pulse of John Bull, told us that he was suffering from an over-dose of humble pie ; that the scuttle out of Candahar and the scuttle out of the Trans- vaal had not been attended with the favourable results that we had anticipated ; and that if now we tried to scuttle out of Egypt we should in all probability have to scuttle out of office. Of course, this was very awkward, especially to those amongst us who had made most political capital by denouncing most strongly the almost identical policy of our predecessors : but there was no help for it ; THE PALACE OF TRUTH. 21 we had to obey the Caucus or throw up the sponge. Naturally we did not hesitate long. We shut our eyes, held our breath, took the plunge, and after a little splut- tering and losing one of our number, we came up Jingoes. Of course we were a little uncomfortable at first, but, as A merciful Providence fashioned us hollow, On purpose we might our principles swallow,' we have not suffered so much as many have supposed. In fact, we are inclined to think that, on the whole, we rather like being Jingoes ; and certainly our Birmingham friends gave us good advice, for Jingoism has proved the most popular act of our Ministry. Never has a war been so popular with all classes as the present one. Never have returning troops been anywhere received with such acclamations, with such hysterical delight ! And why ? Not because they have been victorious in a just war, for many of us think that the war was a most unjust one; and not a few heretics firmly believe that if Mr. Gladstone had been in opposition he would have denounced it as such, with his accustomed torrent of rhetoric. It is not because we conquered Arabi and reinstated Tewfik, because, man for man, Arabi is probably throughout the country the most popular of the two. It is not because the Canal and the bondholders' interests are safe, because the truth is the great mass of the nation know little and care less about either Canal or Egyptian stocks. The reason why we are so grateful to Sir Garnet Wolseley and to our soldiers is because we really feel under a deep obligation to them. They have taken a weight off our minds. They have relieved us from the nightmare of repeated military disasters. Heh! presto! quick! vanish! and in a minute, as if by the conjuror's wand, the mournful names of Isan- dula, Maiwand, Majuba Hill disappear, and are replaced by those of Kassassin and Tel-el-Kebir. There is no deny- ing it, the Egyptian campaign has helped to put the British army on its legs again. Of course we know our 22 'STRAY SHOTS.' soldiers did not meet foemen worthy of their steel ; but they showed qualities that have convinced the country that they must be very worthy foemen indeed that can stand against them. The war is most popular throughout the country ; first, because it has safeguarded British interests ; and, secondly, because it has proved to us that if our army is well commanded it can do its work well. But it has not only put the British army on its legs again : it has done a somewhat similar good office for the British Empire. It has relieved the country from the nightmare of repeated concession, from the dread of Imperial de- cadence. We have heard political Pharisees so loudly thanking God they were not like other British Ministers, we have listened so long to the language of superfine humanity, to denunciations of the sin of blood-guiltiness, to the glory of national self-sacrifice, that we really began to fear there was something in it ; that it was the enuncia- tion of a new national policy, and that henceforth the ' Concert of Europe,' not her own strong arm, was to be the necessary condition of existence of British Empire. But that is all over now. We see with intense relief that however fiercely the Radicals may denounce Imperial interests in opposition, they are willing and even eager to fight for them in office. If the war in Egypt has done nothing else, it has proved to the country how ungenerous, how unreal, how personal, how absolutely valueless, in all but a party sense, was the greater part of the fierce opposition to the Imperial policy of the late Government. V. A FOOL'S PARADISE. IF, as Shakspeare tells us, ' it were very gross behaviour ' to lead anyone into a fool's paradise, it must, of course, be a praiseworthy act to try and lead anyone out of it. This A FOOL'S PARADISE. 23 Mr. Labouchere, in his article the ' Coming Democracy,' in the ( Fortnightly,' has tried to do for the Old Whigs and the dilettante Democrats. His schooling, certainly, is none of the gentlest, and not in the least likely to influence either of the parties it is addressed to ; but, nevertheless, it is sound advice, and it puts it out of their power to say when the Democratic wave does break over them that they are taken by surprise, or, in more Gladstonian language, that it has come upon them like a ' revelation.' Virtually, Mr. Labouchere interviews them in this fashion. He says to the philosophical Radical, the dilettante Democrat, with his 50,000?. or 100,000?. a year in the funds, or in stocks, or in trade : * You call yourself a Democrat, I believe ? ' * Certainly.' ' Then, of course, you are prepared to abolish the House of Lords? ' ' Certainly.' ' And the Established Church 9 ' ' Certainly.' ' And vote for electoral districts, and payment of members, and triennial Parliaments ? ' * Certainly.' ' And you will extend the franchise inde- finitely ? ' ' Certainly.' ' And you will vote for the Caucus ? ' ' Certainly.' * And will do your utmost, to bring down your social superiors ? ' * Certainly.' * In fact, you think that social distinctions should depend rather on merit than on birth and wealth ? ' ' Most certainly.' ' And in that case you believe that you will naturally take a very high social position ? ' 'I hope so.' And when Mr. Labouchere hears all this, he exclaims : * Why, this man must be either a fool or an enthusiast ; either he is foolish enough to believe the coming Demo- cracy, that he is doing his best to promote, will leave him in unquestioned possession of his millions, or he is an enthusiast, who is actually anxious to sell all he has and give it to the poor, and take up his cross and follow Messrs. Harrison, Morley, Bradlaugh and me ! ' So he says: 'One word more. You know, of course, that all these things that you are so willing to vote for are merely the means to the end ; are you sure you are quite prepared for the end ? Do you really realise what it is ? Are you 24 'STRAY SHOTS.' prepared for a progressive succession duty ? for a progres- sive income tax of fifty per cent. ? Do you endorse the programme of the payment of all the taxes by the rich ? Are you prepared to limit the number of acres owned by persons who do not cultivate them ? Do you realise the fact that in the eyes of the true Democrat " wealth " is the enemy, and that we make no difference whether this wealth is in land or money? that monopolists of every kind, whether of money or of land, are to be rooted out ? Do you allow that very large fortunes are a positive danger to a Democratic State, and that any income beyond a man's real or acquired wants is surplusage, and should belong to the State ? Finally, are you prepared to give up one-half of your property beyond the amount regarded as safe to the State ? ' And when the dilettante Democrat hears all this, like the ruler mentioned in the Bible, ' he is very sorrowful, for he is very rich.' To the Old Whigs Mr. Labouchere virtually says, ' You are, I believe, the' party of "family antecedents." You fancy that the mantle of Fox, Althorp, Grey, Macaulay, Russell, Palmer- ston, Cornewall Lewis has fallen upon you ; you think you enjoy a prestige in the country for eminent respectability; but you are mistaken. Your Liberalism is only skin-deep ; you are waiters on Providence, harmless for good or evil. You are in everything but name Conservatives, and it is only your voracious appetite for office that keeps you from joining them. You only care for the lion's share of the spoil. You think you act as a drag on the Democratic coach, whereas in reality you only quicken its pace. You profess to be the master of the great Radical who rules the country ; you are simply his servants. In private you denounce him ; in public you support him. You are nothing but emasculating traitors, a damnosa hcereditas that ought to be kicked out of the Liberal camp and handed over to the Tories.' Now, all this is very disagree- able reading, and the extent to which it is disagreeable depends upon the extent to which it is true. I somehow A FOOL'S PAKADISE. 25 think the sting of it lies in the fact that a good deal of it is true. Mr. Labouchere says : ' I and those who desire great Democratic changes are prepared to place the electoral power in the hands of the many, because we know that the many will bring these changes about ; but why you dilettanti Radicals, with your 100,OOOZ. a year in the funds, or you great territorial magnates, with your 100,OOOZ. a year in land, should desire to place the power in the hands of the many, I cannot conceive. Do you suppose the many will exercise this power for the benefit of the few ? Out of a population of 34,000,000 there are, we read, only 63,000 with incomes over 1,OOOZ. a year. Do you suppose the other 33,937,000 are going to legislate for the interest of these 63,000 ? You are doing all you can to open the door to the Democratic ocean. Are you fools enough to suppose that when it rushes in you can prevent its submerging your own field as well as your neighbour's ? ' And what answer do the millionaire Radicals and the Old Whigs make to these charges ? They do not meet one of Mr. Labouchere's arguments, or dispute one of his conclusions ; they merely reply that he is not a serious politician, that he does not practise what he preaches, that he is one of the ' Haves,' and is not in the least likely to sell all he has and give it to the ' Havenots.' But I confess I cannot see it in this light at all. I have not the pleasure of Mr. Labouchere's acquaintance, and, from what I hear, I think it very improbable that he would sell all he has and give it to the poor, and lead a life of labour and self-denial. It is very possible he would not practise all that he preaches. Mais, mon Dieu, cela n'empeche pas ! If only those are to be allowed to preach who are prepared to practise, we know one of the learned professions at any rate that would soon come to an end. Mr. Labouchere may not wish to go over the precipice with the avalanche, and may perhaps hope by some means to avoid it ; but that is no reason why, if he feels the ground beginning to slide under 26 'STRAY SHOTS; his feet, he should not warn his neighbours of the fact. Far from thinking that Mr. Labouchere is not a serious politician, I think him a very serious one indeed. I have read a great deal that he has spoken and a great deal that he has written, and it always strikes me that he has the courage of his opinions, and a singularly logical way of advancing them, and he seems to have a very clear idea of what he wants and how to get it. It is nonsense to say, as I hear it constantly said, that if the ' Coming Democracy ' had been written by serious politicians like Mr. Morley or Mr. Harrison, it would have some meaning. In what single point or degree, may I ask, does it differ from the opinion of Mr. Morley or Mr. Harrison, or any of the other hundreds of Democratic writers and speakers in the country ? What does it matter, in fact, whose words they are ? The question is, Are they true ? I think they are. Is it true that Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain are the only two real Radicals in the Cabinet ? Is it true that these two are doing the Democratic work so well that the Democrats themselves are quite content to stand aside and let them finish it ? Is it true that those who have been born with silver spoons in their mouths are fools to try and put the power into the hands of those who will transfer the spoon to their own mouths ? Is it true that the Old Whigs are eating dirt in supporting legislation they detest? Is it true that a millionaire Democrat is as incongruous a com- bination as a Dissenting Archbishop? For my part, I am very much obliged to Mr. Labouchere for his article. I think it has done a great deal to clear the air and give us a more correct view of the political situation. It is a somewhat rough reminder to those who are drifting about in their fool's paradise to the pleasant sound of the Syren's song, that they will very likely bump on to the rocks. The ' Coming Democracy ' is apparently written entirely in the interest of the Radical party ; it is quite possible it may have the effect of very much strengthening the National A FOOL'S PAEADISE. 27 party. At present party interests entirely swamp national interests. We know pretty well which candidate the party whips would support an honest Liberal who would sup- port the Constitution and the institutions of the country, and vote according to his conscience, or a red-hot Demo- crat, having ni Foi, ni Loi, ni Roi, who would always vote straight. There is nothing new in this. Aristides the o cj Just, who scorned the sensualist Cimon, supported him heart and soul in order to counterbalance Themistocles. But it shows we have learnt nothing, and that the same causes that brought about the ruin of Greece more than two thousand years ago threaten the very existence of England now. VI. PRIDE OF RACE. * IF I were not a Frenchman, I should wish to be an Eng- lishman,' said a French Minister, with a complimentary bow, to an English Minister. ' If I were not an English- man, I should wish to be one,' was the blunt reply. Here spoke the pride of race, the proud feeling of superiority, the conviction that England was the greatest nation in the world ; that her mission, her motives, her policy were for the good of civilization and of mankind. Pride of race has been the birthright of Englishmen for 300 years, handed down from father to son as a priceless heirloom. For the time it is gone, vanished out of sight. If any of the mighty dead Chatham, Pitt, Canning, Palmerston, Eussell, or even peace-loving Aberdeen were to revisit the House of Commons, they would scarcely recognise the English breed. They would see defeat, disgrace, humilia- tion to our arms and our diplomacy, condoned without a murmur, treated with absolute apathy and indifference. They would see a class to whom the glory of the British Empire is a distasteful theme, who look upon it rather as 28 'STRAY SHOTS; an incubus to be got rid of, who shudder at the strains of * Rule Britannia' as Mephistopheles shudders at the church bells ! They would find the age of patriotism dead, and in its place an age of sophisters, economists, and calculators. If they should inquire what has caused this great wreck of national pride, they will learn that during his Midlothian campaign Mr. Gladstone and his followers set themselves to undo everything that Lord Beaconsfield had done, whether it was working well for the country or not ; every stone of the edifice he erected with so much care and forethought was to be destroyed, not because it was working badly for the country, but because it was the work of Lord Beaconsfield. By exaggeration, by inac- curacies, by passion, by insinuation, Mr. Gladstone so distorted the aspect of the Imperial policy of Lord Beaconsfield that the people began to believe that the Empire was a curse rather than a blessing to them ; that it existed for the benefit of the rich alone at the expense of the poor ; that it was a Tory institution, in which the rest of the community had no share. It is this feeling that has caused the present alarm ing apathy on all national matters. But this feeling cannot last. A nation cannot change its skin like a snake. It cannot be completely transformed in two years. It may be confused and be- wildered by sonorous verbosity, by mock sermons on humanity and national humility, and fancy it has got rid of the old Adam, but it has not. As sure as the sun rises, England will soon awake again, and the awaking may be dangerous. Spite of the new promises made by our Radical godfathers at our Midlothian baptism, the English race will always hear with pride the stories of Plassy and Assaye, of Waterloo and Trafalgar; the names of Olive and Hastings, of Howe and Jervis, of Collingwood and Nelson, and others, 'feared for their breed, and famous for their birth,' who have made the name of England ring throughout the world, will still be household words; and Englishmen will still make pilgrimages to the Abbey PRIDE OF RACE. 29 to gaze on the effigy of England's greatest War Minister, that ' seems still with eagle face and outstretched arm to bid England be of good cheer and hurl defiance at her foes.' More than ever they will tell their children of the gallant deeds of the warriors of their race ' How Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old.' The British Jingo owes his existence to the British * Nihilist.' Jingoism, Chauvinism, Nationalism, Patriot- ism, call it what you will, is the national protest against Nihilism, against incivism, against Gladstonism, in fact, against the cry of perish India, perish British interests, against the claptrap of St. James's Hall, against those who rail at the over-burdened empire of England, who denounce her colonies as encumbrances, who are resigned to her decadence. It is a protest against the spirit that dictated 'kin over sea,' against the spirit of national defamation that can never sufficiently foul its own nest, that proclaims no conduct too base, too cowardly, for British statesmen, no statements too false, no reports too exaggerated for British officials ; that sees in the monstrous ambition of Russia, in the despotism of a military oligarchy, a holy mission ! It is a protest against the spirit that would keep the flag of England half mast, and hoist in its place the spurious rag of cosmopolitanism. It is, in fact, the natural rebound of the pendulum of English pride against those who have pulled it over too much the other way. It may seem to many foolish, but there is nothing to be ashamed of in it ; it is natural to the English breed, it is the spirit that animated Cromwell, Chatham, Pitt, Palmerston, Russell ; it is the spirit that, please God, will always find expression when the efface- ment of England is advocated. Certainly there will be a reaction, a violent oscillation of the pendulum. May it come soon ; it cannot come too soon. When the reaction comes, it will come from the country, not from the House of Commons. In the present House of Commons there 30 'STRAY SHOTS.' will be no reaction. The constituencies sent members to Parliament to support Mr. Gladstone, for no other object, and support him they will to the bitter end. So long as the present Parliament lasts Mr. Gladstone, surrounded by flatterers, will, ' Like Cato, give his docile Senate laws And sit attentive to his own applause.' But the House of Commons is not England. The time will come when the members will have to give an account of their stewardship. Then the constituencies will say to them, * It is true we sent you to Parliament to support Mr. Gladstone, because he told us, and you told us, that Lord Beaconsfield was ruining England, and that only Mr. Gladstone could save it. But we find now, after two years' trial, that it is Mr. Gladstone that is ruining England. We see Ireland in almostopenrevolt, our European influence gone, our Eastern Empire threatened, our officers insulted and killed in time of peace, &c. We sent you to Parlia- ment in order to assist Mr. Gladstone to save the Empire, not to assist him to reduce it to a fifth-rate power.' The foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield was the hereditary foreign policy of Great Britain. It was natural, and national, and straightforward. It was dictated by the requirements of the British Empire. Nobody objected to this policy. France, Germany, Austria, and Italy thought it reasonable, and approved of it. But the foreign policy of Mr. Gladstone is the very reverse of the hereditary foreign policy of England. It is not national in any sense. It is personal personal to Mr. Gladstone, and to him alone. It is originated and directed by influences of which nobody can guess the sources. Mr. Gladstone hates the Austrians, and hates the Turks (and, it is whispered, is not over fond of Prince Bismarck) ; but why he hates the Austrians, and why he hates the. Turks, nobody knows. What, alas ! we do know is, that this hatred of his, out- spoken and demonstrative, has converted two of our oldest and most trustworthy allies into scarcely covert PRIDE OF RACE. 31 enemies. Every sense of national duty should have induced Mr. Gladstone to control his hatred to the Turk ; to check any violence of language or action that could convert into an enemy the spiritual suzerain of 40,000,000 of our fellow-subjects. We have heard of great men sacrificing themselves for the good of their country; it really looks as if in his treatment of Austria and Turkey Mr. Gladstone has not hesitated to sacrifice the interests of his country for his own pleasure. Mr. Gladstone is a great humanitarian, but the humanity that is effusive about Italians and Bulgars, and draws a line at the sufferings of Turks and Jews, that passes over without notice the treacherous slaughter of British troops, and to avoid * blood-guiltiness ' hands over 900,000 natives to the ten- der mercies of the Boers this is only ' electioneering ' humanity after all, humanity snatched up as a rapier to pierce your enemy with. ' Lucius. His enemies confess The virtues of humanity are Caesar's. Cato. Curse on his virtues 1 They've undone his country, Such popular humanity is treason.' Do not let us deceive ourselves. The same national spirit, the same qualities of heart and hand that built up the British Empire are necessary to support it. It was built up by deeds, and * deeds are the sons of Heaven.' It can never be saved by words, however copious, which are the ' daughters of the earth.' ' Be bolde, be bolde, and everywhere be bolde,' was the motto of our Elizabethan an- cestors, and it is that has made us what we are. If we cease to be bold, if we are no longer ready, even eager, to ' fight for our own hand,' our kingdom will not and cannot stand. It is certain that England must, at all times, boldly and determinately maintain her own rights and interests, peaceably if she can, forcibly if she cannot. ' I give you a toast,' said Stephen Decatur, speaking in Norfolk, in 1816, ' Our country ! in her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.' 32 'STRAY SHOTS.' VII. THE BALLOT IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. EVEEY week appears to foreshadow more distinctly the block that threatens legislation in the House of Commons. Scarcely a week passes without one Minister or another alluding in more or less distinct terms to the Cloture, and to the necessity of * adopting such measures as the urgency of public business may require.' All this may be, and probably is, quite reasonable and necessary ; it is quite possible that if one party, or section of a party, takes up the weapon of obstruction, the other party, the great majority, may be compelled, in self-defence, to take up the weapon of coercion ; but it is none the less to be dreaded as an ominous danger to free institutions. If it is necessary for the conduct of public business that the minority should be coerced, let it be done by all means ; but, if possible, let it be done in such a manner that those who, in many cases, are offering a conscientious opposition may not be held up to censure they do not deserve, and that, on the other hand, the majority may not be able to claim a purity of principle they do not possess. I believe the humiliating effect of the Cloture for, under any conditions, it must be humiliating to the minority would be very much mitigated by secret voting, if, indeed, secret voting did not entirely remove the necessity for it. But there is another reason far more urgent and powerful than that of the Cloture why secret voting should be adopted by the House of Commons, and that is the ' Caucus.' The ' Caucus ' is terrorism in electoral matters ; it is the organised tyranny of the majority ; it is avowedly adopted to quash the free expression of the opinion of the minority in every constituency in the kingdom. THE BALLOT IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 33 It is not an organisation of English birth, or suited to the tastes and individuality of Englishmen, and although it may at the last election have assisted the temporary elevation of certain unscrupulous politicians, it has by no means added to their popularity. The logical antidote to the Caucus is secret votingin the House of Commons, and, indeed , why should not voting in the House of Commons be con- ducted under the ballot ? As far as I can understand the question, every argument that applies to secret voting in constituencies applies to secret voting in Parliament. Of course it is very pleasant to suppose that every individual member of Parliament is determined honestly and courage- ously to do his duty in the face of day, and has no need for the protection of the ballot box ; but, nevertheless, there is a very general belief that the ballot box would, on important questions, very often give us the true opinion of the House of Commons far more correctly than open voting. And, after all, I suppose it is the true, independent opinion of its representatives in Parliament that the country desires on important questions, rather than the mere dictation (often interested) of party wire-pullers. Of course, secret voting in the House of Commons would, to a certain extent, loosen the bonds of party dis- cipline, but as each party believes that it would be the gainer, it does not seem as if there is any great danger to fear. Secret voting in the House of Commons would be unpopular with party whips and the promoters of the Caucus, but it has been adopted with surprising success by the French Senate, and I believe it would prove an eq^^al success in the English House of Commons. 34 'STRAY SHOTS: VIII. THE HOUSE OF LORDS. IN the startling attack made by Mr. Forster a few days ago on the House of Lords, he said : * It cannot be for- gotten that the power which the House of Lords possesses is entirely owing to the accident of birth.' A very short examination of the rolls of the peerage proves that this statement is not correct. In addition to twenty-six arch- bishops or bishops, who are peers by virtue of office, there are in the present House of Lords no less than sixty peers who have been created by the Sovereign, and who owe nothing whatever to the accident of birth ; there are, besides, forty-four Scotch and Irish representative peers, sixteen of whom are elected each Parliament and twenty- eight for life, so that of the 500, more or less, peers com- posing the House of Lords eighty-six owe absolutely nothing whatever to the accident of birth ; and in the case of forty-four others the power they possess is only enjoyed for their lifetime or for the uncertain term of a Parliament. During the present reign 169 new peers have been created, scarcely half a dozen of whom owe their elevation to the accident of birth. Of course we all know that the House of Lords contains many frivolous peers, whose pretence at serious legislation might cause a smile ; but it is also plain that it contains orators, states- men, lawyers, men of business, more than sufficient to leaven the mass, and to raise its character as a delibera- tive assembly far above the level of the House of Commons. With the exception of Messrs. Gladstone and Bright as orators, there is not a single statesman, administrator, orator, or lawyer in the House of Commons who cannot be matched two or three times over in the House of Lords. In addition to many distinguished lawyers, diplomatists, soldiers, and colonial governors of this generation who THE HOUSE OF LOEDS. 35 have been raised to the peerage, there are in the present House of Lords no less than twenty-eight Cabinet and ex- Cabinet Ministers, and fifty peers who have held more or less important political offices in the country (omitting, of course, all Court appointments), whilst a very large percentage of peers have for a longer or shorter period served their apprenticeship in the House of Commons. But, indeed, the long experience and calm judgment of many peers who, like the Duke of Devonshire, have never held office, give all moderate men quite as much confidence in the deliberations and decisions of the House of Lords as the active interference of more practised politicians. Naturally, Mr. Forster does not like to allow that he has been tripped up by his friends, and he seeks to attribute his discomfiture to the tyrannical exercise of power by the House of Lords ; but he knows better than any one else that it is not his enemies the Tory lords who have done him this dishonour, but his own familiar friends, the Liberals in both Houses of Parliament. He knows that the preponderance of the independent judgment of the House of Commons was undeniably against the Disturb- ance Bill, and that if the sixty Liberal members who, entre chien et loup, between their party and their con- victions, lost their heads, had had the courage of their opinions the Bill would not have got to the House of Lords at all ; and even when it did get there it was the onslaught of Mr. Forster's former colleagues, the Duke of Somerset, Lords Lansdowne and Grey, the well-known opposition of Lord Sherbrooke (Mr. Lowe), and other Liberal peers, more than the weighty arguments of Lords Beaconsfield and Cairns, that caused its defeat. It is very probable the House of Lords is not without sin ; but after the scandals of the past session it is very improbable the nation will consider the House of Commons quite at liberty to cast the first stone. T> 2 36 'STRAY SHOTS.' IX. STA TESMA NSHIP. I SUPPOSE at the end of the session most of us will take stock of national affairs, and ask ourselves whether we are better off now than we were at the beginning of the year ; whether, indeed, we are better off than we were three years ago, when Mr. Gladstone declared Lord Beaconsfield was ruining the country. Are we now realising the blessing of a higher type of statesmanship at home and abroad, or are we, indeed, drifting dan- gerously near the rocks from the absolute want of any statesmanship whatever ? What is statesmanship? It is common sense the faculty of seeing things as they are, not as you wish them to be ; it is foresight the power of seeing a little sooner than your neighbour the probable direction in which the cat will jump. Statesmanship realises the fact that the daily life of nations is governed by motives quite as much as the daily life of men, and that those motives are almost invariably in a greater or less degree self-interest, that chacun pour soi, quid pro quo, describe even more strongly the ruling instincts of communities than of in- dividuals. Statesmanship ignores enthusiasm, denounces too much zeal, distrusts purely moral obligations, prefers treaties written on parchment to those inscribed on the ' fleshy tablets of the heart,' and recognises the sad fact that conscience has no more to do with politics than it has with gallantry. Statesmanship requires the qualities of the judge rather than those of the advocate. True statesmanship steers the ship in safety between the whirlpools of Scylla and Charybdis ; it knows by expe- rience, by the records of those who have gone before, and by consulting the chart, where each rock lies, and does not trust to fortune or good luck to escape accident. Three years ago Mr. Gladstone announced in Parlia- STATESMANSHIP. 37 ment that ( there was an absence of crime and outrage in Ireland previously almost unknown.' Was it statesman- ship to do away with the Peace Preservation Act that secured this absence of crime and outrage, and to open the door to an increase of crime and outrage previously unknown? Was it statesmanship to offer the Irish people a bun with one hand and to give them a sounding slap in the face with the other? To link the Land Act with two of the most arbitrary acts of repression ever known, even in Ireland? Is it statesmanship to have brought Ireland from a state of chronic discontent to a state of acute rebellion? Was it statesmanship to ignore what the leaders of the movement proclaimed aloud in the market-places that repeal of the Union, not tenant-right, was the object of the Home Rule agitation ? When it is evident that under any possible condition of land tenure evictions are inevitable, is it statesmanship to describe evictions as ' tantamount to a sentence of death?' When it was apparent that civil war could only be avoided by the suppression of crime and violence, was it statesman- ship to allude to the Clerkenwell outrage and ' the ringing of the chapel bell ' as a means of ensuring attention to their demands ? Is it statesmanship to abolish the right of free contract between man and man in a free country ? to destroy the rights of property ? to rob one class for the benefit of another? Is it statesmanship to pay the just debts of defaulting Irish taxpayers with the money of English and Scotch taxpayers ? Was it statesmanship to write a violent article in 1880 championing the minutest rights of minorities in the House of Commons, and in 1882, in a still more violent speech, to try to force on the House of Commons the cloture by a simple majority? Was it statesmanship to commit the House of Commons to a quarrel with the House of Lords when it was evident the House of Lords was in the right? Three years ago England was on confidential terms with Germany, Austria, France, and Italy; Russia had come to recog- 38 'STRAY SHOTS; nise the wisdom of the Berlin Treaty ; Turkey looked on England as her best friend; the Eastern Question was apparently settled for a generation ; Egypt was rich, peaceful, progressive ; a European war appeared im- possible. Is it statesmanship to have brought about a condition of affairs in which Germany, France, Austria, and Italy regard us with suspicion or dislike ; which has driven Turkey to look upon us as her greatest enemy, has induced Eussia to reopen the Eastern Question in its acutest form, has reduced Egypt to a state of anarchy, and brought all Europe within a measurable distance of war? Was it statesmanship to urge the Powers of Europe to meet in conference to settle the Egyptian Question, and before they had settled anything to bombard Alexan- dria? Is it statesmanship to entreat the Turks to send troops to Egypt, and when they agree to do so, to threaten to attack them? Is it statesmanship to have enlisted the sympathies of every power of Europe openly and secretly on the side of Turkey ? Is it statesmanship to cure disease by death ? to restore order in Egypt by causing the destruction of Alexandria and the eviction and massacre of the whole European population, and by throwing the whole country and its resources absolutely in the hands of Arabi ? Was it statesmanship to insult and threaten Austria, to blackguard and threaten Turkey, when it was evident that at any moment the friendship of both might be necessary to us ? Was it statesmanship to tie ourselves to the tail of France, when those who ran could read that the interests of France and England in Egypt were divergent ? Is it statesmanship to have denounced British interests as * pure mischief in 1879, and to invade Egypt in the name of British interests in 1882 ? Is it statesmanship to have denounced as almost treasonable the employment of Indian troops for Imperial purposes in 1879, and to employ twice the number of Indian troops in 1882 ? Is it statesmanship, is it humanity, to expose our small army to the certain losses STATESMANSHIP. 39 and sufferings of a campaign in Egypt in the most pesti- lential season of the year, when a little more foresight, a little more independence, might have prevented it ? And what has been the effect of our policy in Egypt so far ? We went to save the European populations we have destroyed them. Suppose that we are victorious in Egypt and Arabi disappears, how many years will it require to restore the wealth, the commerce, the confidence in the country that the last three months have destroyed ? Suppose, on the other hand, that the climate is too much for us ; that Arabi, backed by the force of Egypt and by Mussulman fanaticism, holds his own, where are we then ? We must not forget that in India forty millions of Mussul- mans are watching with feverish excitement every move in the game ; anything less than absolute success may mean disaster. It is no statesmanship to affect a haughty contempt of all warnings, to decline to notice the gather- ing of the storm. In vain the Omrahs of Musaaod urged that his enemies in Khorassan, f although at first but a swarm of ants, were now little snakes, and, unless in- stantly crushed, would acquire the venom and magnitude of serpents.' England has gone into this miserable war with her eyes open, and, whether she is right or whether she is wrong, please God she will come out of it victorious ; but in any case she will have a heavy account to settle with humanity, and with what Mr. Gladstone describes as a ' tribunal of paramount authority, the general Judgment of civilised mankind.' It was said by a distinguished lawyer some time ago that * Mr. Gladstone would make the best advocate that ever went into a court of law, and the worst judge,' and it is not at all improbable that a retrospect of the events of the last three years, at home and abroad, may lead many -of us who have only common sense to guide us to the conclusion that if Mr. Gladstone possessed more of the qualities of a judge and less those of the advocate it would be better for the country. 40 'STRAY SHOTS.' X. A FRESH DEPARTURE. THE extraordinary legislation known as 'Irish remedial measures ' has brought no healing on its wings ; on the contrary, the last state of that unhappy country is worse than the first. It is not surprising, therefore, that those who see only with the eyes of common sense should begin to realise the fact that we have been on the wrong tack, and that if we hope ever to reach port again we must take a fresh departure. The position of affairs is, indeed, critical. We are told by the Prime Minister that we are in the midst of a social revolution ; will any one tell us how suddenly unforeseen influences and opportunities may convert it into a military one ? The Government apparently either cannot, or dare not, look a foot before their noses ; they are content with a ' from -hand-to-mouth ' policy, alternately petting and punishing, feeling their way like a blind man with a stick. Our present captain has thrown overboard the compass by which the vessel of the State has been hitherto steered ; and she is headed in every direction according to his fancy or temper. Apparently our present legislation has no finality ; there is no firm footing anywhere. The TTOV crrco is knocked from under our feet ; there is a universal slide, and we are going down, down, down to a depth which no one pretends to fathom. 'We must stop somewhere,' is the Job's comfort we hear on all sides. No doubt we shall, but it promises to be where the man stopped who fell over the cliff at the bottom ! In the midst of our perplexity, our alarm, our danger, the only comfort we get is a cloud of words, and phrases, and sophisms, an ' exuberance of verbosity,' apology, prevarication, a hair-splitting of words, and, indeed, many of us think, of morality that is sickening, heart-breaking. We would hold our noses and swallow even this nauseous draught if we felt it would do us any A FRESH DEPARTURE. 41 good, but we know it will not. As Carlyle tells us, * Perorating members and windbags of parliamentary eloquence are poor saviours ! ' Mr. Gladstone, in plaintive accents, expresses himself ' heart-broken ' at Mr. Dillon's blunt explanation of the Land League policy ; but has not the country, may I ask, has not every man of common sense amongst us, still more reason to be heart-broken at learning that the Minister to whose hands are absolutely committed the honour and actual existence of his country has only just now, at the eleventh hour, found it convenient to under- stand the plain meaning of words that every other man in the country understood two years ago ? The condition of public opinion on Irish legislation is amazing. English and Scotch landowners, and house- holders and property holders of all kinds, look on com- placently and approvingly, whilst the rights of property, of free contract, &c., of everything, in fact, that gives security to possession in Ireland are cast to the winds. Poor blind mice ! What reason have they for supposing that a like fate, if not a worse one, will not be theirs ? The flatterers of Canute told him he could arrest the flow of the tide, but he was a sensible man, and laughed at them ; and in order to prove to them what fools they were, went to the inconvenience of wetting his feet. The flatterers of Mr. Gladstone tell us that he, and he alone, can arrest the flow of revolution^ ' block ' it, as easily as Mr. Biggar blocks bills, and apparently he believes them. In the great cities of England and Scotland is a population as large as that of Ireland rack-rented to a degree unknown in that more fortunate country ; men who pay as much for one wretched room as an Irishman pays for a hovel and three acres of land. There are in England hundreds of thousands of labourers whose lives are as hopeless, as squalid as any in Mayo or Connemara. There are thousands of estates in England and Scotland so mortgaged, so charged, that the owners cannot spare a 42 'STRAY SHOTS.' shilling to help the tenants to improve them or keep them from ruin. The seasons have been worse for the farmers in Eng- land and Scotland than in Ireland ; there are thousands of farmers in arrears of rent to their landlords not farmers who, like the Irish farmers, live from hand to mouth, but men who once had capital, who have for years been pay- ing their rent out of that capital, and now their capital is gone and their arrears remain. Do we suppose these classes do not look with envy at the peculiar nature of the remedial legislation for Ireland ? that fixity of tenure, reduction of rents, payment of their arrears by the State, ' the live-and-thrive doctrine,' are not as attractive to the farmers, the cotters, the labourers, the mechanics in England and Scotland as they are in Ireland? As yet, certainly, the Prime Minister has not described evictions in England and Scotland as tantamount to * a sentence of death ; ' he has not described the transfer of 25 per cent, of the landlord's income to the tenant as ' simple justice.' He has not excused ' Boycotting ' as a mere synonym for * exclusive dealing ; ' he has not directly suggested to English and Scotch tenants to ' ring the chapel bell,' neither has he yet taken the taxpayers' money to pay their arrears of rent. But does any one in his senses doubt that when the requirements of party become sufficiently urgent, when the spoliation of the landlord class in England and Scotland is necessary to the Radical vote, it will be done, and that it will be supported and defended by exactly the same arguments as justify the spoliation of Irish landlords now ? And what, I should like to know, will then be the position of those English and Scotch landowners and householders who have sup- ported the Minister in his spoliation of Irish land- lords ? They have applied the thin end of the wedge to loosen the foundation of their neighbour's house : what can they say, when it is driven home, if their own house comes tumbling down with it ? 43 XL CORRUPT PRACTICES. WHO is most deserving of punishment Fagan, in his back parlour planning a ' house-breaking ' job, or the pro- fessional gentleman he pays to do it ? Mr. - , in the office of the Patronage Secretary, planning a ( conscience- breaking ' job, or the agents he pays to do it ? Each avowedly pays others to break the law for his particular profit. If the house-breaking job comes off all right Mr. Fagan ' collars the swag,' and pays his agents what he likes. If the ( conscience-breaking ' job is successful Mr. becomes a member of Parliament, an official, a right honourable perhaps even a peer and he in his turn pays his agents more or less liberally. When the burglary is detected there is generally an unavoidable miscarriage of justice, because the principal is not known to the police, and his agents are made to suffer for him ; but when a bribery case is detected there is no excuse for this mis- carriage of justice, because the principal is as well known as the agents. Fagan leaves his agents to their fate because he belongs to the criminal class ; but I do not see how gen- tlemen can leave their agents to bear the punishment of acts for which they themselves have hired them and paid them to do. When the Patronage Secretary of the Go- vernment tells a candidate that if he wishes to be returned for such and such a place he must stand 2,000/. or 3,OOOL, and if he agrees to do this, and sends the money to the electioneering agent to be employed in securing his return, is it not absolutely certain that he knows that this money will be spent in buying votes, and that it is for that pur- pose, and for that alone, that he sends the money down ? Is he not the principal who pays another to do his work ? and does not the law of England say, ' Qui facit per alium facit per se ? ' Really this sudden awakening of the parliamentary 44 'STRAY SHOTS.' conscience to the frightful wickedness of corrupt practices at elections is rather amusing. For generations the House of Commons, individually, has winked at bribery, condoned bribery, practised bribery. In no single case that I can recall has successful bribery been visited with any social or moral pains and penalties. Both parties, Radicals and Tories, openly subscribe to rival electioneering funds; and when we read that the duke of this has given 10,OOOL and the earl of that 20,000. to one fund or the other, do we not know that all this means bribery, and that, more- over, it means a strong conviction that those who bribe best will win the game ? A general election costs ten times, fifteen times, twenty times more than the most liberal estimate can allow to legitimate electioneering expenses; and all the world knows that this excessive expenditure means corrupt practices in a greater or less degree in nearly all the con- stituencies in the kingdom. Even in sacred Midlothian itself, the very Hedjaz of all true Radicals, it was reported and credited that many thousands of pounds were spent in excess of the official returns ! There is no mystery about the matter ; bribery is against the law, and so is drunkenness (and fifty times more injurious to the com- m unity) ; but should we not be rather surprised if a man, highly respected and of irreproachable character, was suddenly sentenced to six months' imprisonment with hard labour for getting drunk? The purity of the House of Co mmons as regards corrupt practices is very much a matter of opinion. Of course it contains members who are free even from the suspicion of corrupt practices, direct or indirect ; but it also contains a number who are not. Perad venture there be fifty righteous ; peradventure there lack five of the fifty ; peradventure there be forty, or thirty, or twenty, or only ten. Quien sabe ? At any rate, I have an idea that to many members the mere thought of an electioneering agent conjures up a spectre as horrible as was even that of Banquo to Macbeth ' Don't shake CORRUPT PRACTICES. 45 your gory locks (in other words, your bill) at me; thou canst not say I did it.' It appears to me that we out- siders are not directly concerned in the incarceration of the electioneering agents beyond the claims of humanity and common sense; but the members of the House of Commons are deeply concerned in it. They have for generations virtually recognised corrupt practices as part of the game of politics, and they are bound in honour, I think, to see that the agents they have instructed and paid to carry out these practices, more or less directly, should not suffer for the too faithful execution of their orders. I try to see matters as they are, and not as they ought to be. No doubt corrupt practices at elections are dis- graceful, and should be stopped ; but so long as the electoral privilege is so lightly esteemed, and the moral sense of the nation so blunted that at one end of the social stick there are those who are willing to incur the disgrace of buying votes, and at the other end those who are willing to incur the disgrace of selling votes, I cannot see the justice or common sense of punishing with extreme severity only those who are the middle-men in the trans- action. XII. WHO ARE MY BRETHREN? ME. CHAMBEELAIN is probably the most successful man the hardware city has yet produced. In a certain sense he is king of Birmingham ; with our friends the nigger min- strels he might sing, ' I'm a duke, I'm a prince, I'm a major, Some day I shall be the Lord Mayor, I'm an earl, I'm a count, I'm a captain, In fact, I'm a millionaire ; ' but I don't see that even this exalted position gives him the license he apparently assumes, to play ' the lawless 46 'STRAY SHOTS; libertine and rove free and unquestioned' in political matters. I will not say ' noblesse oblige,' because in the face of his utterances against a certain class it might be considered personal, but I should have supposed that loyalty to his colleagues would have induced him to spare the class to which most of these unfortunate gentlemen belong. Of course when Mr. Chamberlain spoke at Bir- mingham he knew that every word he said about Lord Salisbury applied with equal force to Lords Hartington, Derby, Spencer, and Rosebery, and, in fact, to nearly all his colleagues, for they are all more or less tarred with the same odious brush landed property. He must have a very microscopic eye indeed if he can detect any moral difference between inheriting property from Robert Cecil, from Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, from a courtier of Prince George of Denmark, or from the jovial monks of old. Indeed, except in degree, there is no difference be- tween the inheritance of Lord Salisbury and the inheritance of Mr. Gladstone, or of Mr. Dodson, or of any other Liberal landowner. Lord Salisbury succeeds to the acres of Hat- field and Mr. Gladstone succeeds to the acres of Hawardeu, but I am not aware that the one has toiled more for his acres than the other has. Of course, the great manu- facturing wealth inherited by Mr. Chamberlain was acquired by honest industry, by personal spinning and toiling; but he must be aware that all are not so blessed as he is in this respect, and that too close an inquiry into the sources of inherited wealth may lead to some rather awkward results. It is not so very long ago that we heard that one of our leading statesmen owed his fortune to slave labour ; and it is difficult to understand why it is more discreditable to inherit 100,OOOZ. from *a courtier who has rendered services to kings ' than to inherit a similar sum from a dealer in ' black chattels.' The atmosphere of Birmingham appears very favour- able to class antipathies. But it is no wonder ; it is the favoured spot where the doctrine of intolerance has been WHO ARE MY BRETHREN? 47 preached and practised by the great Radical prophet, with marked success, during a long life. When Mr. Chamber- lain tells Lord Salisbury that he has grown rich by the toil and labour of others, he must know perfectly well that Lord Salisbury might simply reply with a tu quoque. It would not be the first time we have heard the words ' I know thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed,' addressed to an employer of labour even in the sacred city of Birmingham. Granted that Lord Salisbury and his class have grown rich by the toil and labour of others, have not Mr. Chamberlain and his class grown rich by exactly the same means ? Have not their workmen toiled for them whilst they slept? Have not they also grown rich by the unearned share of labour ? He objects, appa- rently, to those fortunate individuals who are born with silver spoons in their mouths, but he is eminently himself one of this favoured class. 100,OOOZ. or 200,OOOL is equally a silver spoon whether it is represented by a manu- facturing business, by stocks, or by acres. It is all non- sense to pretend to draw any hard-and-fast line in the matter of the morality of wealth. To the unprejudiced mind of Mr. Chamberlain, apparently, the possession of land is immoral ; but there is little doubt that in his own town of Birmingham there are many thousands who look upon his monopoly of bolts and nuts as equally immoral. But good will come out of these irresponsible utter- ances. Mr. Chamberlain's speech, Mr. Labouchere's article, and the Duke of Argyll's letter will probably in- duce the rank and file of the Whig party to ' reconsider their position.' Either they are still a power in the State, and have a distinct policy, or they are merely a damnosa hcereditas, as Mr. Labouchere politely expresses it, to be kicked out of the Liberal camp. Certainly, when a Whig looks round now on his party, and sees on one side Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Bright urging on the Democratic coach, and on the 48 'STRAY SHOTS; other side the Duke of Argyll, Lord Lansdowne, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. Forster protesting at their headlong speed, he may be excused for exclaiming * Who are my brethren ? ' Are they those who stand by the principles of Grey, Russell, Palmerston, Cornewall Lewis ? or are they those who follow more or less unwillingly the principles of Messrs. Gladstone, Chamberlain, and Bright ? Who are the traitors to the Whig party? Those who stand by the canons of their faith ? or those who, against their convictions, dally with Communism and Socialism? In a certain sense the leaders of the Whig party have deserted their men. They have, for the time, for some reason best known to themselves, chosen to play at Democrats. Are the rank and file bound to follow them ? Certainly not. If they only stand firm their leaders are sure to come back to them. In bidding against the Democrats for the popular vote, they are playing a game at which their opponents can outbid them at any moment they like, and which can only end in ridicule and disgrace. There is no blinking- the fact. The Whigs have been dished again, this time not by their enemies, but by their own familiar friends. At the last general election they worked hard for the leaders of their party ; they believed they were assisting to re-establish a Whig Government ; but at the last moment they were dished. Instead of advancing the interests of their own party, they found they had been instrumental in placing in power the most Eadical Government the country has ever seen. I believe ' That knaves would starve if fools agreed/ and that if the Whig party would only agree to stand together they would show a head to the Democrats that would astonish them. At present, the wave of Democracy appears to be surging over the country ; but it is owing chiefly to the influence of one man, and it cannot be denied that there is a great deal of hum bug about it. The fact is, the Democratic Radicals are many of them terrible windbags. In the same way that it brought great profit to the craftsmen of WHO ARE MY BRETHREN 49 Ephesus to shout * Long live Diana,' so our political crafts- men find that it brings them great profit to shout, like Midshipman Easy, for equality and the rights of man but they are the very first to cry out, and lustily, too, if they see that the ' rights of man ' threaten any of their pet possessions. There is a certain political chic in be- striding their renowned steed, les nouvelles couches sociales, in public, but they are in a horrible fright all the time that he will take the bit in his teeth and land them in the ditch. After all, the principles of moderate, progressive Liberalism are still the principles of an immense number in the country ; and as these are the principles of the Whig party, it follows as a matter of course that if the Whig party will only stand firm, the soundest hearts and heads in the country will rally round them. If the present Whig leaders do not return to the paths of moderation and common sense, and prefer to be driven by the Radicals to leading their own party, their rank and file will have to look around for new leaders, and between Mr. Goschen, Mr. Forster, Lord Lansdowne, and the Duke of Argyll it is not at all unlikely that they will find them. One thing, I suppose, is quite certain, either the Whigs must follow or they must lead. If they have courage to lead it is probable that before long they will have the game in their own hands. If they elect to follow, it is to be hoped that for mere decency's sake they will bear their Democratic cross a little more cheerfully than they have hitherto done. We are told that the sight of a good man struggling with misfortune will move even the im- mortal gods to pity ; but what is that to the sight of a good Whig struggling with temptation ! 'A little still she strove and much repented, And saying she would ne'er consent, consented.' 50 'STRAY SHOTS.' XIII. THE LAND ACT. IT is related that one clay Southey, overflowing with ex- citement, was describing how every minute of his time was occupied by various pursuits of business and pleasure, when a Quaker, who had been listening, asked quietly, 'Friend Southey, when dost thou think?' Perhaps the Ministers more immediately responsible for the present condition of Ireland would rather not think just now ; but let them be of good cheer ! Physiologists assure us that the thoughts of ' superior persons ' are always self- laudatory. Certainly one might suppose their thoughts are not very much to be envied ; they are somewhat in the foolish position of the man who, having with great trouble led his horse to the water, can't make him drink. He finds that ( force is no remedy,' nor persuasion either. The Government lias sacrificed some of the most sacred prin- ciples of political economy in order to concoct an Irish policy, and now they find it necessary to sacrifice liberty itself in order to give it effect. Like an actor who feels himself unsuccessful in a part he has taken a great deal of trouble to play well, they are painfully sensitive to adverse criticisms. If they think they detect a hiss in any part of the house they turn to it with fury. Lord Carlingford is angered by what he considers the unnecessary cries of those who find themselves more than half-ruined by the operations of the Land Act ; but surely he can hardly expect the poor hens whose nests have already been robbed, or those who are awaiting a similar fate, to make no sign. ' Qu'on laisse crier les poules dont on a besoin de manger les ceufs,' said the great Marecbal de Saxe, when he heard that some pillaged citizens were making louder complaints than usual ; in other words, ' Let the poor hens cackle, if it is any comfort to them.' But Lord Carlingford will not let them cackle ; he con- THE LAND ACT. 51 siders it a reflection on ' the most beneficent legislation of this or any other age.' Lord Carlingford assumes that it is too early a day to predict the eventual working of the Land Act. So it may be ; but it can scarcely be argued it is too early a day for those already ruined by it to say something on the subject. If the public are unusually anxious about the working of the Land Act is it not very surprising ? When we see a doctor dosing his patient at random with violent and antagonistic remedies, in entire defiance of all the tried and approved rules of the pharmacopoeia, when the assur- ance that strong measures are no remedy is immediately followed by the administration of a dose of unequalled severity, it is only natural we should open our eyes wide at the new revelation, and watch the condition of the patient with anxiety. The legislation applied to Ireland is so complete a re- versal of all the principles hitherto held to be indispensable by all responsible Governments, that it appears impossible to reason upon it. Success, of course, justifies everything; but nothing but success, absolute, complete success, can be the excuse for suspending the rights of property, the right of free contract, the imprisonment of members of parliament and 500 or 600 citizens without trial, the sup- pression of newspapers, and the employment of an army of 40,000 men. The indifference with which the Irish people view the Land Act is no real measure of the extent of its failure. The Act that has failed to propitiate the Irish people is a very different Act to that explained by Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons ; it benefits the tenant at the expense of the landlord far more than the Act, as under- stood by the House of Commons, ever professed to do. Mr. Gladstone stated that the Act, if passed, was to be administered with the maximum of conciliation and the minimum of confiscation ; the Act is being administered with the maximum of confiscation and the minimum of E 2 52 'STRAY SHOTS; conciliation ; and if its failure has been complete in the latter form, what would it have been in the former? We may be unjust, prejudiced, jaundiced, in saying the A.ct is a failure, but it cannot be considered unfair, now that it has been in operation some time, to compare the predictions of its promoters with the predictions of its opponents. The promoters of the Act predicted (1) That it would not cause a general fall in rents. (2) That it would strengthen the position of the landlords. (3) That it would improve the quality of the tenantry. (4) That it would restore law and order. (5) That it would induce the tenants to purchase their holdings. The opponents of the Act predicted (1) That it would cause a general fall in rents. (2) That it would make the position of the landowners untenable. (3) That it would in many cases perpetuate the tenancy of very bad tenants. (4) That it would not restore law and order. (5) That it would give the existing tenants such valuable holdings that they would have no inducement to buy. (6) That it would place a limit on the right of the landlord, but no limit on the right of the tenant. (7) That it would destroy all real proprietorship in the land. That it would belong neither to the landlord nor the tenant. (8) That it would in- directly make land dearer to rent than at present. (9) That it would benefit the present race of tenant-farmers at the expense of other classes of the community. (10) That it would be a fortune to the lawyers. Now I think my readers will not have much trouble in coming to the conclusion that the working of the Act so far has proved that in every case the predictions of the supporters of the Act were wrong, and in every case the predictions of the opponents of the Act were right. This, of course, does not prove that the Act itself is a failure ; but it does prove clearly that if it succeeds it must be by some very different means from those predicted by its promoters. If what we read of the sayings and doings of the sub- commissioners are true, they are an outrage on justice and THE LAND ACT. 53 an insult to common sense ; if the accounts are not true, the Government ought authoritatively to disprove them : but they do nothing of the kind; they complacently assure us that the uniformity of their decisions, the invariable reduction of from 25 to 50 per cent., is proof positive of the necessity of the Act. But is this so? The sub- commissioners were nominated expressly for the purpose of reducing rents ; at least if this was not the mission given them by Parliament, it is the mission they have assumed, and which one of their number announced, amid the loud cheers of the court, they ( intended to carry out without fear and without favour.' Judge Jeffreys was nominated expressly to hang and quarter the rebels in the west, and he carried out his instructions to the letter, but I have never yet heard it argued that the number of those he left for execution was any evidence of the justice of his sentences. Surely some very strange madness has come over the consciences of Englishmen during the last few months that they should allow fools to rush in where hitherto they had scarcely allowed angels to tread. If two years ago we had been told that throughout a large portion of Her Majesty's dominions the immemorial rights of every man to exercise the rights of property, to treat with his neigh- bour on the basis of free contract, were to cease, we should have laughed him to scorn. The conception even of a dozen briefless barristers, accompanied by tenant-farmers, and perhaps an ex-butcher or publican, scouring the country, and in the name of law and justice confiscating property right and left, absolutely according to their own fancy, would have appeared an impossible fiction ; but not only has this fiction become fact, but it is hailed by a large number in the country as a ' happy thought ' for effecting the ruin of the land-owning class. The position of the landowners of Ireland is indeed a hard one. To bear the injustice of the law is bad enough ; to bear the injustice of those who administer it is still worse. l Je ne me plains pas de la justice,' said a French 54 'STRAY SHOTS; litigant, who, having gained a verdict, found himself a ruined man, ' elle est tres equitable: je voudrais seulement que tons ses officiers fussent d'honnetes gens.' When Parliament says to the landlords of Ireland, ' It is only simple justice that you shall return a quarter or half your income to your tenants,' is it not in so many words saying to the landlords, * You have been robbing your tenants ; you have been spending income that of right belonged to them ; you must make restitution ? ' Take a case Ten or twenty years ago A bought property with a Government title and kept on the existing tenants at the same rent ; now, the same Government that gave A the title says to him, ' You have no right to this rent ; you must reduce it 25 per cent, or 50 per cent.' Does not this mean that during the last ten or twenty years A has been drawing from B rent he had no right to draw ; and that, in exercising what he considered, and what up to this time everybody has considered, the rights of property, he has been committing robbery? Does not this, I venture to ask, come very near an affirmation of the doctrine, ' Le propriete c'est le vol ' ? Hitherto ' land hunger ' has been understood to mean a desire to remove your neighbour's landmark; a disposition to break the Tenth Commandment that it has usually been considered judicious to restrain by force. But Mr. Glad- stone does not take this view of it ; he recognises it as a regular disease ; he diagnoses it with great care ; ex- presses his sincere sympathy with those suffering from it ; and then propounds the cure. Force, he tells us, is no remedy ; the real and only remedy is that familiar one, ' a hair of the dog that bit you,' in other words, a slice of the land hungered after. The disease, Mr. Gladstone pointed out, was chronic, and, in order to bring it within the reach of his remedies, it was necessary that it should assume an acute form. The patient, therefore, was left very much to himself, in fact some think openly encouraged in his evil courses, till at last the acute form was reached; THE LAND ACT. 55 out here the skill of the physician failed him. The disease assumed an acute form certainly, but the form was so acute that instead of a hair of the dog being sufficient to effect a cure it required the whole skin ; in other words, instead of a slice of land being sufficient the whole was demanded. Some years ago a somewhat parallel incident occurred at St. Petersburg. A certain eminent personage had in- vented a fire extinctor, and was very anxious to try its effect. One evening a small fire broke out that could easily have been put out, say, with a watering-pot; but the authorities would not touch it till the great man arrived with his ' extinctor.' There was some delay, and at last when he did arrive the fire had gained such a head that his extinctor was useless, and there was an immense con- flagration. Then of course there were recriminations without limit, one party saying, * If you had done your duty at the proper time, you might have put out the fire with a " watering-pot " ; ' the other side pointing to the great conflagration, and saying, ( Listen to these fools ; they ask us to put out the fire with a watering-pot.' I am quite aware that in the opinion of many it is as wicked to doubt the dispensations of Providence as it is to doubt the dispensations of Mr. Gladstone ; but as the dispensations of Providence are not always immediately evident, neither are those of Mr. Gladstone. Take a case : A has a farm let to B, but B is idle drunken, perhaps thriftless, has no capital, and a dozen children, and he cannot * live and thrive ' at a rent that, compared with rents in England and Scotland, is very liberal. Well, A, who sees the value of his farm annually diminishing, would like to cultivate it himself or let it to C, who has capital and no children, is sober, and intelligent, and thrifty, and can ' live and thrive ' on a rent that B cannot pay. It would appear better for the country, for the community, more in accordance with the rules of justice and common sense, that the land neglected and going to ruin under B should be well and properly cultivated by 56 'STRAY SHOTS.' the owner A, or that it should be let to a competent tenant C ; but the Land Act says No. It says to A, ' You shall not cultivate your land yourself, you shall not let it to C, who has capital and energy to cultivate it ; but you shall lower the rent to B 15 or 30 per cent., or, indeed, by such an amount as will enable him drunken, idle, thrift- less as he is, with no capital and ten children to " live and thrive." ' Now, is this an exaggerated case? Is it a solitary case? On the contrary, it is the law of Parliament as interpreted by Mr. Baldwin and his colleagues. * In de- termining the rent,' said Mr. Baldwin, ' we have not set up any standard of what the farming ought to be. We have taken the estate, tenants and all, as we have found them. We have carefully considered the capabilities of the land in the hands of the present tenants. To others the land may be more valuable if those tenants were removed ; with any speculation on that point we have nothing to do.' Take the following statement of the case of ' Shanahan v. Denny,' mentioned in the 'Standard' of December 19, 1882 : ' In this case the tenant holds 100 acres, principally pasture. He has not during fourteen years drained a single acre. He has borrowed nearly 1,000?. from his friends ; he has ten children, and is deeply involved ; his rent, which was reduced from 751. to 55L when he took the farm, has been lowered by the Commissioners to 4-41. In' both these cases I made a private inspection of the holdings, and I can testify that Flanive's consists in the main of good sweet pasture land ; that much of Shanahan's is equally good; and nearly all would be extremely valuable if scored with a few simple stone drains. Facts like these invite comment.' Indeed they do. A hundred Irish acres, equivalent to 150 statute acres, of good sweet pasture land for 44L a year may indeed invite very curious com- ments from tenant farmers in less favoured districts of the United Kingdom. I do not object to the argument, ' Force is no remedy.' THE LAND ACT. 57 It may be true or it may not ; but what I do object to, in common, I believe, with many others, is that those members of the Cabinet who have secured the ringing cheers of their countrymen for crying ' Force is no remedy,' should now, only a few months later, be soliciting the cheers of their countrymen for an exhibition of force that has no parallel in our history. A few years ago such an unblushing attempt to serve both God and Mammon, to keep office at any cost of consistency, would have been considered disgraceful. Now, alas ! there is only one deadly sin in the political career, one act only that is disgraceful, and that is breaking up the party. Those members of the Cabinet who find now that the cry * Force is no remedy ' no longer pays would have their political dupes believe that the political problem has changed ; but that is not so. The conditions of the problem are exactly the same as they were twelve months ago ; the change is in the public mind. We must be thankful for small gifts ; for the moment, at any rate, common sense has resumed its sway, and rebellion is met as sooner or later it was evident to every man it must be met. If the right of free contract is denied in one matter, how can it logically be maintained in any other ? If the Government claims the right of fixing an arbitrary value of land for fifteen years, how can it refuse to fix an arbi- trary value of the produce of the land for a similar period if urged to do so? Back rents in Ireland, we were assured, were the exception ; yet the Government made these ex- ceptions the excuse for fixing the rents for all the land in the country. If the Government is to fix an arbitrary land rent, at which the idle, and poor, and improvident can ' live and thrive,' why not fix a house rent at whicli the poor and improvident can equally ' live and thrive ' ? Why not fix a price for bread, and meat, and beer, and coals, and fish ? If it is necessary and right that the Irish tenant shall be made independent of his landlord, why is it not necessary and right that the English operative shall 58 'STKAY SHOTS; be made independent of his grocer or his baker ? Do we not know that the extent to which the food of the poorest classes is adulterated is frightful that they never get the full advantage of the low cost of provisions, and do we not know that the poorer classes are compelled to submit to robbery and extortion that make their homes still more miserable, merely because they are in the hands of those from whom they are compelled to purchase the necessaries of life ? Why should not they begin to cry aloud to be protected from their creditors ; to be put in a position to * live and thrive ' at their creditors' expense ? It was argued that it was necessary to fix rents of land in Ireland because competition had created an exaggerated value; and does not this apply to other commodities besides land ? What is it that maintains the rack-rents, the atrocious rack-rents, of the dens and pigstyes in the slums of our great cities, but competition ? If the land rents in Ireland are to be fixed because there is over- com petition for the farms, why should not the rents of the miserable lodgings in St. Giles's be fixed for a like reason ? The wretched beings who pay the exorbitant rent of from 2s. to 3s. a week (a rent that would give them five acres of land and a cottage in Ireland) for human styes, without even the most necessary provisions for decency and health, are evicted at a moment's notice, turned out into the streets, everything they possess seized if they do not pay their rent to the moment. Are not they quite as deserving of pity and protection from rack-renting landlords as the Irish tenants who owe two or three years' rent, and, perhaps, do not always pay when they can ? Ireland is not the only country where free contract stands in the way of the new 'live-and- thrive ' gospel, but it is known that to interfere with it generally would be to throw society into chaos. When Mr. Gladstone began trifling with the rights of property he laid the axe at the root of British credit and integrity. ' The spoliation of the landowners is only the THE LAND ACT. 59 spoliation of a small class,' say submissive Radicals, ' of a class who often have too much in favour of a class who often have too little ; the sacrifice, in fact, of about one in every thousand of the population for the benefit of the other 999.' This may be true, but is not the nation made up of classes ? Are not the propertied classes in every case in a ridiculously small minority ? And if one is to be sacrificed for the public good, why not all ? The National Debt amounts to 800 millions sterling ; this is held by about 220,000 persons. The interest is about 24 millions annually, and the whole population is taxed to pay this interest that is to say, 33,780,000 persons are taxed to pay 24 millions annually to 220,000 persons. Suppose the majority begin to argue * that property has no rights but what is for the general good ; ' that they ask why in good years and bad years, when trade is good and trade is bad, should they, the 33f millions, be taxed for the benefit of the quarter million ? If they base their objection to pay the interest of the National Debt on exactly the same arguments that are accepted as con- vincing arguments against the payment of rent, who is to say them nay ? Again, the railway stock of Great Britain amounts to about 700 millions; it is^held by less than a quarter of a million of the population. Supposing then the 33| millions say that railway fares and charges are too high, that they are injurious alike to manufacturing and agricultural interests, that they interfere with the * live-and- thrive ' doctrine ; that they are, in fact, a grind- ing tax paid by the many for the benefit of the few, and that they must accordingly be largely reduced, again, who is to say them nay ? Ministers and their organs are very angry with the Irish people because they are not enthusiastic in support of the Land Act. * We have piped to you, and you have not danced ; ' but why should they dance ? The fact is, nearly four-fifths of the Irish people detect most serious dangers in the Land Act. It is not an Act to benefit the 60 'STRAY SHOTS.' Irish nation. It is an Act to benefit a class, and that class by no means always the most deserving class in the country ; but in benefiting this class it injures severely other classes on whom the prosperity of the country depends considerably more. The land-owning class is fatally injured, but there is no mercy for them ; but the large class of domestic servants, the class of labourers, of shopkeepers, and tradesmen also suffer seriously. The tenant class in Ireland probably number about 1,500,000 all told. They benefit by the Land Act ; but the other 3,500,000 don't benefit at all ; in fact, many suffer con- siderably. The Land Act interferes with the natural laws of supply and demand in agricultural tenancies. It directly prevents the introduction of an improving class of tenants, and perpetuafes the present do-nothing class in their holdings. This is a most serious matter. The best tenant-farmers in England and Scotland are men who have made a little money in trade, or in carrying, or in shopkeeping, or in cattle dealing, or in some other way, and then take to farming ; these are the men who would make the best tenant-farmers in Ireland, but now they have less chance than ever of getting farms ; the exorbitant tenant-rights, consequent on the diminution of rent, would ruin them before they began. The great and evident object of reducing the rent of laud is that it should be reduced to the whole nation, not to a particular class. The Land Act has created a privileged class of tenants at the expense of the rest of the community. The old tenant-right, that represented the property of the tenant in the improvements he had made, was a perfectly reasonable arrangement ; the new tenant-right, consequent on the compulsory reduction of rent, is an abuse an abuse of such magnitude as to threaten absolutely the transfer of land. It is a fact that in numberless cases the compulsory reduction of 30 or 50 per cent, has enabled tenants to demand, as tenant-rights, more than the fee-simple of their farms. The rent of the THE LAND ACT. Gl land is lowered from 25 to 50 per cent, to the present tenants, but to them only ; any succeeding tenant will actually have to pay more for his land than the present tenants paid before the recent reduction. He will pay a lower rent to the landlord certainly, but he will pay such an additional sum for tenant-right, that the total will be higher than ever. A, a present tenant, whose rent has been reduced from SOL to 20L, will pay 1QL a year 'less rent to his landlord, B ; but if he parts with his tenant- right to C he will demand of him a capital sum, the interest of which will probably double the reduction of 10Z. rent to A. It is a fact that, although rents have been lowered from 25 to 50 per cent, all round, the land will, to any new tenant, be dearer than ever. It is the necessary condition of all progressive com- munities that the strong and the weak should be con- stantly changing places. When JEsop was asked by one of the wise men of Greece how Jupiter employed himself, he answered, ' He abases the high and exalts the low ' in other words, he plays the game of sea-saw with us poor mortals here below, forcing up one man and pulling down another, making the labourer a farmer here, the farmer a labourer there, and so on. But he cannot play this little game any more with Irish tenants. No more pulling down and raising up there ? The idle apprentice will no longer make way for the industrious one. On the contrary, arrangements will be made, regardless of cost, to enable the idle apprentice to ' live and thrive ' on less work than ever. Henceforward, in Ireland, the natural selection of the fittest will give wa,y to the compulsory preservation of the least worthy. The Irish farmer as a rule has neither capital, nor energy, nor ambition ; he is content to live from hand to mouth. The minimum of steady work is his object; he is as complete a fatalist as the Turk; unless some God comes to his help he will let his wheel remain in the rut till it grows there. When he has a good season he sees in it an excuse for doing little 62 'STRAY SHOTS; work ; when he has a bad season he makes it an excuse for no work at all. Is a minimum of steady work the condition on which the working classes of England, Scot- land, America, France, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, live and thrive ? What wisdom, statesmanship, common sense is there therefore in recognising it as the condition on which the working classes are to live and thrive in Ireland ? The history of the Land Act has proved one thing, that * the key of revolution is personal government.' The very props of social order, as we have hitherto understood the words viz., the rights of property and freedom of contract, that no Constitutional Government could have abolished have fallen like the walls of Jericho before the trumpet of an individual statesman. The dictation of Mr. Glad- stone has done in six months in Ireland what no constitu- tional agitation could have effected in a generation. Are we to suppose the revolutionary party in the country don't see this? The success of the Irish revolutionists has taught the English and Scotch revolutionists, and there are plenty of them, this fact that demand is a more effective word than petition ; that if you want a law altered or repealed, it is not to be done by constitutional petition, but by ' ringing the chapel bell,' by repeating the Clerkenwell outrage, by demanding it in troops. But what comes next ? Is there any mystery about it ? Do we not know that when the Roman people began to direct the Senate, instead of obeying it, when the ' legem ferre ' took the place of the * legem rogare,' that the Common- wealth soon came to ruin ? The rights of property are abolished in Ireland because the class who have no property demand it. Do we suppose that the rights of property are not equally distasteful to those who have no property in England or Scotland ? and that when they see that they have only * legem ferre ' to procure its suppression that they will not do so? There is no doubt that the answer once given by an THE LAND ACT. 63 English House of Lords, ' Nolumus mutare leges Angliae,' was the proper one with which to have returned the Irish Land Act to the House of Commons. Many thought so then, many know it now ; but, face to face with the 'Ego et senatus meus ' of Mr. Gladstone, can we be surprised they hesitated, and at last refrained from doing so ? The Irish Land Act was class legislation not merely in the sense that it benefited one class at the expense of another the class of tenants at the expense of the class of landowners but because it was openly made use of by the Eadical majority of the House of Commons to attack the land-owning class generally. I believe it is perfectly well known that there were not ten men in the House of Commons who really understood the Land Act, or pretended to see how it would work ; the enthusiasm, the unanimity, the impatience, therefore, with which the Eadical Party forced it on could not have been the result of strong conviction that it was to be the tidings of great joy to Ireland, for nobody understood it sufficiently to know whether it would do good or harm. Directly it was introduced into the House of Commons it was seen by the astute gentlemen who pull the strings of the Eadical Party that, clothe it in any language, disguise it with any specious arguments, it was veiled Communism ; a direct attack on the rights of property, on freedom, of contract ; a direct blow at the land-owning class, not in Ireland only, but in England and Scotland ; and at once the mot d'ordre went out that nothing was to be allowed to interfere with the unity of the party in its support. The Eadical Party saw that if they did not at once take advantage of the miraculous conversion of Mr. Gladstone, did not strike hard, and strike quick, whilst he constituted himself their champion, their chance might pass away and not return. Mr. Parnell said he would not take off his coat to fight for the land question alone. No more would the English Eadicals ; both had other objects in view. Mr. Parnell saw prospects of Home Eule, the Eadicals saw prospects 64 'STRAY SHOTS.' of rui ning the land-owning class. The Radical party was wise in its generation ; the Whig party was not. The former saw that, logically, every argument advanced by Mr. Gladstone against the rights of landowners and free contract in Ireland applied to the letter to the rights of landowners and free contract in England and Scotland. How it must have amused Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamber- lain to see the simple Whig landowners in England and Scotland following each other into the decoy, singing their own death song, * making a swan-like end ! J I am not wrong in saying that the full conviction of every advanced Radical in the House of Commons, from Mr. Bright to Mr. Chamberlain downwards, was that every clause in the Land Act was a nail in the coffin of feudalism and landlordism in England and Scotland, and that this motive was far more powerful with them than the idea of benefiting Ireland. The Irish know this very well, and when the Radical party charge them with ingratitude they laugh in their faces. They know perfectly well that every word spoken by English Radicals in favour of Irish interests meant a dozen words in favour of their own. The English Radicals compelled the Irish landowners to give to the Irish tenants, but they gave nothing them- selves. It was merely a display of that cheap Liberalism that consists in A compelling B to give something to C. Now that the Act is law the Radicals have much the best of it. It has done, and will do, no good to the Irish people, but every clause of it is a weapon ready to the Radical hand for an onslaught on the class they detest. We hear it said that the Cabinet will pause in face of the general ruin that is rapidly involving the landowning class in Ireland. Pause! Why should they pause? Why should Mr. Bright pause? Is he a man likely to pause when he sees the dream of his early life, the ambition of his maturer years, on the point of being realised ? Not THE LAND ACT. 65 he. He has a chance of success now that he could never have foreseen, and which may never return. Mr. Gladstone's desertion of the broad road of national Liberalism for the narrow path of party Radicalism has given Mr. Bright an authority in his crusade he could never have got without it. He and his friends now feel that the fulness of time is come. They have only to use with energy the weapons put into their hands by their new ally, and the destruction of their enemy is only a matter of time. I am one of those who think that the greatest danger to the future of the United Kingdom is the very limited number of landowners. Any tinkering of the land laws, therefore, that perpetuates and intensifies this danger is an act of legislative madness. But this is exactly what the Land Act does in Ireland. It makes the further sub- division of land almost impossible. Ireland requires three distinct remedies, and of these the first is by far the most important. (1) A larger number of landowners. (2) An improved class of tenants. (3) Emigration from starvation districts. The intro- duction of the Land Act offered the opportunity of intro- ducing all three ; the operation of the Land Act has unfortunately made all three impossible. It has closed the doors, absolutely, to the only remedies that can, in my opinion, save the country from impending ruin. Before Mr. Gladstone introduced his fatal Bill the land- lords of Ireland were willing and anxious to sell at a fair price, and the tenants and general public were willing and anxious to purchase at a fair price. Wis- dom would have assisted this movement, folly and vanity have completely stopped it. The landowners are as willing and as anxious to sell as ever more so ; but what tenant will buy? A year ago a transfer of property might have been made on a scale that would have changed the face of the country. Now that is im- possible. What tenant will now buy his farm when F 66 'STRAY SHOTS; already he has a lease of it at a rent that enables him to sell his tenant-right almost for the fee simple of the land ? What outsider will buy the land now, when he has to take i b without the rights of property, when, indeed, whatever rights remain are strictly settled on the tenant ? When he sees before him the utter ruin that has come on those who, trusting to the assurances of the Government, pur- chased land under the Encumbered Estates Act? How can a new and improving class of tenants ever hope to get land whilst they have to pay the present monstrous ex- aggeration of tenant-right? What prospect is there of persuading the miserable population of the * starvation ' districts of Ireland to seek more fruitful soils, now that their childish ' land hunger ' is gratified by a perpetual tenancy of their ' pauper- warrens ' ? The Irish Land Act in its present form is the most hasty, ill-considered, least statesman-like act of legisla- tion that has ever passed through Parliament; and it mnst fail, absolutely and completely. It must fail, because it deliberately cancels all the conditions that civilisation recognises as indispensable in the relations between man and man. Because it does for Ireland those things it ought not to do, and leaves undone those things it ought to do. Because it stops the sale of land and perpetuates pauper and embarrassed landowners. Because it bars the way to new and improving tenants, and perpetuates bad and indifferent ones. Because it stops emigration where emigration is the only remedy. Because it perpetuates a privileged class of tenants at the expense of the rest of the nation. Because it legislates for the people of Ire- land as if they were children unable to take care of them- selves, and imposes on them conditions of national life that are insulting and intolerable. Because the Irish nation see through the insincerity of the Radical vote. Because they know that the destruction of the class of landowners in England and Scotland was a much stronger inducement to them to vote the Bill than the good of Ireland. Because it poisons the national life, for no THE LAND ACT. 67 national life can be healthy in which the exercise of the right of property and of freedom of contract are forbidden. Because for a term of fifteen years it throws the whole land of Ireland into Chancery, during which time it will belong absolutely to no one, neither to landlord nor tenant, but rather more to the latter than the former. I say deliberately that this Land Act of Mr. Gladstone, instead of strengthening the union between England and Ireland, supplies by far the strongest argument yet adduced for repealing it, because it proclaims openly that Ireland cannot exist in union with England under the conditions that are universally recognised as necessary to the pro- gress and prosperity of civilised mankind. The Emperor Akbar used to say, ' He never knew a man lose himself in a straight road.' I ask any one who has watched the hesitating, vacillating, absolutely contradictory policy of those who have pi'etended to rule Ireland during the last two years, and who are still feeling their way like a blind man with a stick, whether it does not appear that we have left the straight road of common sense and national duty, and are fast losing ourselves in a labyrinth of experiments, expediency, and class legislation ? XIV. THE HOUSE OF LORDS. IF it is a fact that the House of Lords is acting strictly within its constitutional rights in appointing a Committee to examine into the administration of the Irish Land Act, it is evident the House of Commons has exceeded its con- stitutional rights in censuring it for doing so. Of course, there have been many instances in which the administration of the Executive Government has been attacked in the House of Lords ; but on every such occasion the Government of the day has been content to invite the House of Commons to support it against the F 2 68 'STRAY SHOTS: House of Lords. This was essentially the nature of Lord John RusselPs resolution of March 15, 1839. The words of the resolution were : ' That it is the opinion of this House that it is expedient to persevere in those prin- ciples which have guided the Executive Government of late years, and which have tended to the effectual administration of the la\* and the general improvement of that part of the kingdom.' There is actually not one single precedent for the Government asking the House of Commons to pass a vote of censure on the House of Lords. To Mr. Gladstone undoubtedly belongs the honour of having inaugurated this policy of combat. And what reason is there in this particular case to alter the unwritten law that has hitherto regulated the relations between the two Houses of Parliament ? I do not allow that because the action of the House of Lords has enabled the Liberal party in the House of Commons to gain a party victory, that therefore the Liberal party is right and the House of Lords wrong. I believe that, in the present hyper-sensitive condition of the political nerves, the votes of the Liberal party do not on all occasions very exactly represent their true opinions. I do not think there ever was a time when party coercion was so strong ; when it would be less convenient to the Liberal party to lay bare their political consciences. If Cicero's aspiration, that * every man should have written on his forehead what he really thought of the affairs of the State,' could be realised, the handwriting on many Liberal foreheads, on the questions of the Trans- vaal, the Land Act, the Bradlaugh case, the Cloture, the vote of censure on the House of Lords, would give a startling contradiction to many votes. Now, let us see what the House of Lords has done. The landowners of Ireland a numerous, loyal, influential, and responsible class of the community complain to a man that the Land Act is being unjustly administered ; that they are being ruined ; they say the sub-commis- THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 69 sioners are inefficient, are partisans, that they have reduced the rents indiscriminately to Griffith's valuation, without inquiry and without examination. They say that Griffith's valuation, in 1852, was made just after the ' great famine,' when agriculture had suf- fered from a cycle of very bad years. That it was made for the purposes of taxation, and was never intended as a standard of rent ; that Sir Richard Griffith stated ' that an increase of one-third, or 33 per cent., on his valuation would be a fair agricultural rent ; ' that since 1852 the value of Irish agricultural produce has risen over 50 per cent. ; that the last two years are the best Irish agri- culture has ever had ; that, therefore, for the sub-com- missioners to reduce the rents now all round to Griffith's valuation is manifestly unjust and absurd. This is the case of the Irish landowners. The Government say : ' We do not deny that we distinctly and repeatedly assured the Irish landowners that they should not be ruined ; we do not deny there is ap- parent, perhaps real, injustice in the administration of the Act ; we merely reply that we will make no inquiries and entertain no complaints.' To this the House of Lords reply : ( We have satisfied ourselves that great injustice has been committed in the administration of the Act. We think that the Government are bound to inquire into these complaints ; but as they decline to do so, we will undertake the duty : we have the constitutional right to make the inquiry, and we will do so.' This is what the House of Lords have done ; and this is what has brought down on their heads the thunderbolts from Olympus ! But the House of Lords can very much strengthen their case. They can urge that this Act is in every way a novelty, an experiment without parallel or precedent. There is nothing like it in any code of jurisprudence in the world : it is founded on principles the very reverse of those that have hitherto been considered indispensable to 70 'STRAY SHOTS.' good government; it deliberately cancels all the con- siderations that civilisation has recognised as indispens- able in the relations between man and man. It is an Act that is repulsive to the intelligence and reason of almost every responsible statesman in the kingdom ; an Act that nobody likes, nobody understands, nobody believes in ; that has been accepted as a solution by no party in the State ; that has not brought ' peace and healing ' on its wings, but, on the contrary, appears to be dragging the country to a state of anarchy in which < chaos shall judge the strife.' * But,' say irate Liberals, ' the House of Lords is chiefly composed of landowners ; how can they make themselves judges in their own case? Why don't the Irish land- owners appeal to the House of Commons ? ' Why don't they ? For the very reason that they know the House of Commons would not listen to them. I suppose we may excuse, even in Irish landlords, an exercise of common sense that prompts them to bring their complaints before a court that they know is inclined to listen favourably, rather than before one that they know will not listen at all. The House of Lords does not represent the class of landowners more than the House of Commons represents the class of manufacturers and traders. Does the fact of a member of the House of Commons being a manufacturer or a trader disqualify him from sitting on a Committee to discuss questions between capital and labour, between employers and employed ? Why, then, should the fact of a member of the House of Lords being a landowner dis- qualify him from sitting on a committee to discuss questions between landlord and tenant? I know there are some enthusiastic reformers who urge that Irish landlords have no claims to justice that continued tyranny and extortion put them altogether out of court. But those who palliate Irish confiscation, and at the same time deny the possibility of English and Scotch confiscation, make agreat mistake. They imply there is a difference between English and Scotch THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 71 landlords and Irish landlords. But there is no difference at all : there is not a single argument that can be advanced in favour of confiscation in Ireland that cannot be advanced with equal force in favour of confiscation in England and Scotland. I know many landlords in the three kingdoms, and I know no difference whatever between them. It is true that the rents have been raised considerably in Ireland, because there has been great competition for farms ; but it is no less true that, when there was great competition for farms in England, the rents rose here considerably also. It is implied that the Irish landowners have been hard masters ; but this is positively disproved by the enormous number of farms on which the rents are three, four, and five years in arrear. I hear it urged that English and Scotch landowners are suffering as much as the Irish land- owners, but that they make no complaints. But this is not true ; the difference between the two cases is immense. While English and Scotch landlords, after three or four consecutive bad seasons, have voluntarily and temporarily reduced their rents from 15 to 25 per cent., the Irish landlords, after the two best seasons on record, are com- pelled to submit to a reduction of 23 per cent, for fifteen years. Whilst the voluntary reductions made by the English and Scotch landlords to their tenants tend to in- crease mutual reliance and goodwill, the compulsory reductions of the Irish landlords to their tenants merely tend to increase mutual defiance and distrust. Whilst the English and Scotch landowners still retain the rights of property, can still exercise the right of free contract, can still find purchasers for their land, the Irish landowner is reduced to the position of a rent-charger, is deprived of all rights of property and of free contract, and finds his land unsaleable. When I hear the indignation expressed by English and Scotch Liberals with the Irish landlords for their com- plaints, and with the House of Lords for venturing to 72 'STRAY SHOTS.' examine into these complaints, I cannot help asking my- self what these gentlemen would have said if a similar Act had been passed for England and Scotland, and similar injustice had resulted from its administration. Suppose thirty sub-commissioners, without knowledge or experience or standing, had been allowed to roam over the agricultural districts of England and Scotland, and, almost without inquiry or examination, had cut down rents all round 23 per cent, for a period of fifteen years, reduced the landlords to the position of rent-chargers, and absolutely destroyed the selling value of land, would English and Scotch landlords then be so anxious to pass a vote of censure on the House of Lords for venturing to examine into the administration of the Act ? Would they not, indeed, have demanded inquiry without delay, and of a most searching kind ? There was an amusing sketch in ' Punch ' some time ago of two children in a fox-hunting country house, looking at the picture of Our First Parents being driven out of Paradise by angels with flaming swords. * What can they have done ? ' asked one. * I suppose they must have killed a fox,' is the very natural reply. When one sees the Radicals brandishing flaming swords in the face of the House of Lords one is driven to ask the same question : * What can they have done ? ' Have they killed a (con- stitutional) fox ? Have they threatened the rights of the House of Commons infringed civil, religious, or personal liberty ? Is it their action that has brought disgrace on our institutions ? that arrests indiscriminately women, children, and members of Parliament? that has filled the gaols of Ireland with five or six hundred untried citizens ? In fact, has the House of Lords, at the present crisis, done anything to deface the palladium of British liberty ? Not a bit of it. It has done none of these things ; but it has done what, under the present condition of things, is far worse it has ventured to criticise the Irish Land Act as if it was an ordinary Act of Parliament. Now, this can- THE HOUSE OF LOEDS. 73 not be permitted. A man may do a great deal he may be a political Esau, openly denounce Queen, Lords, and Commons ; have * ni foi, ni roi, ni loi ' but he must not allow himself to express any doubt of the beneficence and success of the Land Act. Why this Act is the only one iu the statute-book labelled defendu d'y toucher it is hard to say. I suppose it is because it's so delicate : ' It's so far gone with rickets and th' evil That one small dose will send it to the devil." That is to say, that it is so illogical, so impossible, so utterly unjust, so evidently struck with mortal disease, that its author feels that the slightest rough usage will be fatal to it at once. The Government do not actually deny that injustice is being committed in the administration of the Land Act. They do not even deny the right of the House of Lords to examine into this injustice. All they say is that the time for inquiry has not yet come that the House of Lords ought to wait. But if injustice is being committed, it seems a queer argument to use that it is ' too soon to in- quire into it.' Everybody knows that there is a point where justice ends and injustice begins, and that when that point is reached inquiry becomes absolutely necessary. The House of Lords say this period has already been reached; the Government say it has not. Who is to decide ? It is as difficult sometimes to define the exact want of justice that constitutes injustice as it is the exact want of hair that constitutes baldness. If the latter is argued out, it must, of course, be reduced to the question of a single hair. If the House of Lords is to wait, what is it to wait for ? When will the proper moment arrive to inquire into the administration of the Act ? If not in four months, will it be in six, or twelve, or twenty-four months ? Diogenes used to tell the young men 'it was not yet time for them to marry ; ' to the old men he used to say ' it was too late.' 74 'STRAY SHOTS; The House of Lords are told now it is too soon to inquire into the practices of the sub-commissioners. If they defer their inquiry six months, or twelve months, is it not almost certain that they will then be told it is too late ? The argument advanced by some over-zealous sup- porters of the Government, that 'the Irish landowners should bear any amount of injustice sooner than interfere with the Executive,' is contrary to common sense. What sense is there in saying to the Irish landowners : * You are being ruined ; but for God's sake, keep still ! Don't say, or do, anything that can hinder the process ; don't attempt to save yourselves. Wait until you are quite ruined, then, perhaps, we might do something for you.' It surprises me that Liberals of ' light and leading ' are not ashamed of parading that exceedingly ' chalk ' kind of Liberalism that consists in A making B give something to C. If A and B both give something to C, it is quite excusable to both of them, like little Jack Homer, to exclaim : ' What a good boy am I ! ' But when A gives absolutely nothing to C himself, it is rather comical to see him congratulating himself on his liberalism for compelling B to give to C a great deal more than he can afford. Of course everyone knows that those who now denounce so loudly the complaints of the Irish landowners would cry out quite as loudly themselves if they were compelled to submit to a similar sacrifice. I know there are many ' stalwarts ' in the House of Commons who would do away altogether with the House of Lords ; and, indeed, unless their language is intended to conceal their thoughts, there are a certain number of peers who are quite prepared to commit the 'happy despatch,' provided always they can be sure of dragging with them to the realms below their Tory opponents. But what do they propose to give us in its place ? A Senate, of course, they will say, nominated or elected; but this would be no improvement on the House of Lords. American and French history both teach us that elected THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 75 Senates are generally antagonistic to the Lower House, and nominated Senates have generally proved instruments of tyranny in the hands of those who nominated them. I don't suppose any one is very much concerned to maintain that the House of Lords is an ideal House of Legislature. Theoretically, it may be argued that it is the very reverse ; there is, indeed, something even comical in the idea of hereditary legislators; we all know that talent is not necessarily hereditary, and that there are many peers who, by education, conduct, habit, are un- qualified or disqualified for the work of legislation ; and if the deliberations of the House of Lords were influenced by them the institution would not bear examination ; but they do not influence them in the very slightest degree. The House of Lords is an hereditary House certainly, but its strength rests as much with those who have been created as with those who have been begotten peers. Together with a certain number of ' faineants,' the House of Lords contains the greater proportion of the matured political wisdom and experience of the nation ; those who have been distinguished at the bar, on the bench, in diplomacy, in the House of Commons, and it is by such men exclusively that the decisions of the House of Lords are regulated. Theoretically, the House of Lords may leave much to be desired; practically it is open to less objection, and has done more good work than any Upper House in existence. These periodical attacks on the House of Lords have very different results from what their promoters anticipate ; they compel the impartial public to make comparison between the two Houses, and this comparison cannot fail to be in favour of the House of Lords. We see that the procedure of the House of Lords is still marked by dignity, order, and decency ; that its work is well done and quickly done ; that its debates are exhaustive, statesmanlike, and national ; whilst, according to its own showing, the dignity, order, decency, debating power and business capacity of 76 'STRAY SHOTS. 1 the House of Commons are rapidly approaching the vanishing point. Of course, every incident that shakes" national confidence in the House of Commons rallies im- partial judgment to the support of the House of Lords. The House of Commons has one real grievance against the House of Lords, and, as far as I know, only one, but it is an irritating one, the House of Lords is constantly recruiting its best men ! The House of Lords is just now abused by the extreme party because they see in it a probable check to Radical Csesarism ; and because they see that it can arrest the headlong speed of a dictatorial Minister ; and this they will not stand. But there is a third party in the State besides Radicals and Tories namely, the ' Party of Common Sense,' who do not care twopence who are the * ins ' and who are the ' outs ; ' who take no interest in the fierce squabbles to seize or retain the fleshpots of office, who mistrust headlong legislation, who do not regard every change as reform, who dislike revolutions and distrust dictators. This party takes no active part in practical politics ; but it sits on the ballot box, and to it the militant parties on both sides have to come when they appeal to the people, and it is quite possible that this party may soon come to the conclusion that the very qualities that make the House of Lords at this moment so distasteful to the Radicals may be those that make it most useful to the State. XV. THE CL6TURE. A GREAT physician, whose motto should be ' Opifer per orbem dicor,' teaches that the probability of curing a chronic disease depends very much on the care that is taken to discover the cause of it. The House of Commons, we are told, is suffering from chronic obstruction, and the THE CL6TURE. 77 State physicians are daily meeting in consultation to decide on the remedy ; but they will prove themselves poor prac- titioners indeed if they do not establish, beyond a doubt, the cause of the obstruction before they proceed to ad- minister a remedy that, in the opinion of many competent judges, is worse than the disease itself. Without waiting to consider the ascertained causes of obstruction, whether personal, patriotic, conscientious, or mere ' cussedness,' or whether, indeed, evil examples of official verbosity are not responsible for a good deal of the corruption of Parliamentary manners, I wish to call atten- tion to a cause that has hitherto apparently escaped attention, or, at any rate, has not received the amount of attention it deserves. When every recognised cause of Parliamentary obstruction has been removed by the purge, the cautery, or the knife, there will still remain one that, in my judgment, must always prevent rapid legislation in the House of Commons, and that is, the number of members. There is no existing deliberative assembly in the world nearly so numerous as the English House of Commons ; and, as far as I can learn, there never has been ; and it is the opinion of many competent persons that the large number of 652 members in itself constitutes obstruction, and is a machine so cumbersome and unwieldy that any- thing like rapid legislation with it is an absolute impos- sibility. Do what you will, it must always be a slow process to pass a large body of fluid through a narrow tube, and it must, of course, become slower if the quantity of the fluid is increased and the diameter of the tube is not. No amount of pressure will make it go much faster ; the only remedy is less fluid or a larger diameter of tube. It is true that as Roman freedom decayed the number of the Roman Senate increased, till it rose from the original 300 of Tarquin the Ancient to 900, and even 1,000 ; but it was reduced by Augustus again to 300, and though 78 'STRAY SHOTS. afterwards raised to 600 it was no longer a delibe- rative assembly, consulted on matters of weight and im- portance, but simply a machine to legalise the decrees of tyrants. In the English House of Commons the proportion of representatives to population is much greater than in any representative assembly in the world, whilst the propor- tion of representatives to voters is very much greater still. A short comparison of the representative conditions of America, Germany, France, and England will make this immediately evident. For instance Number Number of Proportion Proportion Population of Voters Represen- tatives to Population to Voters America . . 48,000,000 293 1 in 160,000 Germany . . 45,000,000 397 1 in 110,000 France . . 37,000,000 10,000,000 530 1 in 70,000 1 in 20,000 England . . 34,000,000 3,000,000 652 1 in 50,000 1 in 5,000 If France had the same proportion of representatives to voters that England has, she would have 2,000 repre- sentatives. If America had the same proportion of representatives to population as England, she would have 1,000 representatives. It is no argument, because the number of the members of the House of Commons has but very slightly increased, whilst obstruction has very much increased, that therefore the difficulty is not in numbers but in something else. This is true only to a certain extent. Fifty years ago the number of members may have been nearly as great as at present, but the conditions under which they sat in Parlia- ment were very different. By far the greater majority were then silent members, who never sought to open their mouths at all, but were quite content to be heard through the mouths of their leaders. For the purposes of legis- lation the House of Commons was then an assembly of perhaps 100, or at most 150, talking, and 400 silent members. These proportions are now absolutely reversed. THE CL6TURE. 79 The great majority of the House now consists of talking members, men who all have something to say on some subject or another, and who consider that they are under an obligation to their constituents, to their coun- try, and to themselves, to say it, and re-say it, and say it again, whenever they can make an opportunity of doing so. How can such a machine, combining apparently all the conditions that necessitate slow and deliberate progress, be converted into an express engine ? But even supposing it to be an undoubted fact that the parliamentary machine, as at present constructed, does necessitate slow legislation, is it certain, therefore, that it is a matter of regret ? In altering, undermining, recon- structing old, and it may be shaky, institutions, where we have to pull down at least as much as we can hope to con- struct, which is the least dangerous extreme, to fall into hasty legislation or slow ? The persistent opposition to the Irish Land Act, of which so much capital is made in the present discussion, is, after all, a two-edged sword. It may be cited as a case to prove the necessity for more rapid legislation, but it may also be cited as a case to prove that the slowest legislation may be too rapid, when it turns out to be of a kind the country would have been better without. Does any one doubt now, when the Land Act has been in full operation for six months and it can be proved beyond the possibility of doubt that it has done every- thing its authors engaged it should not do, and has not done one single thing they undertook it should do that if it was again submitted to the decision of Par- liament it would be rejected by large majorities in both Houses ? There is nothing new in obstruction ; it has always existed, and must always continue to exist in every debat- ing assembly where strong antagonism is aroused. 'All obstruction in Parliament,' says Charles I., that 80 'STRAY SHOTS. 1 is to say, all freedom in differing in votes, and debating matters with candour and reason, * must be taken away.' In Rome, when any question was referre ad Senatum, in English, brought before Parliament, any senator whose opinion was asked was allowed to speak upon it as long as he pleased, and it was often usual for senators to protract their speeches till it was too late to deter- mine. Happen what may, under any improved procedure, if the House of Commons is to continue to be a debating assembly, even in name, each member must have absolute power to express his views, and opinions, and crotchets, if the spirit moves him to do so. It would be bad enough for a powerful majority or a powerful Minister to say to the elected members of the first deliberative assembly in the world, ' You may vote but you must not speak ; you may, like Lord Burleigh, convey any meaning you can in a nod, but yon must not express it in words,' but it would be intolerable if a Minister or a majority should exercise party favouritism, ' O'er subject friends extend the gentle sway, But teach with iron rod the haughty to obey.' I suppose it may be accepted as a fact that nineteen out of every twenty of those who have made Parliamentary re- putations have made them at the expense of the patience, or rather in defiance of the impatience, of the House of Commons, by advocating, in season and out of season, un- popular views and aspirations, the wishes of the minority, in fact, against the wishes of the majority. It is undoubtedly true that the Cloture as at present proposed may compel many possible Hampdens, Crom- wells, Burkes, Chathams (especially if they happen to be on the unpopular side) to remain session after session mute and inglorious. But it will, on the other hand, most certainly have the effect of causing inferior men, on both sides, to rush early THE CL6TURE. 81 into debate, under the natural conviction that if they did not say their say before the great guns had spoken, they would, in all probability, be ignominiously silenced as ob- structionists. I suppose the Speaker must, as heretofore, call on the member who first catches his eye, and unless he is monoptic and, like Lord Nelson at the battle of Copen- hagen, puts his glass to his blind eye when he does not wish to see, I don't understand how he can avoid being attracted by the frantic signals of ambitious mediocrities. Of course, it is difficult to imagine the House of Commons performing the ' happy despatch,* and reducing its numbers by one-half; but those who urge that legisla- tion, provided always it is in the right direction, cannot be too rapid or too strong, must remember that with the present number of members of the House of Commons speed can only be obtained by the unscrupulous employ- ment of the muzzle. If it is necessary to the conduct of public business that the minority should be coerced, it must of course be done ; but, if possible, it should be done in such a manner that those who only persist in a conscientious opposition may not be silenced by those who disguise the most evident party tactics under the claim of superior principles. England is threatened by a tyranny that in any other country in the world would be at once laughed out of court the tyranny of ' priggism ' in other words, the rule of men who notoriously sharing to the very fullest possible extent the frailties and infirmities of bitter party politicians, yet claim to be impelled only by motives of superhuman purity ! Whatever the House of Commons may do to improve its procedure, let us pray in the name of common sense that it will do nothing to encourage the growth of this pestilent sham. If Parliament is forced to destroy her own offspring the execution should be as private as possible ' Ne pueros coram populo Medea trucidet' 'Medea does not draw her G 82 'STRAY SHOTS.' murdering knife and spill her children's blood upon the stage.' Under any circumstances the exercise of the Cloture must be hard to endure ; but it will become absolutely unendurable if it is felt that it is used for mere party purposes. The humiliating effect of the Cloture would be very much mitigated by secret voting, if, indeed, secret voting did not entirely remove the necessity for it, and, indeed, why should not voting in the House of Commons be con- ducted under the ballot ? As far as I can understand the question, every argu- ment that applies to secret voting in constituencies applies to secret voting in Parliament. Of course, it is very pleasant to suppose that every in- dividual member of Parliament is determined honestly and courageously to do his duty in the face of day, and has no need of the protection of the ballot-box ; but nevertheless, there is a very general belief that the ballot-box would, on important questions, very often give us a more correct idea of the opinion of the House of Commons than open voting. And, after all, I suppose, it is the true indepen- dent opinion of its representatives in Parliament that the country desires on important questions rather than the mere dictation (often interested) of party wire-pullers. Of course, secret voting in the House of Commons would, to a certain extent, take the sting out of the party lash, but I do not believe there are a dozen men of sense in the country, out of the favoured ranks of place holders, or place hunters, on either side, who are of opinion that exclusively party government, during the last fifteen years, has been attended with such conspicuous national benefits that it is worth our while to make any sacrifices of free discussion in order to prolong it. 83 XVI. RUNNING WITH THE HARE AND HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS. ' WHAT does he mean by it ? ' was the first remark of Prince Talleyrand, when he heard of the illness of some rival diplomatist. 'What does he mean by it?' is the remark one everywhere hears at Mr. Gladstone's prolonged stay at Cannes. Does he mean the House of Lords? Does he mean absolute retirement? Has he suddenly discovered, for the fourth or fifth time, that at his age the future has stronger claims on his thoughts than the present? Are his colleagues afraid of more of his irre- sponsible utterances ? Is he shirking the disagreeable office of washing the Bradlaugh dirty linen in Parliament ? Evidently there is something kept back from the country * Toutes verites ne sont pas bonnes a dire.' There is some truth that it is not considered politic to publish. What is it ? If Mr. Gladstone is really ill, why do his friends persistently assure us that he is ' wonderfully well ' *in excellent spirits'? Why does one special corre- spondent call attention to his ' elastic step ' ? Why does Mrs. Gladstone assure another special that * the sleepless- ness is getting on very well ' ? If he is not really ill, why, in the language of the United Service, does he not ' return to his duty ' ? Lord Hartington told the House of Com- mons that this was no ' enforced absence,' that at any moment Mr. Gladstone could return if he would. Is there a single instance in our parliamentary history of the Prime Minister omitting to meet Parliament at the opening of the session except through ' enforced absence ' ? Would any previous Parliament have tolerated any other excuse for such an omission from any former Prime Minister? What, then, is the truth? There must be some unusual cause for the prolonged absence of Mr. o 2 84 'STRAY SHOTS; Gladstone, and for the complacent manner with which his party regard it. Perhaps the solution is not very difficult to find. The Liberal party have in Mr. Gladstone the most experienced, the most astute, the most successful, and undeniably the most unscrupulous leader they have ever had ; he has led them to victory, he would leave them to defeat ; they know it is a question of life or death. Under no circum- stances, therefore, will they part with him if they can help it. As regards Mr. Gladstone himself, he is apparently only following out his old policy that has served him with more or less success all through his political career, viz., ' running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.' He is as ever courting the applause of 'all sorts and conditions of men.' He knows that if he personally proposes legislation that will admit a professed atheist to Parliament he will shock his pious supporters ; and that if he refuses to do so he will irritate his free-thinking supporters ; so, as usual, he has hit upon a middle course. He will do neither ; he will neither propose nor oppose. He will keep away, and, like Helen of Troy, attempt a double triumph. ' Her eyes she disciplined exactly right, Both when to wink and when to show the white.' To Mr. Morley and the pietists of England and Scot- land, ' showing the white,' Mr. Gladstone says, ( I grieve, my pious friends, to say that the interests of our party render it impossible any longer for the Government to delay bringing in an Affirmation Bill that will give Mr. Bradlaugh a seat in Parliament. You know how dis- tressing this is to me, how I abhor Bradlaugh and all his works. Nothing will induce me to give my personal support to such a measure. " Faithful to the end," I will remain away under the excuse of small health.' And the pietists in their turn, showing the white, exclaim, ' Happy England, felix prole virum,' that is governed by so pious a statesman. RUNNING WITH HARE AND HUNTING WITH HOUNDS. 85 To Messrs. Labouchere, Dilke, and the advanced thinkers of the party, Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand (with a wink), exclaims, * I rejoice, my irrepressible young friends, to tell you that the hour has struck that proclaims the downfall of the last stronghold of Toryism and in- tolerance in England. It is a great comfort to me, in my old age, that this great event should be the work of my Government; it is one of the greatest disappointments of my political life that I cannot myself lay the axe to the root of this detested upas tree, and be with you, when the victorious champion of free-thought takes his well-earned seat. It is only the paramount interests of our party that keep me away, but although absent in the flesh ' My soul, happy friends, will be with you that night, Shall join in your revels, your sports, and j-our wiles, And return to me beaming all o'er with your smiles ! Too blest, if it tells me that 'mid the gay cheer True Radicals murmured, " I wish he were here ! " ' And advanced thinkers exclaim, * Happy England, felix prole virum.' You will go far with such a leader. XVII. DEBASEMENT. THE proposed debasement of the half-sovereign into a 9s. token is a subject generally discussed, and, except by a few very robust party men, who would debase St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey if the Prime Minister proposed it, generally dismissed as puerile nonsense ; the inspiration of restlessness that cannot leave well alone is a reminder to the public that the financiers of 1884 are not ordinary men ! But there is nothing new in it. It is only the extension of a policy that has proved successful elsewhere. It is only doing with the currency what we have already done with the army and navy, and, as many think, are preparing to do with the Empire. By debasing the army 86 'STKA.Y SHOTS.' we are assured we have added to its strength ; by debasing the currency we are assured we shall add to our wealth. Of course, we know we shall not do anything of the kind, that it is only self-illusion, but still we seem to like the idea. The fact is that under our present official dispen- sation a system of * tokens ' of changeable value is indis- pensable ; we could not get on without it ; but these tokens are of no use if they are not elastic. A coin is a token of value, a soldier is a token of height, and breadth, and strength, of endurance, of discipline, &c., an ironclad (say a ram) is a token of speed, of power, &c. We take a token worth 9s. and we say it represents 10s., and we know it does not. It is only a case of self-illusion. We take a lad seventeen years of age, ill- nourished, five feet three inches in height, weighing 1201b., and we pile on him arms and accoutrements weighing 601b., and say this is a ' token ' representing a British soldier ! But we know it is not, it is only another case of self- illusion. We take an ironclad that, owing to defective boilers, can only maintain a speed of nine knots, and we say, ' This is a token of a ram that can steam 15 knots an hour;' but we know it is not only self-illusion again. Of course, we are the greatest nation that ever existed ; the most enlightened, the most liberal, the most humane, the most moral, the most sensible, &c., but somehow or an- other I am afraid that there is more sham perhaps self- illusion sounds better amongst us just now than in any other nation in the world. This is the price we pay for the luxury of indulging in superfine professions, of as- suming superior motives, of pretending to be better than our neighbour better than we really are ourselves. It is the bitter fruit of the ' gospel of cant,' or,, as Mr. Gibson wittily puts it, the ' policy of cant and recant.' The humanity that caused the bombardment of Alexandria and the slaughter of Egyptians and Arabs is sham. The piety that closes all places of amusement and instruction on Sunday is a sham. The civilisation that encourages DEBASEMENT. 87 the dissemination of disease, that sacrifices the health and happiness of pauper children to school fees, is sham. The morality that denounces gambling at Monaco, and tolerates gambling twenty times worse on every racecourse in the kingdom is sham. The crusade against the liquor traffic is sham. The liberality that is profuse with your neighbour's goods, and rights, and interests, and greedy of your own, is sham. In fact, so many things are shams it is lost time to enumerate them. It would almost appear from a recent debate that the latest offspring of political morality, ( electoral purity,' is sham also. But, to return to our * token.' ' Pigwiggen gladly would commend A " token " to Queen Mab to send.' How is Mr. Childers's ' token ' to be commended to King Mob ? Of course, every coin is a token of a certain value, but no token that is in active circulation can long retain its original value ; it is only a question of work. The more work it does the quicker it depreciates, and the quicker it depreciates, fairly, of course, the more com- pletely it fulfils the purpose for which it was issued. Turning money over quickly means making money quickly, but it also means depreciating coin quickly. To withdraw a coin from circulation and replace it with one of a dif- ferent value because it has depreciated quickly is absurd. It is, on the contrary, the strongest possible argument for increasing the number of the particular coin that has proved so useful. Nothing pays so well as the deprecia- tion of current coin. It is proof positive that all the time the coin is at work, turning over and fructifying, and multiplying the wealth of the country. The fair depreciation of a coin represents a direct gain to the country, in the same way that the freshness of a coin that had been hid away in a stocking represents a direct loss to the country. The depreciation is the exact measure of the profit the coin has been to the country. The profit made by a coin in the course of its depreciation by fair 88 'STRAY SHOTS.' wear and tear will pay for its renovation ten times over. To say that the country is enriched by taking a shilling from the half-sovereign and adding it to the sovereign is about as sensible as saying you can lengthen your blanket by cutting a piece off one end and sewing it on to the other. If we are really so poor that we cannot afford to repair our sovereigns without debasing our half-sovereigns we are literally in the position of the beggar who has to sell his socks to patch his shoes. There is no finality to the policy of debasement, whether applied to army, navy, currency, or even to the empire itself. When we have exhausted our military token of 5ft. 6in., we debase it to 5ft. 5in., and again to 5ft. 4in. ; and now, alas ! to 5ft. Sin. When we find our naval token will no longer go 15 knots we debase it to 14 knots, to 13, to 12, to 11, to 10, to 9 ; and so having debased our 10s. token to 9s., we shall soon again, I suppose, by the same argument, debase it to 8s., and to 7. The descent is easy, imperceptible almost, but it leads to Avernus all the same. Of course the whole thing is nonsense; it is all sham and self-illusion; but, unfortunately, during the last three years the country has been taught to love sham, to cherish self-illusion; and whilst they are in that mind, what is the use of crying in the wilderness ? It pays better to holloa with the crowd. 1 Si populus vult decipi, decipiatur.' XVIII. GERMANY. WHATEVER may be the condition of the British army, I don't think any one in his senses can deny that the German army is the most complete and powerful military machine the world has ever seen. I doubt whether the criticisms that have appeared on the parade of the 4th Army Corps at Homburg will very much distress the GEKMANY. 89 German military authorities, or shake the confidence of the German nation. I can quite understand Count von Moltke or General von Blunienthal saying, * Well, it is very sad to hear that the tails of our horses are too long, that our saddles are too upright, that some of our horses are unshod behind, that our artillery waggons are not painted the right colour, that our parade step is ridiculous, that altogether our army is short of buttons and pipe- clay ; but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The fact is, we try to put no more buttons than we intend the men to keep on ; and we use no more pipeclay in peace than we do in war. Thirteen years ago these same long- tailed horses, with their high saddles, some with no hind shoes on, and these badly-painted gun carriages, this infantry with its ridiculous parade step, were confronted by what was supposed to be the finest army in the world, and in a very few weeks they had made the whole of them prisoners, taken the whole of their fortresses, penetrated to the heart of their country, and surrounded their capital with a ring of steel nothing could break. We think this performance was good enough, and a very satisfactory proof of what the German army was thirteen years ago ; and ever since, year after year, we have been reforming, and improving, and organising, and strengthening, and therefore we don't think that the German army of 1883 is in any degree behind the German army of 1870 on the contrary, we believe it is in every way better.' As regards the parade step, if you go into a gymnasium and see a man hitting out with dumb-bells like a lunatic, or turning over a bar like a squirrel, and you ask what is the use of these ridiculous exercises, you will be told they are to strengthen his muscles, and make other work easy. So it is with the parade step ; the German gym- nasts maintain that it strengthens those muscles that are used in marching. It is never used except on parade, or in the barrack square, and whether it is the cause or not, it is certain that the German infantry march at a pace and 90 'STRAY SHOTS.' with a swing and for distances that no other army pretends to rival. But it is not only the military critics who make on- slaughts on German establishments. With that moral, mental, and nasal elevation so peculiar to his school, the British Radical of the Cobden School goes about throwing stones at his neighbours' glass-houses without apparently having any idea whatever that he lives in one of his own. He apparently believes that to him, and to his school alone, is given the intelligence to discern the errors of his neighbours, and the right to correct them. Germany and Prince Bismarck have always been the chief mark for his intelligent invective. * How shocking it is,' says he, 'to see a whole country turned into a barrack, all classes dragged to war, industries, agriculture, education, and civilisation neglected for the amusement of emperors and kings.' ' Why,' says he, swelling with conscious pride, f why don't you imitate me and my school ? Why don't you study the speeches of the divine Cobden, read the writing of the Cobden Club, turn your swords into ploughshares, trust to the benevolent instincts of man- kind, and adopt Free Trade ? ' &c., and I can quite under- stand that Prince Bismarck would be ready with his answer. ' Listen to me, my dear Bull, and learn a few facts before you begin to judge and condemn your neighbours. We are as fond of peace as you are ; in fact, if you will kindly look back into our respective histories, you will find we have practised it far more steadily than you have. We have never made war on our neighbours except in self- defence, and never will; but our neighbours have not exercised the same virtue towards us. During the last hundred years France has invaded Germany fourteen times, each time with all the horrors of war. During those many invasions acts have been committed that even now turn the hearts of Germans to stone when they think of them. Thirteen years ago we were threatened with GEEMANY. 9 1 another invasion ; again the cry was raised, " A Berlin ! " Another military parade was to be made through the country, burning and destroying as before. The Rhine provinces were to be annexed, and peace was to be signed in Berlin. But in the meantime we had created an army ; we had armed the nation, and were prepared for them. In a few weeks we made prisoners of the whole of their army ; we took all their fortresses. The military parade was through France, not through Germany ; instead of France annexing the Rhine provinces, we annexed Alsace and Lorraine ; instead of peace being signed in Berlin, it was signed in Paris. You blame us for keeping Alsace and Lorraine, but, if you will allow me to say so, you do this through ignorance ; you are talking of what you do not understand. Instead of blaming us for keeping Stras- burg and Metz, you ought to be very much obliged to us for doing so. It is this, and this alone, that has preserved the peace of Europe for thirteen years. The present fury of the French against Germany is not caused by the annexation of provinces that once belonged to Germany, but because in the war of 1870 the German arms inflicted on their vanity a deadly wound. Their hatred to us, their craving for revenge would have been no less if we had left them Alsace and Lorraine, but their power of gratifying it would have been much greater. The cry for revenge would not then have been merely a cry, it would long ere this have become a reality, and our frontier lands would again have been swimming in blood. Germany does not desire war with France, and with Metz and Stras- burg in her hands she has the power to prevent it. France does desire war with Germany, and with Metz and Stras- burg in her hands she would have been in a position to attempt it. You take upon yourself to blame us for annexing provinces in order to strengthen our frontier and minimise the danger of invasion, but are you quite sure your own hands are clean in this matter ? Did you not annex the Punjaub, Burmah, and Oude solely and 92 'STRAY SHOTS.' entirely for your own comfort and security ? and had you one jot more right to them than we had to Alsace and Lorraine ? Really, my dear Bull, you must permit me to tell you this is pure cant of the most unvarnished kind, suited, perhaps to the self-laudatory atmosphere in which it is your pleasure to dwell, but ridiculous in the eyes of all the world besides. Suppose we change places for a moment ; suppose your beautiful country had been invaded fourteen or fifteen times during the last hundred years, its fields devastated, its towns pillaged, its lovely resi- dences (perhaps you have one yourself) levelled with the ground, would you have liked it? Suppose you were threatened with another invasion, that in all probability would be more horrible than any that had preceded it, would you be very tolerant of the advice of some neighbour whose land had never yet been pressed by the foot of the invader? Would you listen to his advice to disband your army and trust to the benevolent instincts of mankind ? Would you not rather think he was an impertinent ass, and tell him to mind his own business ? Well, I am not so bad mannered as that ; but I think, perhaps, if you were to mind your own business, and leave us to mind ours, the cause of peace would not suffer. I think I have shown you that we have some excuse for turning our land into a barrack as you say, and for maintaining a large army ; and I think if you will give me a little more time I can show you that this army is not quite so injurious to the country as you assume. To quote one of your economic writers : " The system is not wholly a curse, because it gives the peasant habits of discipline, and the terms of service are quite sufficient to make him a soldier without unfitting him for the arts of peace." Our army is more like your militia ; our soldiers have no foreign service, no tropical or unhealthy climates to contend with, no small, sometimes deadly, wars in all parts of the world. They serve their term of service, one year, or three years, in their own districts ; the discipline is very strict ; there is GERMANY. 93 scarcely any drunkenness, no desertion, no military crimes; the percentage of sickness is only two per 1,000 ; only four per cent, are unable to read and write ; the men are drawn for military service at the age of twenty ; after they have learnt a trade or occupation in one year, or three 3 r ears, they return to their trade or occupation often much better men very seldom, if ever, the worse for their military service. We consider this system far more humane and sensible than your system of enlisting boys of seventeen before they have learnt a trade or occu- pation and dismissing them at twenty-three, when they are too old to learn one. When we look at the returns of crime in your army, of the percentage of deaths, of invalids, of deserters, of drunkenness, we are aghast; we hardly understand how your army can continue to do its work, and we can quite understand that you consider it a demoralis- ing service. We consider it to be the duty of every man, gentle or simple, to fit himself to take a useful part in the protection of his native land. You, on the other hand, entrust the honour and safety of your country to the waifs and strays the dregs of the population, as you call them. With us the rank and file of the army have certain ad- vantages over their fellow- citizens; with you they are considered scarcely fit to associate with their fellow-citi- zens at all. Our practice all through is completely antago- nistic to yours. You may consider your plan the best, but we prefer ours. We would rather not be obliged to keep such an immense army on foot, but with France threaten- ing us on one side and Russia on the other, and with some of your papers and, indeed, some of your statesmen coquetting with Slav aspirations " beating a drum in a sick man's room," as I once expressed it we see no pos- sibility of doing without it. We trust a European war will be avoided ; but we are ready, we are on the watch, and if we see burglars combining to break into our house, it is very likely we shall shoot them down before they actually do so. But the fact is, my dear Bull, it is not 94 'STRAY SHOTS.' our army, it is not our occupation of Alsace and Lorraine, that so excites your bile against us ; it is because we have not swallowed your favourite nostrum free trade ! That's where the shoe pinches. Well, we did try it some years ago, and we found it did not agree with us, that it inter- fered with the employment of our people ; so we gave it up, and our industries have increased immensely ever since we did so. You say our industries are being ruined by our vast military organisation. We don't think so. We are not so rich as you are, naturally. Without a sea- board, we can never expect to have your trade and com- merce. We are so to speak, industrial babies. Forty years ago we were in industrial swaddling clothes; we had nothing literally nothing ; we had everything to create ; whilst you were in the full vigour of industrial manhood and had everything a monopoly of all the manufacturing industries of the world's capital, iron, coal, machinery, cotton, woollen, &c. We have not overtaken you, cer- tainly, but we are rapidly doing so. We already supply you with a great deal you used to supply yourselves, and, in spite of the drain of our military services, we expect very soon we shall show you our heels. Our old-world economy tells us that " the wealth of a nation is the value of what it produces ; " your economy, on the other hand, teaches you to worship trades and commerce as the gods of national wealth. Apparently you think nothing of pro- duction, for you actually point to the startling decline in your agricultural production, to the extinction of many of your industries, as a proof of your prosperity. Your cereal products, we read, have fallen off twenty- five per cent, in ten years, and your cattle and sheep also. Our cereal products, on the other hand, have increased six hundred per cent, in forty years, and our sheep and cattle also. We now grow one-third of the potato crop of the world ; our production of sugar has increased marvellously ; many of your weak industries silk, woollen that have almost left your country are extending in ours with extraordinary GERMANY. 95 rapidity. We stand third on the list of cotton manufac- turers ; we have the greatest length of railway of any nation, with the exception of America ; our public debt only amounts to 215,000,0002., which we could pay off to- morrow by the sale of the various State properties. Now, however much you may commiserate us and tell us that we are ruining ourselves, we don't think we are. We are satisfied we have made very satisfactory progress, and we hope, if peace is granted us, to make a great deal more. We have not so many rich men as you, but we have fewer poor men. The fortunes of our working classes are grow- ing more rapidly than the fortunes of the rich, whilst with you, on the other hand, the accumulation of wealth into the hands of the few seems to be increasing every year. As regards your superior civilisation, we are not so much impressed with it as you imagine. When we read your statistics of crime ; of the frightful prevalence of drunken- ness and brutality ; of the 200,000 able-bodied paupers who are supported by the State ; of the numbers of your prisoners ; of the cost of your police when we see you closing every place of amusement on Sunday except the public house ; when we read of 1,200 applications for the most degraded and disgraceful occupation a human being is capable of that of public hangman we have come to the conclusion that in morality, humanity, sobriety, education, and true civilisation, we have not only nothing to learn from you, but a great deal to teach you. Adieu, my dear Bull, bon voyage ! ' XIX. PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE. ' WHAT are you going to be, my boy ? ' said a father to his son just leaving college. 'A lawyer, father.' 'A lawyer! Why, it is a hard apprenticeship; long study 96 'STRAY SHOTS; and patience and drudgery are the only means of success. It will be many years before you will earn money enough to pay your washing bills.' * I know that, father, but it is the only line in which professional knowledge meets its just reward. Men quack their souls and quack their bodies, but they never quack their estates.' The sagacious youth was right, the law is the only profession in which the quack as yet finds no place ; and property is the only thing with which a man plays no trick. Everything else, even to his common sense, is more or less handed over to the fraternity of quacks, faddists, theorists, and senti- mentalists. This folly or conceit, the result generally of considering yourself 'too awfully clever,' injurious to individuals, is almost fatal to a state. It is no exaggera- tion whatever to say that at present professional knowledge is banished from the national councils. '' When you are in doubt,' says Mohammed, ' consult your wife, and do exactly the reverse of what she advises.' 'When in doubt,' say our rulers, apparently, c about the army, India, Ireland, Zululand, Egypt, the Contagious Diseases Act, &c., consult those who have professional knowledge of these subjects, and then do exactly the contrary to what they advise.' Take army reform, for instance. War Minister to colonel : ' You wish to give your opinion on army reform, short service, regimental system, internal economy, esprit de corps, &c. ? ' ' Yes.' ' But first of all please inform me what professional knowledge you have on the subject.' Colonel : ' I have been twenty years a regimental officer. I have served in all ranks and in all countries. I have seen service in India, Africa, and Egypt, &c.' ' Oh ! thank you. Your professional knowledge is evidently extensive ; but I can see it will not be of any use to us.' Cabinet Minister to colonel : ' You wish to give your opinion on army reform, short service, discipline, regi- mental system, internal economy, &c. ? ' 'Yes.' 'But please tell me what professional knowledge you have of PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE. 97 the subject.' Colonel : ' I have been on the staff for twenty years. I have no regimental service; my service has been passed chiefly at head-quarters at Dublin, Malta, Gibraltar, or Simla.' Minister, brightening up : ' Then you know nothing about regimental systems, short service, discipline, internal economy, &c. ? ' Colonel Jones : ' Absolutely nothing.' ' Bravo ! this is most fortunate ; so nice of you to give us your opinion I have no doubt that it will prove of the greatest service to us.' So again with India. Cabinet Minister to Indian civilian : ' You wish to give your opinion about the Ilbert Bill ? ' < Yes.' ' But first of all please tell me what profes- sional knowledge you have of the subject ? ' 'I have been twenty years in India. I have been collector, magistrate, judge. I have served in the Presidencies, and in the Mofussil. I think I understand the relations that exist between the English and native communities, and between the Hindoo and Mussulman population. I believe .' Minister, interrupting him, ' Oh, thank you. It is very kind of you to come ; evidently your professional know- ledge is very great, but I do not think it can be of any service to us.' Enter Radical M.P. Minister : * You wish to give your opinion on the Ilbert Bill ? ' ' Yes.' ' But, first of all, tell me what professional knowledge you have of the subject. Have you ever been in India?' 'No, never.' Minister, this time relaxing into a broad smile of satisfaction : ' Then you know nothing of the administration of justice in that country ; of the positions of judges and magistrates ? ' ' Nothing.' ' You know nothing of the relations that exist between natives and Englishmen, or between Hindoos and Mussulmans ? * ' Nothing.' ' You do not even know whether the Sikhs and Mahrattas are Hindoos or Mussulmans, or neither?' ' No.' ' You don't actually know the difference between a Brahmin and a Buddhist ? ' * No.' ' Then, in fact, as regards India, you are a tabula rasa?' Radical M.P. with great indignation : ' A what ? ' Cabinet Minister : ' Oh, H 98 'STKAY SHOTS.' I beg your pardon ; I forgot : I meant to say that it is evident that you bring to the consideration of this im- portant subject a perfectly unprejudiced mind. I am sure I and my colleagues feel that your opinion will be of the greatest value to us.' So with the recent changes in the medical staff of the army. Minister to regimental officer : ' You wish to give your opinion 011 the recent changes in the medical staff of the army ? ' ' Yes.' ' First of all, let me ask what pro- fessional knowledge you have on the subject?' ' I served with my regiment in Egypt. I was in hospital at Ismailia. I came home in the " Carthage," &c.' Minister : * Oh, thank you ; I am afraid that your experience will be of no service to us.' Minister to next visitor: 'You wish to give your opinion on the reforms of the medical staff? ' * Yes.' * But first of all tell me who you are ? ' 'A depart- mental clerk.' ' Were you ever in Egypt ? ' ' No.' ' Have you ever seen the working of the new system?' 'No.' ' Then you know nothing about the stories of the want of medical necessaries in the hospitals in Egypt, of want of food on board the Carthage, &c. ? ' ' No ; nothing.' Minister, this time delighted : ' This is again most for- tunate ! I cannot tell you how much obliged we are to you. Your opinion cannot fail to strengthen our hands immensely. We have had serious complaints of the breakdown of the new system, and of the great and un- necessary sufferings thereby inflicted on the sick and wounded ; but breakdown or no breakdown, sufferings or no sufferings, we are determined to carry out our scheme, and the independent opinion of such men as you, who know nothing whatever about it, will immensely strengthen our hands in silencing those who profess they do ! ' So again with Zululand, with the Transvaal, with the Contagious Diseases Act, &c., the opinions of those who have professional knowledge have in every case been dis- carded in favour of the opinions of those who notoriously have no professional knowledge on the subject whatever. PKOFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE. 99 Now, this sounds like nonsense, but I put it to any one who has ever, even in the slightest degree, seen ' le dessous des cartes,' whether it is not the truth and very nearly the whole truth. To such a ruinous extreme is this foolish system now carried out in some departments of the public service, that not only are the opinions of those who notoriously have no professional knowledge openly pre- ferred to the opinions of those who have ; but the opinions of mere departmental clerks, who have no practical ex- perience whatever, beyond their desks, are frequently allowed to over-rule the urgent appeals of the most experienced public servants. But I am wrong in saying professional knowledge has no weight with the Government. This is only the case when it clashes with preconceived theories and sentiment. When professional opinion can be dragged in to support a favourite policy it is quite another pair of shoes, it is then employed, like a Nasniyth's hammer, with terrific effect. It is difficult to pierce the mystery that surrounds the opinions of the legal officers of the Crown on the Suez Canal question, but it is generally supposed to have been brought to pass in this way : Cabinet Minister to legal officer: 'Of course you agree with me that in these negotiations for securing increased facilities, &c., for our shipping in the canal, our first duty is to avoid wounding in the slightest degree the susceptibilities of our neigh- bours ? ' ' Certainly.' ' No sacrifice, in our opinion, can be too great to secure this object, and if it turns out that in order to do so the just interests and aspirations of our shipping and commercial classes have to go to the wall, we cannot help it ! M. de Lesseps claims a monopoly for one hundred years of the Isthmus of Suez Canal route. During that period he claims the exclusive right to make another canal, or any number of canals, if he likes ! But he denies the right of any one to compel him to make another canal, if he does not like, and he denies the right, even of the Sovereign of the country, to make another canal, however H 2 100 'STRAY SHOTS.' much it may be required, without his consent. Now, this claim, we allow, is new to us ; it has never been distinctly stated to us before. If granted, it cannot fail to be very injurious to us, and to the rest of the world ; and certainly it appears to be contrary to what is called common sense. But nevertheless, so anxious are we, at any cost, to pro- pitiate the French, and so determined are we to prove to them and to the whole world that our occupation of Egypt is only accidental and temporary, that we have determined to recognise in its fullest possible meaning this rather start- ling claim of M. de Lesseps ; in fact we have already done so. We intend to defend and justify this monopoly by every argument in our power; and as this line of conduct is likely to startle the country and alarm even our friends, it is of the greatest importance that you should strengthen our somewhat hasty action with your deliberate profes- sional opinion. Of course, you will have no difficulty in proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that M. de Lesseps' monopoly is complete and unassailable, and that it is out of the question for our own or for foreign shipowners to press for the relief that they are now clamouring about.' ' Obedient Yamen answered amen, and did as he was bid.' * Certainly,' replied our legal advisers; 'our pro- fessional knowledge is entirely at your service, and we feel confident that we shall have no difficulty in giving you a professional opinion that will enable you and M. de Lesseps to defend his monopoly against the world.' Those who quack their bodies and those who quack their souls, generally come to grief, mentally or physically ; is it possible that any nation can continue in health that deliberately, and as a matter of principle, quacks ita common sense ? 101 XX. WEALTH. Is not Mr. Chamberlain treading on somewhat delicate ground when he indulges in a general denunciation of wealth, and declaims against 'individuals and classes who have grown rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and are busying themselves in inventing methods of Avasting the money they are unable to enjoy ? ' Where are these individuals and classes ? Are they real, or are they only the cocoa-nuts, and pin-cushions, and Aunt Sallys stuck on sticks by Mr. Chamberlain himself, to be knocked over by Mr. Chamberlain to the great delight of the bystanders ? It looks very like it, for is not Mr. Chamberlain himself tarred with the odious brush of real estate, and does not every word he utters against the rich apply with consider- able force to himself? He is supposed to be a very rich man. In his own city he is credited with 20,OOOZ. a year, or more. Whether it is so or not I cannot say. I only hope for his sake it is. Now, an income of 20,OOOZ. a year is not only very large, but it is also very rare. People indeed talk of it as if it were an every-day affair, and some go so far as to credit every other landowner in this coun- try with an income of this magnitude. But the fact is that those who really possess an income of 20,OOOL are a very small number. Let us see. Out of the whole popu- lation of the country 34,000,000 there were in 1879 only about 9,500 persons with incomes over 5,000?. a year, and it was calculated that not one in ten of that number, or less than 1,000, were in possession of incomes of over 20,OOOZ. a year. So that, chide he never so wisely or so bitterly against the evils of great wealth, Mr. Cham- berlain must always make a mental reservation in his own case, for he is himself actually one of the 1,000 richest men in England. His workmen have been toiling and moiling for him night and day through long and pros- 102 'STRAY SHOTS; perous perhaps, for them, sometimes weary years, and all the money they have made has run into his pockets, and there apparently it begins to burn. What is the moral of this homily about wealth ? Does Mr. Chamberlain intend to give all he has to the poor, and to take up the cross of poverty ? Does he intend to divide his own great wealth ? or is he satisfied with the far simpler arrangement of putting pressure on others to divide ? It is not the first time by a great many in revo- lutionary history that statesmen have advocated a division of their neighbours' goods, in the conviction that they would be able to keep their own ; but their hopes have never been realised ! Division is no respecter of persons ; once it is set going it treats all alike. It is a dangerous pleasure for the owner of 20,000?. a year to denounce wealth. An income of 20,0001. a year represents the yearly incomes of 400 working men, and though Mr. Chamberlain may think it reasonable to divide up the wealth of the few in the country who are richer than he is, it is quite possible that the many who are poorer than he is may some clay ask an account of his own enormous wealth. Mr. Chamberlain says that * the great wealth that modern progress has created has run into pockets.' But into whose pockets ? Not into his own, of course. That is all right. I imagine he wishes us to believe that it has run into the pockets of the landowners ; but this, indeed, is asking a little too much of our credulity. No, it is not amongst the landowners that Mr. Chamberlain will find his 999 happy confreres that joyous band with their 20,OOOZ. a year. He probably would not find 100 landowners amongst them, all told. It is not even amongst the great employers of labour, the ironmasters, the coalowners, the manufacturers, for of late years the money has been rapidly flowing out of their pockets in- stead of into them. It is not amongst the producing'class, manufacturers, or agriculturists. It is amongst the trad- ing and commercial class, the great banking and financial WEALTH. 103 houses, the brokers and promoters of companies and foreign investments, the great cosmopolitan community of Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Parsees, &c. it is amongst this class that he will find the individuals who are grow- ing rich beyond the dreams of avarice, &c. And I am afraid it is a fact that the accumulation of wealth by this class does no good to the country : they neither dig, nor sow, nor spin, but they reap immensely. They employ no labour, they do less for the prosperity of the country, put less in and take more out, than any class in it. A great proportion of those into whose pockets the great wealth of the country is running, have only an indirect in most cases a very indirect interest in the prosperity of Eng- land : clever men who grow rich on the trade, and finances, and produce, and prosperity of the whole world, and to whom the prosperity of America, or Russia, or France, is often of far greater importance than the prosperity of England. Nobody blames them for being rich ; on the contrary, everybody envies them ; but still it is true that if the accumulation of wealth by any class or individual is injurious to the State, it is especially injurious in that class that gives back least in return. Of course everyone knows that the great inequality in wealth in this country, the immense abyss that separates rich and poor, constitutes its great danger. The curious thing is that to Mr. Chamberlain and his friends it would appear that it is in land alone that this inequality is dangerous. It is land alone that requires redistribution. But this is absurd. If it would be better for the com- munity that 100 persons should each possess 1,000 acres of land rather than that one person should possess 100,000 acres of land, much more would it be for the benefit of the community that 100 persons should each have 1,OOOZ. a year in money than that one person should have 100,0002. a year in money. The monopoly of money is more in- jurious to the community than the monopoly of land, and this the French Socialists are beginning to discover. 104 'STRAY SHOTS; XXI. MILITARY POLICY IN THE SOUDAN. THE strange obstinacy of the military authorities in London in refusing to send a battery of artillery to Sir G. Graham, commanding in the field at Suakim, has caused considerable surprise in the army, and will probably cause a good deal more. So determined were the home authori- ties in their purpose that, but for the wiser prevision of our sailors, there would actually not have been a single gun of any sort or kind with the force. 3,200 infantry and 800 cavalry, without guns, marching through an open country, to attack an enemy of unknown force, possibly entrenched, and known to be fairly supplied with guns and rifles, is rather a novelty in modern warfare. Perhaps it is the new tactical outcome of Kriegspiel and Staff College competition ! * We consider a battery of horse artillery very desir- able,' telegraphed General Stephenson and Sir G. Graham. ' Do you ? ' virtually replied the authorities in Pall Mall ; * we don't! You shall have it if you insist; but remember, we shall think you a muff if you do.' No wonder a high- spirited officer telegraphed back, * Am ready to go without guns or without mere horses.' What else could he say ? * It is not too much to say,' telegraphed an experienced military correspondent, ' that two-thirds of our casualties in the battle of El Teb were wholly due to the refusal of the military authorities at home to comply with the re- quest made that a battery of artillery should accompany the force.' If the want of artillery was the cause of two-thirds of our losses at El Teb, it could, I think, be easily proved that it was the cause of nearly the whole of our loss at Tamanieb Wells. A battery of artillery, with a strong force of skirmishers in front, would have prevented the enemy massing any large number of men within a mile of MILITAEY POLICY IN THE SOUDAN. 105 our main body; and the ugly rush that caused such a shocking slaughter on both sides could not possibly have occurred. ' Oh ! but,' say our military Solons, * it would have caused delay to send artillery from Cairo ; and if it had been 'sent it could not have been moved ; and if it could have been moved it would have defeated our pur- poses ; it would have kept the enemy at a distance ; we should never have come to close quarters in fact, we should not have got a good bag.' But events have dis- proved every one of these arguments. Osuian Digina had no intention of running away ; and whether we attacked him on Tuesday, or Wednesday, or even Thursday, did .not signify in the least, if the delay enabled us to make better provision for the safety of our men. It is rather comical to tell the country that horse artillery could not move in the neighbourhood of Suakim, when at that very moment our sailors were dragging their nine-pound guns all over the country. We had a very large force of cavalry, including a squadron of that hitherto mythical force, the 'Horse Marines.' Cannot horse artillery go everywhere where cavalry can go, to say nothing of horse marines ? If they cannot, then all I can say is that the very first axiom of military tactics falls to the ground. There is no doubt whatever that horse artillery can go anywhere that cavalry can go, and there is no doubt whatever that a battery of horse artil- lery is a more efficient force than a squadron of horse marines. It is not true that there was not water enough for a battery of horse artillery, because there was actually water enough for 800 horses. It is not true that guns could not be moved, because they did move and manoauvre their field guns without difficulty. But it is true that a battery of horse artillery would have prevented the Arabs coming to close quarters with our men ; and the result has proved that this is the chief object we ought to have had in view. Our gallant foes were perfectly harmless at a distance, and 106 'STRAY SHOTS; every effort should have been made to keep them there. At close quarters they were better than our own men, and every effort should have been made to prevent their com- ing up. The courage of the Arab is quite distinct from the courage of the English soldier ; it is not physical at all, it does not result from discipline ; it is entirely reli- gious and fanatical. He believes that Paradise is assured to him who with his own hand slays a Giaour ; and the man who would flee in terror from a shell fired a couple of miles off would rush with desperate joy on fixed bayonets if he thought that by so doing he could kill a Christian before he died. The Koran teaches that the highest dignity the faithful can attain is that of making war in person against the enemies of his religion. * Who- ever falls in battle,' says Mohammed, 'his sins are for- given; at the day of judgment his wounds shall be re- splendent as vermilion and odoriferous as musk, and the loss of his limbs shall be replaced with the wings of angels and cherubims.' Seventy- two of the houris of Paradise, with eyes large as eggs and charms in proportion, wait impatiently the approach of every true believer whose thread of life is severed in battle with a Giaour. ' They come ! Their 'kerchiefs green they w ave, And welcome with a kiss the brave. Who falls in battle with a Giaour Is worthiest of immortal bower.' When we talk of * getting a good bag,' of reaping a full harvest of death in the Soudan, are we not troubled with the old question, 'Why; what evil hath he done ? ' What evil have these daring tribesmen done us that we should kill and mutilate them, and destroy their villages, and their herds? They have done us no harm in thought, word, or deed. They are fighting for their country, and for their faith ; and if they have for the moment crossed the path of our interest, or our ambition, we have no right to slaughter them without mercy. If we had employed artillery against the Arabs, we should have convinced MILITARY POLICY IN THE SOUDAN. 107 them at once of our immeasurable superiority in war, and of the hopelessness of their opposition. By omitting to employ artillery we have put ourselves on a level with them, and encouraged them to come to close quarters, where they find themselves as good or better than we are. Surely the evil spirit of England has directed the Egyptian policy of the present Government ? Unintentionally, no doubt, it is a history of blood. Everywhere our progress has been marked by a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases ; by the smell of death ; by garments soaked in blood. The Nemesis that has dogged our hesitating footsteps has been startling indeed. We have been prevented doing everything that we declared we would do, and we have been compelled to do everything we declared we would not do. We declared we would free the Egyptians from the tyranny of Arabi, and we smote 10,000 Egyptians at Tel-el-Kebir. We declared the Soudan should be free from the degrading tyranny of Egypt, and behold at this moment the land of Suakim is a Golgotha. Within a cir- cuit of twenty miles 10,000 or 15,000 skeletons of Arabs lie bleaching on the sands of the desert. Surely Egyp- tians and Arabs alike will cry in the bitterness of their hearts, ' My father chastised us with whips, but you have chastised us with scorpions.' XXTI. TWO MANDATES. WHEN Arabi Pasha decided to fight, the British Govern- ment decided to fight also, and requested the other Powers of Europe to support them ; but this they refused point blank to do, and steamed away. How this isolation came to be interpreted into a mandate of Europe to bombard Alexandria, stamp out the national party, and put Humpty Dumpty on the wall again, it is difficult to understand. I I OS 'STRAY SHOTS.' am inclined to think the European mandate had no existence whatever except in the sanguine imagination of the Prime Minister. But though the European mandate was probably entirely imaginary, there was another man- date that was not imaginary at all, but had a very real existence indeed, and that was the Radical mandate the teterrima causa of all the humiliating muddle we now see in Egypt. But there were yet other mandates to be obeyed, so, at least, we were told the mandate of humanity, the mandate of civilisation. With so many mandates impelling in different directions, it is not surprising that John Bull has been like a man dancing a quadrille, taking one step forward and another step back, making a glissade to the right, and another glissade to the left, turning round, bowing to his partner, and leaving off in exactly the same place he started from. Now, the European mandate, as acted up to by Mr. - Gladstone, was a very serious affair, and was held to autho- rise the destruction of Alexandria, the slaughter of Tel-el- Kebir, and other acts of blood-guiltiness ; but as I under- stand that the Powers of Europe gave no mandate what- ever, it appears to me they are at perfect liberty to wash their hands entirely of these acts ; and, more than that, I understand that, in fact, they do so, fully and completely. Whether a bold policy of common sense, persistently carried out, would have educed order out of chaos and saved Egypt it is impossible to say, for it was never tried. Whenever, in accordance with what they assumed to be the European mandate, the Government put their hand to the plough, the Radical mandate invariably compelled them to turn back, and there the plough remains, stuck fast in the unfinished furrow, a cause of ridicule to the world. Of course, in these days of superfine political morality, no earnest statesman ventures to eat his political fig with- out invoking the name of the prophet, and therefore when we invaded Egypt, bombarded her ports, killed her sons, TWO MANDATES. 109 &c., high heaven was called to witness that we had no eye whatever to our own interests, that we were impelled entirely by the interests of Egypt, the interests of Europe, the interests of humanity, the interests of civilisation. Of course those hypocritical professions imposed on no one ; everyone knew they were sham, both those who spoke and those who listened; but they answered a purpose. They gave an excuse for the Radical mandate to suppress by force of arms, what appeared to many, a genuine struggle for freedom. It is the silly persistence in the assertion of these sham motives that has so aroused the contemptuous indignation of every nation in Europe. * If John Bull in his isle chooses to swallow this nauseous dose of hypocrisy,' say France, and Germany, and Italy, 'by all means let him do so, "si populus vult decipi, decipiatur," but please remember that it is intended entirely for home consumption. Don't ask us to swallow it, for we won't do so. We don't want to be told why you went to Egypt ; we know perfectly well. We know that the interests of Egypt, of Europe, of humanity, of civilisation, had nothing whatever to do with it, and that if there had been no other inducements than these, you would not have sent a man or a gun to Egypt. Tou went to Egypt solely and entirely because your own interests, British interests pure and simple, required it, and for no other reason in the world. Why can't you deal honestly with us, my dear friend ? What do you gain by parading false motives before us all, and thanking God you are not like the rest of us, when, indeed, if there is anything to pick and choose, you are rather worse ? We never liked you much, my dear John, but we never despised you before.' Whether Europe has gained by the destruction of Alexandria ; whether humanity has gained by the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of wretched peasants sent in chains to the shambles at Tel- el-Kebir, Obeid, Teb, Sinkat, &c. ; whether civilisation has gained by the re-establishment of the greatest and most 110 'STRAY SHOTS; hated slave-trading system in the world; whether England has gained by the expenditure of 5,000,000. of money, the sacrifice of many valuable lives, by bringing on her head charges of blood-guiltiness, of inhumanity, of selfishness, of insincerity, of timidity, of weakness, I do not pretend to say ; but this I think any fool can see, that so far the result of our process of sweeping, and garnishing, and driving one devil out of Egypt has simply been to make room for seven worse devils to take his place. From the massacre of Alexandria to that of Sinkat, or from the banishment of Arabi to the appointment of those of Arabi's chief advisers to the Cabinet of Nubar, I think that few will deny that the policy of England in Egypt has been a policy of absolute, complete, disgraceful failure, that has brought shame to every English heart outside the party clique, and has caused the whole civilised world to hiss. Why is this? Why, with so many able men in the Cabinet, has their Egyptian policy been unworthy of a third-rate board of guardians? The reason is very simple. It is because Mr. Gladstone, in order to secure the Radical mandate to carry out a necessary Imperial policy in Egypt, gave a number of ridiculous and impossible pledges, and that the best interests of Egypt and of England have been sacrificed in the pretence (for it is nothing more) of carrying these pledges into practice. Of course, the Cabinet knew perfectly well that a door must be shut or it must be open, that either we must govern in Egypt, or the Khedive must govern; that to attempt to govern through him, to seize the power our- selves and saddle him with the responsibility, was an act of supreme folly and cowardice ; but this we have done in order that we may go through the farce of pretending to carry out impossible pledges. ' It is not true,' say the Radicals, 'that foreigners are angry with us. Foreign newspapers do not represent the feelings of foreign nations, and if Englishmen were ashamed of their Government they would turn it out.' Many thought the country TWO MANDATES. Ill would turn the Government out. Their impeachment by almost the whole press of Great Britain, and by the entire press of Europe and America, had stirred the indig- nation of the people. It really looked as if the Govern- ment would be defeated with disgrace, but again, for the twentieth time, the Conservative leader succeeded in demonstrating the interesting problem that the weakness of the Opposition is the exact measure of the strength of the Government. When the Opposition opened the battle with their big guns, their followers found to their dismay and con- fusion that the guns were not shotted. If, recognising their parliamentary weakness, the Opposition had only been content to say nothing, to sit still and twiddle their thumbs, victory was almost assured to them. Thirty Mr. Gladstones could not have explained away the fatal results that were fast following on his hesitating policy, but Mr. Gladstone had no difficulty whatever in scoring a victory against unshotted guns. It may be an admir- able policy to give your opponent plenty of rope (and certainly this appears to have been the only policy the Opposition have yet attempted), but in that case there can be no sense in taking away the rope the moment you see he is getting it round his neck. The theory of party government is this a strong man, with a majority in office, and a strong man, with a minority in opposition. We have the majority in office, with the strong man to lead, and we have the minority in opposi- tion ; but there we stop, and therefore party government is in abeyance. There is only one party; the other is incomplete. The Radicals would be foolish to conclude that, because the attack on the Government has, so to speak, collapsed, therefore the country and foreign nations are satisfied. The attack has faded away because it was so feebly led ; but the feeling in the country and through- out the world that boldness and vigour, decision and honesty, the hereditary Imperial policy, in fact, of England, 112 'STRAY SHOTS.' have been sacrificed to timidity and nonsense phrases, is as strong as ever. The burning question that just now agitates most Englishmen is not whether Egypt shall abandon the Soudan, or even whether we shall be in time to relieve Tokar, but whether a new gospel of Imperial policy is to replace the old one ; whether sentiment is permanently to take the place of common sense ; whether treaties * in- scribed on the fleshy tablets of the heart ' are to replace treaties written on parchment ; whether timidity is to take the place of boldness ; whether plain speaking is to make way for hypocritical professions. 'Be bolde, be bolde, and everywhere be bolde,' was the inspiriting Imperial policy of the warriors and statesmen of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and if it was still the Imperial policy of the statesmen of the reign of Queen Victoria we should not now be the object of the open-mouthed contempt of Europe and America. How is it that a policy of boldness and of plain speak- ing that has created an empire, at once the wonder and admiration of the world a policy that has been the motto of every great Englishman from Cromwell to our own day should now be suddenly and absolutely tabooed? It is because Imperial policy is now subservient to party policy, because the interests of a part are made to outweigh the interests of the whole. Generations of British statesmen have striven, and hitherto with success, to keep foreign and Imperial politics, to a considerable extent, distinct from party politics. There has always been a tacit under- standing that whereas one was temporary and for ever changing, the other was permanent and should be changed as little as possible. But it is to be feared that this is so no longer. The Midlothian speeches proclaimed in a hurricane of fatal nonsense that henceforth Imperial policy should mean Radical policy, and that what was known as the traditional Imperial policy of Great Britain should be swept away. ' India,' said Lord Wellesley, TWO MANDATES. 113 ' should be ruled from a palace with the hand of a states- man, not from a counter with the cloth-yard of a mer chant.' The same idea applies with ten times greater force to the Empire of Great Britain. If the Imperial policy of Great Britain is taken out of the hands of statesmen and handed over to vestries, and caucuses, and wire-pullers, if it is treated merely as a question of party politics and used in the shameless traffic of party votes, the Empire will fall to pieces very much faster than it was put together ; and this is what is happening now. This is the cause of our present danger, of our actual disgrace. Our Egyptian policy has failed piteously, shamefully, because from the very beginning of it Imperial policy has been made subservient to party policy, and our rulers have thought more of securing party votes than of advancing the great interests of the Empire. XXIII. POLITICAL WHITE ELEPHANTS. THE Radical papers and wire-pullers are in a frenzy of passion with Lord Randolph Churchill because he has presumed to make fun of their sacred white elephant, to laugh at the advertisements, at his genuflexions and ex- hibitions of strength. He actually has the audacity to tell the country that the sacred white elephant in Downing Street is only an ordinary elephant after all, with the perfections and imperfections of most of his species, and that nine-tenths of those who bow down to him have no more genuine belief in him than the so-called Buddhist priests from Ratcliff Highway have in the white elephant in the Zoo ! The Radicals denounce this language as shocking, as unmanly, as impious. But it is all nonsense ; it is only another case of the raven chiding blackness. The fact is, that in throwing mud at the sacred elephant i 114 'STRAY SHOTS.' of the Radicals Lord Randolph is only repaying in a very small degree the shower of mud that four years ago this same sacred animal spouted over him and his party. What was the Midlothian campaign, from beginning to end, but a triumph of mud-spouting ? of the assumption of almost Divine motives by the spouter and the imputa- tion of devilish motives to his opponents ? And now that four years' unfettered possession of power has proved that all those burning utterances were humbug, and worse, and that the whole country indeed, the whole world sees that the motives of the Radicals are not, and never were, one little bit nobler or purer or wiser than the motives of their opponents, they are furious because Lord Randolph Churchill tells them so, ' sans phrase ! ' At the last general election Mr. Mundella, speaking at Sheffield, is reported to have said that he ' should almost lose faith in humanity if the English people did not sweep this infamous Government from the place they occupied.' This 'infamous Government' was composed of many of the noblest, and the best, and most patriotic, and far- seeing of English statesmen ; they were only * infamous ' because they presumed to stand in the way of Mr. Mundella and his friends. Was this distinguished Radical censured by his party for applying the term ' infamous ' to Lords Beaconsfield, Salisbury, and Cairns, to the Duke of Rich- mond, Sir Stafford Northcote, and Sir Richard Cross? Did the gentle wire-puller of the Birmingham Caucus, with the unpronounceable name, on that occasion think it necessary to make any allusion to the * language of an English gentleman ? ' Not a bit of it. Mr. Mundella was extolled beyond measure for his earnestness. He was selected to move, or second, the Address, and at once appointed to high office in the Government. It is not my wish to defend the words of Lord Ran- dolph Churchill ; he is able to do that for himself better than most men ; but as a matter of common sense, I ask with what face can the Radical papers and wire-pullers, POLITICAL WHITE ELEPHANTS. 115 who four years ago applauded to the echo the invectives and insinuations and denunciations of the Midlothian speeches, and acclaimed with delight the term 'infamous ' as applied to their opponents, now affect to be shocked at the com- paratively mild chaff of Lord Randolph Churchill ? It really looks as if it was not so much the force of his language as the truth of it that makes them so mad. Those who fancy that hard hitting in public life is a mistake are themselves woefully mistaken. It was hard hitting that made the reputation of Disraeli, of Bright, of Gladstone ; it is hard hitting that will probably make the reputation of Lord Randolph Churchill. It was hard hitting that placed Mr. Gladstone in power, and it is only hard hitting that will turn him out of it. It is the want of hard hitting that has reduced the Opposition in the House of Commons to its present condition of impotency. The public like to see a man hit out straight from the shoulder, even though he now and then does hit a little wild ; and, strange and incredible and shocking as it may appear to the worshippers of the Radical white elephant, it is a fact that Lord Randolph Churchill's hard hitting has already secured him a very large and rapidly increas- ing political following in the country. XXIV. NEMESIS. WITHOUT for one moment hazarding an opinion as to the justice or injustice, policy or impolicy, of Mr. Broadhurst's motion for the enfranchisement of leaseholds, it is im- possible not to feel some sympathy for the sorry, not to say ridiculous, position many of the great Whig land- owners now find themselves placed in regarding it. For two years they have been sitting at the feet of the Radical Gamaliel, aiding and abetting, and excusing the spoliation 116 'STRAY SHOTS.' and confiscation of Irish landowners, and now they are surprised and angry because they are asked to apply the same principle to themselves ! They appear astonished to be told that what is food for the goose is also food for the gander. Mr. Gladstone said to Irish landowners : * I will give your tenants such favourable conditions that they will neither buy your laud themselves nor allow any one else to buy it ; ' and English Whig landowners ex- claimed, 'A. wise judge: a Daniel come to judgment! ' Mr. Broadhurst says to the English landowners : ' I want to compel you to sell on fair terms to your tenants,' and they exclaim ' Confiscation ! ' It never occurred to them that in supporting Mr. Gladstone they were singing their own death song ' making a swan-like end ; ' but so it was. They have cut the ground from under their own feet. They are on the horns of a dilemma, and a very impossible one it appears to be. If they were right in supporting the principle of the Irish Land Act, they are wrong in opposing the principle of the Leasehold Enfran- chisement Act. If they are right in opposing the principle of the Leasehold Enfranchisement Act, they were wrong in supporting the principle of the Irish Land Act. I see no escape from it. ' We are being robbed ; our estates are being confiscated ; we are denied the rights of property,' insisted the Irish landowners to their fellow landowners in England and Scotland. ' Oh, never mind,' was the philosophical reply ; ' of course the eel doesn't like being skinned it is not likely he should ; but it is for our good that he should be. Naturally, the process of the compulsory reduction of rent, of being deprived of the rights of ownership, &c., is a very disagreeable one to you; but, after all, it is for the public good ; and if it is dulce et decorum, as the Latin grammar tells us, to die for our country, what a chance you have of earning your country's gratitude by giving up only one-third of your superfluous rents ! You are wrong to show such an unforgiving spirit ; rather you should show gratitude to your destroyer, NEMESIS. 117 as the sandal tree sheds perfume on the axe that fells it. You appear to forget that the Irish Land Act is the last legislative act that has sprung ready-made from the prolific brain of the Radical Jove. To hold up your finger against it is to defy the immortal gods.' ' That is all very well,' urged the Irish landowners, ' but your turn will come next. What will you do then ? You tell us to shed perfume on the axe of Mr. Gladstone; are you also prepared to shed perfume on the axe of Mr. Broadhurst or Lord Randolph Churchill ? We don't think you are. There are more tenants in London alone than in the whole of Ireland, and when you preach the gospel of the three F's to our tenants, does it never occur to you that the programme has equal attractions for your tenants also ? Of course it has greater attractions in many cases, and indeed, if it comes to that, greater justice also. You consented to banish political economy to Saturn in order to give you an apology for despoiling us ; don't you think the Radicals will take good care it is banished again when the time comes for despoiling you ? We told you all this last year ; but it did not suit your convenience to listen to it. Mr. Gladstone's Land Act did not hurt you, and it offered you the opportunity of being generous with other people's money a temptation, alas ! it is sad to say, it is hardly in the power of even Whig landowners to resist. You looked on our spoliation with indifference, because you flattered yourself that it would not extend to you. Well, it has extended to you ! Mr. Broadhurst has already opened the ball. Are you inclined to join in the dance ? You have now an opportunity of putting into practice the advice you so liberally showered on us last year. You urged upon us the sacred duty of the Hari-Kari, of self- sacrifice. Are you prepared to perform it yourselves ? If not, why not? Mr. Broadhurst proposes the skinning process to you, and, strange to say, you don't seem to like it. You turn up your nose at your own physic. The very medicine you prescribed as a fine tonic for us you declare 118 'STRAY SHOTS.' is poison to you ; but the public see more clearly in this matter than you do. They see perfectly well through the insincerity of your support of the Irish Land Act. Every one knew you would show your teeth directly your own interests were threatened, and you have done so. Honesty would have been your best policy ; it might not have saved us from spoliation, but it would at any rate have saved you the humiliation of having to run with the hare at the same time that you are pretending to hunt with the hounds.' But it is not fair to be too hard on the poor Whigs, of whom I am one. They are indeed an object for pity to gods and men, rather than for anger. Like silly sheep they followed their leader into the camp of those who openly boast they will eat them up, and they are in dismay. In- dependence of action is hardly to be expected from those who stand between the devil and the deep sea. Well, the Whig party have now another chance. Every one knows that individually, and as a body, they are bitterly opposed to a simple Franchise Bill without sufficient security for redistribution. What will they do ? Their very exist- ence as a party in the State depends on their decision. Will they prove to the country that they have convictions, and have the courage to act up to them ? or will they not? Moderate Liberalism is the national political instinct the instinct of nineteen out of every twenty sensible men in the country ; it is the policy of common sense. The Whigs are its natural leaders in the House of Commons, and if they can only pull themselves together and do their duty to those who sent them to Parliament, they can again raise the banner of common sense and show a bold front to a policy of hysteria and sentiment, to faddists and extremists under whatever guise they appear. But if they have not the pluck to do their duty and again look piteously to the House of Lords to do it for them if in the approaching struggle they again show the white feather it will be understood in the country that the great NEMESIS. 119 Whig party is dead died of a failure of nerve power. And the verdict of the nation will be * Serve it right.' Nemesis was one of the infernal deities, and infernal indeed she must now appear to many who, from whatever motives, have preferred party to principle. XXV. STATE-AIDED EMIGRATION. Now that a statesman of Lord Carnarvon's weight and position advocates state-aided emigration, it is evident that the question is already within the pale of practical politics. And a very important question it is probably no more important one has ever agitated an industrial community. What does it mean ? It means that we are offering money to the industrious, to the hard-working, the intel- ligent, to the bone and sinew of our industrial life, to those who create the wealth of the country, in fact, to leave it ! It means that we are actually offering a pre- mium for the diminution of internal labour. Has this ever before happened in any industrial community under the sun ? I can understand there is common sense in taxing our- selves to export the drones, the idle, the drunken, the useless, those who add nothing to the wealth of the country, but rather detract from it j but to tax ourselves to export the workers, and keep the drones at home, appears to ine arrant nonsense. The wealth of a country is the value of what it produces ; production depends on population : to increase production you increase popula- tion; to diminish production, you diminish population. The first condition of making a country rich is to popu- late it. It is English economists alone who preach the strange doctrine that 'a country must be depopulated to 120 'STRAY SHOTS.' be enriched.' England and Ireland are not over-populated ; compared with other countries they are the reverse. The population of Belgium is 469 to the square mile, of Eng- land 389, of Ireland 169 ; but they are under-cultivated. Under proper cultivation the agricultural production of England might be trebled ; whilst only one kind of the soil of Ireland is cultivated at all, and, moreover, she is entirely without productive industries. It is no exaggera- tion to say that England, with her immense agricultural and manufacturing resources, can easily maintain a larger proportionate population than Belgium ; and fairly culti- vated, and with her industries developed, Ireland could easily support double her present population. How, then, can it be said that England and Ireland are over-populated ? How can there be a single man too many where land is uncultivated and industries unknown? If we had waste lands to bring into cultivation and in- dustries to create, and had no population, what would necessarily be our first step? To import population. Now we have the people and the waste lands, but instead of bringing them together, instead of employing the people in cultivating the waste lands and in creating industries, we export them, .and leave the land unculti- vated and industries a blank. We dissipate British capital in expatriating British subjects, in transferring the very bone and sinews of the Empire to distant climes, in order, forsooth, to increase our internal prosperity and strength. Those who propose to advance the prosperity of their country by expatriating their countrymen are indeed ' Hiberniores Hibernis.* More Irish than the Irish themselves, they would cure disease with death. We export our operatives and import what our opera- tives produce ; we export our agricultural labourers and import what agricultural labourers would grow ; we see vessels at Liverpool, and Glasgow, and London, unloading foreign silks, and woollens, and cottons, and shoes, and STATE-AIDED EMIGRATION. 121 linen, and cambrics, and corn, and side by side we see ships embarking for America or Australia English opera- tives and labourers whose business and industry it is to produce these very same articles ! Is this common sense ? We say to our silk workers, ' Give up making silk ; we can buy it cheaper elsewhere ; make something else.' To our woollen workers, ' Give up making woollens ; we can buy them cheaper elsewhere ; make something else ; ' and so on with cambrics, and velvets, and fine linen. Who can say that in a year or two we shall not say to our cotton workers, * Give up making cotton ; we can buy it cheaper elsewhere ; make something else.' Where is it to end? We say to our agricultural population, * Give up grow- ing wheat; we can buy it cheaper in America. Turn your land into grass ; grow meat instead.' But who can say that in a year or two chemistry and steam may not bring us meat from North and South America, from Australia and New Zealand, cheaper than we can produce it ; and that again we shall say to our agricultural popu- lation, ' Give up growing meat ; we can buy it cheaper elsewhere ; grow something else.' Is not this tantamount to saying to our people, ' There is no work for you to do here ; go elsewhere ? ' How is it that as our population increases our means of feeding them decrease? How is it that during the last ten years we have three millions more mouths to feed, and grow three millions fewer quarters of corn to feed them with? These three millions of people, who have been added to our popula- tion in the last ten years, require food, and houses, and furniture, and boots, and shoes, and woollens, and linen, and cotton, and silk. Why, then, should those who pro- duce all these articles be out of work? How is it that as our national consumption of everything increases our national production of everything falls off? Why is it that England proposes to export her agri- cultural labourers, her mechanics and operatives, her bone 122 'STRAY SHOTS. and sinew, the sources of her wealth and her greatness? It is simply because economic doctrinaires have exposed our working classes to an industrial invasion against which they are helpless ; they have to fight against foreign labour under conditions that make the contest impossible. If they had to face a military invasion that threatened to deprive them of the means of living, should we not urge them to do all they could, at all cost, to drive the invasion back? But now that it is only an industrial invasion, we tell them they must not fight they must lay down their arms, and leave the country ! Is this common sense ? Is it justice ? Competition and cheapness are the watchwords of English economists, and we are assured they constitute the summum bomim of individual and national happiness. I fail to see it. On the contrary, I believe that the pre- sent maddening race of artificially-stimulated competition is the chief source of national suffering and discontent. It is over-competition that has thrown our land out of cultivation, and our mills out of work. It is over-com- petition that has ruined every industry in Ireland, and reduced large portions of it to the condition of a pauper warren. It is over-competition that overcrowds our cities, reduces wages, and raises a cry for state-aided emigra- tion. Carried to excess, competition becomes a war of in- dustrial extermination ; and, under our suicidal system of one-sided free trade, it has become a war of extermina- tion against English workmen ! Comparative cheapness is a blessing to a nation, of course ; but with our natural disposition to rush into extremes, we now preach the gospel of mere cheapness that this is the summum bonum of industrial happiness ; but it is not. Work and wages are far more vital to industrial prosperity than mere cheapness. It is a fact that ' cheap places ' in all fully settled countries have hitherto been those in which the working poor have been the most degraded and depressed, STATE-AIDED EMIGKATION. 123 and cheap times those in which they have been most wretched. The first condition of cheapness is cheap labour. Is the waste of human life, the misery, the suffering, and demoralisation, and immorality inseparable from cheap labour a blessing ? Is the cheapness of corn, that throws our land out of cultivation and deprives our labourers of work and wages, a blessing? Are shirts stitched by starving women at 4>d. a dozen a blessing to the nation ? or the dressing of bricks made by over-tasked children at nominal wages? or the cheapness of nails or cables made by over-worked women and children? Are these national blessings ? The more closely mere cheap- ness is examined, the more evident it becomes that it means a low standard of life, and a low standard of life is incompatible with human happiness. America is a dear country, in which the standard of life is very high. Ireland is a cheap country, in which the standard of life is very low. In which country does the working man enjoy the greatest prosperity ? Every field in England requires more labour ; in Ireland the very fields themselves have to be created ! Each year the consumption of everything that England and Ireland produce increases ; whilst each year the production of everything that England and Ireland consumes diminishes ! Is not this proof positive that there is something wrong somewhere. What is it? What is it that, in the face of increasing consumption of everything they produce, com- pels our working population to leave their country and seek employment abroad ? If it is the result of the inexorable logic of free trade, of unrestricted foreign competition, may not the working classes be excused for asking to be relieved from a logic and a competition that are bringing them to ruin ? Theories and philosophy apart, it is evident that the policy that must most promote national prosperity is that which promotes employment and limits competition. 124 'STRAY SHOTS.' XXVI. THE DUKE'S STATUE. ' Too late ! ' is the refrain of the hour. I suppose it is too late now to save the Duke's statue ; in fact, if I under- stand rightly Lord Granville's reply the other evening in the House of Lords, its fate is already decided. The Government declines to reconsider the question, and, as it is not a question in which Imperial interests are in any way concerned, it is probable they will stand firm. No doubt this decision will meet with the approval of the few who are born art critics, and of the many who have sud- denly constituted themselves art critics ; but to the great majority of Englishmen it will cause regret. I have not the slightest doubt that if a plebiscite was taken of those who have been in the daily habit of seeing the statue, the great majority, probably twenty to one, would vote for its being again put on the arch, or at any rate, being kept in Hyde Park. ' The statue is abominable,' say our art critics; ' it violates every canon of art.' But if this is really so, it should at once be deprived of statue life and sent to the melting-pot. We have no right to spare our own aesthetic nerves at the expense of our delicate young soldiers at Aldershot ! But is it really so bad ? I don't believe it is. I believe an immense deal of nonsense has been talked and written about it. I don't mean to say that it rivals the famous statue of Polycletus, that was so complete and exact in all its forms and proportions that it was called ' The Rule ; ' that Copenhagen is so perfect a model that passing horses rush at him as we are told they did at the famous horse cast by Dionysius of Argos. I by no means believe that the statue is an exceptionally good one, but to say that it is without merit is absurd. For one equestrian statue in the country that is better there are half a dozen worse, and if we are to get rid of this one THE DUKE'S STATUE. 125 because it is not good enough, it becomes a very serious question where we are to stop. Doctors differ, and the doctors of the palette and of the chisel differ more fiercely than any others. A canon of art will provide as endless matter for debate as any canon of theology. Art critics are not always infallible. ' Your horse understands painting better than you do,' said Apelles, somewhat rudely, to Alexander, when his horse neighed to the horse in a picture that he was criticising. Lord Coleridge's dictum that the opinion of art critics must in all cases be taken as ' confirmation strong as Holy Writ,' was so absurd that it has only caused the public to criticise more closely the work of the critics themselves. The other day, at the Royal Academy, I was looking at the Cymoii and Iphigenia. It is the work of a great painter, an art critic des plus fins. As the work of so great an artist, of course the drawing, and proportions, and the colouring, must be absolutely correct there can be no mistake about that but it is astonishing how easily the uneducated eye may be deceived. From remarks I heard I am satisfied that many thought with me that the chief figure was very much out of drawing. 'Hips and haws,' I heard one gentleman remark, and it appeared to cause considerable amusement. I did not see the joke myself, but supposed it referred to the rustic tastes of the somewhat stunted Cymon. Now, I don't mean to say that Copenhagen is an eclectic animal, but I will ' bet a hat,' as the Yankees say, that he is as like a horse as the Iphigenia is like a woman. Beauty alone does not constitute the value of most statues. It is their history, their associa- tions, the sentiment connected with them. Witness Westrnacott's equestrian statue at the end of the Long Walk in Windsor Park, ' erected by an affectionate son to the best of fathers.' The use of statues has often been doubted. Cato objected to having a statue raised to him, and said, * I would much rather be asked why I have no statue raised 126 'STRAY SHOTS. to me than why I have one ! * There is a good deal of sense in this. We have two statues to commemorate the great warrior Wyatt's statue and the Achilles, the latter paid for entirely by a subscription amongst the ladies of England, the former by general subscription. If the one is distinctly descriptive of the man and of his time, the other is as distinctly descriptive. 'Who is that?' asked our poor fat friend Cetewayo, pointing to the statue on the arch. * Oh, that is our great warrior the Duke of Well- ington/ was the reply. ' And who is that ? ' asked he again, pointing to the Achilles. ' Oh, that again is our great warrior the Duke of Wellington.' ' Indeed ! ' said Cetewayo ; * then it is not so long ago since you fought like us without clothes.' For one of these statues the great Duke sat, and dressed, and mounted his war horse, and assumed a pose, and not a very bad one either. For the other he neither sat nor dressed. Which should we keep ? The first is abused by many as a bad work of art, but is allowed by every one to be ' descriptive.' The other is a copy of one of the finest antiquities in Rome, but is descriptive of nothing but a figure holding a horse (in the original). If the statue of an individual is intended, as it certainly should be, to fix in some degree the time in which certain particular events happened, or to prevent one person from being mistaken for another, or to strengthen some conjectures as to dress and customs, the Achilles at some distant future might cause great injury to the repu- tation of our hero. It would corroborate the charge made against him by his enemies that he was so much surprised at Waterloo that he had not time to put on his clothes. But it is of no use asking which of our statues we shall keep ; we are threatened with the loss of both of them. If Wyatt's statue goes to Aldershot, we shall soon be statueless. The 'survival of the fittest* applies to in- animate as well as to animate nature. The ladies' statue appears to have been delicate from its birth ; its condition is now hopeless. It is a very shocking case ; very interest- THE DUKE'S STATUE. 127 ing, I understand, to the profession ; his legs, poor fellow, are dropping off. Nothing but a double amputation can save him, and even that is doubtful ; without it, down he comes. But what then ? The Achilles is a warrior statue, no doubt, and warriors of course lose their legs ; but I don't think an Achilles with wooden legs would look very well ; we could hardly allow posterity to confuse our great warrior Wellington with the gallant though obscure Witherington in doleful dumps, who, When his legs were smitten off, Still fought upon his stumps. But although at the early age of sixty-five, alas ! almost in his 'salad' days for a statue, the Achilles must endure the Pagan rites of cremation (the melting-pot), Wyatt's statue is still hale and strong and active, for he goes up and down the arch like a bricklayer. Why not give him the site that must be soon vacated by the Achilles? Give him an elevation similar to the one in the Long Walk, and he will look very well ; much better than at Alder- shot, or Chelsea, or the Reformers' Tree. There is only one objection to this proposal that I can see, but it is a serious one, and it must be faced. If the Byron of Belt and the Wellington of Wyatt face each other, the road through the park will be closed to Royal Academicians. Not even the boldest would dare face the cross fire of the double Medusa. But the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb ; there is still balm in Gilead. Yery soon a railroad under the park, with aesthetic blow-holes and high art ventilators, will enable them to cross the park without the danger of being converted into stone ! 128 'STRAY SHOTS.' XXVII. GLADSTONEISM. IF a public company that had attained great credit, wealth, confidence, and respect, by following for a hundred years certain lines of moral and commercial policy, was suddenly to reverse this policy absolutely and entirely, ab ovo usque ad malum, simply because a new chairman and board of directors entertained a personal dislike for their predecessors in office, should we not look out for a smash ? Should we not say the directors were throwing away a fine business and doing veiy badly for their share- holders? Well, this is exactly what is happening, or rather what has happened, with the Great British Empire Company (Unlimited). Under the chairmanship of Chatham, Pitt, Grey, Peel, Russell, Palmerston, and Bcaconsfield, the British Empire (Unlimited) has attained extraordinary credit, wealth, confidence, and respect, by following certain fixed, and straightforward, and well- understood lines of foreign and Imperial policy, by cham- pioning British interests openly and boldly, by speaking in the ' Scythian phrase,' by calling a spade a spade, in fact. Well, Gladstoneisni has entirely reversed this policy : it minimises British interests, it discards the ' Scythian phrase,' and insists on calling what everyone in his senses sees and knows to be a spade, and nothing but a spade, by some other name. It is seriously maintained by many honourable men that Gladstoneisni is so noble, so grand, so cosmopolitan, so self-denying, so inexpressibly superior to any former or existing political gospel, that it is sheer blasphemy to decry it. But this is childish. If many other equally honourable men believe that this new gospel has emasculated the national character, watered down its noblest qualities, that it is rapidly reducing their country to the position of a subject Power; that it is GLADSTONEISM. 1 29 destroying before their eyes everything they most venerate and love ; that it has made the name of England a by- word for folly, for indecision, for hypocrisj r , and now, indeed, for bloodguiltiness, are they not to say so ? Glad- stoneism is a policy of noble sentiments, of superfine pro- fessions, of exalted motives, of plausible platitudes; it appeals to the ear alone, it professes to believe that the world is better than it is, and that we are better than the world. Of course this is all nonsense, sham, hypocrisy. It is self-illusion in the most fatal form that can ever affect a nation the power of seeing things as you wish them to be, not as they are. Gladstoneism has made Britannia appear before the world as a hypocrite. Together lie her prayer-book and her paint, At once t' improve the sinner and the saint. ' Look,' cries Gladstoneism, with affected piety, ' look at our prayer-book.' ' Yes,' replies the world, * but look at your paint.' * It is so hard,' whines Gladstoneism to in- credulous Europe, c that you will not believe we are the one unselfish nation in the world ; that in spite of all our assurances you will still assume we had selfish motives in going to Egypt. Indeed we had not. It is so distressing to men actuated by such noble motives as we are to be doubted. We destroyed the forts of Alexandria, we burnt the city, we slaughtered Egyptians at Tel-el-Kebir, Arabs at Teb and Tamanieb, we have made the land smell of blood, and have raised up a spirit of most bitter animosity against us in Egypt, not in our own interest in any way, but for the sake of Egypt, of Europe, of civilisation, of humanity. Is not this noble? Is not this grand? Can we give a greater proof of our disinterestedness ? ' Glad- stoneism professes to sink all national feeling, to mistrust national sympathies, to prefer treaties written on the * fleshly tablets of the heart ' to those written on parch- ment, to appeal to the verdict of civilised mankind, &c., and a deal more similar nonsense. Well, we have appealed K 130 'STRAY SHOTS.' to the verdict of civilised mankind about Egypt, and what is it? Simply that we are a nation of fools; that the British lion, like the very gentle beast of Snug the joiner, is ' a very fox for his valour, and a goose for his discre- tion.' I declare, when I read the magnificent sentiments of Gladstoneism, compare the motives it professes with the acts it performs, reduce to plain English all the sounding and sonorous verbosity that preludes and accompanies its every act of legislation, when I mark the unbounded arro- gance of the humble, the Old Bailey quibbles of the con- scientious, the wastefulness of the economist, the blood- guiltiness of the humanitarian, the incivism of the patriot, the illiberality of the Liberal, I begin to sicken at the very name of virtue. < Le bon inarechal Louvois etait toutes les vertus nieraes, mais peu rejouissantes, et avec peu d'esprit; apres une longue visite, Ninon d'Enclos bailie, le regarde, puis s'ecrie : " Seigneur ! que de vertus vous me faites ha'ir ! " ' Clericalism is the enemy,' cried Gambetta. ' Glad- stoneism is the enemy,' cry most Englishmen who are out of the party traces. It is Gladstoneism that will bring the mighty Empire of Great Britain to ruin. There is no danger in Radicalism, Imperialism, Republicanism, Social- ism, Nihilism even. Italy, France, Germany, Russia, show us that each and all of these are compatible with patriotism, with pride of race, with the permanence of empire. Gladstoneism is not. It is vestryism and method- ism in national affairs. It denounces patriotism, it sneers at pride of race, it accepts defeat, it condones disgrace, it ignores an Imperial policy, it is absolutely inconsistent with the permanence of empire. * Virtus post nummos ' is its motto. Gel money, money still, And then let virtue follow if she will. Bah ! go to your consols, to your counters ; that is your business. What have you to do with Imperial interests, GLADSTONEISM. 131 with Imperial duties, with honour, glory? What have you to do with generosity, with liberality, with science ? A tradesman them, and hope to go to heaven I But, indeed, is it really money only that has made England what she is ? Not a bit of it. It is not the bankers, the brokers, the manufacturers who have made the great name and honour and renown of England. When a foreigner exclaims of England, 'Ah, she is a great nation !' does he simply think of her wealth, of Lombard Street or Cornhill? No; her glory is more associated with those to whom money-grubbing had no attraction her men of science, her grand old mariners, the glorious deeds of her soldiers and sailors, her warriors and statesmen these are the stones with which England's glory and greatness were built. England, with her colonies and possessions, is a giant amongst nations. Deprived of them, she is a dwarf. Her Empire comprises nearly 5,000,000 of square miles, with a population of over 250,000,000 of inhabitants. Shorn of her colonies and possessions, Great Britain sinks into comparative obscurity, with an area of 120,000 square miles, and a population of 32,000,000. But Gladstoneism looks with no pride on such figures. According to many of its supporters, the Empire of England was acquired by fraud and force, and is maintained by tyranny and ex- tortion. The warriors and statesmen who built it up Olive, Hastings, Wellington, and Nelson instead of deserving the foremost places in the capitol, should be veiled and put in a dark room, out of sight. Gladstoneism would make Britannia, like Jane Shore, do penance in a white sheet for the sins of empire. Gladstoneism induced the English people to accept the disgrace of the Alabama Conference. Gladstoneism induced the English people to sneak out of the Transvaal like whipped hounds. Gladstoneism would now induce the English people to desert their Envoy, and holds that K 2 132 'STRAY SHOTS: his life is a matter of * secondary, very secondary ' im- portance. What further disgrace Gladstoneism is pre- paring for England the approaching Conference will soon disclose. How immediately has the poison circulated through our veins I How quickly can the national spirit be debased ! Could Gordon have been deserted five years ago? No; it required the gospel of the Transvaal to familiarise us with dishonour. A thousand years scarce serve to form a State, One hour may lay it low. Of course in all stages of our history we have had amongst us ' faddists,' extremists, revolutionists, fanatics, who have cried ' Perish India ! ' who would let Ireland, India, Australia, and all the colonies go ; who deny the right of property, who would abolish the Church, the Throne, the House of Lords ; who would have no army, no navy; who oppose the Contagious Diseases Act, the Vaccination Act, &c. who have, in fact, ' Ni foi, ni roi, ni loi ; ' such men have always existed ; but hitherto they have not been considered practical politicians ; they have either been chaffed or rated into silence : but now this has all changed. Gladstoneism pats them all on the back and calls them very fine fellows ; there is not at this moment a 'faddist,' a revolutionist, a nihilist, an atheist, who, if he can bring votes, is not welcomed into the Gladstonian fold, and does not look upon Gladstoneism as his creed. Talk of the Cave of Adullam. Was there ever such a cave as this ? It is quite possible that Gladstoneism may have no sympathy with extremists and 'faddists' of all kinds. But whose fault is it if they believe it has ? It is the apparent impossibility of using plain words, the incessant employment of language to conceal the truth; it is the perpetual hair-splitting and torturing of words, childish distinctions between * beleaguered ' and ' surrounded,' between ' wars ' and ' military operations,' between a GLADSTONEISM. 133 ' prohibitory ' telegram and a ' dissuasive ' one that are more suited to Some peaceful province in Acrostic Land, Where they might wings display and altars raise, And torture one poor word a thousand ways, than to the vocabulary of statesmen ! The Northern half of America said to her wayward sister, 'You shall not go; you shall not break up the grandeur of the Empire.' Gladstonianism said to Ireland at Kilmainham, and says it to her again now, * Do as we tell you, and you. shall go ; you shall break up the Empire. There is a thing that is much more odious to us than Eepeal, than Disunion, than severing the ties between Great Britain and Ireland, and that is Imperialism, Tory- ism, Conservatism ; only help us to crush out this pest, and you may have what you like even to half the kingdom ! ' Gladstoneism has no vigour, no backbone. It knows no hard-and-fast line between order and disorder ; between what is within the Constitution and what is without it, between national dignity and national humility ; between common sense and sentimental nonsense ; there is nothing in it to rouse the pride of our race ; the refrain of ' Civis Rornanus sum ' jangles on its ears as the church bells do on those of Mephistopheles ; it is unnational, humble, undecided, squeezable, and above all things it is apolo- getic ; it apologises for anything and to anybody ; it apologises to the peace enthusiasts for maintaining a sufficient army and navy to keep off invasion, to the Dissenters for maintaining an Established Church, to the Democrats for maintaining a House of Lords, to Re- publicanism for preserving the Throne, to Mr. Parnell for maintaining the Union, to the Baboos of Calcutta for retaining India, to the Boors for remaining in South Africa, to Mr. Stansfeld for the Contagious Diseases Act to Mr. Hopwood for the Vaccination Act, and soon, ap- parently, it is going to apologise to Europe for the ruin of Egypt and to pay the bill. MILITARY 137 XXVIII. AN OPTICAL DELUSION. IN return for their hospitality the Adjutant-General presented to the Artists' Volunteer Corps a picture of the British Army. It was an agreeable, indeed, a start- ling surprise. ' You think you have no army,' said he. * Look here ! ' And behold, to their enchanted and con- founded eyes was offered a picture of the finest army in the world ! We had begun to despair of the army. We thought there was no hope ; but we were wrong. After all, ' there is balm in Gilead there is a physician there.' This is a season of strange atmospheric effects, of blue moons, and other optical delusions ; but none of them in any degree approach the optical delusion that surrounds the British army. You go to Woolwich, or Portsmouth, or Aldershot, and you see what appear to you skeleton battalions, and a young and puny rank and file ; but you are mistaken, absolutely and entirely mis- taken. It is simply an optical delusion. What appear to you skeleton battalions are indeed splendid regiments, complete to the last button : and the young and puny rank and file are, in fact, the finest soldiers in the world, to whom neither France, nor Austria, nor Germany can hold a candle. You think the men are very young, but, in fact, nine out of every ten are over twenty years of age ; and one out of every five is over thirty, whilst of those who appear short and puny every other man is 5 feet 7 inches high, and four out of every five are 35 inches round the chest. As for their want of experience, why more than three out of every four have two years' service. Evidently we are labouring under an optical delusion ; we 138 'STRAY SHOTS; cannot realise what is actually before our eyes. Indeed, after Lord Wolseley's speech, the age and height of Tommy Atkins is more a mystery than ever. It really appears that the rascal is a gay deceiver, that he persists in looking younger than he really is, that somehow or other he has got hold of the ' Fons Juvencus ' and drinks, and remains for ever young. In less poetical language, he is like the West India man's pig, ' Little, but dam old! ' XXIX. REGIMENTAL OFFICERS. IN spite of all the official dust that has been syste- matically thrown into their poor eyes, the public are beginning to see dimly that although they spend sixteen or seventeen millions annually on the army, they have uncommon little to show for it ! The military legislation of the last twelve or fifteen years, that ostentatiously ignored professional experience, and the inspiration of common sense in favour of theories, sentiment, and alas ! too often, the inspiration of ignorance, has brought about the inevitable result inefficiency and chaos. Everything has come to pass that the opponents of Lord Cardwell's scheme predicted would come to pass, and nothing has come to pass that the supporters of the scheme said would come to pass. Of course it is easy to understand the satisfaction with the present state of things that exists amongst those enthusiastic gentlemen who want no army who, indeed, look forward to that strange illustration of the * survival of the fittest,' when the last soldier shall kill the last priest. They see plainly that the more unpopular and inefficient the army becomes the more chance there is that the public will do away with it altogether. But I can hardly suppose that it is a subject of gratification to EEGIMENTAL OFFICEKS. 139 the taxpayers as a body. Lord Cardwell's scheme of military reorganisation was founded on a strange mis- comprehension of facts, and on an almost childish con- fusion of cause and effect. He reasoned in this wise ' The German army is most efficient, but the German army rests on short service ; therefore short service is the cause of its efficiency.' But every child could see that the strength and efficiency of the German army was not the result of short service, but of compulsory service; not because there were 100,000 or 200,000 of short-service men in the first line, but because there were 1,000,000 of long-service men behind them. The short- service men of the German army are a mere trifle compared to the whole manhood of the nation, long-service men, who stand at their backs. To call the German military service short service is wrong; it is in reality the longest military service in the world it is for life. The German generals do not adopt short service from choice, but from necessity ; not because they do not want old soldiers in their first line, but because they cannot get them. Compulsory service must of necessity be short service with the colours, because no nation, however warlike, would for a moment tolerate long compulsory service. Those who are com- pelled, whether they like it or not, to take up the pro- fession of arms for the public good, have a right to insist, and do insist, that the term of compulsory service shall be as short as possible ; whereas those who adopt the pro- fession of arms as a voluntary service may insist upon having it prolonged. At present our service is a ridiculous mixture of voluntary and compulsory service. Voluntary as to enlistment, compulsory as to service. Once we have caught our voluntary recruit, his subsequent service is as much compulsory as in the German or Russian armies. But, indeed, this much-debated question of long or short service is only a red herring trailed across the scent. It has no vital importance ; we are, in fact, merely disputing about the shadow of an ass ! 140 'STRAY SHOTS; The real question is not for how many years we enlist a man, but for how many years he will be content to stay with us when we have enlisted him. You may get your horse to the water, but can you make him drink ? You may enlist a man for twenty years, but if the conditions of service are distasteful to him he will try to get out of it in six months, and you may enlist a man for six months, and if the conditions of service are agreeable to him he will serve on for twenty years. It cannot be too distinctly stated that it is not the ' terms of enlistment,' but the * condition of service,' on which depends an efficient and contented rank and file. It would almost appear that as in a compulsory army short service is necessary, so in a voluntary army long service is necessary. It is scarcely reasonable to expect that a man will give up all prospects of a civil career for a military career, unless he is allowed to make that career a long one. It is of no use arguing on this matter ; the men are masters of the situation. With compulsory service you can dictate the terms on which the men are to serve. With voluntary service the men can, to a very considerable extent, dictate the terms on which they will be content to serve. I know a little of financial morality, and I know a little of turf morality ; but official morality beats me entirely. I give it up. As I have often heard it remarked of certain official sayings and doings, ' If a man was to do and say on the turf only one-half that he says and does in the official world, he would be warned oif every racecourse in the kingdom ! ' The fact is, that in face of all our fine professions there is no more morality in politics than there is in gallantry. When I hear it officially stated that the rank and file of the army is perfectly efficient, that discipline, absence of crime, recruiting, &c., is everything that can be desired, that territorial regiments, depot centres, the reserves, &c., are conspicuous successes, I rub my eyes and pinch myself to see if I am awake, for I know that if these official KEGIMENTAL OFFJCEES. 141 statements are true every regimental officer in the army, from ensign to colonel, must be banded together to say what is untrue, and what, moreover, they know is untrue. The account given by regimental officers of the actual condition of the army is the very reverse in every point of the account of the officials. There is a consensus of opinion amongst them that admits of no question ; they say, and s so say all of us,' that the quality of the present recruits as regards height, age, chest measurement, physique, is absolutely miserable ; that discipline is bad ; that military crimes are on the increase ; that esprit de corps is gone, and with it the great bond of sympathy that bound together officers, non-commissioned officers, and men. That most of our regiments can scarcely be described even as skeletons ; that without the reserves are incorporated with them there is no reliable rank and file ; that the shooting is shocking ; that arms of preci- sion require trained and steady soldiers; that in the hands of recruits they are about as effective as cross- bows ; that discontent is general ; that every soldier that leaves the army and joins the reserve becomes an active recruiting agent against the army instead of for it. Now look on this picture and on that. Which are you to believe ? Regimental officers, who live, move, and have their being with the men they describe, and who are in daily, hourly intercourse with them, or officials who have never, probably, set eyes on these regiments or men in their lives? Which description is most likely to be accurate, that of the man who describes what he has seen, or that of the man who describes what he has not seen? Lord Cardwell's ruinous scheme was passed in defiance of the opinions of nearly every general officer in the service, and it is persevered in now in defiance of the opinions of nearly every regimental officer in the service. It is known and felt to be an entire, absolute failure ; but to allow this publicly would be to sacrifice some tender 142 'STRAY SHOTS.' reputations, and sooner than do that it is considered justi- fiable to maintain a paper army. Lord Cardwell and his supporters maintained that the state of the army was so bad that something must be done, but they seemed to forget that doing something may sometimes mean doing the wrong thing that it is possible the cure may be even worse than the disease, and that indeed such things have been known as ' curing disease by death.' I imagine there are very few regimental officers in the army, past or present, who are not now firmly convinced that the cure has proved worse than the disease ; that the army Lord Cardwell pulled to pieces in the heat and exaggera- tion of party warfare, the army that fought at the Alma, at Inkerman, in the trenches, in the quarries, during the Great Mutiny was in every respect of physique, age, spirit, discipline, twice as good, or three times as good, as what he has given us in its place. But it would be unfair to say that the military officials are alone responsible for bolstering up what I venture to call this army sham. With the whole regimental service against it, with facts under their very eyes that they knew cannot lie, it is almost certain that they would ere this have learnt reason; but, unfortunately, they have been more or less coerced by a portion of the public press. There has been an underground agency constantly at work, manufacturing articles, very opportune, able, specious, anonymcus, evidently inspired, absolutely un- fair, and very often absolutely untrue, apparently with the chief object of drowning the voice of the regimental officers of the army, and naturally this inspired agency has been too strong for them. It is very unfortunate and very strange. In no other branch of the public service, I believe, has there ever existed a systematic agency for in- fluencing public opinion by inspired communications to the press. So long as it was possible to keep the public from a true knowledge of the state of the army, this press agency was REGIMENTAL OFFICERS. 143 omnipotent. But now the truth has leaked out, and I am rather inclined to think that even inspired correspondents will have to knuckle down. And, indeed, what madness it is for the responsible military officials to ignore the opinions of the regimental officers of the army. The regimental officers and the rank and file compose the army, they are the army ; to ignore them is inconceivable. Not many years ago it was considered the greatest praise that could be bestowed on a soldier to say he was a 'good, regimental officer.' Now, alas ! he is generally talked of as 'only* a regimental officer. Every possible scheme and device has been adopted to destroy the regimental system. If a regiment has a number or a name that has become a household word of military glory, change it ; if it has a distinctive badge, remove it ; if it has a colonel that has conspicuously increased its efficiency, replace him. 'Why, how is this ? You have brought your regiment to a high state of efficiency ; this will never do, you must go. Brown or Jones, who succeeds you, will not make such a mistake.' Worse than all, encouragement has actually been given to the monstrous assumption that regimental officers are the enemy, that it is they who oppose necessary reforms, who stand in the way of the improvement of the rank and file of the army, as if the efficiency of the rank and file of the army was not a hundred times of more importance to them than to all the rest in the army. I should assume that the regimental officers of the army as a body have been distinctly opposed to the changes that have been in- troduced into the regimental system ; and have not the results justified them ? Is it not a fact that the five yea,rs' term of command, the change in the medical system, the abolition of numbers, the institution of ridiculous names, the incessant schooling of recruits, the constant pressure put on the rank and file to go into the reserves, the constant change in the terms of service, the abolition of pensions, the absence of old soldiers, have reduced every regiment from a unit of strength to a unit 144 'STRAY SHOTS.' of comparative impotence ? No one in his senses will disparage the importance of scientific officers ; but every- one knows that when it comes to the actual test of service, it is the regimental officer who becomes the most important unit. The staff officer may plan and design, but what are his plans and designs worth if they are not carried out by the regimental officer and his rank-and-file ? Science is not everything. It is as well to remember, alas ! that whilst the most accomplished, and the most scientific officer in the whole British army brought disgrace on the British arms at Majuba Hill, two simple regimental officers averted disaster from the British arms at Rorke's Drift. XXX. AN ARMY IN ITS TEENS. IT is announced that 'a committee of eminent soldiers and administrators is about to be appointed to inquire into the working of our new system of military organisa- tion.' This is good news for all of us; to military men, especially, the announcement will bring unspeakable relief. It is like the awakening from a hideous dream. Night and day, for the last eight years, they have been oppressed by the knowledge that short service and premature en- listments have, for the time, destroyed the physique of the British army ; that the immature boys that compose our rank and file are physically and constitutionally in- capable of bearing the fatigues and privations of war. It is only soldiers who really know what a fool's paradise we have been living in ; what a mine has been under our feet, liable at any moment to explode and blow our Empire and our glory to the winds. They have seen the confidence of the nation in its military power with actual dismay. The refrain of the Jingo, ' We've got the ships and we've AN ARMY IN ITS TEENS. 145 got the men,' has jarred on their nerves much as the sounds of the bells do on those of Mr. Irving. They have heard the public talk jauntily of sending 70,000 men to keep the Russians in check, when they knew perfectly well that, with the exception of marines and blue jackets, we had no men to send. The army scheme of 1871 was described at the time as a tentative measure ; and tentative indeed it has proved to be, in the sense that the famous experiment made by a gentleman to reduce the supply of food for his horse was tentative by degrees he got him down to a straw a day, when unfortunately the horse died. By a somewhat simi- , lar tentative process we have reduced the supply of men to our army, till now over 80 per cent, of the rank and file are in their teens, and the non-commissioned officers are boys of fifteen to eighteen months' service. And now, like the unfortunate horse, our army has collapsed also, fortunately without any serious catastrophe. 'The first quality of the soldier,' said the Emperor Napoleon, 'is the ability to bear fatigue and privation.' ' The recruit,' says Dr. Hammond, surgeon-general to the United States army, 'should be a full-grown man, and not a boy ; the most eligible men are from twenty to twenty- five years.' 'There is no regimental surgeon/ says a deputy inspector-general, ' who will not tell you it is ruinous folly to send immature boys to India. They either die like flies or get invalided after a year or so, stay the best part of another year in hospital, and are then discharged penniless, to give the army a bad name.' Dr. Muir, inspector-general of hospitals in India, declared that the evils of premature enlistment had so culminated, that it might be impossible to trust Her Majesty's regiments hereafter. ' Of what avail,' says he, ' are our extensive new barracks, our advanced sanitorium, and all the means and appliances so liberally provided by Government for the preservation of the health of the European soldier, if so large a proportion consists of such delicate material ? It L 146 'STRAY SHOTS. is a fact substantiated by all appearance military and medical that soldiers of immature age and development do not thrive when transplanted to the plains of India.' * In every Continental army,' said Lord Sandhurst, ' care is taken to provide grown men for the service ; but in the British army there is no such provident care. On the contrary, every regulation is framed with the intention of providing ungrown starveling boys.' Not satisfied with recruiting our army exclusively with boys, the system of 1871 was so elaborated as to make it impossible for any but boys to remain in the ranks ; immaturity was virtually declared to be the first condition of our military service. On March 22, 1871, the famous order was issued inviting all soldiers who had exceeded three years' service to pass into the reserve. Can we be surprised at Lord Sand- hurst's statement that the feelings of commanding officers on receiving this notice were those of blank dismay. Practically we say to our soldiers when they arrive at the age of twenty or twenty-one, 'You are now full grown; you are no longer boys ; you are fit to bear fatigue and privation. Therefore, you must at once leave the ranks of the active army.' Three conditions are absolutely indispensable to an effective army : a rank and file of matured men, able to bear fatigue and privation ; experienced non-commissioned officers, able to enforce discipline and impart backbone and cohesion ; and a large percentage of soldiers of over three years' service. Without these conditions no army is fit to take the field. Our system makes it absolutely impossible that our army should have any one of them. Military service in hot climates, whether in time of war or time of peace, is work for men. We have been trying to make boys do men's work ; but this, as Sam Slick tells us, is * agin natur,' and naturally we have failed. What should we think of a 15-stone man who took a stud of two- or three- year-olds to hunt at Melton, and left a stud of five- or six- year-olds in reserve in London P We should have no AN AKMY IN ITS TEENS. 147 difficulty in pronouncing him a fool. We should know for a certainty that his young animals would break down, one after another, as fast as they tumbled into a run, and probably break his own neck. But this is actually what we have done. We have set our two- and three-year-olds to do the work of matured horses, and congratulated our- selves on keeping our five- and six-year-olds in reserve. Of course they break down under the first severe trial, and we are left the laughing-stock of the world. * Look at our reserves/ say the amateur civilians who are responsible for the present system, ' what fine men they are, what bone, what muscle just the sort we want !' ' Look at our army,' reply the professional soldiers who are responsible for the safety of the Empire, * what boys they are, no bone, no muscle, only gristle just the sort we don't want ! ' We have got a reserve certainly, probably on paper 30,000 men; but at what a cost? At the cost of the efficiency of the entire army. These 30,000 represent the only matured men we have in the service ; the rest are boys. To make our army of boys in any degree effective, the presence of every reserve man we have is necessary in the ranks. It is deceiving ourselves to say we have an army and a reserve. Our army is not an arm}' unless the reserve is incorporated with it. The danger our Indian Empire is exposed to by the employment of immature troops cannot be exaggerated. The jealousy of English rule in India is as strong now as in any period of our domination ; the natives hold towards us the same feelings the Communists of Paris held towards the Versailles troops, and amongst themselves threaten us with as signal vengeance. They yield to us because they believe we are a stronger race better fighting men ; they dread our physique quite as much as our guns, and rifles, and dis- cipline. Sikhs, Ghoorkas, Pathans, Beloochees, Mahrattas, watch us with much the same feeling as the caged leopard does his keeper. Once let them see that our fighting caste has deteriorated, and that we are sending boys L 2 148 'STRAY SHOTS.' instead of men to keep them down, and they will be certain, as soon as occasion offers, to make their spring. We were told by the civilian reformers of our army that in 1870 Lord Card well found us, a great military Power, in a ' humiliating plight.' No doubt our army was in many respects far behind some of the armies of Europe, but in many respects it was second to none. We were short of artillery, short of transport ; our army was non- elastic no reserves ; but the physique of our rank and file, their tenacity, their endurance, their discipline, their fighting qualities, were unequalled. The old non-com- missioned officers were the backbone of the system, and had not their equals in any army in the world. Our regimental system had grown up with the army, en- couraged military competition, and fostered esprit de corps ; but now, with a stroke of the pen, this is all gone regimental system, matured soldiers, old non-commis- sioned officers exist no longer. But this army that was put on one side as a thing of no value, and handed over to civilians and civilian soldiers to remodel and reorganise according to their ignorance and their crotchets, had nevertheless done good service ; it had carried the flag of England to victory against greater odds than were ever faced by any other army in the world ; but then it was an army of men, of old soldiers, enlisted for twenty-one years' service. They were old soldiers that stormed the heights of the Alma, that defended the heights oflnkerman, that, in a thin red line, checked the Russian advance on Bala- klava, that made and defended the trenches before Sebastopol (for, as Lord Kaglan reported, 'the young recruits fell victims to disease, and were swept away like flies ') ; they were old soldiers, men of from five to twenty years' service, that, on the banks of the Sutlej, under Hardinge and Gough, stemmed the rush of the Sikh in- vasion ; that, in the far more terrible days of the Mutiny, saved the Indian Empire at Delhi and re-established it at Lucknow. Do we suppose that if the armies that per- AN ARMY IN ITS TEENS. 149 formed those deeds of daring had, like the regiments lately sent to India and Africa, been composed of immature lads in their teens, half of whom ha,d never fired ball cartridge, with non-commissioned officers of twelve or fourteen months' service, they would have achieved an equally glorious result ? It is contrary to common sense to credit it for an instant. The army organisation scheme of 1871 was a political job ; it was entirely the work of civilians ; it was forced on with a studied contempt of the warnings and entreaties of all the experienced soldiers and medical authorities in the country ; and what a fiasco it has been ! never probably such a failure. Short service and premature enlistment have destroyed the physique of the army ; the five years' term has deprived it of some of its best commanding officers, the presence of every man of the reserve is absolutely required in the ranks ; the linked-battalion system has been proved an impossibility ; the central depots have proved a mere sink of money ; abolition of purchase has cost the country millions of money, and caused a stagnation of promotion without a single counterbalancing advantage; and now, after nine years of steady deteriora- tion, the army has got into such a state that the Govern- ment is forced, actually forced, by the urgency of increas- ing inefficiency, to appoint a committee of eminent soldiers and administrators ' to try and discover some escape from impending collapse. Perhaps when the public realises what the civilian tinkering of the army in 1871 has cost them in men, money, and efficiency, they may in the future be inclined to allow a little more weight to professional experience. The soldiers cannot possibly do worse for them than the civilians have done ; it is possible they may do a good deal better. ' Our Besieged Correspondent ' in Paris relates that whenever General Trochu sat down to a game of piquet, he used to say ' J'ai inon plan ; ' and that when he had lost the game, which he usually did, he would get up and say, 150 'STRAY SHOTS: Cependant mon plan etait bon ! ' In 1871 our Trochus had their plan also for reorganising the British army ; and a wondrous plan it was. It was to restore the army to the nation ; to weld our forces into one harmonious whole ; to create light out of darkness, order out of chaos ; to make panic impossible. Well, they have tried their plan ; they have played their game and lost it, every trick in it ; and now, like their prototype, they console themselves and us with the refrain ( Cependant mon plan etait bon ! ' The scheme of 1871 was to make future panics impossible ; it was to give us an efficient army and a reliable reserve ; it has done neither. Here in 1879 we have a regular military panic ; our first line of defence has broken down com- pletely on its first trial, and our reserve is where ? Echo answers, where ? The best of it is, that the Trochus who have got us into this scrape now claim the exclusive right of getting us out of it. They are indignant that any other advice should be taken ; they have brought their patient to the brink of dissolution, and, like Dr. Sangredo, they insist on their right to administer a final drench and bleeding. It is astonishing how much official dust is thrown into the public eyes. The use of our senses is denied us ; we are not allowed to believe anything we hear, and certainly not half we see. In his speech recently Lord Cardwell said that * now, as a rule, none but matured soldiers were sent to India.' If this is so, it is evident that every executive officer of the army, from general to ensign, every medical authority, every military correspondent, is labour- ing under some dangerous delusion, and ought to be put into a strait-waistcoat. But what is the use of disputing about the shadow of an ass ? We all know what we mean. If our recruits are matured men, all well and good ; we have what we want, and what we pay for. But if they are immature starvelings, fit for no work at all till they have been fed up and nursed a year in barracks, and even then incapable of bearing the fatigues and privations AN ARMY IN ITS TEENS. 151 of war till their gristle is turned into bone, what does it signify whether we call them 17, or 18, or even 19 years of age ? We have not got what we want or what we have paid for. The maturity of our recruits, and their fitness to bear fatigue and privation, is really more a matter of optical conviction than of baptismal returns, and the crowd of figures and returns that smother every inquiry on the subject only tend to make confusion worse con- founded. Figures, we know, are most accommodating witnesses, and will prove almost anything we want sometimes even more than we want. Lord Cardwell's figures showed that of 5,622 recruits sent to India in 1864-65, no less than 5,985 were over two years' service; but, prove what they will, figures will not turn ' bone into gristle.' What do we suppose we gain by trying to prove that our recruits are men, when, in reality, they are only boys? Who do we suppose is taken in by our ' Army in its teens ? ' Not our enemies or our allies, or the subject races of our Empire they all see our weakness only too well. It is ourselves ! We are actually perpetrating the preposterous folly of deceiving ourselves. We are going through the ridiculous farce of preparing returns and manipulating figures in order to prove to ourselves what we know is untrue, that we have a splendid army and a splendid reserve. It is childish, and we are making fools of our- selves before the world, wasting millions of the taxpayers' money, simply in order to spare the vanity of a clique of civil and military doctrinaires who have forced on the country their own crude theories in the very teeth of the warnings and entreaties of all the professional experience of the country, and who now, as each link of their plan fails one after another, continue murmuring with * damn- able iteration,' ' Cependant mon plan etait bon.' The cost of a voluntary army must always be much greater than the cost of an army raised by conscription, but when this army is composed of boys who are swept 152 'STRAY SHOTS.' away like flies directly they are put to bard work, get invalided, desert, and spend half their service in hospital, in going to and returning from India, its cost, measured by its efficiency, is enormously increased. The cost of the British army relatively to its efficiency is fabulous. We recruit for six years' service with the colours. For the first two years our recruits are unfit to bear fatigue and privations and exposure to tropical climates the inevitable lot of our army in peace or war. For two years out of the six our boys are neither useful nor even ornamental, and we therefore, as a rule, give our immature soldiers six years' pay for four years' work. And even with all our care the rate at which we use up our boys is frightful. During the four years 1875-6-7-8, 104,717 recruits entered the ranks ; during the same period a period of complete peace we expended under the four heads dis- charged, deserted, died, and invalided, no less than 52,130 men. The number invalided out of the service increased from 3,524 in 1875-6 to 5,416 in 1878. Military service must always to a certain extent be demoralising to a nation, inasmuch as it diverts a certain portion of the manhood of the nation from remunerative to unremunerative labour. It is one of the first duties, therefore, of every Government to make military service as little demoralising as possible. I believe that when it is carefully examined it will be found that no system that has yet been devised is nearly so demoralising to the community as that of premature enlistment and short service. Under the old system of twenty years with the colours, and a pension, the army was a career ; it was recruited chiefly from the waifs and strays, the roughs, the loafers, the adventurous class, who were unable or unwilling to settle down to a civil occupation. In this way the army was an actual relief to the community ; in those days every fresh recruit for the army meant a loafer the less in the community. Now, this is reversed ; every recruit for the army means, eventually, a loafer the AN ARMY IN ITS TEENS. 153 more for the community. We enlist, on an average, 25,000 boys a year at an average age of 17, before they have learnt any trade or profession. At the end of four or six years, when they are 22 or 23, we throw them back on the community, still without any trade, but with 6d. a day reserve pay ; in the great majority of cases these men are too old and unsettled with military service to steady down to the drudgery of learning a trade, and become loafers and waiters on Providence, the pittance of 6d. a day encouraging them in this career. Our system has the effect of inducing some 25,000 boys of 17 or 18 years annually to idle away the five or six most precious years of their life, and to postpone learning a trade till they are generally too old and too unsettled to do so. The German system of compulsory service, that takes every man between the ages of 21 and 23, after he has learnt a trade, and in eighteen months or two years sends him back to his trade again, is very much less injurious to the industrial community. What the number of our reserve is intended to be I don't know ; but, at the present rate of increase, we shall before very long be paying a million sterling a year to 70,000 or 80,000 of able-bodied young men to keep them in a state of semi-idleness, on the chance of their services being some day wanted. We abolished the system of pensions because we were told they were demoralising ; but if it is demoralising to pay a man 6d. a day who has given the best twenty years of his life, and probably his health also, to the service of his country, I maintain it is twenty times more demoralising to give 6d. a day to a young man who has scarcely served his country at all, and whose future service may never be required. The cost of our reserve will soon become enormous, and its utility apparently nil. The whole idea of a pensioned reserve of young men appears to be wrong. It is beginning at the wrong end pensioning the young instead of the old ; pensioning those who can work instead of those who cannot. If the 154 'STRAY SHOTS; reserve is available for ordinary military service, in what does it vary from the regular army ? If it is only avail- able on extraordinary national emergencies, it is an in- convenient provision against an improbable accident, like that of the man who carried about with him a wooden leg in case his own should be cut off. Our Trochus have destroyed our regimental system ; the five years' limit for commanding officers, short service for non-commissioned officers and men, and the constant calls for volunteers, have rung the knell of the ' old regiments.' Officers no longer know their men, or men their officers ; all that was good in the regimental system is gone, and what is left is not worth fighting for; but we must have some- thing to replace it ; we have tried linked battalions, but they failed us even before they could be tried. It appears that we might with advantage adopt a part of the military system of our friends the Zulus. In many ways the efficiency of our army would be very much increased if it were divided into regiments of 5,000 men, with a general commanding and five lieutenant-colonels and a complement of regimental officers. It would save us the ridiculous necessity of having absolutely to destroy three or four regiments in order to make one fit for service, and it would make desertion, or rather re-enlist- ment, which is one of the chief inducements to desertion, more difficult. ' Oh ! it is all very well finding fault,' we are told ; * nothing is so easy as that. Before you destroy the present system, why don't you give us something better? ' As a rule, this argument is a sound one, but in the present case it loses half its force, because the present system is so utterly and indefensibly bad that no change can possibly make it worse, whilst almost any change must make it better. Ruinous, demoralising, dangerous, as the re-organisa- tion scheme of 1871 has proved to be, it has taught us one fact, and that an important one, viz., that voluntary enlistment will not give us an army and a reserve as well. AN AKMT IN ITS TEENS. 155 Under proper conditions it will give us an army, and an efficient first line ; but the reserve must be sought in some other way. Well, but in -what way? As a reserve is necessary, we must have it ; we are not safe without it. Granted all this, it simply becomes a question of what the country will pay for its safety not in money, in hand already, waste enough of that but in 'personal service.' Oh ! but ' personal service ' means compulsory service, and compulsory service in any shape is contrary to the habits, the instincts, the prejudices of Englishmen. I don't believe a word of it. The question of personal military service has never been fairly raised in England it has never been clearly and distinctly put to the people. Of course, I don't mean compulsory service for the army : that is impossible. You could never force a man against his will to serve for years on the banks of the Sutlej or on the banks of the Tugela ; but if any of the statesmen the people delight to honour would tell them that ' per- sonal home service ' is a distinct duty which every citizen, high and low, rich and poor, owes to his country, I believe it would be accepted at once ; but it must be universal, and those who have the best blood must be those to show the best example. If universal military home service did nothing else but diminish class distinctions and class prejudices, it would confer an immense national benefit. The gulf between rich and poor, high and low, is dangerously deep and broad, and might be bridged over with great advantage. What a deal of good it would do the crutch and toothpick brigade to have to serve a year with the colours in the territorial army ; and there would be more joy over one of the half million of able-bodied rough or casuals who won't work, who could be thus utilised, if only for twelve months, than over a hundred respectable recruits. With such a reserve of military spirit and education as a terri- torial army would give us, a bonus of a few pounds would always bring a sufficient number of volunteers to fill the 156 'STRAY SHOTS; gaps that war or pestilence might make in the ranks of the regular army ; and is it not better to give a volunteer 51. when you want him than to continue to pay a reserve 91. a year for many years, with the great probability of never wanting him at all? This, then, is what we want : a voluntary army recruited for twelve years with the colours, with the option of ten years more, and a pension after twenty-one years. This army to be divided into regiments of 5,000 men an army of 25,000 or 30,000 men recruited for special service in India, compulsory service for the militia, or rather a territorial army, for home service, in which every man of every rank, from the duke to the dustman, should be compelled to serve one year with the colours, between the ages of 20 to 24, and to be liable for yearly drills and for home service up to the age of 40. XXXI. THE UNITED SERVICE. THE NAVY, 1884. WILL the year that is now opening afford us some clearer knowledge of the true condition of our united service than we at present possess ? I hope so ; the perfect efficiency of our army and navy is of far more importance than such trifles as a Bankruptcy Bill, a Municipal Bill, or even a Reform Bill, for on it depends the very existence of the Empire. The Empire of Great Britain, whether for good or for evil, rests on the bayonets of her soldiers ; if these bayonets are held by men, the Empire is safe ; if they are held by boys, it will fall ; and the ruin will be tremendous. But if an efficient army is necessary to our Empire, an efficient navy is necessary to our very existence. No nation has ever existed to which the efficiency of its na,vy was of such vital importance as to Great Britain. During the last thirty years this dependence on our navy THE UNITED SEE VICE. 157 has increased immensely increased far more than most of us realise. It has increased exactly in proportion as our dependence on foreign nations for food has increased. Formerly the temporary loss of the command of the seas meant loss of wealth, loss of prestige, loss of honour perhaps. Now it means loss of food. Following the teachings of the false prophets of free trade, we have blindly, madly, allowed our home supply of food to diminish till our dependence on foreign supplies of food has become absolute. Free trade in corn is fast throwing our land out of tillage. During the last twenty years 1,000,000 acres (one-fourth of our total production) have gone out of wheat cultivation in England, and 1,300,000 acres out of grain and root cultivation in Ireland. Very shortly, of every three loaves consumed in this country two will come from across the seas ! It is no longer our own fields, our own tillage, that supplies us with food ; it is the ' frugi- fera navis,' the grain-bearing ships from America, from Russia, from India ; and, in the event of war, if our navy cannot keep the seas open for this supply, we starve. In former wars, the chief business of our fleets was to attack the ships and commerce of our enemies ; now it will be to guard our own ; and if we cannot do that, we shall be starved into submission in a few weeks. Do our great economists thoroughly realise to what an extent they have tied our hands, paralysed them almost even for defence, by inducing us to adopt a fiscal policy that has made us dependent for two-thirds of our food supply on foreign nations ? There is only one similar instance in history, and that is not a reassuring one. It is that of Rome in her decline and fall, when, abandoning the tillage of Italy, she de- pended entirely for her supplies of grain on Sicily and Africa. But then Rome was still mistress of the world ; no foreign fleets could stop her grain-bearing ships across the inland sea. 158 'STRAY SHOTS; How would it be with us now if we were at war with France, or Eussia, or America ? The price of our wheat is regulated almost entirely by the cost of freight. In the event of war, freights would at once rise to a point that no one can limit. They are now down to 3s. or 4s. a quarter. They have been down to nothing.- War risks- even rumours of war would in a fortnight send them up to 30s. or 40s. the quarter. A disaster at sea would send wheat to famine prices, when we should have a choice of starvation or surrender. This is no exaggeration. The ocean highway, that in time of peace may insure us an ample supply of food, would, if we lose even the temporary command of it, lead to our ruin. We want wheat at 34s. or 40s. the quarter. Well, we can have it on these terms : that our land goes out of tillage ; that our agricultural population and those de- pendent upon them find other employment ; that we always keep up a predominant navy to guard our food supply ; that in the event of war, even a successful one, we must be prepared to see the price of food doubled or trebled this is the price we must be prepared to pay for cheap corn. Is it not buying cheapness rather dear? Obedient to the parrot cry, ' Buy cheap/ ' Buy cheap,' we are staking our national existence in the effort to get cheap food. Is this common sense? Is it not, on the other hand, actual madness ? In case of war, England would now be in the position of a beleaguered city, with an immense population de- pendent for their food on convoys passed through the enemy's lines ; if the convoys failed or were delayed, we should be starved. Is this a satisfactory position for a great nation to be placed in ? but is it not a true one? This city never felt a siege before, But from the lake received its daily store, Which nov, shut up and millions confined here, Famine will soon in multitude appear. THE UNITED SERVICE. 159 But, indeed, the very food we require might be in the hands of our enemies. We might be at war with France, or Kussia, or America. Of what use, pray, would be our fortresses and defences, even of the ' silver thread ' itself, if in case of war we have to be victualled by our enemies ? There is no secret in this. All the world knows it, all the world talks of it; all nations take it into their calcula- tions ; every nation knows that if England goes to war with any maritime Power with any first-class Power, in fact food will very soon reach famine prices. She will have to fight not for victory, but for food. France knows this and is openly acting on it. She makes no secret of her objects. Every nation sees them except ourselves. Why is she building an enormous fleet, adding to it every year? Not to fight the Germans. The dog and the fish don't fight. Not to fight Italy or Spain or America. Not to protect her commerce or her colonies ; she has none. No ! In increasing her fleet she has but one object, and that is to be as strong, or stronger, on the seas than England. Once that is accomplished, England and her colonial Empire are at her mercy. I know there are many persons in this country to whom such considerar- tions go for nothing ; who would welcome any cause that prevented England embarking in war ; who see nothing noble, nothing to be proud of, in the Empire of Great Britain ; who, on the contrary, look upon it as an unclean thing, acquired by fraud and force, to be put aside at the earliest opportunity. These superfine cosmopolitans think that in these views they represent the feelings of the ' people ; ' but they do not ; they were never more mis- taken. The English people, beef eaters, beer drinkers, ' fierce wild beasts,' as Benvenuto Cellini called them, may at times appear to swallow this miserable nonsense; but at heart they are Jingoes Jingoes to the very tips of their fingers ; of that there is no mistake. During the Russo-Turkish war, when falsehood and exaggeration had aroused a strong feeling against the 160 'STRAY SHOTS.' Turks, the Peace Society sent delegates, working men, able speakers, through Staffordshire and the Potteries to speak against a war with Russia. Russia was then a long way from Constantinople. Everywhere they were received with acclamation; there was no bounds to the enthusiasm. But, gradually, as the Russians advanced towards Con- stantinople, this feeling began to slacken, till shortly it was actually reversed. Instead of being received with acclamation and applause, the peace delegates dared scarcely show their faces. So general was the Jingo revival that Mr. Gladstone was bonneted in Piccadilly and had to take refuge in a shop. It would be difficult to give a reason for this sudden revulsion of feeling; it was spontaneous; it probably arose from a feeling that national honour and national interests were being sacrificed to party interests and per- sonal feeling. What happened then will always happen again. With all their radical and revolutionary feeling, the patriotism or Jingoism of the people is still their strongest instinct. The British navy must be strong, very strong ; stronger than it, has ever been before. It is the one condition of our national existence. If it is not at all times, and in all seasons, and in all places, able to keep the seas against all comers, we are not safe from disgrace and calamity. Well, what is its present condition? Amidst such contradictory statements as we have heard during the last twelve months, it is hard to say. It may be strong; but when we find that the French are stronger than we are in ships and guns at Madagascar, and again stronger than we are in ships and guns in the China seas ; when we look at the immense increase of their fleet at home, of the ships they have built, and the ships they are building, it would appear that, if we are not already outnumbered, we soon shall be; and then will come the tug of war! But we must be thankful for small mercies. Thank God, the navy has not for some years not since THE UNITED SERVICE. 161 the 'Captain' catastrophe in fact been, like the army, made the plaything of civilian ignorance, been exposed to the rest lessness of civilian reorganisation. The good old traditions in favour of professional experience and professional know- ledge still prevail at the Admiralty, and when the sea lord says to his civilian chief, * This end of the ship goes first, my lord,' the reply is, ' Does it ? All right ! ' not as in the sister service, where any similar remark would probably meet with this reply, ' Does it ? Well, I mean for the future that the other end shall go first.' THE AEMY. IF, as regards the navy, I think we have reason to be thankful for small mercies, I am sorry to say that as regards the army I do not think we have reason to be thankful for any mercies whatever. It appears to me the condition of our army would be absolutely ridiculous if it were not so dangerous. We have been actually trying to make hare soup with- out first catching our hare. Our cooks have gone on weighing and mixing the ingredients with care, not for- getting, at the same time, to call our attention to their exceptional skill, when all of a sudden they exclaim, ' Why, God bless us, we've forgotten the hare ! ' We have been remodelling our army, pulling it to pieces, trying to put it together again, calling on the public all the time to applaud the extraordinary talents of the organisers, when suddenly we find they have for- gotten the rank and file ! Our clever paper organisers offer to the admiration of the world a splendid army costing 16,000,OOOZ. a year, consisting of staff, officers, bands, military establishments of all kinds, but no soldiers. Now, really, this is very little exaggerated. I believe 162 'STRAY SHOTS.' it is now acknowledged by every independent officer con- nected with the army that every so-called reform and improvement introduced by Mr. Cardwell and his suc- cessors viz., short service, abolition of pensions, linked battalions, five years' colonels, increased number of majors, change of numbers and facings of regiments, the reserve, &c. have, each and all, done more or less harm, destroyed esprit de corps and many of the most valuable character- istics of a standing army. In no single case, as I believe, has the efficiency of the rank and file been in any degree whatever improved by these changes; whilst in almost every case it has been seriously damaged. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. After thirteen years of incessant change and remodelling, our rank and file is smaller in height and chest measurement, more immature and inefficient, than it was in the days when our army had been decimated in the Crimea and the Mutiny. Our artillery, the pride and backbone of the army, is fast disappearing. The bright, confident spirit of former days seems to have disappeared. What officer ever now speaks with pride and confidence of his regiment, but rather with anxiety and regret? The very inefficient condition of our rank and file is not, unfortunately, a matter of opinion ; it is a matter of fact. * Cela saute aux yeux.' You see it wherever you see soldiers, and hear it wherever you meet officers. I do not believe there are a dozen officers in the army who do not now allow that the inefficiency of the rank and file is greater than it ever has been, that it is increasing every day, and that it constitutes a great national danger. Of course we shall be told that the officers are wrong, that they are idlers, twaddlers, and know-nothings. I don't believe it. I believe that the accounts the majority of officers give of the condition of the rank and file of the army are correct. But it is not amongst military men only that the THE UNITED SERVICE. 163 miserable condition of the rank and file of the army is treated as an accomplished fact. ' Why,' asks a Radical paper, ' should we be taxed 16,000,OOOZ. a year to support an army which it is acknow- ledged on all sides is disappearing or has disappeared ? ' And I think there is a good deal of reason in the inquiry. According to the number of men on paper, the cost of our army is far in excess of the cost of any other army in the world. According to its efficiency, the cost is pre- posterous. The language of the military advocates of the Cardwell reforms has undergone a most marked change since the Egyptian campaign. No one now vaunts the success of the innumerable changes ; their qualified praise now finds expression in an apologetic repetition of * ifs ' and ' buts,' t if so and so had been done,' &c., * but as so and so was not done, of course/ &c. The Egyptian campaign, with all its tinsel accompani- ments, seems to have completely opened the eyes of the public to the miserable result of our boasted military reforms. The miraculous shower of honours and decora- tions, in some instances five, for a three weeks' campaign ; the jingo parade through London, did not conceal the fact that the first touch of actual war proved that neither men nor organisation had improved one little bit since the Crimean war, if indeed, as many maintained, it had not considerably retrograded. Young soldiers, we had been told by our army reformers, were to constitute the strength of our army. These were the troops to fight, to march, to win battles, to endure privation ; whilst experience, cohesion, knowledge of their trade, confidence in themselves, in each other, in their officers and non-commissioned officers, esprit de corps, regimental system, we were told, was all nonsense. Well, how did our military reformers show confidence in their own theories? By leaving at home every soldier under twenty years of age, which in some regiments meant 400 M 2 164 'STRAY SHOTS.' or 500 men ! Apparently, like so many doctors, they did not think much of their own physic. ' How,' says the leading journal, giving an account oi the embarkation of French troops to Tonquin, * can you expect efficient service from battalions made up of men from six or seven different regiments, who neither know each other nor their officers ? ' How, indeed ? But then how is it that this same journal, or the military writers in it, have been doing their best for thirteen years to force on the English army a system that they at once declare is fatal to the French army ? To send out an effective force of 20,000 men to Egypt the British army had to be drained of its efficient material. Suppose the Egyptian troops had not allowed themselves to be surprised at Tel-el-Kebir ; suppose they had stood to their entrenchments as the Turks did at Plevna; that the English attack had been repulsed ; that more men had to be sent from England, we should then have had to ship out to them the immature boys rejected as unfit for service a few weeks before a nice force to give confidence to discomfited friends and to strike awe into the hearts of victorious foes ! Now, what has brought our army into its present state of inefficiency, and, indeed, disrepute ? There is no secret about it ; it is civilian misrule, civilian incapacity, and, if the word must be spoken, civilian presumption speaking through a party press. Ever since Lord Cardwell, in his foolish self-confidence, threw over with the greatest ostentation the warning, the advice, the entreaties of all the officers of distinction in the country, it has been looked upon almost as an evidence of a want of spirit for civilians to allow that soldiers can know anything about the army. It has been the official cue to look upon soldiers as prejudiced, ignorant, narrow- minded, unable to see beyond their noses ; and by some novel application of -vice versa it has been assumed that all trustworthy knowledge of military matters has passed THE UNITED SERVICE. 165 from those whose lives have been spent in acquiring this knowledge to a few favoured War Office clerks, whose knowledge of military practice has never at any time extended beyond their desks. Civilian presumption and an inspired press have be- tween them led the army into that happy land where common sense has ceased from troubling and reason is at rest ! The civilians who from time to time now preside over the army are no longer content to administer with modesty and discretion departments of which they know nothing. They are soaring legislators ; they must reform, they must inaugurate, they must remodel ; to prove their divine origin, they must, even if only for a day, drive the horses of the Sun. Poor Phaetons ! if they only knew how supremely ridiculous they appear, and if only they could realise one-tenth of the mischief they have done and are doing, they would possibly restrain their fatal ambition. Professing at first to know nothing, absolutely nothing, about military matters, and wondering why the devil they were sent to direct them, we see them in a few weeks or months flouting experience and professional knowledge, organising, pulling to pieces, trusting only to some civilian clerk as ignorant as themselves, the blind leading the blind. There is no royal road to military knowledge any more than there is to Euclid. The military trade is like any other ; it requires an apprenticeship and experience, and if a statesman has not time either to learn or practise it he had better leave it to those who have. To most of our administrators Home Secretaries, Colonial Secretaries, Presidents of Board of Trade, Chancellors of the Exchequer professional knowledge is of no great importance ; they may dictate to magistrates, to colonies, to shipowners, and taxpayers ; and even when they are wrong can do no harm ; but with the army and navy it is different ' Cela s'agit de 1'einpire ' their want of pro- fessional knowledge, their ignorance, obstinacy, or pre- sumption may ruin the Empire. 166 'STKAY SHOTS.' Now, what has the experience of the last thirteen years taught us ? It has taught us many things which before we only saw through a glass darkly, but now face to face. It has taught us that civilians can pull an army to pieces but cannot put it together again. It has shown us that a voluntary system of enlistment cannot supply us with an efficient first line and a reserve. It has shown us that immature boys of seventeen and eighteen, with young non- commissioned officers, do not give us an efficient first line. It has shown us that our system of reserve pay, 6d. a day for doing nothing, to young men, promotes loafing, wait- ing on Providence, improvidence, fraudulent enlistment, paupers. It has shown us that the advocates of short service and young soldiers declined to take young soldiers to Egypt. It has shown us that the cutting and carving and reorganisation have not in the slightest degree improved the rank and file of the army. It has shown us that civilian control of the army has immensely increased its cost and immensely reduced its efficiency. Well, what are we to do ? * I don't know what to do with my horse,' said a man to his friend ; * he gets thinner and thinner every day.' ' Did you ever try oats ? ' was the reply. Well, our horse is getting thinner and thinner every day. Civilian forage is killing him before our eyes. Why shouldn't we try oats some military oats ? Why, instead of handing over our army to civilian inexperience and restlessness, shouldn't we give a little more effect to the knowledge and experience of soldiers ? They may not be able to fatten our horse, but, by Jove, they can't make him any thinner than he is now ! 107 XXXII. THE HOUSEHOLD CAVALRY. I THINK all who take an interest in military matters will be glad that the authorities have decided that if a British force goes to Egypt the Household Cavalry shall form part of it. In fact, after the attacks recently made on this branch of the service, it is hard to see how their request for active employment could be refused. Certainly the climate of Lower Egypt in August and September is not the most healthy in the world, and I fear we must be prepared for much sickness amongst the troops serving there ; but I feel very certain that it will not be the matured men of the Household Cavalry that will fill the hospitals, but the poor immature boys from seventeen to nineteen years of age, who, I am afraid, constitute the bulk of the rank and file of the army. Medical evidence proves that from twenty-three to thirty is the age at which men can best bear continuous fatigue and exposure ; and the elaborate German records of the Franco-German war prove that from seven to thirteen is the age at which horses best bear the labour and exposure of campaigning ; and as the Household Cavalry can furnish a larger proportion of men between the ages of twenty-three and thirty, and a larger proportion of horses between the ages of seven and thirteen than any other regiments in the service, it is only reasonable to suppose that if placed under similar con- ditions they will suffer less. The Household Cavalry are, without any doubt, the finest sample of heavy cavalry in England. General Blumenthal, who witnessed their per- formances during the autumn manoeuvres of 1871, said they were the finest heavy cavalry in the world, and there- fore it is a matter of national congratulation that amongst some poor samples we shall have to show our allies and 168 'STRAY SHOTS.' our enemies, there may be one at least that none of them can equal. It is the parrot cry of some of those critics who limit their attention to the figures of our military statistics and ignore the facts they teach that the Household Cavalry are too costly and too heavy for work ; but Colonel Fraser, in a recent letter to the Times, and Captain the Hon. Reginald Talbot, in an excellent speech in the House of Commons in 1871, have had no difficulty in proving (1) that though the direct cost to the country per 100 men in the House- hold Cavalry is slightly greater than in the cavalry of the line or the artillery, their indirect cost to the country is considerably less ; (2) that the weight of the men and accoutrements of the Household Cavalry is less than the weight and accoutrements of the German Cuirassiers, whilst their horses are very much stronger ; (3) that they are little, if at all, heavier, and are much better mounted than the Uhlans, who made the world ring with their fame in the Franco-German war ; (4) that they perform longer escort duties than any cavalry in the service, and that at the termination of the autumn manoeuvres of 1872, after unusually heavy work, and after their horses had been picketed out for six weeks, they had only five horses unfit for duty, against fifty horses unfit for duty in some regi- ments of cavalry of the line. We have all of us seen horses carrying 17, and even 18 stone, going well for forty minutes, and horses carrying 12 and 13 stone hopelessly pumped in ten minutes. The result does not depend so much on the exact weight the horse has to carry, as on the way in which he is ridden. The reason why one horse gets through the heavy work and exposure of a campaign and another breaks down at the beginning of it is not that he has less weight to carry, but that he is better looked after. It is a question whether he gets his food and water, that his saddle doesn't wring him, &c., whether, in fact, his master cares for him as Major Dalbretty cared for Gustavus, or whether, with a THE HOUSEHOLD CAVALRY. 169 kick and a curse, lie leaves him to take care of himself. Everyone knows that the value of a servant, of a horse, carriage, and engine, is not what it costs on paper, but how it does the work required of it. You may get a servant at low wages, but he may prove somewhat dear if he drinks your wine and pockets your plate ; whilst another, who does his work and watches your interests, may be cheap at double the money. You may give 100Z. for a horse and find him worth 200Z., and you may give 50L for a horse and find him very dear at 50s. The Household Cavalry cost a trifle more per man than the artillery and cavalry of the line ; therefore, it is argued, they should be suppressed and their place taken by less costly troops. No doubt whatever, if you only look to the cost of the article ' mounted men,' and not to the efficiency of it, you may get boys of seventeen and eighteen, and horses of three-years- old for less money ; but if the boys begin to desert and go into hospital directly they join, and the three-year-olds break down directly they are put to work, it does not appear very clear the country gets the services of effective soldiers any cheaper. The value of a soldier to the country is not in the least degree represented by his cost on paper. It is represented by the regularity with which he does his work, by his physique, his constitution, his discipline, his sobriety, his intelligence, his esprit de corps, his smartness, the care he takes of his country's property his horse and his accoutre- ments. Now, in every one and in all these points the Household Cavalry set a conspicuous example to the rest of the army, and a good second to them a.re the Royal Engineers. Roughly speaking, there are six causes, inde- pendently of sickness, that directly and indirectly deprive the country of the services of the soldiers it pays. They are desertion, drunkenness, absence without leave, making away with necessaries, violence to superiors, miscellaneous crimes. Now, all these crimes and offences cost an immense 170 'STRAY SHOTS; direct and indirect moneyed loss to the country, and all are within the control of the men themselves. In the Household Cavalry these crimes and offences amount to about 1 per cent, in the whole brigade, whilst in the rest of the mili- tant army (excluding the Royal Engineers) they amount to 7 per cent., that is to say, that whilst in every 100 men of the Household Cavalry there is one man prevented by his own misconduct from doing his duty, in every 100 men of the rest of the army there are seven. But it is only when those most distressing and humiliating of all national documents, the returns of court-martials, crimes, and punishments of the British army, are analysed that the superior discipline, the esprit de corps, and conduct of the rank and file of the Household Cavalry is realised. Take the miserable, un- soldierlike offence of making away with necessaries. In 1881 there was not a single case of this offence in the Household Cavalry, whilst in the rest of the army these cases are numbered by thousands. In 1878 they were 5,G17. Whilst the net loss from desertion in 1881 from the Household Brigade was one, in the other three branches of the service it was 3,120. Violence to superiors that in the Household Cavalry stands at one; in the other militant branches of the service it stands at 2,047. I declare that when I cast my eye over the calendar of punishments in the British army, I feel astounded at the service it performs. It is impossible to form any approxi- mation of the moneyed loss to the country from the crimes and vices, and consequent inefficiencies, of the army. In the year 1878, for instance, by no means an exceptional one, the army numbered 200,000 all told. There were 16,500 court-martials, 49,462 fines for drunkenness, 285,000 punishments of various kinds, and 70,000 admis- sions into hospital. But the abolition of the Household Cavalry is not a question that concerns them alone : it is a question that deeply concerns the country. It is a question whether we are to try and ' level up ' the army to the best sample we possess, or whether we are to set to work and THE HOUSEHOLD CAVALKY. 171 level it down to the worst ? In age, in chest measurement, in discipline, in esprit de corps y in contentment, in conduct, the Household Cavalry are the best sample of soldiers we have. Are we to try and raise the rest of the army to their level, or are we to lower them to the level of the rest of the army ? That is the question. Every one knows that there are only three means of securing an efficient army. One is by universal compulsory service, by which every man in the community, from the duke to the dustman, has to take his personal share in the defence of the country. The second is by volunteer service, by securing the willing service of a respectable class, who will take a pride in their profession, who are contented to remain in it, and by whom dismissal is considered a punish- ment and disgrace. The third course is by combining the compulsory and volunteer systems : compulsory service at home, volunteer service abroad. Confident in our insular position, and demoralised by the cowardice of party leaders, who will not risk their personal popularity in order to press on the country the evident duty of universal compulsory service, we have taken refuge in the voluntary system. In two branches of the service the Household Cavalry and the Royal Engineers we seem to have reached the conditions necessary to secure an effective voluntary army. The terms are sufficiently good to attract respectable men and secure their willing service. They do not desert; crimes and military offences are reduced to a minimum ; and in most cases simple dismissal is considered sufficient punishment; but instead of trying steadily to extend these conditions to the rest of the army, we propose to replace them in the solitary case in which they exist, with conditions that ex- perience has proved are only just good enough to tempt the veriest waifs and strays to the ranks, from which they try to escape almost directly they have joined. Instead of trying to lessen the cost and increase the efficiency of our army by extending conditions that we see promote con- 172 'STKAY SHOTS.' tentment and discipline and good conduct, our economic Catos are striving to make it still more costly and inefficient by abolishing the best behaved and best disciplined and most contented regiments in the service. XXXIII. MILITARY REFORM. A SUGGESTION. THE army is divided into two camps on the question of the efficiency of the rank and file. In one are five or six officers of great talent, experience, character, true soldiers; in the other, are all ' the rest of the army.' Whilst the former maintain that men cannot be too young, or service too short ; that age and experience in non-commissioned officers are unimportant ; that our rank and file is splendid, our reserve magnificent, our discipline perfect, that, in fact, things were never better, the ' rest of the army,' to a man, officers fresh from India, from Africa, from Malta, Aldershot, Portsmouth, tell you, with one voice, that things cannot be worse ; that the condition of the rank and file is deplorable ; that, in fact, the warning given by Dr. Muir, Inspector-General of Hospitals in India, fifteen years ago, ' that the evils of premature enlistment had so culminated that it might be impossible to trust Her Majesty's regiments hereafter,* is dangerously near its accomplish- ment. The minority are the cooks who made the pudding, and they declare it is excellent; but I think it more reasonable to seek for a proof of its quality from the majority who have to eat it, and they to a man pronounce it abominable ! The evils complained of are the extreme youth of the rank and file ; the large percentage of desertion, re- enlistment, and crime ; the general discontent and dis- satisfaction that prevail throughout the service ; the dis- like with which the service is viewed by the respectable MILITARY REFORM. A SUGGESTION. 173 portions of the working and operative classes ; the want of age and experience in the non-commissioned officers ; the enormous cost of the army as measured by the efficiency of the rank and file ; the great expense to the country of feeding, clothing, paying, nursing 26,000 annual recruits for two years before they can be put into the Line as efficient soldiers. The remedies for these evils are evidently: (1) to advance the age at which recruits are taken; (2) to popularise the services. By this means the number of inefficients in the ranks, and the losses from disease, death, and desertion would be minimised ; and good men would remain in the army, and make it their profession, and afford the necessary supply of experienced non-commissioned officers. It is evident that the present system of recruiting is a failure ; the waifs and strays, the starvelings of our cities and villages, immature, without stamina, under non-commissioned officers as young and inexperienced as themselves, do not give us a reliable rank and file. Is there no other source of supply we can tap ? The rank and file of the Militia numbers 138,500 men ; that of the Volunteers, 192,662 men; a total of 331,328. The number of recruits we require annually to fill the gaps caused by death, disease, desertion, imprisonment, retire- ment, and other causes is 26,000, or about 8 per cent, of this number. It does not seem impossible that the condi- tions of service might be so improved that the Militia and Volunteers might be induced to find this percentage for the Line. But, indeed, if service with the colours was really popular, if the recruits were composed of less delicate material, and there was a general desire to remain in the service, instead of to get out of it, at any cost, the losses from disease, death, desertion, and retire- ment would be so diminished that one-half the present number of recruits would be sufficient to fill these costly gaps. The question, then, is this. Can the 331,000 men 174 'STRAY SHOTS.' composing the rank and file of the Militia and Volunteers be induced to find 4 per cent, per annum of their number for service in the Line ? The scheme of army organisa- tion would be as follows : The Militia and Volunteers would be at once the nursery of the army and its Reserves ; the Line would be recruited entirely from the Militia and Volunteers ; at the expiration of their service with the colours, both men and officers would return to the Militia and Volunteers as Reserves. Now, in order to make this scheme possible, the conditions of service in the Militia, the Line, and the Reserves must be improved and popularised. I say nothing about the Volunteers, because, to a very con- siderable extent, the conditions of their service depend upon themselves. The following would be the proposals to popularise the Militia: The billeting system must be abolished ; the regiments must be officered entirely by retired officers of the Line ; an additional annual bonus of 3Z. should be paid to every Militiaman who serves his training to the satisfaction of his commanding officer (equivalent to an addition of 2d. a day to his pay). The billeting system often lodges men, during their entire training, in the lowest public-houses, sometimes in houses of even worse fame, and deters respectable men from joining the Militia. It is undeniable that if the Militia were officered by trained soldiers, instead of by amateurs, the men would profit very much more by their twenty-seven days' training ; and the evident folly of setting * the blind to lead the blind ' would be avoided. The bonus of 3/. would be a great attraction to good men to enter the Militia, and would afford an ample security for every man on the roll of the regiment coming up for his training. The proposals to popularise the Line would be as follows : The Line would be recruited entirely from the Militia and Volunteers. All recruits to be over twenty years of age ; to have served two trainings of twenty-seven days each with the Militia, or two years in the Volunteers. MILITARY EEFORM. A SUGGESTION. 175 A bonus of 10Z. to be paid to each recruit (fulfilling these conditions) on his enlisting for three years with the colours, equivalent to an increase of 2d. a day to his pay. At the termination of the first term of three years a man should, with the consent of his commanding officer, be allowed to re-enlist for another term of three years, receiving another bonus of 10L ; and so, for a third and fourth term : 5L of this bonus would always be kept in hand by the district or regimental authorities, as a security against desertion or crime. Non-commissioned officers of the Line retired into the Reserve would retain their rank in the Militia, and when called out to serve again in the Line. Greatly increased facilities for obtaining leave of absence should be granted to all soldiers quartered in the United Kingdom. It has been found that sailors do not desert when they have plenty of leave in fact, the tables are often turned. Many of them are found to desert their families before their leave is half up, and return to their ships ! The suggestions to popularise the Eeserve would be these : The Militia and Volunteers would be the Reserve ; men who had served their time with the colours, and wished to go into the Reserve, would join the Militia or Volunteers. They would retain the rank they held in the Line. Any non-commissioned officer or private in the Reserve under thirty years of age would be allowed again to enter the Line for a term of three years, retain- ing his rank. In lieu of the present pension of Qd. a day, each Reserve man would, after each yearly Militia train- ing, receive a bonus of 10L (equivalent to about Q^d. a day as in the case of the Line, 51. to be always kept in hand). At present the Reserve man is as much a waif and stray as before he enlisted as a recruit ; he may be here, there, or nowhere. The only certainty of finding him is on pay- day. If enlisted from the Militia or Volunteers, and returned to them after the expiration of his term of service with the colours, he would always have a local 176 'STKAY SHOTS; habitation and a name ; his real age and character would be known ; desertion and re-enlistment would be very difficult ; and in the great majority of cases he would be ' at call.' The increase of 2d. a day to the pay of the rank and file of the Army and the Militia would amount to about 750,000?. a year; the cost of paying, feeding, clothing, nursing our annual drafts of 26,000 recruits for two years, at a cost of about 120Z. per man per annum, before they are fit for work, is 3,120,OOOZ. a year ; so that if the expenditure of this three-quarters of a million could give us a rank and file of mature men, of a certain military experience, able at once to bear the fatigues and privations of war, we should effect an annual saving of 2,370,OOOZ. ; if, moreover, this addition to the pay of the rank and file popularised the army, as I believe it would ; if it turned discontent into zeal, minimised the frightful waste from disease, death, desertion, and crime, the gain to the nation, in economy and efficiency combined, can scarcely be estimated. I believe it is generally under- stood that the first step to popularise the army is to increase the pay. A great deal can be said in favour of a bonus scheme over a simple increase of daily pay. The short " service of three years applies only to that portion of the army that is employed in the United King- dom and the Colonies. I think it is evident that an English army to serve in India requires totally different conditions, and should be enlisted for continuous service for ten, fifteen, or twenty years. The present system of sending short service men back- wards and forwards to India is wasteful and unreasonable, and cannot continue. I can see no reason whatever why foreigners, Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and Dutchmen, should not be enlisted for our Indian army. 177 XXXIV. PREMATURE ENLISTMENT. THE answer of the Secretary for War shows that no decision has jet been arrived at by the Government on the state of the rank and file of the army, and therefore it is still open to the public to ventilate the question. Not that I am sanguine enough to suppose I can say anything to influence it. I have no convincing argument to advance ; and even if I had, who wants to be convinced ? ' Well, I hope you are at last convinced,' said an over- saiiguine Christian missionary to a learned Brahmin, after a long discussion. 'Many thanks,' was the courteous reply, ' but I am far more uncertain than before.' 'Tis with our judgments as our watches : none Go just alike, and each prefers his own. A man will tell you what o'clock it is by his watch, and when and where he set it, and why it must be right ; but it is not often you meet one who is willing to alter his time to suit that of another. It does not much signify whether the present condition of the rank and file of the army is the inevitable result of an attempt to remodel an army raised by voluntary enlist- ment on the lines of one raised by conscription, or whether the attempt has not been carried out in good faith. It is enough that there are matters connected with the efficiency of the rank and file of the army that cause the gravest anxiety to all who have realised them, and that some steps must be taken to avert an absolute collapse. The two questions that most immediately affect the efficiency of our army are ' short service ' and ' premature enlistment.' There is a general opinion that short service is the cause of the immature condition of our rank and file. This is only half true. Short service is not the cause of the evil, but it has very considerably aggravated it. N 178 'STEAY SHOTS.' Short service does not necessarily mean an immature rank and file ; neither does long service necessarily mean a mature one. But short service and premature enlistment combined make a matured rank and file an impossibility. Short service and mature enlistment can give a perfectly efficient rank and file; and long service and premature enlistment will give a certain number oi' matured men in the ranks. But premature enlistment combined with short service can only give an army of boys ! An army that is recruited for three years' service with men over twenty years of age, must always have its ranks filled with matured men. An army that is recruited for six years with boys of sixteen or seventeen years of age, must always have its ranks half filled with boys. When the conditions of enlistment are such that none but men of twenty years of age and upwards are admitted into the ranks of the army, the term of enlistment does not so much signify : whether long or short, the rank and file must always be composed of matured men ; but if the conditions are such that recruits are admitted at the age of sixteen or seventeen, it is only by keeping them several years that it becomes possible to insure a certain number of matured men in the ranks. When short service gives a rank and file of men over twenty years of age, it is a most desirable institution. When, on the other hand, it gives a rank and file of boys between sixteen and twenty, it is simply madness. Short service combined with mature enlistment has made the German rank and file the finest the world has ever seen. Short service combined with premature enlist- ment has reduced the British rank and file to the vanishing point. Short service in Germany means the service of every man in the country between the ages of twenty and twenty-seven for three years with the colours. Short service in England means the service of immature PEEMATUEE ENLISTMENT. 179 starvelings of seventeen (nominally eighteen, but more often sixteen) for six years with, the colours. All medical authorities in Europe and America agree that from twenty-three to thirty is the age during which man can best bear fatigue and privation. The German army consists of 700,000 men between the ages of twenty and twenty-seven, and 300,000 between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty-two ; in the English army 50 per cent, are under twenty, and the other 50 per cent, under twenty-three, the age at which man's greatest physical efficiency begins. Under the old system of long service there were two old soldiers in the ranks to every immature boy : under the new system of short service there are a dozen im- mature boys to every old soldier. The efficiency of our rank and file has diminished pro ratd with the increase in the proportion of boys that com- pose it : it is the old story : one boy does a boy's work ; two boys do half a boy's work; three boys do no work at all ! I believe it is a fact that in the Zulu campaign the officers found that three boys were required to do the work of one efficient soldier ! ' The first quality of a soldier,' said the Emperor Napoleon, 'is the ability to bear fatigue and privation; physical courage is only the second.' 'In every Continental army,' said Lord Sandhurst, during the debate on Lord CardwelPs bill, { care is taken to provide grown men for the service ; but in the British army there is no such provident care ; every regulation, on the contrary, being framed with the intention of pro- viding ungrown starveling boys.' The Eoyal Commission on the sanitary state of the army in India ; the Director-General of the Army Medical Department ; Mr. Guthrie, the late President of the Col- lege of Surgeons ; Dr. Hammond, Surgeon-General to the United States army ; Professor Parkes, author of ' Prac- N 2 180 'STRAY SHOTS.' tical Hygiene ; ' Dr. Beatson, Dr. Lyon, and, in fact, every medical officer, British and foreign, without exception, who has ever given written or oral evidence on military service, has condemned as cruel, extravagant, and dan- gerous the system of premature enlistment. Fifteen years ago, Dr. Muir, Inspector-General of Hospitals in India, declared that the evils of premature enlistment had so culminated that it might be impossible to trust to Her Majesty's regiments hereafter ! Dr. Parkes appeals to the acknowledged facts that at the age of eighteen the process of ossification has not even begun to be completed, and that especially as regards the ribs, spine, and limbs, the epiphyses are not united to the shaft of the bone till a much later period. Dr. Lyon, who reported to the Government on the diseases of the army in the Crimean camp writes: 'The immature youths of eighteen to twenty succumbed at once to the hardships of campaigning, or perished after operations performed for wounds. When examined after death, the end of the long bones of the legs and arms still showed the cartilaginous state, being incompletely knit.' Lord Raglan wrote of the recruits sent him, that they were so young and unformed that they fell victims to disease and were swept away like flies. It is twenty-five years since the Crimean war, and we are now, in a time almost of peace, filling our ranks with recruits actually less matured than those Lord Eaglan rejected in the terrible emergency of the Crimean winter ! Our recruits are now enlisted at the age of seventeen, and passed into the reserve at the age of twenty-three or twenty-four. We actually say to each man as he reaches the age of twenty-three, 'You are now full-grown; you are no longer a boy ; you have attained the age at which you are best able to bear privation and fatigue ; therefore you must at once leave the ranks of the active army.' When we talk of recruits of sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, we must not picture to ourselves the stalwart PREMATURE ENLISTMENT. 181 youths of an Eton or Harrow eleven, or farmers' sons raised on beef and mutton and chicken fixings generally ; we must remember that our recruits are, as a rule, waifs and strays, brought up in privation and vice, ill-nourished, late in muscular development, absolutely without stamina. There is a difference of at least eighteen months in the physical and muscular development of the well-nourished youth and the starveling of our great cities. General Edwardes reported that in the first year the recruits grew on an average one inch in height, increased two inches round the chest, and 161b. in weight. For two years out of the six for which we enlist them these recruits are unfit for any hard work, scarcely able even to bear the fatigue of their daily drill ; all their strength and nourish- ment goes to support their growth. The success of a campaign, of a war, depends often on the success of the first blow struck. Our ' first line ' is the weapon we trust to to strike this blow. We should therefore be sure it is sound and serviceable. If it breaks in our hand, it may cause us irreparable disaster. We know that the weapon that is now in our hand is not reliable, and before disaster becomes imminent we should try and make it so. The serviceable and reliable condition of the rank and file of our regiments is what concerns the nation first of all. No doubt, a reserve is necessary also ; but we cannot stir hand or foot ; we cannot say ' bo ! ' to any military goose, unless we have an efficient first line. During the last year we have unfortunately been able to test the quality of our first line in two wars with un- disciplined and partially-armed enemies. We have paid dear in money and military reputation for our experience in Zululand ; but when we remember what it might have cost us to buy this same experience in the school of European warfare, we may congratulate our- selves that we have not been called upon to pay ten times as much. 182 'STRAY SHOTS; If the late Government has done nothing else for Eng- land, it has earned our eternal gratitude for having kept us out of a European war; such a war, in the present condition of our regiments, could only have resulted in disappointment, if not disaster. With the evidence of the Zulu war before us, it is nothing short of madness for us * ad sirenum scopulos con- senescere,' to remain at anchor any longer within hearing of the siren's music, that tells us that our army is in a satisfactory state, and fit to enter the European lists. All the world knows it is not ; the condition of our rank and file is no secret ; and it is far better for us to face the truth than to pretend to ignore it. Is it not a fact that in Zululand, in a fairly healthy climate, Lord Chelmsford required 20,000 troops to do the work that should have been easily accomplished by 10,000 ; that the delicate material composing his army was unable to bear fatigue and privation ; that the boys could not march ; that they were liable to panics that in the face of a French or German army would have caused their destruction ; that they were lamentably wanting in co- hesion, in esprit de corps, in confidence in themselves, in each other, in their officers and non-commissioned officers ; that their non-commissioned officers were too young, without experience, without judgment, without influence ; that their discipline was lamentable? Was there an officer in the whole army in Zululand who would have obeyed without dismay the order to head such troops against an equal number of the matured and disciplined troops of Europe ? Almost the only successful initiative during the Zulu war was the admirably-planned assault of Secocoeni's mountain ; but there the British troops were in reserve, and the fighting was done by the volunteers and natives. At Ulundi certainly 5,000 or 6,000 British troops, armed with Armstrong and Gatling guns, Martini-Henry's, cavalry, rockets, &c., &c., withstood in square, four deep, PREMATURE ENLISTMENT. 183 the half-hearted charge of twice their number of naked savages, only partially armed with shields and spears and a few old Tower muskets ! But was that an action to prove the excellence of young soldiers ? Are we to applaud them because they did not run away ? In Zululand there was only one regiment with a fair number of old soldiers, the 57th, from Ceylon, and it is said that with a dozen such regiments the war might have been finished in a fortnight. In Afghanistan we were more fortunate in the quality of our troops. There we had three or four regi- ments that had been quartered some time in India, and had a fair proportion of old soldiers, fit to go anywhere and do anything, but even there a very unequal portion of the fighting, the marching, the fatigue duties had to be borne by Ghoorkas, Sikhs, Pathans; whilst some of the regiments of starveling boys that arrived from England, unable to march, scarcely even to carry their arms, were regarded by the fighting castes of our native army with amazement, pity, amusement, and contempt. c Granted,' I hear some of my friends say. ' All you say is true (or false, as it suits their argument) ; no doubt our first line is inefficient, some of our regiments cannot muster more than fifty rank and file, with the colours, but we have a reserve of matured soldiers ; and at any cost, even at the cost of the efficiency of our first line, we must have a reserve.' Now this is all very well if we are prepared to put the cart before the horse to make our reserve our fighting line, and keep our fighting line in reserve ; otherwise it is nonsense. Well, we have our reserve, consisting of something under 17,000 men who have served their time with the colours (why there are not 50,000 by this time I cannot imagine), and about 30,000 men who have served not less than two trainings of twenty-seven days each in the militia. The former receive 6d. per day, and are liable to be called out for service when required ; the latter receive 184 'STRAY SHOTS.' a gratuity of one sovereign after each training, and are also liable to be called out when required. The former are trained soldiers ; the latter are not ; but they have a certain military experience, and physically are as good material as can be desired. The reserve of an army is generally understood to be a force kept in a state of pre- paration to support the fighting line when required ; but that apparently is not our present idea of a reserve : it is now argued that the reserve should be incorporated with the fighting line whenever it goes on service : it is argued that the breakdown of the rank and file in Zululand was the result the culpable result of not carrying out Lord CardwelPs scheme in that respect ; that the first-class army reserve should have been incorporated with the regiments that were sent to Natal. But f quis custodiet ipsos custodes ? ' Who then shall act as a reserve to the reserves ? If at the very commencement of a campaign the reserve is incorporated with the fighting line, it ceases to be a reserve. We may talk about our first line and our reserve ; but it is evident that if our first line is unfit for active service till the reserve is incorporated with it make what dis- tinction we like in name we have in reality but one line. This appears to be actually our case : we have what we term respectively our first line and our reserve ; but our first line is composed of such youthful material, that unless the reserve of older men is incorporated with it, it is comparatively useless. The confidence we derive from the knowledge that we have a reserve of 17,000 trained soldiers and 30,000 partially-trained soldiers, is considerably diminished when we find that without these reserves our fighting line is unfit to contend with half -armed savages, much less with . the disciplined troops of Europe. We nurse our hobble-de-hoys in the line till they become men, when we turn them into the reserve j but PEEMATUEE ENLISTMENT. 185 when the first note of war is sounded we have to call them back again into the ranks ! Of course the only true test of the value of an army is its efficiency ; neither its cost nor its numbers are any guide : the money may have been ill- spent, wasted ; the numbers may include a ruinous percentage of inefficients. The cost of our army as represented by the efficiency of its rank and file is astounding. According to the Constitutional, the cost of each man in the German army is 431. per annum ; in France, rather more ; in Russia, 381. ; in England, 140Z. If our rank and file was, man for man, three times as capable of bearing fatigue and privation as the French, German, or Kussian soldiers, all well and good ; we should have no cause to complain. But are they? does any soldier venture to maintain that, with all our expenditure, we could now, without calling on our reserves, place in the field an army of 70,000 men fit to confront an equal force of French or German troops ? could we place 50,000, or 30,000, or even 20,000? But I am afraid that 140Z., extravagant as it appears, does not by any means represent the actual cost of each efficient British soldier. Fifty per cent, of our army are from seventeen to twenty years of age, and physically incapable of bearing the fatigues and privations of war ; the cost, therefore, of the other 50 per cent, that represent our effective force must be largely increased ; and even of these but a very small percentage have attained to the full maturity of manhood. The actual pay of the rank and file is, comparatively speaking, a very small portion of the total expense of the army it is the number who die, desert, get invalided, and go to gaol that so runs up the cost of those that remain. The rate at which we use up our immature rank and file is absolutely frightful : during the four years 1875- 6-7-8, a period of complete peace, we enlisted 104,717 recruits, and expended during the same period, under the 186 'STRAY SHOTS: four heads died, invalided, deserted, and discharged, no less than 52,130 men. We enlist roughly about 26,000 recruits a year ; and we lose from the above-named causes about thirteen thousand men a year. The number in- valided out of the service increased from 3,524 in 1875-6 to 5,416 in 1878. With these figures before us, can we be surprised that Mr. Guthrie, late President of the College of Surgeons, should say that ' he felt himself bound, in season and out of season, to press upon every Minister of War the hideous and hateful evil of premature enlist- ment ' ? Now the British soldier in time of peace is well fed, housed, and clothed, and has the advantage of constant medical supervision, and is at an age when, according to insurance statistics, the percentage of deaths should be at the minimum ; but he is immature, growing ; he has no stamina ; the process of ossification has not even begun to be completed ; his bone is still gristle ; and when exposed to fatigue and privation, especially in hot climates, he breaks down or dies. It is more than probable it is almost certain that if we fixed the age of our recruits at twenty or twenty- one, instead of at sixteen or seventeen years of age, our losses from disease and death would be diminished one-half, and that 18,000 recruits annually would give us twice as many effective men in the rank and file of the army as 26,000 recruits do at present. In order to dimmish the ruinous loss resulting from desertion, the service must be made more popular ; and to lessen the loss by disease and death, the army must be recruited with maturer stuff. ( This is all very well,' we are told ; ( but how is it to be done ? To make the army popular means to make it more expensive than it is at present ; and as for getting more mature recruits, beggars cannot be choosers we are only too glad to get what we can.' It is the old story of Mahomet and the mountain. If PBEMATTJKE ENLISTMENT. 187 the recruits will not go to the army, the array must go to the recruits. We must make the conditions of service more attractive. There is no reason why the army should be recruited entirely from the waifs and strays, the out- casts of society ; that ' going for a soldier ' should be synonymous with going to the devil. There are always a sufficient number of men to be found for the police, for railway work of all kinds, for merchant sailors ; and so there would be for the army if the conditions of service were made sufficiently attractive ; and there is so much in the life of a soldier that must always be attractive to an adventurous race like the English, that it can need but very little change to make it so. I believe that in the militia we have the machinery to our hand by which the army might be popularised, the tone and morale very much raised, the quality of recruits vastly improved, and the immense losses from death, disease, and desertion minimised. The connection between the army and militia should be drawn closer than it is at present : they should be linked services in the fullest sense. The militia should be at once the nursery of the army and its reserve : it should furnish the army with recruits from its ranks, and it should receive back from the army those whose term of service had expired. All reserve men should belong to the militia, and serve their yearly training. The course of military service would then be as follows : Two or three years in the militia ; three or six years in the line ; and six or ten years again in the militia as a reserve man with 6d. a day. In order to carry out this scheme, the conditions of service both in the militia and the line would have to be improved. The pay of the militia must be increased, the officers taken as much as possible from retired officers 01 the line. Above all, the degrading system of billeting, that now deters most respectable men from entering the militia, must be abandoned. The militia training should 188 'STRAY SHOTS.' be in standing camps. One large camp at Cannock Chase or Weedon would be of ten times more service than all the costly depot centres together. The pay of the line would also have to be increased, and when in the United Kingdom, as much annual leave given to the men as is possible. The greatest cause of desertion from the line is the want of leave ; men get so bored with incessant, endless, often objectless, turns of ' sentry go's,' that sooner than stand it any longer they desert. Give them annual leave, of six weeks or two months, and they would not want to desert, but probably, in ninety-nine cases out of a hun- dred, would at the expiration of their leave, often before, return with pleasure to their regiments. No man should be allowed to pass from the militia to the line till he had served at least two trainings, and was over twenty years of age. On joining the line, a bonus of 101. should be paid him ; half down, the other half to accumulate till the end of his three years' service. This 51. would be forfeited only by desertion ; it would form a small nest-egg, and would bind a man most effectually to the service. Ten pounds sounds a large bonus to give for every effec- tive recruit ; and so it is ; but it would in reality represent an enormous economy. For 10Z. we should get a man over twenty, with a certain amount of military experience, fit for immediate hard work ; whereas under our present system we feed, clothe, house, pay, nurse, and doctor every recruit for two years before we can place him in the ranks as an efficient man. We should then get for 10Z. what now costs us 280. ! We complain of the expense of our army, and we stick to a system under which one- third at least of our rank and file are always useless for warlike purposes, eating their heads off at our expense, ' growing into money,' as the dealers say ; ' rum uns to look at,' certainly, but hardly I am afraid, ' good uns to go.' PEEMATUEE ENLISTMENT. 189 Three years with, the colours is a very short service ; but the three years' service of the man over twenty, who has a certain military training, and is physically fit for immediate hard work, would, without any doubt, be more economical, and be of more value to the country, than the six years' service of the immature boys enlisted at sixteen and seventeen, who have to be fed and nursed for two or three years before they are able to bear any fatigue at all. * Donnez-moi de jeunes soldats,' said Napoleon, and I have actually heard this exclamation advanced as an authority for premature enlistment ! But when did he say it ? When there was no longer an old soldier left to France : when the veterans of his Italian and Austrian campaigns had perished to a man in the snows of Russia, and he knew he must be content with conscripts and jeunes soldats, or have no soldiers at all ! I believe it can be proved by evidence that would have satisfied even Dr. Paley himself, that premature enlist- ment in the army is, in the words of Mr. Guthrie, a ' hideous and hateful evil,' cruel, wasteful, and extravagant in the extreme, and absolutely incompatible with an efficient force. Even the most unflinching advocates and promoters of Lord CardwelPs reforms allow that some change is necessary ; bnt no change can offer the slightest prospect of improvement that does not commence by insuring to the country, in return for its enormous outlay, a rank and file composed of the manhood of the race. 190 'STEAY SHOTS.* XXXV. TWO ARMIES. WELL, at last the murder is out. Scarcely has the shower of orders and decorations ceased, and the mutual back- scratching come to an end, than we find, to our dismay, that this gallant army about which we have been making such a row is what our Yankee friends call ' making tracks,' rapidly disappearing from our loving view. The military candle, it appears, is burning at both ends. Re- cruits will not join the army and old soldiers will not remain in it. Our rank and file is 20,000 men short, or soon will be; age, height, chest measurement, have a lower point than was reached during tbe most desperate exigencies of the Crimean war. Crime, desertion, discontent, it is stated, are on the increase, time-expired men decline a 10L bounty to extend their service in India, and recruits prefer going to prison to continuing their services in England. The service is evidently thoroughly un- popular. Now, why is this ? How is it that when the country spends 16,000,000?. or 17,000,0002. annually on the army it cannot get men to serve? that immediately after a successful campaign and a real Jingo parade, that inflamed the hearts of half the maid-servants in London, recruits, even for the Guards, cannot be found? The officials, anxious to the last to maintain the success of their pet scheme, say that want of recruits is owing to the great prosperity of the country, to increased competition in the labour market, &c. ; but this is not true. I wish it was. Our recruits were from the labouring class, and the wages of the labouring class have not increased during the past five years. There were two armies in England a military army and an industrial army, the army of the nation and the army of the great railway companies. We may put each roughly at 100,000 men the North- TWO AEMIES. 191 Western Company alone employ an army of 38,000 men. Both are recruited from identically the same class ; but whilst the railway army can recruit as many men as it pleases, who stay in it and give willing service, the military army can only get recruits with considerable difficulty, who speedily get so sick and disgusted with the service that they will do almost anything to get out of it. There ought to be a good deal in the life of a soldier that to a young man offers greater attraction than the life of a porter, or a shunter, or a railway labourer. Why is it, then, that they flock to the one and fly the other ? In the first place, the railway man averages 11. a week; the military man, I suppose, 12s. or 14s. ; and though the military authorities assure the soldier that his pay is as good as the railway labourer, he does not believe that when he dots up weekly reductions made for kit and other necessaries. In the second place, the railway recruit knows that if he labours well he can remain in his service as long as he chooses. The army recruit, on the contrary, knows that, labour as he may, he is liable in six years, perhaps in four, or three, to be suddenly turned out of his employment with a pittance of 6d. per day. The railway recruit gets into a groove, and may, by good conduct, im- prove his condition. The army recruit is scarcely settled in his groove when he is turned out at a day's notice to find his living in any way he can. Common sense tells us that if we want the labouring class to join the army we must offer them terms that are agreeable to them conditions on which they will give us willing service. And common sense tells us that the quickest and best way of finding out what those terms are is to ask them directly what they want. They can tell us at once where the shoe pinches, why they desert, and find the service intolerable. But we do not ask them ; we fly to every quarter for information except to the only one where information is to be got viz., to the soldiers them- selves. A board of inquiry in each regiment, composed of 192 'STRAY SHOTS.' officers and non-commissioned officers, would tell us more in a week how the military service can be made acceptable to the labouring classes than we shall learn by beating about the bush for a year. Certainly the soldier requires better pay. Certainly, if we induce a young man to give up five or six of the best years of his life to learn the trade of a soldier, we are bound to allow him to continue it. To kick him out at our own good pleasure, and to forbid him any longer following the trade we have taught him is a monstrous injustice. No doubt the soldier may be relieved from many senseless and vexatious duties ; from useless sentry-go's; from useless night duties. The majority of young men go into the army with the intention of leading a loafing, easy life not of going to school ; and it makes their life intolerable to harass them from morning to night with education, with gymnastics, with tactics, and God knows what. Absence from care, Paley tells us, constitutes the happiness of oysters, periwinkles, and other sedentary animals, and although perhaps absence from care is not a very high ideal of human enjoyment, it is nevertheless, I imagine, the summum bonum of many a soldier. A soldier 's a man, A life but a span, Why then let a soldier drink 1 For ( drink ' read ' amuse himself within the bounds of reason and discipline,' and I agree with it. By all means, give soldiers opportunities and encouragement to read and improve their minds, and make promotion consequent on proficiency if you like ; but don't compel those to go to school who don't wish to do so. I am satisfied that the country does not yet realise the immense cost and danger of the reserve. A loafer of seventeen or eighteen, without any trade or regular industry, joins the army. In four or six years that is to say, when he is from twenty to twenty- three years old he is turned out of the army and put into TWO ABMIES. 193 the reserve with 6d. a day. He knows no trade when he joined the army ; he learns no trade but soldiering whilst he is in the army, and therefore, when he leaves the army, he knows no trade but soldiering. An army life is not especially conducive to steady and industrious habits, and at twenty-three most men are too old or too vagrant to learn a trade. What, therefore, can he do ? He becomes a loafer, a waiter on Providence, unwilling to dig, but not at all ashamed to beg. Is it not a monstrous injustice to the country to induce 19,000 or 20,000 growing men every year to give up several years of their lives to learn a trade for our convenience, and, when they have learned it, to tell them they must no longer follow it ? In an economical view alone it appears a tremendous national waste. ' But,' say our economists, 'if you increase the pay of the soldier, and improve his posi- tion, he will cost more money, and already he costs too much.' Fortunately this is not the case ; increasing the pay of the rank and file need not necessarily increase the cost of the army. We vote 16,000,0002. or 17,000,000?. a year for the army, and of this sum about 2,000,0002. not more than 15 per cent. goes in the actual pay of the soldier, and therefore an increase of pay to the rank and file does not necessarily mean an addition to our military expenditure. Whilst 2,000,0002. goes in actual pay to the rank and file, about 14,000,0002. or 15,000,0002. a year goes to the arsenals, factories, fortification experiments, training establishments, half pay, &c. An efficient rank and file is necessary, indispensable. Without it we have no army. We can dispense with arsenals, factories, ex- periments, training establishments, but we cannot dis- pense with an efficient rank and file. We must, therefore, reverse the order of our expenditure ; we must secure the indispensables. We must, first of all, have an efficient rank and file ; and if 15 per cent, will not do it, we must supplement it from the remaining 85 per cent. The money must be withdrawn from branches that are of o 194 'STRAY 'SHOTS.' secondary importance and spent on that which is of the first importance. We have been told, ad nauseam, that the army has been so immensely strengthened because we have a reserve. It is an excellent thing to have a reserve, but how the army is strengthened by moving men from the ranks to the reserve, from the first line to the second, I fail to see. It appears to me rather like arguing that a blanket is lengthened because you cut off a bit at one end and sew it on to the other. As the number of the reserve has been increased the efficiency of the army has been diminished, till at length there is no army at all, unless the reserve is incorporated with it. Practically our reserve has become our first line. There is no reliable rank and file without it. What we call our reserves are merely men on long leave with 6d. a day to keep them from starving. The moment these wretched phantom regiments are ordered on service they have to rejoin. To describe the second class army reserve and the militia reserve as trained soldiers is like describing an unbroken two-year-old as a trained pointer. The question naturally occurs to most of us, why, with our vast expenditure on the army, and the many talented gentlemen who have undertaken its direction, it should have sunk into so very unsatisfactory a condition. The broad explanation, I am afraid, is this, that for the last fifteen years the army has been made the battle-field of party. It has been the vile body on which theorists and party leaders have claimed full liberty to try their 'pren- tice hands. The question too often has been, not, Is this reform reasonable? is it according to the dictates of common sense ? is it for the good of the army ? is it for the good of the country ? but, Is it for the good of the party ? If the same incessant changes and experiments had been tried in the Post Office, in the Customs, the police, as in the army, the same demoralisation would have 1?WO AEMIES. 195 resulted. Fifteen years ago the scheme of short service, immature enlistment, a reserve, abolition of purchase, &c., were adopted as one of the shibboleths of the Liberal party anyone who objected to them was voted a stupid Tory ; but, in fact, there was no question of political principle in the question whatever. On one side was reason, common sense, the judgment and practical ex- perience of 99 out of, every 100 officers of the army; on the other, the paper scheme of a civilian, who, till fortune pitch-forked him into the position of Minister for War, may be said never to have placed his foot in a barrack- square in his life. If it was the duty of the Liberals to stand by theory and ignore experience, I think the Tories had six to four the best of it. Honourable, accomplished gentlemen, excellent financiers, colonial secretaries, &c., have posed as War Ministers, who know no more of guns and drums and wounds (Heaven save the work !) than a waiting gentlewoman. Very ' moths of peace,' as Desde- mona described herself, have assumed the martial air of the unfortunate Moor, and discoursed about ' feats of broil and battle,' the ' flints and steel couch of war,' &c., as if they had been, like Minerva, born in the full panoply of war. Nothing is so comical as the way our civilians strut en militaire directly they take military office. Generally speaking, a man who is suddenly placed in a business of which he knows absolutely nothing tries to do and say as little as he can till he has in some degree mastered his A B C ; but not so our martial Ministers. It may require a very severe competitive examination to qualify officers for a commission; tactics may be indis- pensable to the efficiency of a private ; but no preparation, no study, or experience, or apprenticeship is necessary to qualify the civilian head of the army to direct, organise, reorganise, pull to pieces and put together again the entire army. As some men, we are told on authority, are born leaders of cavalry, so others are born Ministers for War. Their courage is astounding; it fails them only in one o 2 196 'STRAY SHOTS.' important point they have not the courage to do nothing. Anything but that ; any change, great or small, wise or foolish, rather than no change at all. Thus have I seen some active prig, To show his parts, bestride a twig. Unfortunately, one of the results of the array having become the battle-field of party is that personal interests have been seriously enlisted. All flesh is weak, and there is no reason to suppose that military flesh is an exception to the rule. ' When the monkey reigns, dance before him,' says the old proverb ; and it is foolish to expect, when pro- motion and appointments are virtually conditional on dancing to the proper tune, that a certain number should not be found to do so. An officer naturally argues thus, and I do not know who can throw a stone at him. ' The Minister for War is bent upon making certain changes. I do not agree with him. I believe in my heart he is absolutely, entirely, wrong ; but he is a very clever man, and will certainly carry his point. If. as I believe, my promotion and professional advancement depend very considerably on my giving him my support, I think I had better risk it. Needs must when a certain person drives.' It is not eery difficult to imagine a discussion of this nature in a certain chamber of the War Office : * Don't you think that young soldiers bear privation and exposure better than old ones? Certainly, my lord. That they have more elan ? Certainly. Don't you think that height and chest measurement are needless restrictions ? Certainly. That sixteen or seventeen years of age, 5 ft. 8 in. in height, the corresponding equivalent in chest measurements, are quite sufficient ? Certainly. Don't you think a boy from the plough, who has only fired off an old musket to frighten birds, should become a crack shot in a year? Certainly. Don't you think esprit de corps is all humbug? Certainly. That regimental num- bers, and facings, and distinction, and history, and TWO ARMIES. 197 associations are absurd ? Distinctly. Don't you agree with me that the reserve is a brilliant success? Most certainly. Don't you agree with me that regimental surgeons are a mistake and that divisional hospitals are much better? Of course. Don't you think me a very clever fellow ? Certainly I do.' Then comes the grateful reply, ' Friend, go up higher ! ' promotions, honours, and appointments. There is no doubt about the reward of the man who dances as he is told to dance, but how about the stupid man who refuses to dance when he is piped to? The assuming wit Who deems himself so wise As his mistaken patron to advise. He receives exactly the same treatment as Gil Bias received from the Archbishop of Grenada when he told him that his sermon sent I'apoplexie. ' J'ai ete furieusement la dupe de votre intelligence bornee. Desormais je choisirai mieux mes confidents. J'en veux de plus capables que vous pour decider.' And with a ' Ya Usted al diablo ! ' he is gently turned out into the street. ECONOMICAL 201 XXXVI. A WALK OVER. MR. GIFFEN'S brilliant gallop over the statistical course does not prove much. It is somewhat like a walk over for araca. He declares his horse Free Trade is the best horse in the world, but he does not prove it by galloping him over the course alone. If Mr. Giffen wishes to prove to us that the industrial progress of England and Ireland during the last forty years under free trade has been greater than the industrial progress of every other nation under protection, he has only to give us some correspond- ing statistics relating to France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Holland, and America, and we shall be satisfied. Figures, like fire, are good servants and bad masters. Whether Mr. Giifen is master or servant I do not presume to say, but certainly there are many facts, or at any rate ' authoritative statements/ that tell against him. In Mulhall's * Wealth of the World ' I read that the increase of property subject to legacy duty in France and England is as follows : France. Great Britain. 1826 35s. per inhabitant. 1826 45s. per inhabitant. 1859 48s. 1859 67s. 1877 101s. 1877 96s. So that whilst England was 10s. per inhabitant richer in 1826, and 19s. per inhabitant richer in 1859, she was 5s. per inhabitant poorer in 1877. This looks as if the wealth of France had increased more rapidly than the wealth of England. Again, the consumption of wheat per inhabitant in England and France is stated thus : 202 'STKAY SHOTS.' England. France. 1820 to 1824 . 2581b 2661b. 1850 to 1860 .... 31 lib 3921b. So that in forty years the consumption of wheat increased 1261b. per inhabitant in France, and only 531b. per inhabitant in England. This looks as if the material progress of the people had been greater in France than in England. Again, a correspondent of the Daily News, November 16, says that ' wages in many industries in London are steadily settling down to Is. a clay.' At the same time I read in a recent number of the Revue des Deux Mondes that 'wages in all the industries in Paris have risen from 30 to 60 per cent, in the last ten years.' Again, the increase of commerce between 1868 and 1877 was France 51 per cent, British Empire . . . . . 21 The annual accumulation of wealth is put : France 75,000,000?. sterling Great Britain .... 65,000,000?. In France there was an increase of 39 per cent, in area under wheat and other cereals between 1863 and 1875. In England there has been a diminution of 25 per cent, in area under wheat in ten years. In Great Britain, on January 1, 1881, there were over 1,000,000 of persons on the books in receipt of parish relief, a number which, according to Mr. Purdy, of the Poor Law Board, represents a total of 3,500,000 applying for parish relief during 1880. Mr. Hoyle argues from this that the whole pauper class of the community that is to say, those bordering on a state of destitution in England and Wales is somewhere near 7,000,000! Is this a proof of prosperity? One million of acres, out of a total of 4,000,000 of acres, have gone out of wheat cultivation in England and Wales during the last ten years, and 1,300,000 acres, of which 326,000 acres were in potatoes, have gone out of grain and root A WALK OVER. 203 cultivation in Ireland during the last twenty years. Is this a proof of prosperity ? The significance of these figures is apparent when we remember that every acre of wheat grows eight times the amount of human food that an acre of grass does, and employs three times as much labour, and that arable farm- ing will rear and fat three times the number of beasts, and fat them in a year's less time than simple grazing. Mr. Bright says that the agricultural class have lost 200,000,OOOZ. in five years. Lord Granville says the iron- masters have lost 140,000,000?. in a few years. Mr. Smith, M.P. for Liverpool, says the cotton industry, that supports 3,000,000 of people, has only made 5 per cent, profit per annum during the last ten years, and that it has only done this with a strain and wear and tear on the part of those managing that cannot continue. The proprietors of the Wharncliffe Silkstone Colliery say they have made no profit during the last five years. The condition of the silk and woollen industries is deplorable. The value of land and houses has fallen 25 per cent, in the last three years. Who, then, is making all the money ? The Pall Mall Gazette, December 20, 1882, says that ' the only chance for the declining industries of Great Britain is in America adopting free trade.' Lord Derby advises those employed in industries which are not likely soon to revive to emigrate beyond the seas. Mr. Chamber- lain and Lord Grey sing seconds to Lord Derby, and advise the operatives to give up ' weak industries ' and learn new ones. All this does not read like evidence of great pro- sperity. It is the same story all through * nothing like leather, only leather doesn't pay.' Mr. Ashworth, chairman of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, enumerates France, Spain, Italy, Switzer- land, Portugal, Germany, Austria, as negotiating treaties whose purpose and intention is to place English manu- facturers at a disadvantage. Mr. Ashworth, apparently, believes in a widespread industrial conspiracy against 204 'STRAY SHOTS.' England in other words, he believes that foreign nations are 'Boycotting' English manufactures and English opera- tives. This can scarcely be considered an evidence of pro- sperous fiscal conditions. ' Crime,' says Mr. Giffen, 4 shows a satisfactory diminution.' This assertion is strange in the face of the fact that the number of summary convictions before magistrates increased from 233,757 in 1859 to 506,281 in 1879 ! Of this number no less than 52,021 were for assaults many of the most brutal kind. The poor and police rates together, that is, the cost of con- trolling pauperism and crime, amounted in 1880 to 16,165,OOOZ., the largest sum ever paid in one year. ' The distribution of wealth increases,' says Mr. Giffen ; but figures scarcely support the statement. Fifty years ago there were 281,000 holders of Government stock ; there are now 225,000, a falling off of 25 per cent. Thirty years ago there were in France 1,000,000 holders of Government rentes ; there are now 4,000,000. At the same time, every year land is getting into fewer hands, because, with the present low price of produce, the yeo- man and small proprietor cannot cultivate it. The ' wealth of a country is the value of what it produces,' we are told. The chief sources of our production are agriculture and manufactures. It is a strange proof of our prosperity that a man should be looked upon as mad who invests his money in agriculture ; that the majority of our manufac- turers would be happy to retire at once if they could get back their capital, or, indeed, even half of it, and that the shrinkage in the value of manufacturing joint-stock capital during the last few years is estimated at from 25 to 75 per cent. Wheat, Mr. Giffen says, is 10s. a quarter cheaper, and meat 3d. per Ib. dearer than it was twenty years ago, and therefore the poor are much better fed. Are they ? Taking these figures, and I believe they are correct, what is the profit and loss to each individual from these changes in prices of food ? Each adult on the average consumes six bushels of wheat in the year, so that he saves by the fall in the price of wheat 7s. Gd. per annum. On A WALK OVER. the assumption that a workman in good employ eats 31b. of meat every week, this would be an increase of 9d. a week, or 39s. per annum ; so that he would gain 7s. 6d. a year by wheat and lose 39s. a year by meat, a net loss of 31s. 6d. a year. This is independent of increased cost of milk, butter, vegetables, &c. It is childish to argue that the removal of a 5s. duty per quarter on wheat has been the cause of its low price. Under no circumstances could it possibly have reduced the price more than 5s. per quarter. It was not the duty of 5s. that occasionally sent the price up to 100s., and it was not the removal of the duty of 5s. that occasionally has brought it down to 34s. per quarter ; but there is very little doubt that it is the repeal of the 5s. duty that has thrown 1,000,000 of acres out of wheat cultivation in England, and 1,300,000 acres in Ireland, and 500,000 labourers out of work ! It was the railroads and canals that brought to the ships the produce of the boundless grain regions of America and Eussia; and the 'frugifera navis,' the grain-bearing steamers that delivered them in our ports for 3s. a quarter, often for nothing, that have brought down the price of wheat, not the removal of the duty of 5s. The stock of gold in the world, we are told, has doubled since 1848, and it is estimated that credit has increased a hundredfold, and it is this increase in the circulation of gold and silver, this extraordinary growth of credit, that has multiplied the trade of the whole world, not the repeal of a few insignificant customs duties by England ; but, on the other hand, there is good reason to believe that it is the removal of these customs duties that floods our markets with foreign goods, and drives our operatives beyond the seas. Of this boundless shower of wealth that has fallen over the whole world, England has, of course, had her share. That she has had a larger share than her neighbours is very doubtful. That she owes this share in any degree to free trade is more doubtful still. 206 'STRAY SHOTS.' Nothing is so deceptive as figures except facts. In this particular case it appears we have the option of selecting which we please. Mr. Giffen's figures and the actual facts are completely antagonistic which shall we adopt ? It may be that the working classes are in every way more prosperous than they ever have been, but I cannot allow that the complaints of overcrowding, of low -and uncertain wages, of the necessity of emigration, are evidences of it. England and Ireland are not nearly so thickly popu- lated as Belgium, but we do not hear of the necessity of deporting the industrial population of Belgium. Is it not quite certain that we should hear very little of State- aided emigration, or of overcrowding, if work was as plentiful and wages as good as Mr. Giffen describes? XXXVII. FREE TRADE THE RUIN OF IRELAND. WHY is Ireland magnas inter opes inopsV Why is a country supereminently endowed with all those natural advantages that have elevated in their turn every people who have possessed them the only country actually the only one in the world that is sinking in the scale of nations ? ' For this Ireland,' says Lord Bacon, f is endowed with so many dowries of nature, considering the fruitfulness of the soil, the ports, the rivers, the fishings, the quarries, the woods, and other material, especially the race and the generation of men, valiant, hard, and active, as it is not easy no, not upon this continent to find such confluence of commodities if the hand of man did join with the hand of nature.' Look at her now. Her millions of acres of waste but cultivable land, her ruined commerce and manufactures, FEEE TRADE THE RUIN OF IRELAND. 207 her houses uninhabited, her villages deserted j discontent , insubordination, insecurity, crime, stalking undisturbed through the country ; her people crying for work and wages, but idle, ragged, pauper-stricken ; deriving a wretched existence from half-cultivated land ; flying from their country like Lot from the cities of the plain. The condition of Ireland has no parallel in the world ; she has a fertile soil, a genial climate, a redundancy of labour, but her land is not one-third cultivated. She has harbours, ports, rivers, coal, iron quarries, and other minerals; but she has neither domestic industries nor foreign trade ; she toils not, neither does she sow ; she neither grows, nor works, nor buys she goes without. We see a race of 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 of people, in no degree whatever inferior to the other races of mankind, who formerly stepped boldly along the great highway of progress and civilisation, rapidly shrinking back to the wilderness of barbarism and decay. National pride, the pride of race, is as strong among the Irish as in any race in the world, but national pride cannot exist with national squalor. The Irish are a very affectionate people, brave, imagin- ative, poetical, attached to their country, their homes, their families, their legends, their customs ; they do not forsake all these ties without many a pang. Why, then, do they go ? What do they seek ? It cannot be a richer soil or more genial clime, for in these respects Ireland has no equal. It is not a life of idleness and ease, for in their new homes they have to work far harder than in their old. Why, then, do they go ? The answer is not difficult to find. They go to seek a healthier condition of life, a higher standard of existence ; they fly from poverty and stagnation, from a land where there are no openings for success, no ray of hope, no in- dustries, no trade, no exchange of commodities, no em- ployment, no wages, to a land where all these conditions are reversed where they can live and thrive, and perhaps 208 'STRAY SHOTS.' grow rich, where they are no longer doomed to pass their lives hopelessly on the lowest rung of the industrial ladder where, in fact, they are no longer the recipients of relief , but the donors of it. Whence comes this great ruin? What causes this great transformation scene ? How is it that the Irish race, who steadily sink lower and lower in Ireland, rise with a bound to prosperity and civilisation in America, Canada, and Australia? What a man hears and reads constantly without contradiction he is apt to believe. Sale, from, poring so long over the Koran, is said to have become a Mahommedan ; so Englishmen, from hearing and reading so long, without contradiction, that over-popula- tion, high rents, and natural indolence are the causes of the poverty of Ireland, have at last assumed that it is true. Let us see. Natural indolence is not the cause. The Irish are a thrifty, money-saving people, and whenever they are well fed and well paid they will work as hard as, or harder than, any race in Europe. To charge the Irish with being idle is false. In our harvest fields, or before our furnaces, or in the bowels of the earth, or on the loftiest buildings, no matter how dangerous the work, or how severe, there are seen the Irish. Precisely the same is seen across the Atlantic. Don't let us put the cart before the horse. The indol- ence that we see in Ireland is not the cause of the misery in Ireland ; it is the result of it. Men do not work because it is a pleasure to work, but because they are compelled to work, or because they are induced to work. The inducement of getting money or the compulsion of getting food are the ordinary stimulants to work ; but the Irish have neither. A man has no in- ducement to work when what he produces does not fetch cost price. The Irish do not grow to sell, because what they grow costs more than it will fetch. They grow to live ; and as in ordinary seasons they can grow enough to FEEE TEADE THE EUIN OF IEELAND. 209 live by scratching the ground, they are content to do that and no more. High rents are not the cause of the decay of Ireland, because, independent of exceptional advantages of climate, soil, harbours, &c., she is lower rented than any country in Europe. Rent in Belgium is about 40s. per acre ; in Holland it is somewhat higher ; in France it is 56s. per acre ; in England 30s ; in Ireland 20s. It is not the slightest exaggeration to say that, as a rule, the cultivated land of Ireland is worth double or treble the land of Belgium, and yet the rent is only half as high. We are told that over-population is the mal du pays that it is the true cause of the poverty of Ireland. How can it be ? How can there be a single man too many where land is uncultivated and industries unknown? If we had waste lands to bring into cultivation and industries to create, and had no population, what would necessarily be our first step ? To import population. Now we have the people and the waste lands ; but, instead of bringing them together, instead of employing the people in cultivating the waste land and in creating industries, we export them ; we drive them out of the country. We dissipate British capital in expatriating British subjects ; in transferring the very bones and sinews of the Empire to distant climes ; in order, forsooth, to increase our internal prosperity and strength. The great wealth of every country is its population. The first condi- tion of making a country rich is to populate it. It is in Ireland alone that the strange doctrine has ever been preached that ' it must be depopulated to be enriched.' But Ireland is not over-populated; compared with many other countries it is quite the reverse ; fairly cultivated, and with her industries developed, she could easily sup- port double her present population. The population of Belgium is 469 to the square mile, of England 389, Ireland 169. The prosperity of Ireland has increased pari passu with 210 'STRAY SHOTS.' the increase of population ; the lower her population the greater has been her pauperism and misery. 'The greatest and most fundamental defect of this kingdom,' wrote Sir William Petty in 1672, 'is the want of people.' ' The improvement of Ireland depends on the increase of the people,' wrote Arthur Dobbs in 1731. ' Scarcity of people is the greatest want of this country at present,' wrote Henry Lord Clarendon. Take a fact. In 1725 the population of Ireland was 2,300,000, or 71 per square mile. In 1821 it was 6,801,827, or 211 per square mile. On an average of six years ending 1725, Ireland im- ported food to the value of 78,126Z. On an average of six years ending 1825, Ireland exported food to the value of 2,366,163?. The value of cattle exported on an average of eight years ending 1726 was 623,177L The value of cattle ex- ported on an average of eight years ending 1825 was 3,705,993Z. So that Ireland in 1821 not only grew food sufficient to feed three times the population that she did in 1725, but she exported over and above thirty times the value of grain and six times the value of cattle. Will anybody say, after this, that Ireland ' must be depopulated to be enriched ' ? We subscribe money, the State supplies money, to convey our population to America, to our colonies, to Canada, Australia, New Zealand ; but the best colonies we can plant, whether for agriculture or manu- factures, are those which might be planted at home, in Ireland, in the deserts of the United Kingdom. ' To force your population to emigrate,' says Dean Swift, ' because they are short of food, is like cutting off your foot because you are short of a shoe.' Cultivate better ; live closer ; that is the way to increase the pro- duction of food, not by cultivating less. Promote the industries of the people, develop your natural resources to the utmost ; that is the way to grow rich. FREE TEADE THE RUIN OF IRELAND. 211 Ireland has not always been miserable; she has not always been a byword for poverty and decay. There was a time when she held her head high, when she sold to England her agricultural and her manufacture produce her corn, her cattle, her woollens, and calicoes, and muslins, and silks, and cottons, and carpets, and blankets, and flannels. ' Can those who now hear me deny/ said Mr. Foster, speaking in the House of Commons in 1800, * that since the period of 1782 Ireland has risen in civilisation, in wealth, in manufactures, in a greater proportion, and with a more rapid progress, than any other country of Europe? ' Now, what put an end to this fair prospect? What has caused such a complete change that the reverse of what Mr. Foster described is now the fact : that ' Ireland is now sinking in civilisation, in wealth, in manufactures in a greater proportion, and with a more rapid progress, than any other country in Europe ? ' Up to the period of the Union Irish industries were strictly protected ; on many articles of English manufac- ture, woollens, calicoes, muslins, silks, cottons, yarns, cotton twist, cotton manufactured goods, the duties were so high as to be nearly prohibitory ; under the encourage- ment of this protection textile and other industries grew into maturity and vigour. The Act of Union continued these high protective duties on woollens for twenty years, on calicoes and muslins till 1808 ; they were reduced gradually to 10 per cent, in 1816, and extinguished in 1821, with the exception of the linen trade, which was en- couraged by Parliamentary grants up to 1826. But English economists were not satisfied with denying to the Irish the right to protect their growing industries ; they went further, they appeared determined to destroy them. For a long series of years Irish manufactures were systematically discouraged and slighted, whilst those of England and Scotland were at the same time protected or cherished. For many years England and Scotland and p 2 212 'STRAY SHOTS.' the colonies were protected against Irish manufactures, whilst English and Scotch manufactures were admitted free into Ireland. Can economic injustice go farther? Was not this tantamount to imposing compulsory idleness on Ireland ? Was it not saying to her, ' Thou shalt not work ? ' Can we be surprised that in 1727 Swift complains that if under such conditions Ireland did flourish, it must be against every law of nature and reason, like the thorn of Glastonbury that blossoms in the midst of winter? Now what was the result of this legislation ? Can there be any doubt ? It is this let our political econom- ists explain it as best they can that in 1840 there were in Dublin and Cork only one- tenth of the numbers em- ployed in manufacturing industries that there were in 1800. In other words, forty years of English economic rule had destroyed nine-tenths of the operative industries of Ireland. There are fiscal laws that may create the wealth of a nation, and there are fiscal laws that may destroy it. Of which kind, may I ask, were the fiscal laws that in forty years destroyed nine-tenths of the operative industries of Ireland ? The great natural law of the preservation of the fittest has been fully exemplified ; weakly Irish industries have given way before the stronger industries of England; but is Ireland any the better for it ? Is England any the better for it? Is England richer for the extinction of Irish industries ? No, ten thousand times no ! English competition has smothered Irish industries and supplies Irish wants; but Irish wants have dwindled to zero with her production. The means of satisfying her wants depended upon her means of making money, of creating wealth ; but as she creates no wealth, as she makes no money, her wants must, and do, remain unsatisfied. When England bought Irish corn and Irish manufac- tures, Ireland bought English manufactures. Now that England has ceased to buy from Ireland, Ireland has ceased to buy from England; she neither produces nor FREE TEADE THE RUIN OF IRELAND. 213 buys : she does without. If Irish industries had been sup- ported, encouraged, as it was the bounden duty of England to encourage and support them ; if they had increased, as the industries of every nation under the sun have increased, wealth would have been created in Ireland; she would have money to spend ; she would be a customer instead of a pensioner. At any cost of theories and first principles, so-called, England would be immensely profited by the industrial prosperity of Ireland. No nation can grow rich, can create wealth, unless it contains manufacturing and agricultural industries, un- less they flourish side by side. Cheapness of food alone never made a community rich, and never will. Look at the miserable condition of the natives of the West Indies, who with twelve hours' work can grow food enough for a week. Look at the Mowjiks of the Don, with whom corn was so cheap they used to burn it for. fuel. To create wealth a community requires a double set of producers, a double set of consumers, double sets of home markets. Agriculture and manufacture are the two lungs necessary to the vitality of every industrial community : unless both do their fair share of work no body can be healthy, no community can create wealth. Ireland is in the position of a man who has already lost one lung and is threatened with the loss of the other. Is it surprising, then, that she is without energy, in- different, squalid, pauperised that, indeed, she exists rather than lives ? A hundred years ago Ireland was more prosperous than Belgium. She had a larger population, more in- dustries, better climate, soil, rivers, harbours. Compare them now. Their present condition illustrates exactly the industrial growth of the two countries under the antago- nistic fiscal conditions of free trade and protection. During this eighty or a hundred years Ireland, with unequalled resources of soil, climate, and natural products, with a redundancy of labour, has, as the Cobden Club 214 'STRAY SHOTS.' would say, * enjoyed ' free trade to a greater extent than any nation in the world absolute, unrestricted free trade, with the greatest producing country in the world at her very doors. And what is the result? Agricultural and industrial ruin ! Belgium, with no natural advantages of soil or climate in fact, with disadvantages that would threaten to make a struggle with nature almost hopeless, has for these hundred or eighty years suffered under the curse of the strictest protection ; and what is the result ? Such a growth and development of manufacturing and agri- cultural industries as the world has never seen equalled. With the densest population in the world she can still export food; whilst her protected manufacturing indus- tries have overflown the soil, and she exports relatively more than any nation in the world. Does any one doubt can any one doubt that if eighty years ago England had been able to force her already matured industries, duty free, into Belgium, that she would have smothered the infant industries of that country as she has already smothered those of Ireland ? That if she could have compelled Belgium to take her cottons, and woollens, and coal, and iron, as she was able to compel Ireland, that those industries would not have been developed in Belgium, and that the same inanition that is now the curse of Ireland would also be the curse of Belgium ? It is as certain as that night succeeds the day that it is only by protecting her industries against English competition that Belgium has escaped the ruin that has fallen on Ireland. The political economists of every country in the world, out of England, accept the following three points as supreme economic laws : (1) That ' the wealth of a country is the value of what it produces.' (2) That ' the chief cause of a nation's thriving is the industry of the people in working up all their native com- modities to the last.' FEES TEADE THE EUIN OF IEELASD. 215 (3) That 'the first condition of every economic law should be to protect the industrial employment of the people.* But our economic Solons will have none of these things. * A fig for production ! ' say they. ' Consumption, consumption, that's the true proof of wealth and pro- sperity. Never mind your agriculture, never mind your manufactures ; buy cheap, buy cheap that is all that is necessary to your prosperity buy from anybody that can supply you cheaper than you can supply yourself; buy your corn and your meat, and your silks and your woollens as cheap as you can from French and Belgians and Americans, or whoever can produce cheapest. Don't bother your- self about working up the resources of your own country. Never mind your land going out of cultivation, your fac- tories stopping work, your people wanting employment; all these things will right themselves. Cheapness, com- petition, trade, commerce these be thy gods, Israel ! ' Apply these adverse principles to Ireland and the Netherlands. 'Work up your native resources to the utmost,' say the old school; 'that is the chief cause of a nation's thriving.' ' Don't be such fools as to force labour and capital into artificial channels,' reply the new school ; ' don't waste your money in bringing into cultivation sterile lands ; buy at a cheaper rate from those who have greater advantages ; ' in other words, never mind poor lands and weak indus- tries ' let them slide. 5 The soil of a great portion of Holland is intractable, sterile, and bad ; to reclaim this poor miserable land from the sea and make it blossom like the rose, she has spent in dykes and polders over 300,000,OOOL sterling. This is the sum Holland has spent in ' forcing labour and capital into artificial channels in bringing into cultivation sterile lands.' The population of Holland is about 4,000,000. They have neither coal nor iron, nor minerals of any kind ; but in the provinces of Drenthe and North Netherlands 216 'STRAY SHOTS.' they have immense fields of peat. Peat is the only natural product of the country, and is it credible these stupid old-world economists have, in the very teeth of all the teaching of Messrs. Cobden and Bright, and the English school of economists, actually developed this miserable natural product into a source of great natural wealth ? Of course the Dutch knew that coal was a better fuel than peat, and that coal could be delivered from Germany, Belgium, and England at a price that would undersell peat. Often, indeed, English coal could be bought cheaper in Amsterdam and Rotterdam than in Dublin, Limerick, or Cork. It was evident, therefore, that if their native peat was to find a market they must put a duty on foreign coal ; and this they accordingly did. And what has been the result ? That the consumption of peat has increased far more rapidly than the consumption of coal. It is now the fuel of three-fourths of the population ; it amounts to many millions of tons annually ; it employs many thou- sands of well-paid workmen ; and is one of the chief sources of Dutch wealth. Where the peat has been re- moved are some of the most fertile lands in Holland. Now, look at Ireland. Ireland has a population larger than the Netherlands. She has 3,000,000 acres of bog, deeper and better than the bogs of Holland, and covering lands far richer; but the theories of our school of political economists have decided that these bogs shall remain bogs still. 'Don't,' say they, 'attempt to force labour and capital into artificial channels by developing your inferior fuel whilst you can buy good coal from us at a lower price.' And, alas ! they have had the power to compel the adoption of their advice. The peat bogs remain untouched ; English coal is the fuel of the country ; the industry that would have created immense internal wealth, that would have supplied re- munerative employment to thousands of labourers, that would have given to agriculture thousands on thousands of acres of fertile soil, is still undeveloped. Does any one FEEE TBADE THE KUIN OF IRELAND. 217 doubt that if a duty had been put on English coal that the consumption of peat would have extended, and would have been attended by the same beneficent result that it has in Holland ? This is not theory ; there is on record one alas ! I fear, but one famous example of the result of developing the peat industry in Ireland. It is one that those who run may read ; and it does not take a senior wrangler to calculate what would have been the results of its general application to the millions of acres of Irish bog. In the county Limerick, the company of Messrs. Stein and Brown, distillers, became possessors of a tract of bog on the river Shannon, within a few miles of the city of Limerick, for the especial purpose of supplying themselves with fuel. Eighty acres of the bog were cut for fuel to the depth of about 20 feet, and conveyed by 100 boats kept for the purpose to Limerick. The heath-covered red bog, from which this peat was cut, was valued at 2s. Qd. per acre ; it cost 2QI. to remove the peat and dry it ; it was sold at the rate of 6s. Qd. per ton, including the proprietor's profit, and the subsoil, consisting of marl and loam, is now valued at 30s. per acre. But besides her peat, which alone has been the cause of great wealth and prosperity in Holland, Ireland has coal and iron. In Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and Ulster, are no less than 182,000,000 tons of available coal of excellent quality, both bituminous and anthracite the Slievardagh anthracite is the best in the world. In Antrim and Connaught is excellent ironstone, quite equal to Welsh or Staffordshire ; but there they lie, undeveloped sources of wealth, and employment, and wages, and pro- sperity, and contentment, because they are swamped by cheaper coal and iron from England. Of course Irish coal and iron and peat can never be worked unless a duty is placed on the cheaper coal and iron of England. But this we are told can never be done because it would be a violation 218 'STRAY SHOTS. 1 of the sacred principles of our political economy. What nonsense ! Our free-trade popes admit of no discussion on this subject. It is of no use suggesting that the relative con- ditions of Holland and Ireland in the matter of peat seem somewhat to militate against the universal application of their theories. You are bowled over in a moment. * What care we,' say they, ' what wealth the development of peat industry has created in Holland, what amount of labour it has employed, what number of fertile acres it has recovered ! What care we what wealth the development of peat industry might have created in Ireland, what amount of well-paid labour it might have employed, what thousands of fertile acres it might have recovered ! Do you suppose that such trifles affect our cosmopolitan theories one little bit? It is sufficient for us to know that however rich and prosperous the people of Holland may be under protection, they would have been more so under free trade; and however miserable, however pau- perised and hopeless the people of Ireland may be under free trade, they would have been still more so under protection ! ' Sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas ! But it is not only in the matter of peat, and iron, and steel that the economic laws of England have arrested the development of the natural resources of Ireland : they have actually smothered flourishing industries that were already spreading wealth and contentment through the land. England said to Ireland, ' You shan't be such fools as to waste your time in manufacturing cottons, and woollen, and hardware, and flannels, and blankets, and silks; we can supply you with all these things cheaper and better than you can produce them. Buy from us, and by so much you will be the richer.' Well, under the compulsion of English competition, Ireland has given up producing cottons and woollens, and blankets, and flannels, and hardware, &c. ; but though she no longer makes, she does not buy, because she has no money. She FEEE TEADE THE EUIN OF IRELAND. 219 does without ! And now, to complete her ruin, America says to her, * Don't be such fools as to grow grain, or pigs, or cattle. We can supply you with all these things cheaper than you can produce them. Buy from us, and by so much you will be the richer.' And so she has, to a con- siderable extent, given up growing food. It is true that English competition in all manufactur- ing industries, and American competition in food products, have brought cheapness to Ireland, but it is the cheapness that degrades, rather than improves, the conditions of life. It is the cheapness of poverty the cheapness that attends a low standard of life ; cheapness caused by low wages, small demand, small means of buying. The Irish people are now supplied with the cheapest Russian, Polish, Bul- garian, Indian, Canadian, and American wheat and beef in any quantity. Look at them ! their squalor, their misery, their starvation ! There is food and plenty of it ; but there is nothing to exchange with it, no means of buy- ing. When Dr. Johnson was told eggs were so cheap in the Hebrides that many could be bought for a penny, he said, ' It is not because eggs are plentiful, but because pennies are scarce.' When we see a large portion of the population bordering on starvation it is not because food is dear, but because there is no money to buy it with. Bay cheap ! buy cheap ! buy cheap ! is the parrot cry of the British economist, and we have heard it repeated so often that we have begun to believe there is something in it but there is not ; the employment of the people is a hundred times more important than mere cheapness. When foreign goods made by labourers worse fed, worse lodged, worse clothed, than Englishmen, are intro- duced into the English markets they bring cheapness ; but this cheapness is no good to English operatives. The cheapness of shirts stitched by a miserable needle-woman at 6d. a dozen is not a blessing ; the cheapness of cotton goods containing 30 per cent, of size is riot a blessing ; the cheapness of inferior and adulterated articles of all kinds 220 'STRAY SHOTS; is not a blessing. The cheapness produced by slave labour, by overworked and underpaid foreign labour, is not a blessing. If cheapness of corn merely brings down rents and transfers a portion of wealth from those who often have too much to those who often have not enough, it is a blessing ; but if this cheapness is succeeded by discourag- ing home production, by throwing our own lands out of cultivation, by preventing a more perfect and minute and extended system of cultivation of the soil, by diminishing the quantity of home-grown food, and consequently in- creasing the dependence of the country on foreign supply ; if it deprives large bodies of farmers of their calling and a vast number of labourers of their work and their wages in other words, of their means of purchase it is a curse instead of a blessing. If those who want have no money to buy, what does it signify to them whether things are cheap or whether they are dear? What is the use of offering a penny roll to a starving man for a halfpenny, if he has not even a farthing to give in exchange ? No one who possesses the most superficial knowledge of the industrial history of Ireland now doubts that eighty years ago England, in the pursuit of a selfish economic policy, destroyed Irish industries ; and that in so doing she has inflicted on her, through succeeding generations, la plaie politique la plus devorante, the curse of poverty and mendicancy. England, therefore, owes Ireland reparation, restitu- tion, compensation. Justice enjoins her to plant new industries in the place of those her injustice has de- stroyed; and not only to plant them, but to protect, foster, help, subsidise them ; bring them up by hand, if necessary, till they are able to walk alone, able to take care of themselves. Ireland can never again be prosperous without industries. No Irish industries, no English in- dustries, can ever again grow on Irish soil ; no American or English capital or skill or enterprise can ever be invested in industries in Ireland without protection, FEEE TRADE THE RUIN OF IRELAND. 221 perhaps without subsidies, without bounties. Will Eng- lish Radicals consent to this ? Will they listen to the inspiration of common sense ? Will they allow Ireland to wash in the Jordan of protection and be clean ? Not they. They turn from the suggestion as Naaman did from that of the prophet in contempt. But this is what an Irish Parliament would do to- morrow. It would employ every effort, legislative and economic, to encourage English and Irish industries on Irish soil ; to open out Ireland to the skill and enterprise and capital of England and America. English competi- tion has smothered the manufacturing industries of Ire- land, and American competition is now smothering her agricultural industries. We have been led out of our course by a false beacon called free trade. To save the ship, it is necessary to take an absolutely fresh departure, and steer directly for the harbour of protection. But when I say protection, I mean that and something more ; I mean not only protection to agriculture, and protection to native industries. I mean more I mean bounties where bounties offer the only means of restoring indus- trial prosperity. ' Bounties ! J scream frantic political economists, 'bounties on production, bounties on exporta- tion ? Are you mad ? ' Yes, bounties. When you give men money to leave the country, is not this a bounty on emigration ? Are you not giving a bounty to the indus- trious, to the hard-working, to the intelligent to leave the country? And are not these men the true and only source of national wealth? In doing this, are you not giving direct bounties for the discouragement of internal labour ? You denounce bounties as an absurd tax on the many for the benefit of the few ; but with all your parade of knowledge, your dogmatising on imaginary principles, you are but superficial observers after all. The linen trade of Belfast, founded by a French Protestant in the reign of Louis XIV., was created by bounties, and was subsidised by Parliamentary grants up to 1826. Look at it now ! 222 'STRAY SHOTS.* The Scotch fisheries, the pride of the country, were established by bounties. Bounties, I know, are against your theories ; but it is a fact that they afford in many cases the cheapest mode of supporting the apparent sur- plus of an immense population. See what consistency there is in our political economists in the benevolent school of the Cobden Club. ' We will,' say they, * support any scheme, any artificial system for maintaining the Irish in poverty and idleness ; we will expatriate them ; we will abolish the rights of free con- tract, the rights of property ; we will appropriate the English taxpayers' money to pay their debts; we will throw their whole land system into Chancery for fifteen years ; there shall be neither landlords nor tenants ; but we will not sanction any artificial system that will make them rich and contented. You tell us,' say they, 'that the result of our theories has been to ruin Irish manu- factures and Irish agriculture, and that English agricul- ture is rapidly perishing. Very well, we are prepared to accept the result of our theories, or, as we prefer to call it, our science. We are prepared to see England one great factory surrounded by a bare common, and we are pre- pared to see Ireland, as she actually is, a bare common with- out even a factory ; but to avoid this ruin, to restore pros- perity by a return to protection never ! If Great Britain is to sink, she shall at any rate go down with the colours of free trade nailed to the mast.' But are not our political economists somewhat illogi- cal ? Do they not strain at a gnat and swallow a camel ? Does not political economy teach us something beyond the sanctity of free trade ? Does it not tell something about the rights of property ; the rights of free contract ; the sanctity of contract, &c. ; and do not those principles constitute the garment of civilisation all over the world, of which free trade is but a tiny fringe? In order to fur- ther party purposes, to gratify the vanity of a reckless legislator, Parliament has torn in shreds the garment and FREE TRADE THE RUIN OP IRELAND. 223 cast it to the winds, and now holds on desperately to a morsel of the fringe. * We will,' say our Radicals, ' sacri- fice the very fundamental principles of political economy in order to save our party ; but we will not sacrifice the theory of free trade no, not to save the whole population of Ireland.' ' Ireland,' according to the last Gladstonian utterance, * is to be ruled according to Irish ideas.' Does this mean anything, or is it merely another ' phrase ' ? Let us see. So long as Irish ideas agree with English Radical ideas, so long as Irish ideas mean simply the destruction of landlordism, and the stamping out of the remains of feudalism, so long as they assume the form of veiled Communism and in any degree reflect the glory of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain, all well and good ; Ire- land shall be governed according to Irish ideas ; but suppose Irish ideas assume a form hostile to the Radical fetish! Suppose a Parliament on College Green should declare, as most certainly it would declare above all things, that the present fiscal condition of what is called free trade has been the ruin of Ireland, and that an immediate return to protection, to subsidies, to bounties perhaps, is necessary : what would the Radicals say then ? How long would it take to convince them that it would be impossible to allow Ireland to be governed according to Irish ideas ? It is as well the country should understand the position. The first act of an Irish Parliament would be to restore protection. Are those Radicals who now coquet with Home Rule prepared for this solution of the difficulty ? The ruin of Irish manufacturing industries is already an accomplished fact; the ruin of Irish agriculture is fast approaching. What will then be the condition of that un- happy country ? * Are you apprised,' said Grattan, in one of his magnificent orations, * that the population of Ireland is not less than 6,000,000, and that a great proportion of that number are people connected with tillage ? ' If you go out of tillage, what will you do with that population ? 224 'STEAY SflOTS.' The land of Ireland is going out of tillage, even faster than the land of England. The population has diminished over 2,000,000 since Grattan spoke ; then it represented one-sixteenth of the population of Great Britain, now it represents only one thirty-fourth. In fourteen years the stock of sheep alone has declined 32 per cent. ' I am for protection,' said Grattan again, 'because it secures us from the policy suggested by its opponents, and reducible to three monstrous propositions : an abandonment of tillage ; a relinquish ment of the power to supply your own con- sumption; and a dependence on foreign nations for bread.' Do not these words convey a warning to England as well as to Ireland ? Our population increases at the rate of 3,000,000 in ten years. During the last ten years our wheat tillage has diminished one-fourth. We now only grow grain food enough for one-fourth of our population. The great agricultural classes of England, as well as of Ireland, are earning nothing, and therefore are buying nothing. They are, indeed, competitors instead of customers of the manufacturing class. Our population is supplied with the cheapest food from all parts of the world; but yet they find, operatives and agriculturists alike, that for some mysterious and unaccountable reason they cannot get a living. Thousands of well-grown and intelligent Englishmen are wandering about out of work. The healthy, the industrious, the thrifty, the enterprising emigrate ; the old, the sick, the idle, the indolent, the drunken, remain at home. We no longer look to the cultivation of our fertile soil for the cheapness of corn in England and Ireland. It is the frugifera navis the grain- bearing ship, the cost of freight, of coal, the uncertain course of wind and waves, and the still more uncertain policy of foreign nations that regulate the price of our food. We talk about the defences of England, of her army, her navy, her fortifications. What, may I ask, are all these defences worth if, in the case of war, she has to be FBEE TEADE THE BUIN OF IRELAND. 225 victualled by her enemies ? The ruin that English and American competition has already brought on Irish indus- tries and agriculture, European and American competition is rapidly bringing on English industries and agriculture. Already many of our smaller industries are dead, and our large ones sorely pressed, whilst our agriculture is rapidly falling away. If, during the next ten years, England does not return to the highway of common sense, and protect her native industries, agricultural and manufacturing, the present condition of Ireland ten times intensified will be hers. The cause of Ireland's ruin is not political, it is not social, it is not religious ; it does not proceed from over- population, from over-renting, from the indolence of the people, from want of liberty, although in the fixed and unalterable determination of the English Radicals not to face the real cause of the evil, each and every one of these causes have been alleged. It proceeds from the want of manufacturing and productive industries, from impossible economic conditions. As free trade, British and foreign competition, and un- just economic laws have been and are the bane of Ireland, so a return to protection is the only cure ; and this will come it must come. It is impossible to suppose that in order to bolster up economic theories that have been rejected by every industrial community out of England, as belonging to the ' puerile doctrines and illusions of man- kind,' the entire population of one of the most fertile countries in the world shall be condemned to remain in perpetual pauperism. ' No ! it is wrong to say that a return to protection in Ireland and England is probable, because it is certain. As to the period, it is a question of time and mischief. How much time must elapse, and how much more mischief be perpetrated, before the nation not only feels, as it has already felt, but understands and sees that it has been deluded, is another question. Probably the period is not far distant. It is not a class, but the nation, that will insist on this change. When it comes it Q 226 'STRAY SHOTS.' will come naturally, irresistibly, and without danger. What danger may be incurred in the meantime is another thing.' To those who have read the preceding arguments I would submit the following question. Irish industries are ruined because they have been excluded from the English markets, and English manufactures have been forced into the Irish markets. English industries are receiving at the hands of Europe and America exactly the same treatment. English manufactures are excluded from American and European markets, and American and European manufactures forced on the English markets. What reason have we to doubt that under identically similar conditions England will suffer similar disaster ? XXXVIII. THE CAPITAL OF LABOUR. 1 IN the freest country in the world,' said Monsieur Thiers in his great speech of January 22, 1870, f arrangements are made to protect the different branches of native industry.' Neither emperors, nor kings, nor presidents, nor communists, nor wars, nor revolutions have caused the slightest change in this legislation. Why ? Because all industrial communities believe they see in it the main- spring of national life. Wherever the voice of universal suffrage obtains authoritative utterance, it proclaims, as the first law of national existence, * protection to native industry.' It is in England alone that this instinctive requirement of all industrial communities has been ignored. Varying the usual formula that ' property has its duties as well as its rights,' it may be maintained that ' labour has its rights as well as its duties.' Its duties are that man must toil and moil and fulfil God's third curse on our unfortunate progenitor, ' that in the sweat of his face he shall eat bread ; ' its rights are that it THE CAPITAL OF LABOUR. 227 shall, to use Mr. Bright's words, be protected from ' unwise and unjust legislation.' When a man learns a trade he invests his capital, the only capital he has, the capital of labour, in that trade as distinctly as if he in- vested so much cash in it. He invests this capital on the security of, as he believes, wise and just laws that will protect him from ' unjust and unwise legislation ' from any quarter, and will safeguard his capital as a factor of the national wealth ; and he believes it is his national right that if in any dealings with foreigners there is a doubt as to the true interpetration of the ' most favoured nation ' clause, it is he, and not the foreigner, who shall have the benefit of it. I believe Englishmen generally are beginning to suspect that they have had enough, and more than enough, of the blatant cosmopolitanism that would teach them that blood is not thicker than water, that charity does not begin at home, that their first duty is to their neighbours, not to themselves; that it is the general happiness of mankind they must work for, not their own ; that self-sacrifice, ' the happy despatch,' is an institution peculiarly suited to British manufacturers and British operatives. The ' capital of labour ' consists in the skill, the practical knowledge, the industry, the strength, the health, &c., that enables a working man to earn his wages, his 20s. or 30s. per week. Now this capital of labour does not appear in balances at the bankers, in buildings and machinery, in plant, &c. It is not tangible or convertible, but nevertheless it exists, and under certain untoward circumstances can occasionally be actually realised. If a mechanic is disabled from earning his wages by the care- lessness of a railway company, for instance, he can recover from the company a sum of money that represents the capital of his weekly wage. The law thus recognises the reality of the capital of labour. Figures will illustrate my meaning, but they do not pretend to be accurate ; readers may alter and amend them as they choose ; they 228 'STRAY SHOTS.' are simply intended to show that the capital of which we are treating is real, and that it is enormous. A man who earns 25s. per week, or 65Z. a year, possesses in the skill, or knowledge, or experience, or strength, &c., that enables him to earn that income a capital that yields that amount of weekly interest. A man may have 30 years' work in him, or he may have 15. Suppose 15, the income of the operative earning 25s. a week, capitalised at 15 years, represents a sum of 975Z. (for the sake of convenience say 1,000?.). Now there are in this country six and a half millions of operatives engaged in manu- facturing and similar industries, earning in fair times on an average 25s. per week. This represents an annual income of 422 millions (it is usually put at 400 millions) ; capitalised at 15 years' purchase, this income, or interest, represents a capital of 6,337 millions. This is the capital of labour, and a pretty considerable capital it is, and the object of the wise legislator is to encourage and protect it, and make it fructify and accumulate, not to drive it out of the country. Every skilled operative, every producer, who leaves the country takes with him his handicraft, his skill, his energy that capital of labour that in every country but ours is en- couraged as the chief source of national wealth. With every thousand skilled labourers that leave this country at least a million of the capital of labour leaves also. To that extent is goodness gone out of us and the wealth- producing power of the country diminished. Let us see how Mr. Chamberlain's reply to the sugar-refiners affects this question of the capital of labour. He says : ' There are only 5,000 of you who have acquired a knowledge of the methods of sugar-refining, and who have no equal knowledge of any other industry (in other words, who have invested your capital of labour in sugar-refining). It is quite possible the bounty system may make your capital unremunerative in this country, and that you may have to take it to America ; but what of that ? There THE CAPITAL OF LABOUR. 229 are only 5,000 of you and your families who will be ruined, whilst all the rest of the community will gain.' Mr. Chamberlain weighs the profit of the community against the loss of the 5,000, and decides that the latter must go to the wall. He assumes a profit of a million sterling a year from the diminished price of sugar. Let us see what the loss will be. The profit is a pure assump- tion. There is no guarantee whatever that when foreigners have a monopoly of our sugar market they will continue to supply us at the lowest price. On the contrary, they are very likely to raise it considerably higher than it is at present. The loss, on the other hand, is real, positive, and capable of demonstration. We will suppose that the 5,000 workmen who have invested their capital of labour in sugar-refining earn 25s. a week, or 65Z. a year ; that on an average each has 15 years' work in him : the capital of each would be 975L, say 1,OOOZ. As there are 5,000 of them, it appears that the amount of the capital of labour invested in sugar-refining is 5,000,000?., and that that is the loss the foreign bounty system inflicts on this capital in England. But this is only the capital loss that would fall on the 5,000 operatives and their families. It does not include the national loss of sending money abroad to buy 180,000 tons of loaf sugar formerly refined at home. It does not include the loss of the capitalists who have erected plant ; of the 20 or 30 different industries directly or indirectly connected with sugar-refining ; of the manu- facturers, and farmers, and tradesmen, and publicans, and carriers who would have profited by the 350,0002. spent in wages. Mr. Lubbock stated in his evidence before the select committee (question 3,190) that 180,000 men would have been employed in our colonies to produce the above- mentioned 180,000 tons of sugar, in addition to 26,000 sailors, dock porters, coopers, &c., who would have been employed in handling and transporting 410,000 tons of sugar cane. It was stated before the same committee 230 'STRAY SHOTS.' that every ton of colonial sugar imported into this country represents at least 20?. spent in British labour, and that the demand of 180,000 tons of colonial sugar would involve an expenditure of 3,600,000?. sterling on British labour. I believe, therefore, that Mr. Chamberlain's statement, that the community profits to the extent of 1,000,000?. sterling by the bounty system, is a gratuitous assumption contrary to facts and experience, and that if a fair profit and loss account were drawn up the loss would be found enormously in excess. But, indeed, where is this bounty system to cease ? Suppose the French, or Germans, or Americans say, * It is of the greatest national importance to us to foster and extend our manufacturing industries ; we find the bounty system on refined sugar has given us the English market, and we hope that the bounty system on ships will give us a great deal of the English carrying trade. Why should we not extend it to cotton and wool and iron as well ? ' Will the operative class then, indeed, will the country generally, be soothed by a cataplasm of free-trade platitudes ? XXXIX. BOYCOTTING. THE present is the greatest crisis that has yet occurred in the industrial history of England. There is no disputing the fact that our industries are being ' boycotted' all over the world, and that the industries of foreign nations are being forced into our markets by a system of bounties to which there is no limit. I believe absolutely, that if the work- ing men of England allow the present ruinous fiscal system to continue, there will not in another ten years be food or work for them in this country. I consider, therefore, that it is the imperative duty of every class in the community- manufacturers, operatives, landowners, householders, ten- BOYCOTTING. 231 ants, tradesmen, publicans, labourers to combine to insist that their birthright shall not be finally traded away for a miserable mess of pottage. If the proposed French Treaty is carried, and England is bound for another ten years to the stake of isolated free trade, her industrial ruin is certain. The working classes must help themselves in this emergency. Their former leaders have deserted them. They can no longer look with confidence on men whose every prophecy has been falsified, and who have not the moral courage to allow it. In every country in the world, except England, arrangements are made to protect the different branches of native industry. In every country in the world, except England, the statesmen, economists, writers, thinkers, consumers, producers, are all equally protectionists. Out of England there is not a single free-trader absolutely not one. * It is possible,' says the old French proverb, ' to be wiser than your neighbour, but it is not possible to be wiser than all your neighbours.' But this is exactly what Mr. Bright claims to be. Not only does he assume that he is wiser than his neighbour at home, but wiser than his neighbours all over the world. At one end of the scale is the whole intelligence and experience of the industrial world, at the other end is Mr. Bright, and Mr. Bright claims to weigh them all down. But this, of course, is sheer nonsense. *I can hardly allow myself to believe,' says Mr. Bright, 'that America will long maintain a privileged class of manufacturers and producers.' ' I can hardly allow myself to believe,' replies an American states- man, 'that England will long maintain a system that is bringing rapid and complete ruin on her working classes.' ' We will not tax the whole community,' says Mr. Bright, * in order to enrich a few greedy manufacturers.' ' We will tax the whole community,' say the statesmen and economists of America and France, ' in order to promote the general employment of the people ; and, moreover, we find by experience that it is the most profitable tax in the 232 'STRAY SHOTS.' country, paying us sometimes fifty, sometimes a hundred, sometimes a thousand fold ! ' l A tax on foreign manu- factured goods,' say the Americans, * may add slightly to the cost of some articles of consumption ; but on the whole, it works well for the community ; it promotes general employ- ment, general interest and dependence, general energy, gene- ral contentment, general wealth.' 'The object of free trade,' says M. Duval, almost the only Frenchman who has ever coquetted with free trade, ' is not to open French markets to foreign produce, but to open foreign markets to French produce.' Do our free-traders ever enlarge on the necessity of opening foreign markets to British products ? On the contrary. ( The object of free trade,' say they, * is to open English markets to foreign products, to buy in the cheapest market, at any loss to the home producer. 'Can't you see,' say they, ' that the more foreign goods we consume and the less English goods the foreigners consume, the worse for them and the better for us ? That is gain both ways : a case of heads I win, tails you lose ! This is one of the great truths of free trade ; if you can't see it, you must be a fool.' ' What a calamity it would be,' says M. Duval again, 'if England were to close her markets to French goods.' France and America have already closed their markets to English goods, and are swamping our market with bounty-fed goods ; but do our free-traders consider this a calamity ? On the contrary, they regard it with a light heart, and are amazed at the stupidity of those who exclaim against its injustice. Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone are never weary of vaunting the immense prosperity of America; they have told us over and over again that American operatives are far better off than English operatives. But why is this? They are not a better breed; they have no national advantages of climate or material; on the contrary, the national advantages are on our side. These gentlemen do not see that, in enlarging on the prosperity of America and the decadence of England, they are proving the case BOYCOTTING. 233 of their economic opponents. If they could say to us, 'Look at this England, this precious stone set in the silver sea, this thrice-blessed home of free trade rich, prosperous, contented ; her population increasing in numbers, in civilisation, in sobriety, in enlightenment; horny-handed sons of toil flocking to her shores from America, still blighted, blasted, cursed (I don't know which epithet Mr. Bright would prefer) with protection ' if they could say this, they would go far to prove their case ; but their language is the very reverse. ' Look at this America,' they say, ' this glorious land of promise, this thrice-blessed home of protection; the richest, the most prosperous land in the world; the paradise of labour, that attracts to her shores the best operatives of Europe; that doubles her industries every two or three years ; that is knocking England into a cocked hat.' When this is their argument, what deduction can we draw from it but that in America protection has proved a true cornucopia, and that in England free trade has proved a tunic of Nessus, that has struck a deadly poison to the very marrow of her bones. England cannot be prosperous unless the two limbs that carry her agriculture and manufactures are prosperous also; and they can never, in these days of competition, be prosperous with- out protection. If the agricultural and manufacturing classes will be true to each, and demand e protection to land and labour,' they will get it, and prosperity will return to all classes of the community. If they do not get it, there is nothing left for them but to emigrate to America, where they will get it. 234 'STRAY SHOTS.' XL. PROTECTION OR EMIGRATION. THE last few years have done a great deal to open the eyes of the producers, of all classes, in England, to the suicidal measure of one-sided free trade ; and I believe the operative classes especially are beginning to realise the critical position in which the theories of Mr. Bright and the Cobden Club have placed them. In fact they can no longer close their eyes to it. The wolf is at the door, the labour market is overstocked, wages are everywhere falling. Many industries that ten or fifteen years ago were strong and prosperous are now weak and struggling ; many more are ruined absolutely, and have disappeared. Does Mr. Bright and his sup- porters of the press expect the producing classes to sit still and listen to their foolish theories till their ruin is complete ? It appears they do ; but they will find them- selves mistaken. The doctrinaires of the Cobden school assure their credulous victims that this steady decline of work and wages is only temporary, and that prosperity will soon return, This is not true. Good times, steady employment, full wages, can never again be the portion of English producers, manufacturing or agricultural, in the face of the combined, unrestricted, one-sided competition of the whole world. Wages will go lower and lower, and one industry after another will succumb to foreign pres- sure. Nothing can arrest the decline of English indus- tries but a return to protection. It is incredible that the operative classes in England should have continued to swallow the quack nostrums of Mr. Bright when their own sensations told them it was doing them harm. Whilst the government of every industrial community in the world, out of England, without any exception what- ever, has declared that the protection of the labour of the people is its first duty, whilst the whole of the operative PROTECTION OE EMIGRATION. 235 and labouring class of every industrial community out of England, without any exception, have insisted on protec- tion to native industry as the one indispensable condition of industrial prosperity in England, some economic pro- phets have persuaded the operatives that protection to native industry, protection to the labour of the people, is an injury instead of a blessing ! Out of Great Britain there is not an operative of any industrial community in the world, absolutely not one, who is not a protectionist. The Americans say it takes just one quarter of an hour to convert a free-trader into a protectionist when you get him into America. Why is this? Are the operatives of England more intelligent, better informed, more able to act for our interests than the operatives of America, France, Belgium, Germany, &c., &c. I don't think they are. Are Messrs. Cobden and Bright and Potter wiser than all the states- men, and philosophers, and economists, and thinkers and writers that the whole world has produced during the last thirty years ? I should say certainly not. Why, then, is it that in England the operatives are for free trade, and everywhere else for protection ? The reason is very simple. In England the question has been made a political one ; in other countries it has been treated simply as a fiscal one. And if it had been so treated in England we should now be as protectionist as our neighbours. The operatives of Lancashire are proposing to meet a reduction in wages in the cotton trade by a strike, and I don't say they are wrong in doing so. I think it is very natural, and if I thought it would succeed, I should say that from their point of view it was quite right ; but it cannot succeed. It is merely a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. The only effect of a strike will be to replace English goods with foreign goods. If the English cotton operatives cease to make cotton for the English consumer, foreign cotton operatives will send over larger quantities of cotton to supply them, and the British 236 'STRAY SHOTS.' consumer, instead of consuming English cotton goods, will consume foreign cotton goods. The result of a cotton strike would be that there would be more foreign cotton consumed and less English cotton consumed. Now this is not an advantage to English operatives, but it is an immense advantage to foreign operatives; and how the leaders of the working classes counsel strikes, when their common sense must show them that in the face of un- restricted foreign competition a strike can only damage their clients, beats me entirely. If foreign competition was restricted, there would be some reason in strikes ; in industries in which there is no competition, such as coal, building, &c., there is some reason, but in industries ex- posed to unrestricted competition they are absurd. But there is more than this. In attempting to meet a fall of wages by a strike, the operatives are merely treating the symptoms of the disease. They leave the disease itself untouched ; still less do they treat the cause of it. Strike against the false doctrines of Mr. Bright and his school ; strike against the ruinous theory of unrestricted foreign competition, against the folly of artificial cheapness, and they may save themselves from ruin, but not by keeping English goods out of the market in order that more foreign goods may take their place. What the operatives should try to find out is the cause of the disease that is ruining their industry. Why is work uncertain, intermittent ? Why do wages fall ? Why are the silk and woollen industries nearly dead in England, but springing into vigorous life in Germany and America ? Why is the cotton industry so sick in England, whilst it is extending marvellously over the whole of the indus- trial world? Because the price of silks and woollens and cotton have fallen below the price at which English operatives at their present rate of wages can produce them. And why have the prices so fallen? Because an artificial cheapness has been forced on the country by PEOTECTION OE EMIGRATION. 237 the continued competition of the whole industrial world ; because, as Mr. Ashworth, chairman of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, says : ' France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, America, have negotiated treaties whose purpose and intention is to place English manufactures at a disadvantage; ' because foreign nations are boycotting English manufactures and English operatives ; because, in fact, there is a widespread indus- trial conspiracy against England, to which Mr. Bright and the Cobden Club are consenting parties. The only natural policy of England, as of every other industrial community, the policy of common sense, is reciprocity or retaliation ; to hold out the hand of indus- trial friendship to those who will help you, and to have nothing to say to those who will not. But the hands of England are tied. Reciprocity and retaliation are equally impossible. Our foreign rivals laugh in our faces when we talk of reciprocity. ' Reciprocity ! ' say they ; ' why you have nothing to offer ! we have already got from you all you have to give, and in fact all we want ! ' And our free trade popes forbid retaliation, because, forsooth, it is contrary to the cosmopolitan hypocrisy that is just now England's greatest curse. Let the English operatives realise their position; let them clearly understand how they stand. If they allow the present widespread industrial conspiracy, supported by Mr. Bright and the Cobden Club, to continue, they must either make up their minds to accept the wages that are paid to their foreign rivals, to work twelve hours a day, and often seven days a week, or they must emigrate. There is no doubt about it. It is absolutely true that the mad perseverance of English statesmen and economists in what M. Thiers so truly denounced as ' one of the puerile doctrines and illusions of mankind,' is 'low wages or emigration.' I suppose during the next year we shall have an extension of the franchise, and I am glad of it. Some 238 'STRAY SHOTS.' people desire it because they think it will upset the Throne, the Church, the House of Lords, divide up the land and the capital of the country ; others desire it simply because they think it will extinguish their political rivals and give them an indefinite monopoly of the sweets of office. I desire it for none of these things. I desire it because I feel certain that when the operative and labour- ing classes get political power, they will employ it, as every other industrial community in the world that enjoys the franchise does employ it, in ' protecting the rights of labour.' Mr. Bright and his party believe that an exten- sion of the suffrage will result in a glorification of him- self and his doctrines. I believe it will be their Nemesis. I believe the working classes, when they get the electoral power, will say to the theorists who have so long and so cruelly deceived them, ' Stand on one side ; we have had enough of your silly nonsense; now let us have a little common sense.' The operatives of England have not far to look for an example of what their fate will be if they follow the advice of the Cobden Club, and sit still whilst their markets are slipping from their grasp. Let them turn their gaze to the sister isle. What is the cause of the ruin of Ireland ? Why is she the only nation in the world, actu- ally the only one, that is steadily sinking in the scale of nations ? What is the cause of the ruin of Ireland ? It is very simple. It is what we falsely style free trade, and nothing else. It is over competition. It is because England for fifty years has been able to manufacture everything cheaper than Ireland, and has forced her cheaper goods into the Irish markets, and at the same time excluded Irish goods from English markets. It is by that means she has killed every industry in Ireland. Irish industries were destroyed, and Ireland was ruined by unfair English competition, and this is exactly what is happening to English industries. English industries are receiving, at the hands of Europe PROTECTION OR EMIGRATION. 239 and America, exactly the same treatment that Irish in- dustries received from England. English manufactures are excluded from American and European markets ; and American and European manu- factured goods are forced into English markets. What reason is there to doubt in fact, can there be any doubt ? that under similar industrial conditions England will suffer the same industrial ruin that has fallen on Ireland ? In every country in the world, out of England, it is preached aloud, as the great canon of political economy, that in an industrial community the interests of consumers and producers are identical both pull in the same boat ; both must sink or swim together. It was for Mr. Bright and his followers to preach the fatal nonsense, that the interests of consumers and producers were not only not identical, but were actually antagonistic ; not only did they preach alas! with ruinous success this evident economic heresy, but they actually persuaded the produc- ing classes, those who earn their daily bread with the sweat of their face, that in every case the interest of the consumer should precede that of the producer. In an industrial community there can be no hard and fast line between consumers and producers. It is impossible. All are in some way or another, directly or indirectly, consumers, and all are in some way or another, directly or in- directly, producers. It is folly to attempt to draw a hard and fast line between consumers and producers where such a line cannot exist ; but if our economic philosophers will insist upon drawing this line, they can only draw it in one place, between those who have fixed incomes and those who have not. Well, then, how will their theory of the superior interests of the consumers bear this test ? There are in Great Britain only 1,300,000 out of a population of 34,000,000 with fixed incomes of over 1001. a year, and there are 32,700,000 without fixed incomes, or with fixed incomes of less than 100?. a year ; and therefore if you compare the relative numbers of those who are truly pro- 240 'STKAY SHOTS; ducers and those who are consumers, you will find there are thirty producers to every consumer. So much for the nonsense of sacrificing the interests of the producers to the interests of the consumers. ' The wealth of a nation is the value of what it produces,' says common sense. Protect, extend, encourage production in every possible way, has been, and is, the cry of every industrial community in the world, except England ; but in England our economic Solons have replaced this universal axiom with the foolish paraphrase, ' Take care of consumption, and let production take care of itself.' For nearly forty years the working classes have bowed their heads to this ridiculous oracle. There are signs, I hope, that they are coming to their senses. Cheapness, cheapness, cheapness and competition these have been the parrot cries of free-traders ; and excellent cries they are for the 1,300,000 lucky individuals with their fixed incomes ; but how about the 32,700,000 without fixed incomes ? How does it affect them ? What does competition and cheapness mean in their case? It means this it means that when by home competition a starving needlewoman is found to stitch shirts at four- pence a dozen, straightway a starving foreign woman is found to stitch shirts at threepence per dozen, and her work is brought over here to drive the English woman below starvation point ! This is competition ! This is cheapness ! And does it benefit the community ? The first condition of this much- vaunted cheapness, this panacea of the Cobden Club, is cheap labour ; do not let the operatives forget this when they have dinned into their ears the virtues of mere cheapness. Is a low price of corn, that is secured by stimulating foreign production and dis- couraging home production, a national blessing ? Is it a national blessing when the English and Scotch labourers are deprived of their employment in favour of the ill-paid labour of Eussians, Poles, Wallachians, or Coolies ? Are shirts stitched by starving women at fourpence a dozen a blessing to the community, or the cheapness of bricks PKOTECTION OR EMIGRATION. 241 made by over- tasked children at nominal wages, or the cheapness of nails or cables, made by over-worked women and children, a blessing ? Is the waste of human life, the misery, and suffering, and demoralisation, and immorality inseparable from cheap labour a benefit to the country ? Is the cheapness that is caused by cheap foreign labour a national blessing ? No, it is not ; and in spite of all the writings and preachings of the Cobden Club, I maintain that the more we examine the meaning of mere cheapness the more distinctly we find that it means a ' low standard of life.' Now, is it desirable to lower the standard of a nation's life ? It is a fact, deny it who can, that ( cheap places ' in all fully-settled countries have hitherto been those in which the working poor have been the most degraded and depressed, and cheap times those in which they have been most wretched ! In the West Indies, for instance, food for a week can be grown with two hours' labour. Are the negroes of the West Indies prosperous? They are idle and miserable beyond belief. Amongst the moujiks of the Don wheat used to be so cheap that it was burned for fuel. Their misery and squalor was without parallel in Europe. But it is not necessary to go to the West Indies or to the Don to illustrate this argument. Take America and Ireland. America is essentially a dear country, where a high rate a very high rate -of living prevails; high wages, high expenditure. Ireland is a cheap country, where the wages are low very low and the rate of living as low as possible. The worker in America gets high wages and spends them : he toils, and sows, and grows, and works, and buys. The worker in Ireland does none of these things: he neither toils, nor e ws, nor grows, nor buys he does without. Now, which conduces most to human happiness the high rate of living in America, or the low scale of living in Ireland ? Which, again, conduces most to human happiness cheapness or employment 9 242 'STRAY SHOTS.' The Cobden Club tell the operatives that wheat is 10s. a quarter cheaper than it was 30 years ago, and that this alone is a complete reply to any objections against free trade. Suppose it is and I believe it is what does this prove? It proves that railways and steamers, and the development of the great grain districts of America have brought to our very doors stores of grain that before were inaccessible or did not exist ; but this has nothing to do with free trade. It is true wheat is cheaper by 10s. a quarter than it was 40 years ago, and so it would have been if free trade had never been heard of. Free-traders make a great deal of the fact of wheat being cheaper, but they carefully conceal the fact that meat is 50 per cent, dearer than it was 40 years ago, and fruit and vege- tables and all dairy produce milk, butter, good cheese are 60 to 80 per cent, dearer ! Now, it is an unpleasant state- ment, but it is true, that the lower price of wheat is not owing to free trade, but to steam ; but the higher price of meat, vegetables, dairy produce, &c., &c., is the result of free trade, because free trade has thrown the land out of cultivation, reduced our stock, made it hopeless for our farmers to cultivate at a profit. Granted that wheat is 10s. a quarter cheaper than it was thirty years ago, and meat 50 per cent, dearer and this is approximately true in both cases what is the exact gain or loss to each individual? Each adult consumes, on an average, six bushels of wheat in the year, so that he saves by the fall in price of wheat 7s. 6d. per annum. On assumption that a workman in good employ eats 31b. of meat every week, this would be an increase of 9d. per week, or 39s. per annum, so that he would gain 7s. (5d. and lose 39s., a net loss of 31s. 6d., independently of the greatly increased cost of milk, butter, vegetables, &c., &c. Owing to unrestricted competition, many of our manu- facturing industries are dead, many are hopelessly sick. Our operatives are losing their work and their wages. Owing to unrestricted competition in agricultural produce PEOTECTION OR EMIGRATION. 243 the land is going rapidly out of cultivation : the labourers are losing their work, the stock of meat is rapidly diminish- ing and the price rising. Is there, then, no thorn to this vaunted rose of competition? Unrestricted competition in cheapness such as free-traders are now forcing on this country must end by making the conditions of labour un- bearable. Mr. Chamberlain says that England has been described as the paradise of the rich, and he warns us not to allow it to become the purgatory of the poor. Can any means be conceived so certain of making it a purgatory of the poor as to encourage wild unrestricted foreign competition, that deprives our own workpeople of their work, and drives them lower and lower in the scale of life ? Look at it from any point of view you like, the question resolves itself into protection or emigration. If foreign competition is restricted, if native industry is pro- tected, wages will rise, work will be steady, the land will again be brought into cultivation, stock will increase, and the price of meat will fall. If the present system of un- restricted competition is encouraged industries will dis- appear, more land will go out of cultivation, wages will fall, and the only escape from a lower scale of life will be emigration. XLI. ' FREE-TRADE PROPHETS: THE Cobden Club proclaim their founder one of the wisest of mankind. Events have proved him to be one of the most mistaken. Probably with the exception of Mr. Bright, Mr. Cobden has been more uniformly wrong in all his predictions and prophecies, economic and political, than any public man that ever lived. Most prophets oc- casionally make a good shot. Mr. Cobden never did. He was always wrong. Let us see. B 2 244 'STRAY SHOTS.' In 1842, in a speech in London, Mr. Cobden said: 'The Americans are a very cautious and far-seeing people, and every one who knows them ' (mark the absurdity of the statement) 'knows perfectly well that they never would have tolerated their prohibitory tariff if we had met their advances by receiving their agricultural products in ex- change for our manufacturing products.' Mr. Cobden said this forty years ago. Well, for forty years we have received the agricultural products of America free of all duty. Have they, in consequence, abated one jot of their prohibitory tariff on our manufactured products ? Not a bit of it; their duties continue more prohibitory than ever. In 1852 Mr. Cobden prophesied that ' the time would soon arrive when other nations would be compelled by self-interest and the reality of our own prosperity, to follow our example and adopt free trade.' Thirty years have since passed, and every year 'other' nations have receded further and further from free trade ! Mr. Cobden was given to prophecy. When the French Commercial Treaty was being ratified, he ventured to predict 'that nothing would be able to stand the moral contagion of the example of England and France acting together on the principles of free trade, and that the stimulus thus given would extend far beyond the limits of the two countries. Our somewhat humiliating attempt to renew the French treaty last year is a curious comment on this prophecy. But these little slips in prophecy are trifling compared to one gigantic myth he placed before his admirers at a monster meeting in Manchester, October 24, 1844. This does indeed give him a high rank among the 'false economic prophets.' ' I speak my unfeigned convictions when I say I believe there is no interest in this country that would receive so much benefit from the repeal of the Corn Laws as the farm tenant interest in this country ; and I believe when the future historian comes to write the history of agriculture, he will have to state: "In 'FREE-TRADE PROPHETS.' 245 such a year there was a stringent Corn Law passed for the protection of agriculture. From that time agriculture slumbered in England, and it was not until, by the aid of the Anti-Corn League, the Corn Law was utterly abolished that agriculture sprang up to the full vigour of existence in England, to become what it is now, like her manufac- tures, unrivalled in the world." When one looks at the present condition of agriculture, it appears almost impos- sible that the opinions and arguments of one who could make such a ridiculously bad shot should much longer influence his countrymen ! Let us now glance at the free-trade utterances of some of his disciples. ' For Heaven's sake,' said Mr. Forster at Bradford, ' don't do anything that may induce foreigners to think our faith in free trade is shaken ! ' This almost reads like an exhortation to us to affect an outward confidence in free trade, when in reality we have lost it ! But indeed this is nonsense. Foreigners form their own opinions of the working of free trade in Eng- land, and it scarcely needed the almost frantic efforts our free-trade Ministers made to secure reciprocity, in the shape of a renewal of the Commercial Treaty with France last year, to satisfy them that our confidence in free trade was very seriously shaken. 'To return to protection,' said Mr. Bright in reply to Mr. Lord, ' is to confess to the protectionists abroad that we have been wrong and that they have been right, and protection will henceforth be the justified policy of all nations.' But if, after watching free trade carefully for thirty years, ' all nations * have already satisfied themselves, with- out any doubt whatever, that free trade is only one of the * vain and puerile illusions of mankind ' that time and com- mon sense will certainly stamp out, I don't see that our confessing they have been right and we have been wrong will very much strengthen their position. When Mr. Bright 246 'STRAY SHOTS; exhorts us to stick to free trade to the bitter end, at any cost, does he, I wonder, realise the curious fact (rather a disappointing one to his vanity I should consider it) that after he has been beating the ' great tom-tom ' of free trade for forty years, protection in its widest sense is still the policy of thirty-nine fortieths of industrial mankind? There is one point connected with the utterances of our public men on this subject that I can never understand. Do British free-traders really wish our industrial rivals to adopt free trade, or do they not ? Their promises and their conclusions are irreconcilable. If our industrial interests do not require foreign nations to admit our goods at the same duties that we admit theirs and that is the contention of Cobdeii Clubbites why are we constantly urging them to do so ? If our commercial interests do require that foreign nations should admit our goods at the same duties that we admit theirs, what blatant idiots we are to pretend they do not ! ' So long as America con- tinues her protectionist system,' says Mr. Gladstone, ' your commercial prosperity is secure.' Of course, Mr. Glad- stone, as a patriotic Englishman, wishes our commercial prosperity to remain secure, and therefore logically he must hope that America will continue her protective system. Mr. Lowe says that ' nothing is so honourable in the history of this country as the patience with which we have endured the exclusion of our goods by rival States,' which certainly looks as if Mr. Lowe at any rate considered that we are suffering an actual hardship and injustice from the protective policy of other States. The Pall Mall Gazette, December 20, 1882, says 'that the only chance for the declining industries of England is America adopting free trade.' Now, this is not very encouraging certainly, and it is absolutely opposed to the arguments of Mr. Gladstone. But if free trade has conferred such un- numbered blessings on our industries, may we be permitted to inquire why they are declining? And if it is really true that American industries are flourishing under pro- 'FREE-TRADE PROPHETS.' 247 tection, whilst English industries are declining under free trade, would it not appear to be a more reasonable pro- ceeding for England to return to protection than for America to adopt free trade ? Mr. Macdonald, the miners' member, said that * if our iron was admitted duty free into America we should shut up every ironworks east of Pittsburg in six months.' Now, this may be a very good reason for our wishing that America would adopt free trade, but it certainly cannot be supposed to offer a very strong inducement to her to do so. Mr. Fawcett in his lectures alludes 'to the great injivry inflicted on English industry by the protective tariffs of other countries.' So the great apostle of free trade, the most logical and far-seeing of them all, admits that we have suffered great injury from the protective tariffs of other countries. Mr. Ash worth, chairman of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, enumerates France, Spain, Italy, Switzer- land, Portugal, Germany, and Austria as negotiating treaties * whose purpose and intention is to place English manufactures at a disadvantage.' So Mr. Ashworth ap- parently believes in a widespread industrial conspiracy against England in other words, he believes that foreign nations are boycotting English manufacturers and English operatives. Now, if any of my readers can see anything hopeful or reassuring in the above prophecies or utterances on our fiscal system, I think he is very much to be envied. XLII. FOREIGN COMPETITION. * FOREIGN competition has been an unspeakable blessing to us,' say the Cobden Club. * It is impossible to have too much of a good thing.' Well, what has it done for us ? First, as regards agriculture : 248 'STRAY SHOTS; 1. It has discouraged agriculture in all its branches. 2. It has frightfully diminished the home production of food. 3. It has thrown 1,000,000 of acres out of grain and arable cultivation in England and 1,300,000 acres out of grain and root cultivation in Ireland. 4. It has entirely driven capital and enterprise from agricultural investments. 5. It has thrown 250,000 labourers, with their families, out of agricultural employment. 6. It has diminished agricultural wages 5,000,0002. a year at least, and the value of agricultural produce 20,000,0002. a year at least. 7. It has killed out all small proprietors, and caused the accumulation of land into fewer hands. 8. It has caused a terrible falling off in the quantity and quality of stock. 9. It has consequently greatly increased the price of meat. 10. It has very much reduced our home supply of vegetables, fruit, and all dairy produce. 11. It has dangerously increased our dependence on foreign nations for food. 12. We actually grow less wheat to-day to feed 34,000,000 of people than we did 70 years ago to feed 15,000,000. From 1811 to 1830 we averaged 97,000,000 of bushels per annum ; from 1872 to 1879 we averaged 91,000,000 of bushels per annum. 13. The number of farming bankruptcies has increased six times in 10 years. Bills of sale have multiplied 10 times in five years. Mr. Bright says the agricultural class have lost 200,000,0002. sterling in four years ! 14. Throughout the greater part of England and Wales, and in parts of Scotland, the condition of the agricultural population is one of comparative misery. Their wages average from 12s. to 14s. per week, to pay for house rent, fuel and light, and food and clothing, FOREIGN COMPETITION. 249 perhaps for a wife and three or four children, the great majority seldom tasting fresh meat ! How they get on at all God only knows ! It is to be feared that very often the only way they can do it is by * going without.' 15. Landlords who cannot get their rents cannot do anything for their cottages ; and tenants who cannot pay their rents cannot do anything for their labourers. 16. Throughout England farming is looked upon as a ruined industry, and anyone who puts money into it is looked upon as a lunatic; and this is the industry of which Adam Smith writes : * Of all the ways in which capital can be employed, agriculture is by far the most advantageous to society : 110 equal capital puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour than that of the farmer.' That is what foreign competition has done for the agricultural industries of England and Ireland; now let us see what it has done for our manufacturing industries. 1. It has caused a general and progressive deteriora- tion in the quality of our manufactured goods. 2. English manufacturers are compelled to sell at prices at which they cannot produce good work, and are therefore compelled to sacrifice quality to price. 3. To meet low foreign prices, the result of cheap foreign labour, English manufacturers are obliged to employ cheap and inferior materials. Scamping and bad work are of necessity overlooked in favour of mere cheapness. 4. Foreign competition has killed numbers of what are called weak industries. Many industries that five years ago were looked upon as strong industries, beyond the possibility of danger, are now showing unmistakable signs of weakness. The silk industry is gone. The woollen industry is more than half ruined. The cotton industry is very sick. 5. Very cheap production means very large production, very large works, very large capital. 250 'STRAY SHOTS.' 6. Small industries and small associations of workmen cannot live ; large capitalists and large works swallow up small capitalists and small works, for the same reason that the large landowners have swallowed up the small ones. 7. Where quantity goes for everything and quality for nothing, individual enterprise has no existence. 8. There is now no possibility of any reciprocity on a fair and equable basis of exchange between England and foreign nations, because England has already given away everything, and has got nothing left to exchange. 9. Unrestricted foreign competition, being an unknown quantity, continually unsettles the English markets. There is no relation whatever between supply and de- mand. When the English market is already overstocked with English goods, it is liable at any moment to be still more flooded with an influx of foreign goods. 10. Unrestricted foreign competition has immensely reduced the cost of the luxuries consumed by the rich ; but in no way whatever does it reduce the cost of the necessities consumed by the poor. 11. The importation of no single foreign article of manufacture that I am aware of adds directly or indirectly to the comfort, or happiness, or economy of the working man, whilst the importation of every one article of foreign manufacture deducts pro tanto from the value of his labour. 12. Foreign competition has very much diminished the distribution of wealth amongst the operative classes. It has made impossible individual enterprise or small associations of workmen ; large manufacturers and large capitalists have stamped them out. Foreign competition, therefore, has already ruined our agricultural industry, and is fast ruining our manufactur- ing industry. The employment of those who live by labour is fast diminishing. When the process has gone a little further we shall have millions short of work. What FOKEIGN COMPETITION. 251 are we to do then? How do our academic Radicals propose to meet such a crisis ? Have they thought of it ? Do they realise that it is approaching with rapid steps ? It is a working man's question. If the products of cheap labour continue to be admitted into our markets duty free, the wages of our work-people must come down to the wages of foreign work-people, or they must cease to manufacture. The question before the working classes, those who live by manual industries, manufacturing or agricultural, is very simple. It is protection or ruin . XLIII. WAGES. I THINK the greatest optimist who reads his daily paper carefully must now be convinced that the condition of the working classes, agricultural and manufacturing, is very bad so bad indeed that it almost appears to demand some drastic measures of relief. A distinguished statis- tician tells us that out of a population of 34 millions, 7 millions, or 1 in every 5, are toeing the line of pauperism ! A correspondent of the Daily News, November 16, 1883, says that wages in many industries in London are steadily settling down to one shilling a day. There is no use philo- sophising over such statements as these. The question is, Are they true ? If they are true they must be faced. What is the cause ? And what is the remedy ? They are no true friends of their country who, in order to serve their political interests, adopt the ' A non causa pro causa ' form of argument in this matter, giving the wrong reason for the right one ! * Hysteron proteron ' putting the cart before the horse, as it were. We are told that over-population, over-crowding, is the mat du pays, the disease we have to deal with. This is not true. Over-crowding is not the disease ; it is merely 252 'STEAY SHOTS.' one of the symptoms of it ; and in prescribing State-aided emigation and improved dwellings as the cure we are only treating the symptoms, and leaving the disease itself untouched. Every intelligent man in the country, I believe, knows what the disease is. It is not over-crowding ; it is not over-population. It is want of work ; it is uncertain, and consequently low wages. It is want of work, wages at a shilling a day, that crowd these poor people together in human styes, and drive them to seek an escape from their misery in emigration. There would be no talk of ' State- aided emigration ' if there was plenty of work. There would be no talk of over-crowding if there were good wages. If the producing classes are so blind as to allow the Government to persist in the mad policy of admitting the products of cheap foreign labour duty free, their wages must come down to the level of the cheap labour abroad. There is no mistake about it. It is as certain as that the sun shines in the heavens. It is only a question of time. ' Cheap products and low wages,' as in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, can give prosperous industries, and ' dear products and high wages,' as in America, can give pros- perous industries ; but ' cheap products and high wages,' as in England, cannot give prosperous industries either the price must rise or the wages must fall. In every case in which cheap foreign manufactures drive English manu- factures out of the market, the cheapness is the result of cheap labour. To meet the competition of cheap foreign labour English manufacturers must themselves have cheap labour, or they must close their works. If they cannot get cheap labour at home, they will have to seek it abroad, and it appears they are already doing so. ' It was reported in Sunderland yesterday,' says one of the northern papers, ' that the employers are making prepar- ations for engaging foreign workmen in the place of the engineers now on strike, and that berths are being fitted WAGES. 253 up for them.' And what do our free-trade economists, the working-men's friends, say to the importation of cheap labour ? ' I have no hesitation,' says Mr. Fawcett, * in ex- pressing the opinion that the importation of cheap labour by employers is a perfectly justifiable measure from an economic point of view, and that the objection to it is based on no better ground than fallacy and misrepresent- ation.' The operative class, therefore, should understand that in the eyes of Mr. Fawcett and his school of economists, including, I suppose, Mr. Burt and Mr. Broadhurst, the Chinese have as much right to compete in our markets for labour as they have ; and if hundreds of thousands of Chinese do come here and work in our mines and our mills and our workshops for 50 per cent, longer hours and 80 per cent, less wages, it would, according to Mr. Fawcett, be against the holy laws of Cobden and Bright to prevent them. How can our wages rise ? In the last ten years 1,000,000 of acres have gone out of grain and arable cultivation in England, and 1,300,000 out of grain and root cultivation in Ireland. This represents a loss of work to 250,000 men and their families, and a loss of 5,000,OOOZ. a year in wages. These 250,000 labourers, with their families, have crowded into the towns and the mines and centres of industry to compete for work. How, then, can wages rise ? During the ten years that the ruin of agriculture has driven 250,000 labourers and their families from agricultural employment the population has increased 3,000,000. How, then, can wages rise ? Wages in Ireland are down to Is. a day. Why? Because foreign competition the competition of England and America has killed out every industry in the country. Foreign competition German, French, Bel- gian, and American is gradually killing out every indus- try in England, and if nothing is done to stop it, wages in England will ere long be down to Is. a day also. 254 'STRAY SHOTS.' All Englishmen of ordinary common sense, statesmen and economists alike, allow that English operatives do suffer an injustice from the unlimited importation of foreign manufactures, and from the exclusion of English manufactures from foreign markets. What, then, are English operatives to do ? Are they to continue to suffer to the verge of ruin ? Are they to sit still and make no sign whilst their markets are being gradually monopolised by foreign products, and their own products are being boycotted in foreign markets ? Is it likely they will do so? Is it likely they will sacrifice themselves in order to keep up the reputation of the Cobden Club ? No, it is not. It is much more likely that they will ask an account of their stewardship. ' What do we care,' they will say, * whether you call your economic philosophy protection or free trade ? It is of 110 use to us if it deprives us of our living. We have acquired industries that would provide us with the means of living decently if we could follow them ; but we cannot follow them. Year after year we see the demand fcr our industries growing less. You tell us our industries are weak, and that we had better emi- grate and take them elsewhere. But we do not wish to emigrate; we do not wish to take our industries elsewhere. We do not see why our own industries should be weak only in England, and prosperous all over the rest of ttie world. We argue that if our industries can be prosperously conducted in America they can be prosperously conducted in England, and that if it is your fiscal conditions that prevent it, those fiscal conditions are wrong and will have to be altered. What comfort is it to us to hear your boasts of the increasing wealth of the country under free trade, if under free trade we, the workers, are getting poorer and poorer ? Our industries are depressed, and we want them put on their legs again; and we look to you, gentlemen of the Cobden Club, who profess to be guided entirely by our interests, to do this for us. ' We have listened to you in blind, unquestioning con- WAGES. 255 fidence for many years, because you promised so much ; but now we are beginning to ask each other what your promises have come to. We now see that you had other objects in view besides our interests that, in fact, you have made us your cat's-paw to gain them. We have been humbugged long enough with your cosmopolitan philosophy. We do not care that our interests and the interests of our foreign rivals should be bracketed together as of equal importance, and the preference in every case of doubt be invariably given against us. This is not to our tastes. The interests of our rivals are not of the same importance as our own at least, not to us. You are at perfect liberty to love your neighbour as yourself, or better if you like, and to make any personal sacrifices in his favour you may think fit; but remember that blood is thicker than water, and that whether it suits your theories or not, your first duty is to us, to your own people. It is our interests that must always come first. It is we who, first of all, must be put in a position to live and thrive. Do this for us ; look upon our industrial interests as of more importance than the industrial interests of all the rest of the world besides, and then you may philosophise as much as you like/ ' Primo vivere, deinde philosophare.' These, or something like them, are the thoughts of the great majority of the industrial classes, agricultural and manufacturing, employers and employed, throughout the country. Very soon they will find utterance in words that will admit but of one reply. The reason why so many of our industries are weak, our wages falling, the area of employment contracting, is that in every industry, agricultural and manufacturing, foreign products are steadily replacing British products. Every article of foreign manufacture that comes into this country replaces some article of English manufacture. Every day this is increasing. Every day, in some small degree, the demand for the work of British operatives is diminishing, and their wages falling. 'This maybe true, 5 256 'STRAY SHOTS; say our economic Catos, * but lower wages are more than compensated for by the lower price of food. Think of wheat at 34s. per quarter ! ' But what, pray, is the use of wheat being down to 34s. a quarter if at the same time wages are down to 7s. a week ? The loaf may be a farthing or a halfpenny cheaper, but how can men who only earn a shilling a day ever taste meat? How indeed can they live at all except as paupers ? What the workers opera- tives and agriculturists alike want is work, not cheapness. They want a demand for what they produce, which means steady wages, and, consequently, better wages. * Your wages have increased 30 per cent, during the last 30 years,' says Mr. Bright to the working classes of England. ' This is entirely the result of free trade. Thank me and my friend Mr. Cobden on your bended knees for it.' ' Your wages have increased 30 per cent, in the last 10 years,' says Monsieur Haussonville to the working classes of Paris in a recent number of the Revue des Deux Mondes. 'This is the result of pro- tecting the industries of the people.' ' Wages,' says Monsieur Haussonville, ' have increased from 25 to 60 per cent, in the various kinds of trades.' He estimates that 74 per cent, of the working population of Paris earn 4s. and more per day, that 22 per cent, earn from 3s. to 4s. per day, whilst 4 per cent, earn less than 3s. per day. These are the wages in the capital of protectionist France. Can free-trade London or Manchester show any- thing like the same result ? But it is not only in France and England that wages have increased ; it is the same in every industrial country in the world, only there is this very remarkable difference, that the rise in wages has been much steadier and more rapid and sustained in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, and America, that have stuck to 'protection to native industry,' than in England that has introduced free trade. At present wages are falling rapidly in every industry in England. Free- WAGES. 257 traders assure the work-people that this is only a tempo- rary fall, and that they will rise again. This is not true, and it is a shame for those who affect to be the work- people's guides to deceive them. The wages of English workpeople can never permanently rise again. Wars or special circumstances may cause a temporary rise, but in face of the competition of cheaper labour they must fall. The leaders of the working classes treat their clients like fools when they assemble together at Leeds and else- where and talk by the hour about the franchise and municipal reform, that they believe will advance their own importance, and say not a word about the want of work that is threatening the very existence of millions of the people ! They seriously address the working classes in the very words Bastiat mockingly puts into the mouths of those he wishes to gibbet as economic fools : L'aumone dit, ' Tu souffres ; ' dit elle au peuple, ( C'est que tu as trop multiplie, et je vais te preparer un vaste systeme d'emi- gration !'...' Tu meurs d'inanition : je donnerai a chaque famille un jardin et un vache !'...' Tu es ex- tenue de fatigue, c'est que 1'on exige de toi trop de travail, et j'en limitera la duree.' * You suffer,' say our economists, * because there are too many of you ; we will organise for you a gigantic system of State-aided emigration. You suffer for want of suitable lodgings ; we will provide each family with a sitting-room and bedroom. You are worn out with fatigue ; it is because you work too many hours ; we will pass a law to limit your hours of labour.' This is charity. But the working classes don't want charity : they want work. What sense is there in limiting the labour of our operatives to nine hours a day if at the same time we invite the competition of foreign operatives, who work twelve hours a day ? What sense is there in saying to a starving woman, ' You shall not stitch shirts at 4d. per dozen,' if at the same time you admit into your market the shirts stitched by foreign women at 3d. per dozen? It is merely saying to them, s 258 'STKAY SHOTS.' 'Thou shalt not work.' The corollary of our one-sided free trade is emigration. There is no doubt about it whatever. When foreign corn replaces English corn it drives our land out of cultivation and our labourers out of employ- ment. What are they to do? They must emigrate or starve. When foreign manufactures replace English manu- factures they drive our operatives out of work. What are they to do ? They must either emigrate or starve. An industrial community whose markets are invaded on all sides by all the other industrial communities of the world, and whose products are in turn boycotted by all the con- suming communities in the world, must very speedily suffer, and a vast amount of work must leave them. Their weaker industries will first be killed down by the foreign competitor, and their stronger industries will soon suffer from combined assaults and from, exclusion from foreign markets. Mr. Chamberlain says England is ' the paradise of the rich,' and warns us not to allow it to become ' the purga- tory of the poor.' Is there any way more certain of making it the ' paradise of the rich ' than by cheapening the luxuries of the rich ? Is there any way more certain of making it the * purgatory of the poor ' than by depriving the poor of their work ? Philosophical free-traders believe that in extending the franchise they are for ever securing their supremacy ; they are, in fact, preparing their own Nemesis. The ratio of persons enjoying the right to vote in the United Kingdom is small compared to other coun- tries: in the United Kingdom 9 per cent., in Germany 21, in Spain 23, Switzerland 24, France 27. In America it is even greater. In every one of these countries the working classes have the chief power, and in every one of these countries they make use of this power to ' protect their own labour.' Is it not absolutely certain that when the present 9 per cent, of British voters is increased to 27 per cent, that they will do as all their manufacturing WAGES. 259 mates all over the world have done ' protect their own industries ? ' It is a certainty ! The extension of the fran- chise will save industrial England, if it does not come too late. But at the present rate at which the land is going out of cultivation and the manufacturing industries are shrinking-, it is to be feared it will come too late. XLIV. INDUSTRIAL RUIN. IF anything will rouse the working classes in England to a perception of the industrial ruin that is overtaking them, it is such a notice as the following : SILK MANUFACTURERS IN THE UNITED STATES. Bradstreet Trade Journal. It is estimated that over 40 per cent, of the silk goods consumed in the United States is of American production, and the industry is growing rapidly. Manufacturers are steadily extending their lines of production. Apart from design, the purity of our silks is in their favour, &c. &c. Twenty years ago Coventry had a flourishing silk in- dustry that was also growing rapidly, where silks were produced of excellent quality, and thousands of operatives of both sexes were employed. Now the silk industry of Coventry is dead dead as Julius Csesar and the silk workers have turned their hands to something else, or left the country. Twenty years ago America had no silk industry what- ever. We see what it is now. It supplies half the con- sumption of a population of nearly 50,000,000 of people, and the quality produced is the best in the world ! Why has the production of silk died out in England, and why has it sprang to great prosperity in America? In both countries the population has immensely increased; in both countries the consumption of silks has immensely increased. s 2 2fiO 'STKAY SHOTS.' The reason is very simple. It is because in England free trade has encouraged the consumption of foreign silks in the place of English silks ; and in America pro- tection has encouraged the consumption of American silks in the place of foreign silks. Twenty years of free trade have ruined the silk industry of England ; and twenty years of protection have created the silk industry of America. In America the protectionists say : ' The interests of our working classes come first far before the interests of any other industrial class in the world. They all shall starve ere we want.* In England our free-traders say the very reverse of this. ' The interests of our working classes interest us no more than the interests of the working classes of the rest of the world,' say they. ' They may starve, or work short time, or not work at all ; but in no degree whatever will we protect their interests against the interests of their foreign rivals ! ' Are the British operatives mad that they do not see the tide that is rapidly submerging them ? The water is already above their knees ; it is rising to their waists, it will soon be up to their armpits ; and yet they make no sign. The silk industry is dead ; the woollen industry is dying ; the cotton industry is hopelessly sick ; the same with almost every industry in the country. Will the working classes move neither hand or foot till it is too late ? In a few years, at the present rate, there will not be a flourishing industry left in England. Every manufacturing industry will be killed down like our agricultural indus- tries. And what then ? Those with independent incomes will buy everything from abroad food, silks, woollens, cotton but how about those who have no fixed incomes? How abont the workers? How about the millions who live by labour ? What are they to do ? How are they to buy if they earn no wages ? How are they to live if they have no work ? INDUSTKIAL KUIN. 261 If English operatives are in doubt of what their fate will be when their industries are ruined, let them look at Ireland. There is no mistake about it. If the industrial classes in England do not rouse themselves before it is too late, and fling to the dogs the fiscal nonsense of Mr. Bright and the Cobden Club, the industrial condition of England in a few years will be what the industrial con- dition of Ireland is now. Ireland once had a population of 8,000,000 of people. She had many flourishing industries, and exported her manufactures, her corn, her cattle ; she was rich and prosperous. What is she now ? Her population has dwindled to 5,000,000, her manufacturing industries are dead, her land is rapidly growing out of cultivation. She has neither domestic industries nor foreign trade. She toils not, neither does she sow ; she neither grows, nor works, nor buys she goes without. What has killed industrial Ireland? Free trade. What is killing industrial England ? Free trade. What alone can restore and maintain industrial prosperity in England and Ireland ? Protection. 265 XLV. HARBOURS OF REFUGE. WE hear a good deal of the profits of our vast commercial fleet; it may be as well sometimes to look at its losses also. They represent something considerable in .s.d., and take more of the gilt off the gingerbread than is generally supposed. During the twelve months 1881-82, 705 sailing and steam ships, with their cargoes, were totally lost on the coasts of these islands. Three thousand sailing and steam ships, with their cargoes, were more or less seriously damaged or lost, and 1,021 British sailors were drowned. I believe that, taking sailing ships and steamers together, it is approximately fair to put them at 200 tons each. Therefore 705 ships, of 200 tons each, represent a total of 140,000 tons ; and valuing ship and cargo together at 20Z. per ton (and I do not think this is too high), this represents a total loss to the community of 2,800,0002. In the same way, 3,000 ships, of 200 tons each, represent a total of 600,000 tons partially lost or damaged* Esti- mating this at 5L per ton, we have a loss of 3,000*OOOZ. a total loss in value of ships and cargo, in one year, of 5,800,000?. But there is another item more serious still, which is the loss of our seamen. During the last year 1,021 British sailors were drowned on our own coasts. What loss to the community do these thousand drowned men represent? It is difficult to appraise the value of flesh and blood. You may approximate the loss to the com* 260 'STRAY SHOTS.' munity in .s.d., but who can approximate the loss to the living and the dead in agony, in despair, in misery 9 Most of our sailors earn on an average, directly or indirectly, 25s. a week. If the community finds it worth its while to pay a man 25s. per week for his labour, it is fair to suppose that the community profits by this labour to the full extent of the 25s. it pays for it. How much it profits in excess of the 25s. no one knows. It may be 10 per cent., it may be 1 00 per cent. I will merely assume that the labour of each sailor drowned is worth to the community that employs him the amount of his wages. Every sailor, therefore, who is drowned is worth to the community 25s. per week, and his loss is a loss to the community of 25s. per week. How many years' work do we suppose there is in the men who go down to the sea in ships? Have they ten years' work in them, or fifteen, or twenty? Let us assume fifteen years. Therefore, the death of a sailor who has fifteen years' work in him is a loss to the community of 780 weeks' work, of the value of 25s. per week, or say 1,OOOZ. It is a fact, therefore, that for every British sailor drowned the British community lose in actual .s.d. at the very least 1,OOOZ. The debit side, therefore, of the account for the last twelve months stands as follows : Total loss of 705 ships and cargo, 2,800,OOOZ. ; injury and partial loss of 3,000 ships and cargo, 3,000,000. ; loss of sailors' lives, 1,000,000*. Total, 6,800,OOOZ. This enormous loss is incurred on the coasts of our own islands, close to our very doors, often in our sight and hearing. It does not include the loss of life and ships and property in other parts of the world. If a few breakwaters and harbours of refuge around our coasts would save some hundreds of these valuable lives or some millions of this valuable property, would it not appear to be a good national investment? To go further. Is it possible to construct a harbour of refuge on any one of the many dangerous parts of our coasts that HAEBOUKS OF KEFUGE. 267 would not pay the country, directly or indirectly, 100 per cent. ? And if you can invest money at 100 per cent., is it unwise to borrow it at 3 per cent, in order to do so ? XLVL COMMON SENSE AND COVERED YARDS. THERE is no doubt of it, British farmers are between the devil and the deep sea. Their position is critical. In- sufficient capital, foreign competition, bad seasons, want of enterprise, and an unwillingness or inability to adapt themselves to new conditions of agriculture have brought them to a bad fix. The number of farming failures has increased six times in ten years. Thousands have paid their debts and have nothing left. Many more are in debt all round, to their landlords, their bankers, their manure merchants, their seed merchants, and to their friends. All they can scrape together goes to pay the interest on borrowed money. Farmers, of course, are of all sorts. Some are sober, intelligent, laborious, enterprising, trying to do the best possible for their landlords and for themselves. Others are the very reverse of all this- wasting their time at fairs and markets, wanting in industry, enterprise, and common sense; crawling along in the old grooves that were cut by their forefathers three hundred years ago; letting the world pass them by; learning nothing, and indeed declining to be taught. Good or bad, however, intelligent or stupid, laborious or idle, in one point they are all alike they have no money. It is a fact that ninety-nine out of every hundred of the tenant farmers of the United Kingdom are without the capital necessary to stock and cultivate their farms. In many parts of the country the land is divided up into small fields by enormous hedgerows; it is only 268 '8TBAY SHOTS.' partially drained, and the drains often entirely neglected ; it is badly weeded, manured, and tilled ; only half stocked, and the stock not half cared for ; the farm buildings are often out of repair ; there are no covered yards to protect the stock and preserve the manure ; there is often a com- pulsory rotation of crops unsuited to the soil ; there are few labour-saving machines ; dairy-farming and beetroot- growing are entirely neglected ; the most rudimental science, even common sense, in farming matters, are abso- lutely ignored. Now this is, without any exaggeration, the condition of at least 525,000 out of the 550,000 farms in Great Britain. It is a fact that 90 per cent, of the land of the United Kingdom is farmed in a manner that, in the face of American competition, makes profit impossible. In all directions farms are being thrown up; in many places land is going out of cultivation, and this, be it especially remembered, with a very rapidly increasing population and an immensely increased consumption of food. Our wheat area has diminished a fourth, or 1,000,000 acres, in 10 years; 350,000 acres have been withdrawn from cultivation within the last 12 months. Between 1877 and 1879 we grew 6 per cent, less wheat, to feed 34,000,000 of people than we did between 1811 and 1836, to feed 17,000,000. The corn return for 1879 is the lowest since agricultural returns were first published. Corn crops, barley, beans, green crops, have fallen off; there are less sheep, less lambs, fewer pigs, fewer agricul- tural horses than there were. At the same time the draining, the weeding, the manuring, the tilling, and stocking of a great portion of the land have been * scamped.' In favourable seasons, certainly, the farmers may live from hand to mouth, but in ordinary seasons they can only pay their rent by robbing the land, by handing to the land- lord money that should properly be expended in stocking and cultivating his land. Of course, the capital value of land that is neglected and badly farmed steadily dimin- ishes ; and the tenant who pays away as rent the money COMMON SENSE AND COVEEED YAEDS. 269 that is indispensable to the proper cultivation of his farm is virtually paying his landlord out of his own capital. Tree trade and foreign competition on a gigantic scale have completely revolutionised the agricultural conditions of Great Britain. She can now only hold her own home markets for grain, meat, and daily produce by employing increased capital and industry, higher cultivation, more liberal stocking and manuring, and by immediately adopt- ing every improvement that science and experience can. suggest. The old ideas and practices of farming are played out. British agriculturists must take an entirely new de- parture, and if they cannot, or will not, do so they will die out. No doubt we have had a succession of bad seasons, but did England ever have a succession of good ones ? Bad seasons are our normal condition ; it is no use growl- ing about bad weather in England ; it is a constant quantity, and has to be accounted for in all our calculations. Bad seasons alone do not account for the present agricultural distress. It is bad seasons combined with foreign competi- tion that have caused the mischief. If British agriculture cannot stand against bad seasons, it is indeed in a bad state, for bad seasons are always with us. The question is, whether it can stand bad seasons and foreign competi- tion combined. That is the question, and the answer is comprised in the formula, ' capital and common sense.' With capital and common sense, it is almost certain that British agriculture can not only stand against bad seasons and foreign competition, but will, moreover, give a good return to those who undertake to cultivate the land liber- ally and intelligently. Now, there is this peculiarity about the decline of agriculture in England, that it is not visible in any other country in the world. In Holland, Belgium, France, Portugal, Germany, America, India, Australia, in fact, in every known country, great or small, agricultural produce shows a steady annual increase. It is in England and 270 'STRAY SHOTS.' Ireland alone that agricultural produce shows a rapid annual decline. Will economists explain this ? Will they tell us why, with an annually-increasing supply of hands to work and of mouths to feed, our production of food is steadily diminishing? Why is it that whilst every inch of soil, good, bad, or indifferent, is brought into cultivation in Holland and Belgium, hundreds of thousands of acres that formerly brought forth food have gone out of cultiva- tion in England and Ireland ? The great dealers in money and goods, who flourish by trade and commerce, and who look upon Board of Trade returns of exports and imports as the true test of the nation's prosperity, regard the de- cline of agriculture with a light heart ; their only feeling, when they give it a thought, is one of irritation against the farmers who persist in grumbling while they them- selves are so prosperous ; who actually, ' like a slovenly, unhandsome corpse,' come between the wind and their nobility ! But to those who, like me, believe that ' the wealth of a country is the value of what it produces,' and that the value of its production, and not the bulk of its imports and exports, constitutes the true test of its pros- perity, the rapidly accelerating decrease in the value of our greatest productive industry is a matter that causes the greatest alarm. ' Capital and common sense ' must be the motto of our farmers, but how to get either or both is the difficulty. One is of little use without the other. Common sense can do little without capital, and millions of capital are annu- ally wasted for want of common sense. Now, it is a fact that if we saw the same absence of intelligence, common sense, and utter defiance of daily experience in any other business or industry that is visible in ordinary farming operations in 99 farms out of every 100 throughout the country, we should conclude at once that not only was such industry or business doomed to speedy ruin, but that the ruin was not wholly undeserved. To begin with the homely produce of the farmyard, muck. Roughly described, COMMON SENSE AND COVERED YARDS. 271 muck consists of ammonia, fertilising salts, the droppings of cattle more or less valuable, according to their food straw, in a greater or less degree of composition, and a littlo silica. Prepared under cover, protected from sun, wind, and rain, muck is the most valuable product of the farm ; it is the blood and bone of the soil. Judiciously and liberally employed, it will produce in perfection every crop. The difference between muck and guano (and most other artificial manures) on the land is the difference be- tween spirits and food on the human body ; whilst one merely stimulates, the other nourishes and gives strength and makes bone and blood. Muck prepared under cover, protected from the elements, retains all its fertilising ele- ments in perfection ; exposed to wind, rain, and sun, it speedily loses every element that constitutes its value, and nothing remains but half-decayed straw and a little silica. Prepared under the former conditions, with well-fed stock, muck is worth 10s. a load; prepared under the latter, it is not worth 2s., often nothing at all. Now, how do we British agriculturists, with all the chemistry of the most scientific age the world has ever seen, with the daily example of all foreign agriculturists how do we treat this valuable commodity ? We continue to make our muck in open yards, surrounded often by buildings without spouts, alternately drenched by the rain or desiccated by the sun and wind ; its ammonia, its salts, the droppings of the cattle allowed to evaporate or drain away into the neighbouring ponds and ditches to fatten the ducks and poison the frogs and cattle. Taking the average of the three systems of farming usually practised the four-course or Norfolk system, the five- course or Northumberland system, and the six-course or East Lothian system an acre ought to produce about 3 tons of muck annually ; that is to say, a mixed farm of grass and arable, of say 120 acres, ought to produce 360 loads of muck, without any cake or artificial feeding. This would repre- sent for the acreage of England 90 millions of loads of 272 'STEAY SHOTS; muck; but it is doubtful whether half this quantity is really made. At present, Great Britain, I believe, does not produce more than 45 millions of loads of muck, which, as we prepare it, is worth barely 2s. 6d. a load, or 5 millions sterling a year. This is the present value of the muck crop of our 30 millions of acres of grass and arable land. With covered yards and sufficient stock, and the most moderate exercise of common sense, we should pro- duce 3 loads per acre, or 90 millions of loads, worth, not 2s. 6d., but 10s. a load ; not 5 millions, but 45 millions sterling a year ; and the difference between 5 and 45 millions sterling is the price England pays for her wanton defiance of the simplest principles of common sense. In the one matter of muck alone the English landlords and farmers waste, absolutely throw away, 40 millions sterling, or 30s. per acre, annually. ' Now this is nonsense,' I hear farmers say ; * like so many others, you are writing about what you don't understand.' Let us see. * We have endeavoured to show,' says Mr. Morton, in the ( Encyclopaedia of Agriculture,' vol. ii. page 322, * in a general way, how much manure may be made on a farm annually ; but of course the calculations are based upon the supposition that nothing is lost. Were we to take the case of a stall-fed cow, voiding only 601b. of urine per day, one-third of which is retained by the litter, and were no provision made for collecting the surplus, the loss in 12 months would amount to 40 plus 365, equal to 3 tons 12cwt. and 161b., or 1,480 gallons, every 5 gallons of which contain nearly lib. of ammonia (Sprengel) ; the loss from ammonia alone, calculating this substance at 6d. a pound, its recognised value in agriculture, would be 2621b. at 6^., equal to 61. 11s., which would purchase 14cwt. of guano.' These are the words of Mr. Morton, and he adds : ' A farmer who imports his ammonia from the Chincha Islands, and dissipates to the four winds of heaven that furnished by his own farm, is nearly as waste- ful as he would be if he were to give away his straw for COMMON SENSE AND COVEKED YAEDS. 273 nothing, and purchase from others what he requires for his own use.' * What should we now think of the people,' says Professor Tanner, ' who, when tea was first brought into England, not knowing how to use it, stewed it, then poured away the liquor, and then tried to eat the leaves with pepper and salt? Yet this is what we do and see done every day ; we see the strong black liquor running from the farmyard to the pond, and the dry and dusty manure being carted away to the land.' ' Jack's Educa- tion,' by Professor Tanner. Not only do we allow all the value of our muck yards to drain away to the ponds and ditches, but when the yard is full of half-rotten straw we cart it away to the corner of some field or roadside, and leave it there for months, or years, till it is absolutely worth no more than the sweep- ings of the neighbouring highway. Indeed the waste of farmyard manure in the United Kingdom is monstrous. It is a fact that the loss incurred by the agricultural in- terest through the neglect of farmyard manure is not less than 30s. per acre, or 40 millions sterling per annum. The value of the whole wheat crop of Great Britain is put at 28 millions sterling ; so that we actually every year sacri- fice by neglect of our manure half as much again as we realise for the whole wheat crop of the United Kingdom. With what reason can the farmers attribute their distress to the wet seasons that occasionally injure their wheat crops to the extent of 5 or 6 millions, when they them- selves every year, by their wanton stupidity, absolutely destroy their crop of muck, that is worth 40 millions? The late Mr. Kay, in his work on Free La,nd, gives con- tinual examples of the incessant care taken by farmers in Belgium, France, Holland, Switzerland, and Germany in the collection and preparation and application of farmyard manure, and concludes with the sad and humiliating re- mark, 'Alas ! there is as much manure wasted and thrown away in England as would, in my opinion, double or treble the produce of our country if properly applied.' T 274 'STRAY SHOTS.' But it is not only in the treatment of muck that the absence of common sense in farming matters is so startling. Live stock fares but little better. In fattening animals it is found beneficial in practice to give them food that con- tains rather less moisture than is naturally required, and to let them have constant access to water. Illustrate this general law by the example of sheep. Sheep thrive best on comparatively dry food ; they require very little water ; they are peculiarly liable to scouring, to flukes in the liver, to distension, and other diseases that are invariably aggravated by a watery and laxative diet. Having this well-known fact constantly before us, how do we treat them ? We restrict them to the most watery and laxative diet it is possible to procure, and we actually go to enor- mous expense in order to grow a crop of water for thoir especial benefit. When we consider that turnips contain nearly 90 per cent, of water, and that 51b. of oil cake is the nutritive equivalent of 100 of them, and that in order to get a square meal out of them the unfortunate sheep have to swallow nine portions of water to one of nutrition, it really appears little less than wonderful that they ever manage to pick up a living at all. Some day of course the bucolic mind will awake to the fact that the cultiva- tion of the watery bulb occupies a somewhat absurd pro- minence in this watery land ; that as sheep require little water it cannot possibly be the most suitable diet for them ; and that to expend millions annually in growing what you can get almost everywhere for nothing, assimilates more to the practice of the silly fellow than of the wise man. I declare, when I think how sheep are treated in this country I sometimes wonder there are any left. Not only are they compelled, even in winter, when everything is saturated, to swallow nine mouthfuls of water with one mouthful of solid food, but they are kept out in the fields, day and night, during the severest weather, up to their hocks in mud, with little or no shelter, or even a dry spot to lie on, in order that they may ' eat water ' on certain COMMON SENSE AND COVERED YAKDS. 275 lands. The manure of animals so fed is worth very little they often do more harm than good by poaching the ground and as for getting fat, every atom of nutrition is consumed in replacing the enormous waste of caloric. Truly, in his treatment of sheep, the British agriculturist is a very Sangrado. Common sense tells us a few facts about the treatment of stock that are so self-evident it appears incredible that they should be generally ignored. 4 An animal fattens on less food at two years old than three/ on less food at three than at four. * No fattening animal should ever be allowed to go back.' From the hour of his birth to his last unpleasant quarter of an hour with the butcher, his life should be one continuous un- broken preparation for the knife. To feed stock well during the summer and to starve them during the winter is to treat them exactly as Penelope treated her web to undo at night what she had done with great care and labour during the day. Stock requires better food and more food in winter than in summer. The commonest of common sense tells us that if muck is to retain its fertilising properties it must be protected from sun and rain ; and the commonest of common sense tells us that if we wish animals to get fat we must feed them with judgment and keep them warm ; and as neither of these things, to say nothing of others equally impor- tant, can be done on the necessary scale in our aqueous climate without covered yards, common sense tells us that as a matter of course covered yards must come. May they come soon ! XLVII. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. I GATHER from several articles that have lately appeared in the Times that the official statistics of the last four months warrant the hope that drunkenness is on the T 2 276 'STRAY SHOTS.' decrease ; but this, I fear, is not the practical experience of coroners, doctors, magistrates, clergymen, police, Poor Law guardians, and others who are daily brought face to face with this monster evil; on the contrary, in their opinion, we are only just now beginning to reap the noxious harvest of the great year of drinking we have just passed through. The consumption of the hour may have fallen with the fall in wages, but experience warns us not to be too sanguine as regards any reformation resulting from such a cause. It appears to me a mistake to cry * " Peace, Peace," when there is no peace,' and to make use of a temporary lull to calm the public con- science; better far that it should be thoroughly roused and the note of warning kept ringing in its ears. There is little sense, and less manhood, in attempting to conceal from ourselves what is notorious to all the rest of the world, that England Christian, civilised England has a greater percentage of her children sunk in the most degrading vice that ever afflicted mankind than any other nation under heaven at least, any that I am acquainted with. Go where you will, the moment you descend below the surface you come upon a chaos of low bestial drunkenness. Every town in England has its dis- tricts whose inhabitants, men and women, wallow in moral filth and degradation, where day and night the ear is appalled by sounds such as made the poet weep on his first entry to the infernal regions : Various tongues, Horrible language, outcries of woe, Accents of danger, voices deep and hoarse. Enter any of the abodes of foulness, of riot, of disease, that crowd these miserable regions, and there you find the habitual drunkard. And in his hand did bear a bowzing cann, In which he sup't so oft that on his seat His drunken corse he scarce upholden can, In shape and life more like a monster than a man. THE LIQUOB TRAFFIC. 277 Man, and woman too, in the most degraded condition human wickedness and animalism can attain to the Prince of Foulness himself patting them on the back and grinning over their shoulders ! But what is the use of adding another to the thousand-and-one sermons on the horrors of drink ? The handwriting is on the wall crime, lunacy, pauperism, ignorance, juvenile profligacy, neglected homes, warn us in language that cannot lie that if we do not shake off our national vice our kingdom will be taken from us. Those who run may read, and those who will not understand would not be convinced though one rose from the dead. We are a commercial people ; morality apart, do we realise the money loss annually caused by our habits of intemperance? We expend 13,000,000?. sterling annually in suppressing crime and supporting pauperism and lunacy (I fancy it is considerably more, but I have not the figures by me). Now, 90 per cent, of this crime, 90 per cent, of this pauperism, 90 per cent, of this lunacy is caused, directly or indirectly, by drink. Last year 146,000,0002. sterling were spent in the public houses throughout the country. This does not include other millions spent in wine and spirits procured from other sources. It is calcu- lated that 97,000,OOOZ. of this sum was spent by the wage- earning class by the operatives, the labourers, and the 1 residuum. 5 Do we really realise what sums these are, and what their waste or useless expenditure means ? It means that in ten years the wage-earning class have spent 800,000,OOOL, or near upon it, in drink. Half that amount would be a liberal more than a liberal, a profuse allow- ance. The other half is as much wasted as if it had been thrown into the sea. ' Quid leges sine moribus Vanas proficiunt ? ' What profits a nation to have wise laws, good institu- tions, if their public morals, their habits and tastes, are bad? Is it not beginning at the wrong end to amend 278 'STRAY SHOTS; our land laws, our labour laws, our education laws, till this horrible waste, which must stultify all legislative efforts, is in some degree checked ? How many peasant proprietors, how many workmen become employers, how many improved dwellings, how much education, how much respectability, what a general rise in the social ladder would this 400,000,0002., fairly expended, have placed to the credit side of the national account ! What legislative scheme, even though devised exclusively for the advantage of the wage-earning class, can restore to them a fourth part of the means of improving their condition they annually cast from them ? The Government, as guardians of the commonwealth, have a right to say ' This waste is intolerable, it is scandalous, it is a national disgrace ; it deprives your children of education, your homes of decency ; it pauperises the community ; it degrades the national character ; it deteriorates the English breed ; it is the bramble that chokes all the good seed that falls by the wayside ; before we help you you must help yourselves ; nine-tenths of the evils you complain of are of your own making ; you have now actually the means of doing for yourselves all you ask the law to do for you, and you decline to take advantage of it. What laws can improve your position so long as you waste from 40,000,OOOL to 50,000,000?. a year in drink? ' No reasonable being who will consider these figures can doubt the ruinous extent of the national wastefulness. The questions that interest all are, What is the cause of it, and how can it be mitigated ? The chief causes of drunkenness are ignorance and the consequent inability to make a rational use of leisure, con- stant temptation arising from the daily increasing facilities for getting drink, and sheer vice. Thousands of the work- ing classes drink because they know no other way of enjoy- ing their play-hours ; thousands drink because they have been brought up and lived all their lives in an atmosphere of drink, and are accustomed from their infancy to look THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 279 upon this vice as a natural condition of existence ; thou- sands more succumb to incessant temptation the multi- plication of public houses, the daily-increased facilities for procuring drink, the ceaseless solicitations of the trade. Now, of course, education will do much to arrest this evil, and if time were no element in the question we might trust to that, and that alone, to effect a cure ; but, un- fortunately, it is a slow p rocess. While the grass grows the horse starves, and though the next generation may be saved by it, the present, I fear, will profit little. School learning can but very slightly diminish the present genera- tion of drunkards, but an immensity of good may be done by giving every assistance and facilities for healthy recrea- tion and instruction. I doubt, indeed, whether, after all, this is not the system of education that promises the best results. Our climate does not allow the same open-air amusements enjoyed by other nations, but we have a certain number of picture galleries, and museums, and public gardens, and it should be the chief aim of every Government to enlarge in every possible way the facilities for their enjoyment. How preposterous, how monstrous it must appear to a man who is working hard five and a half days a week to find the museums and picture galleries closed on the Saturday afternoon and the Sunday, the only days he has the power of visiting them ! What meaning does the ' National ' Gallery and the ' British ' Museum convey to his mind, who finds it is national only for those who are at play all the week, and British only for the loungers ? I see Lord Shaftesbury lately presented a petition, signed by 100,000 persons, against the opening of museums and picture galleries on Sunday. I am sure if the question were considered on the basis of common sense it would be easy to get a million to petition the other way. The petition was based on two arguments first, that the door-keepers and guardians of the galleries and museums would lose their Sunday holy day; and, 280 'STRAY SHOTS; secondly, that by opening places of instruction and amuse- ment on the Sunday we should be assimilating the English to the foreign Sabbath. For every official employed in the museums and galleries who would lose his Sunday holy day probably 10,000 persons, at least, would enjoy healthy enjoyment, have their senses pleased, their ideas quickened, the desire for the fruit of knowledge implanted in them, and, above all, they would have acquired the conviction that there are other and more agreeable ways of spending their leisure than boosing in a public-house. As regards the danger of assimilating the British with the foreign Sabbath, do our most devout Sabbatarians ven- ture to maintain that the British Sabbath as we see it in Shoreditch, in Seven Dials, in Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, in all our great towns, is such a success that improvement is impossible ? Would it not be better that the Sabbath should be a day of recreation, of instruction, than a day of idleness and drunkenness ? Would it not be better the working classes should be waiting in crowds for the opening of the doors of the British Museum and of the National Gallery than for the opening of the doors of the public-houses ? What meaning do * the hours of Divine Service ' convey to the minds of hundreds of thou- sands in our great cities but as the hour when the public- houses are closed ? Far from dreading the assimilation of the British to the foreign Sabbath, I should hail it with delight. Believing, as I do, that drunkenness is of itself the most degrading of sins and the undoubted parent of all the other sins in the calendar, I maintain that the Sabbath as we see it in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, is more rational, more healthful for mind and body, more elevating in every way than the day of dulness, drowsiness, and drunkenness too frequently witnessed with us. A Government that is satisfied to take common sense for its guide can very much diminish the temptation the wage- earning class are exposed to from the want of healthy recreation and instruction for their leisure, and it can THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 281 diminish it still more by reducing the number of public houses. What a mockery must the parrot response, ' Lead us not into temptation/ appear to the working man, who sees legalised temptation in the shape of drinking-houses com- peting for him whichever way he may turn ! Go through the manufacturing districts where money is plenty : every corner house of every block of buildings is immediately monopolised by the brewer or the spirit merchant, and opened as a poison shop where health, morality, decency, everything that can improve or elevate our poor natures, are traded away for gin ! Why don't the clergy of all denominations it is their business rise and protest against the facilities that are given to publicans and brewers to tempt to their ruin the class that are least able to resist it ? It is not the story of one, but of thousands of drunkards among the working classes, that it is the constant temptation thrown in their way, the beerhouse and the gin palace soliciting them at every turn, that has caused their ruin. Anything that can increase the difficulties of procuring drink or make it dearer must be attended by indefinite national advantages. Laws are made, or should be, for the protection of the good, not for the convenience or the encouragement of the bad. Publicans should be closely watched. They are carrying on a trade that is directly injurious to the commonwealth, and they have no right to complain of any measures it may be found necessary to take to reduce it. The law should be so severe and so prompt that it would not pay for men of bad character, who are not determined to observe it, to enter the publican's business. This would free the country from a host of leeches who suck the life-blood of the nation, and fatten, like dung- flies, on the impurities of the people. But what is the use of enlarging on such a subject ? It is only repeating what every sensible man has been saying u 282 'STEAY SHOTS.' the last ten years. Nobody in his senses doubts that the consumption of intoxicating drinks in this country must, by some means or another, be immensely reduced. The question is how to do it. How is the phalanx of brewers, distillers, publicans, enriched by the profits of an annual trade that reaches nearly 150,000,000?., and flushed with the success of a general election, to be attacked ? Talk of the gold ring, the Erie ring, and other similar organisa- tions in America ! There never was any ring with anything like the power, the wealth, the combination of the liquor ring in this country. How is it to be broken ? for broken it must be if the nation is to escape social and moral ruin. Whenever the question is approached we are met by the ominous word ' confiscation,' the buckler of ( vested in- terests ' is flashed in our faces, and we are turned into stone ; but I suppose that even in so sacred a matter as vested interests a line must be drawn somewhere. Vested interests in a public nuisance must always be a doubtful claim, and few will doubt that there are hundreds and hundreds of the lower kinds of drinking dens that are public nuisances of the most iniquitous kind; but still there are these vested interests, and we must recognise them whether we will or no. It is true they have flourished on the corruption of the commonwealth, but we have allowed and even encouraged them to do so. We cannot, therefore, now in justice turn on them and in a fit of repentance repudiate our own handiwork. We want to diminish the consumption of drink con- siderably one-half, if possible ; to reduce the number of public houses; to put the whole trade under conditions less injurious to the commonwealth. How is this to be done ? It must be evident that with so vast a reform in view it is merely carrying on a noisy fight with bladders * disputing about the shadow of an ass ' to make so much ado about half an hour more or less closing. That will not give us the remedy we want. We must brace ourselves^o some more manly effort than that if we intend THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 283 to do anything. The more the question is considered, the more evident it appears to me that the only effectual way of dealing with the liquor ring is to disestablish it to buy up the vested interests that now arrest all reform at the threshold, and to reopen the trade under conditions that will be less destructive to the community. No doubt this is a large operation, but what of that if it will retrieve from absolute waste 60,000,0001 or 70,000,0002. annually, and relieve us from the crime, the pauperism, the lunacy that are now our curse and our disgrace ? We have, for the public good it is supposed, bought up the vested in- terests of the purchase officers of the army; we have bought up the vested interests in the telegraph com- panies ; we have disestablished the Irish Church ; many wish us to disestablish the English Church, and buy up the vested interests in railways. These are big operations certainly, and if we have undertaken them for the public good, why not carry out the same policy with the liquor ring? It cannot be money that should stop us, for cost what it will, it must, if successful, pay back a hundred and a thousand fold. XLYIII. ASCOT V. MONACO. I SEE our ' Goody s ' are again at their fussy work of volunteering to put their neighbour's house in order. They are always at some feeble nonsense or another. One day it is opium-eating in China ; another day it is bull-fighting in Spain ; another day it is cruelty to horses in Italy; and now their sensitive natures are exercised about gambling at Monaco. They say to the Prince of Monaco, 'Let us pull the mote out of thine eye,' and they are rather scandalised when they receive the very natural 284 'STRAY SHOTS.' rejoinder, ' First cast out the beam that is in thine own ! ' This presumptuous f ussiness, for it is nothing else, for the morals of our neighbours is all sham cheap hypocrisy of the most apparent kind ! Why, every sensible man knows that for every stone we throw at their glass houses they can throw back a dozen at ours ! Why can't we mind our own business? There is plenty of it. Certainly horses are cruelly treated in Italy; gamblers are ruined at Monaco; men poison themselves with opium in China; but that is their business. What is our business is, that horses are cruelly treated in England, gamblers are ruined on every racecourse in the kingdom, and men poison them- selves with spirits in England. Such being the case, I think it is more honest and more decent for us to clean out our own Augean stables before we begin to complain of that of our neighbours. We are told gambling is wrong : very likely it is ; I don't know ; but this I do know, that it is one of the most ancient infirmities of mankind, and I have little doubt that Noah and his three suns had nightly a double-handed game of cribbage, or some such innocent jeu, after the lights were out and they had littered down their live stock in the Ark. It does not seem to me that there is anything very immoral in gambling under reasonable conditions. There is no more harm in tossing for a halfpenny than there is in smoking a cigar or eating an ice ; but the man is a fool who eats and smokes till he is sick, or loses more halfpence than he has got ; and he is a rogue if he tosses with a half- penny that has got two heads or two tails ; and this is the difference between gambling at Monaco and gambling at Ascot or Epsom. At the former the halfpennies all have a head and a tail ; at the latter a great number have not. If gambling is wrong, it is because it is injurious to individuals and to society ; it is entirely a question of degree. Well, I believe the degrees of gambling that is to say, the gambling that does most harm to individuals and to society, and the gambling that does least harm to ASCOT v. MONACO. 285 society is well illustrated by the gambling at Monte Carlo, and the gambling at, say, Ascot. At Monte Carlo gambling is perfectly fair ; cheating, in any shape or form, is absolutely impossible. Everything is conducted with a due regard for decorum and good manners ; no quarrelling, no swearing, no drinking, no dishonesty, no cruelty, no ruffianism. The implements of gambling are inanimate objects : cards, dice, roulette balls that cannot be made to lie, that cannot be pulled, or roped, or poisoned. There is no playing on credit. An intending gambler must have the money in his pocket. If he has not got it he must get it ; he must mortgage his property or borrow at 60 per cent, or rob the till before he sits down to the table. For one man who would gamble on these terms there are twenty men who would gamble on credit. How much money would have been staked last week at Ascot if the gentlemen sportsmen had been obliged to produce their thousands, and their monkeys, and their ponies before each race was run ? Certainly there is a reverse to the medal. Fools ruin themselves at Monaco, as they do at Ascot and Epsom, on the Bourse, on the Stock Exchange, or in various other ways, and when they are ruined, destroy themselves. But this is not confined to Monaco. It is not only there that desperate men fly from the ills they have to others that they know not of. We read harrowing descriptions of ladies, with wan and eager looks watching the cards and the dice ; but, disagreeable as such a sight is, I don't think it is nearly so disagreeable as that of a female masher, flushed, excited, and unfeminine, exchang- ing bets with the howling demons of the Ring. The ' ring ' may be composed of the gentlest and most bene- volent of mankind, for all I know to the contrary. They are, no doubt, wise as serpents; but still they may be harmless as doves j very likely they are. I have not the pleasure of their acquaintance ; but certainly when follow- ing their avocation they do not, as a rule, display much of what artists call ' the beauty of expression.' Watch 286 'STRAY SHOTS.' them; look at the blanched, hard, cruel faces of the roaring crowd. Not far Stands Discord foaming ; Riot double-tongued And gleaming Frenzy ; and thy yellow wing, Revenge, fell fiend ! O'er all Disease, her beauty-withering hand Wav'd high. This is not Dante ; but nothing ever gives ine a greater idea of the splendid imagination of Dante than the fact that he was able to describe the infernal regions without ever having seen an English betting-ring. Oh, but I am told gambling on a racecourse is sport. I fail to see it. To me it appears to be simply gambling gambling as complete as that at Monaco, with this difference, that horses represent the cards and dice and roulette balls, and jockeys, and trainers, and ring men, and owners represent the croupiers. Gambling is not sport. Gambling kills sport. Plow many of the ' sportsmen ' who crowd to races would go near them if there were no gambling? How many gentlemen in the whole of England race only for sport? Why, you can count them on your fingers. Talk of sport, ye gods ! why, out of a dozen races how many are there about which there is not some suspicion, some secret, some whispers of ' being meant/ being ' run fat,' being ' pulled.' Some question about owner, trainer, or jockey, or the ring ? * Are you going to win, Bill ? ' asked his friend of a jockey who was cantering down to the starting-post. ' Not unless the reins break,' was the honest but scarcely sportsmanlike reply. It is very shocking, certainly, to hear the whacks resounding from the sides of the 'morti cavalli,' horses bought off the knackers' yard, in the shafts of the overloaded Neapolitan cabs; but it is a hundred times more shocking to hear the crack, crack, crack of the cruel cutting whip on the delicate flanks of the noble, generous, sensitive creatures, with coats of satin and skin as delicate as a woman's, as ASCOT V. MONACO. 287 their riders urge them to superequine efforts. There is this to be said for the Neapolitan cabman : he does it to gain his living, to feed his family, perhaps; the jockey does it probably to put hundreds or thousands into the pockets of some unscrupulous chevalier d'industrie. What, pray, is the plain English of such everyday sporting expressions as that ' the horse was ridden with the greatest determination,' ' was ridden right out,' &c. ? What does it mean but that a strong man with sharp spurs and a cutting whip used all his strength and his cunning and cruelty to urge some poor beast to impossible efforts? And what, pray, does it mean when we read that a horse ' faded away to nothing,' but that the poor tortured beast got faint and could struggle on no further ? Nineteen out of twenty of us who go to races and in our excitement applaud every stroke of the jockey's whip, would give a costermonger into custody if we saw him flogging his donkey half as cruelly, or goading him with a sharp instrument till the blood trickled down his sides. But yet the costermonger may plead necessity; the jockey, at best, can only plead sport. It is absolutely astounding to watch the insane fury that appears to drive the golden youth to ruin themselves on the Turf. Moths at a candle are a joke to them. There are a certain number of butchers whose avowed business it is to ' skin the lamb,' and the lambs crowd to them to be skinned, and appear rather proud of undergoing the operation. Would they crowd to the tables at Monaco if they knew that the cards were marked, the dice loaded, and that many of the croupiers were leagued together to ruin them ? But yet they know this is often actually the case on the Turf. They know that in many cases the cards are marked, the dice loaded, the croupiers in league against them, and yet they go on wagering as if they knew everything was fair. What is called ' plunging on the Turf means more or less ruin. If the plunger's heart fails him he may escape with the loss of half his fortune, or two-thirds of it ; but 288 'STRAY SHOTS.' if he is what is called a t good plucked one ' his absolute and complete ruin is a certainty. He will not escape whilst he has a feather left worth plucking. Eacing always has been, and always will be, a noble and exciting sport, but racing conducted merely on gambling principles is not sport at all, but the most cruel, the most dishonest, the most demoralising gambling in the world. Because I believe that public gambling is infinitely less injurious to individuals and to society than private gambling ; that gambling with cards, dice, roulette balls, is infinitely less injurious than gambling with horses ; that gambling for ready money is infinitely less injurious than gambling on credit therefore I believe that gambling at Monaco is infinitely less injurious than gambling at Ascot or Epsom, and therefore I think that before our * Goody s ' worry us about gambling at Monaco, they had better see what they can do about gambling at home. LONDON I PRINTED BY 8POTTI8WOODB AMD CO., NKW-STRKKT BQTTARB AND PARUAMKKT .-11:1 i I 39 PATERNOSTER Row, E.G. LONDON, November 1883. GENERAL LISTS OF WORKS PUBLISHED BY MESSRS. LONGMANS, GREEN & Co. 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Mill 4 Mental and Moral Science 6 on the Senses and Intellect 5 Emotions and Will 5 Baker's Two Works on Ceylon 17 Baits Alpine Guides 17 Baits Elements of Astronomy 10 Barry on Railway Appliances 10 Bauermaris Mineralogy io& n Beaconsfield's (Lord) Novels and Tales 17 & 18 22 WOKKS published by LONGMANS 6- CO. Beaconsfield' s (Lord) Speeches ............... i -- Wit and Wisdom ...... 6 Becker 's Charicles and Callus .................. 7 Beesly's Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla ......... 3 Black's Treatise on Brewing .................. 20 Blackley's German-English Dictionary ...... 7 Bloxam cV Huntingtons Metals ............ 10 Boultbee on 39 Articles ........................... 14 'j History of the English Church... 14 Bourne's Works on the Steam Engine...i3&i4 Bawdier s Family Shakespeare ............... 19 Bramley-Moore' s Six Sisters of the Valleys . 18 Bramston S* Leroy's Historic Winchester . 2 Brandt's Diet, of Science, Literature, & Art n Brasseys British Navy ........................... 13 - Sunshine and Storm in the East . 17 - Voyage in the ' Sunbeam ' ......... 17 Bray's Elements of Morality .................. 16 Browne's Exposition of the 39 Articles ...... 14 Brownings Modern England ............... 3 Buckle's History of Civilisation ............... 2 Buckton's Food and Home Cookery ......... 21 - Health in the House ............ I2&2I Bulls Hints to Mothers ........................ 21 - Maternal Management of Children . 21 Burgomaster's Family (The) .................. 18 Burton's Home Farm ........................... 21 Cabinet Lawyer .................................... 20 Calverfs Wife's Manual ........................ 16 Capes's Age of the Antonines .................. 3 - Early Roman Empire ............... 3 Carlyles Reminiscences ........................ 4 - Life .................................... 4 - (Mrs.) Letters and Memorials ... 4 Cates's Biographical Dictionary ............ 4 Cayley's Iliad of Homer ........................ 19 Changed Aspects of Unchanged Truths ... 7 Chesneys Waterloo Campaign ............... 2 Christ our Ideal ................................. 16 Church's Beginning of the Middle Ages ... 3 Colenso's Pentateuch and Book of Joshua . 16 Commonplace Philosopher ..................... 7 Conders Handbook to the Bible ............ 15 Coningtoti 's Translation of Virgil's ^Eneid 19 - Prose Translation of Virgil's Poems ............................................. 18 Contanseau's Two French Dictionaries ... 7 Conybeare and Howsoris St. Paul ............ 15 Cotta on Rocks, by Lawrence ............... II Counsel and Comfort from a City Pulpit... 7 Cox's (G. W.) Athenian Empire ............ 3 - Crusades .................... .... 3 --- General History of Greece 2 -- Greeks and Persians ......... 3 Creighton's Age of Elizabeth .................. 3 - England a Continental Power 3 Papacyduring the Reformation 2, 14 - Shilling History of England ... 3 - Tudors and the Reformation 3 Cresy's Encyclopaedia of Civil Engineering 14 Critical Essays of a Country Parson ......... 7 Culley's Handbook of Telegraphy ............ 13 Curteis's Macedonian Empire ............... 3 14 Davidson's New Testament Dead Shot (The) Dt Caisne and Le Maouts Botany ......... li De Tocaueville's Pemocracy in America.., 5 Dewes's Life and letters of St. Paul Dixon's Rural Bird Life Doyle's English in America Dresser's Arts of Japan 15 Eastlake's Hints on Household Taste ...... 13 - Five Great Painters ............... 13 - Foreign Picture Galleries ......... 13 Edersheim 'jjesus the Messiah ............... 16 Edmonds's Elementary Botany ............... n Ellicotts Scripture Commentaries .......... 15 Lectures on Life of Christ ...... 15 Elsa and her Vulture ........................... 18 Epochs of Ancient History ..................... 3 - English History .................. 3 Modern History ............. ..... 3 Evans's Bronze Implements .................. n Ewalds Antiquities of Israel .................. 15 - Apostolic Age ........................ 15 - Christ and His Times ............... 15 History of Israel ..................... 15 Fairbaim's Information for Engineers ...... 13 -- Mills and Millwork ............... 13 Farrar's Language and Languages ......... 7 Fitvwygram on Horses ........................ 19 Francis's Fishing Book ........................ 19 Freeman's Historical Geography ......... ... 2 - United States ........................ 16 Froude's Caesar.... .......................... ;..... 4 - English in Ireland .................. i - History of England ............. ..... i Gairdner's Houses of Lancaster and York 3 Ganot's Elementary Physics 9 Natural Philosophy g Gardiner's History of England 2 Outline of English History a Puritan Resolution 3 Thirty Years' War 3 (Mrs.) French Revolution 3 Glazebrook's Physical Optics 10 Goethe's Faust, by Birds 18 by Selss 18 by Webb 18 Goodeve's Mechanics and Mechanism ...... 13 Gore's Electro-Metallurgy 10 Gospel (The) for the Nineteenth Century . 16 Grant's Ethics of Aristotle 5 University of Edinburgh 6 Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson 7 Greville's Journal i Griffins Algebra and Trigonometry 10 Grove on Correlation of Physical Forces... 9 Gwilt's Encyclopaedia of Architecture 13 Hales Fall of the Stuarts 3 Halliwell-Phillippss Outlines of Shake- speare's Life 4 Hamilton's (Sir W. ) Life 4 Hartwig" s Works on Popular Natural History, &c xo&ii Hassall's Climate of San Remo 17 Hat ton 's Whom Nature Leadeth 17 Haughton's Physical Geography 10 WORKS published by LONGMANS 6- CO. Heatoris Memoir 3 Heer s Primeval World of Switzerland n Helmfwllz's Scientific Lectures 9 Herschels Outlines of Astronomy 8 Hobart's Medical Language of St. Luke... 6 Hopes Because of the Angels 17 Hopkins s Christ the Consoler 16 Horses and Roads 19 Howitt's Visits to Remarkable Places 19 Hullah's History of Modern Music n Transition Period II Hiding's Art-Instruction in England 13 Hume's Philosophical Works 6 Ihne's Rome to its Capture by the Gauls... 3 In the Olden Time 17 Ingelow's Poems 18 Jago's Inorganic Chemistry 12 Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art 12 Jefferies' Story of my Heart 6 Jenkin's Electricity and Magnetism 10 Johnson's Normans in Europe 3 Patentee's Manual 21 Johnston's Geographical Dictionary 8 Jukes' s New Man 15 Second Death 15 Types of Genesis 15 KaliscKs Bible Studies 15 Commentary on the Bible 15 Path and Goal 5 Keary s Outlines of Primitive Belief. 6 Kellers Lake Dwellings of Switzerland.... n Kerfs Metallurgy, by Crookes and Rohrig. 14 Koestlin' s Life of Luther 4 Landscapes, Churches, &c 7 Lathams English Dictionaries 7 Handbook of English Language 7 Lecky's History of England i European Morals 2 Rationalism 2 Leaders of Public Opinion 4 Leisure Hours in Town 7 Leslie's Political and Moral Philosophy ... 6 Lessons of Middle Age 7 Lewes's History of Philosophy 2 Lewis on Authority 6 Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicons 8 Lindley and Moore's Treasury of Botany ... 20 Lloyd's Magnetism 9 Longmans (F. W.) Chess Openings 20 Frederic the Great 3 German Dictionary ... 7 (W.) Edward the Third 2 Lectures on History of England a St. Paul's Cathedral .... 12 London's Encyclopaedia of Agriculture ... 14 ^-^ Gardening ... 1 1 & 14 Plants ii Lubbock's Origin of Civilisation n Ludlow ' s American War of Independence 3 Lyra Germanica 16 Macalister's Vertebrate Animals 10 Macaulay's (Lord) Essays I History of England ... i Lays, Illus. Edits.... 12 & 18 Cheap Edition... 18 Macaulay's (Lord) Life and Letters 4 Miscellaneous Writings 6 Speeches 6 Works i Writings, Selections from 6 M'Cullagh's Tracts 9 McCarthy's Epoch of Reform 3 McCulloch's Dictionary of Commerce 8 Macfarren on Musical Harmony 12 Macleod's Economical Philosophy 4 Elements of Banking 21 Elements of Economics 21 Theory and Practice of Banking 21 Macnamara's Himalayan Districts 17 Mademoiselle Mori 18 Mahaffys Classical Greek Literature 3 Manning's Mission of the Holy Ghost ... 16 Marshman's Life of Havelock 4 Martineau's Christian Life 16 Hours of Thought 16 Hymns -.. 16 Maunder' s Popular Treasuries ................ 20 Maxwells Don John of Austria ............ 2 - Theory of Heat ................ ... XO May's History of Democracy ............. ...,. t . i History of England I Melville's (Whyte) Novels and Tales ...... 18 Mendelssohn's Letters ........................... 4 Merivale's Fall of the Roman Republic ... 2 - General History of Rome ...... 2 - Roman Triumvirates ............... 3 - Romans under the Empire ...... 2 Merrif.eld's Arithmetic and Mensuration... 10 Miles on Horse's Foot and Horse Shoeing 19 - on Horse's Teeth and Stables ......... 19 Mill (J.) on the Mind ........................... 4 Mills (J. S.) Autobiography .................. 4 - Dissertations & Discussions 5 - Essays on Religion ............ 15 - Hamilton's Philosophy ...... 5 -- Liberty ........................... 5 - Political Economy ............ 5 Representative Government 5 -- Subj ection of Women ......... 5 - System of Logic .............. . 5 Unsettled Questions ......... 5 Utilitarianism .................. 5 Millard's Grammar of Elocution 7 Miller's Elements of Chemistry 12 Inorganic Chemistry IO&I2 Social Science Readings 21 Wintering in the Riviera 17 Milner's Country Pleasures n Mitchells Manual of Assaying 14 Modern Novelist's Library 18 Monck's Logic 5 Monselts Spiritual Songs 16 Moore's Irish Melodies, Illustrated Edition 12 Lalla Rookh, Illustrated Edition.. 12 Morris's Age of Anne 3 Mozley's Reminiscences of Oriel College... 4 Muller's Chips from a German Workshop. 7 Lectures on India 7 Origin &c. of Religion 16 Science of Language 7 Science of Religion 16 Selected Essays ,.... 7 Neison on the Moon 8 Nevile's Horses and Riding 19 WORKS published by LONGMANS & CO. New Testament (The) Illustrated 12 Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua 4 Nicols's Puzzle of Life n Northcott's Lathes & Turning 13 Oliphants In Trust 17 Our Little Life, by A. K. H. B 7 Owen's (R.) Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of Vertebrate Animals 10 Experimental Physiology ... 10 (j!) Evenings with the Skeptics ... 6 Payn's Thicker than Water 17 Perry's Greek and Roman Sculpture 12 Payen's Industrial Chemistry 13 Pewtner's Comprehensive Specifier 20 Piesse's Art of Perfumery 14 Pole's Game of Whist 20 Porter s Knights of Malta 2 Powells Early England 3 Preece & Sivewright's Telegraphy 10 Present-Day Thoughts 7 Proctor's Astronomical Works 8&9 Scientific Essays 11 Public Schools Atlases 8 Quairis Dictionary of Medicine 21 Rawlinsoris Ancient Egypt 2 Sassanians 2 Recreations of a Country Parson 7 Reeve's Cookery and Housekeeping 20 Reynolds s Experimental Chemistry 12 Rich's Dictionary of Antiquities 7 Rivers' s Orchard House n Rose Amateur's Guide n Robinson's Arden, a Novel 17 Rogers' s Eclipse of Faith and its Defence 15 Roget's English Thesaurus 7 Ronalds' Fly-Fisher's Entomology 19 Rowley's Rise of the People 3 Settlement of the Constitution ... 3 Rutley's Study of Rocks io&n Saltoun's (Lord) Scraps 4 Sandars's Justinian's Institutes 5 Sankey's Sparta and Thebes 3 Schellen s Spectrum Analysis 9 Scott's Rents and Purchases 21 Seaside Musings 7 Seebohm's Oxford Reformers of 1498 2 Protestant Revolution 3 Village Community 5 Bennetts Marine Steam Engine 13 Seth & Haldane's Philosophical Essays ... 6 Sewells Passing Thoughts on Religion ... 16 Preparation for Communion 16 Stories and Tales 18 Seymour's Hebrew Psalter 16 Shelley's Workshop Appliances 10 Shorfs Church History 14 Simcox's Latin Literature 2 Skobeleff and the Slavonic Cause 4 Smith's (Sydney) Wit and Wisdom 6 (R. B.)Carthage& the Carthaginians a ^ Rome and Carthage 4 Smith's (Dr. R. A.) Air and Rain 8 (J. Shipwreck of St. Paul 15 Southey's Poetical Works 19 6* Bowles's Correspondence 4 Stanley's Familiar History of Birds n Steel on Diseases of the Ox 19 Stephen's Ecclesiastical Biography 4 Stonehenge, Dog and Greyhound 19 Stubbs's Early Plantagenets 3 Sunday Afternoons, by A. K. H.B 7 Supernatural Religion 6 15 Swinburne's Picture Logic 5 TancocKs England during the Wars, 1765-1820 3 Taylor's History of India 3 Ancient and Modern History ... 3 {Jeremy} Works, edited by Eden 16 Text-Books of Science 10 Thome's Botany 10 Thomson's Laws of Thought 6 Thorpe's Quantitative Analysis 10 Thorpe and Muir's Qualitative Analysis ... 10 Three in Norway 16 Thudichum's Annals of Chemical Medicine 12 Tilden's Chemical Philosophy 10 Practical Chemistry 12 Trevelyans Life of Fox i Trollope's Warden and Barchester Towers 18 Twtss's Law of Nations in Time of War... 5 TyndaUs (Professor) Scientific Works... 9& ro Unawares 18 Under Sunny Skies, a Novel 17 Unwin's Machine Design 10 Ure's Arts, Manufactures, and Mines ...... 14 Ville on Artificial Manures 14 Von Bothener's Aut Caesar Aut Nihil 17 Walker on Whist 20 Walpole's History of England i Warburton's Edward the Third 3 Watson's Geometry 10 Watts' s Dictionary of Chemistry 12 Webb's Celestial Objects 8 Weld's Sacred Palmlands 17 Wellington's Life, by Gleig 4 Whately's English Synonymes 7 Logic and Rhetoric 5 Whites Four Gospels in Greek 15 and Riddle's Latin Dictionaries ... 8 Wilcocks's Sea-Fisherman 19 Williams' s Aristotle's Ethics 5 Willich's Popular Tables 21 Wilson's Studies of Modern Mind 6 Witts Myths of Hellas, translated by Younghusband 3 Wood's Works on Natural History 10 Yonge's English-Greek Lexicons 8 Youatt on the Dog and Horse 19 Zeller's Greek Philosophy 3 Spottiswoode & Co, Printers, New-street Square, London.