But I would observe that mention here is no compliment or flattery, because it is mention among whom ?-among the half-saved, those of the Limbo purgatory, the forgotten. I should be righteously derided then if I even named here the Brontès, Mrs Gaskell, Mrs Ewing, and many more. Mrs Henry Wood is read now-I see East Lynne,' and others, among the cheap editions. And so too, though I hardly know how, Charlotte M. Yonge, the beloved of my childhood, whose best-known novel is, I suppose, 'The Heir of Redclyffe.' Even then I could not do with that. Presumably, however, there are those who still read the blameless book, for I see it is reprinted. But I could and did read avidly 'The Daisy Chain,' which is, I think, a far better book in the same homely kind, 'The Chaplet of Pearls' and 'The Dove and the Eagles' Nest.' Here we find this quiet lady, too, swept along in the Wizard's train down the paths of historical romance. But Miss Yonge chiefly aimed at giving us examples of simple and blameless English domesticity. Did not Rhoda Broughton, with characteristic wit, say of her own slightly-oh, ever so slightly--daring self: 'When I began to write, people used to look on me as a Zola now they regard me as a Charlotte M. Yonge '?

Then there was Helen Mathers, with her 'Comin' thro' the Rye,' where the zenith of criminal audacity was in 'gin a body kiss a body,' and the nadir of villainy in 'gin a body tell.' I fear that mild and sentimental salt would be found to have lost its savour now. A writer of far stronger stuff was Edna Lyall, with 'Donovan' and 'We Two' perhaps her best. She goes to humanity -objectively, as she sees it for her characters. Too many of the Victorians had looked on humanity subjectively-as their own flattering hearts told them it should be, rather than as it really is. And she debates problems of religion with a wise tolerance that surely is in advance of her time, seeing that she published in the first decades of the last half of the century. I scarcely rate her with the forgotten, but if she be re-read she will surprise by the modernity of her outlook on life. Honourable notice is surely due to Miss Braddon for 'Lady Audley's Secret,' 'Aurora Floyd,' and many another; but of her again I speak very doubtfully as among the shades of Limbo.

There are, to be sure, many besides, both women and men, about whom I am in the like suspense of judgment. I have said no word, for example, of Mrs Oliphant, with a long list of books worthy to be had in remembrance; of Mrs Craik, whose 'John Halifax, Gentleman,' is both, I think, her best known and her best. And perhaps that first, and certainly not worst, of best-sellers, Miss Marie Corelli, comes into this period. Among the unmentioned men are Baring-Gould, Hughes, the creator of Tom Brown,' the immortal, Disraeli, with his British statesmen and stateswomen reflected from so Oriental a mind that they glow out from it almost as exotics, and all all those beloved of our boyhood, Fenimore Cooper, Harrison Ainsworth, Ballantyne, Blackmore, Black. And I am sure there are many more whom my impiety forgets. From Besant, in my estimate, went much of the sparkle when Rice was lost to that excellent partnership which gave us 'Ready Money Mortiboy' and 'The Golden Butterfly.' Let those two, at least, be fetched back if they ever have lapsed into the forgotten place. They deserve better. Blackmore's 'Lorna Doone' will keep his memory bright as Exmoor heather, so long as the moors and heather last; yet I am not sure but that his 'Maid of Sker' is a better story. After all, I would point out to those poor shades of sensitive fibre who may feel hurt because I do not resuscitate them here, that inclusion in these lists is a doubtful, a double-edged, compliment at its best. I have not breathed the names of such as George Eliot, George Meredith, Hardy, Shorthouse-yes, and I will add, Surtees, though I know men, otherwise rational, who cannot read him—and of many more, so obvious is it that they are not to be called on the Limbo roll. Wherefore I invite all who may deem themselves overlooked, to reflect that the reason of their absence from this page may be not because they are below the salvage line, but rather because they are securely above peril of oblivion.

HORACE G. HUTCHINSON.

Art. 8. SEDITION, PRIVY CONSPIRACY, AND

BELLION.'

AFTER we have surmounted successfully some great crisis we are apt as a nation to thrust the matter out of mind, and if it has created acute domestic differences to insist that bygones shall be bygones. This national attribute is very estimable if rationally directed; but Englishmen are inclined, when faced with some highly controversial problem which calls for a strong constructive policy, to justify their inborn disinclination to take decisive action by exaggerated obeisance to this principle. It would show a lamentable lack of statesmanship should there now be neglect to take such decisive action as dispassionate analysis may show is needed to defend the community against another so-called 'general strike.'

To call the disaster which the Trades Union Congress precipitated with such callous indifference upon the country, a 'general strike,' is merely to obscure its real character by the fallacy of words. The term 'strike,' as it has been employed in industrial parlance in this country for over a hundred years, has no application to the recent happenings. What occurred can only be described by the familiar phrase 'sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion.' Loth as I am to use the words, I am at a loss for others to give a fair and accurate description. Few can have warmer admiration than I for the humanitarian work which the Trade Unions have performed; to it, on many occasions and in numerous writings, I have paid unstinted tribute. No one appreciates more than I do the self-sacrifice and singlemindedness of many leaders of the Trade Union movement who have devoted to the betterment of their fellows, with scant remuneration and often little thanks, enthusiasm, energies, and talents which, applied in other walks of life, would have raised them to commanding positions of personal affluence and prosperity. With the British workmen, I have worked too long and closely not to realise the sturdy loyalty, patriotism, and uprightness of the vast majority. Feelings of friendship, however, cannot be allowed to blind one to the national

menace of the Trade Union machine and its deliberate use for sectarian aggrandisement. In the past when inconvenient critics have with increasing insistence drawn attention to the unique position, immense power, and illogical immunity from legal liability of the English Trade Unions, their spokesmen with one accord have given the stereotyped answer, 'The public may always rest assured that the Trade Unions will never abuse their power, or use it in a way likely to injure the community.' What, then, is the explanation of the mass attack which the Trades Union Congress recently launched upon the nation? The truth is that the Trade Union machine, partly through the commanding economic position which it was inevitable that it would acquire in the organised life of the community, and partly from the unique privileges it has managed to snatch out of the byplay of national politics, has developed a capacity to cause injury and detriment and to exercise a measure of industrial, political, and social coercion that is intolerable in any country of free or liberal institutions. When, therefore, the control of an instrument of such menace is secured by extremists, or allowed by the supineness of moderate men to fall into irresponsible and disloyal hands, there is no limit to the suffering that can be inflicted upon the citizens of this country.

Since the so-called 'general strike,' I have, as matter of interest, read the Reports of the Trades Union Congresses for the last ten years. I emerged from the ordeal filled with disquietude at the growing disregard for the community and the commonweal expressed in the resolutions, characterised in more recent years by the deliberately-expressed intention to squeeze, and if need be to strangle, the nation as part of Labour's tactics of aggression. If, as we are asked to believe, some of the more prominent Trade Unionists have always been against this policy, how strange it is that at the critical time they had not the moral courage to declare their opposition! Accepting, however, what they say to-day, it means that the Trade Union machine has got completely beyond their control. It indicates clearly that definite steps must be taken, if necessary by or with the assistance or under pressure of the legislature,

to bring the machine once more under such regulation as will ensure that it will react to, and record what we are now told the great bulk of Trade Union leaders and members fervently desire. In the history of democratic institutions it is not unusual to see a great popular movement thus fall under the domination of a relatively small number of determined and unscrupulous men. Against this well-recognised danger in democratic institutions it is not easy to devise internal safeguards of any efficacy.

The national menace inherent in the Trade Union machine centres mainly round the modern development of the strike. In the House of Commons on May 6 last, Sir John Simon defined the 'right to strike' as follows:

"The right to strike is the right of workmen in combination, by prearrangement, to give due notice to their employers to terminate their engagements and to withhold their labour when these notices have expired.'

It is implicit in this definition that the strike is 'in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute,' as defined in Section 5 (3) of the Trades Disputes Act, 1906. That is the only sort of strike which by Statute has been removed beyond the inhibitions of the common law. In workshop practice there are many kinds of strike which are illegal, e.g. the 'stay-in' strike, the 'go-slow' strike, and other forms of taking wages and not doing work. Sir John gave it as his opinion that the recent general strike was illegal,' and Mr Justice Astbury decided on May 11 in the case of the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union v. Reed that the so-called general strike called by the Trades Union Congress is illegal and contrary to law, and those persons inciting or taking part in it are not protected by the Trades Disputes Act of 1906.'

The public, however, cannot draw much comfort for the future from the 'illegality' of the recent general strike as between employers and trade unions, or between trade union executives and their members. All workmen employed on the services vital to the community can, at any time, combine together, put forward a 'national programme,' and, after giving proper notice, withdraw their labour and hold up the national life. Against such a legal strike the community