country into all the towns of the kingdom during the last twenty; and that, whilst the country population is still, in spite of recent changes, almost as great as the entire population in 1801, the new population, that has been added to the towns alone, has increased that entire population by nearly a hundred and fifty per cent. The increase in the towns has been some sixteen millions. The immigration from the country has not been so much as a million. All this, we say, the Radical apostles of land-reform never pause to consider. They are either too ignorant to know it, too disingenuous to admit it, or too much pre-occupied to remember it. The last explanation is, we incline to believe, the true one; but, whatever be the cause, the result is still the same. These men, who conceive themselves to be the most enlightened of statesmen, and who boast that they will, by an appeal to history, teach the people to realize their true rights in the soil, habitually appeal to periods which, in the most vital point concerned, are not parallels, but violent contrasts, to our own. They are never weary of talking of the vast common lands which the people once possessed, which the rapacity of the landlords has stolen from them and which by some means or other ought to be given back to them. But they quite forget that, if the land were distributed amongst even one-half of our existing populaion, not only would no common land be restored, but every acre would have to be taken of such common land as is left. They quite forget that, were even one-half of the population allotted land in plots of not more than ten acres to a family, all the land in England would be occupied, and half the population would be utterly landless still. We again beg leave to say that, whatever may be our own convictions, we are not now writing as apologists of the existing land system: we are only concerned to show the astounding ignorance that underlies the present attacks made upon it. And we must again take occasion to impress upon the reader, that this ignorance is by no means confined to what are commonly called ignorant men. We have before us, for instance, a pamphlet on 'Land Nationalization,' by Dr. Clark, a physician, and member of several learned societies ;* and the following sentences are a specimen of his wisdom. At present,' he says, 'about one-half of our food supply is imported; three out of every four loaves eaten in this country are grown abroad; if we were to drift into war, and even one of our thousand food ships were captured by the enemy, the advance in price would be great. It is time our ་ * A Plea for the Nationalization of the Land,' by G. B. Clark, M.D. present land system was abolished, and the country again become self-supporting.' We beg that the reader will notice these last words. Dr. Clark evidently considers them to be the soundest and sternest sense; but can anything, we ask, be more like absolute raving? He forgets precisely what we have said all Radicals do forget-he forgets the growth of our population; and he fails to see that, if his words have any meaning at all, they must mean, either that one-half of our population must be expelled, or that stranger still-the country must produce again' twice as much food as it ever produced before. We have quoted Dr. Clark, not because he is a man of any influence, but because he must necessarily be a man of some education; and because, as such, he is a very excellent specimen of the blindness, we might almost say the madness, which, so far at least as the land question is concerned, the Radical school communicate to all who come under their influence. These men, who conceive themselves to be the pioneers of progress, and are accustomed to taunt their opponents with their superstitious worship of the past, become themselves, the moment their prejudice moves them, the ministers of a worship more superstitious still; and, whilst deriding the nation's reverence for a past that has really existed, they work themselves into a state of maudlin devotion for an imaginary past that has never existed at all. We would willingly have dwelt on this subject longer; but space obliges us, for the present, to bring our enquiry to a close. We trust, however, that enough has already been said to bring home to our readers the main fact we have been most desirous to impress upon them. We mean the fact that the party of agitation generally, in commending its measures and canvassing for adherents, is doing far less by any overt propagandism than by an elaborate system of historical falsification, by which the present, with all its tendencies inverted, is interpreted by a past with half of its facts suppressed-a past which, in virtue of this treatment, is as much like reality as a cherub is like a man. This is the fact which we urge upon the attention of our readers; and all our efforts in the present article have been directed to enforcing on them its extreme magnitude and importance. We have endeavoured to open their eyes to the kind of nefarious process to which the public opinion of the country is at this moment being subjected, and to the dexterous way in which its hopes and passions are being played upon; to the admiration being created for a past that has never existed; the alarm at the extinction of a middle class which is really fast increasing; and the horror and indignation at the increase of a poverty which is in reality fast rising into competence. We ask our readers to consider all this, and to reflect that, to arrive at a true estimate of the situation, we have not to assent to, but categorically to deny, nearly every one of the beliefs that are at the present moment popular. We must recollect especially, that the English labouring classes, instead of being, as Mr. Wallace says, the paupers of Europe, are in reality the richest labouring class in the world, and that their proportionate share in the progress of the past forty years has been greater than that of any other class in the community. The importance of our realizing the actual state of the case, of escaping from the dream-world of the agitator, where all that is, is inverted, is incalculable. Such an escape on the part of public opinion would be in itself a revolution. We have, however, something more to add, or our own estimate of the truth would be gravely mistaken. When we declare that the poorer classes as a body have advanced, and are advancing, enormously, we do not for a moment close our eyes to the squalor and the misery that still remains among us; and if any Radical thinks he is refuting our position by pointing to the horrors of squalid and outcast London, we reply that of these we are as fully aware as he, and that our concern for them is fully as great as his. We differ from him, not in not seeing them, but in seeing them in their true proportions. If we were to find in the road some unhappy man covered with blood from a terribly mangled leg, we should not be showing any want of compassion if we stoutly maintained that the wound was in the leg only, and that in spite of his agony not another member was injured. Not only is compassion for misery not best shown by exaggerating it, but one of the chief conditions of its use is that it should not be exaggerated. With diseases in the body politic this is the case especially; and no more foolish or disastrous course can be taken, than to bewail the pain without considering the extent of the evil, and to treat a nation as though it were in a dangerous fever, when in reality it is suffering from nothing but an acute local inflammation. It is our duty, if we would not lose our heads, to keep our eyes on what is going well with us, just as steadily as on what is going ill with us; and we trust that the reflections contained in the present article may assist the reader in forming some sound opinions on the matter. It will be recollected that in dealing with the progress of the poorer classes we showed it to be impossible that more than a quarter of their number should have failed to better their position by at least a hundred per cent. during the last forty years; and that even of this quarter a very considerable proportion must have bettered their position by at least twenty-five per cent. But when we speak of a quarter of the poorer classes of this country, we are speaking of a population of seven and a half million persons; and there is room in even half this number for enough misery, not only to shock a philanthropist, but to be a source of serious social danger to the community. Were there only one family in eight below the condition of comfort, the proportion of the wretched that would belong to London alone would be something like five hundred thousand persons. That certainly is a reflection sufficiently distressing and serious. But even that can be regarded in two ways. We may either say, Is it not a disgrace to our civilization, is it not a horrible thing, that one family out of every eight should be on the verge of destitution? Or we may say, on the other hand, Is it not a triumph of our civilization, is it not a most hopeful sign, that, in place of the pauperism of forty years ago, seven families out of every eight are in a condition of progressive competence? The agitator dwells only on the first consideration: the optimist only on the second. Both agitator and optimist are wrong. The only right proceeding is to give equal weight to each; and to do this is the characteristic of true Conservatism. The Conservative differs from the Radical and the agitator, not because he sees less, but because he sees more. And the result of this extended vision, this dispassionate looking on both sides of the question, is not to make us think that there is no misery to be alleviated, but to encourage us in our efforts for alleviating it, and to show us the direction and the spirit in which those efforts must be made. A dispassionate review of the history of the past forty years, so far as it relates to the economic condition of the people, will serve to show us that the Constitution is not superannuated, corrupt, or incapable of doing its work; that it is not dividing this country, as Mr. Chamberlain says it is, into two hostile nations of millionaires and paupers, and will, if not radically altered, produce a fierce social revolution; but that, on the contrary, under this very Constitution wealth has been diffusing itself in a way unparalleled in any other country; that, whilst both rich and poor have been gaining, the poor have gained the most; and that England, with her monarchical and aristocratic institutions, allows to the people a measure of freedom that is not tolerated for an instant in the lands of universal suffrage. ART. X.-I. Speech of C. S. Parnell, Esq., M. P., at Dublin, December 11, 1883. 2. Letter to the Right Hon. Sir John Hay, Bart., M.P. By the Right Hon. Sir Stafford Northcote, Bart., G.C.B., M.P. December 3, 1883. 3. The Liberal Party and Mr. Chamberlain. By W. T. Marriott, Q.C., M.P. London, 1883. A 6 DMITTING the wisdom of the witty American's apothegm, Dont prophesy unless you know,' and recognizing the fact that to no field of human speculation is it more applicable than to politics, we are nevertheless of opinion that the portents which precede the opening of Parliament next month are so numerous and so startling, as to justify on our part some anticipation of the probable course of political events, and some consideration of the policy it may behove the Constitutional Party to follow. On all sides, and from all quarters, is the political horizon dark with threatening storms, and all the courage, skill, and resources of our leaders, will be taxed to the utmost to steer our bark safely through the seething waves of external complications, and internal strife. As to the latter cause of anxiety, the loudest note of warning has been sounded, oddly enough, from the Ministerial camp, by Mr. Childers, who, belying for once the epithet of 'cheerful' affixed to him by the quick-witted Irish on the occasion of his visit to Ireland in the height of the Land-League atrocities, did not hesitate to inform his constituents, and, through them, the country, that in his judgment the changes contemplated by his colleagues and himself were the most momentous which had been proposed in our representative and administrative system since 1689.* If Lord Salisbury or Sir Stafford Northcote had ventured on such a statement, it would no doubt have been indignantly denied or mercilessly ridiculed by the Ministerial press. We should have been bidden to recollect the Act of Union with Ireland, the subsequent Emancipation of the Roman Catholics, the Reform Act of 1832, the Abolition of Slavery, the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and even the Reform Act of 1867, and have been reminded that all the legislation now contemplated proposes to do, is to supplement and complete the Parliamentary Reform Act of 1867, and the Municipal Reform Act of 1834. But Mr. Childers, who ought to know, is of a different opinion; and while he faces the possible results of these momentous measures with outward equanimity, inwardly he pro |