sound-headed personality--the British citizen in his best and sanest hour? Neither his sense of indignation, nor his sense of contempt, slumbers so deeply, as to make impossible an awakening, rough for those who rashly provoke them!

We have tried to give a fair account of a new political force, with which we cannot be suspected of having any strong sympathy. What is to be the future of the new and already formidable organisation? We have refused to paint it as the conscious instigator of revolution before which all sane politicians are to sink their ow distinctive principles, and to coalesce in a common effor for its defeat. We accord to it an acknowledged plac in the political arena; and as such are prepared t measure swords with it in honourable combat.

Speculation indulges in predictions of the time wher it may be ready, and may be called upon, to shoulder th responsibilities of Government. With due deference, w must remind the Labour Party that if, and when, the constitute a majority in Parliament-a contingenc which does not yet show signs of being very near-an when, as a consequence, they form a Government, the must necessarily disappear as an exclusively Labou Party. It is true that in some of the less populous, an more imperfectly developed, colonies, Labour Govern ments have had brief and somewhat stormy careers, an have not in accepting office abandoned either thei sectional name or their restricted aims. But what i possible in a fledgling constitution is not possible in th most highly developed system, and in an empire restin upon solid traditions which have become a part of ou very being. Any Government which, for even th briefest period, could carry the weight of the pilotag of the British Empire, must cease to be either in it name or in its policy identified with a single class. It the highest function, and its only sure foundation, is to b the arbiter amongst all. If it accepted any other attitude its rule would be an undisguised tyranny. Even the most ambitious of autocrats, and the most selfish of oligarchies, never proclaimed in their title, or in their declared policy, the pursuit of their own interests alone. We are convinced that the Labour Party would be at least as wise, and patriotic.

We do not, therefore, believe that it will ever be possible for a Labour Party to carry their name, or any narrow programme, into the sphere of administrative responsibility. It is partly for that reason that we would deprecate the idea of forming a Central Party to combat the supposed subversive policy of Labour. Such a course would not only be undignified, in its subservience to unthinking panic, but it might lead to immeasurable disaster. Our political history has never, except for brief and unenviable periods, been the reflexion of class dissensions. If we allowed it to fall into such degradation, the result must inevitably be, sooner or later, Civil War; and that in its worst and most envenomed form, Social Civil War. Let us not be led away, by any bugbear born of a nervous imagination, to sow the seeds of such a calamitous crop of internecine struggles.

We firmly believe that the future of the Labour Party will eventually be, not so much that of forming an independent Government, apart from all other alliances, as that of forming the Left wing of the Radical Party. What weight it will have in that Party depends largely on itself, and to some extent on the constitution of the other wing; and in both directions there lies possible danger. The Radical Party have undoubtedly committed themselves to many legislative proposals, which are strongly imbued with those attributed to the Labour Party. Over and over again, socialistic principles under the pressure of political strategy, they have made concessions which were really a triumph for the Party whose menace they now assert to be so strong, as to demand a political conglomerate in the shape of a Central Party as its only obstacle. England loves neither Coalitions nor Conglomerates.

Whether they wish it or not, the Radical and the Labour Party must absorb, or be absorbed by, one another. The union may carry both along dangerous lines, which some of them may be compelled to follow with much misgiving. Undoubtedly the Labour Party shows signs of becoming the predominant element in an alliance which we believe to be inevitable; and the result of that predominance may be startling.

We are, however, firmly convinced that the true counterbalance to any untoward precipitancy will be

found in a consolidated Conservative Party. That consolidation was last autumn all but rendered impossible. Its rehabilitation has not been undertaken an hour too soon; and no vacillation must be permitted in prosecuting the work. We have to fight, not an avowed Revolutionary Party, but a combination, one section of which is steeped to the lips with Socialism, and the other section of which has allowed itself to slide far in the same direction.