refuge of the oppressed and persecuted of all lands, of those who have escaped from harsh or brutal despotisms, of those who have risen in rebellion against intolerable wrongs. We open our arms to them; we decline to enquire too curiously into the degree of oppression they have fled from or turned against, or into the means they have used in their struggle for liberation or revenge; and we should refuse to surrender them even if our refusal were likely to involve us in a war. But, on the other hand, we do not wish England to be a rendezvous for the desperadoes of Europe, for the cosmopolitan professors of revolution, who, without any special or personal interest in the conflict, or right to intervene, rush, like the vulture to the carcase, wherever there is an incipient disturbance, to fan insurrection into rebellion and civil war, and who offer their swords to all insurgents, provided only that an established Government is the object of their animosity. Still less do we wish to become a den for those malefactors and ruffians by nature and disposition who mingle for their own purposes in every insurrection, degrade it by their adherence, soil it by their crimes, and then plead in bar of punishment or surrender the political character of the disturbance with which they had mixed themselves up. To allow our land to become this sort of universal refuge for those who, with more or less plausibility, can contrive to drape themselves in one common cloak, is to make ourselves a pest and a nuisance to surrounding nations, and an aid and encouragement to all their internal foes; and this all the more surely, inasmuch as our mild laws, our inadequate police, our principle of non-interference with any man's daily life, and of supposing every man honest till we can detect him in some overt villany, deprive us of any effectual means of controlling the vagabonds we harbour, and preventing them from making the

shelter we give them the den of continuous conspiracies and the base of future operations. Yet how are we to distinguish-do we distinguish-and ought we not to distinguish-between the refugees to whom we all desire to offer welcome and asylum, and the refugees whom we condemn and detest as cordially as any other Government?

bad

Again, why, in our ideas and feelings, and in our law of extradition which is an exponent of those ideas and feelings, do we draw the distinction between those guilty of political offences and those guilty of ordinary crimes? Or rather why do we refuse to surrender men guilty of ordinary crimes (such as murder, arson, and plunder), if the offender can plead that they were committed in furtherance of a political purpose, or in the name of a political cause or doctrine? Why, in a word, do we allow rebellion to whitewash all violations of law committed in the course of it or in furtherance of it? Why do we even feel so differently towards the identical actions according as rebellion comes in as a genuine plea, or not?-Partly, no doubt, because some governments are so and cruel that rebellion against them may become righteous and obligatory, and that acts, however violent or exceptional, committed by rebels of this sort become wholly divested of their criminal character; and we systematically and properly decline to constitute ourselves judges of the justifiability of this or that insurrection. Partly, too, because ordinary crimes are usually committed from purely selfish motives and from personal greed or passion, and in no way out of regard, however mistaken, for the public good, or in furtherance of a public object, however really undesirable. But mainly, it is obvious, because, while political offences are directed against this or that government (as to whose legitimacy or character or conduct honest con

troversy may arise), ordinary crimes are committed against the principles which lie at the root of all government and all society, are violations of the common law which is acknowledged by all civilised communities and nations, and which all alike are interested in repressing. Now is it clear that, tried by this standard, many of the actions of the Communist leaders do not belong to the latter category? Was the deliberately meditated and partly effected destruction of the entire city of Paris with its millions of innocent inhabitants, when resistance and escape were alike impossible, not a crime against all society, rather than an offence against the Versailles Government? What shall we say of the murder of the innocent hostages, not in precaution or self-defence, but in revenge? Was this less murder because the murderers were defeated insurgents as well?-Again, was not the opening of the prison doors, the liberation and arming of the galley-slaves (ordinary criminals, be it remembered, of the deepest dye), a crime against all law, a violation of what was manifestly due to the rights and interests of the whole community, an outrage, not on authority, but on society and civilisation?

Once more, what are, strictly definable, political offences? May any crime claim exemption from ordinary treatment as political in its character, or hallowed as being committed from a political motive or with a political aim? When does a crime, political at one moment, lose its politicality? For example: grant that a refugee, guilty of the conflagration of the Hôtel de Ville or the Rue Royale, ought not to be surrendered to take his trial for the common crime of arson; and then suppose (what is far from improbable) that three months hence an irreconcilable Communist now in hiding and so imbued with his political creed or fanaticism that

he regards the struggle as perennial, chances as never past or hopeless, and the Universal Republic' as the one sovereign entitled to his allegiance, should set fire to a quarter of Paris, would he be extraditable, or exempt as a political offender? It would be difficult to say, and impossible to prove, that his motive was not political, that he was not an honest republican fanatic, obeying orders and carrying out a preconcerted scheme to force the claims of his class and party on public recognition. No Government is ever so well seated in France that insurrection against it becomes manifest madness. Seldom has anyone such an indisputable superiority as to origin or sanction over another that revolt is (to a French mind) obviously wicked.

The Government of February 23, 1848; the Government of September 4, 1870; the Commune of March 18, 1871, sprang into life identically in the same fashion, and no one could plead greater right than the others. It is arguably always permissible to a rebel not to know when he is beaten-when he is bound to abstain from 'keeping alive the sacred torch of liberty.' If the Commune was warranted political'-in conflagrating Paris rather than let it fall into the possession of Thiers in May, why should not he, a Communist (possibly with written orders still in his pocket), burn it in July rather than leave it as a trophy and a treasure in the hands of his conquerors? Should we surrender him if he put forward this plea-if he were Blanqui himself, and therefore an unquestionable leader and political fanatic? Or, again, if an escaped Communist (still having orders from his chiefs) should now massacre an escaped hostage-in fact complete the work which he was interrupted while carrying on six weeks ago; would what on May 23 was an 'execution' become a mere murder on June 23, in

the eyes of the Extradition Act, we mean? The subject is full of such perplexities. Regicide, the assassination of eminent and powerful foes, is clearly a political offence; and great as the crime may be in terested as all nations are in putting it down-the motive is usually as purely political as that of any act of war. Are, then, political assassins to claim the benefit of the refugee theory? Is the Irishman, who a couple of years ago shot isolated constables, entitled to plead 'Fenianism as his law of license? Then, why not the Ribbon-man, who, having no personal grudge against his victim, murders a landlord in obedience to a society whose object is to intimidate all holders of land, and whose Shibboleth and aspiration is Ireland for the Irish? If the ruffians who blew up Clerkenwell Prison and the adjoining houses, or those who were hanged for shooting the police at Manchester, had escaped to France, should we have recognised them as political offenders, or claimed them as ordinary murderers? If the Southerner who killed Lincoln had arrived on our shores, should we have listened to a demand for his surrender? ought we not to have done so? In no civil war did political passion rage more fiercely; in no country is assassination (shooting down' without notice) more common. If the French journalist, who openly recommended the assassination of the Orleans Princes a few months ago, or some more courageous

Yet

fanatic of the class, were to shoot the Emperor of Germany because he had conquered France, or Herri Cinq because it was fancied he would enslave it should we surrender him to justice or go to war for the right of sheltering him? In no case could a political motive be more justly or confidently pleaded, yet in none would the crime be more loathsome to us.

These cases, as to which we carefully abstain from giving a dogmatic decision, suffice to show that the right of asylum is surrounded with difficulties. One obligation it entails, however, which presents no obscurity or perplexity at all. We are bound, if we would not become a positive nuisance to other nations-a sort of hostis humani generis, like so many of those we harbour-and if we are not utterly blind and obtuse to our peremptory duties, to retain in the hands of our Executive and our Courts of Justice the amplest control over the mischievous and unscrupulous or fanatical propensities of those we shield; to extrude them without mercy if they abuse our hospitality; to make the shelter we give them conditional on their loyal abstinence from all conspiracies and hostile enterprises against those from whose vengeance we protect them. If we allow our country to become the base of operations' by fugitives and exiles, we virtually forfeit or forego our neutral character. There must be no firing from behind the walls of an asylum.

W. R. G.

Mr. Furnivall.'

FRASER'S

THE

HE greatest military disaster ever suffered by England was her discomfiture in the war with her North American colonies, a disaster which was due not so much to the persistence and bravery of the colonists as to the incapacity and half-heartedness of our military administration.

Yet, great as was the immediate humiliation of defeat in that struggle, the enduring consequences of royal obstinacy and ministerial folly by which it was provoked have been far more disastrous.

The contest left behind it a jealous sensitiveness which has twice since that period plunged the two kindred nations into war, and which would have done so on other occasions but for the forbearance, many say the pusillanimity, of the English people.

In that commercial spirit with which foreigners are accustomed to reproach them, the English people have consoled themselves with the reflection that the people of the United States are far more profitable customers than they could ever have become as colonists. This may be true, although a good deal might be said on the other side; but who can estimate the miseries which would have been spared, and the advantages which would have resulted, to the principals themselves as well as the world at large, from a friendly separation between the great American colonies and

VOL. IV.-NO. XX. NEW SERIES.

the parent state, such as would have merged their old political relations in a bund of peoples of the same race, united by ties of affection and sympathy, and actuated by a common interest?

The moral and material advance of the world has been retarded by no other cause more potent than the failure to appreciate that the prosperity of one nation must react on the well-being of the whole. The prohibitory tariffs which have interfered so largely with the accumulation of wealth have sprung directly from that jealous feeling which has been accustomed to regard the prosperity of one state as an injury to its neighbours; and it is only through the agency of a world-wide bund that the feeling can be entirely eradicated.

In contemplating our relations with the United States it is melancholy to reflect on what might have been, and to contrast it with what is. The political and commercial jealousies bequeathed by the 'War of Independence' have constituted generally one of the greatest difficulties with which England during the last sixty years has been called to deal; and the particular form of difficulty has arisen from the peculiar situation of Canada, which, while geographically joined to the United States, forms part of an empire, the seat of which is three thousand miles distant across a stormy ocean; a situation which

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supplies to the jealous and hostile democracy of America a tempting raw in England's body politic, convenient for irritation in every question of difference which may arise between the two countries.

But for the lamentable manner of the separation of England and the United States, the defence of Canada would never have presented itself as a question for solution; and Canada would in all probability have long since merged her political entity in that of her more powerful neighbour, whose greatness and prosperity would in that case have added to the power and influence of the British Empire, instead of forming as it now does a counterpoise.

Communities cannot, however, be expected to be wiser than their generation, and England must make the best of the troublesome legacy bequeathed by the obstinacy of the Third George and by the measures of his ministers acting according to their lights.

Under existing circumstances it has been the fashion to regard the connection of Canada with England as an inconvenience, imposing on the latter obligations difficult, or, as some pretend, impossible of fulfilment.

The strength and tenacity developed by the Northern States of America during the civil war impressed many public men in England with the belief that it would be hopeless to oppose the vigorous Anglo-Saxon Republic on its own continent; and opinions were expressed, both in and out of Parliament, almost implying that, in the event of the United States resolving to take Canada by force, we must submit with the best grace we might command. There was, in short, a prevalent feeling that if we could divest ourselves of the obligation entailed by our connection

with Canada without absolute dishonour, it would be a great relief. Nearly all admitted the abstract obligation, but there were not a few who appeared to be seeking for some ground or other on which to satisfy their consciences that they were acquitted of it.

The present Chancellor of the Exchequer argued in the House of Commons that the defence of Canada against the power of the United States was an impossibility, and that, as it could never be the duty of an individual or a nation to do that which is impossible, we were absolved logically from the attempt.'

Even Lord Elcho, whose weakness does not usually lie on the side of faint-heartedness, opposed any outlay on Canadian fortifications, on the ground that his instinct revolted against the possibility of defending Canada.

However inconvenient the connection with Canada may be, it will hardly be disputed that England is bound in honour to maintain that connection so long as the Canadians themselves desire it; and the colonists are not only united in their wish to maintain the connection, but are prepared to make for its preservation all the sacrifices thereby entailed in the event of war between England and the United States: in other words, they are prepared to see their country become the battlefield on which any quarrel between the two countries must be fought out, and to bear in consequence an infinitely larger share of the real burdens of the war, in devastated farms and ruined homes, than the English people would be called to endure. England would suffer principally in pocket; but the blood spilt would be for the most part Canadian blood, and the ravages and ruin caused by war would fall exclusively on Cana