the range of London experience. So I received permission to be present.

Punctually to the minute, The Two Thousand' began to arrive. The side galleries filled rapidly, and the semicircular tiers of orchestra seats, and the larger area where a few nights earlier young Birmingham celebrated his gymnastic festival. There they were, from the sixteen wards of the city: the Birmingham Two Thousand,' the very pick and choice of the most democratic of English communities. Among them were lawyers, doctors, clergymen, schoolmasters, merchants, manufacturers, journalists. It was a journalist, the editor of the Post, who opened the proceedings. But a large proportion of them appeared to be artisans, including a class which Birmingham inherited from mediæval times, the class of master-workmen. Some of them were in their working attire-as if they had been kept late. But the majority of them had managed to go home, wipe off the workshop dust, shave, brush their hair, swallow two cups of tea and a chop, button their jackets, and stride off just in time for the debate. Some talked with gestures more or less emphatic to the men next them; others skimmed over Dr. Dale's pamphlet, or produced their newspaper extracts, made marginal notes, or scribbled something-the heads of their speeches perhaps. Within a couple of yards of me, a clerical-looking gentleman and a workman conversed with animation. But we shall be satisfied with the compromise,' said the former. A slow, good-humoured smile, a leisurely shake of the head, was the workman's reply, as he drew his forefingers and thumb contemplatively over his black stubbly whiskers. It was clear how he meant to vote. Perhaps it might not be difficult to guess how nine-tenths of them would vote. However, it was beyond a doubt that every man in the Caucus had carefully studied the subject, and in his own mind had settled the following serious question or questions-Does religious instruction (as commonly understood) afford the best moral training for the rising race? Does it purify and elevate the sentiment of reverence? Or does it deaden it? In this age of the democratic renaissance, shall the clergy lead or be led? Taking ethic in its widest sense (the interfusion of moral feeling with intellectual temperament, attitude, ideal), is the ethical level of the clergy above that of the community? In plain English can the clergy be trusted? In the programme the question did not, of course, appear in that form. In general terms it was merely this -Shall Bible-reading, with historical, geographical, and grammatical explanations' be permitted in the Board Schools? But the real issue, the issue from which the debate derived its whole interest and significance, was just as I have put it.

A detailed account of the night's work is out of the question. I shall only indicate one or two instances of the spirit of this remarkable assembly. For example, the long and loud applause which

followed when a speaker-an artisan, I think-argued that there was no religious instruction or ceremony of any kind whatever in the Midland Institute, where he had received his education, and when he implied that the study of science and literature constituted in itself a moral and religious discipline in the highest sense of the terms; and when, again, he challenged the clerical party to deny that the children of the Birmingham Board Schools, where no religious teaching was allowed, were as truthful, as polite, as moral, as religious as any other children in the kingdom. Here the Caucus cheered loudly for Young Birmingham.

The most heartily applauded sentences of the evening's speeches were those which described religion as something too high and too sacred to be made the subject of the disputes which (it was alleged) would be sure to break out on the acceptance of the compromise, which meant nothing else but the thin end of the sectarian wedge. But the Birmingham clergy, pleaded one of the members, have promised to accept this proposed concession as final. The Caucus interrupted him with a burst of ironical laughter. But there was no irreverence, nor spirit of intolerance, in it, any more than in the applause which greeted a speaker's straightforward confession that, loyal Churchman though he was, he could not trust the clergy in this matter of education; nor was there any in the merriment to which the Two Thousand' gave way when the Reverend Dr. Dale humorously described how the denominationalists would fall out when, taking the advice of a clerical champion, they would meet in the schools to settle the meaning of scriptural words with the help of a dictionary.

Not irreverence, nor shallow scorn, but the sense of solemn responsibility was, clearly, the dominant feeling and inspiration, 'It is better to send forth the young spirit, unhampered by dogma, into life's battle; we shall teach it how to acquaint itself with the best that has been known and thought in the world; we shall trust that its experience, emotion, and reflection will ultimately and naturally flower into religion'-that, if one were asked to put the matter into a word or two, was the signification of a discussion which lasted three hours, in which not a moment was lost-every speech being brief, clear, and to the purpose-every 'point' in which was caught up promptly by the large audience, and in which the forms and courtesies of debate were scrupulously observed from first to last. A shout of applause followed the vote of about nine to one against scriptural teaching. And then it seemed, somehow, as if the whole affair had suddenly receded into ancient history. Just as at the sound of bell, or of steam-whistle, the multitude of workers drop their tools, pull on their jackets, and make for the gates, so did the Caucus promptly write its finis to the question which had been ripening for months and years; and in a minute or two the great

hall was empty and silent. That, said my friend, with a nod of what seemed proud approval, that's Birmingham.' It was, no doubt.

Firstly, the debate exemplified the doctrine which Birmingham proclaimed at the beginning of her municipal career, and which she has since striven to apply, in ever-widening range of action-the doctrine that the life of the city, with all its variety of function, should be, like the life of the human organism, one and indivisible. Complete corporate unity has not yet been effected. The School Board, for example, is a separate administration, though, indeed, the city council, years ago, asserted its authority, even in the educational sphere, by its successful struggle for the repeal of the 25th clause. The assumption of popular education, as a branch of municipal government, will, perhaps, be the next important step in the civic evolution of Birmingham.

Secondly, it was a re-assertion of another position which the first civic reformers maintained—that no subject bearing upon the physical and spiritual welfare of society should be considered beyond the scope of local or national politics (between which they admitted of no essential distinction). Whatever men in combination can do for the free growth of each individual, for the refinement, the elevation, the beautifying of human life, by art, by literature, by science, by ' recreation-all that is 'Politics:' and the art of politics, the art of life in society, is the highest and greatest of all arts.

Thirdly, the men who hold this view of popular culture are the Radicals, the Democrats in politics. The men of the Birmingham Caucus, and their constituents, are the men who voted for the increase of the library rate; who would support with all their might and main every Liberal measure in the House of Commons; who would have said with the Hebrews of old that even the building of the temple should be stopped for the education of the children; who would give but short shrift to institutions which could not satisfactorily account for themselves, but deal considerately and generously with all of them which were useful or beautiful. These men believe that it is from Democracy that culture has most to expect; that there, or nowhere, is the hope and the ideal of the better life.

The Democratic movement in Birmingham is merely an example of the general movement. I have selected it because it is the most complete of English examples. It is but a single current in the stream of national tendency. To change the figure, it is but an individual symptom of the upward 'filtration' of ideas from the soil and the roots of the nation's life. The forms vary, but the impulse, the informing spirit, is one and the same. Take two types of the modern English democracy—the northern, with Newcastle for its centre; the Midland, with Birmingham. The types are as distinct from each other as either is from that of the southern population, influenced by the Metropolis.

Strength and reserve seem to be the special characteristics of the first, versatility and expansiveness of the second; and these characteristics appear to reveal themselves in corresponding preferences for forms of popular culture, the northern Englishman showing a stronger bent towards scientific studies and a less pronounced leaning towards art and literature than his countryman of the Midlands. There is no more extraordinary testimony to the reality and the rapid propagation of the popular enthusiasm for culture than the history of the University extension scheme among the miners and artisans of Northumberland and Durham. This new educational movement among these men has been spontaneous, the extent of it being limited only by their pecuniary resources, though it is possible that this difficulty may be surmounted by recourse to the agency of the co-operative and other trade societies. In fact, the members of an industrial co-operative society in Lancashire were among the first to suggest the idea of University lectures. It must not be supposed that the movement among the northern population is confined to a small minority of exceptionally intelligent men. On the contrary, it is a general movement, and, be it again asserted, a movement from below. The vast majority of those who share in it are working men-miners and artisans-the same men who have founded the Miners' Union, who are now the mainstay of northern Liberalism, and who have sent representatives of their own self-reliant, sturdy class from the mine-pit to the benches of the House of Commons. It will have its centres in such institutions as the Science College of Newcastle, Owens College of Manchester, the Institute and College of Birmingham, and the kindred establishments in Liverpool, Nottingham, and other great towns. And side by side with this transformation of these great cities into centres of culture and learning there proceeds the civic development, with its careers for the talents which otherwise would have sought scope for themselves in the Metropolis. While the Metropolis will become less than it has been the centre of attraction for the best energies and the highest ambitions in the realm, the great towns will assume more and more the character of, so to speak, provincial Londons—a town like Newcastle, for instance, representing and influencing the national and the local politics of the North; or, like Nottingham, those of a considerable portion of North-Eastern England; or, again, like Birmingham, giving the most complete expression to the in telligence and the social ideals of the teeming population of the Midlands.

It would be easy to show how this quickening of the popular taste and intelligence-revealing itself in the love of art, of noble music, and the craving for literature and science-becomes apparent even in the Middlesboroughs, the Warringtons, the Northwiches,

the Walsalls, and other smaller towns, where ugliness and the dreary monotony of mechanical toil have reached the extreme limit. The builder and the scavenger having reduced the death rate, the menmachines have called in the artist and the man of letters to make their longer life worth the living. It is the reaction of their spirit against brutish materialism; the broadening edge of light on the cloud of their existence.

JOHN MACDONALD.