It is a bad thing, as Lincoln said, to change horses in crossing the stream, especially when the stream is a boiling torrent. Threatened with disruption, the nation naturally and rightly rallies round its existing institutions. It is better that the Union should be saved by the most stationary or even reactionary of ministries, than lost by the most progressive. To support the Queen's government against foreign conspiracy and the confederates of foreign conspiracy within the realm is the plain duty of the hour, which every good citizen, Conservative or Liberal, will fulfil, much as the Liberal, at all events, may wish that the government were other than it is. To dismemberment, the people, both of Switzerland and of the United States, rightly preferred civil war, and the British Liberal may well prefer to it any temporary sacrifice of what he deems legislative reform. Commerce universally prays for a few years of firm and quiet government. Nothing else can redeem Ireland from ruin. That which is most to be feared is that the Conservative government may not be Conservative, but may, under the inspiration of unwise ambition and from the desire of outshining the other party, attempt some brilliant settlement of the Irish question, and by so doing throw the country back into the confusion from which it has just escaped. Now that separation has been rejected, no political question relating exclusively to Ireland, of a fundamental character, remains. Nothing remains in the political sphere but to reinstate the national in place of the rebel government, restore order, and place the persons, properties, and occupations of peaceful citizens again under the protection of the law. Questions VOL. XX.-No. 115.

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respecting the Viceroyalty, the abolition of which was voted thirty years ago by the House of Commons, or the institution of an Irish Grand Committee, are not fundamental, and may be considered without heat or hurry. There are Irish questions, other than political, which may be settled' if Acts of Parliament can at once alter the soil and climate of the island, or the character, habits, and religion of its people. The quiet reception of the national decision against separation by the Irish people shows the good effects of firmness, and the futility of the pretence that tranquillity could be restored in Ireland only by a revolution.

But though a Conservative government is the thing to be desired for the present, the late events surely call upon statesmen, with a voice of thunder, to look to the future, and to undertake, before it is too late, a rational and comprehensive revision of British institutions. A party leader, worsted in the Parliamentary fray, suddenly determines to open the way back to victory by taking a plebiscite on a question vitally affecting the integrity of the nation. This he is able to do of his own mere will and pleasure, though the most eminent men of his party have repudiated his policy and left his side. A few weeks are given the nation to make up its mind whether it will consent to the most fundamental of all possible changes. In the electorate there are great masses of people, upon whom political power has just been thrust by the strategical moves of leaders in the party war, untrained in its exercise and ignorant of the question. The question itself is not put distinctly to the people, but is mixed up with all the other questions of the day, and with all those of a local and personal character which enter into the mind of the voter at an ordinary election: so that votes are counted for a separate Irish Parliament when they are really given for Disestablishment, for Small Holdings, for the Abolition of Vaccination, for the popular man of the district, for the G. O. M., or simply for Blue and Yellow. After a confused struggle the nation just escapes irrevocable dismemberment, though we cannot tell exactly how, no two persons agreeing in their analysis of the results, while the defeated party asserts that if the hay had not been out dismemberment might have won. This, I say, is a loud call to a revision of institutions. In democratic America, not the smallest amendment of the Constitution, much less an issue affecting the integrity of the nation, can be put to the vote except in the most distinct and formal manner, after the most ample notice, and by a process such that consent must be the deliberate act of a decisive majority of the entire nation represented by the legislatures of the States.

What had preceded this throwing of dice for the destiny of the country? Scenes which must surely have led anyone but a wirepuller to reflect on the working of party, and to ask himself whether it is the foundation on which government is for ever to rest. The

economical part of the Irish difficulty has deep roots; but the political agitation was in itself weak, like all those which had preceded it, and which, from O'Connell's Repeal agitation downwards, had come successively to farcical ends. Its strength, which became at length so formidable, was derived from British faction; the Parties in their reckless struggle for power playing alternately into its hands. Government was thus paralysed in its struggle with rebellion, and the nation was laid at the feet of a despicable foreign conspiracy, while the House of Commons itself ignominiously succumbed to obstruction which a town council would at once have put down. Nor was the Tory party, though presumably most interested in the maintenance of order, more patriotic or scrupulous than its rival. Few things in our political history are worse than the purchase of Mr. Parnell's support for a Tory government by the abandonment of the Crimes Act and the repudiation of Lord Spencer, to which is immediately traceable the origin of the present perilous situation. Every Tory gentleman who had not cast regard for public honour out of his heart, listened with disgust to the speeches of his leaders in the Maamtrasna debate. On the other side we had signs not less portentous. We had the foremost man of the country, full of years and honour, when disappointed of his majority, flinging himself into the arms of what he had himself denounced as public plunder and treason, and assailing what had been designated by the Queen a few months before as a fundamental and inviolable statute of the realm. We had him appealing, deliberately and repeatedly, to class passions and provincial animosities, inflaming disaffection in Ireland by representations of the conduct of England to the Irish people which no man competently informed could in his sober senses believe, and holding

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his country before the whole world to unmerited odium and infamy. For the last six months the national government in Ireland has effaced itself, and allowed authority to pass into the hands of a lawless conspiracy, which, without a particle of military force at its command, has been left master of the country; till at length the police and constabulary, whose firmness long continued to attest to the feebleness and hollowness of the revolution, have begun to be shaken in their fidelity, as they were sure to be when they found that the government which they served had struck its flag to rebellion. Such are the works of faction, which does not shrink even from the thought of employing the national army in compelling loyal men to submit to the will of rebels and of the foreign enemies of the realm. For what greater or more ominous symptoms of political disorganisation does the nation wait? Does it wish to become the scorn of the whole world?

'Discriminations between wholesome and unwholesome victories. are idle and unpractical. Obtain the victory, know how to follow it up, leave the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness to critics.' Such

is the recorded principle of the present Tory leader of the House of Commons, and he asserts and abundantly proves that it was the principle of Lord Beaconsfield before him. Though seldom so frankly expressed, or so consistently observed, it is the principle of all who subsist by faction; the practice of it has led, under the Party system, to the most brilliant prizes; and as soon as it shall have thoroughly pervaded public life a domination of scoundrelism must ensue.

Parties, moreover, are now splitting into sections, not one of which is strong enough to sustain a government. This tendency is seen all over Europe, and its growth will conspire with morality to seal the doom of party government. No British party returned from the late election with a majority of its own; this, combined with the perilous nature of the crisis, which made a strong executive government indispensable to the country, seemed likely to lead to a coalition, which by moderate and patriotic men was generally and earnestly desired. Supposing the temporary relaxation of the strict Cabinet principle had involved a pause in legislative progress, the nation could have afforded this far better than it can afford to be left without a strong and respected executive at such a moment as the present. But Lord Hartington, it seems, found it impossible to induce his followers to cross the House.' If the House had been arranged as an amphitheatre, so as to render this dread formality needless, the country might have had a government capable of extricating it from its peril. It would be difficult to place the party system in a more ridiculous light. Party, however, has once more prevailed, and has given the country in its hour of peril an administration which its own partisans receive with groans,' and the weakness of which is too likely to lead to a fresh revolution of the circle of disaster. The union of the party chiefs for the purpose of settling the Redistribution of Seats without a faction fight was the happiest thing in recent politics; but it seems to have been merely a rift in the cloud.

The country has no longer anything worthy of the name of a government; that is the momentous fact which every crisis of peril will place in a more glaring light. Extreme Radicals do not want the country to have a government; they only want it to have an organ of indefinite revolution in a House of Commons elected by universal suffrage. But for the rest of the nation the hour of reflection has arrived. All power, both legislative and executive, is now vested in an assembly far too large for deliberation or for unity of action, distracted by faction, and growing daily more unruly and tumultuous, the new rules having had no more effect than new rules usually have when the root of the evil is left untouched. And this assembly is elected by a method purely demagogic, which imparts its character to every function of government. Diplomacy itself is now demagogism. The vacillations in Egypt, which have cost the nation

so dear in blood, in money, and in reputation, seem to have arisen not so much from the indecision of the government itself as from its endeavours to keep in unison with the shifting moods of the people. After all, what else can a demagogic executive do? It can hope for no support against any gust of unpopularity from a Parliament as demagogic as itself.

What democracy can be more untempered or unbridled than this which is styled a Monarchy? The Ministry, which is supposed to be appointed by the Crown, now resigns upon the popular vote, without even presenting itself at the bar of the House of Commons. Representation itself is being rapidly converted into mere delegation, with a mandate from the local caucus which the delegate dares not disobey. The only Conservative institution left with any practical force is the non-payment of members; and this demagogism has already marked with its axe. When it falls the last check will be gone; for if the existing restrictions on the suffrage are worth much, we may be sure that faction will soon chaffer them away for new votes. To this pass the most practical of nations has been brought by its blind reliance on forms. It has gone on fancying that the government was the Crown, and that, consequently, anything might be safely done with the representation of the people, long after the representation of the people had, in fact, become the governing power. Party leaders have alternately' dished' each other with extensions of the franchise, and they have never stopped to consider what would be the effect on the constitution as a whole, nor has the constitution as a whole appeared ever to be present to their minds. Nothing can be more devoid of statesmanship than their speeches, which are made up of vague philanthropy and platitudes about popular rights, while the interest of a faction is really at the bottom of the whole; and if forecast is exercised, it is in the interest of the faction alone. Party leaders cannot help themselves; they are the creatures and slaves of a system, and the councils of a faction are not those of the nation.

Mr. Gladstone proclaimed the other day that only by means of party could Parliamentary government be carried on. Curiously enough he proposed himself, by the admission of Irish representatives on reserved subjects, to introduce an element plainly incompatible with the working of the party system.

Of the vast constituencies which have been now called into existence, the units are for the most part as unconnected with each other as grains of sand in a sand heap, and they can be organised for electoral purposes by the wire-puller alone. The wire-puller thus becomes master of the electorate and of Parliament. His power is not yet confirmed, and at the last election, in which strenuous and most praiseworthy efforts were made by independent men to rescue the country from imminent disaster, it was to a considerable extent set aside. But such efforts are made only at a great crisis. The