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all classes unemployed, of whom 140,000 would be willing to work if they could.

Next, with regard to the powers at present possessed by local or central authorities in relation to the relief of distress arising from want of employment, the Committee reports that the powers enjoyed by Boards of Guardians at the present time are amply sufficient to enable them in their discretion to give such relief as may be necessary to meet the needs of an able-bodied man destitute from want of employment, and those dependent on him; and that they have also full power to raise sufficient funds. The Committee next deals with the claim which has been advanced that the respectable unemployed should be distinguished from ordinary applicants for parochial relief by giving them some form of work involving no stigma. The Committee, after considering the objections that had been raised against the Guardians' labour test, &c., came to the conclusion that nothing would be gained by transferring the administration of a labour test from the Board of Guardians to another authority, and pointed out that, so long as the work is supervised by competent officials, the only change to be introduced is to prevent, so far as possible, the casual and deserving poor from being brought into contact with the loafing class in the stone-yard. They observe that the experience of the St. Olave's Guardians, amongst others, indicates that the scale of relief must be so arranged that less should be obtainable from the Guardians in this form than can be earned by a worker for wages at independent employment of a similar kind. The conditions under which outdoor relief is given should be such that the recipients would have inducement to seek independent employment or to return to their ordinary occupation when opportunity offered.' Relief works are next dealt with, as an alternative to Poor Law relief, with the stigma it involves, for the better class of unemployed. Attention is drawn to the conditions necessary for successful relief works; to the great cost of such works, which is apt to be out of all proportion to the value of the work done, unless some system of piecework is adopted; and to the need of the closest supervision. The Committee further rejects the proposal of State grants in the form of dole, or in the form of grants for this purpose to local authorities, but advocates loans on favourable terms to local authorities for useful public works to be undertaken as relief works. Farm and labour colonies are passed in review and rejected; and the Committee then considers the possibility of discriminating between deserving and other recipients of parochial relief with a view to saving the franchise of the

former, recommending that a person should not be disfranchised unless he has received relief for a period exceeding one month during the qualifying year, and has also received relief at some period during the year immediately preceding the qualifying year. In conclusion, the Committee state that they have not found it possible to devise and recommend any scheme involving the compulsory provision of paid work for all applicants; they repeat that the Guardians have ample powers, and recommend once more the co-operation of the Guardians with the local organisations for thrift and charity as the best means of keeping the deserving unemployed free from the stigma of Poor Law relief.

We have dealt with the report of the Committee at a somewhat disproportionate length in order to indicate to our readers the task which was set to the Committee and the way in which it was carried out. We are not sure if it was wise, and it certainly was disappointing, that those responsible for drawing up the terms of reference to the Committee should have narrowed the issue so as to exclude any attempt at the classification of the unemployed, as well as any consideration of the causes of the evil and the remedies provided by self-help. We believe that the problem would have been made more intelligible if the Committee had first classified the unemployed, dividing them into the temporarily and the permanently unemployed, subdividing the first according as they have or have not a definite prospect of work, and the second according as they fall into the class of the casual labourer or the unemployable. Then it would have been possible to deal in detail with each class and to show how far its members can be absorbed in existing industries or provided for by farm colonies, and how far the recurrence of present evils may be avoided.

Failing this, the Committee might have taken the causes of want of employment, as summarised in Mr. Booth's evidence, namely, (1) termination of job; (2) change of weather; (3) seasonal periods; (4) changes in demand due to fashion, foreign tariffs, &c.; (5) general cyclical fluctuations of trade as a whole; and (6) capacity or character of workers. But although these were laid down by the most expert of the witnesses as leading categories for classification they were soon lost sight of.

Lastly, the Committee might have classified the remedies which have been tried according as they are designed to find work or to make work for the unemployed. Under the former head -that of agencies to find work for the unemployed-would have fallen trade unions and friendly societies, labour bureaus,

agencies for discharged seamen, soldiers, and prisoners, registries for women and girls, and newspaper advertisements. Under the head of agencies to make work for the unemployed we should have found the Salvation Army Social Scheme and other similar schemes in England, the Labour Colonies in Germany and Switzerland, and the English Poor Law system, not to mention such temporary efforts as those which the municipalities and Mansion House Committees have made. A great deal of interesting evidence is to be found in the report on all these heads, and if it had only been systematically arranged it would have thrown some further light upon the problem-which after all is sure sooner or later to come upon us again-how such crises as that of the winter of 1895 can be either avoided or mitigated.

We had intended to dwell in conclusion on some more purely Poor Law problems, such as the vast increase of pauper lunacy from 51,782 in 1859 to 95,462 in 1899, the overlapping of hospitals and Poor Law infirmaries, and, last but not least, the codification and consolidation of the Poor Law orders and statutes now in force, which would, if printed, cover something like 2,500 octavo pages, and as to which the greatest confusion prevails in the minds of the most experienced Poor Law officials. But we have perhaps said enough to show how great is the work with which the recently reorganised Local Government Board has had to deal in the past, and we hope we have also brought nearer home to our readers some of the extraordinarily interesting problems which that Department will be called upon to consider in the near future.

ART. IX.-1. The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to his Family and Friends. Selected and Edited with Notes and Introductions by Sidney Colvin. Two vols. London:

Methuen, 1899.

2. The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson. Edinburgh edition. Twenty-eight vols. 1894-98.

WHAT

THAT is a biography? Is it a record of the external events producing and produced by a man's life and character-the things which affected him and the things by which and in which he affected others? or is it the picture of a personality, the history of an inward experience? Both perhaps, yet more essentially the latter. When the life to be written is that of a man of action '-when the actions of his life have been large and conspicuous, actions in which the individual is only one of many forces at work, perhaps the directing force, yet acting, as a soldier or a statesman must, in concert with many others the business of the biographer, as distinct from the historian, is to depict not the events but the man's share in the events, not the results but the motives; to show how the events were modified by the temperament under study, and how that temperament took a reflected colour from the events. Sir William Napier's 'Life' of his brother Sir Charles, one of the few masterpieces in this kind, is full indeed of battle-pictures and the story of political intrigues, but it never loses sight of its central purpose, and the events related are related to illustrate a character. To this end Napier the historian, turning biographer, relies chiefly upon the one sufficient source-the letters of the man whom he describes; and his success is mainly due to the fact that in this instance the man of action was also, potentially at least, a man of letters, possessing the literary gift of expression and the literary habit of self-scrutiny. Without that, there is no revelation. The men of past times whom we know best are not those about whom we know most; Horace is a real person to us, Augustus a great name. In other words, all biography that is vital and significant must be based on autobiography: the biographer can only work up to a central impression, where the man has written himself clear, as Scott did in his 'Journal.' Twice, indeed, in the history of literature biographical portraits have been created, in one case of a man who left no written expression of himself, in the other of a man whose writings did not adequately express him; but Plato and Boswell, though they did not rely upon first-hand writings, yet possessed a minute contemporary record in which the spoken words of two great talkers were from day to day jotted down.

So at least, arguing from the known fact about Boswell, we may perhaps infer as to Plato's method. But in the case of a personage like Horace or Montaigne, whose literary work is boldly autobiographical, biography becomes superfluous. We are grateful to Suetonius for a few details to supplement our knowledge, but we should have known Horace as well without them, although we have not Horace's private correspondence.

These considerations incline us to be extremely sorry for Mr. Graham Balfour. Stevenson in 1888 wrote and sealed a paper to be opened after his death; it contained a request that Mr. Sidney Colvin, his friend and counsellor of twenty years' standing, should prepare for publication 'a selection of his letters and a sketch of his life.' That wish has now up to a certain point been fulfilled; the selected letters are published in two large volumes uniform with the Edinburgh edition of the 'Works'; they are divided into periods, and before each period a brief outline of Stevenson's movements and actions in those years is given, with just as much comment as is needed to prevent any possible misunderstandings; each letter is headed with a note (where one is needed) to identify the personages mentioned or to explain allusions; and the whole is prefaced by an essay on the author's character, terse, subtle, and vivid, and full of the flavour that comes of long and intimate personal knowledge. In short all that an editor could do has been done. But unhappily Mr. Colvin has found himself unable to complete the separate introductory volume of narrative and critical memoir,' which he had originally designed; and so, by the wish of the family, Stevenson's cousin, Mr. Graham Balfour, has undertaken to write a formal 'Life.' Now Mr. Colvin is a master of critical biography; his brief but highly wrought 'Introduction' shows his ability to give a clear and harmonious portraiture of his friend's mind, presence, and bearing, as they appeared to those who lived with him; and he was that friend's counsellor in many difficult passages of a changeful life.

Mr. Balfour also was a friend, and a trusted friend, but in literature he is an amateur; and, whatever his skill may be, he can add little or nothing to the monument which Mr. Colvin with loving diligence has built up. The plain truth is that with Stevenson's works and the Letters' before us, any one can acquire to all intents and purposes a full knowledge of the man and his life. We propose here to give such a summary biographical sketch as may in some measure justify this assertion, allowing the literary criticism of Stevenson's worksalready dealt with in a previous number of this Review-to fall for the time being into the background.

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