present day. Where the demagogue is not active the hatred abates. In Canada, where hitherto the agitator has not been so active, the Irish are not nearly so bitter as they are in the United States. The source of malignity is also in part the source of misery, for the people are taught to think that there is no fault in themselves, everything that is amiss being the work of the oppressor, and turned from self-help, which no demagogue ever preaches, to seek relief from their distress in the cultivation of a barren feud.

prefer to spend Is it possible Will not the

"The insensate and reckless multiplication of the human species" is the cause, as a Radical journal of eminence tells us, of the misery and barbarism in the east end of London, and the words are equally applicable to Ireland, where the Church thinks that she promotes morality in encouraging early and improvident marriages. If political change will feed and civilise Whitechapel it will feed and civilise Connaught. In deciding that economical remedies of some kind are required, Mr. Gladstone's Government assuredly judged right. Whether the specific remedies selected were the best will be seen in a few years. Will the alteration of tenures lead to an increase in production, which is, or ought to be, the main object of all legislation respecting land? Will fixity of tenure in that soil be anything but fixity of famine? Will the farmer work with a better will and raise larger crops now that his rent is reduced, or will he his energy in agitating for a further reduction ? effectually to fix rents for a long term of years? desperate competition for the land which is caused by the overgrowth of population, and by which the people have hitherto raised the rents upon themselves, reproduce itself in some other form, and make the price as high as ever? If the interests created by the Land Act are sold, as some expect, will not the old rent be virtually paid again in the form of price? Will not the money-lender, who never reduces interest, take the place, when a bad season comes, of the landlord who does reduce the rent? Will not absenteeism become more common than ever now that the landlord is a mere incumbrance? Will not the Church absorb a great part of that which the landlord is compelled to resign? Will any improvement have been made in the lot of the labourers, who need protection against the farmers as much as the farmer needs protection against the landlord? What will be the effect on the general industry and prosperity of the country of a vast disturbance of contracts, and of the general insecurity of property produced by agrarian agitation? These are questions which every one who holds the common notions of economy must be anxious to see answered by results. Peasant proprietorship is a taking idea, but in an age of scientific agriculture we might almost as well talk of returning to the spinning-wheel, which also had its charms, and the departure of which was bewailed by the

poet. Systematic emigration, such as shall permanently relieve districts which can bear no crops but wretchedness and disaffection, has been always deemed, by some good authorities at least, the only cure. To call it cruel seems absurd to those who live in a continent peopled with happy emigrants, though there must always be a pang in the process. But the priests oppose it for fear of losing their flocks, and the agitators oppose it for fear of losing discontent. Against such resistance it can hardly be carried into effect by a parliamentary government. Perhaps the problem awaits solution by a Government not parliamentary, which the crisis towards which events are tending may bring forth. If rebellion ever fairly shows its head, the economical measures which are essential to the relief of the country may some day be carried into effect as measures of war.

The Irish people are in the hands of men who are leading them mainly by the hope of plunder, and whose object is not the measure of increased local self-government which, if it is desired in Ireland, all Liberals are more than willing to give, nor any pledge of respect for a nationality like that of Scotland within the Union, but the dissolution of the Union and the foundation of a separate republic which from its birth would be hostile to Great Britain. These men know their own minds, and they are not to be turned aside from their purpose by soft words. When soft words are addressed to them their answer is a renewed outburst of venomous and calumnious hatred. Mr. Gladstone, after all his touching appeals, and in spite of all that he has done for Ireland, is still in their journals the "grand old rogue," ""the grand old hypocrite," and his throat has to be guarded by policemen from their knives. Their enmity, and that of all over whom they have influence, must be recognised and dealt with as a fact. They can be conciliated only by a resolute resistance; and to make resistance resolute it is necessary that the friends of the Union and of British civilization should feel the moral ground firm beneath their feet. Nor is it needless to state the case of Great Britain fairly in the court of nations, especially before the Americans, whose opinion in this case is of great practical importance. The ravings of the Philadelphia Convention and the dynamite platform might be safely left to the unaided judgment of American morality and good sense, but we cannot so well afford to disregard the injurious things said of Great Britain by English Radicals, who want to place American opinion on the side of Irish revolution. In the Princeton Review, an English writer, whose respectable name will secure attention to what he says, tells the Americans as "an indisputable and undisputed fact," that "the government of Ireland, whether administered by Englishmen sitting in a so-called parliament at Dublin, or by an overwhelming and hostile majority of Englishmen and Scotchmen sitting in Westminster, had been up to less than twenty years ago conducted not even in profession for the benefit

of the Irish people, but for that of the English having estates in Ireland, and the mass of the Irish Protestants and landowners." It seems to me that this is not true, and that it is dangerous to let it pass for truth.

Since writing this paper I have read Lord Lorne's paper, written apparently for people who had asked his opinion as to the expediency of applying the principles of Canadian self-government to the case of Ireland. It would be about as useful to discuss the expediency of connecting the Straits of Belleisle with the Irish Channel. The relations, geographical, historical, religious, and social, of the three Celtic and Catholic Provinces of Ireland to Great Britain and Ulster (for that is the true way of stating the case) have no parallel in politics, past or present. Neither in the relation of the Dominion to the Imperial Government, nor in that of the Provinces to the Dominion, is any help towards the solution of the Irish problem to be found. That problem British statesmen will have to solve by their own unassisted wisdom, patriotism, and courage, of which the last two will afford the best light to the first. One sentence in the paper of the ex-Governor-General is noteworthy. "The Irish in Canada," he says, "have many votes; and almost any proposition which they put before the Canadian Parliament as likely to benefit their brethren in the old country would find support, especially if the proposal were introduced before a general election." In plain words, Canadian politicians who spout enthusiastic loyalty to Great Britain, and go about bedizened with Imperial orders of knighthood, are ready, for the sake of capturing the Irish vote, to place the Canadian Parliament as an engine in the hands of those who are propagating disaffection in Ireland. The charge is true, and of its truth we have already had ignominious proof. The leader of one of the Canadian parties is at the present moment, for lack of a nobler policy, playing this very game, not without moral encouragement from the accomplices of disunion in England. Thus the political connection with Canada, the great pillar of the empire, is likely to be added to the forces which operate for the disintegration of the United Kingdom.

The only thing in Canada that can throw any light on the case of Ireland is the vast multiplication, noted by Lord Lorne, of the French Canadians, under the influence of the Roman Catholic priesthood, which in the Canadian France has added the share of power possessed in old France by the aristocracy to its own. This affords a real parallel to the multiplication of the Irish under the same influence in Ireland. When Great Britain is taxed with the misgovernment, let it be remembered that Ireland has been governed socially, economically, and intellectually by the Irish priesthood. The Imperial Government has been for the last half-century the sole power of enlightenment and progress. GOLDWIN SMITH.

A VISIT TO PHILISTIA.

WHETHER the discovery of America by Columbus has been of advantage or loss to the so-called civilised peoples of the Old World would form an interesting thesis for discussion. When we remember the gentle and refined races of Mexico and Peru, trampled beneath the gross feet of Pizarro, Cortes, and the Inquisition; or regard the savage picturesqueness of the Indian tribes that wandered over the North American Continent, cruel, brutal, and happy, uninjured by and uninjuring Western culture, we cannot but look with some doubt and hesitation at America of to-day, the apotheosis of Philistinism, the perplexity and despair of statesmen, the Mecca to which turns every religious or social charlatan, where the only god worshipped is Mammon, and the highest education is the share list; where political life, which should be the breath of the nostrils of every freeman, is shunned by an honest man as the plague; where, to enrich jobbers and monopolists and contractors, a nation has emancipated its slaves and enslaved its freemen; where the people is gorged and drunk with materialism, and where wealth has become a curse instead of a blessing.

America is the country of disillusion and disappointment, in politics, literature, culture, and art; in its scenery, its cities, and its people. With some experience of every country in the civilised world, I can think of none except Russia in which I would not prefer to reside, in which life would not be more worth living, less sordid and mean and unlovely.

In order that this opinion may not appear harsh, exaggerated, and unfriendly, it is necessary to say a few words on the subject of international criticism. There appears to exist an idea that the friendliness and indeed the amalgamation, social and political, of the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race are so to be desired, that all mutual criticism of politics or manners should be uniformly favourable, even though the praise be undeserved. I will leave others to discuss whether there can be more in uncandid criticism than loss of self-respect; and only inquire whether, if we are unable to say pleasant things of America, it be not better to remain altogether silent. I believe silence to be both harmful and useless. In the first place, America is not an inert mass, devoid of attractive power. It is, to the last degree, energetic, dynamic, and aggressive, while its attractive force is so felt within the orbit of England that a large and increasing number of politicians and publicists are looking to America for the dawn of a new social and political

millennium, and are recommending American remedies for all our national disorders. Each year the democratic tide rises higher and our institutions become more Americanised; while some English statesmen are admittedly careless how high the tide may rise, and what existing institutions it may sweep away. It is as well that Englishmen should understand what is the dream of advanced New York Republicans as represented by the World :—

"The storm of revolution is looming and lowering over Europe which will crush out and obliterate for ever the hydra-headed monarchies and nobilities of the Old World. In Russia the Nihilist is astir. In France the Communist is the coming man. In Germany the Social Democrat will soon rise again in his millions as in the days of Ferdinand Lassalle. In Italy the Internationalist is frequently heard from. In Spain the marks of the Black Hand have been visible on many an occasion. In Ireland the Fenian and Avenger terrorise, and in England the Land League is growing. All cry aloud for the blue blood of the monarch and the aristocrat. They wish to see it pouring again on the scaffold. Will it be by the guillotine that cut off the head of Louis XVI.? Or by the headsman's axe that decapitated Charles I.? Or by the dynamite that searched out the vitals of Alexander the Second? Or will it be by the hangman's noose around the neck of the next British monarch?

"No one can tell but that the coming English sans-culottes, the descendants of Wamba the Fool and Gurth the Swineherd, will discover the necessary method and relentlessly employ it. They will make the nobles-who fatten and luxuriate in the castles and abbeys and on the lands stolen from the Saxon, sacrilegiously robbed from the Catholic Church and kept from the peasantry of the villages and the labourer of the towns-wish they had never been born. They will be the executioners of the fate so justly merited by the aristocratic criminals of the past and the present. The cry that theirs is blue blood and that they are the privileged caste will not avail the men and women of rank when the English Republic is born. They will have to expiate their tyrannies, their murders, their lusts, and their crimes in accordance with the law given on Sinai amid the thunders of heaven: The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generations.'"

Even if such ravings as these are dismissed as unworthy of notice, it is not the less certain that the most amiable and intelligent Americans are looking forward to a near future in which the Republican lion, having digested the aristocratic lamb, shall lie down in dignified repose with no one to question his claim to be the first of created beings in a renewed world, the secret of which he pretends to be equality applied to all except himself. For an illustration of this, it is sufficient to refer to one of the latest and most pleasing American books, entitled, An American Four-in-Hand in Britain, by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, which describes, with great vivacity, how a party of simple and impressionable Republicans chartered a coach at Brighton and were driven, to their immense satisfaction, through England and Scotland. Throughout this book, which is by a friendly hand, and treats British weaknesses with kindly compassion, runs the strong stream of belief in the triumph of Republicanism in England, and its regeneration "under the puri