investments in good, highly cultivated land at home. Thus, altogether, our great working class, and others, become discontented; themselves being, by their own great folly and neglect, the origin and cause of their chief discontent. Of course advancement is not made without some measure of accompanying distress. All movement causes heat, and sometimes suffering; for every good there has to be a sacrifice; but then the good arrives. With us, as a community, it has arrived, and is advancing, so that now we hope the very lowest and the least advanced among us will be raised and carried forward by its influence. But though the workman's state is thus improved, and there is hope that his day's pay may be, quite properly, increased, this under various circumstances might be for the moment but a doubtful benefit, and might even be to him a means of harm. A rapid increment of wealth is trying to most characters; it may develop the conceit and folly latent even in the wisest and most modest men. However, the increase of pay should be conceded generously, as the course of trade permits, judiciously, as something wisely due, and not spasmodically, as a gift of patronage or as an evidence of weakness or of fear. The workmen then, perhaps, will not receive their increased fortune as a sort of gambling prize, to be incontinently fooled away; but having been by gradual habitude of prudent thought prepared to save, or by intelligence to utilize their larger income, this will become for them a blessing, not, as so often hitherto, a curse. They will discern that the chief benefit of wealth is not in its immediate enjoyment or display, but in its power in reserve; that a degrading reverence of wealth must injure its possessor; who, with superior self-reverence, should chiefly value wealth for the increasing independence, greater leisure, and abundant power of dignified beneficence that it bestows. For while there is no station in which industry will not obtain power to be liberal, there is no rank or character on which liberality will not confer honour; and it is generous liberality, and not, as they so commonly suppose, impetuous greed, that will most surely raise the character, and thus the social and financial status of our working men. To resume then, we have found that the essential, natural state of labour is not one, as moderns are so apt to think, of social or of intellectual inferiority; but in its higher ranks it has immensely more of dignity and value than the state of trade. The greatest of our merchant princes or our land proprietors are evidently not superior in quality or merit to the the men who by their gifted labour built the Parthenon, the Choir at Westminster, the Cathedral at Rouen, and all the greater monuments of workmen's art throughout the world; and to restore our working men to their old status in society would be a gift of dignity and happiness to every class. This, recent teaching in the schools has led our working people to perceive; and they are now endeavouring to raise their rank to its original and natural position. The first step in this recovery is their self-endowment with a proper kind of home, that they can live in with their families; and this they must have opportunity and proper means to do, in substitution for the present evil and injurious system of house-tenure and roomhiring. But this reform must not be undertaken in a merely personal, or an unjust way; the object must be solely public good, not individual financial gain; with generosity and full consideration, both in cash and feeling, for the actual proprietors, so that both sides may approve, and be legitimately satisfied. The working class must then be educated, not instructed merely; and instruction should be aided by the use of ample means now under Government control. Excessive working hours should also be reduced, by independent mutual arrangements with employers, and as soon as possible, to give more time for education; so that working men may morally and intellectually rise in due accordance with their higher status in the world of business and of politics. Then, those men who are honest, and industrious, and wise, will systematically save; and will invest, in harmony with capitalist employers, in their profit-sharing undertakings, so that the interests of labour and of capital may be made obviously concurrent, instead of being, as at present it is often thought, antagonistic. Thus mutual respect between employers and employed may be combined with the most favourable means and methods for success. Those who are not thus wise will spend their earnings wholly; and when they become dissatisfied with their condition, they will strike with special valour, since the failure, when it comes, will mostly fall upon their wives and families, but any accidental good that may result will be their own. These unwise men may be sustained in their contention by a corresponding want of wisdom in the capitalist employers; and still more by the officious vanity of fussy meddlers, ecclesiastical and other, who attain cheap notoriety and transient popularity by such display of ignorance and subterfuge as Mr. Livesey has so cleverly exposed. To meet the striking system the employers also must combine. They must not leave this for the future, and be taken unawares; but but always should have their own methods well arranged to meet at once a startling outbreak. And they must, besides, be constantly considerate and frugal, with a good reserve of capital available; they must not be poor. The London Dockers were successful for the time because their chief opponents were, from previous long mismanagement, so grievously impoverished. Employers should look out with carefulness on both sides of their way; they should make every arrangement that will tend to improve the general condition of their workers; on the other hand they must prepare to meet judiciously the wild demands of folly, by securing within reach a full supply of new-imported labour, or by plans prepared for transferring their business capital to other districts where cheap labour is not organized for evil by a combination of the docile and the truculent unwise among the workmen. In a word, the masters must be equal to their appellation, and be strong; and in their strength be generous, considerate, and kind, with an anticipating grace that will commend itself to working men and gain their confidence. Sick funds and pension funds should be promoted; and although strict discipline must be maintained in all affairs of business, and in working hours, there should be increased amenity of sentiment and of address between employers and their workmen. How can working people have a cultivated manner if their leaders and employers hardly manifest to them a symptom of such culture; or perhaps of anything but sheer negation of the courtesy that marks a gentleman ? Non-unionists must be protected. During the Dockers' strike these willing workers were abominably treated by the Union men, and still more shamefully neglected by the Government authorities. It is a scandal that, when men desire to work and need the pay, they should be interrupted, terrified, and injured. Men in Parliament are very circumspect that they themselves shall be protected, in their work, from 'moral suasion,' 'conversation,' and 'appeal,' when backed by threatening physical display; but, in their cowardice, or greed for votes, they have delivered over the majority of working men to grievous personal and social terror of a many-headed tyranny. Perhaps when one of these poor fellows, thus abandoned, makes himself his own protector, since the law or the authorities had failed, and juries disagree, or justify the homicide, then Government and Parliament will think that 'moral suasion' had in every case and form be better left alone. All that has thus been said is evidently free from social bias or exclusive prejudice, and is intended to promote the cause of peace, and happiness, and order. The advancement of the working working class is now in progress, and it will go on; it is then wise for all of us to understand the matter, and to bring ourselves and our affairs into concurrence and co-operation with the actual and the inevitable. Those who are in the movement need perhaps some words of warning, more than those who are but partly influenced by its course; and our great care should be to save these hopeful and ambitious working people from the dangerous whirl of revolution, and to advance for them that peaceful progress which secures material interest, promotes good government, and raises both the intellectual and moral qualities of men. That thus, each class among us being properly endowed to meet its vast material and political responsibilities, the powers of the State may be maintained; and that our commonwealth of England, with its unexampled influence for good throughout the world, may long be happily preserved. ART. XI.-1. Returns of the Polls in Parliamentary Elections, 1874-1886. 2. The Autumn Session of Parliament, 1890. THE HE results of the Barrow and Eccles elections, following upon several previous bye-elections, in which the Unionists had been unsuccessful, led the official Radicals last autumn to profess the noisiest confidence in their coming triumph. Mr. John Morley, as we know from his own admissions, was discussing with Mr. Parnell on the 10th of last November how a Gladstonian Government could give protection to the evicted tenants on the Plan of Campaign estates, and, 'referring to the probable approaching victory of the Liberal Party at the polls,' was inquiring whether Mr. Parnell would be willing to assume the office of Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Since the disruption of the Parnellite Party, Unionist speakers and writers, with equal confidence, have foretold an overwhelming defeat for Radicalism at the General Election. In both cases the prophets base their hopes on a partial view of the political situation, and argue from certain selected events, favourable to their own side. They have not regarded the gradual development and changes in the character of contending parties during a series of years, or the underlying feelings, which are in consequence of these changes at work in men's minds. It is, therefore, opportune to review in its broad aspect the course of the policies pursued by parties since the last General Election, and to endeavour to estimate what effect it will have upon the future of political thought in England. The general conversion of the educated classes from Liberalism to Conservatism dates from the the first ascendency of Mr. Gladstone in 1868. It has been fostered by his successive abandonments of all fixed Liberal principles, and reckless lapse into opportunism. The modern expansion and popularity of the Conservative Party spring from the closer contact with the wage-earning classes, which was necessitated by the Reform Act of 1867, and was extended by the Reform and Redistribution Acts of 1884. Those who superficially compare the total result of the General Election of 1874 with that of 1880 have concluded that there was a reaction from Conservatism between these two dates. This conclusion is misleading. The elections of 1874 worked out as luckily for the Conservatives, as did those of 1880 for the Liberals. In 1874 the Conservative representation was as largely in excess of that, which a proportional system would have given, as was the Liberal representation in 1880. In 1874 there was an active conflict in many constituencies between the sections of the Liberal Party, and in all, a rankling soreness and indifference amongst the Nonconformists. In 1880, the Conservatives lost seats by very narrow majorities in the smallest Boroughs, where the shifting of a few votes altered the colour of the representation. They lost seats in the Counties. But no close observer can believe that the Counties were lost by any real revolt from the Imperial policy of Lord Beaconsfield. They were lost in consequence of agricultural depression, and because the farmers were irritated by what they deemed to be the want of sympathy with their distress, shown by the Conservative leaders, and chose either sulkily to abstain from working and voting, or, for the time, to support the other side. In the large towns, and indeed in all districts, in which political life is most active, there was a positive increase in the Conservative polls, and a distinct increase in intelligent Conservative enthusiasm. In 1885 the spread of Conservatism was marked in the old constituencies, and amongst the old voters. Then came the General Election of 1886, fought under completely exceptional conditions, but in which, after making every allowance for the crowning effect of the Liberal Unionist vote and attitude, the increased strength in England of the Conservative Party was again made manifest. Since that time, under the Government of Lord Salisbury the country has enjoyed four years of peace and prosperity. Ireland, excepting some few isolated plague-spots of disturbance, has been rendered orderly, and comparatively prosperous. The specific form of lawlessness, which in 1886 was epidemic, has been virtually stamped out. Encouraged by the successful operation of Lord Ashbourne's Acts, the Government have introduced a great |