cerns the domestic welfare of the great body of the electorate, I see no reason why there should not be a complete alliance of object between the Tory party and the Democracy. Such a programme also contains questions of the very gravest importance to the future of this country. Power having fallen into the hands of the very classes in whose behalf this programme is urged, may easily be misused to the undoing of much that it would be impossible to reinstate.

English people are not jealous of one another's goods, and there is no sort of antipathy towards the classes that possess wealth. It is well understood that the stability of our prosperity depends largely upon the stability of our political and social institutions, and that it is dangerous to drive away trade and capital, that may never return to our shores. A series of impudent shams have been palmed off on the country as a programme for general reform; these reforms have been simply so many bribes given to the electorate by the Liberal party, at the expense of one particular interest. In no way has the Liberal party ever attempted to deal with the great social questions which belong to the relations of labour' to 'capital,' or the material bettering of the manufacturing classes as against the interest of capital. The great body of capitalists and manufacturers are allied to the Liberal party because its system is one of general laisser faire in matters which concern what they consider to be trade competition. The Tory party have so far utterly failed to see these faults in the programme of their opponents. They are eminently capable to perform a great part in establishing the work of domestic reform. They have no personal motives to prevent them from identifying themselves with the labour interest. No party can exist on principles which contain nothing but a negation of the views of their opponents. The Tory party have before them a programme. They have it in their power to assist in the solution of the great question of the next fifty years of national life, the relation of labour to capital. If they fail to understand their opportunity, they will fail also to understand the ideas and objects which underlie the theory of our unwritten constitution.

MARLBOROUGH.

THE NEW NATIONAL PARTY.

Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest upon some principle in which they are all agreed.—Burke.

THE discussion which has been raised during the last few weeks as to the possible reconstruction of our political parties is not likely to die out. The ideas which underlie it have been long fermenting in men's minds. All that was wanted to quicken them into life was that they should be expressed in words by some leader of public opinion, on some noteworthy occasion. The necessary impetus was given last September by Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain in their Yorkshire speeches. The partisan journals were at once astir, some heartily welcoming the new proposal, others seeking to cover it with ridicule, and to prevent its coming to the birth. The professional politicians out of office, of course, followed suit. But, in spite of all attacks, the proposal survives, and is likely to hold a large portion of the field of political thought, at least as long as the present Parliament lasts-that is to say, for the next two or three years. What will become of it at the end of that time no one can foretell with certainty, but many of us believe that it will then cease to be talked about in the light of a proposal, not because it will have fallen through, but because it will have got itself translated into fact.

The grounds for this belief may be stated as follows. There is a growing sense of the inadequacy of our existing party nomenclature to represent the differences that really separate one set of politicians from another set. The Tory of the old school is already become obsolete. At all events, few are bold enough to boast of that title when addressing a popular audience. The man who calls himself a Tory is usually careful to explain that he is a Tory of the New School-the capitals stand for the emphasis of his gesture-which is as much as to say that, being fully alive to the change of view forced upon him by the extended suffrage, he is prepared to give in his adhesion to most of the articles of the old Liberal faith. He may sometimes cast a tender retrospective glance at Protection amid the confidences of private life, but he will not dare to acknowledge her as his mistress before the world. The Ballot and Compulsory Educa

tion are as much his as if he had invented them, the patents of his opponents having long since expired. His also is now local representative government in all parts of the United Kingdom. Even in the matter of tithes he has given way; for he is ready to place them openly on the shoulders of the landlords, who have long borne the burden of them concealed in their breeches pockets. Such a man would have been called a Liberal thirty years ago. He is now called an advanced Tory or else a progressive Conservative. The former is the fitter phrase of the two, precisely because it has no inherent meaning of its own, whereas a progressive Conservative is a contradiction in terms, and Conservative is not so veteran a word in politics as to be entitled to indulge in the luxury of eccentricity.

When we turn to the nomenclature in the opposite camp we find a similar confusion prevailing. The term 'Liberal' has lost its distinctiveness for the reason already indicated-namely, that there are Liberal Conservatives, to say nothing of Conservative Liberals. Radical is a more characteristic and, at first sight, more attractive word, for it denotes a thorough going policy, and thoroughness of execution is to be admired in every department of life. But then there are Radicals and Radicals. There is the Radical of the type of Lord Randolph Churchill, when he chooses to pose as a Tory Democrat. There is the Radical of the type of Mr. Labouchere, who bears a strong family resemblance to the Continental Socialist. All this is very perplexing. Why should identical words be employed to signify totally different things? No wonder that thoughtful men who have nothing to gain from chaos are seeking a more lucid political classification, and are, many of them, declining to be labelled at all, for fear of being labelled wrong.

If this state of things were inevitable, or even in the order of nature, a wise man would resign himself to it without a murmur. But we are dealing with things that are artificial and entirely in our own power. The difficulty cannot, therefore, be insuperable, although it must be confessed that a difficulty there is. In theory, indeed, nothing can be more easily changed than a name. But in practice it is found that where one name-system is in vogue, it requires either a great crisis or an insistence throughout long years to induce men to substitute any other for it. Has such a crisis arrived? There are those who think that it has. like Mr. Frederick Greenwood, who think that it we are within measurable distance of it. like Sir George Trevelyan, who refuse to arrive, because, in their worship of the fetish Party,' they conceive that to tamper with party designations is sacrilege punishable with political death. In order to judge between these various opinions, we must briefly advert to certain remarkable events in the history of the last three years.

There are others, has not, but that There are others, again, believe that it ever can

Of course, the cardinal fact to be noted is the Home Rule Bill of 1886; for if that had not been introduced the present schism in the Liberal party might never have taken place. But this is not the only or even the prime factor in the situation. The powers of the Irish Statutory Parliament were to be so hedged round by provisions and restrictions, that if these could have held their ground, and if the Parnellites could have been trusted to accept that Bill as final, an end might have been put to the Home Rule agitation for at least a quarter of a century. We know, however, that the hopes entertained in that direction by those who were willing to submit that Bill to a new Parliament have been wholly falsified. The safeguards of our national security on which we relied, and to which a hollow assent was given by the Irish members at the time, have long been cast to the winds. More than twelve months ago Mr. Michael Davitt announced, in a speech delivered in County Wexford, that ‘an ugly feeling was growing up among his colleagues, that they had surrendered too easily to Mr. Gladstone for the kind of Home Rule to which they would agree.' And Mr. T. D. Sullivan stated nearly simultaneously at Dublin that Ireland had now established a right to a larger and wider scheme of Home Rule than was proposed in 1886. Nor is this all. The Bill itself, even if it could be treated as still alive after we have been assured, in the classic phrase of the Pall Mall Gazette, that it is as dead as Julius Cæsar,' has been transformed by the excision of its twenty-fourth clause. The country is now invited, while retaining the Irish members in the House of Commons, to accept as the logical outcome of such retention a system of bastard federalism for which no analogy can be found in any part of the globe. Superficial politicians on the stump still talk of the Gladstonian policy of 1886 as if it existed in 1889, and twit those who were favourable to that policy, as defined and limited by the Bill of 1886, with being renegades and turncoats. These sneers and gibes are wholly futile. There is no such policy now, and, indeed, no one can make out what the present Gladstonian policy is, unless it be the short and simple expedient of giving to Mr. Gladstone a free hand to impose on the country any measure he likes in which his Parnellite allies will condescend to acquiesce. The new nostrum-'Imperial Home Rule '—is a gigantic and fascinating scheme, but how it is to work, or why violence is to be done to our national traditions for the sake of pleasing a comparatively small number of persons who have never asked for this particular form of remedy, and, for all we know, do not desire it, no one as yet has succeeded in showing. Events have proved that the Gladstonian party was in too great a hurry in 1886; its pace has of late become terrific. As if possessed by the Irish Question, it now adopts a counsel of despair, and is about to plunge into unknown abysses and to drag the British Constitution along with it. We are out of breath, and

through the prevailing mist cannot even descry the path it has taken. If its nominal leader would have us follow him down the decline, let him give us pause and give us speech. Let him act up to his own creed, and take the people into his confidence. Let him treat his 'flesh and blood' as intelligent beings, and afford them, by clear statement, an opportunity of scanning his new proposals. So long as he remains silent or oracularly obscure we have a right to doubt whether he knows his own mind.

Here, then, is a strong line of demarcation between the different sections of the once undivided Liberal party; on the one side are those who blindly put their trust in the ex-Premier's judgment, on the other side those who distrust it. With the former must be classed men like Sir William Harcourt, and the bulk of those who enjoyed place and power during the last two Liberal administrations. With the latter, men like Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain, who decline to be dragged at the chariot wheels of any dictator, however eminent or however triumphant. They are themselves leaders of men, and cannot therefore be expected to wear any man's livery. Their title to be so ranked has been abundantly proved by the influence they have exerted on the legislative action of the Conservative party during the continuance of the Unionist alliance. Gallantly aided by their immediate followers, they have piloted the present Ministry through many a dangerous shoal, and their policy is as conspicuous in the Acts which that Ministry has lately passed as if they had themselves commanded the vessel of the State.

Is this alliance an ephemeral phenomenon, or is it destined to grow into something closer and warmer? The answer depends on another important fact, which has now to be taken into account— namely, the future of the new combination which during last session emerged in concrete form and is known as the New Radical Party.

To those who have persistently branded the Liberal-U.icnists with the opprobrious term of Dissentient Liberals the su lden a; pearance in their midst of this compact and resolute band, e quipped with all the apparatus of House of Commons warfare, must be peculiarly galling. It is a distinct imputation on their own orthodoxy. And it places them in an interesting dilemma. Either they agree with the prospectus of the new Company, or they do not. If they do, they have ceased to be followers of Mr. Gladstone, for it would be a libel on the character of that statesman to impute to him sympathy with the reckless cynicism and communistic designs of its principal promoters. If they do not, they must submit to the humiliation of acknowledging a split in their own ranks-a split far more serious than that which their organs in the press are never tired of charging against those Liberals who differ from them. How is this split to be healed? For healed, according to their view of party politics, it