friends even more strongly than by his opponents-were twofold. They held that the policy of an Imperial Parliament should be to municipalise local institutions, but in no sense to allow them to become quasi-national; and that the moment was inopportune to raise hopes or to create occasions for dissension, which would be aggravated tenfold should the Gladstonians be returned to power. The latter were pledged to favour national aspirations to the utmost, and consequently the most elaborate precautions taken to restrict local bodies to the discussion of local affairs would be certainly abused if not openly set aside. Moreover, it was argued that practically the introduction of a measure on the eve of a dissolution was a mistake. More than a hundred members had already announced their intention of not offering themselves again for election, and consequently party ties and party restraint were far less powerful than at the beginning of a parliament. To ask members under such conditions to support a Bill which they honestly believed would do mischief to Ireland, in deference to a promise given years before, was to introduce into politics a Quixotic sentiment which would endanger the position of those who shared it.

It was, perhaps, significant that the Opposition leaders said little or nothing about Mr. Balfour's Bill, either waiting for further details or realising that the subject was one which had no real interest for the English electors. Sir William Harcourt, addressing his constituents at Derby (Dec. 3) and "taking stock," as he termed it, of both political parties, passed it by with a few sneers, and devoted the greater portion of his speech to an attack upon the Liberal Unionists in general and Mr. Chamberlain in particular. Commenting on the Conservative meeting at Birmingham he said: "The Tory commander-inchief had come down in state to receive the capitulation of the old Liberal fortress. The Bazaine of Birmingham was there to surrender to the triumphant foe the key of the fortress." Retorting upon Mr. Chamberlain's declaration that he had no longer any wish for reunion with his former colleagues, Sir William Harcourt said that it was long since reunion had been possible. "His account had long been closed in the books of the Liberal party, and written opposite to his name was 'no Mr. Chamberlain at one time had been willing to accept the principles of Mr. Gladstone's measure, and to accept an Irish executive and an Irish Legislature, and if the round table conference came to an end it was not from any differences of opinion either upon principle or detail, but for reasons of a totally different character. As to the gulf between Mr. Chamberlain and the Liberal party, it was a split as to the spirit which ought to govern the conduct of men in the mutual relations of public life. In the opinion of the Liberal party those relations forbade a man to disavow the policy in which he him...self had been a principal actor, to vilify colleagues whose counsels

he had shared, and to condemn their common actions as though he had no part in them. As to the prospects of the Liberal party, Sir William Harcourt regarded them full of the promise of approaching triumph. The Liberals, he said, placed Home Rule first, but claimed the right to deal with matters of equal importance the condition of the rural population, Scotch and Welsh disestablishment, the temperance cause, and the "one man one vote" reform. The labour question they would deal with in the spirit of Mr. Gladstone's suggestion respecting the payment of members and the introduction of an increased number of labour representatives into the House of Commons.

Mr. John Morley, speaking at Oldham (Dec. 5), defended his party against the charges of latent hostility to capital, of secretly negotiating with the Irish leaders, and of veiling a feeling of separation under a demand for a system of self-government for Ireland. He ridiculed Mr. Balfour's plan of setting up a number of county councils which no one asked for or desired, adding that his idea of local government was so fenced round with safeguards, limitations, and provisoes that it would be something quite different from local government in England. In reply to Mr. Chaplin's recent defence of small holdings at Swindon (Dec. 2), Mr. Morley declared that the best authorities had no faith in small holdings of forty acres or so for a few individuals as a solution of the land problem. Such plans might well be tried, but their adoption would not lessen the necessity for compulsory powers of taking land in small quantities about a village. In this way, and by slowly extending the power to get allotments, and by teaching the rural populations the lesson of co-operation and the need of association, would be the only way to arrive at a satisfactory reform of the land system.

The constant demands made upon statesmen for speeches on purely political subjects put a stop to nearly all those brilliant, instructive discourses with which the recess was formerly enlivened. To the majority of our political speakers the power of "detachment" was probably denied, whilst to many more the pursuit of politics absorbed the whole of their time and thoughts. Mr. Gladstone was the most notable exception to the prevailing spirit of the day, and few, if any, could so completely lay aside political thoughts and party aims as this extraordinary statesman, who was now on the threshold of his eighty-third year. But, if in this respect, he stood superior to all others, he did not stand quite alone. Mr. Balfour at Glasgow (Nov. 26), in his rectorial address had taken for his subject the modern illusion that human society was governed by some irresistible and automatic "law of progress.' He maintained, on the contrary, that history showed nothing but a succession of national civilisations which had successively collapsed; and he concluded a very remarkable and closely reasoned speech by rejecting the theory that the accumulation of knowledge was a guarantee of civilisation, first, because knowledge

did as much, if not more, to dissolve social ties and to stimulate social scepticisms as to bind them together; and secondly, because no knowledge existed by the magic of which men could really be guided and inclined to hold together in close association. Mr. Goschen, too, had on more than one occasion to show himself, not only as the fighting champion of the Liberal Unionists in the Cabinet, but also as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and titular financial head of a great commercial country. In the early part of the year he had already spoken of the difficulties of the Government and the Bank of England in the presence of sudden demands for cash in times of panic. The warnings he had then addressed to the bank managers of the United Kingdom had not been altogether passed unnoticed, and Mr. Goschen recognised that it was all the more incumbent on the part of the Government to assist the Bank of England to the possession of a metallic reserve more in proportion to the credit commitments of the country. Taking advantage, therefore, of a meeting of the London Chamber of Commerce (Dec. 1), he placed before that body his currency proposals in order that they might be discussed before any steps were taken in Parliament in a matter so vital to the interests of British trade. Mr. Goschen first proposed to increase permanently the gold held by the Bank of England twenty millions sterling, through the issue of 25,000,000 one-pound notes. These would be secured to the extent of fourfifths in gold, which, he anticipated, would remain in the vaults of the Bank of England, and by one-fifth in "securities," namely, Consols. He further proposed to dispense with the occasional necessity for suspending the Bank Charter Act by giving the Bank of England the power of issuing notes in times of emergency up to a fixed amount in proportion to the gold in its vaults, the check to an issue in excess of the immediate requirements of the occasion being found in the high rate of interest payable to the Exchequer in return for this privilege. A few days later Mr. Goschen wrote to the Governor of the Bank of England describing the broad outline of his scheme. He proposed to authorise the Bank of England to issue one-pound notes on the condition that the additional issue which would ensue should be issued in the proportion of 41. on gold against 11. on securities. An issue based on this proportion would be grafted on to the present system as follows:

The Bank of England is at present authorised to issue 16,450,000l. on securities. Beyond that all notes must be represented by gold. The average amount of gold in the issue department for the years 1881-90 may be taken as between 21,000,000l. and 22,000,000.-say, to obtain round figures, 21,550,000l.-which, if added to the 16,450,000l.-the authorised amount of the fiduciary issue-would give a total of 38,000,000l., representing the average total issue under the provisions of the Act of 1844. I would disturb nothing up to this point beyond

authorising the issue of one-pound notes under precisely the same conditions as those under which notes of higher denominations are issued at present. But beyond this limit of 38,000,000l. I would authorise the issue of notes under the conditions which I have sketched—namely, 4l. on gold to 1l. on securities.

The proposal may be stated in another and perhaps a simpler way by describing the authority as commencing when the stock of gold in the issue department of the Bank of England stands at 21,550,000l.

If an additional sum of 25,000,000l. were issued in the proportion of 4l. on gold to 1l. on securities, the addition to the stock of gold would be 20,000,000l., bringing the total to 41,550,000l., and the position would be as follows:

Total notes

Old average

Additional issue

£38,000,000

£25,000,000

£63,000,000

This total would be issued against gold and securities respectively in the following proportions:

If, contrary to expectation, the additional issue under the new terms should reach 50,000,000l., any further issues beyond that sum would be required to be covered in full by gold. The second part of his scheme Mr. Goschen explained as follows:

"If the addition to the stock of gold through the issue of onepound notes should bring the total stock up to 30,000,000l., a point which would be reached by the issue of 10,000,000l. under the new conditions, I should be prepared to give certain additional powers of issue in times of emergency which, under the present system, it would not be justifiable to grant. I would authorise the Bank to strengthen the reserve in the banking department by the issue of additional notes against securities on paying to the Government a high rate of interest, to be fixed by law. I stated that the rate of interest must be neither so high as to make the permission inoperative nor so low as to encourage people to speculate up to it."

On its first announcement Mr. Goschen's scheme was received with favour in several quarters, but after time had been given to reflection and discussion, the general opinion in com

mercial circles was that the proposal offered no guarantee for the retention in the Bank of any larger amount of bullion than was absolutely necessary, and that practically the immediate result of its adoption would be the still greater inflation of credit and the export to foreign capitals of all the bullion, first purchased by the Bank of England, and subsequently set free by the natural action of trade and exchange. The more sentimental objection to the substitution of one-pound notes for sovereigns scarcely found serious expression, the custom of Scotland and Ireland, as well as of Continental countries, showing that the difficulties in the way of giving currency to paper money were not insuperable, whilst public tastes suited itself readily to the occasion. Before the close of the year, however, Mr. Goschen had sufficient evidence that his scheme would meet with little support from the higher authorities in the commercial and banking world, and it seemed probable that it would not come before Parliament for consideration. Mr. Goschen at Glasgow (Dec. 9), however, was more successful when replying to the sarcasms of Sir William Harcourt and exposing the fallacies upon which Mr. Cameron, M.P., had based a criticism of his financial acts. To the former, who had ridiculed the divided policy of the Conservatives at Birmingham, Mr. Goschen retorted by reading the letters of delegates to the Newcastle conference, who described that meeting as "a blooming plant," and he contrasted the open discussion invited by the Conservatives to the "resolutions drawn up in secret conclave " and rushed through the Radical meeting without any delegates being allowed to think, and still less to make remark. To Dr. Cameron's reproaches that the reduction of the interest on the national debt was effected at the expense of "the widow and the orphan," because they had no votes, and that his (Mr. Goschen's) surpluses were obtained by taxing cheap tea, beer, spirits, and tobacco as heavily as higher qualities of the same luxuries, Mr. Goschen replied that his opponents often "played the widow," and that if the charge meant anything at all it meant that between five and six hundred millions of Consols were held by orphans and widows who had no votes. To the other criticism he replied that to establish an ad valorem duty would be difficult in practice, would hamper trade, make the commodity dearer, and lead to the consumption of the worst articles and to fraud of every description.

The illness of Prince George of Wales, which at one time threatened to be serious, may have in some way hastened the announcement of the betrothal of his elder brother, the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, to the Princess Mary Victoria of Teck, his second cousin. What is more certain is that the innate loyalty of the English people towards their sovereign, though often kept in the background, was stimulated, first, by the anxiety felt for one so near the throne, and secondly, by the thought that one still nearer, and the prospective heir, was about to break