From The Spectator. THE POSSIBILITY OF WAR THIS YEAR, and France. With the progress of these expectation and the hope that it would be events, Englishmen, busy in tearing one refused. It is also true that the Catholic another in pieces within their own four party throughout Europe expects, or posseas, had little or nothing to do. No sibly desires, an early renewal of the condoubt the ill success of the English arms test; that Italy has been sounded, that in France had much to do with awakening Russia is placing her Treasury in order in that spirit of discontent without which view of the possibility of a catastrophe. Duke Richard would have had but little Nevertheless, Germany is governed by chance of pressing his claims. And at a statesmen, and it is nearly impossible to later time Charles of Burgundy had a believe that statesmen should in the prescertain amount of influence on the affairs ent position of affairs provoke another war, of the island of whose Royal house he should wilfully encounter its enormous deemed himself a member. But to the risks, should destroy at a blow the rising general European character of either the and splendid prosperity of their country. earlier or the later struggle the civil war They would lose at first setting-off almost of the fifteenth century can make no as much as they have gained. Their warclaim. It is a time which, when looked chest no doubt is full, and their military at carefully, has its interest, but on the discipline perfect; but to suspend all inwhole there is no portion of our English dustry, to call upon a nation for a war of history on which we can look back with invasion, to draw out once more the whole less satisfaction. strength of Germany when Germany lies secure behind her fortresses, is an effort which will demand all Prince Bismarck's courage, and if his courage is limitless will require the fullest justification of success. Private soldiers just out of a campaign are not so fond of battle, and the soldiers at THE real danger of war in Europe, and all events do not believe that France is a we believe it is very real, arises from the powerless foe. In spite therefore of the character, the history, and the position of declarations published in the Telegraph, M. Thiers, and not from any policy of the and intended of course as informal German leaders. There is, we know, warnings to France, and in spite of strong reason to believe that the Military the provocations given in Lorraine, we party in Berlin, which is immensely pow- are unable to believe that Germany, erful with the Emperor and with the Reg- unless challenged. will wilfully recomular Army, doubts whether France is yet mence the war. We are the less able, besufficiently beaten, expects another war, cause even if victorious she could gain so and is more than half inclined to embrace very little. She does not want to hamper any pretext for making it a speedy one. herself with a Poland; or to see the ComIf France, they say, is to be fought, she mune rise, as it would rise, to power; or should be fought while still unready, still by increasing the enormous fine already under the influence of despondency, still levied, to tempt France in a fit of despair above all, without any formidable ally. to render fines impossible by repudiating Any change in the politics of St. Petersburg might double her offensive strength. It is under this impression that they have declined all offers for the speedy evacuation of French territory, believing the positions they hold to be more valuable than the decrease in French hostility which would follow on their departure. This party has apparently forwarded to the Daily Telegraph assurances which, if they mean anything, mean that the revival of France will be arrested by menaces, by some demand, such, for instance, as a reduction of the Army, which coull not be accepted, yet could not be refused without a war, to be waged without further parley. M. Thiers could not make such a concession withont stepping down from his chair, nor could it be demanded except in the her Debt. She might by possibility, if Europe held aloof, break up France; but she would gain little by that, her danger from a cycle of insurrection being at least as great as her danger from any war. But our confidence in the preservation of peace diminishes when we study the policy of M. Thiers. That eminent person, amidst many changes of attitude and some few changes of political conviction, has throughout his career displayed one dominant quality, which may be described by his friends as courage and by his enemies as conceit, and is probably compounded of both, but which always tempts men to transmute opinion into action. He is the most self-reliant of mankind, never shrinks from trusting himself in action as well as counsel, and he has two selves → the President of the Republic and France | probable - though a man of his age has - and is equally confident in both. He is not much time to lose but that he will known to believe that the result of the press forward steadily and confidently to last war was due to mismanagement, that his end, and that his end is the liberation France under good guidance could not be of the two provinces, we have no more beaten, and that his own guidance must doubt than we have that M. Gambetta, his necessarily be good. He has therefore di- new ally, said so at Angers, and meant rected his efforts from the first to the re- most heartily what he said. And it must invigoration of the Army on such a system not be forgotten that M. Thiers, however that success should come speedily, in time much he may be distrusted by foreigners, for him to employ the weapon he has re- must seem to himself and to his countryforged. He has discouraged every scheme men to have some ground for his self-conof universal service because it would take fidence. After eighteen months of power time, has redisciplined the troops whole- he is more completely the necessary man sale by forcing them to endure life in than ever. He may be, as the English camps, and has refilled the ranks by large correspondents say, a conceited little man; levies made in the old way. He has made but he has done what he said he would do, no attempt to reform the officers because - has maintained order, has rebuilt an that would demand time, but he has filled Army, has filled the Treasury, has, above up or is filling up every gap which could all, infused his own irrepressible hopefulbe supplied either by energy or by a large ness and buoyancy into a depressed and expenditure of means. His expenditure defeated people. His methods have seemon matériel, for instance, amounts to mil-ed to Englishmen unwise, hasty, or unnelions. That he desires or expects war this cessarily exhaustive; but no one can say year is improbable, but he feels already the that his efforts have been sterile, that he security and hopefulness resulting from his has wasted time, or that, except in forming preparations, and is anxious to communi- alliances, he has evidently failed. When a cate his feeling to France, which, as he man naturally buoyant has succeeded so knows, always requires the stimulus of a well, it is natural that he should think little intellectual champagne. It is diffi- greater success still possible, should grow cult to believe that he, a master of words, less and less fearful of the future, should did not foresee the interpretation which at last feel as if his success were nearly would be put upon his recent speech, or miraculous, - as if he, the locksmith's son that with a state of siege in Paris he would in the position of a Sovereign, must be quietly tolerate the journalists' warlike in- destined to some great work. Add that terpretation without so much as an official M. Thiers is now, as ever, patriot, that Sedenial. The only explanation of his con- dan probably impressed him with more duct in those utterances is that he thought humiliation than it impressed the Emperthe advantage to be gained from admitting or, that the loss of the provinces is to him France to his counsels greater than the a personal grief, and the decay in the posirisk to be incurred by inspiring the Ger- tion of France a personal wrong, and we mans with alarm. And from his point of shall see a man not unlikely to be carried view he is right. If he is really Count away by an enthusiasm for the revindicaMoltke's equal as a strategist, and if the tion of his country. How far this enthuold Army was equal to the German Army, siasm disturbs his judgment we do not and if the secret of defeat was the Emper- know, for we do not know how far his data or's incapacity for military enterprise, are accurate, how far, that is, France is then he is already prepared, for he has the capable of renewing the contest; but we French Army back again, he has selected do know that our countrymen judge habithis own officers, and he has all the powers ually too much by result, are too much necessary to give him the general control. impressed by victory, too ready to believe The risk involved in all these "ifs" seems that none but Teutons can possess the to outsiders enormous, so enormous as to quality of tenacity. Of all great wars give an impression of the ridiculous; but ever waged that of 1870 was probably the it does not seem so to M. Thiers himself, most costly, but of all great wars ever whose mind, though theatric, is not of the waged it probably produced the least of falsely theatrical kind; who honestly does physical exhaustion. After 1870 France believe in himself, and is as prepared to had lost her savings, but after 1815 she act on his military opinions, as on his opin- had lost her youth. And she survived ions about finance. That he will precipi- 1815. tate matters if he can help it may be im From The Economist. -- He abolished import duties, but insisted on a slight but regular revenue from the wild lands as they were occupied, swept away a tonnage duty which impeded com rigidly to the repayment of the debt. Accustomed to a country without a State Church, and perhaps not so afraid of Paganism as a mere Englishman would have been, he disestablished the Church. Finally in 1870 he found himself with a revenue of 414,418/. and an expenditure of 39,938 less, while the debt, reduced from 600,000 to 367,000, or less than one year's income, is in process of gradual extinction, and by 1900 will have entirely disappeared. The colony is already unhampered by official poverty, and can devote large sums to roads, education, and exper cept a small one on land, have been im posed, while numerous taxes have been remitted, and the reform seems to be due entirely to good management, the suppression of waste, the steady collection of revenue, and the extinction of small peculation. THE recent history of Jamaica affords a singular illustration of the political value of experience. Sir J. P. Grant has re-merce, and applied the sinking fund deemed that colony, changed it from a poverty-stricken and discontented island into a valuable possession, mainly by his use of the experience which he brought with him from India. When he accepted the Governorship of the island he found he had three tasks to perform to pacify the population, to restore the colony to solvency, and to enable the people, if possible, to acquire wealth and each of them looked almost hopeless. The island was owned for the most part by a white race, who at once detested and feared the blacks, while the latter, for their part, disliked and at the same time dreaded the whites. Aimental cultivations. No new taxes, exbloody insurrection of one class against the other was but just over and the air was loaded with rumours of coming dangers. The situation would have seemed most difficult or dangerous to an ordinary English administrator, but to Sir J. P. Grant there was nothing exceptional in it. He had governed millions of dark persons It was necessary still, if Jamacia were to who dislike white men, and, like all An- be content, to enrich the people a little, glo-Indians, had been forced into relying and here Sir J. P. Grant's experience was on the efficacy of certain abstract princi- of the highest use. He was told of course ples of government, one of them being that negroes would not work and would equal justice before the law, and another that disaffection should be unnoticed till it becomes rebellion. The disparity of force in India between the governors and the governed is so great that the former are, so to speak, driven into justice as a protection. Sir J. P. Grant therefore remodelled the police, informed everybody that negroes were in law the same as whites, carried out the laws as respected squatting kindly but unflinchingly, and in a few months saw that order was secure. The panic" " he never felt, and very soon the white population ceased to feel it either. There had been no political change, except the abolition of the Assembly, no concession had been made and no tyranny had been set up, but a sense of security had been diffused, and with it industry of course revived. 66 cheat, but he had heard all that before, and knew that men who are reluctant to work for wages will still work for themselves. He therefore improved the civil courts so as to ensure the people their pay, took possession of all waste lands, and granted them out on moderate rents for seven-year terms. The negro squatters, after a show of resistance, which the Governor met with uncompromising firmness, acceded to these arrangements, and began to work steadily, being perfectly secure, and being also inexorably compelled to pay their rentals. Then, as Jamaica can grow almost every Indian product, Indian cultivations were introduced. The tea plant and the cinchona tree were brought over for the hills, and were found to flourish, and hemp for the lowlands, which has turned out better than the Mexican. The next care was finance, and on this Immigration from India was encouraged, also Sir J. P. Grant had much experience and the coolies throve so well that of all to use. Indian finance is not very good, who were free to depart in 1870 two-thirds being irregular, unscientific, and over remained, while the number introduced hopeful; but the tone of the Government was almost doubled. If they will settle, as is hostile to jobbery, waste, and peculation, appears to be certain, the island will oband the island was full of them all. Sir tain a singularly docile and industrious J. P. Grant stopped jobbery at once. He population, accustomed to our rule, easy spent rather more than before, but he to instruct, and asking very little except would have a pennyworth for the penny. 'speedy justice in civil matters, and in all other matters to be let very much alone. | proportion. It is barely forty years since It is quite probable that if the system of the Jews were considered outcasts, since a government can but be continued, the pop- Bill to admit them to municipal office in ulation of Jamaica may be doubled, and England raised such a storm of indignaits wealth tripled, till it is as rich, as full tion that a powerful Government had to of industry, and as contented as any coun- give way and repeal an Act already acty of Bengal, and estates recently worth cepted by Parliament; since they were nothing become again almost as produc- throughout Europe legally disqualified for tive as in the slave period. the offices which a universal prejudice renWe trust that the Colonial Office enter- dered it impossible for them to hold; and tains no intention of removing Sir. J. P. now there is scarcely a State in which they Grant or rather, of letting him depart are not Ministers, not one, except Russia but should he determine to return to Eng- and Spain, in which they have not a kind land, he should certainly be succeeded by of preference in the suffrages of the peoan Indian who would respect and could pre-ple. The prejudice originally bitterly felt serve the traditions of the system which by the masses, and slightly by the upper has proved so successful. It is not so class, now lingers among the upper class, much through mental originality that Sir but has died away utterly in the masses. J. P. Grant has succeeded, though no In England one Jew, by race, leads the doubt he is an original man, as through his Opposition, and another is Solicitor-Genapplication of the experience gained on a eral; in India, another, Mr. Ellis, sits in much more extensive field. It is a pity to the Supreme Council; in France, a Jew throw away a resource so valuable, and to rules the Department of Instruction; in refuse to employ the only class of public Austria he is President of the Lower servants existing in the world who are House; and in Germany, if Mr. Disraeli is trained to govern dark men mildly, and to right as to Count Arnim, he is the most combine absolute personal freedom with a trusted and influential of Prince Bissystem which denies to those ruled all di-marck's selected agents. We are afraid, rect political power. Jamaica should be en-pending the list we have asked for, to give trusted, for a generation at all events, to a the figures we have heard, but it is certain succession of Indian civilians, all bent upon converting the island into a richer, more civilized, and better known Bengal, till it becomes, what we are assured it is already becoming, the favourite home or retreat for the wealthy, the invalid, or the weary of the entire North American continent. Nothing revives a Canadian or a man of the Eastern States just touched by the sharpness of his own climate like a sojourn of a few weeks in Jamaica. From The Spectator. THE JEWS AS POLITICIANS. WE wish our contemporary of the Jewish Chronicle, who alone possesses the means, would supplement Dr. Marks' recent lectures on the position of modern Jews by publishing a list of all the Ministers of State, Members of Parliament, and noted politicians and journalists belonging to that race in the different countries of Europe. We believe it would be found that, with the exception of the cosmopolitan aristocracy, the thousand or so of families in Europe whose names recur through all modern history, no class, race, or creed contributes to the work of modern government in anything like the same that all over the Continent Jews are taking possession of the journals; that in Italy, Austria, Germany, and many towns of France they are the most acceptable of candidates, and that in England while 800,000 Catholics have not a solitary representative, 80,000 Jews have eight representatives in the House of Commons. There is no reason whatever in public sentiment why there should not be eighty, and many in the circumstances of all countries why the process so lately begun should be almost indefinitely extended. The new levers of power throughout the world are property, popularity, and the Press, and the special genius of the people enables them to acquire all three, and prompts them to strain every effort towards their acquisition. The turn of mind on which Dr. Marks with some bluntness of perception animadverts, which induces Jews everywhere, though everywhere industrious to a proverb, to turn with loathing from manual labour, the circumstances which have made them for generations citizens - they are the conclusive answer to the squirearchical theory that city life enervates and the oppressions which once made wealth their only protec tion, have all combined to make them inimitable men of business. They bring special brains to the work, and special who have recently doubled in numbers, and who are penetrated above most men with the modern spirit, should not rise still further, till they become a political as they are already a financial aristocracy, that is to say, a class with an exceptional chance of success in politics and an exceptional tendency towards that career; and it is curious to speculate on the character of the influence which in that case they would exercise on the politics of the world. habits of combination, and now in all the profitable businesses done in the world, especially the exceptional businesses, such as contracting, bullion and gem dealing, financing, opium selling, and the like, businesses in which profits may be at once quick and enormous, no one contends on an equality with the Jews, and more especially with Jews trained with the German thoroughness. Even in Russia, where of all countries their lot is most miserable. they beat the Christians out of the field, and monopolize the only two functions, Mr. Disraeli, in a very forcible passage innkeeping and agency, in which profit is of "Coningsby," says Jews are essentially possible without laborious or monotonous conservative, while almost all Continental toil. Their popularity is the result appar-statesmen affirm that they are essentially ently of different causes; in some coun- revolutionary; but neither of these extries, as Austria, of their independence of treme ideas commends itself strongly to the Church; in some, as Germany, of our minds. An oppressed people is rarely their permanent and necessary hostility to conservative, while a people which has the feudal organization of society; in survived the ages unchanged can hardly some, as France, of their reputation for be revolutionary. That they are ineviscepticism; in some, as England, of their tably opposed to the feudal organization wealth and forehandedness; but in all, of of society, which is still in the half of Euthe quality which they have acquired so re- rope the only recognized organization, is, cently, that perfect receptiveness which en- no doubt true; as it is also true that in ables them to assimilate the special quali- Catholic countries they are of necessity ities of every race without losing any of enemies of a Church which cannot induce their own. No man understands Germans itself to allow them more than a contemptlike the German Jew. No man is so ex-uous toleration. They cannot find a place ceptionally French as the French Jew. in a feudal system, and are, moreover, No man comprehends the insularity of our essentially men of towns; while Catholipeople so well as the English Jew. The cism has injured them too deeply, more extraordinary, and in one way, melancholy especially in Spain and Austria, ever to be story of the Heines of Hamburg, now go- heartily forgiven. It has driven them in ing the round of the German Press-the those countries to the apparent conformity story of the French Jewess, who, inherit-on which, as regards Spain, Mr. Disraeli ing the vast wealth of her German kin- dwells with such exultation, and which dred, uses it first of all to express the Dr. Marks affirms to have existed in Aushatred of Frenchmen for Germans by de tria to such an extent that the very nustroying her splendid gardens lest Ger- merous "conversions to Judaism," noticed mans should gain delight from them, in Vienna in 1868-70, were in all cases shows that this receptivity extends to affirmations of Judaism, by Hebrews who every kind of politics; that a Jew family had for some generations apparently conmay be com osed of Germans and French, formed. As regards education also they and each will cling to all, and yet each re- are, on the Continent, always secularists, main a fanatic for the nation to which he and they are apt to be strongly penetrated or she by race does not belong. This with localism, which just now is rather oppower, which amounts very frequently to posed to the ideas current among orthodox capacity of intensifying all national charac- statesmen; but supposing them not opteristics, is the cause alike of popularity and pressed, we see nothing in the intellect of of success in journalism, while it appears the race, which loves pleasure and desires -though this cannot yet be fairly tested- material success, and rather scorns, while not to involve the danger which one would it is very liable to feel, enthusiasm, any have imagined must accompany it, of grad-quality which should make it truly revoual absorption into the surrounding races. lutionary. Karl Marx notwithstanding, There is no reason whatever that we see the Jews are certainly not hostile either to why the Jews, who have a passion for education so great that, as Dr. Marks reports, they completely outstrip even the Germans in their attendance at the Universities, who are hourly increasing in wealth, the institution of property or to its accumulation in few hands, or to those ancient rules regulating its transmission which annoy modern Liberals so much. Not one of the eight Jewish Members voted |