power in due course by the swing of the pendulum. But at the end of November, 1909, the House of Lords rejected the Budget ("referred it to the country") by a majority of 275. This rejection the Commons immediately declared to be unconstitutional by a majority of 215. The House of Lords had its way; Parliament was dissolved; the Budget and the proposals for the limitation of the Veto were referred to the country along with Tariff Reform and Home Rule, and the Government returned to power with a majority of 124. On February 21st the King's Speech promised that proposals should be made with all convenient speed "to define the relations between the Houses of Parliament, so as to secure the undivided authority of the House of Commons over finance and its predominance in legislation." In April the Veto resolutions were passed through the Commons by a majority of 105, and the Parliament Bill was introduced. In the middle of April the Premier, after conference with the King, declared that the Government, if it were not able to give statutory effect to its Veto policy, would either resign or recommend another dissolution of Parliament. But "in no case will we recommend a dissolution except under such conditions as will secure that in the new Parliament the judgment of the people as expressed at the elections will be carried into law." Shortly afterwards came the sudden illness of King Edward, and his death on May 6th. An attempt was then made to obtain a settlement by consent in order to relieve a young and inexperienced King of his difficulties, and to avoid either another election or a resort to the use of the prerogative. About the middle of June the Conference began between leading men on both sides. Its proceedings were secret, but we know that an agreement was nearly reached. On November 10th the failure of the Con

ference was announced, and three days later the Prime Minister advised King George to dissolve Parliament in order to ascertain once more and with final precision the opinion of the country upon the Parliament Bill. We now know that the understanding between the Prime Minister and the King was complete and definite, for the Prime Minister's advice was accompanied by the following statement:

His Majesty's Ministers cannot take the responsibility of advising a dissolution unless they may understand that in the event of the policy of the Government being approved by an adequate majority in the new House of Commons his Majesty would be ready to exercise his Constitutional power of creating peers if needed to secure that effect should be given to the decision of the country.

Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne thereupon proposed an alternative policy-a reform of the House of Lords, a joint committee, and a referendum, when the Houses differed on important measures. As a result of the General Election in December this alternative was decisively rejected, and the Liberal Government returned to power with a majority of 126. They again introduced the Parliament Bill into the House of Commons, passed it, and sent it up to the House of Lords. Lord Lansdowne introduced and carried amendments, converting the Bill into a measure somewhat resembling the policy which he and Mr. Balfour had placed before the country last November. Last Tuesday the House of Commons rejected the crucial amendments of Lord Lansdowne and returned the Bill to the Lords. Meanwhile a strong and vigorous section of the Unionist Party, led by Lord Halsbury, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Mr. F. E. Smith, Lord Milner, and others, got up a strong movement of revolt against the official policy. Mr. Balfour and Lord Lans

downe endeavored to propitiate them by moving a vote of censure on the Government, which was, of course, defeated in the Commons and passed in the Lords. But the "Die-hards" refused to submit. They whipped up the "backwoodsmen" to insist on the Lansdowne amendments, in order to defeat the Bill for a few weeks and to force a creation of peers. After two days of sharp controversy and recrimination, which have strained the relations between leading Unionists, the Government, as we have seen, has succeeded in carrying its Bill intact, and much

The Economist.

relief will be felt by moderate men of all parties. We have always held that the Government Bill, now about to become law, is the most moderate and practicable device for removing the constitutional deadlock, and for confirming in this country the system of representative government which has been the unwritten law of the Constitution since 1832. The action taken by the King and the Prime Minister has been scrupulously constitutional, and will be generally approved by public opinion.

E. P. Dutton & Co. will bring out in the autumn Romain Rolland's "Life of Tolstoi." The author was long a friend and admirer of Tolstoi-and his book is one of the most sane appreciations that has appeared. The same firm will also publish Arnold Bennett's "Hilda Lessways" in October-and Pierre de Coulevain's "Heart of Life."

Grief giving way to hope, love and joy, under the influence of solitude and the sea, is the theme of the slender story which Joseph Horner Coates names "The Spirit of the Island." The descriptive passages which fill a large part of the book are said to have been suggested by the scenery of Martha's Vineyard, but the heroine-a piquant, pathetic sprite-is surely of the writer's own creation. Little, Brown & Co.

Among books for young readers which T. Y. Crowell & Co. expect to publish this month are "The Aeroplane at Silver Fox Farm," by James Otis, a sequel to "The Wireless Station at Silver Fox Farm," which is already in its third edition, and "Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods," also by Mr. Otis;

"The Unmannerly Tiger and Other Korean Tales" by Dr. William Elliott Griffis; and an edition from new plates of Mrs. Ella Farman Pratt's book for little people, "Happy Children."

Little, Brown & Co's autumn fiction will include "Havoc," a typical story of international intrigue by E. Phillips Oppenheim, illustrated in color by Howard Chandler Christy; "When Woman Proposes," a love story by Anne Warner, illustrated in color by Charlotte Weber-Ditzler; "The Road," a tale of railroad building in the Balkans by Frank Saville; "The Lotus Lantern," the romance of a Geisha girl by Mary Imlay Taylor and Martin Sabine; "At Good Old Siwash," humorous college tales by George Fitch; and "Across the Latitudes," stories of the sea by John Fleming Wilson.

The "Secretary for Frivolous Affairs" of May Futtrelle's sprightly story is a "young, good-looking, well-bred, welleducated, well-read, tactful girl, speaking French and understanding bridge, football, baseball and golf," who replies to the advertisement of a woman

Henry Holt & Co. expect to have ready in November Burton E. Stevenson's "Favorite Poems in English," which promises to be the most comprehensive as well as the most up-todate anthology of English verse ever published. It will make a volume of 3,000 pages, but as it will be printed on India paper it will not be inconveniently large or heavy. About eleven hundred poets will be represented by about 3,500 poems and the range of selection, as might be inferred from this statement, extends to more recent and less widely known writers as well as to those ordinarily included in such collections. The compiler has gone carefully through the works of all the great English poets and the work of most of the minor ones and has examined about two hundred other anthologies and the prominent American magazines, including, among others, The Living Age from the beginning. The use of India paper makes possible a single column to the page instead of the usual two column arrangement, with a corresponding gain in ease of reading.

Octave Thanet's "Stories That End Well," conveys an enticing promise in its title for readers who are disinclined toward the tragic in fiction, feeling perhaps that there is enough that is

melancholy in real life without going far afield for it in the creations of the fancy. The author is true to her promise, for each of the eleven stories grouped in the volume does end well, even at the sacrifice now and then of the probabilities in the case. There is, for example, a rich young woman idealist, who conducts her household on the highest idealistic principles, with some amusing results; there is the pathetic tale of the ardent Blaine partisan who, after his mind has become enfeebled, attends the convention which nominated McKinley under the hallucination that Blaine was the nominee; there is the romance of the "little lonely girl" and a rich young American who fall in love with each other in complete ignorance of the fact that each has been chosen for the other by their elders; and the rest, all ending well, and all illustrating the author's cheerful optimism and her large-hearted interest in social questions. Bobbs Merrill Co.

A less complex character than Edwin Clayhanger, and appealing almost wholly to the sense of humor and scarcely at all to the sympathy, is "Denry the Audacious," Arnold Bennett's latest addition to his gallery of Five Towns' photographs. The son of a widowed washerwoman who saves a certain amount of time every day by addressing him as "Denry," Edward Henry Machin, after completing the course at the Endowed School, feels it inconceivable that he should work in clay with his hands, and through the interest of one of his mother's patronesses is made stenographer to the Town Clerk. The ease with which he contrives the insertion of his own name in the list of invitations to the Mayor's ball, paying the dancing-mistress for lessons and the tailor for a dress-suit by inserting theirs at the same time, and the assurance with which he leads out the Countess for the first dance in