population in 1874 returned 94 Liberals and 92 Tories, giving a Tory majority of two. In 1880 the same boroughs returned 125 Liberals and 61 Tories, a Liberal majority of 84, or a difference altogether between the two elections of 62 votes, counting 128 on a division, derived from only 164 seats. It shows how much less easily and completely large constituencies are moved, to notice that in places above 50,000 the net Liberal gain in 1880 was only 21. Of course it is assumed here, and might easily be proved, that the 1874 election was almost as great a reversal of the previous election as 1880 was of 1874.

On this point because we have But it may be

What are the causes of this especial variableness? it would be rash to dogmatize, and it matters less now done with many of these boroughs for ever. suggested that they are more subject to panic, to cries, to extreme and sudden feelings of all sorts, than are larger constituencies. Probably this may be because they get them at second-hand like their fashions from London, and are not as it were present at the making of them. When the element of fitfulness which they contribute to our political system has been got rid of, we may expect that whatever general tendency in our politics is otherwise most permanent and uniform will have more continuous play. That element, judging by the past, is Liberal. The force of Liberalism will therefore, under the new system, be seldomer interrupted or depressed. Q.E.D.

All the very small constituencies are merged into larger ones. They will lose their factitious and abnormal importance, to which even great Ministers have lent countenance, especially at "byelections," at critical junctures. Change in the electorate will be less spasmodic. Larger constituencies will be less easily impressed by impact of enthusiastic onslaught. Large dense bodies are capable of more resistance, and are difficult to dislodge from any position which they may take up.

Prophecy is vain, but taking the boroughs as at present, and the new constituencies as sharing the sentiments of the neighbourhoods out of which they are formed, and supposing the more fluid element which came of the small boroughs to be neutralized, the Liberal party may fairly expect a substantial majority at the General Election, without taking into account the very doubtful agricultural labourer.

To anticipate the invigorated Liberal policy of the future, to speculate as to what will be done, and which thing first, has been no part of the object of this paper. The aim has rather been to estimate the probable working of the system created by the Seats Bill as a going machine. The machine has been improved by getting

which was deeply seated. No better answer can be

rid of a permanent source of untruth within it. What has been eliminated? given than is to be found in one of Mr. Cobden's speeches, in which he showed what needed to be eliminated :

"Observe," said he, "the facts brought out by the census. You have certain counties where your great cities and manufacturing districts are carried on. You see there people are growing in wealth and population. You see others, as Lincoln, Cambridge, Suffolk, Buckingham, Dorsetshire, and Wiltshire counties, which are either retrograding in numbers, or absolutely stagnant. But when you go into the House of Commons you find these stagnant agricultural counties, and equally stagnant small agricultural boroughs, twenty or thirty of which have absolutely declined in population during the last ten years; you find the country governed, if it is governed at all, by the representatives of those stagnant counties and decaying rural villages. I cannot say it is governed, because I tell you our parliamentary system has come to a negation. But if you are to give a fresh impetus to any measures of amelioration in the House of Commons, it must be by giving a new basis to political parties, by making that representation a reality which is now a fiction."

We have waited nearly a quarter of a century since these words were uttered. Few of us would have been surprised if we had had to wait another quarter of a century before getting as far as we shall be in January next. But there we shall be. There we virtually now are, and what we have expelled from the machine is its gross and unpardonable inconsistency with the figures and facts of the national life which it was supposed to represent. There are still anomalies, and if the two parties were to compete very closely for popular favour, the anomalies might still count for something. But the aliquot power (if one may so speak) of the aliquot parts of the population of this country is substantially and for ever assured, upon a principle the only blemish of which (and that is no blemish in some eyes) is that it makes surer of every constituency having a member of the colour of the majority within it, than it does of the greatest possible number of constituencies enjoying the services of men who will also be efficient on the level of parliamentary politics.

It is common to speak of this great change as ensuring that effect will always be given to "the will of the people." The phrase is ambiguous. Ours is not a plebiscitary system. Our Ministers do not go to the country with specific issues, or, if they do, the country may prefer to pronounce on other issues, with equal effect on the Ministerial fate. The Minister may submit the future to the people and they may pronounce on the past. He may submit to them the past and they may reject him with an eye to the future. Mr. Gladstone may offer them the repeal of the Income-tax and a brilliant employment of a six-million surplus to regenerate, as only he could, the fiscal system of the State; and a sufficient number to turn the

scale may reply, "We won't have W. E. Forster, and there's an end on't." And there was an end on't. In a plebiscitary sense, or even in reference to confidence in a particular Premier or leader of Opposition, neither our old system could, nor our new system will, always express with exactitude the national will. Side issues, crazes, crotchets, utopias, private grudges, personal likings, and a hundred such things must affect and disturb the action of the machine in its registration of the country's highest political purposes and desires. What we are now sure of is that the greatest possible number of householders and lodgers (only the latter ought to be more automatically enrolled) will be represented in Parliament by the men they have preferred among those who were submitted to their choice; and as this will uniformly be done under party management, it will mainly be done upon party issues. The interest of each party will be to present to the whole electorate at all times the best policy that can be put forward and the most likely men that can be nominated. This is not far from an ideal democratic condition, so far as State machinery is concerned.

It is not indeed an ideally microscopic representation of all shades of opinion on all sorts of subjects. But most minorities have all that is good for them when they have liberty of propagation. Few have any claim to be political factors. Some which make this claim without just reason succeed only too well in enforcing it. None which can claim it justly are excluded from a due share of political influence. Their influence may easily be made undue by factitiously treating the mirroring of all minorities at St. Stephen's as an essential political good.

The best practicable ideal is a strong representation of the majority for the time being. Do not be afraid of the swing of the pendulum. Let it swing. The greatest good that can be got out of our political system, comprising good legislation and the training of good and "political" citizens, will be got by such an electoral basis-machinery as will enable the democracy most easily and naturally to return. strong majorities according to their feelings on public questions. And the democracy will by such a method be better trained than by any more finnikin or subtle system to make public questions to the greatest possible extent the criteria of their votes. This, however, not only might have been-and years hence may be-conciliated with, but would chime in with and be promoted by, such a division of the country as would admit of scrutin de liste. Without sacrificing any force of the majority, and with a great increase of democratic power, that system would, and one day will, return to Parliament, in proportion to their general fame, to their local opportunities, and to the judgment and spirit of constituencies, the greatest possible number of really competent politicians, able and well trained to deal with national affairs. EDWARD R. RUSSELL.

M. SARDOU'S "THÉODORA.”

A

LTHOUGH the character and career of Theodora, wife of Justinian and Empress of the Romans, have fixed the attention of mankind ever since the age which she astonished, it is only within the last few years that imaginative writers have seized upon a subject evidently fitted for dramatic treatment. M. Victorien Sardou's play of "Théodora," whose production at Paris a month ago has excited so much interest in France, is the fourth work of recent fiction in which the Empress figures. The first is the romance of Dr. Felix Dahn, distinguished as a poet no less than as a historian and jurist, published some eight years ago in Germany, and translated into English under the title of "A Struggle for Rome." The second is a historical novel, entitled "Blue and Green," by Sir Henry Pottinger (published in 1877), a book which seems to have obtained less success than it deserved, for it is an extremely clever piece of work, in which the life and manners of Constantinople in the sixth century are described with a careful fidelity which does not prevent the story from being spirited and interesting. The third is a long tragedy written in classical Greek by Mr. Kleon Rhangabe, and published in Leipzig a few months ago. The latest, and that which will go furthest to make its central figure familiar to ordinary readers, is the play which now draws the Parisians to the Porte St. Martin, not more by its literary merits than by the brilliant cast of actors who have been secured for it, and the unequalled splendour, taste, and knowledge applied to putting it on the stage. I shall not enter into any general criticism of it, if for no other reason than because comparatively few readers of this REVIEW are likely to have yet seen it. (The text has not yet been published, so that detailed criticism would require a full abstract of the

action.) But the picture presented of the two central personages, and especially of the famous and infamous Empress, may be detached from the rest of the piece. It is interesting to see what one of the most striking characters in history becomes in the hands of accomplished masters of fiction. Such characters-characters that typify traits or tendencies of human nature-often count for as much after as in their life: they react upon literature as literature occupies itself with them. Let us, then, look for a moment at the real Theodora. What does history tell us about her and her husband?

It tells us a great deal. Some points remain obscure. But we know more of these two personages than of any others of equal eminence from Constantine to Charlemagne; I might say from Constantine till those two potent antagonists whom our own great poet has just brought before us in his tragedy of "Becket." The sixth century produced a historian far superior in knowledge and literary skill to any of his predecessors or successors at Constantinople, who has given us in addition to his published chronicle of Justinian's wars what one may call the Scandalous Memoirs of the Byzantine Court, an outpouring of his pent-up spleen, through whose extravagant invective and malicious insinuations truth can be discerned, truth sufficient to set the Emperor and Empress before us in the fulness and sharpness of life. Critics have doubted-there are critics who still doubt-the genuineness of the secret history of Procopius. Scepticism is as boundless as credulity; but if internal evidence can prove anything, it proves that this book was written by the author of the Persian and Gothic wars, and written in Justinian's lifetime. Adding what we make out from it-I do not say what it tells us, for it has usually to be discounted-to the scantier light that comes from other sources, this imperial pair stand out as do few others in ancient or mediæval history.

Theodora was the daughter of a bear-keeper, attached to the Hippodrome at Constantinople, and was one of three sisters whom their mother sent on the stage when they were still children, seven or eight years old. With no talent either for music or dancing, her fortune was in her face and her tongue. Her pretty features, her nimble movements, her audacious smartness in repartee, made her the most popular and notorious in the pantomimes (to use the nearest modern equivalent) which delighted a people whose taste had fallen below the regular drama. Needless to say what was the morality of the Byzantine stage, or what the life which the young actress led. Her enemies of later years declared it to have been more than usually shameless and disgusting; but the question of delicately balanced less or more, besides being now insoluble, need make little difference to our view of her character. After some years, she accompanied a wealthy Tyrian, as his mistress, to the