got that the United States are without the better. The envy with which its what certainly fixes and accentuates the holder is regarded diminishes, society is division between rich and poor the dis- safer. I think whatever may be said of the tinction of classes. Not only have they worship of the almighty dollar in America, not the distinction between noble and it is indubitable that rich men are regarded bourgeois, between aristocracy and middle there with less envy and hatred than rich class; they have not even the distinction men are in Europe. Why is this? Bebetween bourgeois and peasant or artisan, cause their condition is less fixed, because between middle and lower class. They government and legislation do not take have nothing to create it and compel their them more seriously than other people, recognition of it. Their domestic service make grandees of them, aid them to found is done for them by Irish, Germans, families and endure. With us, the chief Swedes, negroes. Outside domestic ser-holders of property are grandees already, vice, within the range of conditions which an American may in fact be called upon to traverse, he passes easily from one sort of occupation to another, from poverty to riches, and from riches to poverty. No one of his possible occupations appears degrading to him or makes him lose caste; and poverty itself appears to him as inconvenient and disagreeable rather than as humiliating. When the immigrant from Europe strikes root in his new home, he becomes as the American. and every rich man aspires to become a grandee if possible. And therefore an English country gentleman regards bimself as part of the system of nature; government and legislation have invited him so to do. If the price of wheat falls so low that his means of expenditure are greatly reduced, he tells you that if this lasts he cannot possibly go on as a country gentleman; and every well-bred person amongst us looks sympathizing and shocked. An American would say: "Why should he?" The Conservative newspapers are fond of giving us, as an argument for the game-laws, the plea that without them a country gentleman could not be induced to live on his estate. An American would say: "What does it matter?" Perhaps to an English ear this will sound brutal; but the point is that the American does not take his rich man so seriously as we do ours, does not make him into a grandee; the thing, if proposed to him, would strike him as an absurdity. I suspect that Mr. Winans himself, the American millionaire who adds deer-forest to deer-forest, and will not suffer a cottier to keep a pet lamb, regards his own performance as a colossal stroke of American humor, illustrating the absurdities of the British system of property and privilege. Ask Mr. Winans if he would promote the introduction of the British game-laws into the United States, and he would tell you with a merry laugh that the idea is ridiculous, and that these British follies are for home consumption. It may be said that the Americans, when they attained their independence, had not the elements for a division into classes, and that they deserve no praise for not having invented one. But I am not now contending that they deserve praise for their institutions, I am saying how well their institutions work. Considering, indeed, how rife are distinctions of rank and class in the world, how prone men in general are to adopt them, how much the Americans themselves, beyond doubt, are capable of feeling their attraction, it shows, I think, at least strong good sense in the Americans to have forborne from all attempt to invent them at the outset, and to have escaped or resisted any fancy for inventing them since. But evidently the United States constituted themselves, not amid the circumstances of a feudal age, but in a modern age; not under the conditions of an epoch favorable to subordination, but under those of an epoch of expansion. Their institutions did but comply with the form and pressure of the circumstances and conditions then pres- The example of France must not misent. A feudal age, an epoch of war, de- lead us. There the institutions, an obfence, and concentration, needs centres of | jector may say, are republican, and yet the power and property, and it reinforces property by joining distinctions of rank and class with it. Property becomes more honorable, more solid. And in feudal ages this is well, for its changing hands easily would be a source of weakness. But in ages of expansion, where men are bent that every one shall have his chance, the more readily property changes hands division and hatred between rich and poor is intense. True; but in France, though the institutions may be republican, the ideas and morals are not republican. In America not only are the institutions republican, but the ideas and morals prevailingly republican also. They are those of a plain, decent middle class. The ideal of those who are the public instruc tors of the people is the ideal of such a | class. In France the ideal of the mass of popular journalists and popular writers of fiction, who are now practically the public instructors there, is, if you could see their hearts, a Pompadour or Du Barry régime, with themselves for the part of Faublas. With this ideal prevailing, this vision of the objects for which wealth is desirable, the possessors of wealth become hateful to the multitude which toils and endures, and society is undermined. This is one of the many inconveniences which the French have to suffer from that worship of the great goddess Lubricity to which they are at present vowed. Wealth excites the most savage enmity there, because it is conceived as a means for gratifying appetites of the most selfish and vile kind. But in America Faublas is no more the ideal than Coriolanus. Wealth is no more conceived as the minister to the pleasures of a class of rakes, than as the minister to the magnificence of a class of nobles. It is conceived as a thing which almost any American may attain, and which almost every American will use respectably. Its possession, therefore, does not inspire hatred, and so I return to the thesis with which I started America is not in danger of revolution. The division between rich and poor is alleged to us as a cause of revolution which presently, if not now, must operate there, as elsewhere; and yet we see that this cause has not there, in truth, the characters to which we are elsewhere ac customed. Maine and M. Scherer tell us that democracy is " merely a form of govern. ment," we may observe to them that it is in the United States a form of government in which the community feels itself in a natural condition and at ease; in which, consequently, it sees things straight and sees them clear. More than half one's interest in watching the English people of the United States comes, of course, from the bearing of what one finds there upon things at home, amongst us English people ourselves in these islands. I have frankly recorded what struck me and came as most new to me in the condition of the English race in the United States. I had said beforehand, indeed, that I supposed the American Philistine was a livelier sort of Philistine than ours, because he had not that pressure of the barbarians to stunt and distort him which befalls his English brother here. But I did not foresee how far his superior liveliness and: naturalness of condition, in the absence of that pressure, would carry the Ameri can Philistine. I still use my old name Philistine, because it does in fact seem to me as yet to suit the bulk of the community over there, as it suits the strong cen-tral body of the community here. But in my mouth the name is hardly a reproach,. so clearly do I see the Philistine's necessity, so willingly I own his merits, so much I find of him in myself. The American Philistine, however, is certainly far more different from his English brother than I had beforehand supposed. And' on that difference we English of the old country may with great profit turn our regards for a while, and I am now going to speak of it. A people homogeneous, a people which had to constitute itself in a modern age, an epoch of expansion, and which has given to itself institutions entirely fitted for such an age and epoch, and which suit Surely if there is one thing more than it perfectly a people not in danger of another which all the world is saying of war from without, not in danger of revolu- our community at present, and of which tion from within such is the people of the truth cannot well be disputed, it is the United States. The political and so- this: that we act like people who do not cial problem, then, we must surely allow think straight and see clear. I know that that they solve successfully. There re- the Liberal newspapers used to be fond mains, I know, the human problem also; of saying that what characterized our the solution of that too has to be consid- middle class was its "clear, manly intelli ered; but I shall come to that hereafter. gence, penetrating through sophisms, My point at present is, that politically ignoring commonplaces, and giving to and socially the United States are a com- conventional illusions their true value." munity living in a natural condition, and Many years ago I took alarm at seeing the conscious of living in a natural condition. Daily News and the Morning Star, like And being in this healthy case, and having Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah, thus this healthy consciousness, the commu- making horns of iron for the middle class nity there uses its understanding with the and bidding it "Go up and prosper!" and soundness of health; it in general sees its my first efforts as a writer on public matpolitical and social concerns straight, and ters were prompted by a desire to utter, sees them clear. So that when Sir Henry | like Micaiah the son of Imlah, my pro test against these misleading assurances of the false prophets. And though often and often smitten on the cheek, just as Micaiah was, still I persevered; and at the Royal Institution I said how we seemed to flounder and to beat the air, and at Liverpool I singled out as our chief want the want of lucidity. But now every body is really saying of us the same thing that we fumble because we cannot make up our mind, and that we cannot make up our mind because we do not know what to be after. If our foreign policy is not that of "the British Philistine, with his likes and dislikes, his effusion and confusion, his hot and cold fits, his want of dignity and of the steadfastness which comes from dignity, his want of ideas and of the steadfastness which comes from ideas," then all the world at the present time is, it must be owned, very much mistaken. Well, then, our greatest institution, the House of Commons, we cannot say is at present working, like the American insti. tutions, easily and successfully. Suppose we now pass to Ireland. I will not ask if our institutions work easily and successfully in Ireland; to ask such a question would be too bitter, too cruel a mockery. Those hateful cases which have been tried in the Dublin courts this last year suggest the dark and ill-omened word which applies to the whole state of Ireland — anti-natural. Anti-natural, anti-nature that is the word which rises irresistibly in my mind as I survey Ireland. Everything is unnatural there the proceedings of the English who rule, the proceedings of the Irish who resist. But it is with the working of our English institutions there that I am now concerned. It is unnatural that Ireland should be governed by Lord Spencer and Mr. Campbell Bannerman Let us not, therefore, speak of foreign as unnatural as for Scotland to be gov affairs; it is needless, because the thing erned by Lord Cranbrook and Mr. Healy. I wish to show is so manifest there to It is unnatural that Ireland should be everybody. But we will consider matters governed under a Crimes Act. But there at home. Let us take the present state is necessity, replies the government. of the House of Commons. Can anything Well, then, if there is such evil necessity, be more confused, more unnatural? That it is unnatural that the Irish newspapers assembly has got into a condition utterly should be free to write as they write and embarrassed, and seems impotent to bring the Irish members to speak as they speak itself right. The members of the House free to inflame and further exasperate themselves may find entertainment in the a seditious people's minds, and to promote personal incidents which such a state of the continuance of the evil necessity. A confusion is sure to bring forth abundant necessity for the Crimes Act is a necessity ly, and excitement in the opportunities for absolute government. By our patchthus often offorded for the display of Mr. work proceedings we set up, indeed, a Gladstone's wonderful powers. But to make-believe of Ireland's being constiany judicious Englishman outside the tutionally governed. But it is not conHouse the spectacle is simply an afflicting stitutionally governed; nobody supposes and humiliating one; the sense aroused it to be constitutionally governed, except, by it is not a sense of delight at Mr. Glad-perhaps, that born swallower of all clapstone's tireless powers, it is rather a sense trap, the British Philistine. The Irish of disgust at their having to be so exercised. Every day the House of Commons does not sit judicious people feel relief, every day that it sits they are oppressed with apprehension. Instead of being an edifying influence, as such an assembly ought to be, the House of Commons is at present an influence which does harm; it sets an example which rebukes and corrects none of the nation's faults, but rather encourages them. The best thing to be done at present, perhaps, is to avert one's eyes from the House of Commons as much as possible; if one keeps on constantly watching it welter in its baneful confusion, one is likely to fall into the fulminating style of the wrathful Hebrew prophets, and to call it "an astonishment, a hissing, and a curse." themselves, the all-important personages in this case, are not taken in; our make. believe does not produce in them the very least gratitude, the very least softening. At the same time it adds an hundred fold to the difficulties of an absolute government. The working of our institutions being thus awry, is the working of our thoughts upon them more smooth and natural? I imagine to myself an American, his own institutions and his habits of thought being such as we have seen, listening to us as we talk politics and discuss the strained state of things over here. Certainly these men have considerable difficulties," he would say; "but they never look at them straight, they do not think straight." Who does not admire the fine qualities of 1 E life by taking up a grotesque old French pedant upon his shoulders, but to have insisted, in middle age, in taking up the Protestant Dissenters too; and now, when he is becoming elderly, it seems as if nothing would serve him but he must add the Peace Society to his load! How perverse, yet again, in Mr. Herbert Spencer, at the very moment when past neglects and present needs are driving men to co-operation, to making the community act for the public good in its collective and corporate character of the State, how perverse to seize this occasion for promulgating the extremest doctrine of individualism; and not only to drag this dead horse along the public road himself, but to induce Mr. Auberon Herbert to devote his days to flogging it! Lord Spencer?- and I, for my part, am | Harrison's intellectual power, not, per- Everywhere we shall find in our think ing a sort of warp inclining it aside of the real mark, and thus depriving it of value. The common run of peers who write to the Times about reform of the House of Lords one would not much expect, perhaps, to "understand the signs of this time." But even the Duke of Argyll, delivering his mind about the land question in Scotland, is like one seeing, thinking, and speaking in some other planet than ours. A man of even Mr. John Morley's gifts is provoked with the House of Lords, and straightway he declares himself against the existence of a second chamber at all; although if there be such a thing as demonstration in politics the working of the American Senate demonstrates a well-composed second chamber to be the very need and safeguard of a modern democracy. What a singular twist, again, in a man of Mr. Frederic We think thus unaccountably because we are living in an unnatural and strained state. We are like people whose vision is deranged by their looking through a turbid and distorting atmosphere, or whose movements are warped by the cramping of some unnatural constraint. Let us just ask ourselves, looking at the thing as people simply desirous of finding the truth, how men who saw and thought straight would proceed, how an American, for ininstance whose seeing and thinking has, I have said, if not in all matters, yet commonly in political and social concerns, this quality of straightness - how an American would proceed in the three confusions which I have given as instances of the many confusions now embarrassing us: the confusion of our foreign affairs, the confusion of the House of Commons, the confusion of Ireland. And then, when we have discovered the kind of proceeding natural in these cases, let us ask ourselves, with the same sincerity, what is the cause of that warp of mind hindering most of us from seeing straight in them, and also where is our remedy. The Angra Pequeña business has lately called forth from all sides many and harsh animadversions upon Lord Granville, who is charged with the direction of our for eign affairs. I shall not swell the chorus of complainers. Nothing has happened but what was to be expected. Long ago I remarked that it is not Lord Granville himself who determines our foreign policy and shapes the declarations of government concerning it, but a power behind Lord Granville. He and his colleagues would call it the power of public opinion. It is really the opinion of that great ruling class | spokesman. Yet I think the true moral amongst us on which Liberal govern- to be drawn is rather, perhaps, this that ments have hitherto had to depend for our foreign policy would be improved if support the Philistines or middle class. our whole society were homogeneous. It is not, I repeat, with Lord Granville in his natural state and force that a foreign government has to deal; it is with Lord Granville waiting in devout expectation to see how the cat will jump-and that cat the British Philistine. When Prince Bismarck deals with Lord Granville, he finds that he is not dealing mind to mind with an intelligent equal, but that he is dealing with a tumult of likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, stock-jobbing intrigues, missionary interests, quidnuncs, newspapers dealing, in short, with ignorance behind his intelligent equal. Yet ignorant as our Philistine middle class may be, its volitions on foreign affairs would have more intelligibility and consistency if uttered through a spokesman of their own class. Coming through a nobleman like Lord Granville, who has neither the thoughts, habits, nor ideals of the middle class, and yet wishes to act as proctor for it, they have every disadvantage. He cannot even do justice to the Philistine mind, such as it is, for which he is spokesman; he apprehends it uncertainly and expounds it ineffectively. And so with the house and lineage of Murdstone thundering at him (and these, again, through Lord Derby as their interpreter) from the Cape, and the inexorable Prince Bismarck thundering at him from Berlin, the thing naturally ends by Lord Granville at last wringing his adroit hands and ejaculating disconsolately: "It is a misunderstanding alto. gether!" Even yet more to be pitied, perhaps, was the hard case of Lord Kimberley after the Majuba Hill disaster. Who can ever forget him, poor man, study. ing the faces of the representatives of the Dissenting interest and exclaiming: "A sudden thought strikes me! May we not be incurring the sin of blood-guiltiness?" To this has come the tradition of Lord Somers, the Whig oligarchy of 1688, and all Lord Macaulay's Pantheon. I said that a source of strength to America, in political and social concerns, was the homogeneous character of American society. An American statesman speaks with more effect the mind of his fellowcitizens from his being in sympathy with it, understanding and sharing it. Certainly one must admit that if, in our country of classes, the Philistine middle class is really the inspirer of our foreign policy, that policy would at least be expounded more forcibly if it had a Philistine for its As to the confusion in the House of Commons, what, apart from defective rules of procedure, are its causes? First and foremost, no doubt, the temper and action of the Irish members. But putting this cause of confusion out of view for a moment, every one can see that the House of Commons is far too large, and that it undertakes a quantity of business which belongs more properly to local assemblies. The confusion from these causes is one which is constantly increasing, because, as the country becomes fuller and more awakened, business multiplies, and more and more members of the House are inclined to take part in it. Is not the cure for this found in a course like that followed in America, in having a much less numerous House of Commons, and in making over a large part of its business to local assemblies, elected, as the House of Commons itself will henceforth be elected, by household suffrage? I have often said that we seem to me to need at present, in England, three things in especial: more equality, education for the middle classes, and a thorough municipal system. A system of local assemblies is but the natural complement of a thorough municipal system. Wholes neither too large nor too small, not necessarily of equal population by any means, but with characters rendering them in themselves fairly homogeneous and coherent, are the fit units for choosing these local assemblies. Such units occur immediately to one's mind in the provinces of Ireland, the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, Wales north and south, groups of English counties such as present themselves in the circuits of the judges or under the names of East Anglia or the Midlands. No one will suppose me guilty of the pedantry of here laying out definitive districts; I do but indicate such units as may enable the reader to conceive the kind of basis required for the local assemblies of which I am speaking. The business of these districts would be more advantageously done in assemblies of the kind; they would form a useful school for the increasing number of aspirants to public life, and the House of Commons would be relieved. The strain in Ireland would be relieved too, and by natural and safe means. Irishmen are to be found, who, in desperation at the present state of their country, cry out for making Ireland independent and |