when things may go hard with this country, when we may have to withstand a series of reverses. Our generals will have to be men of iron nerves, backed by the strongest of governments, if in such a crisis they are to be expected, however, capable of enduring the presence of uncontrolled writers in their camps.

The third objection, which refers to information of different kinds given to the enemy, has been exemplified over and over again. There are innumerable glaring cases of it.

The results of such information may have hitherto been providentially small-but is the evil therefore to be allowed to remain ? Mr. Forbes himself asserts that the defences of Kars and Rustchuk were unjustifiably published in a newspaper during the RussoTurkish war; Varna may surely be added to the same list. The fact that the defences of Rustchuk had been published was new to me, though I remember that there was an attempt at the commencement of the war on the part of a correspondent to procure them from a friend of mine--in whose possession they were for the use of a London paper. My friend, while refusing to give them, added, "If you succeed in obtaining them, and publishing them, the Turks will certainly hang you, and no Englishman will lament your fate.' The fact, then, stares one in the face, that during a great war, with the most tremendous issues at stake, the correspondents of London journals, living with and accepting the hospitality of the Turks, were found base enough to give information to the enemy, by the publication of the defences of their three greatest fortresses. Can anything be worse than this? Is it necessary to rout up more objections to the utter freedom of the pen

?

I now come to the danger of sensational writing, with its vivid descriptions of the necessary horrors of war, destined to excite the humanitarian mind at home, and raise doubts as to the civilisation of our soldiery, and to the thoughtless omission and insertion of officers' names in newspaper letters and telegrams-inserted or omitted because one man is acquainted with the correspondent, and the other is not.

Is this as it should be? Is this unbiassed writing? Is the exercise of a little good fellowship, a little hospitality to the representative of a newspaper, to bring our young officers prominently before the public? It has very often done so. Or a name may bring a scene more vividly home to the reader, and it is no business of the correspondent to weigh the worth of every one he writes; those he knows naturally come first to hand, and he uses them. They become historical on his authority. The action is fought, the wire flashes home the news, reputations are made and marred on no authority, and after a time appears a list of names gloriously mentioned in official

2 The Turks had a press commissioner at Shumla; but he was not ubiquitous.

despatches only to fall flat on the public ear, for the correspondent has already given away the laurel wreath. The hero of a campaign now is not the man whose name is mentioned in his general's despatches, but in a sensational telegram to some leading London newspaper, to be afterwards bandied about in fulsome paragraphs in society journals.

'Great heaven! is it unreasonable to require that we should learn from impartial and unbiassed lips how goeth the day with our brothers, our heart's blood, the fathers of our children? Is it in the cold official words alone that we are to be told how our countrymen, our dear ones, toil and thole, vindicate Britain's manhood, and joyously expend their lives for Queen and fatherland?' &c. &c. &c. Well, it would be just as well if we did not hear so much about it. It would be better to take the cold official words to heart than to overrate the theme that throbs and glows, and dares and dies under' the very hand' of the war correspondent.

6

We have fought many a hard fight before, and not talked so much about it as seems the custom now. England used to expect Englishmen to do their duty, and was not surprised when they did it. Of late years with the growth of the war correspondent has come the thirst for notoriety.

Surely it is better that some rules should be framed at home, in order to establish a recognised position for correspondents with our armies in the field, than that the responsibility of so doing should be left to the general in command; and from what I have seen of correspondents in more than one campaign, and with all due deference to the very many perfect gentlemen amongst them, I cannot say that I think the new regulations too severe. The only doubtful one is rule 10, in which authority is given to stop or alter' newspaper communications.

This I take to mean, that unless the correspondent agrees to an alteration in his communication it will not be sent. In this sense it is fair. He need not agree to the alteration unless he likes, he is not forced to send anything he does not believe, but he is forbidden to send what is considered by a competent judge detrimental to the good of the army. The rule seems, however, to have been read by some as giving power to the military censor to send off doctored communications. It is absurd to suppose that it was intended to be taken in that sense. Rules 13 and 14 very rightly bring the means of transmitting messages under the control of the censor, and insure that official shall take precedence of private news. The remainder seem to call for no comment, but it would have been well if another had been added, obliging the signature of all correspondents to be published with their letters and telegrams. Such a rule would have done much to individualise the opinions expressed in them, and to * War Correspondents and the Authorities,' Nineteenth Century, January 1880, pp. 190, 191.

do away with the almost inspired importance attached to all newspaper communications.

The next war may not give us quite so much pleasant reading. We may miss a little of the seasoning of bygone days. We shall not suffer by it. About a year ago a British force was crossing one of our Indian rivers on its way to the front. With it was the usual representative of the press, and he had written his usual letter. He tells how crocodiles and palm trees people the water and adorn the banks, and hands the eloquent production to a prosaic English officer, who remarks that neither crocodiles nor palm trees are within many miles. Matter of fact man! The correspondent is describing India, and he replies—the best answer ever made, the secret of much of the discussion, the essence of what our soldiers have long known to be true 'What does that matter? The British public must have its crocodile, and it must have its palm tree.'

MELGUND.

THE NEXT REFORM BILL.

MANY, I believe, will agree in the opinion that a portion at least of the short period that now remains before the general election may with advantage be devoted to a consideration of some of the questions which will have to be dealt with by the new Parliament. Whatever the result of that election may be, there seems to be good reason for concluding that a Reform Bill is likely to be one of the earliest measures to engage public attention. The Liberal party has pledged itself, as soon as it has the power, to extend household suffrage to the counties, and to redress some of the existing inequalities in the distribution of political power. The almost complete unanimity which exists among the party in favour of an extension of the suffrage and the redistribution of seats must offer an additional inducement to a Liberal Government to give a Reform Bill precedence to almost all other proposals of domestic legislation. If, however, the balance of political parties should not be turned at the general election, and the Conservative Government should continue in power, it may very possibly happen that a Reform Bill will be introduced. The feeling which induced the Conservatives to deal with the question of Parliamentary reform in 1867 may not improbably again prevail, and they may say to themselves, 'As it is inevitable that the suffrage will be extended, and that the question of redistribution will have to be dealt with, it is better that we, as a party, should have the arrangement of the measure, rather than that we should leave it in the control of our opponents.'

Such being the position of the question, I cannot help thinking that it is very desirable to direct attention to some considerations connected with Parliamentary reform before the subject is involved in the vortex of a keen party struggle. It is the more important that this should be done, because in recent discussions little else has been attempted except to prove the justice and expediency of extending household suffrage beyond the existing Parliamentary boroughs and to bring into strong relief the inequalities in the present distribution of political power. It is needless to attempt to add anything here to the arguments which have been repeatedly adduced to show that there are no valid reasons why the present difference in the county

and borough suffrage should be maintained, or why political power should be so unequally distributed that 47,000 people living in ten small English and Irish boroughs should return ten members to the House of Commons, while only nine members are returned by Liverpool, Glasgow, and Manchester with a population of 1,349,000, and only eight are returned by four metropolitan constituencies with a popnlation of 1,671,000. It is, however, easy to show that even if it is decided to extend household suffrage to the counties, and to make the present distribution of political power more equal, little more will really have been done than to have taken the first step towards the solution of a difficult and complicated question. It may, for instance, be at once asked whether it is intended in the first place to extend the suffrage, and subsequently to bring forward a scheme of redistribution; or whether the extension of the suffrage and redistribution will be regarded as inseparable parts of a single measure. If household suffrage is to be granted to the counties, is residence to be insisted on as a qualification? If not, it will necessarily happen that in removing one anomaly, another will be called into existence, for there will be residential household suffrage in the boroughs, and non-residential household suffrage in the counties. Again, it is to be particularly remarked that little consideration has yet been given to the principles on which a measure of redistribution should be based. It is not enough to say that the small boroughs must return fewer members in order that more may be returned by the large borough and county constituencies. Are we going to move in the direction of equal electoral districts? Are Manchester and Liverpool to be divided into five equal wards, each returning a single member? Or is some arrangement to be adopted which will afford a constituency, in proportion to the additional members it may receive, an increased opportunity of securing the representation of different phases of opinion? Finally, it may be asked-and no question can be deserving of more careful consideration-whether much of the good which may be done by the one hand may not be undone by the other, if, as a result of extending the suffrage, the cost of elections be increased, and thus a seat in Parliament becomes more difficult of attainment, except by those who are either wealthy themselves or are able to command, possibly by a certain sacrifice of independence, the resources of some political organisation. It can scarcely be necessary to say a single word to show that these questions ought to be carefully and calmly considered, before contending political parties are once more engaged in a struggle over Parliamentary reform. In the hope of rendering some assistance, however slight, to such a discussion, I propose in the following paper to consider the subjects above referred to, in the order in which they have been enumerated.

There are few points connected with Parliamentary reform on which a greater difference of opinion is likely to prevail than the