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the more readily are votes influenced by appeals to class prejudice, and by the wiles and catchwords of artful demagogues. "Political liberty," said Hobbes, "is political power," but in Democracies political power is "minced in morsels," and, as Sir James Stephen has pointed out, "The man who can sweep the greatest number of fragments of political power into one heap will govern the rest; the strongest man in one form or another will always rule; .. in a pure Democracy the ruling men will be wirepullers and their friends: . . . in some ages a powerful character; in others cunning; in others power of transacting business; in others eloquence; in others a good hold upon commonplaces, and a facility in applying them to practical purposes, will enable a man to climb on his neighbours' shoulders and drag them this way or that; but under all circumstances the rank and file are directed by leaders of one kind or another who get the command of their collective force." It is of paramount importance, therefore, in a democratic country that the leaders of the people should be men of high moral character. Integrity without ability will, at any rate, never corrupt the people; but ability without integrity will always tend to cheat the electorate of its rights, and deprive a nation of its freedom. A popular assembly, however, when endowed with unfettered authority, is a school in which corruption, not rectitude, is

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taught. The members of such a body learn to follow and not to lead their constituents, and to pander to the desires of the noisiest sections of their supporters, if only they may perchance retain their seats and their emoluments. They carry through their Parliamentary duties "listening nervously at one end of a speaking - tube which receives at its other end the suggestions of a lower intelligence." They are, indeed, elected by the people, but they represent themselves. The Framers of the American Constitution were well aware of this. Alexander Hamilton, writing in 1788 in the 'Federalist,' perhaps the greatest constitutional treatise ever compiled, expressed the opinion that "A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of Government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of thosę men who have overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing as demagogues and ending tyrants." On January 13, 1837, Sir Robert Peel, who habitually couched his sentiments in moderate language, expressed a similar opinion in the course of a memorable address to the Conservatives of Glasgow: "If you give your

consent to measures which tend to the dissolution of existing institutions, what security have you that there will be any reaction at any future time? What security have you against proscriptions against the creeping forth of men of a type not yet heard of in England,what security have you against the ascendancy of blood-stained miscreants like Robespierre and Marat, lusus naturæ hitherto engendered, I am happy to say, in France alone, but from which no country can be protected if institutions congenial to its national character and hallowed by the lapse of ages are dissolved by violence or corrupted by fraud? You may rest assured that in every village a miscreant will arise to exercise a grinding tyranny by calling himself the People.

It is for this reason that no European State of any importance, except Great Britain, is prepared to surrender its destinies to the tender mercies of an omnipotent Single Chamber. In practically every civilised community the Second Chamber of the Legislature possesses co-ordinate authority with the popular Assembly; no fundamental changes can be carried out except in accordance with special provisions inserted in the Constitution to prevent the abuse of legislative power, and nowhere are more stringent safeguards to be found than in the democratic Constitutions of the United States and of the British Dominions in Canada, Australia, and South Africa. Upon what principle are the Radical Gov

ernment justified in setting up a strong Second Chamber in South Africa, and destroying the powers of the Second Chamber in the Mother Country? The advocates of powerful Second Chambers, as Sir Henry Maine has pointed out, "do not assert that the decisions of a popularly elected Chamber are always or generally wrong. Their decisions are very often right. But it is impossible to be sure that they are right, and the more the difficulties of multitudinous government are probed, and the more carefully the influences acting upon it are examined, the stronger grows the doubt of the infallibility of popularly elected Legislatures. What, then, is expected from a wellconstituted Second Chamber is not a rival infallibility, but an additional security. It is hardly too much to say that in this view almost any Second Chamber is better than none.

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.. The conception of an Upper House as a mere revising Body, trusted with the privilege of dotting i's and crossing t's in measures sent up by the other Chamber, seems as irrational as it is poor. What is wanted from an Upper House is the security of its concurrence after full examination of the measures concurred in." Mr Asquith himself expressed a similar opinion at Newcastle on January 30, 1895. there are advantages-I am the last to deny that there are advantages-in the existence of a Second Chamber, they are the advantages which result from the existence of an

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impartial, dispassionate, reviewing power, which will correct slovenliness, which will check dissipation, and which, in case of extreme need, will refer back to the people for consideration measures which the people cannot be supposed to have deliberately approved."

It may well be that in this country the Second Chamber will rest in the future upon an elective basis. At any rate, the hereditary qualification per se has been abandoned by every party in the State; but the composition of the Second Chamber is of little importance in comparison with its powers, and it is the foremost and paramount duty of Unionists to work for the restoration of a Second Chamber with authority co-ordinate_with that possessed by the House of Commons. But there is only one way by which the Unionist Party will be able to accomplish the task which lies before them. The claim of the Radical Party to be "the Representatives of the People" (too long allowed to pass unchallenged) must be laid bare before the electors, and the People must be made to appreciate that it is only by repealing the Par

liament Act that they will be able to regain control of their own destinies. If it is once realised that the Radical Government has deprived the electors of their right to effectually express their opinion in legislative matters, the end of the present Administration will be near at hand, and His Majesty's present advisers will receive their congé in the words used by Cromwell at the end of the Long Parliament: "You must go: the nation loathes your sitting." "In our day," wrote Sir Henry Maine, "when the extension of popular government is throwing all the older political ideas into utter confusion, a man of ability can hardly render a higher service to his country than by the analysis and correction of the assumptions which pass from mind to mind in the multitude, without inspiring a doubt of their truth and genuineness." Will the educated classes realise their duty in this matter, or will they remain immersed in selfishness and apathy, to their own undoing, and to the danger of the State? We shall see: "By their fruits ye shall know them."

ARTHUR PAGE.

AFTER six years of Radical misgovernment it is possible to perceive clearly the chaos and anarchy to which our poor country is reduced. The Cabinet is without discipline and without a united purpose. The Prime Minister accepts measures, in the hard positive spirit of an advocate, which he confesses to be dangerous for the community. He is still a lawyer speaking to his brief, or rather to half a dozen briefs. He possesses neither authority nor initiative. He is as little able to control his Chancellor of the Exchequer as he is to check the precipitancy of the Irish.

Of the Chancellor of the Exchequer it is difficult to speak with moderation. He is a new factor in British politics. He is a foreigner in mind and speech, without the smallest understanding of our institutions. A Welshman in the true sense of the word, he has made no study of England or the English. Scotland is as remote from his experience as the North Pole. A few tags of information, hastily gathered on a trip through Germany, a rough reading of the exploded heresies of Henry George, a knowledge, now happily failing him, of the tricks which catch votes, these are the curta supellex of a man who aspires to control the finances of a great Empire. The result of putting a demagogue into the seat of a statesman is only too mani

fest. After years of peace prices are higher, we are more heavily taxed, Government securities are more profoundly depressed than ever within the memory of man. Despite years of prosperous trading, the feeling of national insecurity grows. The money which in happier days was invested at home, is now sent abroad for greater safety. The reproof publicly administered not long since to the Chancellor of the Exchequer is unique and well deserved. Never before has & responsible Minister of the Crown been thus severely handled. The Governor of the Bank of England pointed out to Mr Lloyd George, who is too busy speaking to learn the rudiments of his trade, that there is a solidarity in finance as in all other human activities. This lesson Mr Lloyd George is not likely to learn, as it is incompatible with his amiable method of making finance a pack-horse of class-hatred and revenge. As we all know, breweries and the land have during the last few years had heavy burdens laid upon them. They seemed to the Chancellor easy hen-roosts to rob, and as they are managed chiefly by Conservatives, an attack upon them involved neither a loss of votes nor a diminution in the Party's funds. But, as the Governor of the Bank of England said with inexorable logic, "you cannot injure one portion

of the community the rest of the community suffering."

The Birkbeck Bank, for instance, stopped payment because its securities were suddenly and wantonly depreciated, and they were depreciated because Mr Lloyd George chose to forget that it is the business of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to lay aside his personal animosities and to think only of the good of the State. Nor was the ruin of the Birkbeck Bank a solitary exploit. Everywhere the small and large holder have suffered equally. There is not a bank in the country that has not felt the pinch. One instance, quoted by the Governor of the Bank of England, is worth remembrance. "A catastrophe on a large scale in the North of England," said he, "which would have affected the savings of a multitude of poor people and caused widespread distress, was with difficulty averted last August. Of course, I refer to a bank for small savings, which was drifting, had it not been assisted, into the same position as the Birkbeck Bank, owing to the depreciation in home investments." Here we see the rare and refreshing fruit ripe upon the tree. Mr Lloyd George, of course, is indifferent. He is indifferent also that Consols have fallen below 75, though even he would be stirred from his lethargy if he were asked to borrow money for the country on a large scale.

Meanwhile he cares not what happens. The Insurance

Passed without discussion, closured, guillotined, and kangarooed into existence, it still keeps its provisions an inviolate secret. Peripatetic lecturers have failed to explain its benefits. The magnificent hotels which Mr Lloyd George promised the haunters of the Tabernacle are still so many castles in the air. Medical treatment is promised without doctors. The people must pay, we are told, and they are not likely to get any "consideration" for their payment. We quite agree with Mr Lloyd George that the National In

surance Act is not an Aladdin's

Lamp. There was at least one passage in his joy-speech (word of ill omen!) which said no

more than the the truth. "You do not "-these were his very words,-"by rubbing it, call out palaces from the sky, with a retinue of servants, and doctors, and nurses, and everything ready." Precisely. Why, then, did Mr Lloyd George flatter his silly dupes with promises of hotels which he knew could not be kept? Why did he insist upon enforcing his Act without delay when no detail was prepared, - when no palace flashed from the sky, in spite of the rubbing of a thousand hands?

The reason is that Mr Lloyd George is in a hurry. As a vote-catcher the Insurance Bill has failed him, and he would, if