CURRENT LITERATURE.
The New British Constitution and its Master-Builders, by the Duke of Argyll (Douglas, Edinburgh), is in the form of a thin little volume of 140 pages, a clever, well-planned, crisply written, rather rasping, but never bitter, history of the recent change in Mr. Glad- stone's views on the subject of Home-rule. It is, in fact, a very able speech reduced to the form of a pamphlet. It was as a pamphleteer that the Duke first won his spurs in controversy, and we should say, from the incisive arguments, the condensed paragraphs, and the pithy sentences of this volume, that such a rae, at all events as regards political disputation, suits him even better than that of the orator. Mr. Gladstone's political course since, in September, 1871, he demanded at Aberdeen, "Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institu- tions of this country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we possess for bestowing benefits on the country to which we belong ? "—through the stage at which, "amidst the cheers of the 'classes' and the ringing of the glasses, he announced the arrest of Mr. Parnell," down to the present time, when he is a Home-rule politician without a Home-rule plan, has never been traced with more lucidity or scientific accuracy. If there is an appearance of ruthlessness about the manner in which the Duke performs his task, it is the ruthlessness of the political anatomist, not of the partisan filled with rancour against Mr. Gladstone. Speaking as a colleague of Mr. Gladstone in 1853, the year of the great Budget, he does ample justice to "the originality of conception, the courage, resource, knowledge, dexterity of treatment, and breadth of view, through which alone that scheme secured its splendid success in Parliament." It may be mentioned that, quite incidentally, the Duke's little book supplies some admirable arguments on—and against—Home-rule for Scotland.
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