THE MAGAZINES.
TEE editor of the Contemporary gives the place of honour to a rather screamy paper entitled " Halt !" Its writer has, however, a clear idea in his or her head. It is that the Pope and Lord Rosebery should suggest to the Powers of Europe an agreement that until 1900 their military and naval Budgets should not be increased. This would, it is thought, prevent further waste and taxation, yet in no way interfere with the
independence or internal organisation of each State. The plan is good enough, but is it not a little late? Most of the Powers have enlisted all the men available, and have no more money which they can spend in preparations. The proposal, in fact, would only prevent Great Britain from arming her- self.—We have noticed elsewhere the Rev. C. F. Aked's paper on" The Race Problem in America," a description of the horrors of Lynch Law ; and next to that, perhaps the most
readable essay is Mr. H. W. Massingham's "Why not
Dissolve?" He entirely admits the flabbiness of the Liberal party in the House, and would cure it by a Dissolution,
believing that it— "Would be most perilous to the Unionist party. They have no policy, not even an electoral cry. Mr. Chamberlain has dragged them with impetuous wrong-headedness into an unlucky conflict with trade unionism. Their unfriendly and litigious criticism of Parish Councils has ruined what little credit they had with the agricultural labourer. Thanks to Mr. Goschen's tremulous passion for property, they have no financial policy but borrow- ing and muddling, and they will enrage the small middle-class
men by imposing direct taxes on the old ungraduated system, and piling up indirect taxation to the obvious disadvantage of the workers. As for Ireland, they are at a deadlock. Coercion is dead ; the Irish Unionists will not consent even to modified Home-rule, while the Gorsts and Rollits and Hanburys will not suffer a relapse into the futilities of Mr. Balfour's abandoned Local Government Bill. Moreover, a dissolution, followed by a weak Tory Government, will reveal the personal defects of the leading Unionist statesmen. Powerful as critics, Lord Salisbury. Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Chamberlain are weak on the constructive side, and no one of them has developed a tithe of Mr. Asquith's capacity for getting things done. Mr. Ritchie, the best Tory Parliamentarian, has dropped out of harness ; and, on the whole, it is difficult to see how, under the quickened pulse of modern politics, a Tory-Unionist Administration would not seem flat, un- inspired, and, in its care for the 'classes,' even shamelessly indif- ferent to the common welfare. Surely these ends are worth seeking, if the Liberal leaders desire a healthy clarifying of the situation."
That is worth quoting, not because it is accurate—for it is not —but because it is an unusual estimate of the situation by a strong Radical who yet acknowledges that the Government cannot carry its Bills. He expects, apparently, nothing except the Budget to pass, and is prepared to face defeat at the polls rather than see Liberalism become "vote-catching and particu- larist" as it now threatens to be. That is honest at all events. —Mr. W. E. Bear wants legislation in England and America, against "Market Gambling," that is, the dealing in options or futures in wheat, cotton, hog produce, and the like. He says such gambling tends to lower prices, which we do not exactly see. It tends to make prices irregular, no doubt, but why enormous purchases and sales of an article which never arrives, should make an article which does arrive, cheap, is not clear. There is mischief in all gambling, but there is mischief too in interfering with trade. Would Mr. Bear stop all dealing in Stock Exchange " futures " ? If not, he had better leave out the moral part of his argument.—Mr. Lynch's paper on " Armenia " is both readable and instruc- tive. He shows that Russia already holds half the provinces inhabited by Armenians, and will, if she is not checked, ac- quire the remainder ; but the paragraphs which will arrest attention are those which describe the villages full of Russian sectaries—extreme Protestants—which have been planted in Armenia. They are full of neat orderly people, living in better houses than the Armenians ; but with little desire for progress or for change. They are a passive people, and if Armenia were free would probably be merged in the more energetic race, which however, though it succeeds all over the world, has done little for itself at home. Russia seems to have about a million Armenian subjects in the Trans- Caucasian provinces, remarkable for their perfect solidarity, and their readiness to acquire instruction, which the Tartars round them will not attempt.
Two or three of the magazines contain articles upon the recent tree-markings in Behar and their meaning, but they are not very nutritious. The most authoritative is in the Nineteenth Century by Sir George Chesney, but it amounts only to this, that the British in India are far better prepared to meet insurrection than they were in 1857; but that there is undoubtedly much discontent among the peasantry from the alienation of the land and the pressure of mortgages, and the increasing density of population, and among the educated classes, from the sense of injustice in taxation, especially the refusal to levy duties on Lancashire goods, from the virulence of the native Press, and from the effort to apply English ideas to a people still in their political infancy. This is all true ; but one hardly sees how any of these things would provoke the soldiery, without whom formidable insurrection is im- possible in India. A writer in Macmillan ridicules the idea of a mutiny, but goes on only to quote a pamphlet satirically describing the probable consequences of Baboo rule; while Mr. Donald Reid, in the Fortnightly Review, who evidently knows Behar, distrusts the idea of insur- rection, but says the people of that province are over- crowded, wretchedly poor, and thoroughly disaffected. Mr. Reid, however, bears strong testimony to the strange fact, twice pointed out by ourselves, of a growing disposition to look to Nepal for guidance. This can only arise from the deep Hindoo feeling about Nepal as the last Hindoo State in which the cult of that creed is exempt from British super- vision, and consequent impurity. He says :— "The most dangerous feature in the Behar disaffection is the fact that the people, being sick to death of the hopeless struggle against oppression, are now looking for aid to Nepal. The Grak-
has of Nepal are the most warlike of any of the Eastern races, and the fertile districts of North Behar, which border on Nepal, would be a very acceptable addition of territory if at any time they could be seized when we were engaged in what seemed to the Oriental mind a hopeless death-struggle on the North-west frontier. Of this fact we may, at all events, rest assured that the people of North Behar will be only too glad to throw them- selves into the arms of Nepal at the first opportunity. They know Nepal well, and are fond of it and its people, and when the exac- tions of middleman and money-lender become too great for even the Behar peasants to stand, they invariably make a flitting across the border. Any change from the grinding thraldom to which they are subjected by middleman and money-lender in British territory is welcome to the Behar peasant."
That is a most curious and suggestive statement, the more so as no Mahommedan would tolerate Nepalese rule for a single day. It is, we believe, quite certain that in 1857 the rulers of Nepal hesitated for some time whether they should aid the British Government or march straight on Calcutta to over- throw it ; and in the end despatched a force which was more formidable to the peasants than to our foes.
The Nineteenth Century is this month a little heavy, with the exception of one or two papers,—notably one by Mr. Smalley, in which he points out with great force the Con- servative effect of the excessive—and, as Englishmen think, the wearisome — delays which the American Constitution imposes upon all constitutional action. It is almost impos- sible, without a revolution, to set the machine in motion hurriedly. Each part is so independent, and must be so fully persuaded of the new proposition. The President cannot be coerced by opinion, the Congress cannot be coerced by opinion, the Judiciary is practically independent of opinion. The American, in fact, looks on his Constitution as a whole, and does not regard the House of Representatives as endowed with any peculiar sanctity. If therefore the Senate throws out, or the President vetoes, a popular Bill, he waits for the next election with patience, and by that time probably has changed his mind. The delays and difficulties in the way of a Constitutional amendment are nearly fatal, and to such a measure as Home-rule would have been quite destructive. The paper is thoroughly worth study, though Mr. Smalley might have added that the American system of patience makes it very difficult to remove admitted abuses, and that the State system, which is, of course, the foundation-stone of the Con- stitution, sheltered slavery for years, and is now sheltering an abuse like the resort in the South and South-West to lynch- law.—Lord Brassey's account of his tour in India is full of bits of disconnected information, as a rule marvellously accurate. He spoils his own work however by apparent hurry —it is not, we should fancy, real hurry—by a want of proportion in selecting subjects for comment, and by a quite extraordinary snippetiness. He will probably remark that he meant to be snippety ; but the practice jars upon the reader, and is fatal to persuasiveness. —Mr. R. B. Brett gives a lively amount of the "quarrel" between the Queen and Lord Palmerston, which lasted for fifteen years, and was due partly to the essential differences of character between "the Court "—that is, the Queen and her husband— and the great Foreign Minister, and partly to the determina- tion of the latter not to be overruled. The Queen was con- stantly annoyed by what she deemed the needless offensiveness of his despatches and the rebukes they brought down, while the Prince Consort throughout held him to be, as indeed he was, a second-rate man with first-rate powers of action. After he became Prime Minister, the Queen's feeling changed because Lord Palmerston ceased to be hostile ; but it is doubtful if she ever cordially liked him, though she accorded to him, as to so many other Ministers,' a loyal support.— We cannot feel interested in Sir Herbert Maxwell's "Love," which is not an essay on love, but an account of the Duke of Buckingham's love-making to Anne of Austria,—a curious episode in French Court-life, not very well related. At least, we feel no appreciation for this kind of thing :— " So it has come to pass that a group of half-a-dozen people, dressed with fairy magnificence, were sitting together on the ter- race overlooking the Somme, listening to the nightingales. The moonlight, throwing deep shadows across the trellised paths, and reflected in soft splendour from the placid stream, sparkled with frosty lustre from innumerable diamonds with which their clothes were covered. You would have declared, could you have seen them, that they were more beautiful than earthly beings ever were—that they must be angels. Nay—lower than the angels, these ; creatures, indeed, of the sell-same flesh and blood—of the same wants and desires—as millions of human beings who, at , that moment, in France and England were in sore straits for the necessaries of life."
"Well-dressed angels,"—there is bathos in that, surely.
In the Fortnightly Review, Mr. R. Wallace, M.P., comes first with a rather discursive paper on "The Future of Parties." He thinks democratic Radicalism has very little immediate chance, the hearts of the people being really own- pied with the desire to better their material position. He believes a great conflict is approaching upon this question, and thinks Socialism—in which, however, he does not believe —will have a widespread, though not a universal, acceptance He says the working man is leaving his religion, and "wants some heaven at once." Personally, Mr. Wallace does not want to be drilled, or to see the country im- poverished, as it would be if the impulse towards money making ceased, or to be, in plain English, "a serf of the State ; " but he thinks the Socialists may extort a drop of concession from this side, and a drop from that, until at last the moneymakers prove once more, by a resort to force, that the organising and practical intellect is stronger than any sentimentalism. The paper is suggestive of thought, but Mr. Wallace writes in jerks.—Miss March-Phillipps pleads strongly for the inclusion of all laundries in the new Factory Act, declaring that the one hundred and eighty thousand laundresses are, for the most part, overworked and underpaid. Her object, and that of those who think with her, is clearly to extinguish small laundries, and allow only those in which the use of capital has secured space, ven- tilation, and the best appliances. There seems to be no doubt of the overwork under the present system ; but we suspect the social dislocation caused by a sudden change will be exceedingly severe. Tens of thousands of poor women will be thrown out of employ, and the poorer section of the middle class may find it difficult to get their washing done at all, except by reversion to the old system of employing washerwomen as we now em- ploy charwomen, for which our houses are no longer adapted. Oursingle objection to the efforts now making to improve the poorer trades, is that their promoters care too little whom they deprive of work. Unsanitary conditions of work are bad, but starvation is worse ; and the new improvements will often compel poor women to give up the hope of earning any- thing.—Mr. Frazer's sketch of Professor Robertson Smith is much too purely eulogistic to content us, and we only note it to remark that the great Orientalist believed what we have repeatedly maintained,—that the objection to the slaughter of cattle still so strong in India originated in the nomadic life. It was too dangerous to kill cattle, the tribes relying on milk, game, and beasts slaughtered in sacrifice for their sustenance. Later on, we may add, when they took to agri- culture, it became an object of the first necessity to preserve the draught-cattle for agricultural operations, and the sheep for their wool. It may be remarked, as evidence on this side, that many strict classes of Hindoos do not hesitate to eat flying birds, though we have never heard, and cannot suggest, an explanation of their horror of eating either hens or eggs. That seems a pure caprice; but pure caprices are rare among religious rules.
We note in Blackwood a very good specimen of the old narrative-ballad, now so nearly disused, by Mr. W. Laird Olowes. It is an account of the British defeat on the Pei-ho, when the American Admiral assisted our wounded, remarking that blood is thicker than water. As a rhymed narrative, it is capital, and with a trace more of fire in it, it would have been a first-rate ballad.
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