them would be only too glad to give valuable reports from time to time to the British Minister at Peking of the state of affairs in their district. Being in the closest touch with the natives and speaking Chinese, the information which they would supply would be invaluable. They say that their advice and opinion are never sought. There ought clearly to be a competent official attached to the Embassy whose province it should be to collect, collate, and digest their reports and present the substance of them to the British Minister at regular intervals for his information and for transmission to the Foreign Office. Then we should be in a far stronger position all round in dealing with Chinese affairs. At present the most wide-awake and well-informed man in Peking is outside the Embassy altogether. He is the Times Correspondent, and the editors of that journal are to be congratulated on his able conduct of his work.

VIII.

A few words only on the economical or commercial aspects of a hands-off policy will suffice. I have already, in my previous paper, called attention to the tremendous risk we are running in opening up a silver-using country where wages are at a very low minimum, labour superabundant, and raw materials plentiful and cheap, while ourselves adhering steadily to gold monometallism. It means the future destruction of British manufactures by putting a ruinous premium on Eastern production. I am not a bimetallist; on the contrary, my ideas and personal interests, in common with those of all recipients of fixed incomes, are strongly in favour of the gold standard. Of course, it is to our direct advantage to keep the purchasing power of the sovereign as high as we can, instead of depreciating it by linking it with cheap silver. Nevertheless, we must all face the facts. And the facts are that, before we set ourselves to open up China in any real sense, which, unhappily for our future peace, we are now doing by the introduction of railways, we ought in reason, as an indispensable preliminary, to set ourselves first to abolish this ruinous premium in favour of Eastern production by remodelling our entire monetary system. So long, therefore, as the bankers and financial magnates in the City of London adhere steadily to gold monometallism, so long will Lord Salisbury be highly to be commended in adhering steadily to the hands-off policy. By this we shall delay, though we cannot altimately avert, the future economical revenge of China, whereby she will be likely to drive our manufactures out of the world's markets. The enormous present and coming output of gold from the mines may yet, however, save the situation, without any such remodelling of our financial system. It must tend to depreciate gold, and thereby to restore the balance in favour of silver.

IX.

Hitherto we have dealt with this whole question ab extra—from the foreigner's point of view. One word as to the Chinese position and the general commercial situation. I think that the only way in which the Government at Peking can save their empire from being broken up is to open up their whole coast-line, and probably their leading inland waters as well, freely to the world's trade. The mutual jealousies of grasping Powers will then save them. Any design of any one Power to secure for itself exclusive rights and privileges will be met by the determined opposition of all the rest, who will promptly appeal to the powerful "most favoured nation" clause. By this simple policy the Chinese may yet save their empire.

X.

Great and growing empires, such as ours, are like maelstroms. They tend irresistibly, and perhaps unconciously, to suck into their ever-widening orbits all the smaller Powers, especially weak, backward, and barbarous or semi-barbarous races. Lord Salisbury is apparently intending to do his best to prevent the vast empire of China from being sucked into our British orbit. I wish him all success, but am very doubtful about it. It seems more probable that the march of events and the growing might of the great whirlpool, which is beyond the controlling power of any single statesman however eminent, will be too strong for him. Then we shall be driven to assert ourselves strongly in China, whether we like it or no.

In this situation it behoves us to consider well betimes all the conditions of the problem with which we shall have to deal, and to welcome light upon it from any and every quarter. This is my reason and justification for submitting to British readers this further contribution towards a consideration of the subject.

SENEX.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

THE

HE majority of Liberal members of Parliament and agitators seem to be of opinion that the ending or mending-they are not sure which of the House of Lords is the best and only card to be played at the next General Election. This conclusion may be doubted. In the first place, so long as the present craze of militant imperialism lasts, no internal reforms of importance will be dealt with, and therefore no collision between the House of Lords and the House of Commons is likely to take place. We may look forward to a Conservative Government in this country for many years to come, unless some wholly unforeseen contingency should arise. It is quite true that a Liberal Ministry might, owing to those political oscillations so common in modern politics, come into office, but I see no reason to suppose that it would hold real power, and I feel confident that its useless and undignified existence would be of brief duration. Consequently the question of the House of Lords must, under such conditions, be mainly academic, because the English people, immersed in business and amusements, slow-moving, and caring nothing whatever for the theoretic absurdities of their constitution, will never trouble their heads about the House of Lords unless on the ground of a practical grievance. I have no sympathy with their point of viewI am merely stating it. The House of Lords presents no problem at all to the average Englishman so long as it is in rough harmony with the other House, and therefore it will not be touched until such harmony comes to an end. But the Conservative party will be foolish if, before that time arrives, it does not make the attempt at reform on generally Conservative lines. Only the pressure of foreign affairs can prevent that.

There is a second difficulty in dealing with the House of Lords from the point of view of a strong Radical who, unlike his so-called

"leaders," is really in earnest on this question. This difficulty is that the English people are not democratic in feeling. By the English I mean the "predominant partner," and not his lesser partners in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The English are, perhaps, the least democratic people on the planet, if we except the Prussian junker and the Austrian archdukes. Were one considering a policy for Dakota, Norway, or New Zealand, the course would be plain; nothing which was not absolutely democratic could be entertained for a moment. But it is John Bull with whom we have to do-John Bull, with his rooted instinct for inequality. Mr. Bagehot spoke of the English as a "deferential" people, which is, I suppose, a pleasant euphemism for a people steeped in the feeling and tradition of inequality. Mr. Arnold said that inequality had materialised our upper classes, vulgarised our middle classes, and brutalised our lower classes. Thackeray went further in saying that an Englishman would rather be kicked by a lord than taken no notice of by him. Emerson, the most acute critic we ever had, saw in the persistence of the aristocracy evidence of the English acquiescence in the main outlines of an old-world structure of society. Democracy is not by any means, as Maine tried to show with wearisome reiteration, merely a form of government. It is a temper, a spirit, an all-pervading sentiment. The life precedes the form in politics as in physiology, and the form of politics in England is not democratic because the life is not. It is folly to try to force artificial democracy on a people who are not by instinct democratic. The recent investigation into the Hooley companies proves that when an adventurer wants to extract money out of the pockets of the average English investor, the best bait he can use is a lord- a fact which speaks volumes as to the real structure of our society. As national characteristics are rarely changed, it may be assumed that England will remain what she is, an oligarchic country, dominated by the idea of inequality.

But the newspapers are constantly talking about something they call "the democracy," and so an impression grows that we are a democratic people. By the democracy, however, the newspapers mean the working classes, who are thus opposed to the upper and middle classes. But in a true democracy, if special and separate classes there be, they are all united in democratic union, and the wage-earning class has no more right to arrogate to itself the title of democracy than any other class. A true democracy is not one class taken by itself and sundered from all other classes. Another mistake constantly made is in the confounding of democracy with liberty. It is assumed that because liberty exists in England to a greater degree than in any country in the civilised world, therefore democracy exists. Such blunderers forget Mill's admirable discussion of this subject, where he compares the political ideals of England and France. I agree with him in preferring liberty to equality, i.e., in

preferring the English to the French ideal, assuming that the two ideals are incompatible, as two such eminent thinkers as Taine and Renan think they are. But the point is that the two are perfectly distinct, and that while England has always stood for liberty, she has never shown any permanent and consistent devotion to the idea of equality. An opportunity was given to England in the seventeenth century to establish a Republican commonwealth, and she missed it. The remarkable closing chapter of the second volume of Mr. Gardiner's "History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate" shows us the democratic ideal dead in the heart of Cromwell and of the nation, and the idol of trade set up in the place of the dethroned goddess of the Republic. When the Restoration came the Whig reformers and the middle classes tried to secure liberty, not equality. That ideal has guided the Whig and Liberal parties ever since in the reforms they have undertaken.

The aristocracy, on their part, have managed to maintain their power substantially, though here and there concessions have been made. They have even thrown up, in the persons of Lord Grey, Lord Russell, Lord Palmerston, and Lord Salisbury, men, if not of genius, yet of high talent and capacity for political leadership. The character of the aristocracy which, in the last century, was their weak point, has undergone a change for the better. Scandals there have been of a grave character, but on the whole the newer and younger peers have improved greatly on their predecessors. Many of them have devoted not a little time to the study of social questions, so much so that you will probably hear as intelligent a discussion of these subjects in the House of Lords as in the House of Commons. The economic decline of the Lords, also, which was freely anticipated a few years ago, has been broken if not wholly prevented by prudential marriages with the daughters of American plutocrats. In the next place, the rampant imperialism of the last few years has brought to many peers appointments in army, navy, and public service, and it has enabled peers to lend their names for a consideration to companies which have been engaged in commercially exploiting the countries opened up. By a peculiar dispensation of Providence it has also happened that the standard of ability and character in the House of Commons, especially among the younger men, has simultaneously declined. On the Liberal side not one of the younger men has taken hold of the country or ever will. And as everything which weakens the House of Commons fortifies the House of Lords, it is clear that the latter institution has received a new lease of life.

Moreover, the masses suspect, and well-informed persons are aware, that the Liberal agitation against the House of Lords is half-hearted and insincere. There have been at intervals agitations directed against the House of Lords ever since 1831, and to-day the House of Lords is much stronger than at any other time during that long