anomalies of the present system which was proposed to be removed by the Leeds, is recommended to be retained and consequently intensified by the Glasgow, Conferencethe exclusion of female ratepayers. Without expressing any positive opinion on the question itself, it stands to reason that if in the counties many thousands of female ratepayers under the £12 franchise are deprived of the vote, their number will be greatly increased, probably doubled, when household suffrage is established in the counties. Thus, in attempting to cure one anomaly, the Glasgow reformers, who claimed to speak the mind of the Government, would magnify and exasperate another. In the counties, from the nature of their local government, the recess has afforded hardly any opportunities of testing the prevalent feeling as to reform. The only contested county election since Parliament rose— -that of Rutland-is noticeable as expressing the opinion of the most exclusively rural constituency in England, and its verdict was decidedly hostile to the threatened reform. With respect to the boroughs, it is different. In their annual municipal elections it is possible to trace the predominant current of urban opinion. A few days after those pretentious conferences had issued their discordant commands to a perplexed Ministry, the municipal elections took place in England, and no one will pretend that their result indicated the slightest desire for further political reform. Even Leeds itself turned its back on the Conference, and helped to swell the Tory triumph. It should be reIt should be remembered that last year a similar result occurred, and that consequently it may now be fairly assumed that the settled bias of urban opinion is favourable to Conservatism-that is, to the maintenance of existing institutions in Church and State. While, then, we do not quarrel with the reticence of our leaders, we earnestly deprecate random admissions of the principle of identity of franchise, such as appeared in Mr Houldsworth's address to the electors of Manchester. In his case, it is true, some qualifying words followed; but the public notes the admission of the principle in vital questions of this kind, and properly disregards the qualifying expressions, which may be satisfied by some slight concessions in Committee on the Bill: and we earnestly trust that, when Parliament meets, the Conservative party will find itself able and willing to maintain, in substance, the liberal settlement of 1867. Before leaving this subject, a few words are due to Mr Goschen's deliverances upon it at Edinburgh last month. He appeared as a Liberal of the Liberals. His opening sentences were of scathe and contempt for Tories and Toryism, and his peroration was an almost fulsome eulogium of Mr Gladstone. Yet, on the merits of this great test question, as it is called, not the late Mr Croker, nor the present Lord Sherbrooke, could have expressed more fervent alarm, or uttered words of more solemn warning. Mr Goschen's deliberate opinion is expressed in the following words: "I see a measure before me which, in my judgment, clenches the supremacy of one class at the poll, and makes it irrevocably the arbiter of all interests and all classes." 1 Any one hearing or reading this weighty judgment, unless he had carefully studied Mr Goschen's parliamentary career during the last three years, would exclaim, "Well, here the alarmed 1 Times,' November 1, 1883. and recalcitrant Whigs have found not only a mouthpiece but a leader! The Fitzwilliams, the Russells, the Ramsdens, and the Lambtons will no longer be "like dumb driven cattle," but will, under such distinguished leadership, strike a bold blow in defence of the existing Constitution." Alas! if they do, it must be under some other leader. Mr Goschen possesses all the qualifications of leadership-but one; he has no backbone and so, having denounced the contemplated measure of reform, he hastened to assure his audience that he meant nothing by his vigorous wordsthat the country had made up its mind on the subject, and "there's an end on't." Those who witnessed Mr Goschen's interference at the end of one of the most important discussions in Committee on the Irish Arrears Bill last year, will not feel surprised at this lame and impotent conclusion. White with apprehension lest the amendment he approved should be carried, and wringing his hands in the extremity of his terror lest the Government he condemned, yet supported, should be defeated, he abjectly entreated the Committee to vote, not on the merits of the amendment, but in support of the Minister. The Whigs, if they wish, as they probably do, to emerge from the uncomfortable, not to say discreditable, thraldom so pungently described by the author of "Disintegration," must enlist under the banner of some other leader than Mr Goschen, or follow the example of the Duke of Norfolk, Lords Zetland, Scarborough, Bury, and other hereditary Whigs, and take their place in the Conservative ranks. Having referred to the recent municipal elections in England as indicative of a salutary change in urban politics across the Border, it is gratifying to be able to point to the result of the Edinburgh Uni versity Rectorial contest as a proof of the growing power of Conservative opinions among the educated youth of Scotland. Without unduly magnifying Sir Stafford Northcote's triumph over Mr Trevelyan, we may at least draw from it the conclusion that the majority of the future ministers, doctors, lawyers, and professional men of Scotland, so far as they are subjected to the influences of the University of Edinburgh, will belong to the Constitutional party; and the manner in which the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen are represented in Parliament, leaves no doubt as to the political convictions of the graduates of those learned bodies. In spite of Lord Hartington's dictum, the majority of the cultured classes in Scotland adhere to the "stupid party"; and we are bold to add our conviction, that in no part of the United Kingdom is the Conservative reaction stronger than in Scotland. At the next election, we confidently anticipate that the sturdy band of patriots who now so well represent the Constitutional Toryism of Scotland will be at least doubled in number; and to this result the admirable addresses delivered during the recess by Mr Gibson at Glasgow and Inverness, Sir Richard Cross at Aberdeen and Paisley, Mr Stanhope at Perth and Edinburgh, will have not a little contributed. The complimentary yet just terms in which the Liberal Provost of Aberdeen, on the occasion of conferring the freedom of that ancient city on the late Home Secretary, referred to his legislative labours on the great question of improving the dwellings of the working classes in our large towns, show that honest work in the cause of social reform will be properly appreciated by the public at large; and we do not doubt that Sir Richard's outspoken language on this subject at Aberdeen and Paisley, coupled with Lord Salisbury's terse and lucid plea for further action in that direction, will make many Liberal philanthropists hesitate before they agree to postpone all social amelioration to the tinkling brass of a political revolution. The oratory of the recess has been so copious, and promises to produce such important results, that the attention we have felt bound to bestow upon it leaves but scant space for noticing foreign and colonial events during that period. Abroad, the turbulent and bellicose action of the model Republic, France, in Madagascar and Tonquin, threatens to affect our honour and our interests; and it is impossible to feel that either are safe in the feeble hands of the present Ministry. According to Mr Gladstone's rose-coloured statement at the Guildhall on the 9th ult., the reparation granted by France to Mr Shaw and to England for the outrages at Tamatave has been ample and spontaneous. Considering that nearly half a year has elapsed since the Prime Minister startled the House of Commons from its propriety by his denunciation of the misconduct of the French naval authorities at that port, and that we are still ignorant of the nature of the amende which has been made to our insulted flag, it would appear that if the amplitude of the reparation does not exceed its spon taneity, the Government of this empire is very easily satisfied. M. Waddington, favourably known to us by his friendly and judicious conduct at the Berlin Conference, contributed to the City banquet some graceful and reassuring phrases in vindication of the just and peaceful aims of French foreign policy. So far as that policy is influenced by him, we cordially accept his assurances; but the Kroumirs and the Tunisian expedition, the quarrel forced on Madagascar, the attack on Annam and Tonquin, the Tricou telegram, and the undiplomatic behaviour of M. Challemel Lacour and M. Ferry towards the Chinese ambassador in France, at once rise up before us, and forbid us to regard M. Waddington as a complete representative of French foreign policy à la mode Républicaine. A test of the friendliness of that policy will soon be afforded in Egypt. Cairo is to be evacuated by our troops, unless the disaster to Hicks Pasha in the Soudan should serve to make the Government pause. If six months after that evacuation we hear of no French intrigues to regain a paramount influence over the Egyptian Government, we shall be agreeably disappointed, and admit that we misjudged the temper of those who control the foreign policy of the Republic. Lord Derby was present at the banquet, but neither from him nor from Mr Gladstone did a word fall on the present or future condition of our great but ill-used dependencies in South Africa. That their policy has hopelessly broken down both as to the Transvaal and Zululand, is too plain and palpable to be denied; and that its failure has brought with it a deplorable loss of life and property is equally undeniable. Prestige, we know, Mr Gladstone and Lord Selborne denounced and abandoned ten years ago. Mr Goschen has recently informed us that in a similar spirit he repudiates honour; but he stops at credit." How stands British "credit," we should like to ask him, in South Africa, from Simon's Bay to the Tugela? Mr Goschen will hardly say that he expects it to be raised from its present depression by the result of any negotiations now pending between Lord Derby and the Transvaal Delegates, or any hocus-pocus which may be attempted by the Colonial Office to bring about an arrangement between Usibepu, Cetewayo, and John Dunn. Meanwhile, the effect of their miserable mismanagement has been disastrous on the trade and commerce of South Africa; and we learn from Sir Robert Lindsay, recently returned from a journey in the interior, that from one end of the Cape Colony to the other, Mr Gladstone and his colleagues are condemned and detested. The Prime Minister's platitudes about Ireland require no notice; and with commendable skill, and scarcely concealed scorn for his Liberal mentors of the press and platform, he resolutely declined to be drawn into any engagements, however shadowy, as to the course of legislation next session. Reticence on that subject, on which no Cabinets could have been held, seems to us not only natural, but necessary. Not so, however, with the decision at which the Government had arrived with respect to the Ilbert Bill. No assembly of Englishmen could have been collected together more interested in the fate and welfare of our vast Indian empire than that addressed by the Prime Minister; to none, therefore, could the announcement of the practical abandonment of that obnoxious measure have been more fitly or more gracefully made. Men of all political parties had condemned it, men of all political parties were listening to him; but, owing to what motive we know not, Mr Gladstone delegated the disclosure to a Cabinet Minister not connected officially with India, and charged him to announce the fact of Lord Ripon's retreat to a purely political meeting at Bristol. As to the manner and taste with which Lord Northbrook discharged his ungrateful task there will probably be a general agreement. Abuse of those who had persistently brought the real issue before the country, and a disingenuous defence of the disingenuous artifices by which the Indian Government had endeavoured to conceal the overwhelming condemnation of the scheme by the local Governments and Anglo-Indian public opinion, vindicated Lord Northbrook's loyalty to his absent friend at the expense of other more sterling qualities which the country would gladly recognise in the First Lord of the Admiralty. Thus ends -if, indeed, the concession so announced satisfies Anglo-Indian public opinion-a pregnant chapter of Radical rashness, a foolish and uncalled-for change, surreptitiously introduced, disingenuously defended, universally condemned when submitted to discussion, obstinately maintained, and, at the last moment, practically abandoned and withdrawn at a Radical meeting in a provincial city, in a torrent of angry but weak invective against its successful opponents. The principal inconvenience arising from Mr Gladstone's silence on the question of reform is the justification it gives the rival wirepullers and manipulators of Radical public opinion to work their oracles in behalf of their antagonistic programmes until the meeting of Parliament. Meanwhile, the sober sense of the country will rally round those statesmen who prefer to ameliorate the social, moral, and physical condition of the people, rather than to embark on the perilous enterprise of subverting our present representative system in the three kingdoms, in the feeble and fallacious hope of pacifying for a time the destructive appetite of democratic reform. Astronomical knowledge among the Belka Beverley, Trollope's candidature for, 591, Auchmedden, Mr Baird of, 254. 379 et seq.-his recollections of Napo- Barents, William, his description of a Barsetshire novels, Trollope's, 587 et seq. 127. Bedawin, characteristics of the, 176 et BELKA ARABS, THE, 171-the Belka or 738. Bird-life about Bournemouth, 743. BLACKIE, J. S., OCTOBER SONG BY, 520— Blowing Stone, the, in Berkshire, 321. 753. Bright, Mr, on the Ilbert Bill, 130 et Cabs at elections, use of, restricted, 'Cæsar,' Trollope's, 592. Camel-marks among Arabs, 187. 280. Candahar, General Roberts's march on, Capital and Socialism, 509 et seq. |