passing of the Reform Bill was but the outward sign. But,' says Mr. Kebbel, 'by social power must here be meant the power of that class of society which drove the Reform Bill through Parliament, that is, the power of the populace.' But the 'power of the populace' is hardly distinguishable from that physical force' which Lord Eskdale suggested, and which Lord Beaconsfield through Sidonia rightly rejected as an explanation.

Lord Beaconsfield seems to be appealing through Mr. Kebbel to men of culture and of conservative instincts, as if he wished them to understand that the Reform Bill of 1832 was due to the power of the populace,' and that it is against this power he is now desirous of establishing guarantees. Mr. Kebbel would hardly have dared to set aside the plain meaning of his author without adequate sanction; but his criticism will not hold water. It is untrue, for in those days of small constituencies and aristocratic ascendency it was certainly not the power of the populace' that revolutionised the unreformed House of Commons. It was power constitutionally exerted at the hustings and the poll-booth by the scot-and-lot voters of the boroughs and by the freeholders of the counties, both classes till then paralysed by traditionary allegiance to their masters, but for the moment set free by the force of a mighty emotion which swept the land. The movement was no doubt swollen and made more impetuous by the great industrial towns at that time unenfranchised, but the vast assemblages which were organised by Mr. Thomas Attwood and Mr. Joseph Parkes in connection with the Birmingham Political Union it would be utterly unjust to describe as 'the populace.' They consisted of the bourgeoisie of the towns, of men engaged in businesses of all sorts, 'wholesale and retail,' of shopkeepers and respectable artisans, of men who, as the saying is, had a stake in the country,' and were aroused to action by an intelligent sense of the reality of the crisis for them and for the whole nation. It was a new 'social power,' as Sidonia said; the power of industry seeking to be emancipated from an oligarchical régime which mimicked feudalism. In Lord Beaconsfield's lips the assertion that this beneficent revolution was due to the 'power of the populace' would be hypocritical as well as false. For it is to the power of the populace, to the multitude, that Lord Beaconsfield has always shown, and still shows, a disposition to appeal, as to the power which forms the constitutional complement of the Crown, and by which it may be possible to override the legislative influence of the middle classes.

Mr. Kebbel disputes my right to infer 'cut and dried' political theories from Lord Beaconsfield's novels; yet, bating the epithet, which seems to be introduced invidiously, he makes the largest use of that right himself. But the amusing part of the business is that the account Mr. Kebbel gives us of Lord Beaconsfield's serious opinions is substantially the same as my own. I am willing to give up all I

said on this point, and to accept Mr. Kebbel's version instead. What is it? Mr. Kebbel says Lord Beaconsfield always thought Sir Robert Peel was wrong in reorganising the Tory party on the basis of resistance to all further constitutional changes, and rebaptising it by the title of Conservative.' He thought the Tory party ought not to be satisfied with preserving so much of the Constitution as the Reform Bill had left. It ought rather to seek to replace what was lost by something else fitted to do the same work, for which purpose he thought that further constitutional changes might be necessary.

What constitutional changes did Lord Beaconsfield think necessary? He said that their object should be to make up for the loss of the political power of the aristocracy which the Reform Bill had destroyed, and to do so by introducing some fresh machinery' into the Constitution. That machinery he was prepared to find in the augmented influence of the Crown. The vanishing influence of the aristocracy was to be replaced by an amplification of the prerogative, by a revival of powers then dormant, and by a larger exertion of the direct power of the sovereign in political affairs. It was to do the same thing that an ascendant House of Lords and a House of Commons which was but another House of Lords in disguise had done, namely, to oppose a firm front to revolution,' a name for political progress, and keep power in the hands of the educated and most cultivated classes,' a euphemism for keeping power in the hands of the few by bamboozling the many.

It is the active and influential middle class, the class emancipated by the first Reform Bill, the 'social power' to which Sidonia referred, the power that can most effectually lay its hands on the springs of Government-it is this power that Lord Beaconsfield dislikes, and wants to find some means of checking. He finds this means in the extended power of the Crown, operating as a new piece of machinery inserted in the Constitution, and so employed as to cheat the nation of the fruits of the first Reform Bill, and make the practical upshot of politics to be the same as it would have been if that Reform Bill had never passed. This is in substance what I have alleged, and it all follows from Mr. Kebbel's view of Lord Beaconsfield's opinions as readily as from my own. Exercising my wits to the best of my ability, as Mr. Kebbel has done, upon some passages of Lord Beaconsfield's novels, I have also inferred that he would not care to stop at that chaotic period which he has made the butt of his anti-Venetian ridicule, but that he would do his best to go back to that earlier period which he exalts and eulogises through the whole diapason of political devotion. I have as good a right to my opinion as Mr. Kebbel has to his. But accepting his version instead of my own, and ascribing to Lord Beaconsfield nothing more than a wish to find in the exaltation of the Crown an antidote to the effects of the first Reform Bill, I have

quite enough to establish my contention that he is seeking by quiet and plausible steps to modify the Constitution in accordance with his autocratic opinions.

But Mr. Kebbel becomes most interesting when, having finished with Lord Beaconsfield, he begins to speak for himself, and his avowals give the finishing touch to a rather grotesque situation. had charged Lord Beaconsfield with attempting to revive the personal authority of the Crown. Apparently amazed at such a preposterous accusation, and scandalised by its gross injustice, Mr. Kebbel rushes to the rescue. But, having performed this act of political friendship, Mr. Kebbel proceeds to admit that Lord Beaconsfield has always thought that the very thing ought to be done which I have charged him with attempting; and finally Mr. Kebbel confesses on his own account that, though it has not been done yet, it will probably have to be done soon, and perhaps the sooner the better. It cannot but be considered very remarkable if the most characteristic of Lord Beaconsfield's opinions-that which gave him a distinctive place in speculative politics-should never have been allowed to colour his conduct; and it is equally remarkable that Mr. Kebbel, after treating it as a calumny to charge Lord Beaconsfield with attempting to put his most cherished opinions into practice, should finish by telling us that he holds the same opinions himself. On reading the concluding pages of Mr. Kebbel's essay, I find it hard to resist the impression that he cannot have been arguing seriously, but rather that he has been figuring in decorous masquerade, vociferating at the top of his voice that there are no proofs of a conspiracy, and that the thing is utterly impossible, while all the time the dark lantern is under his cloak and the revolver is peeping out of his pocket.

However this may be, he ends by laying aside all disguise, and speaking with most honourable and instructive frankness. He tells us that he is not prepared to deny that circumstances might arise to render a revival of the personal authority of the Crown beneficial and possibly indispensable.' He believes 'there is an increasing number of people in the country who view with great alarm the rapid progress of the doctrine that the House of Commons is the government.' The influence of the aristocracy is gone, and there are men in the country, who are neither dreamers nor sentimentalists, who look round wistfully for some equivalent.' Suppose the possible predominance in the House of Commons of the Ultra-Radical party bent on overthrowing the whole social system of the country;' in that case the Conservative forces of society might thank God that they had a centre to rally round.' Within the last quarter of a century, says Mr. Kebbel, 'the House of Commons has ceased to be what it once was both intellectually and socially.' Aristotle remarked, more than two thousand years ago, that democracies were low-born, poor, and vulgar; and, making due allowance for the fact that

Englishmen who are not earls are often rich, Mr. Kebbel thinks that the present condition of the House of Commons illustrates the truth of Aristotle's words. He thinks it within the bounds of possibility that, in the course of a few years, the House of Commons may have so far forfeited the respect of the more educated and intellectual classes as to cause them either to stand aloof from public life altogether, or to cast in their lot with any party whose principles may seem best calculated to restore the dignity of government.' If neither of these things should happen, Mr. Kebbel thinks it is still possible that the nation at large may appeal to the Crown from the strife of parliamentary factions.' He gives it as his 'honest conviction that the House of Commons is on a downward course, on which it did not enter yesterday; and that, unless it succeeds ere long in regaining its former hold upon the confidence and respect of the people, the latter would look with indifference, if not with positive satisfaction, at the progress of personal rule.' What will actually occur he does not pretend to say. Perhaps none but men pledged to give a general support to the prerogative would be returned to Parliament.' 'Perhaps the length of the parliamentary session might be considerably abridged.'

To all this I have nothing to say except to express my wonder at the boldness and dexterity with which Mr. Kebbel uses his opportunities of defence as a means of propagandism. The confessions which flow from his pen do not amount to formal proof of the truth of all that I have maintained, but they are more than proof. They reveal in the minds of the men whose political sympathies Mr. Kebbel represents, and in the quarter to which his defence applies, a fund of hostility to parliamentary government which would suffice to defray any number of the small expenditures which I profess to have discovered. The most extravagant conjecture I hazarded was that the time might come when the Crown, brought by its growing prerogative into conflict with the House of Commons, might clear the benches, remove the mace, and send a proclamation to the newspapers.' But Mr. Kebbel, who says that my more extravagant statements confute themselves,' seems ready to endorse the one which I should have felt most difficulty in vindicating, for he imagines that if an Ultra-Radical faction should become predominant in the House of Commons, the Crown would know how to dispose of them in spite of the majority of the nation, without whose sanction they could not have got there. I also ventured to suggest that as personal rule advanced, Parliament might be relieved of most of its present functions, and that most of the business of legislation might be transferred to the Secretaries of State, acting as the immediate servants of the Crown. This seems to be the arrangement of which Mr. Kebbel would approve; for if the length of the parliamentary session is to be abridged, a great part of the work now done by

Parliament must be handed over to the Executive. In short, in his view the prerogative is, sooner or later, to supersede the legislature. Yet, while Mr. Kebbel fills the future with these horrible predictions, he professes to be unable, without superhuman aid, to discern the hostile deities in the act of destroying the Constitution.' Of course my opinions are more favourable than his to the faculty of second sight, and I think he underrates the significance of his own work if he refuses me leave to see in him one of those dira facies of the great gods behind the scenes which portend the ruin of Troy.

By what means the Crown is to play the formidable part allotted to it by Mr. Kebbel in the constitutional changes which ' a few years' are likely to bring about he does not say. If it sets itself against the political decision of the majority of the nation as affirmed by the constituencies, the army would seem to be its only resource. A few regiments distributed among the principal towns, and the household troops barracked round Westminster, would no doubt prove a powerful sedative to agitation; and an interval would thus be secured during which the Conservative forces' might rally round the saviour of society. Other force than the army in a contest with the Parliament and the majority of the nation the Crown has none, and it is possibly by a wise prevision that so much care has been taken to isolate the command of the army as much as possible from the authority of the House of Commons. We begin to discern a method in all this madness, and, could it ripen into action, there can be no doubt of the certain result. It would end in civil war as the only alternative of absolute power. The civilian cannot cope with the soldier. A few rifled cannon would for a time be an unanswerable argument in any of our large towns. But, unless the history of our country is to belie itself, the triumph could not be of long duration. England could not live under such a régime. The reviving spirit of freedom would turn the very stones in the streets into armed men ; and the Crown, which had been thrust by unwise advisers into the front of the conflict, would fall. Such, in my honest conviction, is the catastrophe which men like Mr. Kebbel, and those in whose behalf he speaks, are doing all they can to pre-arrange; and it is because my loyalty is of a truer stamp than theirs that I have raised my humble protest against disguised incendiaries and their programme of discord and revolution.

HENRY DUNCKLEY.