papers devoted to political, social, or religious progress, has induced Messrs G. J. Holyoake and Co. to establish a news and book agency, and these already supply various provincial agents with every article of general literature." That is to say, it is a news and book-agency speculation of the ordinary kind. Professing to be "conducted on a propagandist basis," in order to give it a fine name, it is simply the usual kind of agency business, the philanthropic firm further undertaking the transmission of prospectuses and circulars -"Terms to be had on application. Specially distributed as per agreement," Secularism is a system which propounds the necessity of giving the first attention to the things of this life; and it must be confessed that its great apostle thoroughly understands the system, when the first thing which it strikes him as requiring to be done, is the securing of himself in a good trade. Mr Holyoake was presented with £250 at the Free Masons' tavern, a gift to himself. That money he employed as a capital in the establishment of his agency; "regarding it, not as for private, but for public service." He adds, with a clear eye to the main chance, could advantageously employ a larger sum, for the ground to be occupied at this hour is eventful to us."

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This brings us to the question in which we are chiefly interested, and for the sake of which we have entered into these details. We have endea voured to convey some idea of the tract literature of the country, the societies which are the chief sources of issue, the individuals who compose and manage these societies, the underhand influences at work, the petty motives of personal vanity and selfish gain that are brought into play side by side with strong convictions and weak arguments; and the character of the tracts which are thus issued, their clap-trap eloquence, their spasmodic sentiment, their metaphorical allusion, all intended to cover the want of anything definite to say. One impression, however, we have probably failed to produce--we mean as to the extent to which this system of organisation is carried throughout the country, and

as to the quantity of tracts which are in consequence distributed at large. No public necessity arises in these islands without calling forth a committee or association of some kind. There is nothing to be done of a public character, that is left for individuals to do. The Parliamentary iron has so entered into our blood, that whatever great thing is to be effected must be the work of joint enterprise. Especially if any legislative object is to be attained, no individual can do it. There is no such thing nowadays as a Swift writing letters and pamphlets, and by his unaided power rousing a whole nation into fury. All great political action is the result of organisation. In every town throughout the three kindgoms there are scores of societies of infinite variety-public societies, private societies, secret societies. The system is universal; and that which gives a personal identity, a character and a power to most of those societies with a political object, is the system of tract publication. As the minute-book is the private record of the society, so the tracts are its public manifestoes, and the record of its extant work in this world-the seed which it has sown, the endeavours which it has made. The quantity in this way produced is prodigious. Educated people, who are not in all the crotchety schemes for which societies are started, and who cannot summon up courage to read even one of the four pages of twaddle and rant in which these schemes are advocated, have little idea of the mass of stuff which is every week issued for the convincing of mankind. They must have a good deal more of sympathy with human labour, because it is human labour, and not because it is clever, or interesting, or successful, before they can appreciate this wilderness of reading, which-very far from being brilliant-is nevertheless full of aspiration, firmest faith, and nature's promptings. And the question which spontaneously arises in a survey of such a curious literature is, what means it? whither is it all tending what are the political bearings of this singular phenomenon?

To the most obvious conclusion we have already referred, in mentioning

Mr Carlyle's lament on the destruction of the heroic character in our age, and Mr Mill's lament on the comparative weakness of individuals. To express the same fact in terms which will be more readily understood the tendency of these associations is to create that equality which democrats have long been sighing for -a dead level of power. Just as in the modern system of warfare, discipline is everything-the hero is less, and the regiment is more, than in those fights described by Homer, in which one man sent ten thousand to flight, and the spear of a single brave decided the battle; so in political action, by the help of organisation, it follows that individuals accomplish most by throwing aside their individuality, and merging their forces in a common unity. The comparison is perfectly parallel; and it will be found that the system of political unions is in itself neither worse nor better than the system of regimental unions. The political unions must have their leaders not less than the regiments; and in these recognised leaders we have a certain escape from equality. Whether it is to be deplored or not, however, there can be no doubt that the system is inevitable that the importance of political association, once discovered, cannot be forgotten. The real evil is, that hitherto the art of combination has been an instrument in the hands chiefly of those who style themselves the progressive, or, as we should style them, the aggressive party. Their ignorance, their stupidity, their coarseness, have made men of education and refinement shrink from the use of a system identified with so much that is questionable. It is the old story of Oliver Cromwell again. How the Cavaliers laughed at his regiment of Ironsides - their sober habit, their Scriptural style, and their rigid discipline! Surely the highspirited gentlemen of England were not to be put down by these snivelling saints. Unfortunately for the Cavaliers, whatever might be the absurdity of the Ironside views, or whatever the repulsiveness of their habits, they had one great quality which was utterly wanting in the camp of the Royalists they had

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discipline, and this discipline gained the day. Never was a greater mistake committed than when the Cavaliers despised discipline, because it shone forth in vulgar or distasteful forms; and men of moderate views and conservative tendencies are apt to make a similar mistake in our days in their rooted aversion to the associations which are the ordinary routine of political action. They forget the very remarkable lesson which the experience of our manufacturers conveys. Manufacturers were for a long time at the mercy of trade unions. The labouring classes, for the purpose of compelling their masters to assent to their terms, entered into all sorts of combinations, and the masters, powerless, were forced to yield. The evil was intolerable until the masters found out the remedy, which was to combine among themselves. They met mine with countermine, association with counterassociation, and in the end they conquered.

It is the very thing we require-organism against organism, in the political not less than in the social life.

But there is another fact in connection with these combinations, and the tract-literature produced by them, which it is necessary to note. Observe the strange fact which gives a new tone to the democratic tendencies of our time, that discussion is being transferred in a thousand ways from the rostrum to the press, from the public hall to the quiet study. It has been said that there is no such thing as a genuine democracy-what we name a democracy is but an aristocracy of orators. How true is this description applied to the old democracies!to Athens, for example, where there was no representative system, and the legislature was simply the mob who could first secure their places. Here was a democracy in its worst form - the tyranny of a sectional rabble over all, and the god of the rabble was the orator who could sway it best— the most thorough-going demagogue. Perhaps there is not a more complete contrast to such a scene than that which we find every day in this country. By the system of representation we break up this enormous

mob into a number of smaller mobs; and by the system of publication afforded by the press we break up the smaller mobs into a series of units. It is told of a foreigner who had been going the round of our law courts, that he could not help expressing his surprise to Lord Mansfield that they were so empty. "No matter, sir," replied the Chief Justice, we sit every day in the newspapers." Through the newspapers, too, every man of us has a seat in the House of Commons, if not a vote; and through the system of tractwriting all the great political movements of the country are reduced to print, transferred more or less from the passionate and too often irrational tribunal of assembled mobs to the calmer and more rational atmosphere of individual thought and private study. Here we perceive a certain gain to the individual. He is addressed no longer as an atom in the popular mass, as a drop in the ocean, as part and parcel of the overwhelming mob; but as a man judging for himself, and capable of forming his opinion unbiassed. A mob is a monster. It is a great power devoid of intellect. The evil of it is not principally that it is an aggregate for the most part of ignorant people, but that it is an aggregate in which the individual, be he ignorant or otherwise, is lost, an unreasoning aggregate, an impassioned aggregate. Introduce a system by means of which you can deal with each member of this mob separately, and you deprive it of half its evil. There is justice to be found in individuals, sense, moderation; but these are virtues rarely to be found in confused masses. Now, in so far as they develop this system of appealing to individuals, and substitute the lever age of the pen for that of the voice, of the four-page tract for that of the mob orator, our societies and leagues and alliances are engaged in a good work, even although, in the mean time, that work may be but vilely done. We have little doubt that, by degrees, the character of the tracts will be raised. A curious fact was reported the other day on the authority of one of those hawkers of books who have recently been employed in large

VOL. LXXXV.—NO. DXXIII.

numbers to distribute a healthy literature in the country districts. He reported that he has scarcely any purchasers above the age of thirty, and the fact seems to indicate not inaccurately the level of the population which has been reached by our thirty years of educational effort. When these efforts reach their full effect, surely also the peculiar system of political agitation, of which the tract-issuers are a most important part, will rise in character. Taking it, however, as we find it, we do not doubt that there is good mixed up with those evils which we have pointed out as so very prominent. The great evil of a democracy is, we have said, that the individual is lost in the mass, and the result is very nearly equivalent to the tyranny of an absolute despot. You cannot reason with a mob, and you have no chance of reasoning with a despot. The oppression is tremendous, with this only difference between the two, that we may expect consistency from a single tyrant, though not from a million of tyrants. Transfer your arguments, therefore, from an appeal to the mob to an appeal to individuals, and you advance a step, just as in a system of votingpapers we should advance another step. It has been said that a system of voting papers would tend to increase corruption, and to create fictitious votes. We hope not: it is surely within the power of our parliamentary draughtsmen to prevent any such misappliance of them; and we are very certain that, if so misapplied, it is the offending party that must suffer. But observe the real advantage to be gained by voting.. papers. At the polling-booth men vote in a mob, in a hurry-it may be in fear; at all events, under the often senseless contagion of example. But take the polling apparatus to each man's house, bid him record his vote quietly, at leisure, and thinking for himself, and instantly you destroy, or go very far to destroy, one of the worst evils attaching to democracy, which thinks and votes too much in common which catches at a word, and starts at the flutter of a leaf, everybody doing the same thing, and nobody knowing why. All

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those processes which tend to disintegrate a mob, whether it be the system of popular representation, or the system of political agitation through tracts, or the system of voting by means of papers transmitted

through the post, are a gain; and if they add strength to democracy by contributing to its permanence, they also raise its character and take away from its reproach.

IT was generally agreed that during the ride, described in the last chapter, to the temple of Dai-see, we must have seen at least 80,000 Japanese, the majority of them men-yet no one had noticed a crippled, deformed, or leprous person. The writer was careful to count all those Japanese whom he saw during that day suffering from infirmities arising from disease-such, for instance, as loss of eyesight from small-pox. The entire number, incredible as it may appear, amongst so many thousands of human beings, fell considerably short of a hundred. Pock-marks were common, but by no means general.

Only two beggars were seen in this ride of full twenty-two miles : one was a mendicant priest, too aged to wander about, and he was seated under a tree by the wayside, beating the discordant wooden drum used in Buddhist temples, and mumbling over endless prayers; and the other beggar was a very venerable and decrepid old woman. This was all the really downright poverty we heard of or saw in Yedo; and we can hardly believe that the paupers were put out of sight during the stay of the English.

If squalor and poverty were not to be found in Yedo, neither was there ostentatious magnificence or extravagance amongst the higher and wealthier classes. In the audiencechamber of the Prince of Bitsu, or in the official procession of an imperial commissioner going to an interview with Lord Elgin, there was no gaudy display of bright-coloured silks or satins, no glitter of gold and silver, yet there was abundance of ceremony, and invariably a large well-dressed retinue. The Japanese men may be

said to be the Quakers of the East, from the sombre colour and style of their dress; and the contrast between the tawdry magnificence of Chinese mandarins, and the simple yet orderly array of a high Japanese functionary, was very striking.

We have already spoken of the curiosity of the people, and of the struggle which daily took place to inspect the mysteries of the Ambassador's kitchen. There were many other instances of the wonder excited by the novelty, and (as they owned) by the superiority of the strangers. Yenoske, the interpreter, had often to blush at what he called the illmanners of his countrymen, but he assured us that in three or four years' time they would behave much better ! Poor souls! it would indeed have been unreasonable to have resented their inquisitiveness; and if we ever did so, they immediately recalled us to our senses by a good-humoured laugh. The visitors to the Embassy being quartered at a temple a short distance from the abode of that Argus-eyed individual, the Deputy LieutenantGovernor, were especially favoured with the attentions of those ladies and gentlemen of Yedo who wished to judge for themselves of English manners and customs. No doubt the priests, who, with their families (for priests in Japan are allowed to marry), were living in the enclosure of the same temple, turned to profitable account the spectacle we afforded to their friends and neighbours. There was no objection to gratify all reasonable curiosity, and arrangements were made that our only apartment should be thrown open for an audience directly after the morning ablutions were completed. This ex

press stipulation that a Briton taking his bath was to form no part of the morning's entertainment, was made in consequence of one of our party having unconsciously, for several mornings, been shown to various parties of Japanese ladies, in such light costume as might enable them to assure themselves of the fact that his skin was quite as fair as his face and hands promised. All the wonders of the dressing-table, from stropping a razor to putting eau-de-cologne upon a pocket-handkerchief, were freely exhibited. A jolly old priest laughed immoderately at our applying such a spirit to so ignoble a purpose, and tried to enlighten the foreigners as to its proper use, by tossing off any quantity that might be poured into the palm of his hand. The ladies were especially delighted with scented soaps and hair-brushes, and the gentlemen looked upon boots and gilt buttons as marvels which it was highly desirable the Japanese nation should know how to manufacture as soon as possible.

Our sleeping apartment was one of two which formed the wing of a small temple, the main body of which rightfully belonged to some half-dozen Japanese deities, who had retired from business, behind screens, during our stay. In front, and behind this wing of the building, there were gardens, each about a hundred feet square, and here the priests had spent long lives of industry in cramping the growth of unhappy firs, and divers other trees and plants. Directly we became the inmates of the rooms referred to, a little shed was constructed in the corner of the backgarden, and here a priest was permanently posted to watch our doings, while at night a policeman with a bamboo rattle joined him, and disturbed our rest with hourly tunes upon his instrument. We had, like the eels, just become accustomed to this infliction, when, one night, the bleating of a goat awoke us so often, that we sprang out of bed, wishing the policeman's rattle down its throat, and vowing vengeance on the beast. Stepping out into the balcony which ran round the apartment, we saw a white goat trotting over the grass and flower-beds, bleating incessantly,

whilst the priest and policeman were addressing it in Japanese, and the former occasionally threw up his arms, and made reverent obeisances to the brute. We had ready a pair of stout boots to pelt the goat with, but they fell harmless from our hands, for we at once jumped to the conclusion that the goat was an incarnation of Buddha, and that to touch it would be sacrilege. Mentally anathematising all such noisy objects of idolatrous worship, we besought the priest and policeman to persuade their four-legged deity to remove its sacred presence to another part of the premises. They understood us, and with awe-struck faces, which the bright starlight enabled us to see, proceeded to carry out our wishes. They approached most cautiously, making all sorts of coaxing and wheedling noises-but directly the goat showed the slightest inclination to resist, or drooped its head as if to butt, away scuttled priest and policeman, and hid themselves until we cheered them on again to the fray. At last the animal was expelled, and the priest held up his hands, shook his head, and sighed as he returned to his hut, as if what he had done was "no canny ;" and all this so confirmed us in our supposition, that when the brute again returned at dawn and bleated, we only pulled the bedclothes over our head, and hoped for the speedy religious enlightenment of the idolatrous worshippers of Nanny-goats. All that we saw during the day still confirmed us in our original idea, for there was the goat browsing upon dwarfed plants which were worth their weight in gold, and the priests did not attempt to stop it, but offered it bot boiled rice in a plate, a devout offering which the beast indignantly rejected. A second night of the same bleatings was, however, too much for the patience of a naval officer; and, taking the greatest care not to touch or hurt the goat (a forbearance which cost an hour's hard work, where five minutes would otherwise have sufficed), we expelled it from our gardens, and sent it forth into the general court of the temple. Had a certain old gentleman in black made his appearance in that courtyard, the astonishment and horror of the horse