But the Government has passed a quite remarkable quantity of very useful and desirable legislation, including much not acutely controversial, which had been left aside unnoticed in the stagnation of the previous régime. In South Africa it has achieved its one striking and inspiring success; and its policy in this long-suffering land will probably be remembered with gratitude in Imperial history long after all the domestic incidents are forgotten. It was a policy of an exceedingly daring character, reckoning for its triumph upon a combination of fortune and human endeavour which might have been thrown all awry by any slight break in the chain of circumstances. The result has exceeded the wildest dreams of its supporters. The Chinese are going, not, as was so scornfully prophesied, through the coercion of the deliberate wish of a self-governing colony, but through the definite action of that colony itself. The Dutch attained a most fortunate majority under the new constitution; a Dutch Ministry, with complete internal freedom, and a mandate' of reconciliation offered the only light in a future which at one time seemed to offer no reasonable hope that South Africa could remain an integral part of the British Empire. It is a policy which was only effected, step by step, amid a hurricane of calumny and opposition; fighting furiously, first for the retaining of the Chinese, and secondly for the jerrymandering of the constituencies to ensure a "British' or 'loyalist' Ministry installed at Pretoria. It stands to-day as a piece of statesmanlike effort which possesses just that use and appreciation of sentiment in human affairs, with a rational understanding of the advantage of a sudden courageous advance, which lifts it from the region of mere ingenious political adjustment into the region of political genius.

At home, however, the Government is by no means out of its troubles, which indeed have been postponed rather than destroyed. It has pushed legislation forward from session to session, partly as a means of obtaining momentary relief from disagreeable questions, partly from the mere blind chaos of competition in a programme from the beginning heavily overloaded. To-day it is to start its third session with at least eight first-class Bills in being, and as many more looming in the background. There would be no danger in this hectic energy but for the fact that overshadowing it all is another problem, to whose satisfactory solution the Liberal party is irretrievably committed. This is the problem of the House of Lords, which must of necessity exercise a disturbing influence upon all its schemes. Were this removed, or had this never arisen, this Parliament might have ploughed doggedly on through six allotted years of office, slowly harvesting that progressive legislation which has been so long delayed. But at present it is fixed in an alternative; in which (up till to-day) it has never given clear indication of its choice. If it is to fight the Lords, it cannot get through its legislative programme. If it is to get

through its legislative programme, it cannot fight the Lords. When the great Bills of its first year's effort were rejected or destroyed it made considerable agitation in the country; and announced that it would not adopt the policy of 'filling the cup' or 'take it lying down.' When some of the most important Bills of the second session were subjected to a similar fate, it broke into similar declamation. The country (or at least the fighting organisations) was prepared for a contest on the first pronouncement. They have responded (though less hopefully) this autumn to a second outburst of indignation. Will that indignation be at service after a third explosion? Or will they then-if nothing still appears but brave words-sink into a conviction that all this apparent anger is merely part of a game of 'bluff' and elaborate political fooling. The two rejected Scotch Bills and a modified Education Bill are to be sent back to the Lords this year. It seems inevitable that their return to the Upper House must force this struggle to an immediate issue. If the Lords prefer to pass these in some amended form, rather than to face an election fought upon a direct challenge of their past record and present capacities, the constitutional struggle might be averted. But in lack of such almost inconceivable abandonment of their present claims, there would seem to be no alternative to rejection but a speedy appeal of one House against the other to the electorate. If such appeal were not desired the only rational policy would have been to reserve all rejected Bills for the last Parliamentary session and to occupy the intervening time in the passage of less controversial legislation. Every sign to-day would seem to point to an ad hoc election on the Lords' veto some twelve or eighteen months from to-day.

What of the results of such an appeal? What of the party and policy which would ultimately survive when the constitutional struggle is closed? The extraordinary dimensions of the party which at present supports the Government is in itself a difficulty when (as at the present) the interests of each section are generally diverse and often contradictory. It includes a few rich men; and a considerable number who are extraordinarily susceptible to the influence of the wealthier classes, and perhaps too much inclined to find the voice of public opinion in the verdicts and criticisms of a very limited London Society. It consists of a minority only of the professional classes in England, though perhaps a greater proportion in Wales and Scotland. It still retains (outside London) the vast proportion of the middle classes and the small tradesmen, including the bulk of the Nonconformists. And it is from this class that is built up the bulk of its permanent fighting staff in the constituencies. At the last election it secured the almost solid support of the artisan vote; and although it will now be compelled to divide this with 'Labour,' it can still reckon on the unshakable allegiance of large masses of the industrial populations.

The votes of unskilled labour in the towns are always an uncertain element dependent largely on the condition of trade, and afford a fruitful field for the propagation of Tariff Reform, of advanced Liberal and social reform, of Socialism in its less rigorous and intellectual appeal. In the rural districts the Liberal party is still the Labour party, and can be sure of the allegiance of the agricultural labourer; except where the judicious blending of sternness and kindliness has restored the ancient feudal domination which has been so rudely overthrown. Will the Liberal party continue to hold within its embrace all these diverse elements? Can it retain, for example, its few men of wealth, without losing those adherents who demand direct taxation of that wealth in the interests of social reform ? Can it continue to bridge over that wide chasm of interest which exists to-day between the lower middle class and the working class, which leads the former always to associate itself in interest with the classes above, and alternately to fear and to despise the classes below; which is causing in that middle class a violent revolt to-day at the pampering of the working man and a vague fear of an advancing social revolution.

It will need statesmanship of great courage and wide perspicacity to steer the party safely between these various rocks and shoals of jarring interests. The Liberal party in England stands alone amongst the Liberal parties of Europe, as an organisation which can reckon both upon the allegiance of the bourgeoisie and upon a hearty support among the proletariat. In all other nations the fissure of interests outside politics has proved too strong for the resistance of the political machine. Parties in Germany, in Austria, and in Italy are rigorously cooped up within the limits of narrow class divisions. Liberalism only persists as a somewhat tarnished flag, celebrating a somewhat discredited cause. The signs are not absent, here and today, of the exercise of a similar external and economic pressure in this country. And the whole interest of the future concentrates itself upon the question whether by judicious neglect of the demands of the two extremes, the Middle Party can be swung forward with sufficiently solid agreement to continue to occupy a middle position of dignity, prominence, and power.

Unquestionably there is a divergence to-day between these classes concerning the subjects which excite interest and appear to their advocates of primary importance. The middle-class Liberals-the trading interests-demand Free Trade, concerning which much of the artisan population is at present not entirely certain. The middleclass Liberals demand as the first item of policy an Education Bill which shall altogether eliminate sectarian' religious teaching from publicly supported schools. They desire temperance legislation which shall considerably reduce facilities for drink; and the more extreme of them desire opportunities for total prohibition over large areas.

They still cherish some of the old ideals of political reform-' one man one vote' and the like. They desire retrenchment, especially in the Army and the Navy; not only because (in common with most taxpayers) they dislike tax-paying, but because they have a vague conviction that money spent in armaments aids in the fostering of a military and truculent spirit; which-like all good bourgeois-they profoundly dislike. The workman's ideas are different. Unless he happens to be a Nonconformist, a Catholic, or a member of a tiny militant workingclass Anglican section, he cares nothing at all about education. He cannot understand what all the pother is about, being cheerfully content to let his child go to any school and receive any religious teaching which seems desirable to its teacher. He has a distinct aversion (unless he is one of a small band of earnest teetotalers) to temperance legislation, and cannot understand why he should not be left alone to drink as much or as little as he pleases, so long as he does not make himself a nuisance to his neighbours. He cares nothing for retrenchment, not understanding the 'burden of armaments' in its effects upon productive expenditure, and being on the whole bellicose, with intervals of repentance. And where military expenditure is reduced, he cries aloud against action which throws his comrades out of work and compels even the Labour members who represent dockyard or arsenal constituencies to vote against such a policy. What he does desire is some direct betterment of his own condition, and (it is only fair to add) of the condition of the poor below him; provision for his old age; provision for unemployed labour; better houses at less rent; less work for more wages; the removal of sweating, the betterment of the Poor Law, improved chances for the children. These two ideas of two distinct classes may be combined by judicious blending; they are only in part contradictory, being in the main not so much struggling against each other as struggling against the time and limitation of Parliamentary legislation which renders each day a choice between various desirable programmes. The neglect of either of these programmes means the shedding of large bodies of support, either to the right party on the one hand, or to the left on the other; between whose two assertions, on the one hand of the defiant rights of property, on the other of the equally defiant rights of personality, the party of moderate progress is compelled to advance along its dim and perilous way.

But if the Liberal party, in face of this intrusion of reality, finds itself in a position demanding courage and insight, the plight of its historic opponents is beyond measure more desperate. In Parliament itself, where dialectic and debating power occupy the supreme position, Mr. Balfour, a master of subtlety, quickness, and dialectic, has been able to maintain some semblance of resistance. But in the country, where the appeal of the intellect scarcely counts in comparison with

the impulse of the emotions and the demand of the will, and only some compelling energy of conviction can influence the energies of man, the party has sunk into the very trough and tangle of decay. They can neither do without Mr. Balfour nor with him-without him in the House of Commons, with him in the constituencies. They can neither do without Protection nor with it. Apart from their own vigorous dissensions, they cannot unite upon any rational measure of opposition. Unable to distinguish between what men care for and what men care nothing for, they waste their energies upon irrelevant denunciation of things to which the electorate is profoundly indifferent. If Providence has endowed me with anything that can be called a striking gift,' Mr. Gladstone once affirmed, 'it is an insight into the facts of particular eras and their relations one to another, which generates in the mind a conviction that the materials exist for forming a public opinion and directing it to a particular end.' This 'insight' is the foundation of all political sagacity; it was possessed by Disraeli, by Lord Randolph Churchill, by Mr. Chamberlain; its influences seem for the moment to have deserted the Tory party. The attempt, for example, to inflame a considerable agitation in the country concerning the Anglo-French convention in the New Hebrides, as a kind of tu quoque to the Chinese labour agitation, was an attempt inspired by intellectual ingenuity imperfectly familiar with the movement of the collective mind. The charges may have been true of veiled or open slavery' in the New Hebrides; they may have been untrue of veiled or open 'slavery' in South Africa. But what the Opposition failed to discern was that, true or false, they were essentially irrelevant. Chinese labour in South Africa was in the main stream of political opinion; the New Hebrides were in a backwater; and no effort could compel the people to take interest in the one, or prevent the people from taking interest in the other. The feeling against the Chinese may not have been a rational cry; it was something of profounder importance to the politician, an emotional cry. If the Liberal party had accepted the Chinese and the Ordinances, opponents to them would have arisen out of the very stones. Some things are possible in a British democracy; some are impossible. Statesmanship will recognise the distinction, and recognise also the limitation that such distinction involves. There is an attempt, again, to-day to inspire disgust in the constituencies, and to secrete a cementing force in the party by indignation at cattle-driving in Ireland. But the British electorate cares nothing about cattle-driving in Ireland. No doubt as ruler of Ireland it ought to care. But no work is more futile than the endeavour to make men face one way when they are determined to face another. The official Opposition indictment has been compelled to pass to the very dregs of political argument. I have seen a leaflet in which the country is to be inspired to repudiate the Liberal Government because it is paying an exiguous