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the greatest Ministry of Queen Victoria, and towards the House of Commons which supported it. The decadence of Parliament, much talked of to-day, has been a commonplace of contemporary political criticism since 1832; and doubtless since much earlier days.

A modern critic must admit that a great record of legislative work has been achieved since 1870, though we are told that even then the golden age of Parliaments was past.

The impotency of Parliament has become a commonplace of political controversy,' writes Mr. Sidney Low. 'It seems at any rate an excessive assumption that the House of Commons does "actually and practically and in every way" govern the kingdom. The House is still powerful, it is still influential in all departments of government, it is still a bulwark of public liberty, and still the worthy and splendid elective assembly of a great people. . . . The show of power is with it, nor has it abated its pretensions or diminished by one jot the assertion of its nominal authority. But it is undergoing the evolution which comes in turn upon most political organisms. Much of its efficiency has passed to other agents. Its supremacy is qualified by the growth of rival jurisdictions. Its own servants have become for some purposes its masters. .. Of all its functions the testing and selecting of public men in debate, and their appointment to ministerial offices, is the only one as to which it can be said to have "conserved its old privileges without diminution."

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We should have been glad, did space allow, to follow Mr. Sidney Low in his examination of the causes which have contributed to the increased power and independence of the Executive Government, which is a marked feature of the present day as contrasted with the period treated by Sir Spencer Walpole. Although Lord Sherbrooke, amid an avalanche of sinister predictions, pointed to the difficulty which would probably appear of working the existing system and which might drive Parliament to 'appoint the Executive for a number of years certain whether the Executive were in harmony with the legislative or not,' none of the prophets foretold the significant loss of popular control through Parliament which has actually occurred. This is a phenomenon which is probably due far less to the lowering of the franchise than to causes, perhaps temporary in their nature, peculiar to the present political conditions of the British nation and Empire.

Mr. Sidney Low writes throughout on the assumption that the political conditions of recent years must continue to prevail, and that they will have a permanent effect in

modifying constitutional usage. Mr. Hobhouse, on the other hand, attributes them to a process of 'reaction' which has invaded one department after another of thought and 'action.' Unless progress and reaction, as Mr. Disraeli thought, are but words to mystify the millions,' it is permissible to affirm that the present generation is witnessing a reaction against many of the political and economic doctrines which brought prosperity to England in the past. As Mr. Hobhouse with some exaggeration expresses it,

'reaction at home is interwoven with reaction abroad, and in the new principles we see the whole tribe of Cobdenist ideas turned, as it were, inside out. There we saw that free trade, peace, retrenchment, selfgovernment, democratic progress, were mutually dependent principles. In their reversal we see the same truth. Aggrandisement, war, compulsory enlistment, lavish expenditure, protection, arbitrary government, class legislation, follow naturally one upon the other.'

A reversal of ideas so startlingly complete is not to be explained by the fact of changes in the electorate, still less by any mere theory of the swing of the political pendulum; it must mean that there is a side of the national life whose demands were not satisfied by the Cobdenite formula. We may perhaps find the explanation in the dual character of English political conditions, noted by Mr. Sidney Low.

'In England we have a set of conditions which are at present without parallel elsewhere and have never found their exact analogue in the past. There have been great empires and there have been great democracies. But we alone have essayed the experiment of combining the two, and vesting the control of territories scattered over the world and of a vast subject population in the Committee of a representative chamber elected by the popular vote.'

Dealing only with the constitutional aspect of this situation, Mr. Sidney Low does not, perhaps, indicate in these words its full significance. The British Isles form an industrial State depending for its prosperity and even its existence on a world-wide commerce and upon freedom from fiscal or military burdens which would handicap it in the industrial competition of the nations. But the industrial State is also an imperial State enjoying, of course, such commercial advantages as empire may procure, but subject also to indefinite liabilities for the defence of that empire. There is thus a double set of interests and objects always at play, and first the one and then the other is apt to receive too exclusive attention at the hands of the popular leaders of the moment. The country has for some years been under

the spell of those who look to expansion and consolidation of the Empire as the supreme object of statesmanship and shut their eyes to the strain which they run the risk of imposing upon its heart. Some statesmen even appear to hold that the country can be transformed into a military State able to contend on equal terms with one or more of its great rivals without impairing its strength and vitality as a popularly governed commercial community. Almost all the symptoms which we have noted as distinguishing the present era from that described by Sir Spencer Walpole can be referred to the prevalence of this school of thought. Liberal statesmen then took what to many is again beginning to seem a sounder view of the possibilities and limitations of British power. It is true that their paths lay in easier places and that their view of what was necessary for naval and military defence was not one which could be safely adopted to-day; but while they concentrated their energies on the improvement of material conditions at home, they were keenly, almost nervously, alive to the problem of reconciling their progress with the responsibilities entailed by the position of Great Britain as an imperial, and, above all, an Asiatic State. Their policy was lacking neither in breadth of view nor in definiteness of principle, and it may be plausibly maintained that even from the imperial point of view it had the crowning merit of success. For they succeeded in what must always be the supreme object of British statesmanship, in preventing the contending ideals of industrial democracy and empire from coming into serious conflict.

We began by expressing a doubt whether the changes which have undoubtedly occurred during the last two generations would be found to be of so profound a character as many observers maintain. Recent tendencies, indeed, may seem to point to the probability that this country has been brought to a real parting of the ways. Her people may shortly have to decide whether to turn their backs on the hope of a future which would raise and maintain the condition of her workers above that of Continental States and link her destiny with the boundless prosperity of the New World, or to submit to the almost hopeless conditions of debt, taxation, socialism, and protection, which are the lot of her great European rivals. But if they are brought to this point, if any such decision is forced upon them, the fault will lie with those whose imperial aspirations blind them to the vital domestic interests of the nation.

That the democratic institutions upon which those

293 interests depend are in any danger from the forces of 'reaction' we do not believe, however much forms may change. If our energies in foreign policy are confined to the defence of our own essential interests there is no real necessity to contemplate an undue developement of the military and autocratic element in the State. Our relations with the self-governing colonies and with the United States of America should strengthen the forces of freedom and popular government, the establishment of which is the glory of Great Britain, and upon whose ultimate success her place in history depends. Nor do the omens point to the probable success or long duration of the autocratic and military monarchies of the Continent of Europe, whose example has too often of late years been quoted against the popular system of this country. No very radical changes are required to bring our institutions into real harmony with the educated democratic spirit of the time. If the signs of the times are read aright by the electorate and by statesmen, there is, in short, no reason to despair of a solution of the problem of reconciling democratic progress with imperial rule. But want of foresight, want of moderation in aims, unreasoning insistence in dreams' of world-wide dominion may easily end in some repetition on a greater and more disastrous scale of the Danish imbroglio, with results fatal alike to empire and to pretensions of national greatness. The possibility of drifting into some such catastrophe is among the dangers of the present day. The best hope of avoiding it is a realisation of the essential conditions of British national life, which can best be attained by a careful study of modern English history. No better guide in such a study can be found than Sir Spencer Walpole, who has recounted in dignified language the imperishable story of liberal progress in England, and the triumphs of statesmen who carried their country through the most dangerous of her transitions, the transition from the condition of semi-feudal oligarchical government to that of a great modern State. We have little fear that when the democracy enters into full recognition of its power and its responsibilities it will forget the past in dealing with the problems of the future.

ART. II.-EARTHQUAKES AND THE NEW

SEISMOLOGY.

1. Earthquakes in the Light of the New Seismology. By CLARENCE EDWARD DUTTON, Major U.S.A. London: Murray, 1904.

2. Seismology. By JOHN MILNE, F.R.S. London: Kegan Paul, 1898.

3. Earthquakes and Other Earth Movements. (Fourth edition.) By JOHN MILNE, F.R.S. London: Kegan Paul, 1898. 4. A Study of Recent Earthquakes. By CHARLES DAVISON, Sc.D. London: Scott Publishing Company, 1905.

FEW

Ew beleaguered cities-certainly not Port Arthur when it fell into the hands of the Japanese-have presented a spectacle of devastation comparable with that witnessed in Yokohama at daybreak on February 23, 1880. The most severe bombardment spares more than it demolishes; a world-shaking_earthquake is indiscriminately destructive. The beautiful Japanese city, then, lay in ruins; its surviving inhabitants found themselves homeless, stricken, and impoverished. Yet in no quarter could any trace of discouragement be perceived. Excitement and activity reigned instead. The disaster had only served to intensify the common consciousness. Much had to be done, and that quickly; the circumstances were pressing; and it might well have been supposed that material exigencies would have absorbed immediate attention. But to this remarkable people it seemed quite as urgent to interrogate Nature regarding the calamity as to repair its effects. So, after a few hours devoted to clearing away the rubbish of shattered tenements, a public meeting was summoned amid the débris, and the Seismological Society of Japan, in sombre earnest, set about its task of investigation.'

Young Japan had not, a quarter of a century ago, as yet discarded European tutelage. The teaching staff of its newly founded universities was composed of foreigners, among whom were many Englishmen. Now imported intellect is apt to be vivified by strange surroundings; and the earth-tremors of the Far Eastern archipelago were a startling novelty to men reared on our inert British soil. Their scientific study was promptly set on foot; a Chair of

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* J. Milne, Ency. Brit.' vol. xxvii. Art. ' Earthquakes.'

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