the certain road to success. A more complete and triumphant refutation of the calumnies of which he has so long been the subject could not have been found than that which this agitation has furnished The imperious dictator of Tory imaginations has proved of all statesmen the most amenable to reason, the most solicitous to act with due consideration to all parties and all sections of the community, the most willing to enter into friendly consultation and to look fairly at all sides of a great question. The result is that for a time the voice of calumny is almost silenced, and the name of the great Liberal statesman will be honourably associated with the most memorable measure of constitutional reform which any country ever adopted in so peaceable a manner.

The objections which some extreme Radicals raised to the negotiations between the rival leaders cannot, in our judgment, be maintained. It is no doubt unpleasant for private members of the Liberal party to feel that this unwonted and resistless combination reduces them to impotence, and almost to insignificance; and we are prepared to admit that the frequent repetition of such agreements would be undesirable. But the present was one of those extremely rare cases in which an arrangement was not only possible without any dishonourable compromise, but under the circumstances almost imperative. For there was no difference of principle, and yet the difficulties in working out the details of any scheme were so formidable, and the relations of the two parties so embarrassing, that it is not too much to say that, apart from such a mutual understanding, it would have been impossible to pass a Redistribution Bill even though it had been so pared down as to correspond to 'The Pall Mall Gazette's' description of it as a twopenny-halfpenny measure. The present bill is far in advance of the draft scheme which was published by 'The Standard,' but even that lesser measure would not have passed the House of Commons if it had been met by even the regular tactics of an Opposition. The criticisms we hear on the present measure are amply sufficient to justify Mr. Gladstone's original determination not to include the extension of the Franchise and the Redistribution of Seats in one bill, and to justify the entering into honourable negotiations with opponents, so as to break down the power of personal ambitions and local prejudices. A Redistribution Bill must of necessity make a host of enemies, and the only possible way of overcoming them is to remove it as much as possible out of the region of party. But we go even further than this. Redistribution cannot be arranged on party lines; and as soon

The Redistribution Bill.

163

as there was an agreement on the general principle, it was expedient on the grounds of justice and fair-play that the details should be settled without any regard to party interests. This is the only true safeguard against 'gerrymandering.' and gerrymandering is to be deprecated and eschewed by all honest politicians.

As regards the bill, there are two merits, at all events, which may be claimed for it. So little is it of a party measure that the cleverest manager or wire-puller in the country would find it hard to say which party is likely to reap any advantage from it, while any change which it may effect will be due to the provision it makes for the full expression of public opinion, and not to clever manipulation of forces. The South has lost, and the North has gained largely. The result of the change may be doubtful, but the change is a right one, necessitated by the movement of population, and the changes, in the distribution of trade, wealth, and of social influence, all leading up to a transfer of political power. It is in fact but a legal recognition of a revolution which has already been accomplished; and the same may be said of other provisions in the bill. Its second merit is that. it is no paltry and temporizing compromise. The hand of Lord Salisbury is doubtless to be seen in it as well as that of Mr. Gladstone; but the peculiarity of the situation has been that the Tories have been working on Radical lines, and consequently that the effect of their co-operation has been to enable the Ministry to go further in the direction they themselves desired, bnt in which, under the ordinary conditions of political warfare, they would not have dared to advance. is very seldom that a measure which is the product of united councils gains strength from such an abnormal parentage, but it is so in the present instance.

It

Of course there are defects in the measure. 'The Pall Mall Gazette,' says Lord Salisbury has so far improved the original scheme of the Ministry that a twopenny-halfpenny Bill has become a threepenny farthing. The criticism is a bad example of that smartness and audacity which some journalists pass off as wit, and it is as unfair as it is impertinent. The bill is not perfect, but it is a very sweeping one. It does not remove all anomalies, but it is extraordinary that its authors should have ventured to touch so many; and we repeat they could not have ventured so much but for the happy combination of rival leaders. The division of the large towns into wards returning one member each is the point in the measure against which the strongest opposition is directed,

although there are few even of those who most strongly condemn the provision who would not accept it as it is rather than risk the success of the bill. The strength of the case in its favour rests mainly on the difficulty of finding a better plan to substitute for it. 'Scrutin de liste,' that is, the election of nine members for Liverpool, or seven members for Birmingham by an undivided constituency, every one of whom would thus be entitled to votes for the entire list, is simply out of the question. On the other hand, the experience of the minority member and of the cumulative vote renders the introduction of either impossible. The advocates of proportional representation would introduce Mr. Hare's plan, but it is a scheme which, however dear to the hearts of idealists, will never commend itself to the English people, who are far too direct and straightforward in their political conflicts to allow their elections to be turned into an arithmetical puzzle. We are not ourselves enamoured of the one-member constituency, and Mr. Gladstone's clever retort upon the objections to them does not dispose of them. Our decided preference is for twomember constituencies, and we cannot recognize the force of the arguments against them. It is said that difficulty would arise where there is an odd number of members; but that surely cannot be insuperable. In some cases another district might be added, so raising the number of the constituency as to secure another member. Take the case of Birmingham. Aston is to have a member of its own. Add it to Birmingham, and there are four boroughs with two members each. So Liverpool might receive some outlying parts not at present included in it, and it would have five constituencies of the same kind. Where such an arrangement is not possible, it would be necessary to have one borough with a single member, but this would be greatly to minimize the possible evil of splitting great towns into mere wards, which may possibly return ward members. Of course the same law must be carried out in the counties, and for ourselves we do not feel the force of the objection to this, as it presents itself to Sir Charles Dilke. The question is not one of principle, and it may be that all the speculations as to the probable result may be falsified by the event. Be that as it may, we heartily congratulate the Government on the success it has achieved thus far. It closes the year even stronger than it began it, and though there may be difficulties before it, especially with respect to Egyptian policy, it will be the stronger and more able to deal with them, because of the increased prestige and power which it has gained from the triumph of its domestic policy.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TRAVELS.

A History of the Four Georges. By JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M.P. Four Vols. Vol. I. Chatto and Windus.

SOME time has now elapsed since we first learned what to expect of Mr. McCarthy in his quality of historian. We recognize in him a writer who spares no pains to become master of his subject, whose views are comprehensive and his grasp firm, and who is therefore able to make his reader see things as clearly as he does himself, for he has the great art of avoiding a too great redundancy of collateral allusion and of bringing forward just enough of such matter as to enhance the vivid colouring of his principal personages and incidents. This makes one of his monographs, thrown off in his crisp, sparkling style, a delightful study, and we do not fear to lend ourselves to its charm as personal prejudice is not suffered to intervene. Indeed, one of the most striking things in the work before us is the admirable relf-restraint which enables the author to hold the balance so evenly when estimating the external influences and hidden motives that served to mould the characters of which he gives us such incisive portraits. It may seem a paradox to say that Mr. McCarthy in writing fiction, served an apprenticeship for the higher walk of literature upon which he has lately entered, but it is undoubtedly true that the power he acquired of investing with life the creations of his fancy enables him to revivify in a singularly happy manner many historical personages who have perhaps been for some of us little more than shadows. The history of the four Georges opens with the closing scenes of the life of Queen Anne, and tells us of the alarm occasioned by the slightest signs of illness in the sovereign whom it was the fashion to consider immortal, and on whose health depended to all appearance the continuance of peace in England. Anne dreaded so much the presence of a successor that she could not bring herself to permit the return of her own brother, although it is more than probable that she meditated assisting him to regain his father's crown. Her timid and anxious temperament prevented her from pronouncing in favour of an aspirant to the succession, nevertheless, as the writer says, her fading eyes turned not to the world she was about to enter, but to that she was going to leave, and was thinking much more of the future of her throne than of that of her soul. When a fit of apoplexy carried her off on August 1. 1714, nothing had been arranged, and the Dukes of Argyll and Somerset by a successful action, justly termed by Mr. McCarthy a coup d'état, contrived to secure the proclamation of 'the high and mighty Prince George, Elector of Brunswick and Lüneburg,' as rightful king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland; and the ungenial monarch, who never cared or affected to care for the country to which he had succeeded, quitted his beloved Herrenhausen and in due

course landed at Greenwich. The author gives good reasons for this quiet acceptance of a foreigner who had neither sympathy with his new subjects nor even the slightest acquaintance with their language, and who had, to put the case mildly, no personal recommendations to boast of. There had been so many dynastic changes within a comparatively short period that a strong feeling of loyalty to any House was, for the majority of Englishmen, a matter of impossibility, and though it was thought that half or nearly half of the population were in reality in favour of the Stuarts, their attachment to them was not sufficient to prevent their being well satisfied to allow any one to wear the crown who would maintain tranquillity in the country and not make himself intolerable.

Mr. McCarthy is probably right in his view that the old feeling of blind unconditional homage to the sovereign was dying of inanition and other and stronger forces in political thought coming up. As he puts it: The king was in future to be a business king, and not a king of sentiment and romance.' . . . 'The mass of the English people who accepted him (George) and adhered to him did so because they understood that he represented a certain quiet homely principle in politics, which would secure tranquillity and stability to the country. They did not ask of him that he should be noble, or gifted, or dignified, or even virtuous. They asked him two things in especial: first, that he would maintain a steady system of government; and next, that he would in general let the country alone.' And these moderate demands on the part of the people were fully responded to, for the reign of George I., as a whole, decidedly conduced to their prosperity. He managed England's affairs for her, says Mr. McCarthy, like an honest, straightforward, narrowminded steward; and as he was wisely content on various occasions to leave the business of the State in the hands of those who knew better than he how to manage it, he avoided blunders and placed his dynasty on a firm foundation. Yet was he not wanting in courage; on the contrary, he appeared to the best advantage in times of danger, and at such moments could decide promptly and wisely on his course of action, although his directions to his minister at the time of Peter the Great's designs against the House of Hanover' to crush the Czar immediately, to secure his ships, and even to seize his person,' cannot but strike us as supremely ridiculous viewed in the light of succeeding events.

The reigns of the first and second Georges are of special interest to the student of English history, for in them, in the person of Pulteney, as Mr. McCarthy takes care to point out, the modern system of parliamentary opposition took its rise, and the transfer of power to the representative chamber began. The latter change had already made itself felt in a slight degree when Walpole took his seat in the Lower House, and his great sagacity led him to appreciate and make use of the position. Of all the author's clever bits of portraiture there is perhaps none more happy than that of the minister whose run of power was so exceptionally long and who, possessing no special brilliancy or talent, secured and maintained his influence by sheer perseverance and common sense, united to