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She has been

Franchise in counties for the last thirty years. ready to enter into consideration of the relations between State and Church for certainly the last ten years. On the Licensing Question, the Land Question, the Game Question, she has been equally ready to come to a clear decision, and desirous to have a definite reform. But all these questions have been stifled at the instance of party managers. Is it to be supposed that the President of a Local Government Board will take them up? Is it likely that Lord Rosebery or Lord Dalhousie or any rising young commoner, who may be promoted to the new office, will take Mr. Gladstone by the throat, and say in the name of Scotland, I demand that these questions shall be taken up? On the contrary, we know perfectly well that any such official will use his whole influence with Members of Parliament to get them to abstain from pressing any of these questions.' The ripeness of Scotland for the solution of the questions Mr. Kinnear mentions is a matter of opinion. It may be doubted, too, if his suggestion for the formation of a specially Scottish Party to demand reforms-the Church and State problem is an exceptional one, requiring exceptional treatment-which are as much needed by England as by Scotland, could be given effect to, and in any case it savours of separatism in feeling if in nothing more serious. But Mr. Kinnear is probably quite correct in the view he takes as to the tendency of the appointment of such an official as the President of a Local Government Board to retard genuine reforms. It would result in the supersession of truly national and practical by cliquish and sentimental politics.

The best Scottish politics of the future will proceed on substantially the same lines as the best Scottish politics of the past. British statesmen of eminence, whose mission it has been to head great movements, such as the Free Trade agitation and the Midlothian Campaign, have frequently complimented Scotsmen on their openness to new ideas, and the heartiness and unanimity of the support given to public men who try to give effect to them in legislation. There is not self-conceit, but only self-respect, of race in accepting such compli

Scotland? One thing however seems certain, and is unquestionably predicted by the majority of those who read the signs of the times, that the first truly great question that will be taken up by the enfranchised Democracy of England and Scotland, when it has discovered its own strength-one, too, that is likely to be taken up even before that Democracy attains Mr. Chamberlain's ideal of Manhood Suffrage-will be the Land Question, the mere fringe of which is touched by such measures as the Agricultural Holdings Acts. Scotland, owing to its peculiar position in regard to this question, owing both to the small number of its landed proprietors, and to the intelligence of its landless citizens, may well become the battle-ground of peaceful but serious and fruitful controversy between agrarian reformers of all shades of opinion-Mr. Henry George and Mr. A. R. Wallace with their Land Nationalisation schemes, the Free Traders in Land, the Peasant Proprietary Theorists, and the believers in Mr. Mallock and 'the natural craving for inequality.'

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Politics has been defined as at once the science and the art of the national well-being; and the best Scottish patriotism is synonymous with the best Scottish politics. In this connection, a quotation may here be appropriately made from a letter recently sent by Mr. J. Boyd Kinnear, a well-known disputant on Scottish and general politics, to an Edinburgh newspaper: What Scotsmen have to complain of is that on great vital questions of policy she has obtained no hearing, because it was not for the interests of party politicians that any such questions. should be heard. Scotland has been ripe for extension of the

streets of London, than the affairs of Scotland.' A writer on The Closing of the Scottish Highlands,' in such an influential English journal as the Spectator, says, (Aug. 25), 'If the holders of privilege do not make timely concessions, the results will be far from agreeable. At present, they may buy the Sybilline leaves at a low price. Liberty to stroll through the forests, to climb the mountains, freedom to roam over barren moors, without being checked and bullied by the underlings of the shooting tenant, will give contentment. But let the encroachment go on for a little more, and the right of exclusive solitude on the part of the few will be ruthlessly taken away.' See also what emeritus-Professor Blackie has been saying and writing on similar subjects at intervals for the

She has been

Franchise in counties for the last thirty years. ready to enter into consideration of the relations between State and Church for certainly the last ten years. On the Licensing Question, the Land Question, the Game Question, she has been equally ready to come to a clear decision, and desirous to have a definite reform. But all these questions · have been stifled at the instance of party managers. Is it to be supposed that the President of a Local Government Board will take them up? Is it likely that Lord Rosebery or Lord Dalhousie or any rising young commoner, who may be promoted to the new office, will take Mr. Gladstone by the throat, and say in the name of Scotland, I demand that these questions shall be taken up? On the contrary, we know perfectly well that any such official will use his whole influence with Members of Parliament to get them to abstain from pressing any of these questions.' The ripeness of Scotland for the solution of the questions Mr. Kinnear mentions is a matter of opinion. It may be doubted, too, if his suggestion for the formation of a specially Scottish Party to demand reforms-the Church and State problem is an exceptional one, requiring exceptional treatment—which are as much needed by England as by Scotland, could be given effect to, and in any case it savours of separatism in feeling if in nothing more serious. But Mr. Kinnear is probably quite correct in the view he takes as to the tendency of the appointment of such an official as the President of a Local Government Board to retard genuine reforms. It would result in the supersession of truly national and practical by cliquish and sentimental politics.

The best Scottish politics of the future will proceed on substantially the same lines as the best Scottish politics of the past. British statesmen of eminence, whose mission it has been to head great movements, such as the Free Trade agitation and the Midlothian Campaign, have frequently complimented Scotsmen on their openness to new ideas, and the heartiness and unanimity of the support given to public men who try to give effect to them in legislation. There is not self-conceit, but only self-respect, of race in accepting such compli

been slow to appreciate aid given them by their Scottish colleagues, for that has been rendered no less quietly than efficiently—and why not? Surely the golden Goethean rule—

'Give other's work just share of praise;

Not of thine own the merits raise,'

holds true of nations no less than of individuals that are united in partnership. Surely Scotsmen are better engaged in doing justice to the love of order, the independence, the passion for justice that undoubtedly characterise Englishmen in their capacity as citizens, than in posing before the glass of national vanity. Scotland is frequently styled the knuckle-end of England. But it is still open to her to be in the future as in the past, the advance-guard of British progress, and if politics must be looked at from the party point of view, the Macedonian Phalanx of British Liberalism. In acting such a part she will be more worthily employed, while at the same time she will more effectually promote her special well-being than in playing at Home Rule or dallying with separatism.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

Revelation and Modern Theology Contrasted; or, The Simplicity of the Apostolic Gospel Demonstrated. By the Rev. C. A.. Row, M.A. London: F. Norgate, 1883.

Its

The object of this volume is to develope the position which was assumed by its author as the foundation of his excellent Bampton Lectures, the position, viz. that Christianity, as distinct from the theological systems of the different communities into which Christendom is divided, consists of a few simple principles which constitute its essence as a revelation; and to inquire what is really essential to it, and what are merely human additions. A clearer, more candid, or more timely volume we have seldom read. great merit is that it brings the reader face to face with the principles of Christianity as actually taught by our Lord and His Apostles, and enables him to escape from the meshes of whatever theological system he may be involved in, and to attain to that liberty of thought and action which the first teachers of Christianity inaugurated and proclaimed. Mr. Row has said little or nothing that is new. His book, in fact, is thoroughly conservative. His conservatism, however, is of the best and most enlightened kind. What he pleads for is a reversion to the actual facts of our Lord's teaching and life. This he has done in the most admirable spirit, and has thus earned the thanks of all who have the interests of Christianity at heart. There is nothing more certain, we take it, than that if Christianity is to make any way in the present, the niceties of theological speculations must be set aside, and the simple but pregnant principles inculcated in the New Testament set forth again with Apostolical plainness and sincerity. Nor is this all. As Mr. Row remarks, if Christianity is to retain its hold on thoughtful men, theologians must cease to propound as Christian verities, to be accepted under penalty of exclusion from the fold of Jesus Christ, a mass of dogmas, which are nothing more than the deductions of human reason from the facts of revelation, or super-additions to these facts, introduced into the records of revelation by the aid of the imagination, and then announced as verities resting on the authority of God.' And hence, as he further remarks, 'in the interest both of the believer and of the unbeliever, it is necessary to exhibit Christianity, not as a system elaborated to meet the requirements of the logical intellect, but as a moral and spiritual power, mighty to energise on the heart, and to influence the life.' 'To effect this,' he continues, 'it must be set forth in the simplicity in which our Lord presented it to His fellow-citizens in

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