theories in trade economy, let every one first ask: Whether the arithmetician's premiss is true? He counts heads, and says There are too many. Such a proposition as that is evidently a relative one. To be conclusively relevant, it must be true irrespective of circumstances. Illustration: A father looks round upon a dozen indolent children and cries There are too many.' He has 3,000l. a year, and spends 5,000l. If he must spend at the rate of 5,000l. per annum for twelve children, he clearly has too many; but on the other hand the condition is obviously not imperative.

Another father, more economic in his management, with only 1,500l. a year, of which he saves 300l., might look complacently on his thirteen children whom he had educated and brought up in homely fashion to work and win their way, and might even regret that he had

no more.

Surely one need not in words extend that illustration to the body politic?

Before you are justified in resorting to the anti-human policy, you must prove that the real difficulty does not lie in the non-administration or mal-administration of your resources, but in over production of children. It is monstrous enough to propound as an economic principle the solution of a difficulty by a process demoralising to societystill worse to propose such a reform until every other possible solution is exhausted. Now in this case there is another solution.

For consider. You, Paterfamilias, may not only be unthriftily handling your income-so, for instance, as to starve half your family while you are overfeeding the other half: you may have failed to ascertain and utilise all your resources. Was it absolutely necessary in the present condition of our Imperial assets, that the love of my poor young grinder-pest and

his angel-widow should vegetate and die in such sickly darkness as it did? Were the State father and mother to blame for their indifference to means which, well used, would have almost made the incident impossible? If the rough coast-line with its fierce waterward shut us in from external intercourse-if England were only England-if for our growing numbers there must needs be found sustentation from her bosom alone, the arithmetician's' case would wear a terribly rigid front. But it is not so. Let us apply again to our illustration. Suppose Paterfamilias with his dozen expenses suffered half his estate to lie in uncultivated wilderness, you would laugh at him when he cried out upon the hardship of his exorbitant progeny.

Why, you old fool, six of your children are big enough and strong enough to work in that wild land, and you say you haven't enough to keep them! Send them there; give it to them; help them to begin to cultivate it. Hush your silly out. cry against Mrs. John for her fe cundity, and use all your resources before you complain of numbers. Why, I believe you could do with half a dozen more, with all that land in your fist!'

Whereto let us suppose Paterfamilias to reply: 'Mere sentiment, my dear sir, and worse economy: don't you see it would only increase my expenses? It would cost me so much additional per annum to begin, for cultivation of the land, and the establishment of my children. No, no; we'll live together, thank you, where one joint of beef does for all.' How easily you could answer that the first expense would more than repay itself even into the paternal coffers, let alone the fresh provision for the children! But you would be inclined to leave that egregiously hopeless old dotard to the ruin he deserved. The same

demands-in

remonstrance name and for the sake of England's greatness—an answer from English statesmanship. On that answer depends Imperial ruin or Imperial glory.

I think the reader will have begun to see that the true arith metic is on the side of those who not only count heads, but count resources. This we urge in antagonism to a false premiss and a vile conclusion. It has now to be determined, here and soon, whether our Ministers shall pursue the policy propounded by inhuman theorists or that dictated by simple and humane self-interest. One or other

of these two solutions must be accepted the third and only other remedy is Revolution. The numbers may be reduced by the sword; but that sword will be wielded, not by governors and philosophers, not by peers and parliament, but by the crushed and tortured masses of the people, waking up to dreadful despair of any other remedy, and putting forth their omnipotent strength in a blind, relentless rage. Terrible to the feasting Philistines will be the vengeance of burly Samson whose sorrows have been their sport.

Thank God, we are not yet too many. We have untold and untouched wealth hoarded for a limitless offspring. The true problem is not how to stop the increase of a noble race, but how to distribute its active forces over our vast estate. Let English governors throw themselves into the invigorating energies of colonisation. Stir up the whole empire. Unite its members in firmer union, upon more just and intercommunicative and flexible constitutions; open its boundless capacities to the enterprise of a happily increasing people; get the workman back what you can of the birthright you have mismanaged and are seeking to fritter away: thus, and thus only, will all

The alternative I can only view with horror. To inoculate English society with French vices; to destroy our unique home-life and home-ideas; to bewray the sentiments which have established the purities of our society and glorified us in the eyes of nations; nay, to depreciate at once our manners and our race, is the remedy, God help us! offered by the thinkers, followed by the strange women and chattering disciples of the social philosophy. The two systems may be seen and compared in America. Down East, women, by practices there notorious, thwart the natural effects of marriage; and you may ascertain for yourself, or read it admitted by medical observers among them, that they are degenerate and degenerating from the grand old stock. In the wide West or in Canada, where children are blessings,' and no foul principles or practices discourage the beneficent increase, you may see huge joyous families and a sturdy generation fit to be the sons and daughters of Freedom.

To me it is an ever saddening experience to live at the heart of this unrivalled Empire and to watch it pulsating with lessening vitality and force; to see its life-stream turning inward on itself and tending to congestion, not circulating with healthy flow to and from the utmost extremities. I know not what to think of an age so degene rate as to have lost the impulse of growth-as to be unmoved by the spur of rivalry-as to be meek amid the scorn of nations. Samson shorn of his locks in the lap of faithless luxury were no inapt figure of this majestic State when clipped of its colonial strength by the feminine fingers that might at least have warned it. There is still hope-there is yet time. A hedging

Ministry, a selfish House, trembling peers, and mercenary tradesmen, may be willing to sell for present peace and comfort the future glory of a long-ennobled race; but there is some generous chivalry at the heart of the people, a healthy common-sense, an upspringing life and ambition, a dim but gradually clearing appreciation of good to be won, of rights to be maintained-a cleaving sympathy of English heart to English heart all the world over; that once directed into channels of noble impulse will

sweep away our droning obstructives into the depths of eternal obscurity.

I began at the pauper root of England's evil-I would end at the hopeful blossoming of England's good. Here is the question for us all. Shall that root grow up to bitterness, bearing its apples of Sodom, its wild grapes of vice and misery and death? Or shall it, tended by pious hands, flourish a comely tree, with branches great and stately, far-spreading, and yielding perennial fruit?

biretta; at what precise angle they may bend their knees without being convicted of kneeling, and how high they may raise the consecrated elements without being guilty of a technical elevation. When one has plodded through some fragment of the voluminous antiquarian information expended upon mere questions of millinery, one is apt to ask with some indignation whether the persons who carry on such disputes on either side are really grown-up and educated men. What does it matter one way or the other? If a man can't confute atheism, or confront the selfishness, luxury, and licentiousness of the world, in a white surplice, does he seriously think that he will meet such adversaries by all the pretty dresses and gorgeous ceremonies that ever were invented? When somebody was asked in what costume he would have liked to fight the battle of Waterloo, the answer was, 'In my shirtsleeves.' These valiant champions of the Church Militant seem to think seriously that their warfare cannot be effectually carried on unless they are allowed to put on the most becoming fancy dresses that they can collect from old curiosity shops. Of course, the answer is that greater principles are at stake behind the immediate points at issue, and to that we will come directly. But meanwhile it is not the less a lamentable spectacle when the clergy presents itself in the attitude of an internecine struggle over details of tailoring. The world at large would appreciate their motives better if the conflict did not rage around so obscure and insignificant a point. A creed which is to stir mankind should be capable of expressing itself from one end of a table as well as from another, and should care supremely little for attacks directed against mere external appendages. Its martyrs should suffer in the name

of some great principle. Strip a Ritualist of his ornaments and he cries out as loud as if you were flaying his natural skin. With the best will to do him justice, we cannot help fancying that it is because he is terribly confused as to the distinction between the substance and its outside trappings. And still more unworthy of men who, whatever their capacities, have at least the merit of sincerity, are the devices by which they struggle for their beloved costume. 'You forbid us,' they say, 'to mix water with wine in the church; we will mix it in the vestry. You won't let us carry our caps on our heads; we will keep them in our hands. We may not kneel, but we will give a decided bend to our knees without touching the ground. In short, we will try to evade you by every logical quibble that could be devised by a pettifogging ecclesiastical attorney.' To say, The Courts of Law have no right to meddle with me, and I will not give way to them one inch,' would be intelligible and honourable. To say, 'Though their right is doubtful, I will submit for the sake of peace on any non-essential matters,' would be equally intelligible. But to profess to submit, and then to try by every variety of strained interpretation to make the supposed submission nugatory, is a course to which no gentleman would condescend in any other sphere of life. Somehow, in ecclesiastical questions all stratagems become sanctified; yet it is not pleasant to see this sort of sharp practice carried on upon such infinitesimal matters by our modern martyrs to the truth, and to remember that whilst these gentlemen are wrangling over chasubles, the outside world is seriously discussing whether Christianity has really anything to say for itself.

A shock in some degree similar is given to us by Mr. Voysey's case.