which affect the partnership which is called the United Kingdom we are to wait the predominant vote of England?'

Unfortunately, however, this passage in no sort of way represents the plain meaning of the words used in the House of Lords. Those words may have been a truism in the sense in which they were uttered, but at any rate they are not the truism by which Lord Rosebery now says he stands. Lord Rosebery in his Life of Pitt' has pointed out how much Lord Shelburne's influence was injured by the need of ' explanation' from which that statesman always suffered. The present Premier will be wise if here again he takes warning by one of his own reflections.

In all probability Lord Rosebery is what the world in general believes him to be at heart-a Unionist. He is, however, before all things an opportunist, and in obedience to that creed he will, doubtless, be quite prepared to throw the whole constitution into the melting-pot. The situation, then, as regards Home Rule remains unchanged. Lord Rosebery, as far as the Union is concerned, is in every way as dangerous a guide as Mr. Gladstone. Home Rule, however, must remain during the present session in a state of suspended animation. The only Irish measure will be a Bill for restoring the evicted tenants to their holdings. Whether this measure or the Bill for disestablishing the Church in Wales or again that for doing the like in Scotland will obtain precedence remains to be seen. All that can be said is that the struggle will be fierce, and that the factions which lose the day will be in no very friendly mood to the Government. The groups which make up the majority on which the Ministry rests act well enough together while each believes that its interests are being specially considered. When, however, the inevitable decision comes, and one group has to be given a preference over the others, the greatest possible difficulty will be experienced in keeping the party together. Mr. Redmond has already declared open hostility on behalf of the Parnellites. This danger has, however, been got rid of for the time by the expedient of placing the Bills for altering the registration laws and for the abolition of plural voting in the forefront of the battle. It may be that before they are carried a dissolution will have taken place, and that the faction fight between the Irish and the Welsh will thus be postponed.

Let us examine the Registration Bills a little more closely, and consider what reception they should meet with from the Unionists. These Bills, which are in effect the

same as those of last year, constitute a complete revolution in the suffrage. They not only seek to add many hundreds of new voters to each constituency, by allowing the migratory portion of the population to qualify for registration by a short period of residence, but at the same time take away the extra votes which have hitherto been bestowed -somewhat capriciously no doubt-on those who happen to hold property in several constituencies. To do this may be wise and just, or it may not. We do not now desire to argue that question, or even to canvass the general desirability of tinkering the electoral laws every ten years. One fact, however, is incontestable. Right or wrong, the proposed Bills will produce a momentous change in the suffrage. But it is almost a principle of the Constitution that any material alteration in the suffrage ought to be accompanied by a redistribution of the constituent areas. If a structural alteration is to take place it must be done thoroughly and well, and no mere botching must be allowed. Especially important is it to insist on this principle at the present moment. There exists in the distribution of political power in these islands an anomaly of the most glaring and injurious kind, and to touch our electoral system and leave this unremedied would be to sanction the grossest piece of political jobbery.

Ireland at present has no less than twenty more members than she is entitled to by population, and these members are so distributed that the southern portions of the island have far too large a share of the representation. It is not the loyalist, but the nationalist portion of Ireland which is over-represented. To show how monstrously unfair is the extra endowment of power reserved for the least wealthy, the least cultivated, and the most retrograde part of the three kingdoms, one may take the Irish borough of Galway, and compare it with one of the great London constituencies. Galway has 1,986 electors, Wandsworth has 15,612. The cases of Newry and Kilkenny are as bad. Compare Newry with 1,927 electors and Kilkenny with 1,825 to the Wimbledon division of Surrey with 16,454 and Croydon with 15,439. No doubt these are extreme cases, but their existence is none the less a scandal. Again, take this plain fact. Ireland and London are now about equal in population, and yet Ireland has forty-one more members than the Metropolis. Ireland sends one hundred and three members to Westminster, and London sixty-two. To palter with the minutiae of the registration law and yet to refuse a remedy for

a defect so glaring seems a piece of impudence so sublime as to be almost incredible. Yet we are assured that this is what is contemplated by the Home Rule party. Though they have themselves admitted the over-representation of Ireland, and proposed in their Home Rule Bill to reduce it, they now declare that the subject is one that can and must wait. Fortunately the House of Lords may be relied on to treat this partisan manœuvre in the way it deserves. The Duke of Devonshire has publicly announced that the question is one in regard to which the peers will see justice done. They are well supported by precedent. In 1884 a Bill altering the suffrage, but unaccompanied by any scheme of redistribution, was submitted to their consideration. They refused, however, to proceed with the Suffrage Bill till a fairly constituted Redistribution Bill was also introduced. If this procedure is followed on the present occasion-and that it will be followed we do not doubt the House of Lords will be able to protect the basis of political power from an unfair and unscrupulous attack. The lowering of the suffrage plus the maintenance of so grievous a wrong as that under which Ireland casts, as it were, a prerogative vote in the counsels of the three kingdoms cannot possibly be permitted. No difficulty in adjusting this anomaly will have to be encountered. The reduction of the Irish representation to its proper proportion need not mean that there must be redistribution in England. Let the number of members to which Ireland is entitled, if they are to bear the same proportion to population as in England, be calculated and that number be allotted to Ireland, the total numbers of the House of Commons being reduced by the present over-representation of Ireland. All the redistribution that would then be necessary would be the taking away from Ireland of her surplus members. This, it has been shown, could be done with very little trouble or difficulty, and with no serious alteration of areas. Should the Government, however, refuse to adjust the wrong caused by the over-representation of Ireland, and insist upon 'one man one vote' without its complement, one vote one value,' the House of Lords must ask the country to judge whether they have or have not done their duty in declaring that they will not permit a partisan treatment of so momentous a subject as the suffrage. We have no fear of the result. The overrepresentation of Ireland is a matter which can be easily explained to the electors of Great Britain, and constitutes an injury to which the people of the predominant partner

are by no means inclined to submit. The House of Lords by taking action of the kind we have presumed they will take would add to rather than impair the feeling of confidence with which they have been regarded since their rejection of the Home Rule Bill.

In spite of

The question of dissolution naturally suggests the agitation against the House of Lords, which was the last legacy bequeathed by Mr. Gladstone to his successor. Never was there a more feeble and half-hearted movement. the utmost exertions on the part of the Radical section of the Gladstonian party, in spite of the fact that Mr. Gladstone fulminated in Parliament against the Peers and made his swan song in the Commons an attack on the Upper House, in spite of Sir William Harcourt's heroics and Mr. CampbellBannerman's platitudes, and in spite of the forcible feeble resolutions of the body of Tapers and Tadpoles which calls itself the National Liberal Federation, the country as a whole has remained absolutely cold. When the nation is really stirred public meetings spring up spontaneously in every part of the Kingdom, and the great centres of population do not wait to have a man with a name sent down from London to harangue them. On the present occasion there have been no such manifestations. When a Cabinet Minister has gone down to Plymouth, or some other large town, and has denounced the Peers, his own friends have greeted his sallies with the usual cheers, but such demonstrations of party zeal cannot possibly be regarded as proofs of national feeling. The only part of the so-called agitation against the Peers that has in it any touch of reality is that which has been organised by the Trades Unions. But the one or two unimportant meetings held by them have been rather meetings in favour of the policy which those bodies advocate in regard to the Employers Liability Bill than gatherings assembled to protest against the abstract right of the Peers to amend legislation. In a word, there is no heart in the agitation against the Peers, and that House was never more popular than it is just now. Even those working men who are inclined to be annoyed at the action taken by the Lords on the Employers Liability Bill remember with satisfaction that the Upper House saved the country from a Home Rule Bill which allowed Ireland to govern England but forbade England to interfere with Irish affairs, and which in effect made England pay a large yearly tribute to the sister Island. The agitation against the House of Lords has not then been

even a successful imposture.' From the beginning it has been singularly unlucky and ridiculous. In the first place 'the universal voice' (so we are assured) of the Home Rule party called a peer to succeed Mr. Gladstone. No doubt it is possible to show that there is nothing illogical in choosing a peer to head a movement against the Peers, but that is a subtlety on which the mind of the plain man will not bite. He judges roughly and broadly, and concludes in the words of the working man who opined that if they meant business 'with the Lords, they wouldn't have put a Lord on the job.' Against this sort of feeling it is useless to argue. The Premiership of Lord Rosebery has rendered utterly ridiculous an agitation which started with the assumption that all peers are either fools or profligates and entirely unfit to be entrusted with political power. But even this was not enough. The carrying of Mr. Labouchere's Amendment to the Address introduced yet another element of farce. It obliged the new Ministry to make their first public act the solemn rescinding of an Address which contained exactly the sentiments which are the stock-in-trade of those who agitate against the House of Lords. The Ministry began their political existence by throwing their shield over the Peers. Surely these circumstances do not constitute a very hopeful basis from which to attack the Upper House.

But the fact that the attempt to overawe the House of Lords by outside agitation is in the present instance bound to become ridiculous does not in any way relieve the Government from the awkward position in which their more extreme and reckless followers have landed them. Though they find themselves quite unable to make the movement for coercing the Lords a reality, it is by no means certain that they will be allowed to drop it. The New Radicals,' as the extreme wing of the Home Rule party are proud to be called, have little knowledge and less judgement. They are totally unable to estimate the strength of the forces which mould public opinion in this country, and will in all probability insist upon the attempt to flog a dead horse to the cry of Down with the Lords.' But this will mean ruin to the Administration, for nothing is so fatal to the prestige of a Ministry as a discredited and empty agitation. It will then require all Lord Rosebery's dexterity and ingenuity to drop the agitation against the Lords while appearing to give it support and encouragement. Possibly he may find a solution of his difficulties by amusing his followers with the details of a controversy on the merits and demerits of