sides, and other enclosures and encroachments which have been made illegally and without the sanction of Parliament since 1800, and to provide that such lands be placed in trust of the local authorities of the districts in which they are found for the benefit of the laboring classes and other inhabitants of those districts. How many private properties are there in the United Kingdom whose estates would be unaffected by legislation proceeding upon these lines? Yet Sir Charles Dilke, speaking the other day at Aylesbury, avowed his belief that this bill will pass. The Church and the parson, the squire | restore all common lands, wastes, roadand his hall, are the natural and impregnable rallying places of Conservatism. May not sentiment be as powerful as argument, and shall we not find that the inStincts of the English masses, especially when they are removed beyond the peril ous and disturbing temptations of towns, are Conservative above all things? The obvious rejoinder is that if such has been found to be the case, to the present time, it is because the agricultural laborer has not been subjected to the conditions which can alone test his allegiance to Toryism; because no alternatives have been offered him to the grooves in which his superiors have held it to be desirable he should move. In the future Hodge will be brought within range of those quickening and revolutionary influences which the advance of knowledge, educational and political, and more frequent attrition with his fellow-subjects who live in towns will supply. At the same time he will be approached more directly and perhaps more effectually than this. What are called his instincts may for some time prove superior to his interests, and the appeals made to the latter may be rejected by the former. How long will it be before the citadel of Toryism, enshrined, as we are bidden to believe, in the bosom of every tiller of the soil, yields to the solicitation of Radicalism? Or are we to believe that his attachment to the existing régime — an attachment that is merely an affair of sentiment, and is supported only by a conviction that every-government, securing the establishment thing is for the best in the world in which he lives will withstand the succession of shocks to which it will be exposed? It is easy to understand that the territorialists and their champions should fervently believe in the impossibility of change. Having reduced the occupants of the soil to a condition of comparative servility, and used the Parliamentary votes of the farmers for their own purposes, why, they may ask, should they not be able to do the same with the laborer? It may be that so cool-headed and clear. sighted a man, expressing himself with the knowledge and responsibility which the presidency of the Local Government Board has brought to him, was wrong, and that the voters in rural districts have no wish to repossess themselves of those portions of the land of which they have been despoiled — that, in other words, they will be content to have a vote and not to use it. But, assuming Sir Charles Dilke to be right, there is further legisla tion of a kind which would now be deemed revolutionary that is mevitable. Thus, unless the agricultural laborer, in conjunction with the artisan, who, it must be remembered, is to be emancipated in almost equal proportion with him, is to swell the force of reactionary Conservatism, it is absolutely certain that, before two or three years have passed, there will come into existence a scheme of county of rural municipalities throughout the country. This will be an innovation second only in importance to the franchise itself. The exercise of the municipal vote which it will give the laborer will be an exceedingly useful and instructive discipline for the exercise of the political vote. When county administration has once been organized on a new basis, the cry for free education will be raised. It will, always supposing that the newly created citizens are not prepared to remain indifferent to their lot, be only one of many demands for their improvement. One may confi dently anticipate that the whole aspect of the agricultural question will undergo a change, and that instead of such measures as the Agricultural Holdings Act, legisla tion will, under the pressure of the new force applied to it, be introduced for the purpose of bringing the land into the best use for the nation. Thus far the agricul tural laborer has been regarded by the political economists as a mere machine an instrument to be used for the creation | consfield, and recently on view as a curiof wealth, deposited in the hands of the few; not as a human being whose comfort, health, and home are to be considered, and who has a claim to such benefits as were conferred by the Factory Acts upon the laborers in towns. If his welfare cannot be sufficiently protected without the taxation of property, then property will be taxed. But it is needless now to attempt to define the measures that may be necessary for these ends. It is enough to indicate their general character. They sound the death knell of the laissez faire system; and if the agricultural laborer, with the leaven of urban artisans that the Redistribution Bill will place in his midst, is not strong enough to look after himself, to take the initiative in the social reforms prompted by a rational estimate of private interest, there is an organized body of politicians in this country who will at least do thus much for him. If it be said that this is communism, the answer is that it is not. If it be said that it is leg. islation of a socialist tendency, the impeachment may readily be admitted. Between such legislation and communism there is all the difference in the world. Communism means the reduction of everything to a dead level, the destruction of private adventure, the paralysis of private industry, the atrophy of private effort. The socialistic measures now contemplated would preserve in their normal vigor and freshness all the individual activities of English citizenship, and would do nothing more spoliatory than tax, if — and in what degree necessary, aggregations of wealth for the good of the community. That the working men of agricultural England will be solicited by the more advanced of their political leaders to move in this direction, and not to be satisfied till these claims have been conceded, is indisputable. Equally indisputable is it that the prospect thus opened to them, which, so far as votes can assure its accomplishment, it will be within their power to realize, will have powerful attractions for many of their number. What has the landed class to offer as an alternative? Territorial Toryism has thus far had as its main principle the instinct of preservation, and, above all, the protection for property. But Toryism of this kind is not only moribund; it is actually dead. It is as much a relic of the past as the star of the order of the garter presented by the late Lord Hertford to Lord Bea osity at a jeweller's in the Haymarket. As the Redistribution Bill, by its almost uniform substitution of one-member districts for plural-member constituencies, will gradually result in the extinction of the Whigs, so it will announce the doom of the old-fashioned Conservatives. The name may remain, but it will signify the Tory democracy of Lord Randolph Churchill, which is Radicalism tricking itself out in a fantastic dress, and not the Conservatism of Sir Robert Peel or even of Lord George Bentinck. There are other liabilities attaching to land which, under a democratic régime, led by competent and resolute chiefs, the possessors of land are likely to realize in the not remote future. The new Reform Bill, complete in both its parts, will enable, or will compel, Parliament to give something like the same prominence to the maxim that property has its obliga tions as it has given almost exclusively in the past to the familiar postulate that property has its rights. Conservatives and Radicals, Lord Salisbury as well as Mr. Chamberlain, may accept with equal readiness the principle thus formulated. But how about its application? When the president of the Board of Trade wrote, as he did, in the Fortnightly Review for November, 1883, "The expense of making towns habitable for the toilers who dwell in them must be thrown on the land which their toil makes valuable without any effort on the part of its owners," was the corollary with which he followed the principle one that Lord Salisbury is likely to accept? Again, would not Lord Salisbury stigmatize as revolutionary the other purposes to which it will be strenuously attempted to turn the democratic impetus imparted by the Reform Bill to the community? Let us glance at some of these. All land, as Radicals of the type of Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Charles Dilke, and Mr. Trevelyan would allow, should be held subject to the right of the community, as represented by the local authority, to expropriate the owner for any public purpose at a fair value. This fair value, as Mr. Chamberlain has repeatedly explained, is the price which a willing seller would obtain in the open market from a private purchaser, with no allowance for prospective value or compulsory sale. The proposal is one that would be legitimately resorted to in furtherance of all schemes of sanitary or general improvement, in the creation of public works or public buildings, in the provision of arti sans' dwellings in towns, and of course in | The goal towards which the advance will the provision of laborers' dwellings in the probably be made at an accelerated pace, country, with a sufficient minimum of is that in the direction of which the legis land attached to them. But there are lation of the last quarter of a century has other burdens than these which the land been tending the intervention, in other will hereafter have to bear. They may words, of the State on behalf of the weak be placed under two heads. In the first against the strong, in the interests of place, a more equitable taxation in con- labor against capital, of want and suffering nection with the revision of the death against luxury and wealth. We are someduties; secondly, liability to full taxation times told that another swing of the penon value in the case of vacant grounds in dulum will shortly be witnessed, and that towns. As matters are, this ground, fre- a reaction against the interference of quently of enormous present value, and government in the relations of daily life held for a prospective rise, is taxed on its between classes of the community will set value for agricultural purposes. But it is in. Where are the signs of it? They are never destined for these. It is destined not to be found in any of the bye-elections only for building. As such it would be which have recently taken place, in the bought; the price which as such it would reception given to those public men who command is the criterion of its worth, and have spoken in the sense in which these should therefore fix the standard of its remarks have been written, or in the welrating. Finally, the question of rating come, to judge not only from the working and taxation cannot be raised in the new men's papers, but from the daily press, to Parliament without the necessity forcing a measure like that for the restitution of itself upon the mind of elected and elec- illegal enclosures. Those whom Gam. tors of making the ratable value of all land betta styled the nouvelles couches sociales and houses a self-acting test of real value. may possibly assimilate themselves to Once this were done, the local authority their superiors, may acquire their prejuwould acquire the right of at any time dices, look at things from their point purchasing property at its ratable value. of view, mechanically subordinate themIt would of necessity be an antecedent selves to their interests, and be content to condition that the rating of the United remain the instruments of their effaceKingdom must undergo a revision. The ment. But if like effects are generated by ratable value is now nearly always consid-like causes, if there is any dynamic force erably under the rental value. Provided in legislation, if the law of progress is only it were raised uniformly, there could not an imposture and the desire of selfbe no unfairness in or objection to raising improvement an unreality, the change of it; and a full, fair value having been policy following the Reform Bill cannot arrived at all property being in other fail to be yet more remarkable than the words docketed with its legitimate mar-reduction of the numerical influence of ket price there would be indicated a Conservatism. This may mean a peace. proper figure for purposes both of taxa tion and expropriation. The rating of mansions and parks would be immediately affected by the operation of this scheme, seeing that the sum on which the owners would have to pay rates would be that for which they were willing to sell. Upon such a legislative cycle as that described in the foregoing pages it would seem probable that we are shortly about to enter. The Reform Bill of 1884-5, by creating a new electorate, will not perhaps revolutionize, but will produce many modifications in the personnel of Parliament. There will be alike at Westminster and in the country a fresh legislative machinery. Members of the House of Commons being chosen for the most part by wards or districts will be brought more closely into contact with voters, and will be compelled to have a surer and more constant touch of those whom they represent. ful, but it will none the less mean a genuine, revolution. The Conservatives may periodically return to office, but they will have place and not power. They may profit by the blunders of their opponents, or they may strengthen themselves by outbidding them. But unless the classes now enfranchised reveal an amount of Conservative immobility and obstruction to all change hitherto unsuspected, and unless they succeed in communicating the influence of these qualities to the remainder of the country, how is the onward movement to be arrested? "Thank heavens !" some one may still be found to exclaim, "we have a House of Lords." For the moment, indeed, the agitation against the House of Lords is at an end; but on what terms is it at an end, and what does its cessation prognosticate? So far from recognizing in it any omen of hope, the Tories would be wise to see in it reason for discouragement. No one | feeling for art, in my humble opinion, as now menaces the peers with legislative an average coal-heaver. Having had the disestablishment, because they have ac advantage, however, of a year's training quiesced in the national will. So long as in Paris and another at Brussels, he has they are prepared on future occasions to a certain slap-dash way of producing his reduce themselves to a nullity whenever it effects, knocking off so many yards as it is desired for them to do so, no one will were of paint and canvas - -which to my dream of attacking them. But it is quite feeling is little, if anything, short of imcertain that with the House of Commons pertinent. Thanks also to this same early growing more democratic and more in familiarity he can dilate at large upon forsympathy with the people every year, the eign capitals - their gaieties and galleries, interference of the Lords-the hostile the respective beauty of their women action, in other words, of a chamber which subjects upon which neither Simcox nor possesses a permanent anti-popular major- myself can pretend to give an opinion, the ity-will not be tolerated with the same former's acquaintanceship with the contiequanimity as heretofore. The country, nent of Europe being limited to a fort. indeed, would not allow any government night spent in extreme youth upon the possessing its confidence to suffer such a sands of Boulogne, while my own past thing, and the condition on which alike history is not embellished by even so ministries and the hereditary and aristo-meagre an experience as this. Now, as cratic branches of the legislature exist, no one naturally likes to be set at nought will be that the latter abstains from assert-upon such purely frivolous and advening itself. Nor, indeed, is it to be supposed titious grounds as these, it has for a very that the Lords will fail to profit by experi- long time back been a fixed idea in my ence. Looking at what has taken place already in the immediate past, and what may be expected to take place in the not remote future, the Lords will scarcely be encouraged to snatch another barren triumph, and for the sake of an empty victory to sacrifice the reality of everything for which they have fought. From Macmillan's Magazine. I ARRIVE. LIKE many artists whose means are more modest than their ambitions, I share a studio with others in the same predicament. Now the comfort of such an arrangement depends, it will be obvious, largely, if not entirely, upon the amount of equality and spirit of camaraderie which exists between the several members of the party, any tendency to domination on the part of one being naturally fatal to any such spirit. At present our party consists of three; and two of us-Simcox and myself are decidedly overridden and overmatched by the third, whose circumstances have given him a certain perfectly adventitious preponderance of which he is not slow to take advantage. Brown Judkins is a big, red, burly-mannered young man, with about as much mind that I would seize upon the very earliest opportunity which presented itself of shaking off this same insular reproach, and putting myself upon a level with Brown Judkins in this respect. That being the case, my satisfaction may easily be imagined upon receiving one morning about the middle of last February a letter from my cousin, John Hargrave, inviting me to spend some weeks with him in his villa at Algiers. John Hargrave and myself may be said to stand at exactly opposite ends of the monetary scale; my fixed income being accurately represented by an ought, his by the same ought many times repeated, . with a handsome figure at one end to give it weight and consistence. The Hargraves are all rich, whereas none of the Bells have ever known what it was to possess a groat in their lives. The late Sir Benjamin Hargrave (he was knighted upon the occasion of some, I have forgotten what, civic function) was a full-blown, pompous-looking individual, with a mas sive gold chain, and a large bunch of dangling watch-seals, which the conforma. tion of his person seemed always to bring into prominent relief. The Hargraves' house was in Portman Square, and a very magnificent affair it was, with an amount of gold-leaf upon its walls and its ceilings which otherwise distributed would have sufficed for a good many minor diadems. in those days wealth had not learnt to disguise itself under quaint and strange devices, and my great-uncle Hargrave (he was my mother's uncle) certainly showed causes made it, as will readily be understood, a decided satisfaction to be able to announce at the studio one morning, with due nonchalance, that I had accepted an invitation to spend some weeks with my cousin at his north-African paradise. his in a sufficiently naïve and outspoken | Oriental luxury of this abode. All these fashion. As I advanced to man's estate I used now and then to be bidden to entertainments at which my lot generally was to stand in a doorway and watch the variegated throngs streaming beneath its many-twinkling candelabra. Poor relations, have, however - perhaps unwarrantably their own opinions, and it was no small consolation to me, I remember, mentally to smile at these redundant splendors, and turn up my nose (of course quite invisibly!) at the, to my youthful and fastidious mind, somewhat barbaric character of my great-uncle Hargrave's entertainments. John Hargrave, my cousin, is a man of a totally different type from his father. He wears no gold chains, or if he does they are not obtrusively evident. Since his accession to the family accumulations the house in Portman Square has been shut up, he having no turn for the sort of aldermanic pomp for which its halls were formerly renowned. John is now fortyfive, and has therefore been about the world for a pretty considerable time. He has never married, nor has he apparently seen any necessity for so doing: neither has he any profession, unless that distant and very discreet supervision which he exercises over the paternal brewery (I forgot, by the way, to mention that the Hargraves are brewers) can be accounted such. Nothing, however, could be a greater error than to look upon John as an idle man; on the contrary, few have ever exhibited more energy in their own line than he has done. He has sat in the House of Commons for two contested boroughs, and has contested unsuccessfully twice as many more. As a commit tee man and chairman of companies, his praise has been in many men's mouths. Brooklands, his place in Herefordshire, is always cited as a model to other and less practical-minded landlords, while as regard charities his munificence has been of the kind never described by any epithet less striking than princely. Even his very amusements have not been devoid of the same spirit. His yacht, the "Go By," is one of the largest, I am told, afloat, and as a pioneer into strange and little frequented seas he has added fresh lustre to the character of the roving Englishman. The last two winters, however, he has established himself at Algiers, remaining there with a constancy not a little at variance with his previous habits. Reports, vague but enticing, had from time to time reached me of the beauty and more than I had lately disposed of a couple of pic. tures, which, taken in connection with the fact that John had intimated in his letter that my reliance upon his hospitality was to date from the moment of leaving my own doorstep, placed the monetary aspect of the matter upon an altogether satisfactory footing. Three days, therefore, after the receipt of my cousin's letter, I was duly seated in a first-class carriage, en route for the town of Paris. Over the emotions which visited me as I walked for the first time under the gilded ceilings of the Louvre and over the historic asphalte, I draw a veil, the more willingly that they are probably not of transcendent novelty. Over other sensations, endured during a day and two nights' transit across the boisterous waters of the Mediterranean, I likewise - for different reasons draw a veil. Suffice it to say that there was one moment, some thirty hours or so, after my embarkation, when, having been wakened from an uneasy slumber by the violent banging of the berth-board above my head, I did ask myself, as I sat erect in my narrow crib, and looked despairingly about me in the darkness, whether even for the sake of bringing back portfolios full of "naked Arabs and sunlit mosques," whether even for the sake of flaunting Africa and its golden joys in the very face of the reluc tant Judkins, it was worth enduring such a combination and complication of miseries as those through which I was at that moment passing. These debatings, however, vanished with the sensations which gave them birth. And when, some six or seven hours later, I was again awakened by a sudden thumping at my door, it was to find, to my no small relief, that the hide. ous and heathenish pitchings and heav ings which had made the last two days a martyrdom to endure and a nightmare to look back upon were at an end; that the engines themselves were panting feebly and intermittently, like some exhausted athlete whose course is run; that, in short, we were entering the harbor, and that another half-hour would see us at our anchorage. Like every one else on board, I hastily bundled on my clothes, and clutching to |