every manufactured article, and by subsidizing steamers to the China seas, he not only gained the votes of three influential classes of the community, but also made the Executive more independent of popular movements. In his capacity of Prussian Premier, he has procured the purchase by the State of the entire railway system of the kindom. The number, the position, the influence of government functionaries is constantly on the increase. To crown everything, a marvellously well-equipped and trustworthy army removes all present anxieties. Murray's Magazine.

PIRATES PRESENT AND PAST.-The latest instance of the nineteenth-century way of hauling down the black flag is found in the story of "a strange affair" which happened quite recently in New Zealand. Two seamen, named Penn and Caffrey, murdered a man on Great Barrier Island, and ran away with a cutter called The Sovereign of the Seas, and also with a girl. The narrative is related with a brevity that cannot but distress the curious. The name of the lady is left in darkness. Of her beauty, of her qualifications as a pirate's wife -the Medora of the South Pacific-no hint is given. We are barrenly told that " they seized arms and provisions and commenced to sail for South America, but, fearing pursuit, they put back on the Australian coast, and scuttled their vessel fifteen miles north of Port Macquarie." Portions of the wreck came ashore, suspicion was excited, the pirates were arrested and conveyed to Auckland. Strictly, they were pirates only in having seized and run away with a vessel. They had not yet hoisted the black flag, nor exhibited any of the old symptoms of this sort of marine depravity. It is very warrantable, however, to suspect their intentions. They were bound away for the South American coast when they changed their minds; there, maybe, they hoped to ship a few beachcombers-gentlemen who would do honor to even the ship's company of a Morgan or a Blackbeard-and then start in search of some Acapulco ship of to-day, some wellfreighted craft manned, perhaps, by a slender body of Spaniards. As was the Centurion to the galleon, so would The Sovereign of the Seas be to the thousand-ton vessel she might tackle. But the result, as usual, is without poetry. The preparations did, indeed, promise a highly-seasoned dish. The swift and nimble cutter, the seizure of arms, the presence of a heroine, the two determined seamen with ap

petites rendered sanguinary by their pretty little piece of practice on the man they had left behind them on Great Barrier Island all this was assurance of adventures more thrilling than anything of the same kind that ever dropped from the fertile pen of Mr. Fenimore Cooper. The baleful shadow of the police, however, seems to have hung gloomily upon the undertaking from the very beginning. The moral influence of the law was working in these pirates when they weighed anchor, and operated so powerfully when they were out of sight of land that, as though constrained by some diabolic spell, they shifted their helm and trimmed sail for their fate. An unromantic sequel indeed-without even the gibbet, the clanking chains, and the carrion crow of the lonely seashore to inform the flat issue with something of the fine old spirit! In a lively American novel an Irish sailor is made to in

veigh against civilization. "What's the use of bein' snivelized?" he exclaims. "Snivelized chaps only learns the way to take on 'bout life and snivel. You don't see any darned beggars and pesky constables in Madagasky, I tell ye; and none o' them kings there gets their big toes pinched by the gout." The sailor might have carried his protest further by pointing out how injuriously civilization has served the sea life. Fifty years ago the start of The Sovereign of the Seas with muskets, ammunition, lovely woman, and two stout hearts, with appetites whetted by that little job on Great Barrier Island-her start with all these picaroonish commodities aboard would have been the beginning of a noble marine campaign, which must have speedily led to the command of a fine smart ship and the hundred diversions of scuttling, blowing up, hanging, plank-walking, marooning, and the like. When one considers the behavior of the crew of The Sovereign of the Seas it seems pitiful that buccaneering should have come to this. How gallantly Shelvocke, Cowly, Clipperton, Dampier pushed on! With what lordly resolution did they beard the haughty Spaniard, skirting unchartered coasts to come at him, stealing his niggers, sacking and firing his towns, robbing his altars, insulting his ladies, emptying his ships, and drinking to the health of Britannia's Queen or King-God bless him or her!-in hearty punch manufactured out of the Don's cellars! It is, indeed, true that the origin of the buccaneers does not partake of the sublime; but the calling borrowed a great glory from the scores of valorous cut-throats who

fortified their spirits by "long drinks" of brandy mixed with gunpowder, and fought like bloodhounds under their fearful flag. These famous heroes were originally settled in the Island of St. Domingo; they salted and smoked the meat of the animals which they had slain in chase at spots which they called boucans, and from this term they took their title. They went equipped as became such valiant creatures. Their apparel consisted of a shirt and a pair of pantaloons, both formed of coarse linen cloth, dyed with the blood of animals. Their boots were made of hog-skin -they did not condescend to so effeminate a luxury as stockings-and they covered their heads with a round cap. Around their waists they wore a strap cut out of a raw hide, to which they hung, each man, several knives and a very short sabre. Their arms consisted of a firelock that carried two balls, weighing an ounce apiece. Though they despised stockings, they were not above such comforts as are to be obtained by a plentiful retinue; for we are told that every one was attended by several valets, a number of servants, and by twenty or thirty dogs. Their habits are described as being rather lower than those of the Hottentot. Raw marrow was one of their favorite dishes. They ate lying on the ground, having neither benches nor tables. Stones furnished them with pillows quite soft enough for their heroic brows; and the trunk of a tree was as good a table as they could ask for. From the annals of this suave and gentle race of men the novelists have drawn materials for some very choice contributions to the literature of romance. The poets have also favored them : "Boisterous in speech, in action prompt and bold, He buys, he sells, he steals, he kills for gold."-Daily Telegraph.

A BEAR HUNT IN THE HIMALAYAS.-A Correspondent writes to the Field :-We had news of a large black bear; so I sent on my shikari and rifle to the Dâk Bungalow at Doonga Gully, where I was to sleep. I arrived at the bungalow toward the small hours of the morning. The shikari was waiting to say that he had got a tracker, and we were to start for the bear at 5 A.M. After a walk of six miles of the steepest climbing I ever had, and hanging on to fearful precipices-those of the Himalayas must be seen to be understood-we came on the bear's fresh tracks. He was evidently a large one from his pugs (foot-mark). We tracked him for some distance to the edge of a terrible incline. We were at a height of over

10,000 feet, and there was snow in all the ravines. The tracker went on in front, and presently came back with a face of delight to say that the bear was lying on a rock just outside his cave, taking the air. It was now so steep that had to take off my shooting-boots and walk with bare feet, as a slip would have been fatal. Luckily there was a strong breeze blowing from the bear up to us, so there was no danger of his scenting us, which is most to be feared in bear-stalking. Down we went toward him, creeping nearer and nearer, till at last we got within forty yards. My shikari had now become so excited that he was shaking all over, and kept telling me to fire. I wanted, however, to make sure, so crept on till within twenty paces. The shikari's excitement now became intense, and he nearly spoiled the whole thing. In trying to restrain himself he coughed loudly, and up sprang the bear. At once I gave him the right barrel in the shoulder; but it seemed to have no effect, and on he charged straight at us, making a terrific shindy. I gave him the left barrel in the middle of his body, and the shock of the bullet rolled him over; but he contrived to get into his cave, to which he was close, before I could give him another bullet. Knowing he was mortally wounded, we waited half an hour before reconnoitring. We then went to the cave, but it was so deep and dark that we could do nothing. Getting a lot of wood, we tried to smoke him out, but he did not show. then sat down, and, after a council of war, concluded we could do nothing without light and help. I therefore remained with the shikari while the tracker went back to Doonga for a lantern, which in due time arrived. We then entered the cave, the shikari first with lantern and a knife, and I next with the rifle. The cave was very narrow and went far into the rock. We had got about twenty yards, when suddenly the bear, who was hidden behind a turn in the cave, gave a roar, seized the shikari's hand and the lantern, tore his arm and leg, and left us in perfect darkness. How we got out of that cave I know not; but we did so with very fair average speed. Luckily, the bear was injured so that he could not rise on his hind legs; as we afterward found, the bottom of his spine was smashed, and the bullet in his intestines, but he had just been able to strike at the shikari. To make a long story short, the bear died, next day, and a man with a long torch went into the cave, and the carcass was pulled out. It measured 6 feet from nose to tail, and 5 feet 9 inches round the chest.

We

:

I. THE ONE THING NEEDFUL. A FEW years ago there was published in this country a volume by an American writer which, in one way at least, was most remarkable. It dealt with a subject of almost proverbial dryness, which, as usually treated, the common mind revolts from; it dealt with this subject not only at length, but with prolixity and yet it so roused for a time the interest of the general public that its yellow back was a feature at every bookstall; poor mechanics brooded over its pages after work-hours, and frivolous women explored them curiously in drawing-rooms. The volume I allude to is Mr. George's Progress and Poverty and, whatever its faults or merits, it has had at least this signal success. While the volumes of Mill and Fawcett, to all but a small section, are nothing but the stalest and most butterless bread of litNEW SERIES.-VOL. XLV., No. 5

erature, this book, though dealing with precisely the same subject, was read with as much avidity, and discussed with as. much excitement, as the most sensational novel in England or the most sensual novel in France.

Now how did the writer achieve this unique success? To some degree it was due no doubt to the ingenuity, the plausibility, and the seeming novelty of his theories; but it was due to this in a small degree only. It was mainly due to the fact that his theories, such as they were, were shown with admirable force to touch the interests of every one. He stated them, he restated them, he moaned, he whispered, he shouted them, not as a professor addressing a world of students, whose principal care it was to understand a subject" rightly, but as a practical man addressing common practical men, to whom economics as a subject was of no interest whatever, and

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who would as soon be induced to study it as a subject as a Socialist mob in Trafalgar Square would be induced to listen to a lecture on the Greek particle. Mr. George addressed such men, and he made such men his readers; and his secret was, that when arguing about economics it was not economics about which he set them thinking-not economics, but their own pockets and prospects. Malthus and Ricardo may seem dull authors to criticise, but Mr. George criticised them to such good and such immediate purpose that his criticisms made the mouth of the poor man water, and the rich man start at visions of coming ruin and revolution.

As an economic authority Mr. George's reputation was brief. His principal doctrine at least in the form in which he stated it-glittered for a moment and then burst like a bubble. But though he may have added nothing to the science of political economy, he gave the public a sufficiently startling lesson as to how practical a science political economy may be, and how much will depend on the views with which the masses in this country are imbued about it. The lesson was startling; and yet, strange to say, the ordinary reading public seem by this time to have forgotten it. They seem to think, because Mr. George's sensational treatise has failed to produce even so much as an organized agitation, that the kind of speculation to which it gave such a stimulus has ceased to bear appreciably on any practical questions. What is needful to know in economics, they think, is known already. The old economists continue to hold their own, except when occasionally they are sent on an excursion to Saturn; they continue to hold their own; we have read them at school or college; and there is no more reason why we should now read them anew, examine, defend, and very likely amend them, than there is why we should reconsider the theory of the solar system.

Never was indifference more misplaced; never did it imply a more curious kind of blindness. The age we live in, and the immediate future that is being prepared for us, are viewed by various men with very opposite feelings; by some with eager hope, by others with

terror or despondency; but all agree at least about one point; there is no room, indeed, for two opinions about it. The age is an age of change, or of a struggle for change, and the change in question is of one particular kind. It is a change of some sort in the social condition of the masses-in the number of hours they work, in the way in which their work is remunerated, and, above all, in their certainty of having regular work supplied them. From Vienna to London, from London to San Francisco, the same signs repeat themselves, the same thoughts are fermenting. More meat, better houses, less work, longer time for amusement-the politics of the people everywhere are turning into a cry for these. Now and again some great national question may divert their attention for a time from what is really next their hearts, for the majority of them are as yet but half conscious of what they are aiming at; but the moment this question is settled the social want reasserts itself, and there is an active minority which never for a moment forgets it. Every political party, with greater or less clearness, sees somehow that this is really the case. Conservative speakers and Radical speakers equally, whether conducting a canvas or addressing a public meeting, are compelled, in order to put themselves in touch with their hearers, to hint at, or promise, or hold out as an end to aim at, a general change of the particular kind I speak of. Nor is this, indeed, to be wondered

at. The situation results naturally from the four great products of the modern industrial system-from the kind of wealth produced by it, and the kind of poverty; the kind of knowledge, and the kind of ignorance. Wealth was once hedged, as it were, "by a divinity;" it belonged to a sacred caste; and the envy directed against it "dared but peep at what it would." But this divinity it has now utterly lost. New classes have made it and been made by it; it is daily changing hands; it has become common and vulgar; and as the awe of it has dwindled among the masses, their desire for it has proportionately developed. Whenever they turn their eyes from the bare benches of life they see before them a moving panorama of comfort, enjoyed by men so exceedingly

like themselves that they cannot but compare these men's lot with their own; and their own lot, even when not one of privation, becomes by comparison sordid, and a constant source of resentment. They long to change it; this is their dominant longing, and it smoul ders when it does not blaze. Such is the temper among those even who are fairly and normally prosperous; and this temper gains yet additional strength from the growing publicity, if not the actual growth, of the squalor and destitution that prevail among classes even more unfortunate. The cry of the desperate stimulates the demands of the discontented.

It is impossible, then, to mistake the kind of aim which is gradually shaping itself in the minds of the voting multitude, or not to see that, regard it how we will, this is the chief factor with which statesmen will have to reckon. There is no use in being indignant at the popular temper; there is no excuse for being so. The classes who are discontented cannot help themselves; their temper is the natural result of their circumstances. They are discontented, not because they are bad men or rebellious men, but simply because they are men; and any one placed as they are would feel just as they do. For the same reason, in proportion as they think they can better themselves, we may be perfectly certain that they will doggedly try to do so. It is certain also that they will not want for leaders, and these leaders in urging the cause of the many will have no compunction in attacking the rights of the few, and, to some greater or less degree, will think themselves forced to do so.

This is not the estimate of an alarmist, excited by riots and demonstrations. No doubt forces exist which might, under given conditions, explode like dynamite and produce some marked catastrophe; and many events have taught us in sober earnest that such forces actually have to be reckoned with. But I am not thinking of these. Armed Socialists, drilled by doctrinaires, inflamed each week by a kind of vival" service, and pledged to the propagation of some special social doctrine, are never likely to be anything more than a sect, though they may easily

re

What is really

prove a dangerous sect. forcing the question of property into the foremost place in the field of practical politics is a desire for material change, which, unlike that of the Socialists, has as yet found for itself no theoretical basis, and which differs widely among different types of men in the intensity with which it is felt, and the particular points on which it fixes. It is this very fact that gives it its great force. It is not embodied in any authorized programme, so it cannot be discredited as impracticable or perilous. Its vagueness allows it to adapt itself to every temperament-the bold, the timid, the genial, the sinister, and the determined. It stimulates without alarming, and in one shape or another it is permeating the whole body of the industrial classes, not excepting the most moderate and orderly part of them.

Nor does its vagueness prevent its force being immediate as well as prospective. This desire for social change is finding constant, though incoherent expression, in countless legislative proposals, some of which are as yet but planks" of various platforms,' while others have actually taken the shape of bills, and a few, probably forerunners of others, have become law. But even more instructive is the spirit which animates political speeches, and to which I have already alluded. Every speaker, no matter what his party, feels bound to touch on the contrast between the castle and the cottage; and even if he does not insinuate that anything should be taken from the rich, to imply that at all events the first aim of legislation is to somehow give something in the nature of property to the poor. This is seen more plainly in the case of the Trades Union delegates. These men at their meetings are generally far from violent. There may, perhaps, be a certain grimness in their temper, but they are personally honest in their views and anxious to reason soundly. We may think them mistaken, but we can hardly blame them, or be surprised at them, if they agree with their president, who said last autumn at Hull that what he protested against was the existing distribution of wealth; and there is something significant in the opinion of another speaker, that their aim should be to se