means it was hoped that an impression would be made upon the public mind, calculated to bear fruit hereafter, an impression which the subsequent publication of the third volume when the matter was forgot ten would do little to efface! Whether this dirty trick, worthy of Scroggs or Jefferies, had succeeded or failed, the intention of its authors would have been just the same : equally dishonest, and equally typical of the spirit in which they have handled almost every great question to which they have addressed themselves.

What the Welsh members think of this third betrayal they have been at no pains to conceal. They were led to believe that their wishes would be gratified in 1907. They were assured of it in 1908; and when that promise in turn broke down the Government pledged themselves to carry it in 1909, as solemnly as they now give a similar pledge for 1910. The Bill has been renewed three times. And those who expect to see it honoured either next year or any year before the next general election would do well to look up the history of the English Dissenters and learn what happened to those who, after supporting the Prime Minister of the day for seven years on the strength of his assurance that their disabilities should be removed, found that after the general election of 1734, when he had no further need of their services, he had no further intention of helping them. When they claimed

care of itself. This may be all very well for the lilies of the field, but with the lilies of the Treasury Bench, who belong to a different species, it may chance to end in disappointment.

To recur to the point whence we started, it is clear that the one sin committed by the Government which concerns every man and woman in these islands, great or small, rich or poor, is the betrayal of our naval supremacy. This should rouse the whole nation to show its distrust of them by every means in its power. Their naval administration is part of their financial scheme, and the two must be taken together. It is highly satisfactory therefore to see the steps which are at length being taken to expose the misery and confusion and the widespread ruin which must necessarily follow the acceptance of their financial proposals. The evil which they will work can never be undone. The havoo can never be repaired. Unless we nerve ourselves for the effort to prevent it while there is yet time, we may wring our hands in vain when we witness its effects in

blighted trade, in the bankruptcy of great firms, in the destruction of great properties, and in the general poverty which must inevitably fall upon the poor by the loss of their natural employers.1

was

The House went into Committee on the Finance Bill on the 21st of June, and both Mr Balfour and others dwelt on the grievous injustice which would be inflicted on small landowners by the Valuation clauses. Mr Balfour's logic merciless. The Ministerial majority in the House of Commons is of course impervious to argument, but there is another audience outside Parliament to which we must look for its effects. The great City meeting of Wednesday night, the 23rd, is, we trust, only the forerunner of many more which should bring an almost irresistible weight to bear on public opinion. The Resolutions embody much that has frequently been urged in these columns and on pages 146 and 150 of the present article, written before the meeting was arranged.

The difficulties before the Unionist party, which is now to all intents and purposes the Conservative party, are undoubtedly very great. As we pointed out in May, in our article entitled "The Parliamentary Situation," and as has since been frequently repeated in the daily press, an enormous majority in the

representing public opinion, and with two or three years of office still before it, is a phenomenon of which we have hitherto had no experience. Lord Rosebery, in a weighty and well-timed letter addressed to the London press on the 22nd of June, said that this particular point had escaped notice. This is by no means the case. We have called attention to it repeatedly. The Budget, says Lord Rosebery, is a "revolution," "a political and social revolution of the first magnitude.' Yet when it has been accomplished, the people will have had no more voice in it than if they had been "Tartars or Lapps." More-they are known to be opposed to it; and thus it has come to pass that the forms of the Constitution are made available for the destruction of liberty. The Lord Advocate himself asserts that we have arrived at the "parting of the ways," words rightly interpreted by Sir Henry Craik to mean that the country has now finally to choose between Socialism on the one hand, with the total subversion of our long-established order, and the maintenance on the other of all those rights, principles, and liberties which have hitherto formed the basis of our social system.

Now, surely, if ever, the constitutional powers of the House of Lords may be properly invoked to save us from the impending calamity. In our

entitled "The Dominating Issue," we called attention to a letter written by Sir Robert Peel to the Duke of Wellington in 1846 with regard to the constitutional powers of the House of Lords in the matter of Money Bills. Sir Robert, a leading authority on such subjects, told the Duke he did not think it would be possible to fight the Lords on the ground that their alteration of a Money Bill was unconstitutional. The Commons had always refused to acquiesce in such alterations, but had equally avoided any denial of the power of the Lords to make them. Lord Rosebery

If indeed, then, we do stand at the parting of the ways, how can we hesitate to appeal to powers which the Constitution has wisely reserved for such emergencies? If we would not see the England of history, the England of more greatness and happiness combined than has fallen to the lot of any other nation in the world, levelled with the ground, we must not shrink from remedies, however sharp or unfamiliar, to deliver us at any cost from this Government of treachery and tyranny.

THE approaching departure of Lord Kitchener from India will close a tenure of command which has been extended beyond that of any predecessor of recent years except Lord Roberts, and which has been remarkable for other reasons besides the length of its duration. It will be remembered on account of two great changes, both of vital importance to the Indian Army, but of which the merits still remain, in one case at least, the subject of dispute. While few fail to admit the immense improvement in efficiency which of these changes has effected, the other was at its initiation the subject of unusually heated controversy; and even now, four years later, its probable results are regarded with doubt and misgiving by many.

one

Other measures of reform have been accomplished during the six and a half years that

VOL. CLXXXVI.—NO. MCXXVI.

Lord Kitchener has spent in India, but they sink into insignificance beside these two great schemes with which his name will ever be connected. Nor, indeed, have the minor changes in question been nearly so numerous or so important as is often supposed. Developments, improvements, and reforms are constantly attributed to Lord Kitchener which were really initiated long before he went to India, so that in reviewing the work that he has achieved it is almost as necessary to indicate what he did not do as to describe that for which he was really responsible. He has accomplished too much to need the laurels which others have earned, and he would be the last to wish for praise that is not his due. It is therefore an ill service to him or to his great reputation to pretend, as has been done, that he has regenerated the whole Indian system. The

L

Indian Army was of great of great value long before the year 1903, a fact which has been proved a hundred times. In the last six years it has made notable strides forward, as it did also under many previous commanders; and a just recognition of the nature of its increase in efficiency during Lord Kitchener's tenure of office is a better testimony to the merits of his administration than could be any exaggerated and sensational claim on his behalf to the achievements of others.

It has been urged against Lord Kitchener that he went to India with preconceived ideas of the needs of the Army there, and with the intention already formed of effecting considerable changes. That he did so seems to be probable, and it is also evident that certain special circumstances made it inevitable that the period of his command would be an era of reform. The idiosyncrasies of his temperament and the influences of his previous career combined to render him but little tolerant of a system which did not coincide with the very definite views of his own. Moreover, the public voice, as revealed in the Press, was loud in proclaiming all that would be accomplished as soon as he should assume the control of the Indian Army. Finally, the conditions of the moment united with these more personal factors in impelling him towards a course of reforms. Not only did he find the finances of

cen

India in a condition of prosperity very different from those thin years of famine and of currency embarrassment which had marked the previous decade. Besides this the military budget had for five years been almost entirely free from the hampering cost of frontier wars, a circumstance without precedent for half & tury. Above all was the fact that the bitter experiences of the Boer War and subsequent inquiries into our military methods at home had revealed the need for many changes which had previously been appreciated by only a limited few. An era of military reform had been inaugurated, and even under a less energetic Chief than Lord Kitchener it would have been impossible at such а time for the Indian Army to stand still. In short, the moment was a psychological one.

Reform was in

the air, and in Lord Kitchener the Indian Army found a reformer ready for the destined task.

The fact that Lord Kitchener went to India with his mind made up on the subject of certain important changes is not in itself a proof that his views were erroneous. Nevertheless, to his prejudices in these matters must be attributed a hastiness and lack of consideration with which some of his earlier proposals were put forward. forward. It is only necessary to indicate a scheme for raising several batteries of field artillery, manned by natives and armed with modern guns, as a proof