ment and Parliament have done, they have satisfied every reasonable man in England and Scotland that the utmost limits of just and reasonable concession to Irish demands have been reached. The English conscience may at last be content. In the unhappy but not impossible event of our failure to put an end to persistent and systematic violation of law; if outrage, intimidation, and murder are still to continue, unpunished and gloried in because not condemned by popular Irish feeling; if, in short, the autumn and winter of 1881 are to resemble those of 1880 and 1879, there will be no hesitation and no division of opinion as to what ought to be done. It is easy to understand the scruples and the reluctance of an executive called upon to enforce a law which they regard as unjust; but when they have put that law into the shape suggested by themselves, when they have cut down every claim and pretension which they hold to be unreasonable, not only Irish landowners, but the English public, have a right to require that such rights as remain shall be guarded by the full power of the law; that it shall no longer be dangerous to obey the law, safe to defy it; that an honest witness shall not be in greater danger than an assassin; and that a rival and practically superior authority shall not be allowed to supersede that of magistrates and judges. We must not overrate the effect of what we have done. We must not indulge in the pleasant dream of a contented, reconciled, and loyal people. That is not the state of things we have to meet. We are at the beginning of a struggle, not at the end of one. We have seen in foreign countries, again and again, what is the power of a movement carried on under the standard of nationality; it is now our turn to deal with such a movement ourselves. To overrate the danger (I should be glad to think that I did so) is at worst a harmless error; to underrate it may be more serious.

It is, as far as I know, peculiar to the Home Rule movement that while in effect and in reality one for the subversion of the existing constitution—while, if successful, it must necessarily lead to a virtual if not formal separation of the two islands-yet that in the pursuance of its ostensible object there is nothing illegal or seditious. The Union created by an Act of Parliament may be repealed by one. To speak, to vote, to agitate for Repeal, are acts strictly within the limit of constitutional right. No man can be reasonably charged with sedition or disaffection for proposing to undo in 1882 what was done in 1801. Yet few things can be more certain than this: that if once a representative assembly meets in Dublin, calling itself a Parliament, no restriction or limitation of its powers, however stringently imposed as a condition, will long endure. It will be declared by universal acclamation to be the only authority competent to make laws for Ireland. And inasmuch as under our parliamentary system the governing power practically resides in the House of Commons, the creation of a separate House of Commons for Ireland implies a

separate executive, representing different ideas and a different policy. What is this but separation?

We are then in this dilemma-that we sincerely desire to govern Ireland according to Irish ideas, but that the one dominant idea which has taken possession of the Irish mind is that we should not govern Ireland at all. If we resist, we belie our loudest professions; if we give way, we break up the Einpire. If we try to compromise by granting a half-independence-freedom of local but not of imperial action-can we as reasonable men doubt that the power we have conceded will be used as a means of extorting larger power? that the one hand which we release will be employed to liberate the other?

The question of Home Rule, in its various forms, is too large to be discussed at the end of an article; nor do I attempt to argue it. My present object will be sufficiently accomplished, if I have indicated some of the difficulties which lie before us, and explained why, at least in my belief, it is premature to say, 'Now we have settled our Irish troubles, and may deal in peace with questions that concern England.'

DERBY.

THE JEWISH QUESTION.

ON opening the Nineteenth Century the other day in Canada, I was surprised to find that Mr. Lucien Wolf, of the Jewish World, in his paper on the Anti-Jewish agitation had set me down as having commenced the agitation in England. Mr. Wolf writes, as he avows, under the influence of 'all-consuming indignation and strong passion,' for which it is easy, under the circumstances, to feel respect and sympathy, but which cannot fail to colour his statements. I replied at the time that I was not aware that there had ever been an Anti-Jewish agitation in England. No tidings of such a movement had reached Canada. So far as I could see, fully the due measure of homage was being paid by the highest representatives of English society to Jewish wealth. We had even received accounts, in connection with the last general election, of a new political sect which was seeking to identify the English race with the Ten Tribes, and to found on that pedigree a claim to worldwide dominion. In Germany, as elsewhere on the Continent, there has been an Anti-Jewish agitation: in England, I apprehend, there has been none.

It had happened that when I was last in England we were on the brink of a war with Russia, which would have involved the whole Empire, including Canada, whose mercantile marine would have been in great danger of being cut up by Russian cruisers. The Jewish interest throughout Europe, with the Jewish Press of Vienna as its chief organ, was doing its utmost to push us in. Mr. Lucien Wolf avows that the Jews all over the world were united in opposition to what they regarded as the hypocritical designs of Russia, though Russia might perhaps retort the epithet, inasmuch as her crime in their eyes was not her ambition but her protection of the Eastern Christians, with whom the Jews had a quarrel of their own. At such a crisis it was necessary and right to remind the English people that Israel was a separate race, with tribal objects, and that its enmities could not be safely allowed to sway the councils of England. As to the merits of the quarrel between the Eastern Christians and the Jews, there was room for doubt: we had some reason to believe that there was as much of extortion on one side as of fanaticism on the

other: but at all events it was not an English quarrel, or one in which English blood could justifiably be shed.

I heartily supported, and, were it needful, would heartily support again, the political enfranchisement of the Jews, though I do not pretend to believe that people who intrench themselves in tribal exclusiveness, refuse intermarriage, and treat the rest of the community as Gentiles, are the very best of candidates for citizenship. But the franchise is a trust, in the exercise of which every one must expect to be watched, especially those who are liable to any peculiar bias, above all when their allegiance is divided between the nation and some other power or interest. The staunchest advocate of Catholic emancipation has never doubted that it was right to watch the Catholics, at least the Ultramontanes, as often as there was any possibility of a divergence between the interests of the nation and those of the Papacy. If I am not misinformed, the movement against the Jesuits and against Ultramontanism in Germany-the Education War, as it is called-has found ardent supporters among the Jews. Especially is vigilance needful when the equivocal influence is exercised through the secretly enslaved organs of an ostensibly independent Press.

If patriotism means merely a willingness to perform all social duties and to do good to the community, nobody can deny that it may be possessed in the largest measure by the kinsmen of Sir Moses Montefiore. But if it means undivided devotion to the national interest, there is difficulty in seeing how it can be possessed without abatement by the members of a cosmopolitan and wandering race, with a tribal bond, tribal aspirations, and tribal feelings of its own. Far be it from Liberals to set up a narrow patriotism as the highest of virtues, or to make an idol of the nation. There is something higher than nationality, something which nationality at present ought to serve, and in which it will ultimately be merged. Mazzini taught us how to think upon that subject. But tribalism is not higher or more liberal than nationality; it is lower and less liberal; it is the primeval germ of which nationality is the more civilised development. Nor does the narrowest patriot make such a religious idol of his nation as the Jew makes of his tribe. All the other races profess at least allegiance to humanity: they all look forward, however vaguely, to a day of universal brotherhood; they cannot help doing this if they are Christian, and have accepted the ideal of the Christian Church. The Jew alone regards his race as superior to humanity, and looks forward not to its ultimate union with other races, but to its triumph over them all, and to its final ascendency under the leadership of a tribal Messiah. I mean of course the genuine, or, as the Americans would say with rough picturesqueness, the hard-shell' Jews. About the position of these alone can there be any question. As to the men of Jewish descent who have put off tribalism alto

gether, we have only to welcome them as citizens in the fullest sense of the term and to rejoice in any good gifts, peculiar to their stock, which they may bring to the common store. But Mr. Wolf speaks for the genuine Jew: he rejects, evidently with abhorrence, the thought of intermarriage with the Gentile.

Of the existence of Israel as a power and an interest apart from the nations, though domiciled among them, there can scarcely be a doubt. One who has deeply studied the question, Mr. Oliphant, in his recent and very interesting work The Land of Gilead, dwells more than once on the great advantages which any European Government might gain over its rivals by an alliance with the Jews. It is evident,' he says, 'that the policy which I have proposed to the Turkish Government (i.e. the restoration of Palestine) might be adopted with equal advantage by England or any other European Power. The nation that espoused the cause of the Jews and their restoration to Palestine would be able to rely on their support in financial operations on the largest scale, upon the powerful influence which they wield in the Press of many countries, and on their political co-operation in those countries, which would of necessity tend to paralyse the diplomatic and even hostile action of Powers antagonistic to the one with which they were allied. Owing to the financial, political, and commercial importance to which the Jews have now attained, there is probably no one power in Europe that would prove so valuable an ally to a nation likely to be engaged in a European war as this wealthy, powerful, and cosmopolitan race.' Perhaps the writer of these words hardly realises the state of things which they present to our minds. We see the Governments of Europe bidding against each other for the favour and support of an anti-national money power, which would itself be morally unfettered by any allegiance, would be ever ready to betray and secretly paralyse for its own objects the Governments under the protection of which its members were living, and of course would be always gaining strength and predominance at the expense of a divided and subservient world. The least part of the evil would be the wound inflicted on our pride. It is the highest treason against civilisation that Mr. Oliphant unwittingly suggests. If Russia were alone to stand out against such submission, even though her motives might not be untainted, she would practically acquire no inconsiderable title to the sympathy of the nations.

The allusion to the influence wielded by the Jews in the European Press has a particularly sinister sound. This, as has already been said, is a danger the growth of which specially justifies our vigilance. In the social as in the physical sphere new diseases are continually making their appearance. One of the new social diseases of the present day, and certainly not the least deadly, is the perversion of public opinion in the interest of private or sectional objects, hy the clandestine manipulation of the Press.