nice family, upon my soul! I suppose the mater's been telling you about this preposterous business. [Emily nods.] Well, I must confess I'd no idea John was such a frantic prig. . . Because I run a paper to sell, and I hapNo, I'm d d if I can pen to make it out! I'm d- -d if I can, and that's flat!

Emily. There's your mother to be thought of. She is very upset indeed.

Sir C. My dear girl, I came down simply to satisfy the mater. That's all right. But I'm not going to have my family interfering with my business. It's too ridiculous. Why doesn't Francis knock some sense. into some of 'em? Where is he? Cleared off, of course! That's Francis all over!

Emily. But, Charlie, don't you think

Sir C. Look here, Em, you can't understand these things. I don't expect you to, so far as that goes.

Emily [solemnly and stiffly]. Do you mean to say that you won't put a stop to that Downes case, whatever it costs you?

Sir C. Certainly not! [After a pause.] I might just as well be asked to stop the whole series, and fill the pages with extracts from the Acts of the Apostles. [Emily is astounded, shocked and desperate. She does not know what to do, and she hesitates. Then her whole demeanor changes.

She ap

proaches Sir Charles coaxingly, caressingly, putting forth all her charm and persuasiveness.

Emily. Charlie, to please me!

Sir C. No, no [half repulsing her]. What you women want is peace at any price. You don't appreciate the argument at all.

Emily. Dearest, I don't pretend to But to appreciate the argument.

please me-it's the first time I've ever asked you to do anything for me. Do! Do! To please your Emily [caressing him].

Sir C. [after hesitation]. Oh, very well, then!

Emily. And you'll be nice, and jolly! You won't look glum! You know how nice you can be!

Sir C. [sighing, half smiling, shakes his head humorously]. You girls—you simply do what you like. [Re-enter John.]

John. Of course, Charles

Sir C. That'll do, old chap. I'll stop it. I'll see to it first thing to-morrow morning. Keep your hair on.

John [looking at him]. Oh, well, that's all right. [Enter Annie, back.]

Annie [taking Sir Charles by the car playfully, but with a certain concealed exasperation]. Come along! Am I to be mistress in my own house or am I not? Never did I know such a family of arguers as you Worgans. But if you think I'm going to have my supper spoiled, you are mistaken. along, you others. [Exeunt Annie and Sir Charles, followed by John. Emily is left alone. Enter Mrs. Downes, l.]

Come

Mrs. D. [hurrying]. Bless us, I hope I'm not keeping everybody. Are they gone in? And I haven't shaken hands with the great man yet.

Emily. Mrs. Downes, I just want to tell you

Mrs. D. Eh, what's amiss?

Emily. If anybody says anything to you about-about something in the "Sunday Morning News"-it isn't true. I mean it's been stopped. Charlie didn't know about it-he's

Mrs. D. Eh, bless ye, my dear. Do you suppose I don't know about that? Why, half a dozen different people took the trouble to tell me about it before nine o'clock this morning! But I make naught of it. I know what those Sunday papers are! No respectable person would look at one of them. You say Charlie didn't know-you'll excuse my plain speaking, my dear, but he ought to have known! There's only one thing that puts me about, and that

is-what will his poor mother think? [Goes towards door back, then returns to Emily.] My dear, I do hope you'll

be able to influence him for good. [Edit back. Emily's face is a study. Enter Francis, back]

Francis. I say, the missis is getting cross. Hello! You surely aren't crying? Emily [crying]. No.

Francis. Look here. I don't really see what you've got to be upset about. The English Review.

John and Charlie are simply behaving like angels to each other. The whole bother is settled satisfactorily, and I've no doubt it's you that did it. The fact is, you ought to be proud; you convinced him.

Emily. No, I didn't convince him. I only caressed him.

Francis. Well, I suppose this supper must be eaten. [Movement towards door.]

Curtain.

The most difficult part of the Budget (the land clauses) has now been carried; and we are glad to feel that a number of equitable and reasonable amendments have been accepted. In fact, it may be truthfully said that very little opposition can any longer be raised on the score of justice, except by those who think that land is, as it were, sacrosanct, and ought never to contribute in the way that houses or commodities do to the needs of the revenue. The theoretical argument against taxing undeveloped land was ingeniously, and, we think, correctly, disposed of by Mr. Simon in the House of Commons. He pointed out that undeveloped land may yield no income at all, so that if it were not subjected to a tax from time to time, as its value rose, the revenue would be defrauded of its proper claims. In fact, the yield of the development tax may be treated in most cases as a substitute for an avoided income-tax. Mr. Balfour glanced at the argument, and seems to have acknowledged its cogency. But there are, of course, besides very good social and economic arguments for putting some check upon the cornering of land in the neighborhood of towns.

Probably the reason why such vehement objection is taken by many large

landowners to this part of the Budget is not so much the taxation itself as the valuation; and we are afraid that in many cases, the reason for objecting to the valuation is a consciousness that some properties-and especially those which are costly luxuries-are undervalued for poor-law and local government purposes. Some very extraordinary instances of the under-valuation of famous country seats, moors, and parks have lately come under our notice, and many of them have been reproduced in the newspapers. We do not wish to embitter controversy by the introduction of personalities, still less by abusing those who disagree with us; but we feel sure that we shall have the assent of the great majority of our readers in saying that a complete valuation, under which all properties will pay fairly, and be assessed on the same principles, without fear or favoritism, should prove a boon to the whole country.

Happily, during the past week the tone of the controversy has changed for the better; and combatants are relying more and more upon the weapons of logic and persuasion. Of this improved spirit no better illustration could be found than the dialectic between Sir Edward Grey and the Duke

of Northumberland. Ever since the Budget was introduced a number of persons, owning large estates, have been threatening to stop their charitable subscriptions and dismiss numbers of laborers. Thus, it is argued, much unemployment may result directly from the operation of the Budget. If the complainants had protested against the increase of public expenditure and had denounced public waste, they would have been on stronger moral and economic ground in objecting to the very considerable additions that have been made to their own particular tax bills. But if the expenditure is all necessary there is much to be said for asking a man who possesses five luxurious houses and tries to live in them all with the help of five hundred servants to contribute more in proportion to the new revenues than the man who has only five rooms and no servants.

This Budget makes no further demand upon the working classes, except in so far as they consume tobacco and alcoholic drinks. The middle classes have to contribute considerably more than before in income-tax on investments, and also, it may be, in respect of land and motor-cars. But from the wealthy there can be no doubt considerable contributions are exacted, and it is against these that the Duke of Northumberland and many in a like position with him have raised indignant complaints. In his speech at Leeds, Sir Edward Grey addressed himself to the question whether the policy of dismissing laborers is either necessary or justifiable; and he suggested that most of those who have been threatening to do this on a large scale, if the Budget is passed, could easily find more sensible, as well as more charitable methods of providing whatever additional revenue is demanded from them by the State. The Duke challenged Sir Edward in the Times to show how a big landed pro

The Economist.

prietor could effect economies without inflicting intolerable hardships on himself and his dependents. Sir Edward Grey, in his reply, suggested that those who have more houses than they can live in, more moors, or deer parks, or pheasant preserves, than they need, more motor-cars than they can conveniently use, should sell or let some of these superfluous possessions. To this the Duke has not been able to find any better rejoinder than that his tenants would not like him to let or sell one or more of his houses and estates. That may very well be. No one, of course, likes to lose a good landlord. But we doubt if the public as a whole will blame the Government for inflicting this kind of hardship in preference to taxing the comforts and necessaries of life by the method euphoniously described as broadening the basis of taxation. In the United States the taxation of luxuries is put forward by politicians as one of the moral features of the tariff. But we fear it is undertaken there mainly to raise prices for the benefit of the manufacturer. It is happily a principle of English finance that the whole proceeds of taxation should flow into the Exchequer. This is the case with tobacco, cigars, wines, spirits, and all the other luxuries which we deal with by way of Customs and Excise. The possession of land, especially when it is used purely for sport, is perhaps the most attractive of all luxuries. But we can hardly believe that the nation would suffer or that any cruel hardships would be inflicted upon individuals if some of the deer forests and pheasant preserves were curtailed, and some of the land, which has been diverted from profit to pleasure, were restored to farming and agriculture. For every gamekeeper who might be dismissed there would almost certainly be created two or three agriculturists.

The President of the British Association opened his address at Winnipeg by saying the correct and inevitable things about science and what is called Imperialism. Until five-and-twenty years ago, the meetings of the Association had always been held in the British Isles; in 1884 the Society went to Montreal and since then has visited Toronto and South Africa. The number of scientific men who can attend meetings at these great distances is necessarily limited, but the arrangements of the Association provide that a representative selection is present, and it is good both for the visitors and the colonists that the word British should be given its extended meaning. Science itself is international, but the organizations engaged in advancing it must for long remain chiefly national. The President, remembering that he was a Cambridge professor as well as a physicist, seized the occasion of the great publicity of a Presidential Address to ventilate a problem specially acute at Cambridge, but not unknown elsewhere. In Sir Joseph Thomson's opinion the £35,000 a year given at Cambridge in scholarships does great harm to the competing schools and the successful scholars. The scholarships are awarded on the results of competition in practically a single subject in each case. The competing schools devote most of the time of their clever boys in the last year or two to the one subject in which they have most chance of being successful, and the selected scholars continue to specialize at Cambridge in that one subject. Thus they attain a very high standard of knowledge and a very low grade of education. The competitive taint reaches further than the regions discussed by the President. The Colleges compete for the clever specialized boys with the

object of showing well in the University honors list. Perhaps on his return from Canada Sir Joseph will continue his attack in Cambridge itself; for, after all, it is a Cambridge problem, to be settled in Cambridge.

There was nothing local about the body of the President's address. He dealt with the problems of matter and force, of the texture of space and the forces that sway it, and pointed to the vast revolution that is taking place in the fundamental conceptions of physics. The direction of events has been apparent for a good many years, even to those who are not expert physicists. In 1895 a writer in this Review, discussing the addresses delivered at the meeting of the British Association in that year, showed how, largely from mathematical data, the old crude conceptions of a universe of atoms and molecules of matter played on by forces was being displaced, how the distinction between the elements and even the distinction between matter and force was breaking down. Since then, and chiefly on the experimental side, the progress of knowledge has been so unexpected and so exciting that the word "renascence" is more than appropriate. The discoveries that quickened physical science with new life and that gave a new and coherent meaning to a great array of detached and unco-ordinated observations and deductions came from the discovery and investigation of the Röntgen rays. These rays were found to excite phosphorescence in certain substances, particularly the salts of uranium, and Becquerel tried to find out if phosphorescence would produce the rays. He found that uranium salts, made phosphorescent by exposure to sunlight, gave out rays with properties similar to those of the Röntgen rays. Later

on, however, it was found that the rays were given out even if the salts had been kept in the dark, and that they were a property of the metal itself and not of the phosphorescent condition. Soon afterwards thorium was shown to have similar properties, and still later came the great discovery of M. and Mme. Curie of two new substances, radium and polonium, with enormously more powerful radiation. Still later, Rutherford, in Canada, found that an enormous number of substances were radio-active. Thus an experiment, in itself futile, but diligently pursued, led by a side issue to discoveries of enormous importance.

Further investigation of radio-active substances led to results still more unexpected and significant. Crookes showed that there could be separated from uranium something that was radio-active, leaving the uranium itself negative in this respect. Becquerel followed by showing that the separated radio-active material soon lost its powers, and that the neutral body re-acquired activity, and Rutherford and Soddy elaborated the theory, now fairly well established, that radio-active elements are not permanent but are gradualy breaking up into elements of lower atomic weight. They are not immortal, but have a range of life varying from thousands of millions of years in the case of uranium to a few seconds in the case of the gaseous emanation from actinium. And they are vast reservoirs of energy, some of the energy being set free with each emanation. The quantity of energy stored in this fashion suggests some interesting side issues.

A gramme of

radium is capable of producing as much energy as would be set free in burning a ton of coal. These considertions have an important bearing on the age of the earth, a subject that has been discussed frequently at meetings of the Association. When biologists,

in the early days of evolution, were speculating as to the formation of the existing plants and animals by the slow accumulation of small modifications, they were accused of making unlimited drafts on the bank of time, and the physicists calculating the age of the earth on the basis that it was slowly losing its primitive heat by radiation into space, were inclined to dishonor such drafts. It is plain that the presence of radium in the crust of the earth completely destroys the basis on which physicists formerly made their estimates. The question, however, is only of academic interest from the point of view of evolution; as the successive strata actually show the succession of life, say from lower to higher mammals, it is plain that there must have been time enough for the change to take place.

We must now look on matter with new eyes. The old phrases as to inert matter, and so forth, and the old ideas of permanent, indestructible elements have disappeared, to be replaced by conceptions of matter as undergoing ceaseless change and as being inseparble from the conception of energy. On the other hand, the new knowledge of electricity, set forth in plain language by Sir Joseph Thomson, further breaks down the distinction between matter and energy. For now the structure of electricity can be spoken of and described. Negative electricity is particulate, consisting of innumerable units all of the same kind and exceedingly small, compared with the smallest atom; and the evidence is at least pointing towards a conception of positive electricity as also particulate, although the particles must be different and probably much larger. Then, again, the ether, formerly regarded as not much more than a useful hypothesis, is now to be accepted as a definite, ponderable substance capable of acquiring and losing momentum. Mole