moving, though the lights broke slowly through the utter darkness, and it was hard at first to overcome the inveterate vis inertia. But in the last fifty or sixty years-for a few years more or less count for nothing in the circumstancesthe pace has become unparalleled, as it has been steadily increasing in something like geometrical progression.

The gains and material advances in the last sixty years of English life have been immense; the accumulations of capital have been simply unprecedented, while credit has practically had carte blanche; we have been sending out our surplus population to people continents and territories; science and invention, stimulated by great prizes, have been anticipating our needs, and ministering to our social conveniences. The art of living agreeably has been cultivated. The doctors, with their discoveries and the sanitary measures they suggest, have been getting the better of epidemics, and holding death at bay; the increase in riches, with the diffusion of comfort, has been more broadly distributed than is generally believed; and, in short, there can be little question that the world in general has good cause for congratulation. It is impossible to realise the blank desolation of the social eclipse were the hands of the clock of progress to be put back for half a century. Yet the world in

general must lament over wasted opportunities. Nations that were isolated before have been brought into close and continual contact. Their pulses are perpetually throbbing in mechanical unison through a sensitive network of electrical wires. Unhappily the harmony is merely mechanical, and the reign of universal peace and goodwill seems as far removed from us as ever. As for England, with which we are more nearly concerned, we only know that the eventful era of which I write has seen our departure in new and unfamiliar ways, with the extinction of our most cherished political traditions. The Constitution, which had been the slow growth of ripe experience, which had stood the double test of time and trials, under which the country had grown rich and populous, while the home islands had expanded into a vast foreign empire, has been radically modified, if not absolutely revolutionised, by a double transfer of political power. Measures that were precipitated by imaginary party exigencies might have been inevitable sooner or later; all the same, it remains to be seen how far they may answer the expectations of their sanguine authors, or falsify the prognostications of more cautious patriots. The old maxim as to not disturbing what is quiet will suggest itself to conservative minds without distinction of party. We hope the best, and are

inclined to believe it; for we have faith in British luck as in the sterling sense of the people. But the stakes in this new departure are so momentous, that we may well await with anxiety the solution of critical problems.

Dismissing these vital constitutional considerations, it is more agreeable at the commencement of a review of the reign to turn to the position and capabilities of our country. We may safely say that in the last fifty or sixty years England has become relatively a more formidable Power to reckon with than when, subsidising the allies that abandoned her on their defeats, she maintained the tremendous and exhausting struggle that exiled Napoleon to St Helena. The increase of her wealth, of her industries and her commerce, has been enormous, as her population has wellnigh doubled itself, notwithstanding incessant emigration. In spite of the chronic complaints of the working classes, who have been striking against wages that would have seemed wealth to their fathers, all men who are willing to work have had their share in the growing prosperity. The emigration, far from draining the veins of the mother country, has relieved the congestion that found vent in social disturbances more dangerous than any we have lately had to deal with. It has been peopling new dominions beyond the seas with men of one blood, language,

and religion, who are bound to us by common interests and sympathies. There has been a

heavy fall in Irish rents, and the new attitude of English Radicals has complicated the political question; otherwise, Ireland is very much as she was, as may be seen by consulting the journals of fifty years ago, while the discontented population has been enormously reduced. India has been consolidated by annexation or conciliation; the great feudatories enclosed in their semi-independence in British territory have more enlightened ideas as to the wisdom of loyalty; the wild and warlike elements in the population are betaking themselves to peaceful work; and now we rule a united empire isolated or fortified within a ring-fence by the seas, the Himalayas, and the frontier of the Indus. Unfriendly foreign critics are fond of sneering at our growing impotence, of ridiculing our involuntary selfabnegation in European affairs, of predicting our decline to the second rank of States. They fail to remember, or choose to forget, that our abnegation has been very much a matter of choice, and that we are saving the money which is the sinews of war, while Continental nations are spending. As we indulge ourselves in exemption from conscription, we can no longer put great standing armies in the field, as, relying too entirely on our insular security, we may have

been retrenching imprudently on the expenditure in fortifications and war-ships. But the men are there, so is the money; and the fact remains that we have resources and reserves such as no rival European Power possesses. Should the necessity arise, which God forbid, we have always that Continental conscription to fall back upon; and, were the emergency sufficiently serious, the country might clamour for conscription. Short of that, whether in England or India, or even in the Colonies, recruiting is a mere matter of pay. In her Majesty's wide dominions we have the finest fighting material in the world, for service anywhere between the equator and the poles. Money would be forthcoming to float flying squadrons of the more handy ships and the lighter craft of the future, arming them with the war material we could turn out in perfection. Money would be found to make the fortresses and harbours practically impregnable, with which we lay an iron grasp on the ocean routes, from the Cape to Hong Kong, and from Gibraltar to the Bermudas. If we will only waken up to take due precautions against surprise, we may safely trust our honour to time and Providence. It has hitherto, perhaps, been a more serious matter that, owing to our Constitution being so absolutely free, the country should have been frequently changing its Ministries, which un