British Radicals and Radicalism

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from The Arena, Vol. XXIII, No.3, February 1900, pp. 254-270]

IF we were to eliminate from English history all those who in their generations were looked upon as radicals and iconoclasts we should have a series of lacunae in the record of that upward movement by which man in the British Islands has risen from a lower to a higher level. Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, Joseph Hume, and William Molesworth, together with the gentler individuality of George Grote, would have to be erased. The fine, chivalric personality of John Stuart Mill (whom we of to-day have ceased to regard as so very extreme a radical) would also have to be expunged. Most of these men were political Ishmaelites in their day whom neither of the two great political divisions cared to shelter. Their names were linked in much of the popular imagination with those of undoubted demagogues and charlatans.

The names of political parties in Great Britain mean hardly more than they do here. "Liberal" and "Conservative" are the convenient designations of political tendencies rather than of political divisions. The Liberal party is usually found a step or two in advance of the Conservative party during any particular phase in the evolution of a reform principle, but this is only a temporary relation of politics and by no means a permanent difference of apprehension. The Liberals have given to Ireland some of the most unpopular Chief Secretaries, such as Mr. William E. Forster; they have adopted as rigorous measures of coercion for Ireland as the Conservatives, and have repeatedly stood as opponents of measures of relief for the working masses, basing such opposition, it may be said in justification, on the laissez faire doctrines of the Manchester school. Outside of the two parties, the Radicals have heated and hammered the iron of reform into small swords, which they have placed now in the hands of Joseph Chamberlain or the late Lord Randolph Churchill, and now of Gladstone or Sir William Harcourt. The Radicals have been the advance guard of the great siege that is being waged against privilege, leaving the fruit and the loot of such victories as have been won to the Liberal army; and this in spite of the fact that many of the Radicals were stanch supporters of the main purposes and policies of the government. It is true that Mr. Labouchere was nominated for office by Mr. Gladstone; but the Queen would not assent, and his name was promptly withdrawn.

The Liberals when in power have not seldom emulated the Tories in retroactive measures, while the Tories out of power have nearly as often favored the enactment of Liberal measures. When, for example, the rumor of Irish-American plots - mostly rumor and nothing more - led Sir William Harcourt to introduce a bill strengthening the Explosives Act, Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords declared that no real reason existed for its passage. Lord Randolph Churchill in the very heart of the Conservative organization built up his Tory Democracy. The bulk of factory laws are the offspring of Tory, not of Liberal, legislation.

It was the merest accident that determined the place of Disraeli in the Conservative party. He was least of all a Conservative. His dream of Imperial federation likens him to James G. Blaine, and he was popular with the masses for the same reason that Mr. Blaine was. By a like accident of politics Parnell was forced to act with the Liberal party, with which he was nowise in sympathy; for neither by temperament nor conviction was Parnell a democrat. It is well known that for the land doctrines of Michael Davitt, which were those identified in America with the teachings of Henry George, he had declared his abhorrence. In the old days Joseph Chamberlain was called a Radical, but a great change has come over Mr. Chamberlain. No one has departed more widely from the course of those brave declarations that in his earlier Parliamentary career, as the political partner of that still uncompromising Radical and far greater man, Sir Charles Dilke, he used as a stepping-stone to hi9 present high official pedestal. All the vices that Mr. Chamberlain, when he was a Radical, attributed to the Tories, he has industriously practised since his conversion to Toryism. There were occasions when he accused the Tories of purposely complicating foreign affairs that attention might be diverted from questions at home. To-day he belittles every home question, applying to it the term "parochial," and insisting that the only questions of permanent interest to the United Kingdom are its foreign and colonial problems. As Lord Salisbury ridiculed "the policy of taking the public into the confidence of the government on the delicate questions that concern foreign and colonial policy," the question arises whether it is the government's intention hopelessly to distract and befog the British people.

To-day this policy governs the Salisbury ministry in the treatment of the Transvaal question. The government is on the eve of dissolution. Domestic problems are pressing to the fore. Almost every by-election has of late resulted in over- whelming Liberal victory. The Conservatives dare not "go to the country" on their record, and especially they dare not face the new questions that are pressing for solution. Mr. Chamberlain is a good politician in the measure of his unscrupulousness. His record - or shall I say his records, since the versatility of his career has identified him with a greater variety of policies than fall to the fortune of .most public men with whom politics is a trade rather than a conviction? - has been such as to render him a thorn in the side of the party that adopted him. His Radical atavism they look upon as likely to manifest itself at any time, and of this his party associates stand in wholesome dread.

The preposterous demands of British Imperialism are deliberately adopted as a party policy to avoid the alternative of meeting defeat at the polls. For this policy the Colonial Secretary is responsible. It has been adopted with a twofold purpose: the one that has been stated and another, which is to gain the consent of the English people to increased armaments that the program of British Imperialism may be perfected with additions.

The independence of the Transvaal after the British defeats at Lang's Neck and Majuba Hill was given back to the sturdy Boers, subject to an indeterminate and cloudy power of suzerainty by the British Crown. By the Convention of 1884 the independence of the Colony received additional confirmation. The name of the South African Republic was bestowed upon it, and its geographical limits were defined. In 1894 the Dutch colony absorbed part of the Zulu country, and to such annexation England offered no objection, though territorial additions have from "immemorial time" been regarded as the highest exercise of the sovereign power of a people. The claim of British suzerainty is thus reduced to a shadowy and 'unsubstantial pretense. But the Colonial Secretary seeks to construe it to mean a right of dictation to the Volksraad in purely domestic matters - and this in violation of England's most solemn pledges. But to this policy the English Radicals will certainly be opposed with united front; and it is not impossible that the versatile Colonial Secretary has committed the last great blunder of his political career. From the intrepid, public-spirited mayor of Birmingham, having to his credit an administration of public affairs that raised that municipality to a proud eminence among cities of the English-speaking world, to the "jingo" politician goading with bullying threats a brave people into resentment, is a contrast happily not often met with in the lives of men of undoubted qualities of intellect and capacity for public affairs.

The British "jingo" politicians perhaps base too much confidence in the excitableness of the London populace. The cable has told American readers of peace meetings interrupted and disorganized by Chamberlain sympathizers, and of soldiers carried on the shoulders of the mob at Trafalgar Square. But British Imperialism is always more noisy than the opposition, and such boisterous demonstrations are apt to be short lived. The natural bent of the English mind is toward conservatism, and the smothering of the maniacal patient under the cold blanket of reason and calculation is likely to put an end to the paroxysms.

Not all men who call themselves Radicals are such. John Stuart Mill has told us some men were Radicals because they were not Lords. Many well-known Radicals broke away from Mr. Gladstone, so shocked were their sensitive natures by the Irish Home Rule bill. Mere denunciations of social conditions have long ceased in English politics sharply to define Radical from Conservative. Nor should the Socialistic movement be confounded with the Radical movement in Great Britain. The former is the survival of extinct Chartism, with all the Chartist incoherence; the other is a more or less legitimate successor of that impulse started by Cobden and Bright with the abolition of the Corn Laws, and vaguely foreshadowed in the speeches of some of the great free traders. Careless or ill-informed writers sometimes confound Radicalism with Socialism ; but this is not true of Radicalism, of either the British or generic kind. It is largely because British Radicalism recognizes the evils of State interference that it favors disestablishment, home rule for Ireland, and the taxation of ground rents and land values - the latter permitting the abolition of prevailing onerous imposts. Socialists, on the other hand, are often found making party cause with the Conservatives, voting for the continuance of the Established Church and English rule in Ireland and against all progressive measures.

It is not always easy to define what the term Radical, as used politically in Great Britain, means. It is first necessary to understand that there is something startlingly frank in the discussion as to whether government by the masses or government by the cultivated classes is best for society. We should shrink from such appalling candor here, because political discussions have less the distinctive mark of sincerity. We veil the same purposes under political euphemisms, but in English politics there is no such dissimulation, speakers of the Conservative party often openly avowing their preference for class government.

One of the chief points of Radical attack in the past has been the House of Lords. The anomalous position of that body in the scheme of British government and its long continuance are a standing wonder to the foreigner, and especially to the democratic citizen of North America. Fifty years ago and more threats were uttered against the House of Peers. As long ago as 1839 Macaulay prophesied its abolition; but it still continues. To understand this one must understand the English character. Gladstone, had he chosen, might have led a successful attack against it; but Gladstone in all essential things was English - nay, for thirty years was England. A campaign against the Lords could wait. It will be remembered that Mr. Gladstone adopted the principle of Home Rule only when it was absolutely demonstrated by the election of 1884 that the majority of the Irish people were in favor of such a policy. The time has not come when England is prepared to sacrifice the House of Lords. There are many reasons for this long sufferance, after allowing for the conservatism of the British intellect. In British politics nothing transpires suddenly. It will be remembered that the first reform bill was passed in 1832, and it was not until 1867 that the second reform bill, establishing household suffrage in boroughs, was passed. And it was not until seventeen years later, in 1884, that such household suffrage was extended to the counties. The House of Lords has repeatedly disclaimed any intention of setting itself in opposition to the public will, and has thus prolonged its life beyond the allotted span of nineteenth-century anachronisms. Why Mr. Gladstone, at a time when the Liberal atmosphere was heavy and stagnant, did not choose to uplift and purify it by carrying out his threat, uttered with oracular solemnity against the Lords, is a secret now buried in the grave with the superb opportunist. This self-restraint, if a weakness, met with punishment; for the defeat of the Home Rule bill left the Liberals dispirited and without a rallying issue. Such to this day they have remained. The chief point of Radical attack to-day is not the House of Lords, but the existing land system. Whenever the Liberal party has moved in this direction the Radicals have been a little in advance, or, to speak more accurately, have been close at the rear urging forward the Liberals to measures touching land reform more drastic in effect and more explicit in declaration. It is not to be denied that the influence of the teachings of Henry George has been strongly felt in the trend of British politics. Davitt in the Irish party has not scrupled to avow his adhesion to these principles; and Sir George Trevelyan, nephew and biographer of Lord Macaulay, is an advocate of the taxation of ground rents and land values - two phases that, suggesting the same thing to the American reader, mean two distinct things to the British mind.

How imminent is the great land question in English politics is shown by a suggestive vote in the Commons a few months ago. A proposition to tax the land values of towns was introduced as an amendment to the Queen's speech by Mr. E. J. C. Morton. It was a bolt out of a clear sky. For the first time since this burning question of the land has entered English politics it came before Parliament in definite shape; for the first time, too, the Liberal party became officially committed, by the action of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in naming the official whips as tellers, to the question that must hereafter determine the rise and fall of parties and Parliamentary ambitions. The government could only muster a majority of thirty- four against the measure, though the normal majority is one hundred and forty. The speeches, notably that of Mr. Fletcher Moulton, were vigorous ; and the Commons rang with denunciations of the system that gives to those who do not earn the great public value of the Kingdom.

The land question is indeed coming to the front. "We make the money and they spend it" is a saying of the agricultural laborer, and by "they" are meant the ground landlords of England. Various devices have been adopted to head off this agitation, among which has been the effort to inject tariff discussions into the political arena with the intention of holding out delusive hopes to the agricultural voter.

One of the interesting issues to be decided in the next general Parliamentary election is that which centers around the subject of old-age pensions. On the question itself Conservatives, Liberals, and Radicals are practically agreed ; it is on the methods by which the funds to pay these pensions shall be raised that they part company. Curiously enough, to both Conservatives and Liberals are here presented an opportunity and a danger, in a manner that a few paragraphs may serve to make clear.

It was on August 12th of last year that Mr. Henry Chaplin, in a significant speech, "cast an anchor to windward." He proceeded to condemn as extravagant the estimate of certain newspapers that the old-age perfusion policy would call for a raising of from twelve to twenty million pounds sterling per annum. It is true that such a sum, Mr. Chaplin intimated, might be raised by a duty of five to ten shillings on foreign corn. But he warned the agricultural community not to be led away by such seductive suggestions (as if, indeed, agriculturists and not landlords could be benefited by such a duty). "But," continued the speaker, "if those who make this proposition will limit themselves to the old shilling duty upon grain, which would not add to the price because its removal did not cause a decline in price - a non sequitur, it may be suggested, not identical with demonstration! - it would suffice for a nice little nucleus for old-age pensions." In this way a "sop to Cerberus" was thrown out by the shifty Mr. Chaplin. Of course, these things are hazarded only as "feelers," as our American friends would say. There is no more chance of the reimposition of the grain duty in England than there is of the sea rising and swallowing her up. But the hope of such reimposition lives eternal in the Tory breast.

It is to be noted that such duties are defended, even by the insidious Tory protectionists, always as a revenue measure. But such is the genesis of even the highest tariffs ; they are born of a revenue mother into the hands of a protectionist accoucheur. The English protectionists sneer at free trade and the "Cobden fetish;" they timidly advance, even while they disavow, the arguments overthrown in 1847, but even while disavowing they talk of a preferential duty of one shilling on all grain from the English colonies and two shillings on grain from Russia and elsewhere. They ask how the pension scheme can be carried out if not by bringing under taxation some article of general consumption. In the answer to this question are involved the opportunity and the danger at which I have hinted. The opportunity for the Conservatives is the drawing of a red herring across the path of the pending question of the taxation of land values ; the danger is that in raising the issue of protection in the guise of revenue schemes the Conservatives may conjure a Frankenstein to destroy them. To the Liberals the issue likewise presents a danger and an opportunity. The danger is that they may accept a compromise between the grain duties proposed and the taxation of land values; their opportunity is to raise the true standard of fiscal reform in a general attack all along the line on imperial methods of taxation and to call for the imposition of a direct tax upon the land values of the Kingdom. And for this British, especially Scottish, opinion is fully ripe.

Years ago, when Mr. George's doctrines were first proposed, the Radicals denounced them; yet they were openly accused of harboring them. To-day they have ceased to disavow them. There are certainly over sixty members of the Commons pledged to the principle for which Mr. George stood, and not all of them are Radicals in the party sense. The Radical election for members of the London County Council turned exclusively upon the question of ground rents, and the Progressive Radicals won. In more than one quarter a consciousness has arisen that in dealing with the Irish question the voters are really dealing with the land question. The forcible reduction of Irish rents, too, has familiarized the slow-going English mind with the truth that property in land is not to be regarded with the same sacredness as property in things produced by labor. The Liberal program to-day advocates "the taxation of ground rents, land values, and mining royalties" - a tautological inventory, for the benefit of the popular mind, of one and the same unearned increment.

When in 1880, on the wave of a tremendous majority, the Liberals came back to power with Mr. Gladstone at their head, the Radicals were few in number and lacking in influence. They were utterly without a rallying issue that would close their ranks for defensive or offensive warfare. They were content to place themselves under the leadership of Mr. Gladstone, though some were looking to Sir Charles Dilke and some to Mr. Chamberlain.

The mention of Sir Charles Dilke calls to mind the leading English Radical of to-day. Years ago he declared himself a republican. With abilities more solid and conspicuous than those of Labouchere, the present member of Parliament for the Forest of Dean is still a large figure in English public life. Stroke oar of Cambridge, Senior in the Law Tripos, with a scholarship in mathematics and the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Laws - these mark his college course ; and the immediate after years found him in 1869 and 1870 traveling through the great empire of Russia and observing with a keen and philosophic eye all that was unrolled in the panorama before him. How closely he observes, and with what power of analysis he scrutinizes and dissects, readers of "Greater Britain" can testify. This work, written during his tour around the world in 1866-7, W *U remain as one of the literary masterpieces of the time. The success it achieved was instantaneous. Sir Charles was a very young man at that time, which increases the marvel of this achievement, for the thought is ripened and matured. Young Dilke had been brought up surrounded by every luxury, under the guardianship of a perhaps too indulgent father, his mother having died while he was yet a child ; but he was possessed of studious inclinations and a love for outdoor sports, and his habits thus conduced to the ideal of "a sound mind in a sound body.

There was a time when Sir Charles was accustomed to hearing himself introduced to British audiences as "the future Prime Minister of England." This was when he and Mr. Chamberlain were political partners, and when the two were dividing between them nearly all the public attention that Gladstone was not reserving for himself. The first of his public utterances that singled him out from the tribe of smaller politicians was his famous speech at Tyneside on "The Cost of the Crown," in which, with extraordinary fluency and humor, he went into the expense entailed on the people by the long line of royal functionaries - Rat Catcher in Ordinary, Grand Falconer to Her Majesty, and other dignitaries attached to the retinue of her royal person. The speech was particularly audacious, but rather tickled the British people as its humor slowly percolated. The chief merit of the speech was that there was no possible reply to it.

Sir Charles has two styles of speaking - a Parliamentary and a platform style. We hear less of the latter than of the former nowadays from Dilke. A Parliamentary career does not conduce to effective public speaking. Eloquence has a subordinate place in the House of Commons. What the House does appreciate, and what the party following in the country does expect from its favorite in the House, is adequate strength in debate. There is just enough of the belligerent in the British nature to be on the lookout for an intellectual tussle; and this the elector anticipates and is disappointed if he does not get. But men who have been long in Parliament and who venture to address public audiences are almost sure to fail in arousing strong public sentiment, because a certain impassivity has become a House of Commons habit. With Dilke this is very marked. He can and does say the sharpest and most cutting things; but his extraordinary deliberation of manner, reenforced by the Parliamentary habit, gives to his utterances an effect not a little queer. These bitter things are said with inconceivable decorum; but there is always evidence of the orderly mind. Sir Charles's mental housekeeping is of the neatest. His answers to questions are said to be equal to those of any public man in England, and he ranks to-day as the greatest Parliamentary authority on the British navy.

Not every member, nor perhaps even a majority of the Irish Home Rulers, are Radicals in either the real or party sense. I have indicated that Mr. Parnell was not - that the whole bent of his mind was toward conservatism. The same is true of the present Irish Home Rulers. Of these Michael Davitt is a Radical in every physical and moral fiber. He has suffered, too, for his convictions. In 1870, on the charge of treason-felony, he was condemned to fifteen years' penal servitude and served ten years. Since then he has been imprisoned several times for seditious speeches. In 1879, * n association with Mr. Parnell, he founded the Land League organization, and in 1884 he published his well-known "Leaves from a Prison Diary." Davitt alone of the Irish leaders, as I have said, has radical views on the land question; he would use the taxing power to destroy land monopoly.

It is small wonder that this Irishman grew up with a hatred of landlordism. When young Davitt was a mere baby in arms, his father, in the county of Mayo in which Davitt was born, was evicted from the little plot of land that constituted the family's sole subsistence. When a boy he went to work in a mill, and there lost his arm. At fifteen years of age he became a letter-carrier. When a young man Davitt was a Fenian, and moreover a Fenian conspirator. He has never denied it; indeed, he is rather proud of it. But he has come to take a different and a nobler view of things. In the letter he wrote after the murder of Burke and Cavendish he said, freely: "This let me say for myself: If, in the hot blood of early manhood, smarting under the cruelties and indignities perpetrated on my country, I saw in an appeal to force the only means of succoring her, there has dawned upon my graver thoughts, in the bitter solitude of a felon's cell, a nobler vision - a dream of the enfranchisement and fraternization of peoples, of the conquering of hate by justice."

Although Parnell condemned the land theories of Davitt, yet the latter has lived to see the Parnell idea overthrown, and the narrow principle in the party policy of Irishmen invoked with such masterfulness and carried so near to achievement as far away as ever. There are but few men in England, and but fewer still of the Irish leaders, in whose efforts public opinion believes that personal ambition has no place. Yet Davitt has come to be so regarded. Of late, it must be confessed, he has not seemed to perceive so clearly all that is involved in a real and final settlement of the land question. I say this not because of any public declaration that Davitt has made, but for the reason that within the present year there has been organized in Ireland the United Irish League, in which Michael Davitt is one of the chief leaders, and the published program of which shows but an imperfect and halting conception of the land rights of the people of Ireland. Two clauses, the second and third of the constitution, are appended, which advocate:

"The abolition of landlordism in Ireland by means of a universal and compulsory system of purchase of the landlord's interest, together with the reinstatement of tenants evicted in connection with the land war, and the restoration, to the legal status of tenancy, of caretakers and future tenants whose rights were sacrificed by the operation of the 7th section of the Land Act of 1887.

"The putting an end to agricultural distress and famine in the West by abolishing, on terms of just compensation to all interests affected, the unnatural system by which all the richest acres of the province are monopolized by a small ring of graziers, and restoring to the people the occupation of these lands in holdings of sufficient size and quality."

That such a program, involving as it does radical imperfections from a practical standpoint, and worse defects from the standpoint of principle, should be associated with the name of Michael Davitt will surprise all of his friends on this side of the water who know him best. He, better than most men, should know the futility, injustice, and impolicy of the allotment system, or of legal limitations of land-holding. Either the land of Ireland belongs to all the people of Ireland or it does not. If it does, the proposed system of compulsory purchase is what kindred measures have lcng been known to be - "a landlords' relief bill," and a contemptuous impertinence addressed to the intelligence of the taxpayers; but if it does not, then do such limitations as are suggested transgress the most sacred rights of property. And of this no one is more fully aware than Michael Davitt.

Of the Radical representatives of labor in Parliament who are not Socialists the most eminent is Thomas Burt, miners' representative of one of the divisions of Northumberland. He has been in Parliament since 1874, and is the son of a miner and a miners' representative in the House. He has been present at all the Miners' International Conferences, has written much, and is one of the strongest political forces in public life. He began working in the coal mines at ten years of age. In 1892 Mr. Gladstone invited him to become Parliamentary secretary to the Board of Trade, a position that Mr. Burt accepted.

Among Radicals not in official life is Edward Evans, jr., one of the real leaders of the Liberal party. He is vice-president of the Liberal Federation. He is a young man - young as English politicians go, being only about forty years of age.

Among Scotch Radicals the most prominent is Sir Charles Cameron, M.P. Sir Charles was created a baronet for his services in inaugurating the six-penny telegraph system. It is interesting to know that he had to fight for years to accomplish a reform that seems to embody so little. He was also successful in championing the cause of municipal suffrage for women in Scotland. He is the proprietor of the North British Daily Mail and the Glasgow IVcckly Mail, which has the largest circulation of any weekly journal in Scotland. Another Scotch Radical is Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Bart., M.P., Liberal party leader. There was a time when all parties would have united upon him for Speaker despite his well-known Radicalism; for he is quite as famous for his judicial temperament. He has the fashion of uttering the most audacious and far- reaching sentiments in the coldest-blooded and most matter- of-fact way. He is a large landlord of city property. He has represented Stirling since 1868, and was Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1884-5. He was educated at the University of Glasgow and at Trinity College, Cambridge. It was the adverse reception given to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's motion to dispense with the Duke of Cambridge's services in the army that in 1895 led to the dissolution of Parliament and the resignation of the Liberal leaders.

Wales numbers thirty members in the House, and nearly all are Radicals. Of these David Lloyd George is one of the most hopeful. But to Alfred Thomas is due the credit of having formed the Welsh party in the House in the last few months. He and many of the others hold advanced doctrines on the land question. Mr. Thomas has represented Glamorganshire since 1885, and is about sixty years old; he is a prominent and successful merchant, and was president of the Baptist Union of Wales and at one time Mayor of Cardiff. Wales is, of course, overwhelmingly Non-conformist, and the threat of the House of Lords to defeat the Welsh Disestablishment bill will have the effect of uniting the Welsh members against the Upper House when the clock of doom shall strike for that body.

Not only because of his position as president of the Liverpool Financial Reform Association, of which Gladstone's brother was the first president, does Edmund Knowlcs Muspratt deserve a distinguished place among the Radical leaders. He is one the greatest living authorities on taxation in the United Kingdom. He is the head of a great firm of alkali manufacturers with headquarters at Liverpool, but in spite of large business interests he has been active in more than one movement for the betterment of the lives of his fellows. The Financial Reform Association has done great work in fiscal reform, and of this organization Mr. Muspratt has been an active member for forty years and president for twenty-six. He was born in 1833 and studied in Germany under Baron Liebig.

John Ferguson, a publisher and stationer in Glasgow, is one of the founders of the Scottish Land Restoration League and an eloquent and persuasive orator. The Irish Nationalist movement found in him an earnest advocate, and the advanced position that the Glasgow Council has lately taken in promoting a bill in Parliament to give power to municipalities to tax land values is due in no small measure to the work of John Ferguson.

W. H. Lever is an English Radical and an energetic business man whose "Sunlight Soap" is known all over Great Britain. He has two factories, one at Birkenhead and one in Australia. He contested Birkenhead, a Tory stronghold, and brought down a Conservative majority of two thousand to one hundred.

W. P. Byles, proprietor of the Bradford Observer, of which his father was the founder, is a man of singular independence of character - and is thus not popular with the party managers, though looked up to with admiration and respect by the people, and especially by the laboring people, whose cause he has so loyally championed. He is the only employer of labor in Bradford who appeared on the platform during the engineers' strike to defend the union's position. In 1892 he won his seat in Parliament. He is a strong advocate of international arbitration and the reduction of armaments. Mr. Byles is a brave, consistent friend of freedom, one of the many who are helping to bring the English people and all mankind up out of the darkness of social slavery into the light of liberty. J. McGuffin Greaves, who conducts the public debates on market-days in the city of Manchester, is one of the best informed men in Great Britain and one of the most representative of non-official Radicals. J. W. S. Callie, who is editor of the "Financial Reform Almanack" - the Radical Bible - and secretary of the Financial Reform Association, is a strong man in the Radical party. So, too, is Sir George Newnes, proprietor of The Strand and Tit-Bits, who has served in Parliament; and Sir John Lang, M.P., proprietor of the Dundee Advertiser. There are three miners' representatives in the Commons from whom, when the Radical tide shall have risen higher, the world may hear more - Charles Fenwick, Sam Woods, and John Wilson. Richard McGhee, M.P., is a land restorationist and a rugged, fearless type of man. Augustine Birrell, M.P., the well-known author of "Obiter Dicta," one of the most skilful and original of critics, with a style that fairly radiates with epigram and humor, is a far more robust Radical than one expects to find among members of the liigher literary craft. Labouchere is of course too well known to need introduction to American readers. His most grave defect, perhaps, is his absence of seriousness. More even than the Americans, the English distrust humor as a quality in their public men.

These are a few of the men that are shaping Radical political thought in Great Britain. A great many others, not usually considered Radicals, are doing as much. But a few months have gone by since John Morley announced himself as an advocate of the recovery of all rights in land. How the land question is looming up in British politics may be seen from this declaration, issued with the approval of the National Liberal Federation:

"Lord Salisbury constitutes himself the spokesman of a class - of the class to which he himself belongs - who toil not, neither do they spin ; whose fortunes, as in his case, originated in grants made long ago for such services as courtiers render kings, and have since grown and increased, while their owners slept, by the levy of an unearned share on all that other men have done by toil and labor to add to the general wealth and prosperity of the country of which they form a part."

But political issues in Great Britain are only shaping themselves. Both Liberals and Conservatives are without a definite program, and the Radicals are not less so. It would not even be possible to state the exact issue upon which the last general Parliamentary elections of 1895 were decided. But the great, overshadowing, and everywhere impending question is that of man's equal rights to the land of Great Britain. When this issue comes we may expect many of the Liberals, and perhaps even some of the Radicals, to fall away. All the Socialists will certainly do so - but, intellectually and numerically, the Socialists are of small importance. I would exempt, however, from such depreciatory estimate many of the Fabians, since men like Bernard Shaw are of them; but the Fabians themselves seem to me, with their lack of vitality and want of robust appreciation of what is really the matter with society, a thin and shadowy group - the very pre-Raphaelites of political economy. I do not doubt the earnestness of these mild and inoffensive teachers any more than I do the appalling length of their social program. But for all practical purposes - in the gathering impetus of that movement of social reform destined to destroy in both English- speaking countries those systems that oppress man, produce inequalities, and turn the very agencies of civilization to its own destruction - Socialism is even of less importance than the fabled fly upon the chariot wheel. For the fly does survive after all these centuries in a story that illustrates its moral ; but for the ephemera of economic error who dare predict a like longevity?