" But past century by too much spite of Mr Masterman's conaid than by too little. tempt. Not a word has he to it is evident that any stick say of the vast enterprises, of is good enough to beat the the quick inventions, of the Conquerors withal. On one masterly organisations which page they are blamed because, have given the Conquerors while they compete for the their victory. They have won pictures of great masters,"-a either by the thrift and forecompetition which, by the way, sight of their ancestors or by was long since transferred to their own talents, and though America, they "leave the men Mr Masterman may assume of genius of their own age to that nothing is of value in starve." On another page it the world save manual toil, it is stated as though it were is to the leadership of their the Conquerors' own fault that Conquerors in industry and England has no men of genius politics that England and at all. Here they are charged every other nation under the with wasting their time in sky owe their prosperity. the discussion of British Art, of the Opera, of "decadent French plays" (O, Mr Masterman, haven't you outgrown that "decadent " yet?), pleasures which seem harmless enough; there they are told that their life is a "delirium"; and at last they are informed that they spend their money in the maintenance of a life "bringing leisure, ease, and grace, some effort towards charities and public services, an interest, real or assumed, in literature, music, art, and a local or national welfare." What more the poor things could do we do not know, and we do not suppose Mr Masterman knows, and if he did know he could not tell us, for the habits of assertion and selfcontradiction are too strong upon him. Yet leisure, ease, grace, charities, and public services, local or national welfare, are not these enough to fill a well-earned retirement? For the retirement is well earned by a vast majority, in senting ministers; we have Having demolished the Conquerors, and left upon them not a rag of respectability or talent or esteem, Mr Masterman, himself a Conqueror, proceeds to rail at the Middle Classes, or, as as he prefers to call them, 66 the Suburbans." Concerning them he has made many pleasant discoveries. He is sure, for instance, that they are the product of the last half century, and forgets that for two generations they had a large share in the government of England. To whom did Bright and Cobden appeal? The Middle Classes. Who was it that insisted, for their own purposes, upon the repeal of the Corn Laws? Cobden himself had no doubt. His agitation, he knew, was a middleclass agitation. We have carried it on," said he, "by those means by which the Middle Class usually carries on its movements. We have had our meetings of dis obtained the co-operation of the ladies; we have resorted to tea-parties, and taken those pacific means which mark us rather as a middle-class set of agitators." Here is Suburbia in all its energetic uncomeliness, and Mr Masterman believes that it is not fifty years old! Perhaps he himself slept until 1906, and marks the beginning from that inauspicious year. At any rate, he is sure that the Middle Classes are easily forgotten, that nobody fears them, and nobody respects them. He has also arrived at the conclusion that they are the peculiar product of England and America, as though France were not the home of the bourgeoisie, as though Germany had not her Philistines. And now that he has discovered them, he knows not what to make of them. On one page he deplores their "devitalised life"; on another he applauds the "clean and virile life" which he has detected "in these regions," and finds therein "the healthiest and most hopeful promise for the future of modern England." But amid the many uncertainties one thing is certain: the Suburbans are infinitely inferior to the Working Classes. The County Council election of 1907 (not of 1908, as Mr Masterman says) still rankles in the breast of the Radical. "The Progressive Party," we are told, "ended its political career in the Metropolis because it had forgotten the 'Middle Classes.' Ill as we think of the Progressive Party, we should not have believed it quite so foolish as that. However, in Mr Masterman's opinion, the Middle Classes are evidently unfit to vote. When they defend themselves at the polls against the aggression of working-men, Mr Masterman calls their action an "uprising.' If they dare to use the privilege of the ballot-box, they are "fierce" and "feverish." They do not walk to the booths like the respectable Progressive, they swarm." Briefly, to quote Mr Masterman's own words: "In an an unexpected whirlwind of ferocity, a Progressive Party, hitherto unconquerable, finds itself almost annihilated. The general effect is that of being suddenly butted by a sheep." Doubtless the Suburbans will be enchanted with this amiable image. Unhappily it is insolent rather than accurate. If Mr Masterman must have a comparison, let him liken the Middle Classes not to a butting sheep but to a decent householder who, having caught a burglar fully armed with jemmy and crowbar, collars him stoutly, and hands him over with all the proofs of crime upon him to the policeman at the corner. Yet, wicked as he is, the Suburban need not languish without hope. "Even the Socialist," says Mr Masterman, "no longer turns from the Middle Classes in disgust,”. a generous concession, which has already increased the rents of Balham and Upper Tooting by twenty-five per cent. So, in the the same dreary, hesitant displeasure Mr Master man discusses the Multitude. "A hardy race of men," he calls it, "whose efforts in skill, perseverance, and indefatigable industry have earned them supremacy in the markets of the world." It has been noticed that after the manner of his kind Mr Masterman has no word of praise for those who initiate and control all enterprises. They do not work with their hands, and therefore their skill, perseverance, and indefatigable industry are not worth mentioning. Nor does the hardy race itself long keep its place in Mr Masterman's esteem. Presently he quotes with approval the opinion of a "brilliant young "Socialist, who "cannot look with full confidence upon the English electorate. "It is hardly disputable," says the brilliant one, "that millions of electors in the greater cities have reached a point of personal decadence physical, mental, and moral-to which no Continental country furnishes a parallel on any comparable scale." We do not believe that the decadence of England is worse than the decadence - let us say of France. But it is true that the vast majority of electors in great cities all the world over are wholly unfit to exeroise the franchise; and the vain boastings of theoretical democrats cannot more wisely be met than with the statement of the Socialist, on whom Mr Masterman has smiled his approval. Mr Masterman, indeed, seems sensible, at intervals, of impending ruin. With a kind of cheerfulness he admits that we are passing "to the antithesis which Nietzsche foresaw many years ago - the Many against the Few-the demands of incapacity to share in the benefits created by the competent.' When this deathknell of competence is sounded Mr Masterman, we assume, will be on the side of the Many. And he will face the disaster with a strange solace. He takes comfort in the reflection that of Nineveh there remains but a heap, of Tyre but a spit of sandy shore, for the reflection "releases him from the tyranny of a present which sees no change possible." Better, say the apostles of change at any price, that London should lie in ashes than that she should retain her prosperity unchanged! And much it will profit the Many to find a common grave with their Few adversaries! The world is well lost, they will murmur, now that our envy is assuaged! We have considered Mr Masterman's book at some length-not because he or it deserves it. Foolish books are no rarer in this world than writers incapable of clear thought or of clear speech. But Mr Masterman aspires to the art of government; he has put himself forward as one capable of guiding the ship of state; and this book is his certificate. And having read it with care, we can come to no other conclusion than that he lacks all the qualities which the craft of government demands. He does not possess knowledge or judgment or ob servation. He would picture England with nothing to aid him but a vague sense of "perfectibility." He cheerfully dismisses all the facts of life and history which do not chime with his sentiment. He finds a crime in prosperity, a disgrace in service. Work for another seems to him a degradation, and yet he should know that the vast multitude is wholly incapable of working for itself. Thus it is that our politicians would lightly rush in to the domain of statesmanship, not in a spirit of humble patriotism, but to exercise a profession or gratify a desire. The amateur, who would not presume to make a pair of boots, is ready to take upon himself the duties of statecraft. Now these duties are neither few nor light, and the amateur cannot be forgiven if he fail because he has not formed & proper estimate of his powers. "No man is compelled," said Demosthenes, conduct public business, but he who has once undertaken it may not set up honest incapacity as an excuse for failure. Such a plea would be a small consolation to ruined allies, and to their wives and children." To speak of allies at a time when our politics have degenerated into a system of public bribes seems almost irrelevant, but England will presently awake from her dreams of greed, and will ask again what are the qualities of the statesman. Once more let Demosthenes speak. He would demand of a statesman that "to he should "see events in their beginnings, forecast the future, forewarn others"; that he should "limit to the utmost the range of these vices which are inherent in the very idea of a state"; that he should "promote harmony, kindly feeling, and the impulse towards duty.' Tried by this standard, our politicians of to-day fail miserably. As a mob of honest "proletarians" left a meeting which had been addressed by the Prime Minister not long since, 66 we don't want your charity," they cried they cried to the passers-by, "we want your money, and we mean to have it." Thus is "kindly feeling promoted; thus is brigandage publicly preached by the politicians of to-day. The amateur in politics, forgetting Demosthenes, is wont to believe without warrant that he is justified of the last folly, if only he means well. Mr Masterman means well-that is evident on every page of his book. Mr LloydGeorge, on the other hand, keeps steadily before him the baser ends of politics. In the words of Thucydides, he has 'applied himself to the people, and let go the care of the Commonwealth." Like Mr Masterman, he has a hatred of wealth, but his hatred is practical, not merely sentimental. He intends, if he can, to strengthen his own position by distributing the wealth of others. The old adage said that the three objects of statesmanship were (1) Security to possessors; (2) Facility to acquirers; (3) Hope to all. This Mr Lloyd - George has sentimentality, that ensure freely translated into (1) wholesome reaction. "DecepSecurity to none; (2) Facility tion," said Mr Lloyd-George to plunderers; (3) Hope to the on this great occasion, "is althriftless. He worships num- ways a pretty contemptible bers with a constant heart. He vice," but, added he with tears knows no other gods than in his voice, "to deceive the majorities. No man was ever poor is the meanest of all less careful of his country's crimes." Limehouse answered welfare. The responsibilities with its cheers, and Mr Lloydof office sit so lightly upon him George proceeded cheerfully to that he holds himself not as a commit "the meanest of all Secretary for State, but as a crimes for three columns of noisy demagogue. If only he print. He spoke no word that could take a lesson in deport- was not a deceit, and probably ment from Mr John Burns, by this time all Limehouse how much better it would be knows how much the speech for him and the country! Mr was worth. His many inacBurns knows the "People,' "People," curacies have long ago been estimating it at its proper exposed, and need not detain worth, and the disapproval of us an instant. A word may be Mr Keir Hardie and his friends said about his main argument, is his highest testimonial. But which the inaccuracies were Mr Lloyd - George fears the intended to illustrate. In the "People" as ardently as he old-fashioned melodramas, dear toadies it. He humours it in to the frequenters of the Brihis speeches; he durst not an- tannia Theatre, the villain was ger it by contradiction. Even always a Baronet, who might Mr Gladstone, amiably as he easily be recognised by a maflattered the Multitude, knew lacca cane and a seedy suit of how to inflame it with his own dress elothes. When the wicked desires, his own ambitions. Mr Baronet was not busy with the Lloyd-George is a new element destruction of valuable docuin our politics, though not in ments, he was engaged in abthe politics of the world. ducting the heroine, and he Aristophanes knew him, and was rewarded at the fall of drew him vividly enough in the curtain with the hissed the Sausage-Seller. But never execrations of the whole house. before has he sat unashamed Mr Lloyd-George has invented in a British Cabinet. And a landlord, whom he delights even now he reserves his to call a Duke, and who is ohoicest effects for popular as absurd a travesty of audiences. A month ago he human nature as the Baronet delivered an oration at Lime- of the Britannia. He is a blackmailer, this bogey of Mr Lloyd-George, who delights to grind the face of the people, who refuses to pay his taxes, whose "sole function and chief house, which we welcome as the worst specimen of its kind. We welcome it because it is such mixtures of cant and truculence, of exaggeration and VOL. CLXXXVI.—NO. MCXXVII. 2 G |