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heeded him not, and in his own despite he felt insulted by the neglect. "My faculties, he writes to Hunt, "are shaken to atoms and torpid. I can write nothing; and if 'Adonais' had no success what incentive can I have to write?" On the other hand, he was properly indifferent to the critics. They at least could not touch him. "As to reviews, don't give Gifford or his associate Hazlitt" -queer associates truly "a stripe the more for my sake. The man must be enviably happy whom reviews can make miserable. I have neither curiosity, interest, pain, nor pleasure in anything, good or evil, that they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder, that they presume to write my name. What would he say to-day, if he knew that every scrap of prose or verse that ever he wrote was cherished with a mad devotion, that he above all men had tempted the ghouls of literature to superhuman ingenuity?

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have been both the misery and the happiness of fame. The appreciation would have delighted his soul, as he would have shrunk in horror from that which has done his reputa

tion a grievous wrong-" the chatter about Harriett."

As we close these two stout volumes we reflect how dimly they reveal the real Shelley, the child of fancy and wonder, for whom the stress of the world meant too much and too little. And we turn with the pleasure of relief to the impassioned prose of a poet, to whom more than to any other the true spirit of Shelley has been revealed. "The universe is his box of toys," writes Francis Thomson. "He dabbles his fingers in the day-fall. He is gold-dusty with tumbling amid the stars. He makes bright mischief with the moon. The meteors nuzzle their noses in his hand. He teases into growling the kennelled thunder, and laughs at the striking of its fiery chain. He dances in and out of the gates of heaven: its floor is littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild over the fields of ether. He chases the rolling world." What word can be added to this? What mean all the letters, with their Hoggs and their Hunts and their Godwins, when we can picture Shelley alone with his poetry and "the universe his box of toys"?

THE THREE SPEECHES.

FROM Mr Balfour's speech at Birmingham, coupled with Mr Chamberlain's letter which was read to the meeting, three points emerge. The first, that the Budget, so far from being a poor man's Budget as the Ministerialists pretend, will injure the poor more severely than any other class in society. The second is that the principle underlying the whole measure, and leading directly to the confiscation of private property, is pure Socialism. The third is that it is the duty of the House of Lords to take care that such a measure is not passed into law till the opinion of the country has been taken. Part of the ground had been already traversed by Lord Rosebery in his speech at Glasgow. But the pretence, to the exposure of which Mr Balfour more especially devoted himself, has never been handled before so closely and so effectively as it was by the Unionist leader. The Government in posing as the poor man's friend have had all the advantage which the plausibility of a class-cry is sure to assume among the ignorant. But we doubt if we shall hear much more of it in future.

Mr Balfour's lucid demonstration that Socialism must necessarily tend to the reduction of the poor man's wages, and that the only way to prevent it is to encourage the investment of capital in home

industries by giving it adequate security, is as masterly in its way as Lord Rosebery's dissection of the entire Budget. We want to widen the area of employment and to cause money to be spent at home instead of going into the pockets of the foreigners. This can only be done by protecting ourselves against foreign competition, which now threatens us on all sides. England is not now where she was in 1846. Her commercial supremacy was then unquestioned, and in that position she could afford the experiment of Free Trade. But that position exists no longer. The experiment has failed. And if we still choose to be slaves to a wornout shibboleth we must take the consequences. The choice is before us, and the whole population of these islands must be made to understand what that choice is. When they do understand it neither Mr Chamberlain nor Mr Balfour has any fear of the result. Security, as they say, is of the very essence of industrial success, and if you tamper with security the first thing that you injure are the wage-earning classes of this country. The Budget does tamper with this security, and "cuts at the root of all enterprise," cuts the ground from under the feet of those by whom all modern work and modern business is carried on, and by whom the

poor man's wages have hitherto been paid. The first symptoms of what would follow if the Government had their own way are already visible. Mr Balfour refers to the Socialist answer, that if the land were the property of the State it would be distributed in small holdings among the poor. But, says Mr Balfour very truly, small holdings can never answer as tenancies. It is only the stimulus of of ownership which can make them payand, of course, the Socialists can never sanction any form of private ownership in land, Let the working man remember that. We may have our own opinion on the utility of small holdings, whether freehold or otherwise. That they could answer as an expedient for supporting whole classes of the population in lieu of wages is what no one in the slightest degree acquainted with the subject can believe for a moment. We agree with Mr Balfour that a judicious extension of them on conditions which have often been specified by experts, by land agents, by commissioners and others, who have practical experience of their working, is a wise and generous policy. peasantry 80 far have the Conservatives to thank for it rather than the Liberals; and they will never get it from the Socialists in any form which can really benefit them. Such a system if established by the State must inevitably collapse ere long, amid widespread misery and ruin.

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The whole argument comes back to this point-that you cannot injure the rich without injuring the poor. The latter depend upon the former, and must continue to do so to the end of the world. No doubt there is a certain class of politicians who say that the destruction of wealth would be cheaply purchased by the increase of poverty. Mr Balfour knows that we have these to reckon with. But such doctrines are alien to British common sense; and though they may pass muster for a time when set off with all the jargon of German anarchists, whenever they can be stripped of all their philosophic frippery they will, we agree with Mr Balfour, be indignantly repudiated. But this is the difficulty: there is the choice before the people. But who is to clear their minds from all the lies and the delusions which have been carefully instilled into them? What is wanted is an infusion into the Anti- Budget campaign of speakers taken from among the working classes. These they will listen to more attentively, perhaps, than to others of a higher station, who, however eloquent and popular, are always liable to the suspicion of interested motives. These are, nevertheless, rendering great service to the Constitutional cause. And the people like being talked to by gentlemen. But the campaign would be none the worse if a few selected artisans or peasants could be

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associated with them. The crisis with which we are confronted to-day has, says Mr Balfour, been obviously inevitable for some years. All the tendencies of domestic politics have been gradually working up to it. The particular moment has now come when even those who are most reluctant to say Yes or No to any proposition whatever must make their minds. They must say one or the other must commit themselves to one side or the other. Of this Budget you must remember, he says to the working men, that a poor man's Budget it is not. But your choice is limited to that, and the great fiscal change which will at least make us masters in our own house. The decision does not rest, as he tells us, with either the Lords or the Commons. It will not be decided at Westminster. The question before us is much more than a financial one. It involves a fundamental change in the organisation of society and in the machinery of the Constitution. "The only tribunal, the only court of final appeal which can declare between the two alternative policies now before the country, which can say whether we are to go down-hill under Socialism or up-hill under Tariff Reform, are the people of this country." It cannot be settled over their heads by a chance majority of the House of Commons returned when no such question was at issue.

Mr Balfour said at the be

ginning of his speech that he was not going to discuss the Budget in detail. That had been done by others, and of course the masterpiece of exposure has been Lord Rosebery. He lamented his own forced secession from his former friends, but found that he could no longer conceal from himself the goal towards which they were marching. On this road he could not accompany them one inch farther, and he spoke of the Socialist movement even more strongly than Mr Balfour.

There are always in the world men who regard Thought as an enemy, and gladly take refuge in any plausible excuse for avoiding it. These are they in whose ears the words "Thou shalt not surely die" are for ever sounding: suggesting that all predictions of future evil, consequent on our present conduct, are either the fictions of interested parties or the voice only of antiquated superstitions or feminine credulity. Even to such as these, however, we would venture to hope that the solemn words with which Lord Rosebery concluded his address at Glasgow will convey some message, rousing them for the moment at all events to the contemplation of possibilities which if ever thought of before have been put aside for a more convenient season.

We have never ceased to point out that under various forms, and on divers pretexts, Socialism was the one dominating principle to which the policy of the Government was

obedient. And now at last tradition, all alike been blinded Lord Rosebery can no longer dupes or sordid impostors ? conceal from himself that the This is the question which goal to which we are rapidly Lord Rosebery's words, above tending, as long as the present quoted, immediately bring beMinistry remain in power, is- fore us in the plainest and what? most direct form, and no one, who is not prepared to answer it in the affirmative, but must feel it his bounden duty to resist, through every channel that is open to him, the iniquitous scheme which would make a clean sweep of old England.

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"Socialism is the end of all, the negation of faith, of family, of property, of monarchy, of Empire." Maga' has said the same thing more than once, and the same words now come emphasised with all the authority of Lord Rosebery. The Socialists will of course reply so much the better. For them the past has no lustre; what England has been is to them nothing or worse than nothing; such terms as patriotism, honour, reverence, our national character, our domestic virtues, our political freedom, our respect for law and order, our rank among the nations of the world, are in their eyes but so much claptrap, by which fools have been gulled for centuries. Such is the Socialist creed. Can we, then, all have been mistaken? Have twenty generations of Englishmen, when they gloried in the greatness of their country and the power of her name, been dreaming dreams? Have all the genius, wisdom, and valour which have gone to make England what she is been wasted on a mischievous delusion, and on treasures which we now discover to be only pieces of slate? Have the statesmen, philosophers, and poets, the conquerors and colonisers who have for centuries bowed down before our great

It is perfectly plain that if Lord Rosebery's description of the Budget is correct there is only one course for the House of Lords to pursue. It is impossible that any alterations can now be made on the Budget, extracting its virus, without destroying its essence. The Government will not do this, and Mr Asquith, following Lord Rosebery, has told us pretty plainly what we have to expect. Let us now see what Lord Rosebery has given him to answer. Mr Asquith set out by saying that there being a deficit of sixteen millions the gap can only be filled up by this Budget. But of this Budget the land taxes are by far the most important and the most obnoxious part, and they will do next to nothing towards supplying the necessary amount. Then what other purpose are they meant to serve? This is the question asked by Lord Rosebery, and Mr Asquith offers no explanation of this obvious anomaly. If you lay exceptional taxation on a single great interest in

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