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cumbered any longer with this millstone of an empire. To the working man it is of little consequence whether the Union Jack flies at Gibraltar, Quebec, and Calcutta; but of infinitely great importance that he have a fair share of the profits of production; that the necessaries and comforts of life be within his reach; that poison be not infused into the air he breathes and the water he drinks; that rational education be provided for his children, and that his legitimate dignity be not wounded by institutions designed to consecrate and perpetuate social inequality. The present generation must make up its mind to see these questions raised, and the next, probably, to see them settled."
Since those words were written we have had two Reform Bills. The working classes do not yet swamp the other electors because they are handicapped by sly regulations about registration, hours of polling, and so on. But even now they weigh heavily, and the first result of their intervention is a movement for Home Rule, which is rapidly spreading from Ireland to England, Wales and Scotland. When we have Home Rule for England there will be some chance that workmen's questions will come to the front. Workmen and non-workmen will have to be brought face to face in comparatively small governmental areas if the former are to have anything like a fair chance of getting their interests attended to. Home Rule for Ireland is the first and most obviously practical step in this direction.
Mr. Chamberlain says he is against the Bill because the tendency of modern Europe is to unification rather than separation. It is a thousand pities that so able a man should be so imperfectly informed. A fuller acquaintance with facts and a sounder theory of history would have taught him the worthlessness of his crude and hasty generalisation. Religious wars in the 16th and 17th centuries, commercial wars in the 18th, revolutionary wars in the 19th, have, it is true, driven the peoples of Europe to suspend their abiding and normal predilection for Home Rule in obedience to the exigencies of attack and defence. But the ascendency of industrial and pacific manners, now near at hand, will remove all induce-
