proposal was amazing; or let any man accustomed to deal with an ordinary West End tailor-not an especially extravagant or fashionable one-find himself obliged by press of losses to inquire what price he really need pay for an equally well-made suit furnished by some a little further or a little less known, and then calculate the difference in his family expenditure the transfer of his custom in that one item will effect. Or, finally, let him take a little pains, and he will be surprised to find that a pair of boots for which he has been accustomed to pay 35s. or 40s. in Mayfair without a murmur, can be obtained in quarters scarcely nearer Temple Bar, just as good, quite as lasting and almost as seemly for 14s. or 21s., with no better reason for the difference than that on inquiry he may learn that the latter article is "country made." In a word, while the wholesale cost of many articles of general consumption has dropped 30 per cent., how few of us have been able to obtain a reduction of even 10 per cent. from our retail suppliers,—at least till it was made clear that the alternative was the transfer of our custom to "the Stores." In conclusion, has not the conviction been gradually forced upon all most careful housekeepers dealing with inexpansive incomes of £2500 a year or under, that--what with illicit connivance between their servants and their trades-people in the form of "tips," and laxity as to weight and quantities, and eschewing or neglecting the righteous claims of ready money, and paying for the bad debts of slipping fellow-customers, to say nothing

of their own idleness and lack of vigilance—they have been in the habit undeniably of simply wasting, through one channel or another, at least one-fourth of their annual expenditure,-which in future they will be resolute to save ?

Inevitably, in the course of a change from an unhealthy to a thoroughly sound system of dealing between man and man-as in all analogous improvements since our complicated social arrangements grew up, some parties will suffer and find the ground cut from under them. All that can be confidently asserted is that they cannot mend matters by opposing what is at once irresistible, righteous, and for the good of the mass of the community. Unquestionably many retail dealers will have to abandon a business which they have rarely found a satisfactory or profitable one, or one possible to carry on without resorting to practices more or less questionable. Many more will be driven to change from an unsound and unsafe system to a sound and safe one. Many who are now competitors will find it their interest to be associates instead. Still, numbers of the weaker, and least qualified, and least wanted, will be crushed out; but few probably or none whom it is the interest of the community to preserve ;-and these will ere long, we may be pretty certain, be absorbed into other avocations.

II.

FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN- -IMPERIAL OR

ECONOMIC ?

THERE are two opposite and hostile schools of foreign policy prevalent in England, based on quite distinct principles, breathing a different temper, and aiming at irreconcilable results. Each has a great deal to say for itself, each can be defended by very powerful arguments, each sets before itself respectable and even righteous issues; and we do not know that either is entitled to despise or to denounce the other. Each appeals to distinct doctrines, and will be a favourite with different characters and dispositions. We are

not inclined to pronounce dogmatically in favour of either. What is perfectly clear, however, is that it is increasingly important, and will soon become absolutely essential, that the country should definitively and decidedly choose between them. Its credit, its greatness, its success, and, what is more important still, its beneficence and repute as a nation, depend upon the choice being made. The determination still lies within our reach. Whatever be the class of aims we finally resolve to set before us, we need not question our ability to attain them, provided only the resolve be

national, deliberately taken, and unswervingly pursued. What can bring us neither respect, nor gratitude, nor grandeur, nor friends, is to come to no decision-to stumble on from opportunity to opportunity, from crisis to crisis, with no clear, fixed, persistent foreign policy whatever to fall first under the guidance of one school of statesmen, and then under their rivals and antagonists to be swayed to-day by one set of doctrines, to be tempted and dazzled by purposes of one character, and to-morrow by their exact opposites-to profess this year the most generous and spreading doctrines, and next year the most selfish and confined, and to hold language in conformity thereto-in a word, to pose before Europe alternately as the devotee of a principle and as the victim of a passion. Yet this is what we have done too often, and what we are in danger of continuing to do to our infinite peril and discredit, unless we can make up our mind deliberately, and keep it when once made up.

The two schools of foreign policy we speak of have hitherto been commonly distinguished by the phrases Intervention and Non-intervention. We do not wish to prejudge the discussion we invite by adjectives, or we might qualify them respectively as the Imperial and the Parochial, the Lavish and the Economic, the European and the Insular, the Generous and the Egotistic, the Grandiose and the Self-effacing. as to the essential characteristics at the root of each, there can be no mistake. Many valid pleas may be urged on behalf of each, which it would be impossible

But

Many

for fair and wide-seeing antagonists to deny. weighty objections to each can be pleaded, the reality and applicability of which no candid reasoner can question or ignore. The duty of statesmen, therefore, and of such political inquirers as wish neither to waste time, nor to obscure truth, nor to abuse mental strength, is frankly to admit, as facts which form the bases and the raw materials of the investigation, both the pleas and the objections, and to confine themselves to the simpler and more profitable task of measuring the one against the other, and assigning the respective force to each. Inevitably the conclusion will be different with discrepant temperaments and in varying moods; but at least all classes of thinkers and feelers in the nation will have a clear conception of the true grounds of their determination and desires, and may be expected to show some resolution and persistence in their course of action. We shall try not to state on either side anything that is open to dispute by well-informed observers, and to state what we do state as briefly and unrhetorically as we can. We have such strong sympathies with both sets of views in their essential features that impartiality at all events will not be difficult.

We need not go back into English history beyond the last century. Previous to that date there was much that was glorious in our national career, and not a few episodes that were disgraceful. Our recent annals that portion of them at least which is closely linked with the present times-may be said to begin