companion of wealth, and not of poverty. For the most part, the man who has saved a pound is wiser than the man who has not saved a penny; the man who has a good coat on his back is wiser than the man who is in rags; the man who has a good roof above his head is wiser than the man who lives in a hovel. We may carry it further, and say that there is more wisdom to be found in a house of eight rooms than in a house of four; and that he who can afford to pay a rent of £60 is likely to be a wiser man than he who can only afford to pay a rent of £30. In a local board of health election, then, it would be reasonable to expect that the more intelligent classes would, without much trouble, carry the day; for while in the parliamentary election a man of wealth has but one vote, in a board of health election he may have no fewer than twelve. It so happens that I have myself just taken an active part in one of these elections, and though we fought under the most favourable circumstances, and though there was a singular agreement among the larger householders, yet our victory was but a narrow one. Had we voted for men to provide us with pure water and well-ventilated sewers on the same plan as that on which we vote for men to provide us with those trifling matters an army, a navy, or laws, we should have been hopelessly defeated.

"All growing villages and towns are, I hold, in one of three states. They have either had a visitation of typhoid fever, or they are having it, or they are going to have it. We, happily, have had our visitation. The lesson was a very sharp one, but it has left us-those of us who are left, that is to say-better citizens, and far more alive to the duties which attach to us as members of a community. A few years ago it was with us a reproach to a man to take part in parish matters. It is now an honour. For years the elections to the board of health had excited no interest. Their proceedings, indeed, from time to time amused us, as we read in our local paper that one member had threatened to punch another's head or pull his nose. Meanwhile, this ignorant board was quietly turning all the streams into open sewers, and, to meet the needs of the rapidly growing population, had half poisoned the pure supply of water which we got from the chalk by mixing with it the landspring water drawn from beneath a large market-garden highly dressed with London manure. If London half poisoned us, we in our turn did our best to poison London. An ingenious market-gardener

was allowed to tap the drain that came from our hospital-a hospital in which our fever cases are nursed-and to turn the sewage on to his watercress beds. But I need not go into further details. The death-rate steadily rose, rents as steadily fell, houses stood empty, the cemetery was enlarged, the undertakers looked cheerful; we talked of mysterious dispensations, but for a time we blamed the board but little, ourselves not at all. We had, indeed, at last begun to make a stir, and had done something, when there came upon us an outbreak of typhoid fever. In a few weeks over 300 persons were struck down with it, and in that year fevers carried off between forty and fifty. The Local Government Board sent down one of their medical inspectors. He did not confine his attention to our foul ditches, our unventilated sewers, our impure water supply. Bad though these were, he was bold enough to show us that we ourselves were almost worse. We had neglected our plainest duties by so long leaving to the ignorant the care of the health of the whole community. He gave us some lessons in sanitary matters as admirable as they were simple, and urged us to form a sanitary association. This we at once did. We instructed ourselves, and by means of pamphlets and broad-sheets we did all we could to instruct our neighbours. When the next election came round, we carried in two of the best members of our association.

"The opposition that had been organized now for the first time looked formidable, and the publicans, with one bright exception, were to a man against us. If I am not mistaken in my numbers, we had an embattled phalanx of no fewer than fifty-one publicans to fight. Each side worked its hardest. The enemy took to prophesying, and we took to facts. The parish was canvassed from house to house as it had never been canvassed before. In the course of the canvassing I happened to come across a French refugee who lives in the parish. He flatly refused to vote at all, as the voting was not by universal suffrage. In vain I pointed out that as the occupier of a house he was surely entitled to secure for his house a good supply of pure water. He did not recognize, he loftily replied, houses or property. He knew of nothing but men. As he did not vote as a man, he would not vote at all. Well, sir, to cut a long story short, we carried three out of four seats, but we carried them by very hard work and by small majorities. Had we been voting not for

members of a local board, but for members of the great council of the empire, we should have been hopelessly beaten. We fought with success in a great measure because we fought with confidence, and we fought with confidence because we knew that intelligence would not be swamped by mere numbers. We had left, indeed, nothing undone to win the votes of the smallest voters, and not a few we did secure. We put a plain statement of facts before them, but we found that the printing-press was no fair match for the pot-house.

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Now, sir, if the scene of this contest had been Stoke, and if Dr Kenealy had chosen to put himself forward as a candidate for the board of health of that town, I have no doubt that neither his resemblance to Cromwell and Milton nor his own impudence would have saved him from utter defeat. The men of property, the men of character, the men of sense, the men who had shown strength of mind to overcome the temptations of the present, and to lay up for the future, the men who had not eaten or drunk up to their earnings, but had begun with small savings, and had seen these small savings grow into large savings, would have all gone eagerly and heartily into a contest where their worth and their knowledge would not be swamped by the ignorance of a mob. The day may come when some monstrous delusion, some lie gross as a mountain, open, palpable, may throughout England seize on the lowest and largest body of voters as a class, as it has lately seized on the new voters of Stoke. Should such a storm of passionate prejudice sweep over the land, the men of common sense, the men who have made England what it is, would, if they tried to stem it, find themselves clean swept away. Parish politics have often been a byword among us. I, for my part, in my search after political wisdom, would rather watch the people voting in their parishes than study all the works of all the philosophers who have begun by studying, not men, but Man.-I am, Sir, your obedient servant, A PARISH POLITICIAN.

"April 20th."

For dangers such as those to which I have for the second time ventured, Cassandra-like, to call the attention of my countrymen, there are obviously but two safeguards, the spread of education and of property

extensively among the labouring classes. But are those safeguards adequate? Are they coming? and will they come in time? Is the education we are giving of the right sort, and given to the people who need it? And is the accumulation of property becoming the characteristic of our well-paid artizans ? For my part I can scarcely rely on the timeliness or efficacy of a medicine gingerly administered in 1875, and not even expected to operate till 1890; and how far have the extraordinary wages paid for the last few years gone to turn our mechanics and operatives into capitalists ? What proportion of the millions distributed has gone with the savings banks, and what to the publican and sinner?

IV.

A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US.

MANY persons-especially practical men, busy men, and men charged with the toils and difficulties of administration—are prone to fancy that it is useless and unwise to call attention to "rocks ahead" unless they are close upon us, or unless we have some distinct and well-digested remedy or safeguard to propose. Our rulers especially, whether executive or legislative, are apt to resent such embarrassing and meddlesome forecasting, and to snub and silence the over-anxious prophets of danger who indulge therein. "Sufficient to the day," they tell us, "is the evil thereof let the future take care of itself."

In

There are several reasons why I do not share and cannot approve this habit of thought and feeling, and why I deem it shallow, indolent, and noxious. the first place, dangers which threaten us in the future often take their origin in the action or the negligence of the day that is passing over us. The long years that usually elapse between the seed-time and the harvest of irreparable mischief easily lay vigilance to sleep, and fan us into a false security which is full of peril. These difficulties, which might have

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