tion, whenever it is taken up seriously, will for more than one or two years leave us but scant leisure for domestic reform. There are a few thinking persons, I believe, who accept Home Rule for Ireland because they find in it a stepping-stone to imperial federation. It seems to me that, on their own principles, they are beginning at the wrong end. They would embark on a vast enterprise under conditions not only unfavourable but perverse. The British Empire does not exist for the sake of Ireland, still less for the sake of one party in Ireland. Home Rule must be Irish and Nationalist, or it is nothing; federation must be imperial and impartial, or it is nothing. Given a federal system, it might be possible to admit Ireland as a constituent without danger; but to work out a federal system by starting with the single and exceptional case of Ireland is a notion exceedingly remote, for both external and internal causes, from any reasonable expectation of success.

It all comes round to the same issue. By whatever ideas known to politicians or lawyers we test the shadowy presentment of Home Rule which seems to beckon us to a land of peace and concord, we find nothing but a fool's paradise, with an infinite wilderness beyond it. The Parliament of the United Kingdom is called on to abdicate the sovereign power and responsibility in these realms, not in any clear and settled view of good to come, but in sheer weariness and despair. The British Empire was not so made, and it cannot be so maintained. If we do not know how to govern Ireland, we must learn. It is a

duty we cannot shuffle off. Remissness in this duty gives the demand for Home Rule its only real strength. The cry is, "You cannot, or you will not, perform the office of rulers in Ireland; you have only perplexed matters with legislation, and instead of being firm and gentle in administration, you are violent and feeble by turns. Let an Irish Parliament make what it can of the task you have failed in. If it does no better, it can do no worse. A just and highminded nation, a nation that has achieved what England has achieved in the most various undertakings of government, will not be so abject as to give way to such a cry. We cannot in honour abandon our office if we would. Our worst faults, in their effects, have been those of indifference and ignorance. There has been indifference-perhaps culpable indifference-in the public, and ignorance-perhaps culpable ignorance -where knowledge was to be looked for. But these faults are not invincible. Englishmen have overcome them before, and can do so again; the first of them is overcome already. Our people have a mind to be just; and the will to be informed, that they may do judgment with knowledge, is not lacking. To delegate the whole burden would be a strange and, methinks, no worthy way of repairing what is amiss. I have tried to show that such a course would fail even of its own half-hearted purpose. The way of strenuous and patient justice, turned aside neither by evil nor by good report, will seem the more arduous, as it is the worthier. But the truth of things will not be escaped, and the nobler way is the only safe one at the last.

IX

EXAMINATIONS AND EDUCATION

1

BEFORE criticising a system which in its youth was hailed as a great reform, and to the development and perfection of which there has been devoted as much and as excellent ability as to any modern English institution whatever, it seems no more than fitting to show what opportunities one has had of forming a considered opinion of its merits and its dangers. I must therefore speak of myself so far as is needful for that purpose. For about ten years, namely, from my election as a King's Scholar at Eton to my election, now more than twenty years ago, as a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, I was in the state of being habitually examined. I went through the Mathematical and the Classical Tripos, and competed with more or less success for such university and college prizes as then were and still are usually competed for by men who throw the main weight of their university reading on the Greek and Latin classics. For another ten years I had no direct concern with examining except on one or two occasions not worth special mention, though I took a good deal of interest in the reform of the Triposes at Cambridge. Having 1 Reprinted by permission from the Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1889.

been called to the Bar before the establishment of the present compulsory examination of Inns of Court students, I have not been examined-save now and again in dreams—since I became a Fellow of Trinity. During the last ten years and more, again, I have been an examiner in the law schools of Cambridge, Oxford, and the Victoria University, and I do not think one of those years has passed without my being thus engaged in one or more of those schools, or in other occasional employment of the same kind. Thus I may claim a fair working experience of the university examination system in its methods and results, both as candidate and as examiner. It is true that as an examiner I can bear witness, of my own knowledge, only to its application in that branch of learning with which my own profession is concerned. Perhaps I may add without presumption that an interval of ten years spent in professional work and study apart from scholastic affairs is not likely, at any rate, to have spoilt my chances of forming a rational judgment.

Competitive examination, in the literal meaning of the words, would include any trial of strength or skill between several persons or associated bodies of persons of whom some or one are to be in some way preferred to the others in accordance with the result of the trial; and this whether the preference carry with it some kind of substantial gain or reward, or a purely honorific title or distinction; and again, whether the distinction in question be conferred by any formal act, or marked by any visible token, or consist only in the reputation of the published and verified result itself.

The Isthmian Games, the shooting for the Queen's Prize, the solution of chess problems propounded in a newspaper, come equally within this conception. But in common usage we limit the term to examinations conducted as a test of proficiency in some branch or branches of knowledge, and wholly or mainly by means of identical questions, problems, or exercises proposed to all the candidates in the same subject, to be dealt with in writing within the same limited time, and either without using books or other aids to memory, or with liberty to use only specified aids. Examination of this kind may be directed to "subjects" or to "books," or to both. One may be examined in Greek and Latin scholarship without any particular Greek and Latin authors being prescribed, as in the Cambridge Classical Tripos; or one may be required to show knowledge of a particular book chosen for its authority or importance in its subject, as the Elements of Euclid or the Ethics of Aristotle. Such particular requirements may be and often are combined with the requirement of general knowledge of the subject and of its literature. This is one of the distinctive traditions of the University of Oxford. Cambridge, in its higher examinations, has avoided prescribing fixed books. At both Universities, however, there has of late years grown up a system of officially recommending books as useful in the study of such special subjects as history, law, theology, but without requiring a specific knowledge of the contents of those books.

It is needful to bear in mind the limits to which