of the House as a legislative machine would be increased thereby? We very much doubt it. Each of the 670 in turn might have the most excellent legislative projects, but there would always be 669 independent critics wanting to know the reason why. Mr Courtney's counterassurances are not convincing :— 'It is not believed that the difficulty of conducting business in the House of Commons would be seriously increased. The new freedom would bring a new sense of responsibility' (p. 154). 6 But of responsibility to whom? To the independent voters,' we suppose, who ex hypothesi would like their embodiments to be independent' also. An assembly of party men is not in all respects a lovely spectacle or an effective machine. But an assembly of the alternative pattern suggested would be a machine with so many cranks that it might not go round at all. The practical monopoly of legislation by the Government suggests other questions, and entails other consequences than the decay of the private member. The efficient secret of the English Constitution,' according to Bagehot, may be described as the close union, the nearly complete fusion, of the executive and legislative powers.' The fusion has become more complete since Bagehot wrote (in 1865–6). It is, as he pointed out, the specific quality of Cabinet Government, just as the independence of the legislative and executive powers is the specific quality of Presidential Government. Its advantages are well known and admitted. Recent events and tendencies suggest some of its disadvantages. If Parliament is overburdened, Ministers, or at any rate the principal Ministers, are overburdened also. The office of Prime Minister, as it was understood and filled in former days, has almost ceased to exist. Lord Rosebery's remarks on this subject are well known : 'It is more than doubtful if it be possible in this generation, when the burdens of empire and of office have so incalculably grown, for any Prime Minister to discharge the duties of his high post with the same thoroughness or in the same spirit as Peel. To do so would demand more time and strength than any man has at his command. . . . In these days of instant, continuous, and unrelenting pressure, the very tradition of such a minister has almost departed; indeed, it would be impossible to be so paternal and ubiquitous. A minister of these days would be preparing or delivering a speech in the country, when Peel would be writing minutes of policy for the various departments.' ('Sir Robert Peel,' pp. 27, 29.) Mr Courtney marks the same difference, though, like Lord Rosebery, he refers to Mr Gladstone's first premiership as continuing the traditions of Peel (p. 117). But not all Ministers have the restless energy and powerful physique of Mr Gladstone. It may be said that this is a case in which we may well thank God that we have a House of Lords.' A Prime Minister in that House, not being burdened with the legislative labours of the Commons, is free to concentrate his energies on executive functions. Whether this freedom is in fact possessed and used it would be invidious to inquire. But in any case it may be pointed out that even upon a Premier in the House of Lords the burden of legislative responsibility, as chairman of the legislative committee, is considerable, and, except in specially favourable circumstances, is not rendered easier or less irksome by the fact that, while the responsibility is his, the effective power rests with his leading colleague in the Commons. It may well be doubted, therefore, whether that fusion of the legislative and executive powers which is one of the distinguishing features of our constitution, and which tends every year to become absolute, merits all the unreserved praise which some writers have given it. Lord Randolph Churchill, in addressing an audience at one of the Universities, advised them to think as much as they could during their student-days. If they went into public life, he said, they would never again have any time to think. This is the most charitable explanation to offer of some of the want of forethought on the part of the executive which has characterised the South African policy of Great Britain. At a time when the executive has admittedly been lacking in forethought and preparation, it may seem inappropriate to suggest that its powers are in some respects unduly restricted. Yet this is a conclusion which many observers have drawn--and among them are some of those who have been most behind the scenes from the course of recent events. There are occasions when a stitch in time saves nine. But a Power whose executive and legislative functions are fused is seldom able to work that timely stitch. The present Government, when charged with supineness or dilatoriness or inadequate preparation, has generally defended itself by reference to the necessity of carrying public opinion with it at each stage. The executive requires to take Parliament into its confidence; but this can only be done, under our constitution, by shouting from the housetops. Yet where expenditure of money is not immediately involved-as in the case of treaties-the power of the executive is unlimited. There is something illogical in the position that, whereas the executive, in the case of a far-reaching alliance with Japan, is able to confront Parliament and public opinion with the accomplished fact, it dared not (and in some measure could not) move a man or even buy a mule in South Africa for fear of being in advance of public opinion. In the result the British Government was abreast of public opinion, but a good deal behind the Boers. Bagehot perceived the nature of the inconsistency which we have noticed, and in the second edition of his book suggested that the Constitution ought to be amended in the sense of restricting the treaty-making power of the Crown. It is at least open to question whether the inconsistency might not be cured in an opposite fashion. We return, in conclusion, to the point from which we started. If greater efficiency be indeed required, it must come in constitutional as in other matters-from pressure of public opinion. Every people, it may be said, has the form of government it deserves. The British Constitution is the expression of the intellectual and moral capacity of the British people for dealing with the conditions of its national life. Hitherto the Constitution has adjusted itself with a minimum of friction and delay to the nation's needs and growth. It is now passing through a time of severe trial; but if the political genius and national character of the British people be unimpaired, it should still be possible so to develope the Constitution as to combine imperial solidarity with local liberty, and democracy with administrative and legislative efficiency. Art. VIII.-MR STEPHEN PHILLIPS. 1. Poems. By Stephen Phillips. London: John Lane, 1898. 2. Paolo and Francesca. A Tragedy in Four Acts. By the samę. London: John Lane, 1900. 3. Herod. A Tragedy. By the same. Lane, 1901. London: John 4. Ulysses. A Drama in a Prologue and Three Acts. By the same. London: John Lane, 1902. THE principle of destruction is the principle of life. It is your business, if you are bringing a new force into the world, to begin by killing, or at least wounding, a tradition, even if the tradition once had all the virtues. There was never a dragon that Perseus or St George killed which had not been a centre of conservatism and a moral support. Perseus or St George, it has never thoroughly been understood, was only able to kill him because his day was over, and he was getting behind the times. Dragons in their old age grow weak, and their teeth drop out before the spear strikes through the roofs of their mouths. It is not always even so hard and heroic to put them to death as is generally supposed. But it is essential. In poetry there is, indeed, the great unformulated tradition by which all poetry may be recognised, in virtue of which all poets are of the same race, as all well-bred persons are akin. But in exact opposition to this tradition, which cannot be dated, there is a literary tradition, new in every age, and at the most of only temporary value. The writers who found traditions are mostly good writers; but the greatest writers inspire poets without founding traditions. When Wordsworth destroyed the tradition of Pope he founded a new tradition of his own, which has been fatal to every disciple. Keats and Shelley made no schools; we feel their influence to-day in every writer of fine English verse. Tennyson founded a tradition of his own, which has helped more indifferent and uninspired poets to pass themselves off as excellent and inspired poets than almost any other tradition in poetry. Tennyson's work seems to be the kind of work which one can do if one takes trouble enough. Sometimes it is; but, after all, has any one done it quite so well? is there not always some essential thing left out? Nothing was ever so easy to copy, and to copy well, well enough to take in the ignorant. Now the appeal of poetry must always be chiefly to the ignorant, for in no age have there been enough discriminating people to make what is called a public; that is, if we are speaking of the appeal of the work of any single generation to that generation. People to-day have Keats on their table instead of Robert Montgomery, and some of them are even beginning to have Mr Bridges instead of Robert Lord Lytton, because they have been told what to read by the people whose judgments really matter, and whose judgments only wait for a little of the corroboration of time. But the popular poet of a generation, or of a given moment of that generation, is never chosen because of his merit; if he happens to have merit, as in the case of Tennyson, or as in the case of Victor Hugo, that is a matter largely beside the question. The mob is not logical enough or thorough-going enough to choose always the worst. On the contrary, the mob frequently chooses a writer of merit, a writer who deserves tempered praise as well as not unmeasured reproof. It is a common mistake to suppose that originality, even if a trifle meretricious, is likely to succeed where quiet merit passes unobserved. In verse, at all events, quiet merit (not perhaps so entirely admirable a thing in an art justly called 'inspired') has every chance of success, where true originality will but disconcert the reader of poetry who has come to love certain formulas, the formulas of his masters, which seem to him, as every form of truth must seem to 'young ignorance and old custom,' forms immortal in themselves. That there is an eternal but certainly invisible beauty, it is the joy of the artist to believe. It is often well for him to believe also that the ray by which he apprehends infinite light is itself the essential light. But a limitation, which in the artist is often strength, shutting him in the more securely on his own path, is in the critic mere weakness of sight, an unpardonable blindness. In no two ages of the world has the eternal beauty manifested itself under the same form. A classic beauty of order to Sophocles, a Gothic beauty of exuberant and elaborate life to Shakespeare, perfume to Hafiz, a self-consuming flame to Catullus, it Vol. 195.-No. 390. 2 L |