Merely to ask the question is to answer it, and to answer it with a negative. And we have no hesitation in saying that, if Mr. Morley had honestly put it to himself, the same answer would have instantly been forced upon him, and checked his eloquence with the force of a physical blow. For the passage we have quoted can contain any truth whatever only on one or other of the two following suppositions: either that all owners of ground-rents or of ground are great owners, or else the great owners are treated by the law differently from small owners. Are either of these suppositions true? As for the first, an hour's study of authorities, easily accessible, would have shown Mr. Morley that it was false, even supposing him ignorant enough to have ever thought it true. As we have before now pointed out in this Review,' the rental of the British landlords who own under four acres is considerably greater than the rental of those who own more than a thousand acres. Plainly, therefore, the land question, as a whole, is in no sense specially a great landlord's question. Does Mr. Morley then mean that great landlords, in the eye of the law, stand on a footing different from that occupied by small landlords? Does he mean that if, out of a hundred acres of land, two men were to buy, one of them two acres, and the other ninety-eight; and if, in the course of years, this land was to centuple in value, the two buyers would pay an unequal percentage of taxes? Does he mean that if he, Mr. Morley, had, as he puts it, saved a little money,' and instead of leaving it either on deposit, or in shares and stocks, and so forth,' had bought the fifteenth of an acre in the City of London-does he mean that he would in that case be taxed on one principle, and the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Westminster on another? * If he does not mean to say that, what he says must mean nothing. If he does mean to say that, he is saying what every one, outside the Radical party, knows not to be true; and he is saying what, in the mouth of any one but a Radical, would, to quote his own words, be a shameful thing.'

6

In the Radicals, however, there is, we think, a moral, if not an intellectual, excuse. Though the possession of land in large quantities, and for a long number of years, gives to the possessor no legal privilege, it does give its possessors, in this country, what is a very different thing, and this is a certain kind of moral privilege. But this is the expression, not of a judicial inequality, but of that larger life of the nation which is outside the laws; and it represents, so far as it still exists, the fact, not *If Mr. Morley is right in taking dukes as representatives of all landlords, he ought to take the Rothschilds as representatives of all shareholders or depositors.

that

that our legislators have neglected their duty, but that the privileged class has, as a whole, done its duty. Now, Mr. Morley and his brother Radicals, like every one else, see this class; they have it before their eyes; but, though they see it, they do not understand it. They see it from without, not from within. Mr. Morley, to return to particulars, sees it not as an Englishman, but as a wanderer from some political Laputa. He has determined to have something to say to the political life of this country; but he has never been able to make himself a part of that life. And in this point he is the very type of our intellectual Radicalism as a whole. Our intellectual Radicals are Englishmen who have been imperfectly naturalized. They are in the country, but they are not of the country; and the passions that animate them are the passions of men who are trying to break through walls, not who are trying to defend them. In a word they are Radicals, not because they understand their country's needs better than any one else, but because they understand their country's life less than any one else.

And with regard to religion, to philosophy, and to morals, the same thing holds good. Adopting as they do a system fundamentally false, a system of false prejudices, false hopes, false beliefs, and false negations, the more clear and coherent they succeed in making their creed, the more sharp is the collision which at all points their principles come into with reason, and their profession with their practice. And of this fact Mr. Morley is the most signal illustration with which this country has supplied us. It would be interesting to pursue the argument farther by farther reference to his speeches; but space forbids us to enter on so wide and so luxuriant a field. Two flowers we may, however, pick from its border. They occur in two others of his most recent speeches. We have seen how, in his books, he declared deliberately that nations vary fundamentally in civilizable qualities,' and last November he warned a meeting at Birmingham, that to apply this idea-this idea of his own, to the Irish-that to hint that in any way they thus differed from the English, was not only an error, but a wickedness.' The day following, addressing a similar audience, he declared that what he cared for in politics more than anything, was 'mutual toleration,' and a moment or two afterwards, he described the Unionist Party as an image with a front of brass, and with feet of clay.' Truly if this is Radical toleration, we need cease to wonder that they find intolerance a superfluity.

* Times,' Nov. 7th, 1888. The bad, the wicked, the old notion.'

We

We are loth, however, to leave Mr. Morley with a sneer. Indeed to do so would probably leave in the readers' mind a completely false idea of the whole tenor of our criticism. We regard Mr. Morley's works and conduct as a condemnation and exposure of Radicalism, not because we think ill of Mr. Morley, but because we think well of him. If he were not naturally fair and candid, there would be nothing remarkable in his unfairness. If he were not a person of high intellectual powers, there would be nothing remarkable in his pitiable confusion and contradictions. Our design has been to exhibit not his faults, but the faults of the wretched cause to which he has immolated his faculties; and which in his case, as we have said before, has mangled on the wheel a good man, and not a criminal.

Well might Mr. Morley, could he but realize his condition, exclaim with one of his revolutionary heroes, 'Better to be a poor fisher, than to meddle with the governing of men.' Better for him, at least, to have cultivated letters, which he might have so well adorned, and which might have yielded him a spotless fame, than to illustrate in his own person one of his own most melancholy sayings, that when men diverge into new walks in life, and when thus the habit of their lives has been sundered, the most immaculate are capable of antics beyond prevision."

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-Speeches and Addresses of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, 1863-1888. Edited by James Macaulay, A.M., M.D. With a Portrait. London, 1889.

HIS volume furnishes a record which is absolutely unique

heirs to most of the thrones in Europe to have their energies directed chiefly towards the formation of vast armaments, and the study of the art of war. The more fortunate circumstances of our own country have left its future monarchs free to pursue a different career. Opportunities of great social usefulness are within their grasp, although in former days it can scarcely be said that they were invariably turned to the best account. It was not usual to consider that the heir to the Crown had important and onerous duties to discharge for the benefit of the people, or that his time belonged to others rather than to himself. To be required to take an active interest in every charitable work; to travel two or three hundred miles for the purpose of laying a foundation stone or opening a new building; to attend innumerable public dinners with the view of enticing money from the purses of others, while not forgetting to make a substantial contribution oneself; to be expected to assist every conceivable object, from an orphan asylum to a life-boat institution, from an international exhibition to a cab-drivers' benevolent societyall this was not at one time supposed to form any part of the private or public duty of the Princes of Wales. If history does not belie those personages, the idea of owing any kind of serious obligation to the public did not occupy an inconveniently prominent place in their thoughts. The times in which they lived, the general tone of opinion, the adulatory voices which filled their ears, all helped to strengthen the pleasing belief that, if they were born to a great position, it was in order that they might extract as much enjoyment as possible out of it. The Vol. 168.-No. 336.

U

present

present Prince of Wales has given the death-blow to these traditions. He has marked out, inch by inch, a hard and laborious road, over which his successors will be expected to tread. In departing from all former precedents, he has established one which can never be set aside for the sake of returning to the practices of days, which some who are still among us can remember, but which seem separated from us by an indefinite period of time.

tion."

That the Prince himself had an inestimable example before him, in the self-denying life of his gifted father, is not likely to be forgotten, now that the leading incidents in the too brief career of the Prince Consort have been made known to the world. One thing which the reader of the speeches before us will not fail to observe is, the gratitude and deep affection with which the Prince of Wales has invariably referred to his father. Lord Stanhope remarks that it has been a peculiarity of the House of Hanover that the heirs apparent have always been on ill terms with the Sovereign,' and he quotes Lord Carteret's saying to a similar effect: That family always has quarrelled, and always will quarrel from generation to generaThis is another of the traditions which the Prince of Wales of our own day has nobly and happily broken down. Among his many claims to the respect of his countrymen, must be included the reverence and devotion he has invariably displayed for the memory of his father, and the high sense of duty he has always manifested towards his mother. In one of the earliest of his speeches in England, delivered in 1863, His Royal Highness made use of these words :- I cannot on this occasion divest my mind of the associations connected with my beloved and lamented father. His bright example cannot fail to stimulate my efforts to tread in his footsteps; and, whatever my shortcomings may be, I may at least presume to participate in the interest which he took in every institution which tended to encourage art and science in this country.' He spoke, we are told, under deep emotion;' and that what he then said came from his heart, and has helped materially to shape his life, is proved by his subsequent public acts down to this hour. The special works in which the Prince Consort took a deep interest have always received the hearty encouragement of the Prince of Wales. But he has not contented himself with that. His amazing industry and activity, his capacity for undergoing the ordeal of long journeys, and the still more trying ordeal of protracted ceremonies, without showing signs of weariness, are

* History of England,' Popular Edition, vol. i. p. 211.

not