elaborate electoral calculation, the outcome of these two suburban elections proves to mathematical demonstration that the Liberals in the next Parliament must win 133 votes. These calculations

are things too high for my mental faculties. I can only console myself by the reflection that, supposing' ifs and ans were pots and pans,' the state of mundane affairs would be very different from what it is. Personally, I prefer a brace of votes in the hand to sixty odd braces in the bush. But then I have no claim to be an expert in electoral forecasts, but am only a commonplace man, 'one of the many' who, judging by facts, not by theories, hold that Mr. Chamberlain is going to win the day.

There is a sort of pathos in the fact that the Duke of Devonshire should have chosen the eve of the bye-elections to slide off the fence on which he has sat so long, and apparently with such great discomfort. Ever since his Grace resigned office he has never been able, till the other day, to make his political position comprehensible to the public, or I suspect to himself. He could not decide whether to turn to the left or the right, to sacrifice free trade or to desert the cause of the Union. He has been looking in vain for some middle path by which he might remain staunch in his allegiance to the Union, and yet forswear the heresies of preferential duties and retaliatory tariffs. The logic of facts has at last forced the Duke not only to make up his mind, but, what was still more distasteful, to speak out his mind. It is matter of notoriety that up to the very date of the elections the Liberals were confident of success, and believed that the transfer of a few hundred Unionist votes might place their candidates at the head of the polls. An urgent appeal was made to the Duke as President of the Free Food League to express an opinion as to the duty of Liberal-Unionist voters who disapproved of Mr. Chamberlain's policy in the event of a contested election. It is only just to the leading member of the Unionist party in the House of Lords to say that he is devoid of the subtlety of intellect which would have enabled Mr. Gladstone to give such an answer to an inconvenient question as might be susceptible of any number of interpretations. If he spoke at all, he could only speak plainly. In consequence, being at last forced into a corner, his Grace replied that in his opinion Liberal-Unionist electors should decline to vote for any Unionist candidate who stood pledged to support the policy with which Mr. Chamberlain directly and Mr. Balfour indirectly have identified themselves. The ducal manifesto did not go to the length of advising Liberal-Unionist free traders to record their votes in favour of the Liberal candidates. But it followed logically that if a Liberal-Unionist elector of Lewisham or Dulwich felt it his duty to refrain from voting for the Unionist candidate, he was equally bound to vote for the Liberal.

The Encyclical,' to employ Mr. Chamberlain's phrase, seems

to have had very little effect, either at Dulwich or at Lewisham. But its indirect results are likely to prove serious. There is no getting over the plain fact that the Duke, who till a few weeks ago was the most prominent member of the Unionist Government, with the exception of Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain, has formally advised the Liberal-Unionists to use their influence to secure the return of Liberals to Parliament, if by so doing they can hope to exclude Unionists who are supporters of Mr. Chamberlain. I confess, to me the Duke's attitude is absolutely incomprehensible. The great achievement of his long and honourable political career was his secession from the Liberal party in order to secure the defeat of Home Rule for Ireland. His secession was openly justified by the plea that the maintenance of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland was a matter of life and death to this country, and therefore of higher importance than any party considerations. Yet now, he not only deserts the Unionist party, but he is doing his utmost to secure the return of the Liberals to power, knowing, as he must know, that they can only hope to obtain a parliamentary majority by receiving the support of the Irish Nationalists, and that the price of this support is, and must be, the concession of Home Rule to Ireland. In common with the vast majority of his fellow-countrymen, I have the utmost confidence in the good faith and honesty of purpose of the Duke of Devonshire, but I fail to understand how he reconciles his present attitude with his past professions.

One thing seems to be certain, and that is, that the ducal manifesto must bring about the disappearance of the LiberalUnionists as an independent political organisation. At the time of the Gran' Rifiuto, when some threescore Liberals, under the leadership of the then Marquis of Hartington, Mr. (now Lord) Goschen, Mr. John Bright, and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, joined with the Conservatives to throw out Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, a convention was concluded between the two sections of the Unionist party that no seat occupied by a member of one section should be contested by the other. The convention was only reasonable and fair at the time of the enactment, though, from a purely party point of view, it was of a very one-sided character. In view of the general Conservative reaction, which coincided with, if it was not occasioned by, the Liberal-Unionist secession, there were any number of seats held by Liberal-Unionists which the Conservatives might have contested with every chance of success. But there was scarcely a seat held by a Conservative which the Liberal-Unionists could have contested with the remotest prospect of success. The convention has, up to now, been carried out with the utmost loyalty by the Conservatives, but its practical inconveniences have long been felt by the party leaders. The recent death of Mr. Jasper More, the M.P. for the

Ludlow division of Shropshire, furnishes an illustration of the inconveniences to which I allude. My old friend Jasper More, when I first knew him, much more than a quarter of a century ago, called himself, as most of us did in those days, a Liberal. I should, however, gravely doubt whether he had any definite ideas as to the tenets of his political creed. His Liberalism, such as it was, was that of a country gentleman of good family, who took much more interest in agricultural than in political affairs. When he joined the Liberal seceders he called himself a Liberal-Unionist, and was re-elected by his old constituents, who, on previous occasions, had returned him as a Liberal. His personal popularity with the Shropshire farmers was the real secret of his hold upon the constituency, and this popularity was not capable of being transferred to a stranger.

On Mr. More's death, the natural course, from an electioneering point of view, would have been to nominate a Conservative as candidate for the representation of the division. The seat, however, in accordance with the compact in question, was held to belong to the Liberal-Unionists, and serious unnecessary delay was caused by the extreme difficulty of finding a Liberal-Unionist candidate who was known by name to the Shropshire electors. Under very great disadvantages Mr. Hunt has carried the day by a decisive majority, but he did, not only without the help, but contrary to the recommendations of the Duke of Devonshire, the head of the LiberalUnionists. I fail to see how, after the Duke of Devonshire-with, I presume, the approval of Lord Goschen-has gone out of his way to recommend the Liberal-Unionists to decline to vote for Unionist candidates who will not renounce Mr. Chamberlain and all his works, the convention to which I have alluded can continue to be binding. The leaders of the Liberal-Unionists have now in fact, if not in name, attached themselves to the fortunes of the Liberal Home Rulers, and have thereby forfeited their title to the name of Unionists.

A record of the month can hardly be considered complete without some reference to the death of Mr. Herbert Spencer. I knew him only as a club acquaintance. His presence will certainly be missed in the billiard-room of the Athenæum, where till a few years ago he was a frequent visitor before dinner, and where he was looked up to as one of the oldest surviving notabilities of the Club. I I may relate an incident or two which throw some light on his curious doggedness of purpose. My old friend the late Sir Edgar Boehm told me that on some occasion he went into the billiard-room and there caught sight of a member-I believe Mr. Maskelyne-who was a singularly handsome man with a classical Greek profile. Upon inquiring what the name of the member might be, he was told by a young waiter that it was Mr. Herbert Spencer. Thereupon Sir Edgar arranged with a common friend to ascertain if Mr. Spencer would like to have his features represented in marble, and, if so, to arrange for a meeting. When the meeting

took place, and the sculptor caught sight of the real Herbert Spencer, his astonishment knew no bounds. If you could conceive a human form and face ill adapted as a model for a sculptor, it was that of Mr. Spencer. In the most delicate way Sir Edgar tried to intimate to the philosopher the insuperable difficulties of the task he had offered to perform. But all his arguments were useless. Mr. Spencer took his stand upon the ground that he had been requested to allow a bust of himself to be made, that he had agreed to the proposal, and that he intended to insist upon the execution of the promise. Again I have been told on good authority a story of how Mr. Spencer's complete works ever came to be published. A number of his personal friends who knew the extreme narrowness of his means, who admired his extraordinary energy under the most depressing circumstances, and who were anxious to relieve his embarrassments, agreed to publish a complete edition of his works and to pay him a salary for editing the volumes and seeing them through the press which would, with his simple tastes, keep him in comfort during his advancing years. After some few volumes had been published, the signatories of the agreement, who were all personal friends, found the cost of publication far exceeded the amount anticipated, and suggested to Mr. Spencer that the publication should be suspended, and that, notwithstanding this, their engagement with him should remain as heretofore. But to any suggestion of this kind Mr. Spencer absolutely refused to listen. He informed his friends that they had made a contract, and that he must insist on its rigid execution. Legally he was absolutely and entirely within his right; and I for one, though I doubt whether Mr. Spencer's magnum opus will command quite the amount of attention on the part of posterity that his admirers foretell, cannot but admit there is something really heroic about an author who believed so implicitly in the value of his own work, and was so prepared to subordinate all personal considerations to the perpetuation of its memory.

EDWARD DICEY.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake
to return unaccepted MSS.

THE autobiography of my old and highly esteemed friend, Lord Wolseley, constitutes an honourable record of a well-spent life. Lord Wolseley may justifiably be proud of the services which he has rendered to his country. The British nation, and its principal executive officials in the past, may also be proud of having quickly discovered Lord Wolseley's talents and merits, and of having advanced him to high position.

Obviously, certain conclusions of public interest may be drawn from the career of this very distinguished soldier. Sir George Arthur, in the December number of the Fortnightly Review, has stated what are the special lessons which, in his opinion, are to be derived from a consideration of that career.

Those lessons are, indeed, sufficiently numerous. I propose, however, to deal with only two of them. They are those which, apparently, Lord Wolseley himself wishes to be inculcated. Both involve questions of principle of no little importance.

In the first place, Lord Wolseley, if I understand rightly, considers that the army has suffered greatly from civilian interference. 'The Story of a Soldier's Life. Field-Marshal Viscount Wolseley. (Constable.) VOL. LV-No. 324

N