eminently respectable, but somewhat pedestrian, virtues of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. But then, after all, the change is no greater than the Conservative Party in the House of Commons experienced when it allowed Mr. W. H. Smith to sit in the seat of Disraeli and Lord Randolph Churchill. Perhaps we can explain the matter by saying that any genre of politician may succeed hors le genre ennuyeux. Neither wit nor eloquence, neither scholarship nor versatile talent, is indispensable. But a leader must be one who can lead. He must have tact, and temper, and integrity, and, above all, courage and determination. Mr. W. H. Smith possessed these qualities, and they compensated, or much more than compensated, for a homely manner and the absence of high intellectual attainments. And no one, Liberal or Conservative, who has appreciated the tenacity and the good humour with which Sir Henry CampbellBannerman, amid a sea of difficulties, has fought his losing battle, will dispute that he is made of the same sound and workmanlike material.

Anglo-Saxon human nature, whether by the Thames, the Hudson, or the St. Lawrence, is in essentials the same. So it is not merely fanciful to find an analogy in the broad issues before the different bodies of electors, however the details differed. In each country, it may be said, the result was a victory for those who had definite opinions clearly expressed. The Unionists in Great Britain, the Republicans in the United States, and the Ministerialists in Canada, had the immense advantage over their opponents of knowing precisely what they were fighting for. The Liberals, the Democrats, and the Canadian Opposition, were confused as to their cause and uncertain of their leaders. They were all anxious to defeat the other side; but they were by no means sure what they wanted to do if they won. Tens of thousands of Democratic voters only intended to support one-half of Mr. Bryan's programme, just as large numbers of English Liberals sympathised with the Conservatives on the South African War. The followers of Mr. McKinley and Lord Salisbury were not troubled by any such 'haunting doubts and fears.' They realised what they wanted; strove for it, with no reservations or hesitations; and, naturally, obtained it. In the material business of life, public or private, the race is not to the swift or the strong, but to him who keeps his eye steadily on the goal. The surprising thing is, not that the Unionists and the Republicans won, but that their adversaries were not much more signally defeated than was actually the case. For, when all is said, it must be rememberen that it was only the odd man' who turned the scale-the odd mad and the lucky accidents of the ballot boxes. A little shifting of weights, a very little, would have reversed the balance. No doubt, the majority gained the victory in each case. But it is a very small

majority. When people talk rashly of the Opposition in England, the Democrats in America, being 'wiped out,' they should recollect that not very far short of half the electorate voted for the vanquished party in either case. It should chasten the pride of British Unionists to remember that a turn-over of some four voters in every fifty last October would have returned a Liberal Government to office.

Whenever there is a General Election in England there is a faint recrudescence of the flickering movement in favour of Proportional Representation. This is natural; for as a rule the results of the polls work out in a way that must shock the mathematical— which is not the political-mind. One party or the other is almost always grossly under-represented, and the allocation of seats in the House of Commons is sometimes grotesquely out of proportion to the distribution of votes in the constituencies. There is no doubt, for instance, that in the late elections the Conservatives and Unionists obtained a much larger number of seats than they would be entitled to on a mere count of the votes. It is impossible to speak with precision on the subject, for, of course, in any fair estimate the uncontested seats must be taken into account, and no one can say with certainty what would have happened if these had been put to the test of the ballot. But, making due allowance for these constituencies, on the basis of the last previous polls, careful investigators come to the conclusion that the Ministerial majority is far heavier than it ought theoretically to be. A writer in the Daily News, who may be regarded as an expert in political arithmetic, estimates that, while the actual majority in Great Britain is 195, it should proportionally be no more than fifty-three. Taking Ireland into the reckoning, he gives the following figures, which are sufficiently interesting to be worth reproduction :

This majority of 201,761 votes has given Ministers a majority of 132 seats. If the seats were allotted according to relative voting strength, their majority would be twenty-six. Some people suppose, adds the Daily News writer, that the luck is always on the side of the big battalions. According to him, however, this is not invariably the case.

In 1892 it was found, on the same basis of calculation as has now been employed, that Mr. Gladstone's majority of votes was slightly under 200,000. Roughly speaking, he had the same majority of votes on his side as Lord Salisbury has now on his. But, whereas the 200,000 odd men have given Lord Salisbury a majority of 132 seats, they gave Mr. Gladstone a majority of only forty seats. It is not correct, therefore, to say that the aberrations of our representative system tend to correct themselves by always favouring the winner in like degree. They do not. Sometimes electoral luck piles up a big majority for the winning side. But sometimes it doesn't.

An instance of the capricious manner in which electoral luck works is supplied by the fact that Lord Salisbury's majority at the polls is greater in 1900 than it was in 1895, though his majority in the House of Commons is 18 less.

Nevertheless, the present system, with all its anomalies, works better than a more strictly scientific method would be likely to do. If the proportional-representation man could get his way no Government would ever be likely to have a sound working majority. The object of a General Election is to obtain the rough verdict of the national jury on the pressing questions of the moment, and to secure a strong Administration; not to represent the various shades, or half-shades, of opinion with mathematical accuracy. A constant succession of small and precarious majorities would be the greatest of political calamities. Nothing could be worse than that each party would be just strong enough to prevent the other from doing anything effectual. There is an illustration in the case of Scotland at the recent election. In that part of the United Kingdom, one may say that just over one-half the population are Unionists, and just under one-half Liberals; and, as it happens, the actual representation almost exactly corresponds to the theoretical. The result is that if Scotland had a Home Rule Parliament the parties would be so nearly balanced that no Ministry could reckon on a stable tenure of office three weeks ahead. Thus, on the whole it is fortunate that the ballot, as a rule, does not operate with this delicate and impracticable equity.

It is curious to notice how little the personal character of the English Parliament varies from election to election. It used to be said, especially during the years immediately succeeding Mr. Disraeli's 'leap in the dark' of 1867, that the effect of a wide suffrage would be to introduce a different class of men to St. Stephen's. Thoughtful Radicals suggested with hope, cautious Conservatives with alarm, that the new voter would speedily make an end of the propertied, aristocratic, socially influential M.P. He would look for his representatives in a different class of society, and find him in the ranks of those not burdened with titles, or great wealth, or an old family name, or broad acres, or even the tone' of Eton and

Harrow. 'Labour' would choose its spokesmen from the sons of labour. The career would be open to the talents, and the clever young man from the factory, the shop, the schoolmaster's desk, or the professorial chair, would be able to place his abilities at the service of the nation. This was the favourable way of putting the matter; the pessimistic view was that the responsible person, with a stake in the country, would find himself elbowed out by pushing local vestrymen, briefless barristers, out-at-elbows journalists, low-class attorneys, and needy adventurers generally. Neither anticipation has been realised. For good or for evil, the Parliaments of Lord Salisbury are not very different, in their composition, from the Parliaments of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Palmerston. The sons, grandsons, nephews, of the men who were sent up to Westminster thirty years ago are to be found there to-day. A mere glance down the list of names shows how largely the legislature is still made up of the old Parlimentary elements-the members of the great governing families, of the landed gentry, and the wealthier industrial bourgeoisie who in England join the aristocracy in the second or third generation. The most noticeable change is that wealth and successful commerce are more largely represented than they were in the earlier Parliaments. It appears that in the present Lower Chamber there are some 220 bankers, brewers, distillers, coal-owners, ironmasters, manufacturers, contractors, shipowners, and merchants. The sons and brothers of peers, with the gentry and landowners,' make up another 100; and there are 116 barristers, of whom, of course, a good proportion are men of means and leisure who do not frequent the Temple or Lincoln's Inn for a livelihood. Eton and Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and the Army still train a large proportion of young legislators, as they have always done. The elder Pitt was that terrible cornet of horse,' to steady-going persons on the front benches, and Macaulay was a brilliant schoolboy for irate Tories; and there are youthful cavalry officers and clever young Union debaters in the present House also. But the new couches sociales have not made extensive contributions. The labour' representatives are an inconspicuous handful, and they lost rather than gained at the late election. Professors and schoolmasters only number thirteen all told; farmers and agriculturists no more. Journalism, it is true, does supply a steadily increasing contingent, and it is now responsible for thirty-three M.P.s; but of these it must be recollected that several are not working journalists, but newspaper proprietors, and so might more properly be numbered among the capitalists. The professional and bourgeois element is rather more pronounced on the Liberal than on the Conservative side, as might be expected. But, after all, a party which finds its leaders among men like Sir William Harcourt, Lord Rosebery, Lord Kimberley, Sir Henry Campbell

Bannerman, and Sir Edward Grey, is a long way from democracy, in the Continental sense. The fact is that in England and Scotland politics still continue to form the favourite pursuit of men of wealth, leisure, and education, and while that is the case the character of Parliament is not likely to undergo much alteration.

The South African War still drags its weary course along. He would be a bold man who should predict that it will be over when this, or even the next, number of the ANGLO-SAXON REVIEW is in print. Never was there a campaign which has seemed so often on the very verge of extinction and then has suddenly blazed up again. Ingenuous writers for the press have been declaring that the Boer resistance must collapse every time that a striking British success has been secured, only to discover a little later that our persistent enemies are still unsubdued. If anybody will turn to the files of the London daily newspapers for October 1899, he will observe that many sanguine commentators regarded the victory of Talana Hill as likely to prove the decisive blow of the war. After this reverse,' said one writer complacently, Mr. Kruger will probably realise the futility of further resistance.' This was a trifle premature. Talana Hill was by no means a crushing defeat for the Boers, and it was followed by the hasty retreat from Dundee, which only just missed being a signal disaster for the British. Then came the dark days of November and December when Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking were all in deadly peril, and that black week before Christmas, which is associated with the names of Magersfontein, Stormberg, and Colenso. We are talking of events that seem almost to have passed into history by this time:

Of old forgotten far-off things
And battles long ago.

The sur

But with the spring the end seemed really at hand. render of Cronje, the occupation of Bloemfontein, the evacuation of Johannesburg, the entry into Pretoria, the defeat of Botha, the capture of Lydenburg, the flight of Kruger-each of these occurrences was hailed, reasonably enough, as the conclusion of the struggle. But the war goes on still; and now, at the opening of December 1900, we have to turn to the map again to refresh our memory for the situation of places that were familiar long months ago, such as Bethulie and Dewetsdorp, Lindley, Wepener, and Rouxville. There have been fighting and marching within the past few days in that South-eastern corner of the Orange Colony which was believed to have been cleared of marauding commandoes and militant Boer chiefs when Lord Roberts moved his army forwards from Mr. Steyn's former capital towards the Vaal.