blocks out the sunshine. Envy alone would lead them to look with favourable eyes upon an agrarian development of Radicalism, but other and more powerful motives urge them in the same direction. The wealth which has been acquired in trade, commerce, and manufacture, is actually regarded with more unfriendly eyes by the working-men than that which consists in the ownership of land. The social unrest and discontent produced by the facts of existence, and which, fanned by trades unionism, is allying itself with the imported Socialism of the Continent, is evolving in the minds of the proletariate an angry and bitter feeling against the capitalist and the direct employers of labour. Now a theory and a policy which would divert that hostility from themselves and concentrate it upon their political foes is plainly one which would suit admirably the taste, the inclinations, and the interests of the Radical capitalist. Mr. Chamberlain sees this clearly. Again, an agrarian policy which would pile up taxes on ground-rents would be of course so much gain to those who now pay taxes upon their income, their expenditure, and their personal possessions.

The advantages of a great political coalition between capital and labour against the territorial interest, are too great to escape the notice of forward-looking and deeply-plotting Radicals. How

powerful such a coalition might prove was demonstrated in the Anti-Corn-Law agitation, when employees and employers united against the landpower. The tendencies already enumerated or suggested, which are gradually attracting Radicalism towards the adoption of an agrarian policy, have been enormously increased since the passage of the Franchise Bill and the addition to the electorate of some two millions of voters, landless, yet whose occupation and immediate wants will suggest to them more readily than to the proletariate of cities the thought of agrarian legislation.

For these and other reasons I am convinced that the next considerable development of Radical policy will be of the nature of an attack upon the territorial proprietors, an attack avowedly Georgian, or savouring of the nationalisation of the land. One or two really disastrous years would probably immediately precipitate that advance, in itself already certain; and be it remembered that agrarian legislation may travel by degrees up to Mr. George's complete formula. The essence of his system lies in the taxation of ground-rent. Radicalism may approximate to that idea by piling the taxation more and more and from time to time upon that source of income. In support of my view I may mention that Thomas Carlyle, in his political pamphlets, predicted that English Radical

ism would ultimately adopt this mode of taxation. He wrote that prediction in terrorem, and to induce the governing classes to adopt the theory of administration which I believe to be the latent essential principle of the Tory Democratic form of Conservatism.

CHAPTER IV.

CAUSES WHICH HAVE PRODUCED THE TORY DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

THE significant fact that only once since the great Reform Bill has the Conservative party been in power with a bona fide and genuine majority, has of late convinced certain thinking men that the political platform and constitution of the party are too narrow and too stationary or reactionary for the national requirements or the national taste. They perceive that by pursuing a certain line the Conservative party have lost virtually all their adherents in Wales, and nearly all in Scotland. The Conservatives have closely identified themselves with interests which, though not unpopular at least in England, are not sufficiently powerful to secure for their patrons political predominance. True, Conservatism is also closely identified with the maintenance of the national honour and national interests abroad; but in the opinion of the Tory

Democratic school, the advantages which it possesses here or may possess do not counterweigh the disadvantages arising from a too close identification. with interests not popular or essentially national. In the opinion of such men the time has come in which the party must sever those ties and obligations, and seek instead the support of the broad democratic strata of the nation. Conservatism, as Lord Randolph has observed in one of his speeches, must surrender its close connection with a dependence upon the landed interest, and must seek instead popular support and establish popular connections. In pursuit of the same idea, no doubt he and the men who think with him will sever the close connection now subsisting between Church Establishment and the Conservative party, a connection which has been mainly responsible for the loss to the party of Scotland and of Wales. With regard to Ireland, too, as he indicated in his paper entitled "The Mantle of Elijah," as well as on many occasions in the House of Commons, he is in favour of a Conservative policy more popular than that which he inherited from his predecessors. Consider, too, his attitude with regard to the Crimes Act. Man is the creature of hope, and there are few who do not look forward to a future better than the past. Even the rich fool who could say "Soul, take thine ease," intended at least to throw down his barns and build greater, nor anticipated that to