Page images
PDF
EPUB

they were entirely unacquainted. Briefly her method may be said to consist of securing and maintaining perfect control of the tongue, the lips and the soft palate, and for these processes she gives full directions. She also furnishes colored plates, showing precisely what she means by certain technical phrases of her own invention and to these she adds a "Vowel Table," stating the exact positions required for the production of each vowel. Armed with these, an industrious and obedient person could certainly improve in the pronunciation of English, although he could hardly hope without instruction to attain to such perfection of speech as this book records of the daughter of Mario and Grisi. Miss Jones's book is one of those which should be in the school libraries, not for compulsory use, but to inspirit those rare pupils who desire to attain perfection. Harper & Bros.

The Hon. John W. Foster's years in the diplomatic service have already borne fruit in a group of instructive volumes, and he now avails himself of the retired diplomatist's agreeable privilege, and writes his "Diplomatic Memoirs," two handsome volumes with photogravure portraits of himself and Mrs. Foster, and portraits of ministers from foreign countries to the United States, two presidents of Mexico, two Kings of Spain, the murdered Emperor of Russia and certain American statesmen, among them Oliver P. Morton before the weary days of old age came upon him. Mr. Foster gives but little space to his personal history and ancestry, but disposes of them and of his appointment to the Mexican ministry in a single chapter, and gives the next ten

to Mexico, of which he presents an excellent geographical description, besides recounting the events by which President Diaz was placed in supreme authority. After eight years of Mexico he was sent to Russia where he remained but a short time, returning to the United States on leave of absence, and thinking it best not to go back. Sixteen years later he was again sent to St. Petersburg to find the present Czar on the throne, and the condition of the country very different from that prevailing before the emancipation of the serfs so far alienated the noble from the crown. Spain was his next charge, and since he withdrew from Madrid he has served China in a peace mission to Japan; has twice taken part in the Hague conferences; has been Secretary of State, and as an international lawyer has taken part in many delicate negotiations. It is a long, honorable story, doubly pleasant because it is nearly free from the exciting events in which a minister may have to take part. Mr. Foster's energy and ability have always been manifest, and he modestly prints a few of the letters and other testimonials showered upon him by sovereigns, ministers and his own chiefs, but the impression left upon the reader is entirely different from that received from similar records of European officials. The frank simplicity of the life seems alien to the very word diplomatic, yet the simplicity seems to have been quite as useful to his country as would the practice of all Talleyrand's arts. His book belongs to the little group to which one may point as American, a group ever growing, a steadily increasing historical treasure. Houghton Mifflin Company.

SEVENTH SERIES
VOLUME XLVI.

No. 3422 February 5, 1910

FROM BEGINNING
VOL. CCLXIV.

CONTENTS

IV.

v.

1. Liberalism and the Future. By Sydney Brooks

11.

Mr. Balfour and Signor Croce.

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

As It Happened. Book V. The Chances of the Sea. Chapter VI.
The Falling Away of Thomas Furley. By Ashton Hilliers. (To
be continued.)

338

Some Reminiscences of Mr. Gladstone. By Sir Algernon West
NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER 344
The Theology of Matthew Arnold. By H. W. Garrod .

VI.

OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE REVIEW 349 Made Absolute. By His Honor, Judge Parry

[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

XIII.

Taliesyn's Song of the Wind. By Alfred Perceval Graves

[blocks in formation]

FOR SIX DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually for warded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the United States. To Canada the postage is 50 cents per annum.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office or express money order if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, express and money orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING ACE Co.

Single Copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents.

TALIESYN'S SONG OF THE WIND.

Guess who is this creature

Before us outspeeding,

Of strength so exceeding;
Begot ere the flood,

Without flesh, without blood,
Without bones, without veins,
Without head, without foot,
Not older or younger

Than when he drew breath
At earth's first beginning;
And no design spinning

Of fear or of death,
Through thirst or through hunger,
Through anger or scaith.

Great God! when he cometh,
How the sea foameth
At the breath of his nostrils,
The blast of his mouth!

As it smites from the south-
Foameth and spumeth

And roars on the shores!

Now on the wold,
And now in the wood,
Without hand or foot
Escaping pursuit;
Jealous destiny's rage
Cannot wrinkle his age,
Though coeval was he
With all cycles of time.
Nay, still in his prime

All the face of the earth

Is his mighty demesne; He has ne'er come to birth; He has never been seen, Yet causeth, I ween, Consternation and dearth!

Ere they were beginning to be!

On the sea, on the land,

Unviewed and unviewing,
Pursued and pursuing,

Yet never at hand.

On the land, on the sea,

Unviewing, unviewed,

Though in sight of the Sun;

Ne'er at command,

However he's sued! Indispensable, Incomprehensible, Matchless one!

Out of four regions, Alone, yet in legions, He winneth!

[blocks in formation]

1

LIBERALISM AND THE FUTURE.

Rarely, very rarely, are we in Great Britain called upon to bother our heads about the British Constitution. Except as a mysterious something in the background, we are hardly even aware that it exists. We have not the privilege of carrying our organic act of government in our pockets and of reading it through in twenty minutes. You hardly ever hear the Constitution appealed to in a Parliamentary debate. Speakers may occasionally denounce this and that proposal as "unconstitutional," but the epithet is little more than a rhetorical flourish. There is no authority in Great Britain that is charged, as the Supreme Court of the United States is charged, with the duty of determining whether such and such an Act or procedure is or is not ultra vires. There is no code or document that an inquirer can turn to for a solution of a Constitutional conundrum. Conventions, usages, prescription, precedents, tradition, a few statutes like the Habeas Corpus Act and the Bill of Rights, a few judgments of the law courts, resolutions of the House of Commons, resolutions of the House of Lords, ancient forms that are still retained though their original intention has been abandoned, theories that are flouted by practice, names that answer not to realities, arrangements that are valid and operative though destitute of any formal sanction, a mass of customs, a series of understandings, unwritten compromises and tacit adjustments-it is from this heterogeneous jumble that the supreme political good sense and the placid history of the British people have evolved the most fecund, flexible and convenient system of government that has ever, I suppose, existed, "We are content," says Mr. Sidney Low, perhaps the keenest and most lucid of living commentators

on the realities of British government, "with a Constitution which has been found to meet our practical requirements, though it is partly law, and partly history, and partly ethics, and partly custom, and partly the result of the various influences which are moulding and transforming the whole structure of society, from year to year, and, one might almost say, from hour to hour."

A Constitution at once so smooth, so fluid, so uncertain, so mutable and contradictory, so all but invisible, is obviously not one that lends itself to precise exegesis and cast-iron definitions. The average man, as I have said, in or out of Parliament, is satisfied to take it for granted. It works with so little friction that the occasions are few when its exact purport becomes a matter of political controversy. The present is, indeed, the only time within living recollection when the British public, much to its bewilderment, has found itself compelled by a grave crisis to examine the foundations of its Constitutional system. Many theories and arguments that would have made Burke and Blackstone gasp and stare have been the fruit of this unwonted plunge into the fundamentals of government. Thus we have seen it flatly denied that there is any difference, under the practice of the British system, between what is legal and what is constitutional-as though the distinction between the two were not the very genius of our whole framework, as though the British State could be anything but an elaborate chaos if every authority in it were to insist on treating the fiction of its legal prerogatives as an operative and inquisitorial fact. Thus, too, we have seen it defended as a perfectly normal proceeding, as a power inherent in the very existence of

a Second Chamber, that the House of Lords should refuse the supplies for the year, should bring the executive Government to a standstill, and should compel a dissolution. Thus, again, we have seen one hitherto sober and always independent journal arguing that the Lords have an unqualified right to save the people from any tax which the Commons seek to impose upon them; that the proper way of regarding the Budget is as a collection of separate Tax Bills grouped together for purposes of Parliamentary convenience; that the Lords are under no obligation to treat it as an indivisible whole; that they are entirely at liberty, if they please, to resolve it into its original elements and to deal with each tax separately and as though it were still presented to them in the old form of a special ad hoc Bill; that the Lords, in short, are not bound to accept or reject a Budget in toto, but may pass one clause and throw out another.

Other opponents of the Budget have taken even wider ground than this. They have insisted that the legal powers of the Lords to amend or reject a Finance Bill, though they have rarely been asserted, have not perished from desuetude; that they could only be definitely annulled or abrogated by statutory authority; that the claim of the Commons to a financial absolutism, though never resisted à outrance by the Lords, has been made the subject of formal and repeated protests by the Upper Chamber; and that there is nothing to prevent, and much that in certain circumstances would justify, the resumption by the Lords of their ancient privileges. "It seems to me," said Lord Lansdowne last July, "that, looking at it from a common-sense point of view, it is unthinkable that either under the theory or the practice of the Constitution, in a country with two legislative Chambers, it should be left to the absolute discretion of one of

those Chambers to impose upon the nation any burdens, however monstrous and intolerable, any taxation, however inequitable its incidence, any new financial system, however subversive of society." That unquestionably was, as Lord Lansdowne intended it should be, a searching appeal to the common sense of the nation. It has been endorsed in substance during the last few months by some of the highest authorities on the British Constitution. Professor Dicey, for instance, has laid it down that "the true limit to the privilege or power of the House of Commons in respect of Money Bills is that the Lords may override this privilege if it is so abused as to interfere with the authority of the electors; or, in other words, may, in case of such abuse, compel an appeal to the electorate, or, in popular language, to the nation." Above all questions, he has argued, of the comparative rights of the Lords and the Commons stands the supreme principle that the will of the electorate must ultimately prevail in all legislation; and where there is good reason for believing that the will of the electorate has not been sufficiently consulted, and still more when there is good reason for believing it is being positively thwarted, the Lords are abundantly justified in demanding an appeal to the final tribunal. Such a demand does not constitute the assumption of any new privilege or prerogative on their own behalf. It is simply a means of ascertaining the matured and authoritative judgment of the country on the matter in dispute. Suppose, says Professor Dicey, a Budget were to change the whole electoral system by imposing a tax on voters. Suppose it were to revolutionize the Poor Law or were to establish financial arrangements that would go more than half-way towards setting up Home Rule in Ireland. Can any man seriously maintain that respect for the

« PreviousContinue »