nihilates it, and that the concession of even a small right is often a far more generous act than the bestowal of large gifts. He does not realize that, influence, to be strong, must voluntarily abjure absolutism, which, though it have starvation at its back, cannot bend the human will, and may injure affection beyond reparation. A business contract in these circumstances would often safeguard a good relation, and remove endless friction and complaint.

Of course there are many far simpler reasons which make men avoid business principles when dealing with their families. A great many men who in their professions display some method are born muddlers, and when they are at home they indulge their natural proclivities. They cannot bring their minds to harass themselves with one more contract which must be adhered to. No one not born with the tendency to procrastination and a natural hatred of method has any idea how hard these defects are to cure. The effort to keep to time and rule is ceaseless, and it is not too much to say that now and then it is agonizing. The procrastinator feels as though he were passing his life in a workhouse governed by alarum-clocks. The temptation to give in to his temperament at home is overwhelming. course some one suffers. His wife never knows when she will get her bills paid, nor how much she may reasonably spend, and his children cannot remember when their pocketmoney was so small as to be a certainty. When such characters belong to the worser sort, and are ungenerous as well unpunctual, the more unbusinesslike they are the richer they feel. They are never sure what their outgoings will be at any given date; consequently they are sometimes in actual possession of a little more than can be accounted for.

Of

But all this time we are talking of allowances, not of actual sums which when given bring in a settled income that it is no longer in the power of the donor to control. In the greater number of cases, of course, the head of a household cannot afford to do this either for his children, or for any relative who may, so to speak, do duty for a child under his roof. "Cannot," we say, without perhaps sufficient consideration. It is not the custom, at any rate in England, for a man to divide his fortune with his children. Speaking generally, the most unselfish parents belonging to the middle and upper classes expect in their old age to enjoy a larger income than is enjoyed by, say, a son with a rising family. Would the world be happier if the custom changed, if every good man said to himself:-"I am getting old. I need, of course, physical comforts; but I want less society, can enjoy fewer pleasures, and feel far less ambition than I did when I was young. Money is less good to me now. Let my son and his children enjoy themselves while they may. I only ask them not to forget the giver"? Would such a new custom make for the good of the world? From the point of view of strict reason it is conceivable that it might; but the instinct of mankind would seem to be against it. The time when a man could enjoy most is the time when, for the good of the world, he ought to work hardest. Perhaps no man can safely have all that he wants until, if we may be forgiven the paradox, he has ceased to want it. One must not forget, however, that the French dot system does in a measure force men to divide their goods with their children, and that by contract. The devotion between parents and children existing in France is a byword. Clearly here no affection is stifled by money.

The moral effects of money are of

course very difficult indeed to appraise. The extent to which money will buy duty is rather appalling. We believe that no philanthropic institution ever attains to any size or importance without paid agents. Let an undertaking rouse what enthusiasm it may, no sufficient number of persons will serve it heartily for nothing. An individual voluntary worker may do more than any paid man, but the rank-and-file will never put in a full day's work. Is not the conclusion this: that affection, individual affection, the dynamic force which one personality arouses in anThe Spectator.

other, is a thing which cannot be bought and can hardly be gauged, a thing so strong that money has no more effect upon it than it has upon the force of gravitation. But duty is another thing. Completely abstract in its essence, the most exclusively human of all sentiments, the one thing we seem not to share with the animals, it needs in most men a strong material stimulus. No man ever does his duty the worse because he is pard for it and how many thousands do it better!

Just as a matter of form I took a pair of gloves and drove round to the Galleries, but I did not expect to find anybody there. However, there appeared to be quite a lot of people.

"Then the dance has not been postponed?" I said to the man who accepted my coat.

"Hardly seems like it," he replied. "Perhaps they haven't heard the news," I said; and I bustled off to find someone in authority.

A dear old friend, who used to share my Latin proses at school, approached, staggering beneath a weight of orders, ribbons, garters, rosettes and what not.

"Look here," I began at once, "this is no time for dressing up. We can't stand fiddling here while Rome is burning. You're a steward?"

"How did you guess?" he asked. "Well, you must stop the dance. I suppose you've heard what's happened?"

"The question is, have you heard what's going to happen? My boy, I'm going to introduce you to the prettiest girl north of the Equator. Ah, here she is."

Mechanically I went through the introduction, and with a heavy heart broke into what the Press calls the "mazy waltz" with her. Feeling that the whole thing was some horrible dream I led her to a secluded corner, and offered a meringue, an ice, a cup of coffee, champagne cup, and a marron glacé. She refused them all.

"Yes," I said, "I agree with you. It is a mockery to sit here eating, when in the great world outside"

"One can't begin after the very first dance, I always say."

"Sometimes I wonder if I shall ever eat again."

"Lots of people feel like that, just after Oh, do let's talk about something else."

"There is only one thing to talk about," I cried. "The Constitution has been torn asunder-"

"I don't think you're doing what I asked you," she said coldly. "Have you been to many plays lately?"

"Plays! Haven't you heard the news? The so-called House of Lords-"

“Oh, politics! Do you know, I don't take much interest in them."

"This isn't to be dismissed lightly as 'politics,'' I said excitedly. "The whole world-north of the Equator "

"I'm so glad, aren't you? I

got up. hate horrid taxes."

As soon as I was alone again I dashed to the cloak-room, struggled

We went back; and I decided to leave the giddy throng in order to strike somehow a blow for freedom. Just as I had got my coat my friend the ambassador came up.

"A charming girl in green for you here," he said, taking me by the arm. "The best dancer south of the Aurora Borealis. Let me introduce you."

Once more I found myself treading the mazy whirl; once more I found myself sitting on the sofa in the little room on the right as you go downstairs.

"Have you been to many dances lately?" said the girl in green.

"Is this a time for dances," I said, sternly, "when all England is reeling under a blow dealt by a handful of hereditary irresponsibles? You have not heard the tidings? They have kept the ill news from you, fearing to mar your innocent gaiety? Yet the time must come when-"

"Oh, do tell me. I love anything exciting."

"A revolution has begun, the end of which no man can foresee."

"Oh where?"

"You ask me where?"

"Of course you mean in Spain. But then they're always having them there, aren't they? I think Queen Ena is so sweet, don't you? Isn't the floor good to-night?""

"Spain? What of Spain? We have had a revolution forced on us in England! In England, yes; but all Europe -south of the Aurora Borealis

"Shall we be getting back? It's so hard to hear the music from here. I suppose you've heard about the Budget being thrown out?" she went on, as we

porter to get me a hansom. I would shake the dust of frivolity from my shoes, and

"Hallo," said my friend the archduke, “you can't possibly dance in all those things. Leave 'em here and the man will give you a ticket. I have a delightful girl with golden slippers just round the corner-the best talker west of Suez. She wants to sit this out with you."

Ah, here at last was a girl who understood! She too had no heart for dancing.

We sat in silence for some time in the little room on the right as you go downstairs. Then I looked all round me, saw that we were alone, and said in a hollow voice:

"When our shords are seethedwhen our swords are sheathed there will not be one Duke left."

"Have you seen Smith?" said the best talker west of Suez.

"No. Are the chosen of the people to be thwarted by a handful of irreconcilables? Shall a degenerate "Don't you love Marie Löhr?"? "Yes. Is the Representative House to be browbeaten-"

"Do you go to many plays?"

"Several. The battle is joined; the lists are set; like a trumpet-call to lovers of liberty comes

,,

"Have you read any good novels lately?" "Five. The revolution into which the haughty backwoodsmen have entered so lightly—"

"Do you rink a great deal?”

"Moderately. Are the lords of Walbottle, the patrons of the beer bottle, to dictate

"Have you been to the Motor Show yet?".

News? They're awfully exciting now, aren't they?"

"Yes. Oh, yes. Only I think I must have read too many of them. One loses one's sense of proportion."

"I lose simply everything. Gloves. fans, handkerchiefs."

"Well, you very nearly lost me. I all but went after the third dance." "Why? Did you have a very heavy partner?"

"No, not exactly that; butare you keen on-on politics things?"

"Why, of course."

I say,

and

President Taft's first Message touches a great number of subjects, but the most exciting domestic questions of the day, such as corporation taxes and waterways, are left over for subsequent development, and the residue, though full of interest and variety of suggestion, is not of a character likely to excite controversy or divide the Republican party, as under his too theatrical predecessor. He promises the fulfilment of some of the election pledges of his party, such as the cessation of "government by injunction" in labor disputes and the establishment of postal savings banks; and he urges the expediting of Federal equity procedure, a greatly needed reform. But three groups

of subjects call for special attentionforeign affairs, tariff problems, and currency and finance. The section on foreign affairs, with which the Mes-. sage opens, deals at length not only with questions forced on the United States by its geographical position, but with the problems raised by the overflow of American capital to find new fields in the Far East and Central America. By this and by its references to the attitude of the Administration towards the Congo problem and to the Monroe Doctrine, it shows once more that the United States has become a "world-power"; but the conditions contemplated are really a revival, on a much larger scale, of those which

existed before the War of Secession. In the 'forties and 'fifties of the last century Boston and New York had large interests in Far Eastern trade, and New York capitalists made the Panama railway, and carried on the rival transit enterprise by the river and lake of Nicaragua. Then came the war, which incidentally freed the West from the danger of development by slave labor, organized on a patriarchal system and directed by a landed gentry from the South. The country was opened up to farmers, miners, and ranchers, who furnished an infinitely better traffic for the great trans-continental railways than would have been possible under a slave system and a landlord aristocracy; and for some 40 years there was employment enough and to spare at home, even for the marvellously increased capital of the American people. That capital is now overworking again into the old channels; its first need is security, and President Taft intimates very clearly that this security will either be ensured by the United States, if necessary, or accepted, in spite of the Monroe Doctrine, from any European Government that may feel called on to provide it for its own investors. The danger of European political interference in Spanish America has disappeared-a recognition of facts which may be commended in passing to the German enthusiasts for "expansion"; and in regard to Nicaragua, American political interference will go no further than is necessary to uphold the duty of the Government to American interests and "its moral obligations to Central America and civilization." Here, of course, we must await the pending developments, on which a future Message will be issued; but we may bear in mind that, on the one hand, the United States and Mexico are pledged to keep the peace between the little Central American States through

the central Court of Arbitration, and, on the other, that any establishment and support of a particular faction will raise a Nationalist opposition which will greatly complicate the task. We cannot but add that such a Government might make trouble between American interests and the large British interests in Nicaragua, and that though General Zelaya is a kind of mediæval despot, there is some reason to believe that General Estrada, who owes his rise to him, and is now leading the revolt, might prove to be even worse. We can only hope that the interference which has undoubtedly become the duty of the United States will be limited to the restoration of peace and the protection of an efficient and orderly administration in Nicaragua. Of other foreign questions touched we can only note the subsidence of the Japanese scare and the reference, too moderate in tone, but still promising, to America's attitude on the Congo problem.

In the financial portion of the Message there is a cautious intimation, in accordance with Republican pledges, that the tariff may be lowered in the remote future, and an indication that the Government sees the folly of tariff wars. The reference to the rise of the cost of living, a process which, by the way, seems likely to cause a serious railroad strike, provokes the criticism that, if much of the rise is independent of the tariff, it is folly to keep it aggravated by artificial means; and other great evils of the tariff do not quite escape notice. The great sugar frauds are now sub judice, but they illustrate strongly the evil possibilities of Tariff "Reform." The corruption of the New York Custom House in small matters, such as the passing of passengers' luggage, has long been notorious, and is fully recognized in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury; but it takes more than the mere tipping of officers