be no doubt as to the feeble and artificial character of Sir Wilfrid's humour, it must be acknowledged that it is generally successful. Something, of course, is due in this respect to the speaker's manner and appearance. Jests which seem in all conscience to be poor enough when seen in print, gain not a little in effect when they are delivered in a falsetto voice by a gentleman whose countenance is grave even to the point of solemnity. Sir Wilfrid, like other humorists, gains something from this contrast between the manner and the matter of his

oratory. He is indebted still more, however, to the audience to whom he habitually appeals. A little humour goes a long way in the British House of Commons; and there can be no doubt that even a duller person than Sir Wilfrid Lawson might at a pinch pass muster as a wit in that illustrious assembly. It is a little disappointing

to have to condemn the Member for Carlisle in his professed character of political humorist, because it is notorious that he is a writer of really smart and clever epigrams, and in private life he has a reputation as a lively and amusing talker. But I have only here to deal with those dismal jokes with which he peppers his speeches in Parliament, and these, it must be repeated, are generally of the very poorest quality.

It is not, therefore, as a humorist that Sir Wilfrid Lawson deserves attention among the politicians of to-day. It is as the type of a particular class of Radical Reformers a class not very numerous in the House of Commons, but yet influential and growing that he demands notice. Sir Wilfrid Lawson-apart from his share in that great question which he has made his own, and of which I shall speak presently -would have gained a considerable position

in Parliament as an advanced Radical. On all social questions he represents the most pronounced members of that school of Liberalism which seeks to carry the spirit of parochialism into national politics; and which believes so firmly in local self-government, that it would like to see centralisation abolished altogether, if that were possible. If he lived in France or Spain, Sir Wilfrid would probably be a Communist. The rights and liberties of the Commune would be dearer to him than the greatness or unity of the country. It cannot be doubted that up to a certain point Sir Wilfrid Lawson has the right on his side. Local self-government is one of the greatest of all English institutions; it is, in fact, the broad basis upon which our Constitution has been so successfully reared. But it is not everything; and a politician can hardly make a greater mistake than that into which he falls when he seeks to

measure every question, be it big or little, by the standard of the interests of his own parish. The wisdom or necessity of a particular line of policy in India or the Mediterranean is not is not to be ascertained by the degree in which that policy is likely to benefit the people of Carlisle.

Undoubtedly it would be far safer for each individual Member of Parliament to look at all public questions from the standpoint of his own local interest, rather than to trust to the guidance of what, under the present Government, have become known as 'Imperial instincts;' but in this, as in most matters, there is a middle path of safety, which the wise man will try as far as possible to follow. Sir Wilfrid, who takes the extreme Radical view on these questions, is naturally one of the strongest opponents of the 'Imperial' policy of Lord Beaconsfield; and more than once he has

done good service in the House of Commons by the way in which he has stripped that policy of the borrowed and stolen plumes in which it has been decked by its framer, and has applied to it those plain common-sense tests by which men of his school are ready to try indifferently the merits of an international treaty or of a turnpike bill. It would be very unfair to deny the great ability with which he has done this part of his work as a Member of Parliament and an opponent of Lord Beaconsfield; or to call in question the thorough earnestness and honesty of his opinions on all these questions of high policy. But one cannot fail to regret the narrowness, possibly it might even be called. the bigotry, of the views he holds on many of these subjects.

After all, England is something more than a collection of parishes, and even a Liberal may be allowed sometimes to confess that