knowing well the objection to using strong words, and the liability to prejudice of the best class of readers; but it is impossible to make known the state of things in Ireland except by using very plain strong words. It is the lying, the idleness, and the drinking, and nothing else, that are the cause of all the troubles. When it is too late this will force itself on the

conviction of all true men.

There is a further point of a very serious kind, and that touches Father O'Leary and Father Mulcahy, and still more their Church. (Let me state plainly that, in what I am about to say, I by no means wish to say a word against the majority of the Roman Catholic priests in Ireland. Many are worthy men, doing their duty fairly and honestly, like the parish priest of the parish where Father O'Leary is curate.)

I have said enough of Father O'Leary. He asserts that Father Mulcahy denies having helped to draw away my labourers. A dozen persons saw my men going into his vestry on the Sunday before they left me. My son saw him in the village next day with the men. The windows of the police barrack, too, look on the place. Father Mulcahy holds a few fields from a magistrate near his house. He refused to pay his rent, and about a month ago had to be sued in the County Court for three half-years' rent. A few days afterwards the magistrate received a dead rat by post in a letter; a few days more, and all his beagles were poisoned. When such things are done, it is right they should be known.

But the really serious question is this, What must be the character of a Church whose ministers are permitted to do even a part of what these Roman Catholic priests have done? Put aside all doubtful points, and consider only those that are admitted, and even gloried in. They are done by the ministers of a Christian religion, because a landowner charges his tenants rather higher rent than these priests like, and will not submit to their dictation on the subject. Have the ministers of any other form of the Christian religion acted in this way? Has it come to this, that such interference of Roman Catholic priests is to be borne in this kingdom?

We all know what has long been the accusation against Roman Catholic priests, that they aim at directing the affairs of this world, both in families and in civil society, for their own purposes, in a way that has raised distrust and suspicion in every country where they have a footing.

All, too, know what effect this very same interference has produced on men's minds in France, Belgium, Germany, and even Italy, and the strong, scarcely justifiable, measures the Governments of those countries have been driven to take in consequence against the priests. There never was a clearer and more wholly unjustifiable instance of this evildoing than that of Fathers O'Leary and Mulcahy, and the other priests in Ireland who have acted in the same way. I ask the attention to it of all honest men in all the countries of Europe. I abstain from drawing the moral; but I am quite certain what will be the effect of

such conduct on the interests of their Church. Backward as is the state of Ireland, still it is growing fast in education and knowledge.

No minister of religion can abuse his office for such purposes as these without inflicting the worst injury on his religion, and giving a justification to the opponents of it, of the greatest value and effectiveness in their hands. One thing more I ought to mention, lest I should seem

to avoid it on purpose.

Father O'Leary states that my grandfather was an attorney, and the Town Clerk of Cork. On a previous occasion he said the same thing, and his New York friend, who drew his information from him, repeats it. It is plain he thinks the statement will eause me annoyance or injury. The fact has been always known to all in County Cork. Many must remember my grandfather, as I do. I certainly never gave any one the impression that I wished to keep the fact out of sight, nor has any act of my life assumed a position inconsistent with it. The unusual truth and uprightness of my grandfather's character, and the great esteem he enjoyed in consequence from all sorts of men, is one of those things that have been the pride of my life, and I have always rejoiced to believe that what there is in me of truth and uprightness, was inherited from him. Father O'Leary can know little c England if he thinks that any man of education, whose conduct and character are such as they should be, will lose the good opinion of any whose opinion is worth having, because his grandfather had not the advantages of birth others enjoy.

To conclude. Dealing with land, whether by the owner or occupier, is a business and nothing else, just as much as cotton-spinning or selling cotton goods. It can only prosper when conducted on the same sound principles. It does not, therefore, follow that kindness and fair consideration are to be excluded from the business of dealing with land any more than from any other business, not because of any right in the receiver, but because they are duties due by the giver to his own character. It follows, therefore, that if a large sum of capital is to be expended on land, it must yield an honest business return to whoever expends it. If from any cause it does not yield the return, capital will soon cease to be laid out. It is for this reason—a great expenditure of capital being the chief want of Ireland, by which alone production and employment can be increased that so much care is needed not to deter any one who has been laying out capital, or can be induced to do so.

Such ideas are wholly outside men like Father O'Leary, and others of his sort in Ireland. Hence the unreasonable and dishonest views put out, which have led to the present trouble, and which it is impossible to satisfy, because their one aim is to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. W. BENCE JONES.

July 15, 1881.

ARE REFORMS POSSIBLE UNDER

MUSSULMAN RULE?

I

MUST ask to be excused for prefacing the answer which I propose to make to this question with some observations on an article in which the Saturday Review criticised my paper on Lord Beaconsfield in the June number of this REVIEW. On the personalities in which the writer of that article thought fit to indulge I shall make no remark further than to express my surprise and regret that they should have been permitted to appear in a journal of the character and reputation of the Saturday Review.

The readers of my paper on Lord Beaconsfield will remember that I was not niggardly in my praise of his private worth. I said that, in spite of appearances to the contrary, "so admirable a husband and so true a friend was clearly not deficient in generous and amiable qualities;" that he was "honest and straightforward" from his own point of view; that even when I felt bound to call attention to conduct which seemed to me morally indefensible, still "I made no imputation whatever on his sincerity;" that "his private life had been unsullied by the breath of scandal;" that "in his private character it seems to be generally admitted that he was not only irreproachable, but graced with some ennobling qualities;" that "he has left behind him warm friends and no enemics;" that "equity requires that in passing judgment on Lord Beaconsfield's political career we should not apply too rigorously in his case our ordinary canons of political morality," because adverse circumstances, not of his own creation," are answerable, to a degree not commonly suspected, for what even a friendly judgment must condemn in Lord Beaconsfield's character and career."

Having thus done full justice to the man, I felt myself at liberty to criticise all the more frankly the conduct of the politician. I accused Lord Beaconsfield of having "made self-aggrandisement the one aim of

his life." For this the Saturday Review has taken me severely to task, and has referred me to Lord Hartington's judgment on Lord Beaconsfield's foreign policy in his last administration—namely, that "it has been one which in his [Lord Beaconsfield's] judgment has been calculated to promote the greatness, the honour, and the prosperity of this country." Now, in the first place, Lord Beaconsfield's foreign policy in his last administration was but a small part of his public career. But, secondly, it is by no means impossible for a politician to persuade himself that the path which leads to self-aggrandisement is also the path which "promotes the greatness, the honour, and the prosperity of this country." No form of self-deception is more common. If the Saturday Review knows how Lord Beaconsfield could have achieved personal greatness through the littleness, and degradation, and ruin of his country, I candidly confess that I do not. But, thirdly, I prefer Lord Beaconsfield's own account of his political conduct even to the judgment of Lord Hartington or anybody else. Whatever else I may think of Lord Beaconsfield, he was, in my opinion, as little of a hypocrite as most men. When he entered the political arena he avowed candidly and publicly the principles by which he intended to be guided. deliberately composed manifesto he said:

"A statesman is the creature of his age, the child of circumstances, the creation of his times. A statesman is essentially a practical character; and when he is called upon to take office he is not to inquire what his opinions might or might not have been upon this or that subject; he is only to ascertain the needful, and the beneficial, and the most feasible manner in which affairs are to be carried on. The fact is, the conduct and opinions of public men at different periods of their career must not be too curiously contrasted in a free and aspiring country. The people have their passions, and it is even the duty of public men occasionally to adopt sentiments with which they do not sympathize, because the people must have leaders. . . . I laugh, therefore, at the objection against a man that, at a former period of his career, he advocated a policy different to his present one."

On that rule of conduct Lord Beaconsfield's whole career was based, and he took no pains whatever to conceal the fact. Free Trade, Parliamentary Reform, the Disestablishment of the Irish Church-these and other questions he advocated or opposed alternately according as the one or the other promoted or impeded his own possession of power. Other men have changed their political principles and connexions. The late Lord Derby began life as a strong Liberal and ended as a strong Tory. Mr. Gladstone began life as a strong Tory, and is now the chief of the Liberal party. But Lord Beaconsfield "piqued himself on his consistency" to the end of his career. In opposition he advocated the policy which he considered most likely to oust the Ministry. In office he adopted the policy which he thought best calculated to retain power. And this he did openly and without any disguise. Politics were with him a game of skill, of which the great object was to win. the other hand, he had such confidence in his own powers that he sincerely believed himself better able than any competitor to promote

On

the welfare of the country. His pursuit of aggrandisement thus coincided with what he believed to be the welfare of his country. Even the Saturday Review, when not bent on venting its spleen upon me, slips into agreement with my estimate of Lord Beaconsfield. "The early part of his Parliamentary career," it says in its obituary notice, "was devoted to the establishment of his own position, as the necessary step to his further efforts." "It was to Mr. Disraeli that the Conservative party was indebted for its relief from the dead weight of Protectionist pledges. The opponents who denounced a cynical breach of consistency well knew that he had no economic convictions to repudiate." Precisely. But that did not prevent his professing Free Trade principles until his quarrel with Peel, nor his subsequent advocacy of what he styled "the sacred cause of Protection" until he stood upon the threshold of office, and found that a Free Trade policy was the only passport to power.

Are these facts? Have I misquoted or misrepresented Lord Beaconsfield? And if I have not, what is my critic's alternative interpretation of the facts? The key which I have applied to them has been furnished by Lord Beaconsfield himself. And in the same passage he incidentally suggests the plea of mitigating circumstances which I have urged on behalf of the man for the immorality of the politician. "A statesman is the creature of his age, the child of circumstances, the creation of his times." Lord Beaconsfield's personal environment up to the period of his entrance on the stage of public life was such as, humanly speaking, to leave him no chance. Men ought to be judged not so much by their acts as by their opportunities. "Mr. Disraeli," as I said in my article upon him, "started on his public career with little or no furniture of moral or religious principles of any kind— and this from no fault of his own." In passing judgment on his public conduct, therefore, equity requires that we should leave his personal character to the judgment of Him who "seeth not as man seeth," and who has warned us, in arrest of hasty condemnations, that very often "the first shall be last, and the last shall be first." It would be most unfair to judge Lord Beaconsfield by the standard by which we measure our ordinary public men; all the circumstances of his life are so entirely different. But, on the other hand, those who believe that the influence of his public career was, on the whole and in itself, an evil influence, ought not to abstain from saying so because it might be more agreeable to shout with the crowd.

"They are slaves who will not choose

Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,

Rather than in silence shrink

From the truth they needs must think.
They are slaves who dare not be

In the right with two or three."

The chorus of undiscriminating adulation which the death of Lord Beaconsfield evoked was, for the most part, an exhibition of flunkeyism