the Opposition. No wonder that of late there have been signs of temper in Downing Street.

In the meantime, as the summer discussions proceeded, it became increasingly clear that the Bill was an utter frost in the constituencies, while not so amazingly unpopular as was, and is, widely believed on both sides. The Bill was yet likely to do the Government more harm than good. Certainly as a method of stemming or postponing a turn of the tide it was futile. Its vital defect, both as a legislative enactment and as a popular measure, began to stare everyone in the face. No Bill could survive the hostility of the friendly societies; but to settle their sentimental and financial objections was such an appallingly costly proceeding that every other interest and class not immediately bound up with these organisations had to be sacrificed ruthlessly. The post office contributors, the agricultural labourers, the doctors, the domestic servants, the clerks, the town worker earning less than 24s. a week, soldiers and sailors, were allowed to go to the wall. Some grievances have, indeed, been remedied, but there is no money to remedy the main defect. The exclamations of the sufferers have been becoming increasingly vociferous, and byelections, especially in Scotland and in the agricultural districts, have begun to wear an ugly look. Indeed, as early as last summer there was a panic in the Liberal ranks which was reflected in the Cabinet, and a determined effort was made to secure the withdrawal of the Bill. The Chancellor, however, faced his friends firmly; but his remarks about standing or falling by the Bill were addressed, not to the Opposition, but to the enemies of his own household.

The truth of the matter is that the country is getting a little bit tired of sensational legislation and violent language. Never much enamoured of the Newcastle programme, it will answer no more to the syren pipe of Limehouse, unless the Tories are so incredibly stupid as to give it the impression that nothing but the Lloyd-Georgian method can give it the gradual social amelioration it desires. Perhaps the events of last July have had something to do with this change of mood. A universal railway strike and the prospect of a war with Germany all in forty-eight hours were enough to damp the most ardent advocates of an exciting life. They were two sensational extras not provided by the management, and they have rather glutted the public appetite. Underneath this uneasiness lies that old inveterate distrust of Liberal foreign policy which only Palmerston could quell, and that at the price of quarrelling with his Chancellor of the Exchequer once a week. In this matter neither the official Liberal nor Unionist Press really represents the public

mind, which has no confidence in Sir Edward Grey or in "Mansion House" methods. The nation has an instinctive feeling that a policy which leads to proposals for a limitation of armaments between the two countries one year, and to the necessity for a strong "hands off" speech the next, is conceived in just that kind of spirit which gets you into war by mistake and then gets you beaten when you are in it. The Crimean War was due to the fact that the Czar could not believe that a Ministry which contained so many eminent pacificists could really mean business nor is Liberalism a synonym for effective military preparation. Similarly, while the country has no particular complaint to make of the manner in which the Ministry has handled Labour troubles, it feels that to a large extent the Radicals have been laying spirits which they themselves have raised.

By the time the Insurance Bill was through both Houses, this "tired feeling" and this lack of confidence was beginning to become predominant in the national mind. The air was full of portents which might have been read with profit by Ministers of rash and reckless dispositions. The west and the eastern counties were inclined to regard the prospect of Home Rule with a sullen, if not very explicit disapproval. South Somerset had come and gone. Hatfield and Oldham brought small comfort to Ministerialists. Quondam Liberal votes were being parcelled out between Toryism and Labour. There was no enthusiasm for Disestablishment, and Disendowment is loathed far beyond the confines of the orthodox Conservative ranks. The position in Ulster was ominous. Still the movement of the political waters, though apparent to any keen observer, was not yet very marked. The tide had turned, but it had not yet begun to flow with any force. A prudent leader would have kept very quiet and hoped that things would smooth themselves out before the introduction. of the Home Rule Bill.

Not so Mr. Lloyd George; he chose this very moment to go down to Bath to deliver a speech so insane in the circumstances of the hour that after a month has elapsed no two people are agreed as to the real reasons for making it, or as to the ultimate. effects it is likely to produce. Some critics have attributed this resounding indiscretion purely to overstrain; others have seen in it a deliberate attempt to foil Mr. Redmond at the cost of wrecking the Government before Home Rule could be passed: the more cynical see in it nothing but an attempt to supersede Mr. Asquith in the Premiership. No doubt overwork and annoyance at his tactical defeat and electoral failure over the Insurance Bill may have been a contributory cause to the Chancellor's strange

performance. But in the main the writer believes, to pay Mr. Lloyd George a compliment, that there is something Napoleonic about his mentality-largely that something which brought the Emperor to St. Helena. Napoleon's mind became fixed in the mould of his earlier successes-he never realised that the conditions of Leipsic were not the conditions of Lodi. The Emperor also shared the fatalistic belief that if you gamble deep enough you are bound to win out. The Chancellor seems to imagine because he shifted the issues from Tariff Reform versus Free Trade over the Budget, and thus saved the waning fortunes of the Ministry, that he can repeat the trick an indefinite number of times. The history of the Insurance Bill has apparently taught him nothing; nor does he appear to realise that a party which has been in office for six years does not occupy the same relation to the country as a party which has only been in office three and a half. The Bath speech was the third attempt to shift the issues. And beyond that there was the gambler's fascination when in doubt double your stake, when in difficulty treble your programme: if the electors thought the summer and autumn insufficient for the discussion of the Insurance Bill, give them three principal measures in a single session. If the country has nerves, frighten it out of its nervousness by homoeopathic doses of panic. No wonder a thin and dolorous wail of protest goes up from the moderate Liberal Press. And then remains the last card: Adult Suffrage; who knows but that policies and proceedings obnoxious to the existing electorate might not be welcomed by a vast and newly enfranchised horde grateful to the authors of their electoral being. One has heard "of the last throw of a ruined gamester "; now one has seen it, and behind it lies the continual instinct to escape those unpopular causes which have sterilised Liberalism in the past.

But why Adult Women's Suffrage? Here, it must be confessed, one touches a factor which lends strength to the suggestion that the Chancellor is riding for a fall. The announcement that Lord Loreburn and Mr. Lewis Harcourt are to speak on the same platform with Lord Cromer and Mr. F. E. Smith at the Albert Hall, on February 28th, in the anti-suffrage interest, casts a lurid light on Cabinet unity. Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer really imagine that a Cabinet can hold together or hold office when they are uniting with opponents to denounce each other's policy on an issue which will in all human probability be a living one at the next general election? The whole proceeding has a touch of Gilbert and Sullivan opera about it. Yet here to ride for a fall is to get one. The Insurance Bill will need years of custom and drastic amendment to make it even mildly popular; to face an election at a period when the contri

butions have been paid, and in thousands of cases the qualifying period has not been finished, and in consequence no benefits have been received, is to court overwhelming disaster. There is, of course, no pretence, even on the Liberal side, that any of these measures except Home Rule has received the popular assent. That is, however, nothing surprising, since Liberalism has long given up the pretence that it rules by popular mandate, and is perfectly content to govern by group deals and Cabinet autocracy. One is, however, the less concerned by this fact, because there is only a very faint possibility that Ministers will survive long enough to carry any of next session's measures into law-and before they can return to the charge the Constitution will have been re-enacted. The Government have not two years to live. The Lords' power of delay covers that period for measures passed next session. Nor at the present rate of rake's progress have Ministers the slightest chance of returning to office.

Fortunately, it is not for opponents to explain this final gaffe over Female Suffrage; the fact is good enough for Unionists. It possesses, however, the touch of personal interest. The Chancellor is, in his curious way, a real Democrat and a violent Jingo. Many of us expect to see him passing his old age in the secure fold of Toryism. But he is at the present moment playing a losing game with a lack of self-control which is curious in such a thorough-going sportsman. A touch of the folie des grandeurs is, as has been suggested, the only reasonable explanation. If the Chancellor was at his best in good times, Mr. Churchill has shown a far greater aptitude in dealing with a falling market. Indeed, if Mr. Lloyd George is not careful, the leadership of the Liberal Opposition, with the reversion of the future Premiership, may yet fall to his principal rival. The safe man who upheld Liberal credit by reorganising the Navy may triumph over the genius who was damned for a decade for driving. his party on the rocks. Nor need there be any doubt that the Unionist party will, if public opinion becomes uncontrollable, as it is likely to do, take the necessary measure to force an appeal to the country before they allow the unity of the United Kingdom to be shattered and civil war raised in Ireland, or an ancient Church ruined and spoliated, against the wishes of the people. So much for the contributions made by events and Ministers to the prospects of a Tory return to office.

But the very prospect of such a return entails on that Opposition the duty of taking serious stock of its position and its prospects. It has the asset of the flowing tide, if it makes no crass blunder of policy sufficient to stem a movement which is just now "too full for sound or foam." It has the asset of a leader in whom it believes. One ill-bred speech by a peer and a

few serious newspaper comments have dwelt on the fact that Mr. Law is not a member of the landed aristocracy. The criticism seems rather puerile when one remembers that Peel, who stood for the manufacturing classes precisely as Mr. Law does, and Disraeli, who certainly did not belong to "the gentlemen of England," controlled the Tory party in the Commons for more than half of the nineteenth century. These anxious souls must console themselves with the reflection that the phenomenon in the Commons is not without precedent. And, after all, Lord Lansdowne is still leader in the Lords, and the most prominent figures behind him, Lord Curzon, Lord Selborne, and Lord Willoughby de Broke, are not without their influence in the counsels of the party. A far more astonishing fact is that out of the quartette who must inevitably control for some years the destinies of the party in the Commons, three are the chosen representatives of the great industrial centres. Unionism has not to find seats for its leaders in Carnarvon, or Fife, or Dundee. If Mr. Law stands for Glasgow, Mr. Austen Chamberlain is the Midlands and Birmingham, as Mr. F. E. Smith is the incarnation of the Liverpool Tory-Democracy; while Mr. Walter Long keeps the banner of "the country party" flying. If the torch has passed from Hatfield, that is Hatfield's own fault, as an "Old Tory" pointed out recently in a terribly just letter to The Times. If Lord Hugh Cecil, and, to a lesser degree, Lord Robert Cecil, are to-day rather out of the running, it is certainly not the fault of their party or of their brilliant abilities. It is due to the fact that, apart from their views on the Church or on defence (compulsory service?), they are the rankest of midVictorian Whigs, and would have voted in four divisions out of five for Lord Palmerston and against Mr. Disraeli. Toryism can hardly give office or precedence to men, however gifted, who are opposed to its fundamental principles. Personal questions have, however, now ceased to be matters of primary importance. The writer ventured to point out two months ago that everything depended on the harmonious co-operation of the four most prominent members of the Front Bench. That co-operation has been achieved, and the new leader can depend, not merely on the loyal support, but on the active sympathy and agreement of his principal colleagues. There remains the question of policy. That problem requires far more attention than it has yet received from an Opposition until recently without hope of office; it also requires far more space than the limits of the present article will allow. It must be sufficient to indicate in the briefest possible manner the salient facts in the electoral position. In order to attain office it is necessary to obtain a majority in the House of Commons. In order to obtain that majority the Unionist