begin a great political movement seldom foresee its direction or live to witness its termination. That will probably be the case in Japan. But meanwhile, even in this eventful age, there is no more curious subject of observation and speculation.

The revolution of 1868 was in reality accomplished by four of the great nobles or princes of the country, Satsuma, Hizen, Chôshiu, and Tosa. They succeeded in destroying and extinguishing the power of the Shagoun, which had long held themselves in check; they assumed the supreme authority of the State under the name of the Mikado; and they have used that authority to reduce all the lesser daimios to absolute subjection, by depriving them of their property, by compelling them to reside in Yedo, and by disarming their retainers, who are reduced to beggary. But in spite of these apparently vigorous measures, it is doubtful whether the new legislation of Yedo is obeyed in the country, and whether the Government really possesses the power it claims. The Mikado has no army and no real force but that which the great daimios may lend him. He is, in fact, a talisman, and no more, but he serves the purpose of those who keep him there.

The revolution of 1868 either means nothing or it is the substitution of the rule of four princes under the supreme but nominal authority of the Mikado for that of the Shogoun. Yedo, the seat of the late Shogoun's power, was necessarily the seat of power of his successor : hence the talisman was removed from Kiyoto to Yedo. The new state of things then is, in fact, the domination of four feudal chiefs, collectively exercised, under the name of the Mikado, by ministers who are their own nominees. The young sovereign, the Mikado himself, is so far a party to the movement, that he is favourably disposed to innovations and approves the conduct of his ministers.' (Hübner, vol. ii. p. 215.)

No wonder, for the revolution has released his Majesty from the monotonous bondage of an Epicurean divinity, and converted him into a prince and a man. Divine honours contribute very little to human enjoyment. But in this state of things it is obvious that there are numerous causes of dissension. The four chiefs will not always agree. The Mikado will not always submit to them. The treaties with foreign States are about to be revised, and will raise fresh questions. A large number of fierce, lawless, and reckless retainers have been impoverished and disarmed by the recent changes, and must form a most dangerous class, if they cannot be incorporated into a regular army. Revolutions are costly; the Government is in want of money, and has seized the eccle

siastical endowments; but that is a questionable expedient, which creates another host of enemies, the priests and bonzes, who have been turned adrift and told to shift for themselves. Have they no hold on the people? These are serious considerations; and unless the Japanese nation differs from any other recorded in history, we confess we cannot share the confident expectation of Iwakura and his colleagues that the whole revolution will be successfully terminated in three years-indeed, nearly five years have almost elapsed since it began; and we incline rather to the opinion, which Baron Hübner seems to entertain, that events of a very extraordinary and perhaps afflicting nature may still be expected to occur in Japan. Certainly no writer has done so much as this distinguished traveller to give us a vivid and correct impression of the present state of that country.

ART. IV.-1. First and Second Reports of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into Friendly and Benefit Building Societies. Minutes of Evidence: 1871-1872.

2. Reports of Her Majesty's Diplomatic and Consular Agents abroad respecting the Condition of the Industrial Classes, &c., in Foreign Countries.

'GOOD

1870-1872.

LOOD husbandry is no English virtue. It may have been 'brought over, and in some places where it has been planted it has thriven well enough; but it is a foreign species-it neither loves nor is beloved by any Englishman.' Lord Derby recently quoted this passage from Defoe (in a speech as chairman of the first annual meeting of the Provident Knowledge Society '), to show that a disinclination to save is an old hereditary sin of the English people. His lordship declared himself a great believer in the permanence of • national character,' and hinted that English deficiencies in saving may be the result of traits of character inherent in and inseparable from the nature of a progressive and energetic people.' It is tempting, no doubt, to make the national character the scapegoat of national sins, but in this instance it would probably be nearer the truth to lay the blame on the strength of the temptations of national position and circumstances, rather than on any inherent and inherited tendencies to sin in a particular way.

It is said, and we believe with truth, that more than two

thirds of the English people are dependent on wages. Probably in no other country in the world is the proportion of the people dependent on wages so large. And it would seem that at no other period of English history has so large a proportion of the English people been dependent on wages as at the present time. Whether rightly or wrongly, such is the great economic fact which practical statesmanship has to deal with in England. It is the product of her past economic history. The fact seems to be that very early in the course of the economic development of the English people, a remarkably rapid and continuous extension of commercial enterprise became united in very unusual combination with manufacturing industry. The permanence of this unusual combination was favoured by natural advantages. The maritime position of England favoured her commerce. The growth on English soil (home or colonial) of the raw material needed for her looms, joined to the possession of coal and iron fields, naturally fed her manufactures. Mechanical skill and inventiveness became hereditary in her people. The growth and steady accumulation of capital generation after generation, and century after century, was the natural result. This growth of capital in its turn led inevitably to an earlier and more general application than in other countries of the principle of division of labour. And thus has come to pass (rightly or wrongly) the fact that so large a number of the English people are dependent on wages. Whether this process ought to have been checked by legislation may be open to question. We do not mean to discuss it here. But if we may trust present appearances, a practical proof seems to be coming to hand of the wisdom, in this instance as in so many others, of leaving economic laws to work out their own result -of setting them free, and letting them work, rather than by artificial legislation seeking to restrict their working for the protection of special interests and classes. The recent Reports of British consular agents in foreign countries, and, we may add, the still more recently published experience of the late

The annual value per head of the population of the imports and exports of England, Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland is nearly double that of any other European nation. These four nations were (leaving out of sight the cities on the Mediterranean) the four chief commercial nations of Europe in the fourteenth century. For five hundred years past, Holland has been mainly a commercial as distinguished from a manufacturing nation: Belgium and Switzerland have been mainly manufacturing as distinguished from commercial nations: England has been marked throughout the same period by the combination of both commercial and manufacturing enterprise.

Mr. Brassey, seem to bear conclusive testimony to the fact that English wages (unless it be those of the lowest half-million of agricultural labourers, whose lot is so exceptionally poor) are, on an average, higher in proportion to the cost of the necessaries of life than the wages of similar classes of workmen in any other country, excepting only the countries across the ocean where English is spoken. And this is an exception which does but prove the rule, for the people of the United States and of the English colonies are, economically considered, parts of the great British people. They live in lands which, historically and economically also, are in truth extensions of England. Their wages are, therefore, in some sense English wages. And one reason why wages in England are relatively high is undoubtedly the fact that the English workman, owing to the early commercial development already alluded to, has within his reach these extensions of England where his own language is spoken, his own people dwell, and wages are higher than they can be in an old country.

These facts certainly, so far as they go, may well tend to reconcile the working classes of England to a condition of things which at first sight may seem to be of but doubtful advantage.

Mr. Forster in his admirable speech at Bradford, in September last, is reported to have said, "There is no country in the world, except the United States, in which wages are so high in proportion to the 'price of necessaries as they are in England; there is no country at all, including the United States, in which the hours [of labour] are so 'short.' It is not clear that it is needful to make an exception, even as regards the English agricultural labourers, if the Northumbrian labourer with 188. a week as well as the Dorsetshire labourer with his 8s. be taken into account. In countries where peasant-proprietorship prevails, no less than in England, the class of landless agricultural labourers are badly paid.

M. E. De Laveleye in his Essay contributed to the 'Systems of Land Tenure,' published by the Cobden Club in 1870, pp. 264-5, describes the low wages of the Flemish agricultural labourer in terms which would almost apply to the Dorsetshire labourer. And Mr. Pakenham, in his Report on Belgium (Consular Reports, 1871), draws a picture darker still. The condition of the 600,000 strictly agricultural labourers (393,000 of whom are males) in the Flemish provinces, according to his report, can hardly be better than that of the lowest half million of the English peasantry. But England has this advantage. It is easier for an English peasant to emigrate to a country where English is spoken 2,000 miles across the ocean, than for a Flemish peasant to move a few leagues into a Walloon district of his country where wages are nearly double his own, but where another language than his own is spoken!

They at least raise a reasonable doubt whether, after all, an economic condition in which so many millions of the people are dependent on wages is in itself one to be altogether deplored.

We are not however disposed to be reconciled to the present condition of the English working classes, simply because we do not recognise, as some do, in the fact of their being dependent on wages the great blot on English economic history. The real blot seems to us to lie in another fact, to which we cannot be blind. It is that so small a proportion of the English wagereceiving class—so much smaller a proportion of the whole people than in other countries-are possessed of capital. It is that there exists so much more numerous a Proletariat' in England than in other European countries, not, at all events, (as Mr. Carlyle would say) abler looking' than she is.

The fact that in other countries-in France, in Belgium, in Germany, in Switzerland, and almost every other European country-so large a number of the people are possessors of small quantities of land is, without reference to the question of the particular mode of investment, at least a palpable proof of the wide diffusion of capital amongst the people of these countries. For the little plots of the peasant-proprietors, and the stock and produce, and sometimes houses upon them or held in connexion with them, are, in fact, investments of capital, saved and transmitted by former generations to their present holders. The peasant who is such a proprietor starts upon life backed up by so much saved capital as the value of his interest may be. His capital, being invested in land, may pay him but a poor rate of interest, no doubt; it may not seem to lessen much the necessity to labour, or to shorten materially the hours of his work; but it is there, for whatever it is worth, between him and beggary. More than this, it represents a hereditary habit of saving. It is, so to speak, a nest-egg, tempting him on to save more and more, and so bringing him within the operation of the law that to him that hath 'shall be given.'

That our English wage-receiving classes are not proprietors of land may economically be right or wrong. But it is undoubtedly economically wrong that so few of them are possessed of capital. Land is not the only investment. Thousands of working men were a generation ago proprietors of looms, and probably in former days the proprietor of an English loom was often better off, and with apparently better chances for the future, than many a French proprietor of land. But, unfortunately, while in the course of English economic history the

VOL. CXXXVIII. NO. CCLXXXI.

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