Sir Garnet Wolseley, son of Major Wolseley | stand near the capital, ended in the decisive of the 26th Foot, may be said to have been born a soldier. In 1852, when he was nineteen years of age, he had entered the army as ensign. In 1855 he became captain, and in 1858 major of the 90th Foot. In the next year he was made lieutenant-colonel, and he obtained his coloneley in 1863. During nearly the whole of these thirteen years he was actively engaged, and on several occasions had performed distinguished services. After the Burmese war of 1852-53 he obtained a medal. With the light infantry in the Crimea he was severely wounded during the siege of Sebastopol, and received the legion of honour and the Turkish order of the Medjidie. After the siege of Lucknow and the defence of Alumbagh, where he was made brevet lieutenant-colonel, he was specially mentioned in the despatches. In 1860 he was in China on the staff of the quartermaster-general, and served throughout the campaign. In 1867 he became quartermaster-general in Canada, where his success in the Red River expedition was conspicuous for the ability with which he could estimate a situation and take immediate advantage of an opportunity. In 1870 he was nominated a knight-commander of the order of St. Michael and St. George, an honour which was followed by his appointment to be adjutant-general at headquarters. Activity, fertility of resource, and that judicious confidence which appears to follow a readily formed but complete plan of operations were important qualities against a foe whom it was necessary to impress by rapid and effectual successes, and in a country where the enemy must be driven from every standpoint and defeated within so short a time that the victorious troops would be able to return to the coast ready to re-embark before the sickly season had set in. The punctuality with which this was actually effected was something remarkable. The march of the English troops, who fought their way in a series of skirmishes, was almost unchecked; and the final engagement, when the enemy made a defeat of the Ashantees. The advance had begun in the last days of 1873, Captain Glover in the east and other officers in the west raising native forces with which to converge on the capital. It soon appeared that the native tribes were almost useless as auxiliaries, and it was difficult to secure the services of the camp followers and bearers who were necessary to assist an army in such a country. On the 5th of February, 1874, however, Sir Garnet had entered Coomassie with his troops, and there he received the submission of the king, who agreed to appoint commissioners to conclude a treaty. It was, however, time to make the return march, and the troops retired to Adamsi to await the Ashantee agents, with whom there might have been more trouble had not Captain Glover already arrived with his contingent on the north of the capital, through which he marched without opposition. The king relinquished all sovereignty over the tribes who were under English protection, and some of his tributary chiefs soon renounced their allegiance to him. The army was marched back to the coast, and though many officers and men had succumbed to the hardships of that brief campaign, the troops re-embarked within the time that had been proposed, and before the sickly season had commenced. The power of the Ashantee tyrant was over, and the native savage chiefs had been impressed by his defeat. The English government then determined to retain the settlements on the coast as a colony of the crown, forming the neighbouring districts into a protectorate. The native tribes were informed that the protecting power would include complete control, and would assign the limits of native authority or interference. One of the first intimations made by the directions of Lord Carnarvon to the native chiefs was that the purchase or sale of slaves would not be any longer permitted, and that thereafter the law would not recognize the right of a master to the possession of a slave. CHAPTER XII. THE LATEST STRIDE. Footprints of Advance-A Brief Chronicle-Aspects in 1876-Vote by Ballot-Agriculturists and Artisans -Sailors and Ships-Disraeli, Earl Beaconsfield -Imperial Policy-India-Egypt-Suez Canal-The Eastern Question-Russia-Turkish Provinces-Bulgaria-War-"Peace with Honour"-Afghanistan: General Roberts-South Africa: Cetewayo-The Enemies of Ireland-Liberal Reaction, 1880-Two Years Ago The Makings of History-Conclusion. The more recent occurrences with which we are chiefly concerned in estimating the latest steps of social and political progress can be touched but lightly. We cannot to-day estimate the influences of yesterday. Our remaining observations must necessarily be few and brief. They will indicate some vast and important objects; but our attention can now be directed only to superficial appearances. The events of the years since 1878 have not yet passed into the sphere of history, for they have not developed complete results, and at present are full of suggestions for some future chapter of the story of our national life. The chronicler must stay his hand, for he can give no more than an imperfect outline of the forms that loom large in the present, but the real dimensions of which it is not easy to compute. We have already noted some of the financial advantages to which the Conservative government had succeeded after the Liberal defeat; but it may be said that when they commenced office the old order had given place to the new. The very mode of entering parliament had been changed, for constituencies elected their representatives by secret voting. The measure for which Mr. Grote, and afterwards Mr. Berkeley, had long contended in vain, and which had at one time become a mark for ridicule, had been passed. Vote by ballot had been made a reality, and the old system of public nominations of candidates and the consequent riots and "humours" of elections, such as those described by Dickens in his account of the visit of the Pickwickians to Eatanswill, were abolished. The ballot bill, introduced by Mr. Forster on the 20th of February, 1871, proposed to secure secret and therefore uncontrolled voting, and to prevent personation by compelling each voter to attend at the polling place, where, after stating his name and place of residence, a stamped official voting paper would be handed to him on which he was to inscribe his vote. He was to take this paper into a separate compartment, where, without the possibility of being overlooked, he was to mark a cross in the space opposite the name of the candidate in whose favour he desired to vote. He was then to fold the paper so that this mark could not be seen, and to drop it through the aperture in the ballot-box or urn in the presence of the official in charge. Candidates were to be nominated by a proposer, seconder, and eight assenters, all of whom were to be registered voters, and to sign a nomination paper, the handing of which to the returning officer would alone be necessary for nomination. Of course the "secret vote" was denounced by the supporters of bribery and by those who for years had been able to intimidate or unduly influence the electors; but it was also opposed by many who regarded the concealment of the vote as unmanly and degrading. Among these were Mr. John Stuart Mill, who had at one time been an advocate of the ballot. He and others did not seem to reflect that open voting did not prevent the meanness and unmanliness of the landlord who coerced the tenant, the rural magnate, who, as it were, carted electors to the | tington was chairman in 1868-69 had led him, poll to vote according to his will, the patrons who bought the votes of the local tradesmen by their "good custom," or the employer who could "see after" his workpeople. The ballot was to be regarded less as a measure for promoting manly independence than as one to check and frustrate the shameless corruption maintained by those who had authority, wealth, or influence. It was to prevent immorality rather than to inculcate morality, and that is mostly all that can be done by act of parliament. Those who assailed the proposed bill said that it would enable electors to give their vote in a sneaking underhand manner instead of openly and boldly. They seemed to forget that there was plenty of sneaking underhand bribery as well as too much bold bullying and intimidation exercised on unscrupulous voters who were for sale, or necessitous ones of whom it was too much to expect that they should support the principle of purity of election at the expense of being ruined by their resentful and powerful superiors. Some such measure had been advocated at intervals for nearly two centuries. In 1708, according to a letter of Addison, the question of deciding elections by ballot was discussed in parliament. In 1815 it was a "burning question." The omission of some clause relating to the ballot from the Reform Bill was explained by Lord John Russell to have arisen from the desirability of bringing in a separate measure. Lord John Russell was personally averse to such a measure; but he sometimes gave unmistakable signs that he thought the prevailing corruption might render it necessary. Lord Palmerston had jested about the ballot-box, and had argued that voting for members of parliament was a public trust, and should be exercised openly, that everybody might see it was done fairly; a representation which must have provoked a grim smile among electioneering agents. Mr. Gladstone had been against the ballot, but the conviction was forced upon him that the prevailing corruption could only be remedied by some such provision, and the revelations made before a commission of inquiry of which Lord Har and others also, to advocate its prompt adoption. Public opinion was mostly in favour of it. Its opponents in the House of Commons, however, nearly talked it out of the session; and when it went up to the Lords, a majority had already made up their minds to reject it, on the ground that it had been brought before them too late to be considered. It was supported by the Marquis of Ripon (a title conferred on Earl de Grey for his services in the Alabama commission); but the Earl of Shaftesbury moved for its rejection, and the Lords appeared to think, that though it passed the House of Commons the delay showed that nobody cared much about it. Mr. Gladstone, however, had adopted it as a necessary measure, and some members of the house who would willingly have voted against it knew that their constituents were in its favour, and would resent their opposition at the next election. In the session of 1872 Mr. Forster returned to the charge. Again the bill passed through the Commons; but the Lords were still determined to punish Mr. Gladstone for having placed the royal prerogative against their opposition to the Army Reform Bill. On the second reading a resolution was carried in committee making secret voting optional. This was, of course, absurd, as it was nearly equivalent to cancelling the objects for which the ballot was to be introduced. There had been a pretty smart debate in the Commons, where Mr. Fawcett was among the opponents of secret voting. There had been a sharp discussion over a clause making it punishable by imprisonment with or without hard labour for an elector to make known his vote at the polling place. This was modified, and a proposition was adopted, that any one inducing a voter to show his voting-paper after he has marked it, should be liable to three months' imprisonment with hard labour. The optional clause of the Lords was immediately rejected when the bill went back to the lower house. There was the usual contention, amidst which many adopted the proposition of Mr. Disraeli, "to apply secret voting only as a degraling punishment for the electoral excesses of society." This, as Mr. Gladstone pointed out, EFFECTS OF STRIKES-THE ENGINEERS. was an admission that the ballot would be a remedy for existing evils. The Lords were obliged to give way; but they succeeded in making the measure experimental by introducing a proviso that it should only remain in force to the end of the year 1880 unless parliament should see fit to continue it. In that form it passed, and parliament as well as the nation has too completely recognized its advantages to allow it to be rescinded. It was not unnatural that the change which had taken place in the mode of election should direct attention to a further extension of the franchise, and one of the objections made by the Lords to the ballot was that it would lead to a redistribution of seats. No direct proposal was brought before parliament, however, till 1877, when Mr. Trevelyan moved for a uniform parliamentary franchise in boroughs and counties, and a redistribution of political power for the purpose of obtaining a more complete representation. This proposition, which was debated in a full house, was advocated by Lord Hartington, and Mr. Gladstone. He and Mr. Lowe, who both voted for it, afterwards supported it by articles contributed to leading magazines. Mr. Goschen, though on the Liberal side, was opposed to it, and that opposition has since been maintained, though it has perhaps had the effect of preventing him from taking a more forward position in Liberal councils. Mr. Trevelyan's proposal was rejected by 276 against 220 votes, and there was no very strenuous demand made outside parliament for further parliamentary reform, though certain conditions had arisen, which seemed to indicate that some extension of the franchise, and especially some change in the county franchise, would not be very long delayed. In the industrial and mining centres the effects of recent and continued strikes among workmen were being felt, and had had some influence on the general prosperity of the country. We have already glanced at some of the results of this disturbance and the poverty and suffering at the East End of London, where the refusal of the shipwrights to work at a rate of wages higher than the masters could 309 afford to pay, and yet keep their yards open, had the effect of driving the greater part of the shipbuilding trade from the Thames to the Clyde. After the capitulation of Paris and the disasters which had ensued from the corrupt imperialism of the French government, the atrocities of the Communists had to be punished and suppressed by a republican organization, and the political derangements there, seemed to have some disturbing influence on the uneducated portions of most European communities. In this country they appeared to affect a number of artisans and labourers with a sullen disinclination to argue the matter of the strikes; and in some indirect and not easily explained way to associate with an attempt at despotism the refusal of the masters to yield to all their demands. It is only under very eminent and judicious leadership that large bodies of people can be brought to discriminate, and there was frequently manifested a disposition to confound the economic necessities which control demand and production, labour and wages, with an arbitrary and oppressive exercise of the will of employers. Doubtless there were industries in which the rate of wages and the hours of work were unfairly against the operatives; but in numerous instances it was pretty clearly shown, not only that the masters could not make further concessions, but that they were willing to submit the disputes to examination and to the decision of arbitrators. We cannot here consider in which of the trades important grievances existed; but the general industry of the country suffered seriously, and has since suffered, from the interruption of production and the uncertainty which had become an element in those great manufactures where the operations must be continuous in order to fulfil the terms of extensive contracts. In many cases, especially in railway and marine engineering, a good deal of the business left England and went to the great workshops of France and Belgium. At Newcastle in 1871 above 9000 men were on strike for the purpose of reducing the hours of work to nine hours a day for the same amount of payment that they were then receiving, and it was declared by the masters that, with the short time on Saturday and the meal times, this would practically mean eight hours a day, to say nothing of the frequent "Mondays" taken by numbers of the men as holidays from work, and the consequent danger of delay in the fulfilment of contract engage ments. The For sixteen weeks the engineers were supported by the contributions of other societies belonging to the trades-unions. As a result of the communistic theories then afloat, there was a general notion-and not an unworthy one from another point of viewthat an international trades-union of artisans, mechanics, and labourers throughout Europe or throughout the world might be effected, by which the rate of wages and the hours of labour might be controlled. effects of such a confederation (if it had been possible) in the corresponding modification of production, and the cost of commodities necessary alike to the workman and all other men, and in the crushing of individual aspiration under the wheels of a society, did not seem to occur to the delegates and their supporters who advanced the theory. To some extent, too, there was a recognition of community on the part of foreign workmen. Many of them who had been applied to by English manufacturers to take the place of men on strike, either refused to come, or after having been appealed to by the representatives of the trades-unions, returned without entering on their engagements. But while half England was on strike, the workshops of other nations were growing busy. If foreign labour did not come here, foreign trade and British trade could go elsewhere, and much of it did. Early in the decade with which these pages conclude there were between 30,000 and 40,000 ironworkers and miners idle in South Wales and Monmouthshire. The colliers of Northumberland and the Forest of Dean, the ironworkers of North Staffordshire, the mechanics in the building trades in London and some parts of the provinces, and even those engaged in more casual and worse-paid employments, joined in the general attempt to obtain the better conditions which some of them sorely needed. Perhaps the movement may be said to have reached its last boundary when the men employed at the London gas-works struck without sufficient notice of their intention, and threatened to leave a great part of the metropolis in darkness unless their unreasonable demands were complied with; or when a number of the police force clamoured for increased pay without having made proper representations at headquarters. These two developments of the prevailing epidemic were checked by the promptitude of the superiors, and their recurrence was made improbable by a special enactment which, while it removed some penalties for endeavours made to maintain strikes, ordained punishment for any person engaged in the public service leaving or neglecting their duties without proper notice according to a specified regulation. Perhaps the most startling appearance in the sphere of "strikes" was the agricultural labourer. It will be remembered that years and years before an attempt on his part to assert the right to combine for the purpose of resisting slow starvation had been met by a penal enactment. It was supposed that he had neither the spirit nor the power to manifest his dissatisfaction by effectual remonstrance. The repeal of the corn-laws had somewhat improved his position by enabling him to share in the reduced prices of the first neces saries of life; but on the whole he was little better off than Cobden had described him to be. In some localities his poverty was mitigated by certain allowances from his employers; in others his children might find employment in the intervals of school attendance. Wages varied considerably in different districts; but on the whole the body of agricultural labourers in England seemed incapable of being roused to make any active effort to improve their condition. There were few signs of individual ambition among them-few examples of the energy which was to be observed among the operatives of large towns. Continuous and monotonous toil, no doubt, has the effect of suppressing the individual life of men; but it would be thought that effect would be more obvious in the factory or the mill than in the farmyard and the fields. Life in the open air would be supposed to be in itself an aid to |