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education. The success of either would encourage sectarian and provincial bodies of all kinds to demand the privilege of examining their own students and conferring titles upon them. There is no reason, if a new university is to be founded on local considerations, why a separate charter should not be granted to the Catholic body in England or in Ireland, or to any other religious or local community which may prove equally strong, make equally full provision for the education of its own people, and desire to be in a position of independence. The prospect of weighing these various sectional claims, of admitting some and rejecting others, is not an agreeable one for the advisers of the Crown. Nor is it, having regard to the educational efficiency of the colleges, a desirable thing that the energies of their professors should be expended in the self-assertion and controversy which would be necessary in order to obtain the position many of them not unnaturally desire. Meanwhile the University of London occupies a position of commanding and central influence, above the rivalries of competing colleges, and having no interest in the success of particular institutions or systems, but concerned only in the general diffusion of thorough teaching and systematic culture. It may be owned that this attitude of complete independence has its disadvantages. A more perfect understanding might well be established between the examining authority and the principal teaching bodies engaged in the preparation of the candidates, than is already secured by the present practice of choosing from time to time the most. eminent teachers to serve the office of examiners. Such an understanding is indispensable to the harmonious and efficient working of the University, and is greatly desired by many of its most influential graduates. It might be secured by the direct representation on the Senate of some of the principal colleges, or, if this proved impracticable, by organising a consultative council composed largely of such representatives, for the purpose of advising respecting the conduct of examinations and the selection of subjects. And if, wide and varied as the present scheme of examination is, it should prove to need further elasticity-if, e.g., engineering, on the teaching of which Owens College specially prides itself, can be so taught and co-ordinated with other studies that a degree in that subject can deservedly take rank with distinctions implying that the possessor has received a liberal as well as professional education-nothing would be more easy than to make the needful extension of the curriculum. But, for the present at least, the interests of learning will probably be better served by the complete trial of the present Cambridge experiment, by the occasional affiliation of colleges to the older Universities, and by the further increase and development of the work of the University of London, than by the creation of any new Examining Board.

J. G. FITCH.

THE DEMOCRACY AND FOREIGN POLICY.

IN the course of the last three years the Government to whom has fallen the task of guiding the country through the difficulties and dangers of the Eastern Question have done and said many strange things. The public mind, however, which at first responded adequately to the surprises prepared for it, has latterly become jaded and insensitive. It has supped too full of marvels, and has become less and less susceptible of the passion of amazement. Lord Beaconsfield and his colleagues have in fact debauched the national faculty of wonder, and no Ministerial coup, however sudden and unlooked for, no Ministerial utterance, however startling, has of late excited more than a languid and transient thrill of its appropriate emotion. Sometimes, indeed, it has failed to excite even this, and notably it so failed on the evening of the 27th of July, 1878. On that evening, the Premier returning thanks for the toast of his health at a complimentary banquet, delivered himself of the following extraordinary confession: 'One of the results of my attending the Berlin Congress has been to prove what I always suspected, that neither the Crimean War nor the horrible devastating war which has just terminated would have taken place, if England had spoken out with sufficient firmness.' So spoke the Minister who was at that moment, and had been for several months past, the most powerful and popular man in England. So he spoke; and his words, if we may trust the newspaper reports, were received with loud cheers.' No other emotions, apparently, were excited by them than such as could find sufficient expression in Hear, hears,' and be relieved by rapping a table with a dessert-knife. Nor did the revelation strike the newspapers next morning as anything more than 'curious-an interesting little political confidence, worthy to rank beside the disclosure that it was at Lord Salisbury's special request that his chief accompanied him to Berlin; but nothing more. A few words of comment, a shrug of the shoulders, a shake of the head, and the Premier's confession had gone the way of the latest Parliamentary mot, the newest scrap diplomatic gossip.

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And yet how astounding was it!-nay, to any one who will consider the speaker's position and all that was implied in what he said, we may even add, how appalling! A Minister enjoying, at the time when he spoke, something very nearly resembling absolute

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power-a Minister who was known to regard the political existence of Turkey as of the utmost moment to the interests of England, tranquilly admits that a war in which Turkey, as a factor in European politics, has been annihilated, might have been prevented if England had spoken out with sufficient firmness.' And he resignedly adds that he does not shrink from his share of responsibility in this matter.' But the question immediately arises: Is not Lord Beaconsfield's 'share' the whole? If something was not done for the protection of the Empire which should have been done, is it permissible for the Prime Minister to lay any portion of the responsibility for the failure upon a distracted country, or a factious Opposition, or even upon recalcitrant colleagues? Is he not himself solely accountable, morally as well as constitutionally? Or if not-if authority is to appeal to the existence of anarchy, in justification of its shortcomings, to what or to whom are we to look for the fulfilment of the primary ends for which all government exists?

The whole group of questions which this inquiry suggests are so ineffably serious, they are so pregnant with interest of a painfully pressing kind for the future of the country, that they ought for purposes of discussion to be disentangled from all other subsidiary questions whatever. I shall not, therefore, invite controversy by assuming that the majority of the nation inclined at any given period to this, that, or the other line of Eastern policy. It is enough if a reader of this paper has favoured any definite line of Eastern policy whatever; for it is the chief characteristic of the Ministerial dealings with the Eastern Question from first to last that they have been informed by no distinct policy at all. The English Government have swayed this way and that, now tossed upon a wave of antiTurkish feeling, now swept on by a current of anti-Russian jealousy, but never for a moment masters of their own movements, never with any foothold on the solid earth. They have been throughout held back or forced onwards, not by the collective will of the nationif that had been so, the event, however untoward, would have pointed a far less startling moral-but by the dominant, or what appeared to be the dominant, party in the nation for the time being.

If this has been so, and we all know that so it has been, it is unnecessary to discuss the question whether the results of such government by haphazard are in this particular instance satisfactory or the reverse; or even whether upon fuller consideration the public will be content with them or no. The latter question may have its interest for those whose survey is bounded by the limits of the 'party prospect.' But it will have comparatively little attraction for those to whom the Eastern Question presents itself under any broader aspect than that in which it appears to the election wire-puller' or the party journalist. Nay, I am not without hope that, since the conclusion of the Treaty of Berlin, I may safely address myself to some even of that too numerous class of people who have made a

'personal matter' of the Eastern Question. I am not without hope that, relieved of immediate incitement to denounce each other as 'jingoes' or sentimentalists,' and to tax each other with moral insensibility on the one side and political blindness on the other, the so-called Philo-Russians and Philo-Turks may, to the extent of their individual powers of observation and reflection, at last arrive at the basis of an agreement upon the mode in which the recent foreign policy of their country is to be viewed, and, what is far more important, upon the inferences which it suggests. But whether this hope be well founded or not, I may confidently challenge contradiction to this assertion-that for all those who are in a mood to sink their individual differences of opinion on Eastern policy, and to consider England's conduct of her affairs during the recent crisis, in its bearing upon the great question of representative government under a widely extended franchise, but one opinion is possible. We may think that we have fallen on our feet,' but we cannot one of us deny that, so far as any calculation of distance or any skill in jumping is concerned, we have only our luck to thank that we have not broken our necks. From amid the conflict of opinion about the Berlin Settlement in its relation to ourselves, the one view emerges unanimous that that settlement is not the product of any definite and consistent English policy. We may believe that it gravely compromises the interests and even the safety of our Empire; or we may believe that all fears of the kind are groundless. Holding the former belief, we may hold also that the danger to our Empire might best have been averted by our acting in concert with Russia; or we may think that prompt and decided action in opposition to that Power would have been the surest or the only means of protecting our interests in the East. Holding the latter belief, we may think that a policy of absolute non-intervention ought to have been adopted. We may, I say, hold any one of these beliefs, or any two of them not inconsistent with each other; but there is one belief which we cannot any of us hold, however we select our opinions from the above list, and that is that the particular policy which we approve has been followed. Concert with Russia may have been good; but we have repudiated concert with Russia. Resistance to Russia may have been good; but we have not with any vigour or consistency opposed her. Possibly it would have been wise to hold aloof; but we have not held aloof. The so-called policy of our Government has been at one time a policy of apparent confidence' in Russia; at another time a policy of distrust of Russia, and of 'preparations' to resist her; and at yet another time a policy of pure laissez-faire and letting slide.'

These, it may be said, are familiar criticisms, and so, of course, they are they are not put forward as novelties. But what there is too much reason to fear is novel, is their proper application. Hitherto they have been made the text for every sort of political sermon save the only one which can tend to real political edification.

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They have been used to demonstrate the weakness of Conservative Governments, the madness of popular clamour, the mischief of divided Cabinets, the wickedness of Mr. Gladstone. The miscarriage of English policy has been examined in every aspect except that nearest and simplest one, of a miscarriage of the policy of England;' and it has been made to yield a lesson for any number of persons short of that largest aggregate of all-the English people. For it is we, the English people, who have failed; not our Ministers, who are only our instruments-freely chosen by ourselves at first, whatever right of guidance and command they may exert upon us afterwards-and whose failure, therefore, is just as much our failure as the snapping of an ill-chosen chisel is the failure of the carpenter. It is our failure, whether we hold the theory of Ministerial functions affirmed by Lord Derby on the celebrated occasion when he informed a deputation waiting on him to learn his Eastern policy, that her Majesty's Ministers were waiting for instructions from their employers,' or whether, more solicitous for the dignity of the office than the noble who so described it, we conceive that a Government is something more than a staff of clerks appointed to keep the accounts of the nation, and to carry on its business correspondence with friendly or rival houses. For, if the understanding is that Ministers should think as well as act for us, guide us to right resolves on the conduct of our affairs as well as merely carry out such resolves-if that is the theory of our Constitution, then, how lamentably ill it works out in practice If, on the other hand, the sole duty of Ministers, miscalled a 'Government,' is passively to attend the will of their 'employers,' to wait till they have made up their minds, and thereupon execute their commands, then what employers! and with what a will and what a mind! A clerk who served such, in reality and not in metaphor, in the City and not in Downing Street, would not have them long to serve. The Court of Bankruptcy would gape for them; the Gazette would claim them for its own ere they had been in business a twelvemonth.

Hence it would appear to be of no great controversial moment which theory we adopt as to the relation of Ministers to people. Whether the English nation, having to direct their Government, have so directed them, or whether the Government, having to decide and act for the English nation, have so decided and acted, the result is equally deplorable. But, for all that, it may be interesting as matter of pure speculation to consider which of the two theories is (not the correct one, that would open a much wider question than I can here undertake to discuss, but) the theory accepted as correct by the majority of people in this country. For the point is really by no means clear. One would say, primâ facie, I imagine, that a very large majority was in favour of the employer and servant' theory. From all that we hear of jubilation over the progress of democratic VOL. IV.-No. 21. 30

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