who only side with the Turks for the bad reason that a Czar now long dead and gone helped to deliver Austria from a Hungarian insurrection. In France, the Bonapartists are passionately Russian, because they hope one day for a Russian alliance against Germany; and of the Republicans a slight majority are admitted, even by unwilling witnesses, to be on the same side, not because they hope for a Russian alliance, but because they believe the Turkish cause to be what it is, the cause of oppression, cruelty, misgovernment, and of incessant peril and disorder to the whole of Europe.

The bloody carnage in the south-east of Europe has only divided interest in England with the desolating famine in the south-east of India. The nation has followed the mournful figures of disaster with the closest attention, and continues to respond with an honourable generosity to the call for national aid. The English people have shown that their sense of responsibility for their remote and perhaps unwelcome dependency is thoroughly real, and their sympathy with their subjects stands the coarse but effective test of pecuniary sacrifice in an admirable degree. If it were not too Pharisaic, one might perhaps say that the one bright spot in the calamity is the extent to which it served both to demonstrate and to nourish the sense of human sympathy between governors and governed. Apart from the interest of sentiment and humanity, serious observers of public affairs have been deeply struck by Lord Derby's recent remark at Liverpool that the Indian famine is a graver matter than the ferocious struggle in Europe, and that we have no security that this is likely to be an isolated occurrence such as the Irish famine was. When we remember that India has been visited by four heavy famines within ten years, we cannot choose but face the grave and most embarrassing fact that a famine recurring tolerably frequently must be counted as one of the normal demands on the material and administrative resources of the Indian government. Whether the frequency of famine has been increased by the conditions of English rule, is one of the questions about which men may well dispute. We have, say some, by our very merits slackened such habits of self-reliance as the natives possessed under a rougher rule: by keeping the peace we have increased the population which was formerly thinned at frequent intervals by war. Others reply that famines are not a deadlier scourge to India now than they have been before; the only difference is that now by means of telegraphs and steam-ships and swift routes overland we hear of the calamity before it comes, and while it is actually in progress, whereas in the old times we knew nothing about the famine until it was at an end, and then it fell as lightly on our minds as is usual with what is irretrievable.

A proposal is afloat in the air that might have been anticipated

under the circumstances, and that is believed to be finding favour in the eyes of some men of the highest authority, and with power sufficient to realise it, unless the current of weighty opinion sets strongly the other way. We mean the proposal to render the Indian Government a grant of three, four, or five millions out of the English Exchequer, as a sort of free-will offering towards assuaging the afflictions of India. Such a proposal is easily flung out, and its acceptance would remove a heavy load from the shoulders of the able men who have to govern India, whether in Calcutta or London. But the gravity of such a proposal, or even of what looks like a more moderate proposal, to lend our credit to the Indian Government, was hardly recognised until Mr. Fawcett called attention to it in his particularly weighty and valuable speech at Salisbury (Sept. 19). Mr. Fawcett admits,-perhaps too readily as some may think-that if the grant would make the relief more efficient and abundant, then the grant ought to be made. But as relief must be given according to strict rules, wherever the money comes from, and as no amount of money would cause the relief to be given on different principles, the grant would have no benevolent effect so far as the sufferers are concerned, but would only be a relief to the borrowing department of the Indian Government. Mr. Fawcett, however, went to the root of the matter when he pointed out how inevitable it is that if once the principle were sanctioned of providing famine relief from the English Exchequer, the sentiment would spread far and wide over India that there was the less necessity to adopt vigorous remedies and preventive measures. And he justly illustrated this by referring to what everybody knows; namely, how disastrously all guarantees for economy would be weakened if local authorities in our own country were freely permitted to draw from the Consolidated Fund. A grant from England would have the effect of doing the very thing which it is above all things important both for the prosperity of England and the wise government of India not to have done. It would foster the notion that Indian finance has English finance behind it. If there can be such a thing as a cardinal, organic, and unchangeable law about the relations between England and India, it is that the two concerns shall keep wholly separate accounts, and wholly separate purses. Let us govern India as well as we can, but it would be insanity to run the risk of confusing and ruining England for the sake of India. If the Indian account does not balance, that is no reason why we should begin to throw in our lot with it, but the best of reasons why we should keep clear of it. And the best way of keeping the Indian Government solvent, and the Indian administration thrifty, is to fill them with the consciousness that the Consolidated Fund at home is no better friend to them than if it belonged to France or Germany. If the famine were a single event, England could afford to pay for it. But England cannot afford

to go on paying for famines, and it is not desirable even in the interests of good government in India itself that she should begin.

The national attention is so absorbed by the immense events that are happening elsewhere, a bloody war in one country, a hand-to-hand struggle for freedom and order in another, a desolating famine in a third, that it is no wonder if political hopes and party rivalries are for the time suspended among ourselves. Everybody seems to feel that the various legislative improvements for which opinion is ripening must wait until the day of portents has closed and calm has returned to the earth. Lord Derby was only too right the other day when he said at Liverpool that he should not envy the man who should attempt just now to rouse England to the necessity for some domestic change. Lord Granville's speech at the opening of the Bradford Liberal Club was conceived exactly in the same easy vein, and after reading our leader's complacent sentences. we only ask ourselves why the Conservatives of Bradford should scruple to use the Liberal Club. Even now, however, in this slumbering noon of our home affairs, perhaps the leader of a party would do better to throw away no chance, when he takes the trouble to address a great multitude who have taken the trouble to come to hear him, no chance of impressing on his hearers that they are a party, with a political temper and principles and aims and intentions of its own. Nobody expects Lord Granville at this hour to proclaim a crusade against the Church Establishment, nor an agitation for Land reform, nor in short to press for any of the improvements in legislation which will be the work of the next strong liberal government. But it must always be worth while to remind people why they are Liberals, and what it is that makes a Liberal different from a Tory and better than a Tory. You will not build a party up by pleasant truisms about English public life, and both Yorkshiremen and others are ready for the wine of a stronger doctrine than this.

It is not worth while to chronicle the various turns and shifts in the internal disputes of the Irish party. They are naturally followed with a good deal of interest by those who will have to deal with the Irish Irreconcilables next year. It is enough to mention the broad result of the dissensions between Mr. Butt and Mr. Parnell. After the end of the session Mr. Butt confessed that he had no longer the full support of the Home Rulers of the English and Scotch constituencies. It is now becoming apparent that he is equally weak in Ireland itself. While Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar have been received as heroes, Mr. Butt has scarcely shown his face. This was foreseen by all calm observers. We know unfortunately what the Irish people are in politics, and they would be untrue to their past if they did not give their warmest support to the man who had discovered the severest torment for an English government. We have to face that

prospect, and make up our minds how it is to be dealt with. It is pleasant to be able to respect one's adversaries when it is possible, and we are sorry not to be able to pay this compliment to Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar, not merely because they are dull and tiresome speakers-which they cannot help being—but because they are not straightforward, which all respectable moralists allow that a man has the power to be if he likes. They are not straightforward, because they say in one place that their motive is to secure the proper performance of legislative work, and in another that they mean not reconciliation but retaliation. Mr. Parnell has endeavoured to explain this away, in a cloud of futile and absolutely unintelligible sentences. The fact of his insincerity remains, just as the more important fact remains that he and his friends have found out a way of tormenting the House of Commons, that they intend to persevere, and that they are only too likely to be backed by the Irish constituencies. The common opinion seems to be that in case of a repetition of the policy of obstruction next session, the offender will be punished by summary act of the House. And that the House has the perfect right to inflict imprisonment, suspension, and expulsion on a member, no one denies. But there are difficulties in the way of these strong courses. Such difficulties have been pointed out by Mr. Courtney in an able speech at Liskeard (Sept. 14). "Suppose," says Mr. Courtney, "you put a member of the House of Commons in the corner. You may do that for a day or even for a week, but I think you would hesitate before you did it for a month. Before you did it for a session, or indefinitely, you would have this fact to dispose of: that there is another party to be considered in the matter besides the member of the House of Commons. There is his constituency. Are we to punish the constituency by depriving them of representation through the man, when possibly they might disapprove and disown his proceedings? You may expel him from the House, and the constituency might reject him. That would be a proper and constitutional course to pursue, and you will be driven to it. But bear in mind that if you are driven to it, the effect may be different from what you anticipate-the man might be again returned by his constituency. That would be a very ugly thing to lock forward to. The House might declare that it cannot work with the man, and yet he is sent back again to the House as a man with whom it must work. The House may even expel him again, but you cannot prevent his coming back unless you suspend the issue of a new writ for the election-unless, in fact, you disfranchise that constituency for a time, and then you are brought face to face with this odious conclusion-that you have constituencies in Ireland that will not work with the constituencies in England. In a word, you make the confession which is really the groundwork for the demand of Home Rule."

September 25, 1877.

THE

FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. NIGHT

No. CXXXI. NEW SERIES.-NOVEMBER 1, 1877.

SCIENCE AND MAN.1

A MAGNET attracts iron, but when we analyse the effect we learn that the metal is not only attracted but repelled, the final approach to the magnet being due to the difference of two unequal and opposing forces. Social progress is for the most part typified by this duplex or polar action. As a general rule, every advance is balanced by a partial retreat, every amelioration is associated more or less with deterioration. No great mechanical improvement, for example, is introduced for the benefit of society at large that does not bear hardly upon individuals. Science, like other things, is subject to the operation of this polar law, what is good for it under one aspect being bad for it under another.

Science demands above all things personal concentration. Its home is the study of the mathematician, the quiet laboratory of the experimenter, and the cabinet of the meditative observer of nature. Different atmospheres are required by the man of science, as such, and the man of action. The atmosphere, for example, which vivifies and stimulates your excellent representative, Mr. Chamberlain, would be death to me. There are organisms which flourish in oxygen-he is one of them. There are also organisms which demand for their duller lives a less vitalising air—I am one of these. Thus the facilities of social and international intercourse, the railway, the telegraph, and the post-office, which are such undoubted boons to the man of action, react to some extent injuriously on the man of science. Their tendency is to break up that concentrativeness which, as I have said, is an absolute necessity to the scientific investigator.

The men who have most profoundly influenced the world from the scientific side have habitually sought isolation. Faraday, at a certain period of his career, formally renounced dining out. Darwin

(1) Presidential address, delivered before the Birmingham and Midland Institute, October 1st, 1877; with additions.