not likely to be content with any such plain practical proposals, but are bent upon a much more ambitious and sensational scheme, and that they would make the supposed existing abuse the excuse, not for amending, but for destroying, what exists, and building up some other body on radically different principles, not having chiefly in view the best practical administrative results, but the carrying out of some new-fangled theory of local parliaments. Even Mr. Goschen seems to have been fascinated by some such proposal. "I trust," he says, "that the Government will act with courage and determination. I believe that they will have a much greater chance of passing a strong and a broad Bill than they would a small Bill which would not appeal to the imagination of the people. I wish the effect to be political as well as administrative." Plain practical folk, however, may possibly think that the real question is much more one of pockets than of politics, and that the end in view should be much more one of securing the best and most economical administration rather than of creating or of satisfying a lively imagination. Even Cabinet Ministers who have spoken do not seem very enthusiastic or hopeful as to the result of such a measure. Lord Derby, in his speech at Manchester, expresses himself plainly enough that the chief trouble, in his view, would be to give to this new body enough to do. Lord Hartington, in his speech to his constituents in North-East Lancashire, was not more encouraging or precise.

And

"This question of county boards," he said, "may be a subject which does not appear pressing or immediate, or of very great importance or interest, and I acknowledge that at first sight these county boards, however they may be elected or composed, will not have any great amount of exciting or important work intrusted to them. . . . But I think hereafter, if not immediately, we must intrust many of the powers which are now, and not without some inconvenience, exercised by the central bodies in London to them; and I believe that once we have established these county boards, we shall find every day new duties, new powers, and new responsibilities intrusted to them to exercise." This is certainly all vague enough and crude enough. If the full scheme has really been thought out, it should have been fully and clearly explained; if it has not been so thought out, it should not, for the present at all events, be attempted. It would surely be a more statesmanlike way of proceeding first to find out and define as clearly as may be what duties will have to be performed before constituting the new body to perform them; otherwise, you may perchance find after all that the new machinery is ill adapted for the proper performance of its functions. I agree with Mr. Goschen that it is always well to stimulate throughout the country a large interest in local self-government, but this already largely exists. The more populous parts of the country are full of local boards, and the ratepayers take the keenest interest in their proceedings, and are very jealous of any interference from without. And even where such local

boards do not exist, the same remark applies equally to the proceedings of boards of guardians, highway boards, school boards, burial boards, &c. &c. If I understand one part of Lord Hartington's remarks aright, I should be inclined to agree with him that the functions of the Local Government Board and of the Central Authorities have in some instances been pressed too far, and that more license and liberty of action may fairly be left to the several local authorities, especially in smaller matters. If that be so, by all means let these functions be brought within proper limits and be more strictly defined. There is also much to be said in favour of simplifying areas and against multiplication of boards, but the area of a county is too large for the actual administration of such matters as those with which these several local boards have had to deal, and it is much to be feared that, though many of the best men of business engaged in active commercial life and of the best tenant farmers are ready and willing to give their time and attention to managing their own local affairs in their own locality, and though many would no doubt be willing to make further sacrifices, and would attend the Quarter Sessions for the administration of county affairs, still comparatively few would be able or willing to give attendance at the county town. for any lengthened sittings, such as would be necessary were these county boards to be charged with such duties as are vaguely shadowed forth as the functions of a local parliament; and in such case one of the great objects of local government would be defeated, and matters would fall into the hands of inferior, though it may be ambitious, men.

We wait with much anxiety for the production of the Government measure. It would seem from Her Majesty's gracious speech that we may probably have to wait for some time before it appears. There is at all events one advantage in this. It will give the Government full time for further consideration before they commit themselves finally to a measure which might involve multiplication of offices and officers, multiplication of elections, increase of expenditure, loss of the services of many very valuable public servants, to a measure by means of which, so far as careful and wise administration is concerned, they might very easily lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

RICHARD ASSHETON CROSS.

LEON GAMBETTA.

A POSITIVIST DISCOURSE.*

A

TRULY comprehensive religion should teach not only a spirit of heart to cultivate, but a set of principles to act on in the world; and as life is concerned with actions quite as much as it is with feelings, public life is just as much the sphere of rational religion as our personal life. So, the churches, if they only knew it, have quite as much to do with the social duty of statesmen and the political habits of the people, as they have with purity of heart and spiritual earnestness. There will be no complete religion until religious men have just as keen an interest in the progress of the commonwealth as they now profess in the welfare of the soul. And there will be no high and stable policy until politics, together with morals and science, are recognized to be the sphere of the only religious earnestness that is worth having-true unselfishness of heart.

that/the

Thus it is that the religion of Humanity is a thoroughly political religion, or rather public life is an essential part of its aim; not, as with the Romans, to the exclusion of creed and devoutness of spirit, but quite as truly as either of these. Whilst the Romans knew no religion except such as concerned their social life, and whilst Christianity in its decay looks at all things in the light of the personal soul, the religion of Humanity avoids the narrowness of both, and seeks to regenerate social life on the basis of a scientific education, and of high purpose, not only in the heart within, but in the social body without us.

Positivism is no mere historical scheme, a movement for the bare commemoration of the worthies of the Past. The calendar which gathers up so vast an array of our great fathers, who are the true * The following discourse was given at Newton Hall on Sunday, Feb. 4, 1883.

creators, if not of the human race, at least of human civilization, this calendar is not there as a dry tabular synopsis for the use of classes in history. Nor is it there, as the Catholic calendar is, as an external object of reverence and ceremonial obligation. It is there to teach us types of human duty, and facts of social philosophy, as we find them, as they fashion our life, inspire our own efforts, and supply us with examples to follow. These are no saints, these men, nor are they to be reverenced in the way that the Catholic worships saints. They are simply men who have done good work in their time, some more, some less well; none of them perfect, many of them most faulty; but all able to teach us by their faults no less than by their virtues. At any rate, they are men like ourselves, and with powers that we can recall with profit at any hour of our working lives. That vague and unreal vision, the Christ, or perfect man, whom the good Christian professes to take as the embodiment of all human excellence that transcendental figment we replace with the collective Host of the real men who exhibit every trait of human greatness, and never cease to be as frankly human as any one of us. There is no superstitious line that severs the past from the present, the Living from the Dead, or the most revered servant of Humanity from the street sweeper, who is serving it to-day. They have not passed into another world, nor have they any other life but ours. The gates of Death open and close each day, encircling new multitudes within, as new multitudes each day press on into the vacant place. But the unbroken human stream is all one, within and without those adamantine doors. We hear their voices and the vast murmur of their lives as we hasten on ourselves to join them, and Living and Dead form one Humanity for ever.

I invite you to think of this, in order that, in forming our judgment of public duty, we may remember that the honour of the dead is no bit of antiquarianism, but that the men of to-day, and yesterday, like the men of to-morrow, are all employed on the same work, and furnish similar types, for our practical understanding of duty. Yesterday it was Gambetta, to-morrow it may be Gladstone, whose personality absorbs us and forces us to judge; but we are all making history day by day, and the leaders of men whom we see no more, and those who are amongst us, and who are growing into power, are all in one plane, as much and as little saints as the rest, as much the makers of humanity.

Last Sunday we met here to reflect on the work of Mahomet and the foundation and history of Islam. To-day-how vast a sense of humanity does it imply, to note the interval and contrast!—we turn to judge Gambetta and the Republic in France. The few weeks have passed that Comte judged expedient as an interval for the fair judgment of the dead; the flowers in the wreaths upon his grave are

hardly withered, and how much has happened since his death! Within a month we see (as we could not see in the hour of his disappearance) all that his death involved.

It would only be strangers to us who could wonder what especial concern of ours is the career of a French politician, or what the religion of humanity has to do with Léon Gambetta. Those who know us at all are well aware that to us the social movement in Europe as a whole is of far deeper moment than any local matter of national politics; they know that to us the foundation of the Republic in France is the condition of all healthy political progress in the world. They know how we recognize the social initiative which the great Revolution gave to France, and of which no errors and no disasters can at present deprive her. The Republic is to us the sole guarantee of any stable progress or order. The Republic in France is the turning-point in the second half of the nineteenth century; it is that whereby, for good or for evil, the century will stand in history. And every one can see that, for good or for evil, Léon Gambetta was bound up with the Republic as no other contemporary life was bound up.

Nor can we forget that he was the first statesman of European importance formally to offer his public homage to Comte as the greatest mind of the nineteenth century; and formally to adopt, as his leading idea in politics, Comte's great aphorism: "Progress can only arise out of the development of Order." But it is not for this that Gambetta holds a place of prime importance in our eyes. The doings of a statesman are what concern us, and not his protestations. And it is in the region of action that we see how distinctly Gambetta foreshadows the type of the Republican statesman-rudely and incompletely, no doubt-but with all the essential elements. He is the first European statesman of this century who is heart and soul Republican; the only one whose fibre is entirely popular; who saw that the Republic implied a real social reconstruction; he is the only European statesman who is equally zealous for progress and for order, and most assuredly he is the only statesman of this century who has formally thrown away every kind of theological crutch.

This is no panegyric of a public man. Of such we have had enough. It is no critical analysis of a striking personality. We are met here neither to bury Cæsar, nor to praise him. Brutus and Cassius and the rest have told us that he was ambitious, and had many grievous faults. I am not about to dispute it. There are many things in his public career, especially in its later years, which we wholly fail to reconcile, not only with the best type of the statesman, but with any reasonable version of his own principles. As to his private life, there are things, perhaps, gross and unworthy, and a public man has no private life. But unworthy if they be, they were not of the kind which seriously disable a public career. He was not