with reason believed to have been a great time of Parliament. The reminiscences of the very old may still be gathered by those who are admitted to them, and they may be found abundantly in memoirs. And the general impression left of this time is, that it was a time of great freedom of expression. Humour, often boisterous humour, was allowed to play freely over the solemn subjects of debate, and in this way reality of treatment was attained. The matters really were discussed, and the vital points were not shirked; and those who were not pertinent or interesting were left under no self-delusions. When it is sometimes pretended that women would raise the tone of debates by preventing freedom, there is an utter confusion of thought. There is no reason to suppose that there would arise a less venomous way of looking at things by women taking places in Parliament. The restraining men from saying what they have to say, in the way in which they would naturally say it amongst themselves, would be not a good but a real evil, tending to prevent the fatuity of solemn pretences from being exposed, and turning debate from an engine for getting at the realities of the case, into a sequence of decorous declamations, not really contradicted on the points in which contradiction and exposure are necessary. In this matter the mere fluency of woman is not so much a qualification as a drawback. That she is capable of making speeches of a certain length no one doubts, nor speeches of a set coherent cogency. The vital point is that the mere presence of her sex must necessarily disturb the freedom of style and the possibility of rudeness where necessary, which is indispensable to the real treatment of public questions. It is much to the point to remark that on many less observed platforms there is little doubt that she is hindering that reality of treatment now. Even in a matter which seems to give more than any other a promise of her beneficial agency, her appointment as Guardian of the Poor, I believe that her presence in debate among other male guardians, considered as a hampering presence, stopping the free play of natural remark and contradiction, and securing to her own share of assertion and discussion a far larger immunity from reflection by reason of her sex than her influence and position could give if she were male, is more calculated to do harm by the hampering of truth than her special aptitudes for finding out certain facts of public import could do good. Unreality, and the thin dropping of uncontradicted assertion, a lack of contradiction which to a large extent must always come to her by reason of her sex, must, I think, outbalance the advantage of her sitting at the board. Yet these are but illustrative matters, and it is in view of a danger of wider and more vital operation on broader fields that the remarks are offered. At the risk of repetition I say in fewer words, that the vital object of debate is that the realities which underlie a matter, and which often come out best by collision, by contradiction, and by irritating interrup tion, should be revealed there and then in the council chamber. That whatever claims may be made by New Women, the radical relations of man to woman have been settled by nature long ago; that these are incompatible with an uncompromising sifting of truth in common public debate; and that this public debate, whether in the large field of Parliament, or in the lesser fields of parish councils, hospital boards, or boards of guardians, and especially in boards which relate to public education, is of more importance to a nation than any other thing. If there be any truth in this point of view, it would seem to follow from it that the public functions of women would be limited to the collecting of evidence, which men must afterwards debate. This seems at first sight arrogant on the part of males. And there is no doubt that it will be received with indignation by those who are most serious in the claims which they make for public position. But it has a really humble side. The sarcasm of Johnson is worth attending to. So supereminent is the influence of woman over man that we must protect ourselves. By rightly constituted men, women will never be subjected to the immediate sifting or heckling in public debates which we must needs give to one another; and those who respect woman much and love their country more, must in selfprotection do their best to keep her out of them. CHARLES SELBY OAKLEY. 1896 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL AS AN OFFICIAL HAMLET, in his most cynical humour, hopes that a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year. It almost seems as if Shakespeare, in the person of his hero, foresaw the fickleness of those who live at the close of the present century, when popularity is attained and lost, when fortunes and reputations are made and marred, when men and questions alike fill the public imagination for an hour, it may be a day, and are then hurried off the scene to make way for new men and new ideas. Those who have held a great position, or who have been brilliantly successful in their lifetime, or even who have achieved some important work, are often soon forgotten; but not so the possessor of an individuality that is unique of its kind. Him the world does not willingly let die. So it seems to me unlikely that Lord Randolph Churchill will ever disappear from the memory of his countrymen; for rarely has English political biography furnished one gifted with a personality of such dazzling brilliancy. For a time-alas, too short-he held a position in the world of politics second only to that of Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Disraeli. He could draw together the largest audiences in London and the provinces, and he always inspired them with his own enthusiasm. Not a newspaper but was full of his speeches as he traversed the country from Woodstock to Belfast, or from London to Edinburgh; not a caricaturist but exercised his talents on his features, his mustachios, and his collars. Is it possible that now the painful warrior famoused for fight, After a thousand victories once foiled, Is from the boke of honour razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toiled? To some other writer and to a remoter time it must be left to deal with that part of Lord Randolph Churchill's life when, in the face of the overwhelming majority opposed to him in 1881, in spite of the ill-concealed disapproval, and to the dismay of what he somewhat disrespectfully termed the old gang, he charged over the heads of a dejected and dispirited party into the serried and then unbroken ranks of the Liberal phalanx. Like the youth in the old classical story, he hurled his lance, before the awe-struck worshippers, into the side of the idol they knelt to and adored. My object in this short sketch is to show the impression Lord Randolph Churchill produced on the minds of old and staid officials who had been educated in the school of Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Mr. Gladstone, and Sir Stafford Northcote. At first they regarded him as an impossible man 'whose breath was agitation and his life a storm on which he rode.' He was to their eyes a visible genius, an intense and unquenchable personality, an embodied tour de force; but as a serious Minister of the Crown he was to them an impossibility. In his fierce assaults on Mr. Gladstone he had attacked the best friend the Civil Service ever had; and it was a moot point which was in greater dread-they of his entrance within the portals of a Government department, or he of having to associate in daily business with men whom he curtly described to a friend as a knot of d-d Gladstonians.' He was a man to whom the words of Hookham Frere in Monks and Giants might as suitably be applied as they were to that kindred spirit, the brave and fiery Peterborough. His birth, it seems, by Merlin's calculation He seemed as if some momentary spleen Such was the impression we had of him, not unnatural and certainly not wholly wrong. But there were other aspects to his many-sided nature the reckless knight-errant of debate proved at the same time a patient, strenuous, thorough, and far-sighted administrator. The following is the character he won at the India Office from Sir A. Godley, the Under Secretary of State for India :— He was, as every one knows, exceedingly able, quick, and clear-sighted. Besides this, he was very industrious, very energetic and decided when once his mind was made up, and remarkably skilful in the art of 'devolution,' by which I mean the art of getting the full amount of help out of his subordinates. He knew at once whether to take up a question or to leave it to others. If he took it up, he made himself completely master of it; if he left it alone, he put entire confidence in those to whom he left it, and endorsed their opinion without hesitation. I need not tell you how invaluable this quality was both to himself and to those who worked with him. It should be added that his perfect candour and straightforwardness were not only admirable in themselves, but were a great assistance to business. What he said he meant; and if he did not know a subject, he did not pretend to know it. The duties of the Secretary of State for India are, as you know, somewhat complicated by his relations with the Council, over whose deliberations he has to preside. In this part of his business he showed great skill. For some time, and until he had learnt the methods of procedure, he took no part whatever in our debates. But as soon as he began to feel at home, his method was to decide beforehand which were the subjects as to which he wished to use his influence, and having done this, to send for the papers and master them thoroughly before the meeting of Council. Then, having his brief, and with the advantage of his parliamentary training and natural readiness, he interfered with decisive effect, and I believe I may say, invariably carried his point. Few high officials can have been his superiors, or indeed his equals, in the art of getting things done. Those who worked under him felt that, if they had once convinced him that a certain step ought to be taken, it infallibly would be taken and 'put through.'. . . He was, as he freely said, extremely sorry to leave this office, and I believe that all who had worked with him, without exception, were sorry to lose him. Lord Randolph's brief tenure of the India Office was marked by some achievements of first-class importance. The annexation of Burma, a country with an area of 83,473 square miles and a population of 3,000,000, was his policy for which he was responsible. The conquest of the country was effected with remarkable rapidity. In November 1885 Lord Randolph gave the order to advance; on the 1st of December Lord Dufferin announced that the conquest was completed; and on the 31st of the same month Lord Randolph sent out his despatch detailing what had happened and authorising the annexation. Another important piece of work, the formation of the Indian Midland Railway, which has now a length of line of 700 miles and a capital of 7,000,000l., was carried out by Lord Randolph against considerable opposition. It was he also who finally sanctioned the increase of the British (European) army in India by 10,000 men; and several other important measures were passed during his administration of the India Office. Lord Randolph, between the fall of the Tory Government and his return to office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, made himself the mouthpiece of an attack with a venom not his own on the Chairman and Deputy-Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue. 'Those were,' as he said, 'my ignorant days.' When he returned to office as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1866, notwithstanding the reputation he had made for himself at the India Office, he still appeared to the minds of Treasury officials as a Minister who would in all probability ride roughshod over cherished traditions and habits which were very dear to them. That such a man, with all his faults and glaring indiscretions, whose inclinations became passions, should have attached to himself a body of men like the Civil Service of this country, was little short of a miracle. A Frenchman, in a conversation with Pitt at the end of the last century, expressed his surprise at the influence which Charles Fox, a man of pleasure ruined by the dicebox and the turf, had exercised over the English nation. You have not,' was the reply, 'been under the wand of the magician.' It was not long before those who were brought into close communication. with Lord Randolph fell under his magic spell. I confess that I, |