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"But how?" said Silcote.

"Announce to him the immediate marriage of James and Dora," replied πολυμήτις Tоλvμýris Betts; "then explain this matter to him, and immediately afterwards have those two married, just to show you are in earnest."

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They are full young," said the Squire.

"None too young, and they have plenty of money. Lor' bless you! carpenters and blacksmiths, and such people, habitually marry at that age without a week's wages to the good. You can knock 'em up a couple of thousand a year amongst you. Let 'em marry at once. Put your hand to the prettiest thing ever done. Let us see one more beautiful thing before we die, Silcote. We have seen but few pretty things in our lifetime: let us see one more before we take to the chimney corner on our way to the churchyard. Come, my good old friend, put a rose in your button-hole, and let us have this wedding. Youth is past for ever with both of us, but let us feel young once more, vicariously. Let this thing be."

"But Arthur?"

"Hang Arthur. Why, you are worth six of Arthur any day of the week. You have sufficient manhood to make a fool of yourself, and I'll be hanged if he has. Algy was worth a dozen of him, and so was Tom. There he is, coming in from shooting. Go down to him. Tell him of your intentions and announce the marriage."

"But we have not consulted James and Dora," said the Squire.

"Pish!" said Betts, "go. Don't be a coward."

Arthur, on being informed that his father had been long thinking of his domestic arrangements, and after that

long thinking had come to the conclusion that the best thing he could do was to make over to Arthur 118,000l. in the funds, and leave the reversion of Silcotes to his grandson James, was furiously, though silently indignant. No one could possibly have behaved more perfectly than Arthur under this heavy dispensation of Providence of nearly 4,000l. a year down on the nail. The attitude of himself and his wife at dinner that day was that of politeness under an injury: an injury too great to be mentioned. This announcement meant a notice to quit, and they understood it as such. They discovered that they had an engagement to go to Lord Hainault the next morning, and stopped all conversation by persistent silence. The way in which they shook the dust off their feet, in stepping into their carriage next morning, and leaving this perfidious mansion, was, to say the least of it, "genteel." Yet they went, and there was peace; Silcote said, "triumph."

The Princess lived the rest of her life with her brother in peace. She was very gentle, quiet, and obliging, and it was only known to very few even in the household that anything was wrong. It only showed itself in one way. She kept with her own hands a room ready for the arrival of poor Colonel Silcote. It was the old room he had had when a boy, and was hung round with his guns, swords, and cricket-bats. Here she waited for his arrival, coming into his room several times a day to see if everything was ready, and always looking in the first thing in the morn ing, to see if he had come in the night and was in bed. With this not unhappy delusion the time wore on with her peacefully, although he never came.

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WORKING-MEN AND WAR: THE MORAL OF A RECENT CRISIS.

BY LORD HOBART.

SOME two or three months ago, just at the time when nations were about to meet in an Armageddon of peaceful industry, Europe suddenly found itself on the verge of a gigantic and desolating war. Few doubted for a moment that two enormous armies, equipped with weapons of the newest pattern and destructive beyond all precedent, were about to be hurled against each other, and to repeat, on the same theatre, but on a grander scale, the performance which so often before has thrilled and fascinated the world. Few doubted for a moment that commerce was to be paralysed, moral and intellectual progress checked, evil passions unchained, force deified, cruelty condoned, crime encouraged, pauperism increased and ignored, in the old and well-known style. And the cause was as clear as the event seemed certain. This was to be no war for the protection of the weak against the strong, to prevent injustice, or to liberate oppressed nationality. It was to be a war of the simplest and most elementary character

-a war for territory. Moreover, it was a contingency which every one of what is called "a certain position in society," appeared to think perfectly natural, and, though much to be regretted, neither to be avoided nor denounced. That in this nineteenth century immense bodies of men should still at intervals be engaged in cutting each other's throats is considered, by an influential minority of mankind, a phenomenon which is lamentable enough, but to suggest a remedy for which is to be a visionary, or, what is worse, a 66 peaceman. Position in society is in the habit of looking upon occasional war as a necessary condition of human affairs, and holds that the mutual trucidation of human beings is a matter of provi

dential arrangement, susceptible of no more satisfactory explanation than the origin of evil, and having, like other misfortunes, its advantages and compensations.

It happens, however, that society consists not only of those who have position in it, but of those who have none, and that the latter are by far the most numerous. Let us see, then, what is the opinion on this subject entertained by the vast majority of the individuals of whom society is composed. France and Prussia were on the brink of mortal strife; but the people of France and Prussia-the class which lives by its labour, comprising probably some four-fifths of each nation-held out their hands to each other, and declared that they for their parts declined to quarrel, and looked with abhorrence upon the bloodshed to which they were being committed. By protests and declarations of every kind they proclaimed that the avowed cause of war, the possession of territory, was no reason for it in their eyes. They declared that "labour was of no country;"-that so long as they were protected in the peaceful possession of the fruits of their toil, and allowed to perform their part in utilising and interchanging the products of the earth for the general good, they cared not whether they were called Frenchmen or Prussians; and that to fight in such a quarrel was to fight for an empty name. It might be for the benefit of their rulers, who derived honour and advantage from such distinctions, to maintain them at the cost of unutterable misery to the world; to them it was none. For themselves they wanted no wars, and, if they had liberty in any true sense of the word, war would long ago have been a thing of the past.

The simple fact is, that the working men, or, in other words, some four-fifths of the population of France and Prussia, whose feelings on the subject are shared by about the same proportion of the population in other countries, have apprehended (partly, no doubt, because they and not the wealthier classes are the principal sufferers from the antagonism of nations) a truth which those who claim superiority over them have failed to understand. What they meant by their protests and declarations was nothing more nor less than this--that war is not inevitable; that the cause of war is nationalism; and that, if they had their will, nationalism should be no more. Nationalism-the segregation of mankind into distinct communities, each of which is a law to itself, and, repudiating at the bayonet's point all political communion with its neighbours, is precisely in the condition of a society in which there is no government-is that which makes war inevitable; and the end of nationalism is the end of war. No war, except civil war, would be possible when once an end was put to that anarchy of nations which has so long disgraced a Christian world. In a community which has taken no step towards political institutions, in which each individual considers his neighbour unqualified to form part of the same body politic with himself, force must and will be resorted to for the protection of individual rights and interests; for it is the only tribunal to which they can be referred. So long as nations cling obstinately to anarchy, on the ground that they are unfit for any form of political association, not only wars, but wars which may be termed just and necessary, must from time to time occur. The members of a society in which there is no law must take the law each into his own hand. What the working men of France and Prussia meant was not that resistance to interference by one nation with the rights of another was unjustifiable, but that there is no reason in the nature of things for the division of mankind into separate and antago nistic communities, any more than there

is a reason why individual human beings should abjure a common polity. The possessors of leisure and power may think or affect to think it preposterous, but to those who live by labour the idea has long been familiar-that whether a man is happy is a more important inquiry than whether he is a Frenchman or an Englishman, a Prussian or an Austrian. The manifestos of working men during the late crisis afford evidence of a fact little regarded by the governing class in all countries - that a feeling has long existed among those whom they govern, and is advancing with resistless force, which must sooner or later overflow the barriers of nationalism. The notion that foreigners are unfit for political intercourse with themselves, and that the division of the human race into isolated sections is an eternal ordinance which it is not only unpatriotic but impious to condemn, is supposed, by those who are interested in upholding despotic and oligarchical institutions, to be general among the inhabitants of this and other countries, but in reality has long been confined to their own class. Ask those who are lower in the social scale, but who, besides being more numerous, are as a rule more thoughtful read their journals and listen to their conversation—and you will find it treated with reprobation and scorn. In this country, owing to the inferior provision for popular education, the progress of internationalism among the working class has probably been less than in some others; but even here it has taken vigorous root. Here, also, that "labour is of no country;" that men are entitled to regard and respect to whatever nation they belong; that happiness and self-respect are independent, not certainly of political institutions, but of nationality; that, cateris paribus, life is as well worth having whether a man is an Englishman or a Frenchman; that, indeed, all such distinctions are an evil; and that it is less sensible, less honourable, less conducive to human welfare, that men should be citizens of a parti cular country than that they should be citizens of the world ;-has long been

the creed of those whose opinions on the subject are not even known to the depositaries of political power, but who are now advancing, however slowly, towards the attainment of such a share in the government of the country as will enable them to give effect to their views. Nationalism and oligarchy are sisters indissolubly bound up in each other; political liberty and internationalism are inseparable allies. A ruling minority, looking upon the nation which it governs as its own domain, is naturally enough unwilling to share it with others, to merge in a common polity its exclusive privilege and power, and to give up the standing armaments which enable it to maintain them, and whose occupation would thenceforth be gone. That, on the other hand, with real political freedom, internationalism, notwithstanding the ridicule, partly ignorant and partly interested, with which it is treated, would before very long take some practical effect, is now sufficiently evident. Whenever the working class, advancing as it is in education, intelligence, and power, obtains that which must at no very distant time be conceded to it-a share proportionate to its numerical importance in the government of the world -it will not be long before the barbarous, puerile, and eminently pagan exclusivism which has kept nations apart and deluged the earth with blood ceases, in the garb of patriotism, to impose upon mankind. There must at any rate now be an end, once for all, to the tone of good-natured contempt with which speculations of this kind have hitherto been set aside, for it is now clear that they are the calmly and deeply entertained convictions of the great majority of civilized men. It is now clear that, if wars are made in the mere spirit of nationalism-for the mere purpose of aggrandizing one nation, or preventing the aggrandizement of another-they are made against the will of the majority; and it is further clear that, in the opinion of that majority, the wholly distinct political existence of nations, with the rivalry, antagonism, and anarchy which it involves, is a barbarous anachronism.

So deeply rooted indeed is the prejudice, so inveterate the habit of thought, which looks upon the separation of men into isolated bodies, always rivals and often enemies, as

a

necessary incident of human life, that even to the operative classes themselves time will be required for giving a perfectly full and clear perception of the great principle which they have apprehended. Men bave so long been taught by the recognised instructors of the world that the anarchy of nations-the blood-stained barriers of nationalism-are of divine institution, that there is some excuse for their belief in the doctrine. The differences of race, of creed, of language, or of political character among the various nations of the earth have, time out of mind, been supposed to be such as to make the idea of any approach to political association simply ridiculous. A supposition more diametrically opposed to truth and wisdom it would not be easy to conceive. But for prejudice and ignorance it would at once be seen that the continued dissociation of the various branches of the human family is not divine, but the opposite, and that the proper subject for derision is not the search after some common bond of union 'for civilized and Christian men, but the blindness which has so long acquiesced in its absence. Anarchy in the community of states is that which anarchy. would be in an ordinary communitya scandal and a shame. The lawless life of nations, with the hand of each against the other, is as foolish, and ought to be considered as intolerable, as the same kind of existence among individual men. Tradition, habit, dissimilarity of character, language, race, or creed, ought no more to be accepted as excuses in one case than in the other. It is the business of human beings with any pretension to civilization or enlightenment to see that such obstacles do not stand for a moment in the path of a consummation which is demanded by every dictate of reason and humanity. Nationalism, which is a reproach to Christendom and an insult to common

sense, would have long since perished but for such obstacles; and it is the business of those who care for the future of mankind to use every effort for their removal. Foremost among them all is prejudice-the torpor of mind which, handed down from age to age and fostered by vicious education, fails to recognise truth merely because it is new; and this, by whatever resource of pen or tongue may be at his command, it is the duty of each man in his sphere to assail. Formidable in the next degree is the obstacle of dissimilar political institutions. It is, for instance, obviously impossible for nations, one of which is ruled by a despot or by a class, and the other is under perfectly free government, to take any serious step in the direction of political unity. Both states, so far as their people are concerned, may be anxious for union, but antagonistic forms of government forbid the banns. It thus appears that one of the reasons why internationalism is of so little account is to be found in defective systems of government. If nations were, as they ought to be, self-governed in the true sense of the word, the transition to common government, through the preliminary stage of federation, would be natural and easy. Tyranny, based on ignorance and selfishness, has thus been a main agent of the disunion which has so long afflicted the world, and outraged freedom the cause of the worst miseries of mankind. Let the millions who, like the working men of France and Prussia, are actuated by the desire, so ridiculed and so rational, to live in fellowship with other men, and are not ashamed or afraid to form part of the same community with those who differ from them by the mere accident of race or climate, remember that before they can do this they must be free. The government of a despot or of a class, besides the other evils for which it is answerable, is answerable also for this-that it keeps men apart from each other, actual rivals and possible enemies, and, as a consequence, impoverishes them for the purpose of enabling them, when occasion

occurs, to shed each other's blood. There is but one kind of polity-it is of substance and not of form that we are now speaking-which is fit for rational beings, and that polity must be theirs before they can hope for rational intercourse with each other. War will cease only when government for the few exists no longer; and the way to peace is through the gates of liberty.

Were it only for this last consideration, it is but too obvious that the great change which will sooner or later unite the world must be gradual and remote; but there are not wanting signs that the way is already in course of active preparation for its advent. The very fact that it is no longer possible for the monopolists of political powerwho have been suddenly awakened to the fact that theories which they have treated as the mere crotchets of idle and morbid dreamers are to the vast majority of thoughtful, intelligent, and practical men mere common sense and common humanity-to sneer at the very mention of that change, and ignore it systematically in their policy and legislation, is an important step in the right direction. It is true that freedom is a condition indispensable to the object in view; but to familiarise men's minds with that object is in itself to supply them with a powerful lever for the acquisition of freedom. The first serious blow to nationalism was dealt by Free Trade, which gave for the first time a common interest to nations, and taught them that, whatever might be the result of human arrangements, nature abhorred their antagonism. In order that the minds of men might receive the idea of political union it was necessary that commercial enmity should cease. The possession of vital

interests in common leads them in the first place to pause before they come to blows, and in the next place to consider whether there must not be some signal and fatal defect in a system which arms every community to the teeth against its neighbour, and supplies them with no court of appeal but the cannon's mouth, and no arbitrator but

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