that it has difficulties of its own and weaknesses and dangers of its own, both in this country and elsewhere, every observant man is well aware. They assuredly deserve to be considered in a different spirit from that which marks these volumes.

MAINE ON POPULAR GOVERNMENT.1

'If the government of the Many,' says the distinguished author of the volume before us, ' be really inevitable, one would have thought that the possibility of discovering some other and newer means of enabling it to fulfil the ends for which all governments exist, would have been a question exercising all the highest powers of the strongest minds, particularly in the community which, through the success of its popular institutions, has paved the way for modern Democracy. Yet hardly anything worth mentioning has been produced on the subject in England or on the Continent.' To say this, by the way, is strangely to ignore three or four very remarkable books that have been published within the last twenty or five-and-twenty years, that have excited immense attention and discussion, and are the work of minds Sir Henry Maine would hardly call weak or inactive. We are no adherents of any of Mr. Hare's proposals, but there are important public men who think that his work on the Election of Representatives is as conspicuous a landmark in politics as the Principia 1 February 1886.

was in natural philosophy. J. S. Mill's Considerations on Representative Government, which appeared in 1861, was even a more memorable contribution towards the solution of the very problem defined by Sir Henry Maine, than was the older Mill's article on Government in 1820 to the political difficulties of the eve of the Reform Bill. Again, Lord Grey's work on Parliamentary Government failed in making its expected mark on legislation, but it was worth mentioning because it goes on the lines of the very electoral law in Belgium which Sir Henry Maine (p. 109) describes as deserving our respectful attention, which it is as little likely to receive. Nor should we neglect Sir G. C. Lewis's little book, or Mr. Harrison's volume, Order and Progress, which abounds in important criticism and suggestion for the student of the abstract politics of modern societies. In the United States, too, and in our own colonies, there have been attempts, not without merit, to state and to deal with some of the drawbacks of popular government.

Nothing has been done, however, that makes the appearance in the field of a mind of so high an order as Sir Henry Maine's either superfluous or unwelcome. It is hardly possible that he should discuss any subject within the publicist's range, without bringing into light some of its less superficial aspects, and adding observations of originality and value to the stock of political thought. To set people thinking at all on the more general and abstract truths of the great subject that is commonly left to be handled

lightly, unsystematically, fragmentarily, in obedience to the transitory necessities of the day, by ministers, members of Parliament, journalists, electors, and the whole host who live intellectually and politically from hand to mouth, is in itself a service of all but the first order. Service of the very first order is not merely to propound objections, but to devise working answers, and this is exactly what Sir Henry Maine abstains from doing.

No one will think the moment for a serious political inquiry ill chosen. We have just effected an immense recasting of our system of parliamentary representation. The whole consequences of the two great Acts of 1884 and 1885 are assuredly not to be finally gauged by anything that has happened during the recent election. Yet even this single election has brought about a crisis of vast importance in one part of the United Kingdom, by forcing the question of an Irish constitution to the front. It is pretty clear, also, that the infusion of a large popular element into the elective House has made more difficult the maintenance of its old relations with the hereditary House. Even if there were no others, these two questions alone, and especially the first of them, will make the severest demands on the best minds in the country. We shall be very fortunate if the crisis produces statesmen as sagacious as those American publicists of whom Sir Henry Maine rightly entertains so exalted an opinion.

Whether or not we are on the threshold of great

legislative changes, it is in any case certain that the work of government will be carried on under new parliamentary and social conditions. In meeting this prospect, we have the aid neither of strong and systematic political schools, nor powerful and coherent political parties. No one can pretend, for instance, that there is any body of theoretic opinion so compact and so well thought out as Benthamism was in its own day and generation. Again, in practice, there are ominous signs that Parliament is likely to break up into groups; and the substitution of groups for parties is certain, if continental experience is to count for anything, to create new obstacles in the way of firm and stable government. Weak government throws power to something that usurps the name of public opinion, and public opinion, as expressed by the ventriloquists of the newspapers, is at once more capricious and more vociferous than it ever was. This was abundantly shown during the last five years by a variety of unfortunate public adventures. Then, does the excitement of democracy weaken the stability of national temperament? By setting up what in physics would be called a highly increased molecular activity, does it disturb not merely conservative respect for institutions, but respect for coherence and continuity of opinion and sentiment in the character of the individual himself? Is there a fluidity of character in modern democratic societies that contrasts not altogether favourably with the strong solid types of old? These and many other considerations of the