Lastly, there is the argument derived from the supposed liberality of Great Britain towards Ireland in the matter of loans and grants. If there is any part of the history of the financial relations of the two countries of which England ought to desire to avoid an investigation, it is that regarding the loans made to Ireland. It is said that out of the loans advanced for British and Irish purposes respectively, ten millions, or one-fifth, have been written off or remitted or treated as a free grant in the case of Ireland, while only one fifty-eighth part has been so treated in the case of Great Britain. What is the fact? 'An examination of the return [regarding loans] shows,' says The O'Conor Don's Report, that about nine millions out of the ten for which Ireland was alleged to be in default were not, in the true sense, loans for local purposes, and that they did not correspond with the advances made to Great Britain.' The truth is that the greater part of the Irish loans consisted of advances by a State department in relief of distress, and were more than repaid by other devices; or on public works, regarding which it may be said that there was no Irish borrower at all, and no independent Irish authority with the least control either in the selection or the execution of the works; and that many or most of the works have been non-reproductive. Of the ten millions remitted more than four millions represented money advanced for the relief of the poor in the time of the great famine, and it was actually on the ground of the remission of that money that the income tax was extended to Ireland. In other words, four millions and something over were remitted, and twenty millions have been collected to recoup the Treasury! This is, indeed, a curious sort of 'liberality to Ireland.' To all this it may be added that, by the arrangements made regarding the interest to be paid on Irish loans, there is the gravest reason to believe that the Treasury is making actually a profit out of lending to Ireland, just as if it were an ordinary money-lender, and that at this very moment a lunatic asylum cannot be built or extended in Ireland without money borrowed from the Government at 3 per cent., while, if the local authorities were allowed by law to go into the open market for the advances they require for those institutions, they could, in view of the excellent security they can offer, borrow at nearly 1 per cent. less. As for the grants directly made to Ireland, they are scarcely worth talking about, and, as The O'Conor Don's Report shows, those which have been made under the Tramways Act of 1883 have actually proved, from the manner in which they were made available, a distinct injury, and not a benefit, to the Irish ratepayers. It would thus appear that there is really no answer whatever to the Irish case. It remains to say a word or two as to the manner in which redress may be afforded to Ireland for the injustice which is thus proved to be inflicted upon her and which she has undoubtedly endured for many years. Four principal suggestions have been made on this head. The first is that the control of her own financial concerns -the power of raising her own revenue and spending her own money -should be restored to Ireland, with or without the obligation of making a fixed annual contribution to Imperial expenses; the second, that the fiscal system of the Empire should be altered either by making the incidence of taxation fall more lightly on Ireland and more heavily on Great Britain, or by returning to the system which prevailed in the earlier part of the century and making certain abatements in the Excise and Customs duties raised in Ireland so as to differentiate them in favour of Ireland from those raised in Great Britain; the third is to allocate a certain large sum annually from the general revenue for the purpose of promoting the material prosperity of Ireland; and the fourth is that reductions should be effected in the existing expenditure in Ireland, and that the sum of those reductions should be applied to more useful public purposes in that country than those to which they are now devoted. Obviously these various suggestions are so important and cover so much new ground that it would be impossible adequately to discuss them at the close of this paper. A few general observations, however, may be made upon them, and the last is specially worthy of note when we consider the quarter from which it comes, and the reasons urged in its support. The first plan would practically mean the concession of a measure of Home Rule; it is highly significant that it is specially favoured by Lord Farrer and Mr. Currie, and in a less degree by Lord Welby, as the only mode of meeting the difficulty. The second would mean a change which many perhaps, even in Ireland, would not prefer to the third plan, which, if properly carried out, would seem likely to confer much greater and more direct benefit on the country, inasmuch as what, after Home Rule, is most wanted is a liberal expenditure of money in reviving and fostering Irish industries of all kinds. The last is the suggestion of Sir David Barbour. It is obviously intended as a means of saving the British taxpayer from the just consequences of his own misdeeds in the past, and there is no doubt that if adopted it would have that effect. But that very fact shows that it would be no redress of the grievance complained of, for Ireland would be still paying the same excessive contribution to Imperial expenditure, although of course it may at the same time be admitted that it would be better for Ireland to have half the sum, say, now paid to the constabulary devoted to technical schools or the improvement of the means of internal communication. But I do not discuss this plan now; I draw attention to it specially to mention that Sir David Barbour advocates it on the following grounds: (1) That the Union arrangements were unfair to Ireland; (2) that the process by which the present system of taxation has been brought about has in practice proved more advantageous to Great Britain than to Ireland; (3) that the circumstances of Ireland were not fairly considered when the great increase of taxation occurred in the 1850-60 period; (4) 3 U VOL. XL-No. 238 that the economic condition of Ireland has been very unsatisfactory ffor a very long time-in other words, that it has been about as bad as it could be; (5) that Ireland is entitled under the Act of Union to have her circumstances specially considered; and (6) that being the weaker partner the Irish representatives are necessarily a minority in Parliament. All this is pretty strong for a dissentient. After having read it, we wonder why Sir David Barbour was a dissentient at all. Much, very much, more remains to be said upon this question. But what has been said shows, I hope, why there is an agitation in Ireland at present such, in one respect, as has been rarely witnessed, and it will probably also explain why next Session of Parliament Irish representatives of all political parties will almost certainly be found earnestly demanding that some plan or other shall be adopted to put an end to an injustice as gross of its kind as is to be discovered in history since the days when Sicily was plundered by Verres. P.S. Since the foregoing pages were written, another Parliamentary return has been issued on the motion of Mr. Joseph A. Pease, M.P., an examination of which will show that the over-taxation of Ireland, which the Royal Commission found to exist, has been considerably aggravated by that great effort of Liberal statesmanship, the Finance Act of 1894. On the lowest estimate the over-taxation of Ireland now amounts to more than three millions sterling a year. 1896 STERNE It having been observed that there was little hospitality in London, Johnson: Nay, sir, any man who has a name, or who has the power of pleasing, will be very generally invited in London. The man Sterne, I have been told, has had engagements for three months.' Goldsmith: And a very dull fellow.' Johnson: "Why, no, sir.' ONE of my earliest recollections is a warning which I received from a country gentleman not to read too many books. For my part,' he said, 'I only read two books; but I read them over and over again. One is the Bible. The other is Tristram Shandy. Apart from the absurdity of calling the Bible a book, and the indecorum of comparing sacred literature with profane, there is in the writings of Sterne no obvious inspiration from on high. But there are other qualities with which a mundane critic is naturally more competent to deal. Dr. Johnson, who knew better than to call Sterne dull, declared that Tristram Shandy would perish because it was odd, and nothing odd could live. Tristram Shandy, like Charles the Second, has been an unconscionably long time in dying. It would be an exaggeration to say that Mr. Disraeli was the last man who read Rasselas, or that no man living had read Irene. But references to these classical compositions would in the best educated company fall exceedingly flat, whereas Uncle Toby's sayings are as well known as Falstaff's, and the 'sub-acid humour' of Mr. Shandy plays, like the wit of Horace, round the cockles of the heart. It is now a pure curiosity of literature that men have lived who imputed dulness to Tristram Shandy. Goldsmith, who was not altogether incapable of jealousy, denounced it in the Citizen of the World with a bitterness unsuitable to his character, and censured its violations of propriety in language of extraordinary grossness. Horace Walpole informed Sir David Dalrymple that he could not help calling it a very insipid and tedious performance,' in which 'the humour was for ever attempted and missed.' That is a description which might be applied by an unfavourable critic to Walpole's own letters, except that it is not easy to understand how, if humour is always missed, there can be any humour at all. The great humour,' adds this great critic, consists in the whole narrative always going backwards.' That is like the definition propounded by a budding naturalist to Cuvier, in which a crab was called 995 3 U 2 a red fish that walks backwards. Your definition,' said Cuvier,' would be perfect but for three facts: a crab is not red, it is not a fish, and it does not walk backwards.' Wordsworth thought that Candide was dull, and it is possible that Voltaire might have pronounced with more reason a similar judgment upon the Ecclesiastical Sonnets. As a straightforward and consecutive narrative of actual facts, duly set forth with appropriate comments, Tristram Shandy must be acknowledged, as Mr. Shandy said of the science of fortification, to have its weak points. Those who find it dull will probably find The Caxtons amusing, and I recommend them to try. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has rewritten his Life of Sterne, and has published some of Sterne's letters not previously printed. He has also reproduced the famous autograph contained in the fifth, seventh, and ninth volumes of the second edition of Tristram Shandy. When Sterne wrote for the public he was a purist in style, if not in morals. When he wrote to ladies he was rhapsodical and in every sense of the word romantic. He corresponded with his male friends in a colloquial and rather slipshod fashion, which has nothing very characteristic about it except indomitable cheerfulness. Mr. Fitzgerald has disposed of Byron's charge that Sterne preferred whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother.' The mother was an insatiable harpy, and Sterne did relieve her on many occasions. He was a good-natured if at bottom a selfish man. He behaved much better to his wife than Byron, which is not saying much, and was as fond of his daughter as Wilkes, which is saying a great deal. It is a strange notion that a man's private life becomes more interesting if he writes good prose or verse. The late Professor Freeman protested against setting up a Chair of English Literature at, Oxford if it was only to mean chatter about Harriet'-that is, the first Mrs. Shelley. Chatter about Jenny-that is, Miss Fourmantelis equally devoid of edification. It was rather a mean sort of economy on Mr. Sterne's part to use up his old love letters to Mrs. Sterne in addressing Mrs. Draper. Nor can the tone of his epistle to Lady Percy be held up for the imitation of the married and beneficed clergy. But, as Captain Shandy exclaimed, what is all this to a man who fears God?' Sterne was forty-five when he began Tristram Shandy. He had lived since his youth chiefly in York and the immediate neighbourhood. The book was begun as a sort of local satire, in which the characters were well known and speedily recognised. What is the secret of its unfailing charm? There is no plot. There is no story. There is no method. There is no order, not even an alphabetical order, of which an eminent judge said that, though inferior to chronological order, it was better than no order at all. There are only a few characters, some eccentric, others so broadly and typically human that one is startled by the familiarity and obviousness of |