him and has to give way. The Liberals are in power, anu they carry some measures by the strength of their parliamentary majority. The moment comes when they go farther than the patience of their opponents will bear, or when they have nothing more to suggest at the moment. In either case the managers of the Opposition arouse them. selves, and they say, "We cannot endure any more of this;" or they ask each other why they have endured so much. They stir up their whole party with all the energy they can muster, and at last, after tremendous effort, they get their shard-borne beetle hoisted for his drowsy flight. The others have sunk into comparative languor. They have done what they wanted to do; they have, according to the French phrase, exhausted their mandate; and their is nothing by which they can call the whole strength of their party into action. They do not any longer see their way as well as their opponents do. They are not so angry or so resolute. Perhaps they think they have gone a little too far. The Conservative newspapers are all astir and aflame. The Conservative passion is roused. The Conservative lungs are fresh and strong; their rivals are out of breath. In a word, the Conservatives get what American politicians call "the floor;" and this is Conservative reaction. All the time it is probable that not one man in every ten thousand of the population has really changed his opinion. The Conservatives hold their place for a certain time, until their oppo. nents have recovered their energies and have lost their pati ence; until their passion to attack is more thorough and genuine than the power of the men in possession to resist. Then the Liberal beetle is got upon his wings, and Liberalism has its time again.

During all these changes, however, the Liberal Lovement is necessarily gaining ground. Reaction in English politics never now goes the length of undoing what has been done. It only interposes a delay, and a warning against moving

Therefore, after

too far and too fast in the same direction. each flux and efflux it is a matter of practical necessity that the cause which means movement of some kind must be found to have gained upon the cause which would prefer to stand still. It is almost needless to say that the Liberal party have not always been the actual means of carrying a Liberal movement. All great Conservative leaders have recognized in good time the necessity of accepting some principle of reform. In a practical country like England, the Conservatives could not maintain a party of any kind if it were absolutely certain that their mission was to oppose every reform, and the mission of the Liberals to promote it. As a principle, the business of Liberalism is to cry "forward;" that of Conservatism to cry "back." The action and reaction of which we speak is that of Liberalism and Conservatism; not of the leaders of Liberal and Tory administrations.

The movement of reaction against reform in domestic policy was in full force during the earlier years of Lord Palmerston's government. In home politics, and where finance and commercial legislation were not concerned, Palmerston was a Conservative minister. He was probably, on the whole, more highly esteemed among the rank and file of the Opposition in the House of Commons than by the rank and file on his own side. Not a few of the Conservative country gentlemen would in their hearts have been glad if he could. have remained prime minister forever. His thoroughly English ways appealed directly to their sympathies. His instincts went with theirs. They liked his courage and his animal spirits. He was always ready to fling cheery defi ance in the face of any foreign foe, just as they had been taught to believe that their grandfathers used to fling defiance in the face of Bonaparte and France. He was a faithful member of the Church of England, but his certainly was not an a austere Protestantism, and he allowed religion to come no farther into the affairs of ordinary life than suited

a country gentleman's ideas of the fitness of things. There was among Tory country gentlemen also a certain doubt or dread as to the manner in which eccentric and exoteric genius might manage the affairs of England when the Conservatives came to have a government of their own, and when Lord Derby could no longer take command. These, therefore, all liked Palmerston, and helped by their favor to swell the sails of his popularity. Many of those who voted, with their characteristic fidelity to party, for Mr. Disraeli's resolution of censure, were glad in their hearts that Lord Palmerston came safely out of difficulty.

But as the years went on there were manifest signs of the coming and inevitable reaction. One of the most striking of these indications was found in the position taken by Mr. Gladstone. For some time Mr. Gladstone had been more and more distinctly identifying himself with the opinions of the advanced Liberals. The advanced Liberals themselves were of two sections or factions, working together almost always, but very distinct in complexion; and it was Mr. Gladstone's fortune to be drawn by his sympathies to both alike. He was of course drawn toward the Manchester School by his economic views; by his agreement with them on all subjects relating to finance and to freedom of commerce. But the Manchester Liberals were for non-intervention in foreign politics, and they carried this into their sympathies as well as into their principles. They had never shown much interest in the struggles of other nations for political liberty. They did not seem to think it was the business of Englishmen to make demonstrations about Italians, or Poles, or French republicans. The other section of the advanced Liberals were sometimes even flightily eager in their sympathies with the Liberal movements of the Continent. Mr. Gladstone was in communion with the movements of foreign Liberals, as he was with those of English free-traders and economists. He was therefore qualified to

stand between both sections of the advanced Liberals of England, and give one hand to each. During the debates on Italian questions of 1860 and 1861 he had identified himself with the cause of Italian unity and independence.

In the year 1864 Garibaldi came on a visit to England, and was received in London with an outburst of enthusiasm the like whereof had not been seen since Kossuth first passed down Cheapside, and which perhaps was not seen even then. It was curious to notice how men of opposing parties were gradually swept or sucked into this whirlpool of enthusiasm, and how aristocracy and fashion, which had always held aloof from Kossuth, soon crowded round Garibaldi. At first the leading men of nearly all parties held aloof except Mr. Gladstone. He was among the very first and most cordial in his welcome to Garibaldi. Then the Liberal leaders in general thought they had better consult for their popularity by taking Garibaldi up. A lady of high rank and great political influence frankly expressed her opinion that Garibaldi was nothing more than a respectable brigand, but she joined in doing public honor to him nevertheless, acknowledging that it would be inconvenient for her husband to keep aloof and risk his popularity. Then the Conservative leaders, too, began to think it would never do for them to hold back when the prospect of a general election was so closely overshadowing them, and they plunged into the Garibaldi welcome. Men of the class of Lord Palmerston cared nothing for Garibaldi. Men like Lord Derby disliked and despised him; but the crowd ran after him, and the leaders on both sides, after having looked on for a moment with contempt and another moment amazement, fairly pulled off their hats and ran with the crowd, shouting and hallooing like the rest. The peerage

then rushed at Garibaldi. He was beset by dukes, mobbed by countesses. He could not, by any possibility, have so divided his day as to find time for accepting half the

invitations of the noble and new friends who fought and scrambled for him. It was a perpetual trouble to his secretaries and his private friends to decide between the rival claims of a prince of the blood and a prime minister, an archbishop and a duchess, the Lord Chancellor and the leader of the Opposition. The Tories positively outdid the the Liberals in the competition. The crowd in the streets were perfectly sincere; some acclaiming Garibaldi because they had a vague knowledge that he had done brave deeds somewhere, and represented a cause; others, perhaps the majority, because they assumed that he was somehow opposed to the Pope. The leaders of society were for the most part not sincere. Three out of every four of them had always previously spoken of Garibalbi, when they spoke of him at all, as a mere buccaneer and filibuster. The whole thing ended in a quarrel between the aristocracy and the democracy, and Garibaldi was got back to his island somehow. Had he ever returned to England he would probably have found himself unembarrassed by the attentions of the Windsor uniform and the Order of the Garter. The whole episode was not one to fill the soul of an unconcerned spectator with great respect for the manner in which crowds and leaders some times act in England. Mr. Gladstone was one of the few among the the leaders who were undoubtedly sincere, and the course he took made him a great favorite with the advanced Radicals.

Mr. Gladstone had given other indications of a distinct tendency to pass over altogether from Conservatism, and even from Peelism, into the ranks of the radical reformers. On May 11th, 1864, Mr. Baines brought on a motion in the House of Commons for the reduction of the borough franchise from ten pounds rental to six pounds. During the debate that followed Mr. Gladstone made a remarkable declaration. He contended that the burden of proof rested upon those "who would exclude forty-nine fiftieths of the