excuse some forgetfulness of the events themselves but cannot justify a failure to recognise the blessings that have flowed from them. The Roman conquest of Britain, being never more than a military occupation, has left few traces on the national character, but East Anglia can still boast stalwart descendants of Danish ancestors, while the very tongue we speak owes its beauty and its expressiveness in the main to our Saxon progenitors. On the Norman conquest it is needless to dwell. Poets in rapturous strains have sung of Norman blood. The most eloquent writer of the day whom none can accuse of want of patriotism-Mr. Kipling-in the latest of his works tells how Norman and Saxon laboured in harmony for the common weal. Our good friends across the water recognise with pride the beneficent influence on our national character of the great movement that originated in their own land. 'It is probable,' says a too partial and, I fear, not too discerning an admirer writing in the Gaulois so lately as June last, 'that the English owe their thoughtfulness, their social discipline, the justice of their views, and the surety of their judgment to the Norman Conquest.' Yet notwithstanding these glorious results of the fusion of races, Englishmen are still to be found who would deprecate a repetition of the procedure whereby such results were effected. To my mind it is an affair of words. We are dominated by words. Let us no longer, then, speak of 'invasion,' that word of fear to the ignorant and the prejudiced, but substituting therefor 'visitation in force' allay the alarms of the foolish without sacrificing the claims of truth. How a German visitation in force is to be accomplished is a detail on which I do not feel called on to offer advice. Fortunately, we are not without an instructor. An ingenious writer, under the guise of an historian of the future, has compiled what he himself implies may be regarded as a complete guide to the Conquest of England. Armed with this admirable vade mecum no foreign commander need go astray or miss the most effective strategical positions to be found in our island home. It is to be hoped that this philanthropist will crown his labours by personally conducting to victory the regenerators of the race.

I am free to admit that a visitation such as I have suggested rather than described may be attended by some discomfort. One cannot make omelets without breaking eggs. It is possible that some misguided individuals, masquerading as patriots, not content with the show of resistance which is all that our forces as at present organised could be expected to offer, might proceed to acts of violence that would lead to a breach of the peace. It is pretty certain, too, that the owners of many palaces but no homes would be dispossessed of some if not all of them. This result, however, would be but a speedier realisation of the aims of our own socialists, while the sufferers would always have their villas in the Riviera to retire to. Probably also the inmates of the Poplar Workhouse might miss some of their accustomed luxuries, but on the whole, so far as their material interests are concerned, the

masses would be the chief gainers by the visitation. The sack of London and other great cities would give to the twelve millions who, on the authority of the Prime Minister, are on the verge of starvation that 'equality of opportunity' which is now a recognised article of the Radical Creed, and bring about in a simple but effective manner the redistribution of wealth which at present is limited to the erection of free libraries. Not that I would be thought to disparage these institutions. They will make excellent barracks for the German garrison. But if the masses would reap the most material benefit from the fusion of races let it not be supposed that the rest of the community would not have reason to heartily appreciate the results of this great Teutonic Combine. The Labour leaders who love to tyrannise over their fellows would find in some German proconsul a despot after their own heart. The professors of the higher patriotism, true to their motto: 'My country, always in the wrong,' would have leisure to study the intricacies of the laws of lèse majesté, whilst even the few to whom the new order of things might at first prove distasteful would be soothed and cheered by the reflection that five hundred years hence their descendants would be as proud of having 'come over with the Germans' as we should be now of Norman ancestry.

C. W. RADCLIFFE COOKE.

CONSERVATIVE OPPORTUNISTS AND

IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY

MANY Unionists naturally prefer at present to look forward to the future, which may have good fortune in store for them, rather than backwards into the immediate past, which is black with a great party disaster. This attitude is very human when adopted by the leaders who are directly responsible for that disaster. And yet it is precisely at times such as these that a healthy mind seeks courage in the past, searching in the party records for the causes of defeat and regaining hope and vigour by studying the means through which earlier disasters were repaired. It is necessary to go back more than twenty years to find history repeating itself, and then the outlook of the Conservative party was not one whit less gloomy than is that of the Unionist party to-day. One man more than any other restored the fallen fortunes of Conservatism. His success was due no more to his striking personality and vigorous methods than to the new faith which he preached. While, therefore, we may have to wait many a dreary day for the individual who can repeat Lord Randolph Churchill's triumphs in Opposition, we may well ask ourselves whether a departure from his faith is not the origin of the evils which have befallen us.

The fact that the Empire is again threatened with the revival, under a new disguise, of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy is in itself sufficient to recall to the minds of Conservatives the last occasion on which this policy was defeated, and to turn their thoughts to the man who not only led the assault on the Home Rule ranks, but, by preaching Tory democracy, prepared Conservatism for that coalition of apparently conflicting principles on which the Unionist party was founded.

Murmurs are, indeed, heard from the party rank and file, complaining that it was because the Conservative leaders had lost sight of the essential principles of Tory democracy that they so utterly failed to command the confidence of the people at the recent elections. But deeper and more widespread is the consciousness that the abandonment of these principles accounts for the lack of cohesion throughout the party itself, far more than the immediate issues raised by the Fiscal question. The more thoughtful Unionists-above all, those men who have given their adherence to the Unionist party for the reason

that their ideals cannot be reconciled with the official programme of Liberalism—are awaiting anxiously for some definite pronouncement from the Conservative leaders as to their relation to those democratic principles which can alone give permanency to the party, and without a frank acknowledgment of which the party cannot reasonably hope again to be returned to power.

Their anxiety is not allayed, it is rather increased, by the energy in decrying Tory democracy which its natural enemies are at this moment displaying. They regard it as significant that, with the possible exception of a letter from Sir John Gorst (the Times, the 6th of February, 1907), the perpetuation of Lord Randolph's memory should have been left, during the last eventful eighteen months, to two supporters of the party which still bears the scars of the wounds he inflicted, and to one of the few surviving representatives of that older type of Conservatism which he had to keep at bay with his left hand while he was fighting Liberalism with his right. Their anxiety and their suspicions certainly do not appear groundless if the motives, complicated, no doubt, by a genuine admiration for the subject of their memoirs, of the three most recent writers on Lord Randolph and Tory democracy are examined from the Unionist point of view.

It is generally conceded that Mr. Winston Churchill has performed brilliantly the task entrusted to him by his father's literary executors. But Mr. Churchill in his own career has chosen to disregard the conventions of party morality; and it comes as no surprise to those who have watched his advancement that he has endeavoured throughout his story to persuade his readers that, if Lord Randolph had been guided by the logic of his convictions, he would have deserted the Conservative fold and embraced Liberalism. That, at any rate, is the impression which his book leaves on their minds. Lord Randolph's public life is, however, the property of his party, and it is strange that none of his friends, who are still among the foremost of Unionist leaders, should have bestirred themselves to refute this teaching at least as eagerly as Lord Rosebery has sprung forward to support it and drive it home. A party which has lost the confidence of a large number of its supporters is doing something very like courting extinction when it allows a deserter from its ranks to preach unchallenged such dangerous doctrines to the many malcontents who still owe it allegiance. Its silence certainly lends colour to the suspicion that the Conservative leaders have lost sight of the Tory working man, and of many other progressive elements among the people, to whom they owe their long continuance in office; and that it is their intention to use the small Unionist remnant in Parliament as the nucleus of a party reconstructed on narrow and undemocratic lines.

Lord Rosebery, in an essay full of that literary charm associated with all his writings, endorses Mr. Churchill's view in the capacity of a personal friend of Lord Randolph, but of one 'who was always

his political opponent.' Tory democracy, in Lord Rosebery's opinion, was and apparently still is an imposture, an honest and unconscious imposture, no doubt, but none the less an imposture.' He cannot classify it, and he does not pretend to understand it, but he damns it as the wolf of Radicalism in the sheepskin of Toryism.' To that conclusion all his argument is directed; but at times his criticism puzzles the simple-minded reader. He has an incomparable sense of humour, which occasionally seems to carry him into the borderland of the disingenuous; as, for instance, when quoting the opening sentences of the well-known Mafeking letter: 'So Arthur Balfour is really leader, and Tory democracy, the genuine article, is at an end,' he observes: 'It is not easy to trace the subtle connection between the leadership of Mr. Balfour and the disappearance of the genuine article.'

Lord Hugh Cecil, writing in an antistrophic strain in the Dublin Review, endeavours to direct Lord Rosebery's criticisms of Tory democracy into a practical and constructive channel. He makes as direct an appeal as political exigencies permit to Lord Rosebery to come out of his retirement and lead those central-minded people' who find their views ill-expressed on either side Parliament.' The incongruity of this chorus is so obvious that there is little danger of its two members arriving simultaneously at the 'central' altar, still less of their conspiring to play leading parts on the political stage. For, whatever may have been Lord Rosebery's political failings, he has never been accused of opportunism. To him the Tory creed, so far as it implies maintenance of historical continuity and calculated, practical, well-meditated reform without unnecessary risk to precious institutions, is a respectable and healthy faith.' Lord Hugh Cecil, on the other hand, finds salvation in the discovery of 'the large element of opportunism in Conservative leadership.' His faith is thus defined: Apart from the extensive region of legislation which is not of a controversial party character, and in which either party may consistently find room for its activities, there arise from time to time demands for changes in the law which, while Conservatives do not approve them absolutely on their merits, are yet assented to and even promoted by Conservatives as being relatively acceptable, as being expedient in order to escape from some impending disaster or some worse legislative remedy.' If Lord Hugh Cecil had added that the Conservatives who are affected by this kind of opportunism are strongly moved by the very human desire of holding their seats at an election, and if he had argued that many of them submitted to Lord Randolph's Tory democracy because they were quick to perceive that he was winning the electorate to his side, nobody could have contradicted him. But if he means to imply that Tory democracy'the genuine article '-was the same thing as Conservative opportunism, then either he does not understand the British people, or it