agree. It is incredible how many difficulties, which are caused by maladroit turns of phrase in written communications, by the illtemper of subordinates, or by pure accident, are brushed away when differences can be talked over round a table.

In another matter connected with the colonies I observe a very great advance. When in August 1879 the formation of an Indian and Colonial Museum was brought before the House of Commons, very few people cared anything about the matter.

It was then said: We want a place to which not only members of Parliament and other privileged persons can go and learn without cost and without trouble what our colonies and dependencies are, where they are, what sort of things they produce, what chances the inquirers or persons in whom they may be interested have of bettering their condition or pushing their fortunes in those countries, what attractive advertisements with regard to our colonies and dependencies are mere Wills of the wisp, what little known and unregarded sources of wealth there may be in those regions which have not yet received bold advertisement. What we want is a place, to the creation of which the mother country on the one hand, her colonies and dependencies on the other, shall contribute, the object of which shall be to bring them nearer each to each for the common advantage of all. It appears to me that there is hardly any knowledge which is more likely to be useful to a British citizen, whether born in the colonies, India, or at home, than a wide knowledge of the gigantic Empire to which he belongs. That knowledge and the feelings. that naturally come of it are true Imperialism, the best antidote to false Imperialism.'

Now, views, which had then very few defenders, are taking shape under the most august patronage, in the Imperial Institute.

An unpretending, but important, change has been made by the establishment, under the supervision of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, of the Emigrants' Information Office.

Meantime the Empire has gone on steadily growing. North Borneo was added just before I went away, but that is a small affair, not so big as Scotland. In 1884 we took over Bechuanaland, equal to about six Scotlands, and in the same year assumed the protectorate over the vast Niger districts, in which is the theatre of the operations of the Royal Niger Company (under the enlightened guidance of Lord Aberdare), which received in 1886 enormous powers of administration.

We have acquired, too, another outlying farm in New Guinea, not quite equal in size to three Scotlands, and only the other day the Governor of Natal took over a large slice of Zululand.

In 1881 I had a good deal to say about Cyprus, then recently transferred to the department with which I had been connected. It may have cost us, from the 1st of April, 1881, up to the end of the

last financial year, something like a quarter of a million, but the revenue creeps up, and none of its inhabitants have, I apprehend, any real reason to regret our occupation of their island, unless it be the locusts and the goats, who are having, it would seem, a much worse time than they had a few years ago, when I used to hear more about their proceedings.

A great and far-reaching change has been recently inaugurated by the opening of the line of communication across Canada, between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

It would be easy to conceive circumstances under which the possession of this alternative line of communication might be of the greatest possible importance to Great Britain.

Meantime, all Europe has been engaged in a game of 'catch who catch can,' in which almost everybody has got something in the way of colonies, even Spain, who has been moderate enough to content herself with the not very promising acquisition of the Western Sahara.

Quite the strangest political development which has taken place in the last six years is the formal constitution of the Congo Free State, under the sovereignty of the King of the Belgians, but not in any way connected with Belgium or its Government. This pleasant little Royal peculium, which could not well have a more kindly or intelligent ruler, is just about the size of our possessions in India, including our recent annexation of Upper Burmah, but the population is comparatively small, say about that of Italy.

In India little has occurred during the last six years which requires notice in a brief summary like this. Men have come and gone, policies have been introduced and modified; but the one great fact to be kept in mind is this: that, in spite of the embarrassing proceedings of the rupee, the last six years, by comparison with those which preceded them, have been years of splendid prosperity. In so huge a country there will be always something to create trouble and anxiety; but the last six years have seen nothing faintly comparable to the hideous misfortunes which saddened their immediate predecessors the Afghan war, with its expenditure (well on to twenty millions), and the South Indian famine, which, in spite of efforts such as no government that has existed, since the earth turned on its axis, ever made, cost the peninsula something like the population of London.

We have added during this time somewhat to our national responsibilities. I am one of those who deprecated for years the annexation of Upper Burmah, but acquiesced in it, at last, as a sad necessity, and it looks now as if, in spite of the troubles from rebels and brigandage, it were going to turn out, on the whole, a better financial bargain than was expected.

It is strange to me how people in this country ever imagined

that Burmah would settle down without giving us a good deal of trouble. Lower Burmah did not; why should Upper Burmah have done so? If the violent storm which broke over Madras, just before Sir Harry Prendergast and his troops embarked, had lasted twentyfour hours longer, it would have cost us many more lives to get to Mandalay, for the boom on the Irrawaddy, just above our frontier, would have been completed, and behind it the Italian engineers in the service of Theebaw would have quietly finished all the very strong works which they had begun to construct, right up to the capital.

Sir Harry Prendergast said to me, the night before he started, Our real difficulties will begin when we have got to Mandalay,' and he turned out to be a true prophet.

On the whole, although we have lost many valuable lives, and spent much money, I think we have thus far got off not badly, and that Lord Dufferin may be congratulated upon a series of measures in which, ably seconded by Sir Harry Prendergast, the lamented Sir Herbert Macpherson, and Sir Frederick Roberts, he has shown himself at once prompt, resolute, conciliatory, and fortunate, as equal to the occasion sudden, and the practice dangerous,' as to all other combinations of circumstances, with which he has had to deal, in his long and brilliant career.

The passing of the small island of Socotra from the status of a protected to that of a dependent territory, and the extension of our protectorate over the Somali coast, are recent results of our position in the Indian seas which can hardly excite either satisfaction or regret.

If, passing from the great concerns of the nation, I inquire in what spirit these great concerns are likely to be treated, I find it very difficult to frame an answer. If anyone were to ask me, 'Are the Anglo-Indians of 1887 materially changed from those of 1857; would they, if anything like a new mutiny were to break out, meet it as their predecessors did?' I would reply, They have acquired a good many fresh merits, and some fresh defects, but substantially they are the same. You may count on them for the old high-hearted resolution in trouble, and, if you do not hamper them by the telegraph, for the same wise severity in stamping out rebellion.'

But how is it in England? I hear some of the ablest people 'inside politics' say, 'Yes, we fully admit all you urge. The paralysis of the House of Commons is frightful, and threatens the very existence of representative government in this country. The Queen's authority has practically ceased to exist in various parts of Ireland, and there are ominous symptoms in some portion of Great Britain that any accident may let loose anarchic forces, with which the ordinary law cannot cope. We know all that; we know that strong measures are necessary if we would not drift on to frightful calamities, but we know also that the people won't stand strong measures. Tell a

gathering of local wire-pullers that strong measures are necessary, and see what they will say!'

Now, is this true, or is it not? If it be true, surely the duty of all men who have attained a position which enables their opinion to count for anything in the country, and who believe that strong measures are necessary, is to say so. It may cost them their political careers, if the nerveless spirit, which has dictated some recent utterances, has really gone as wide as it has gone deep in certain sections of our society; but if there ever were a cause in which it was worth while for honest men to sacrifice their political careers, surely this is that cause.

And in doing so, not one of the persons, of whom I am thinking, would abjure a single opinion which he held in 1881. The old Liberal party, in which every one of them grew up, the offspring of the good traditions of Whiggism, enlightened by the wise teaching of Bentham and his followers on the one hand, as of Cobden and his followers on the other, had absolutely nothing in common with the neo-Radicalism, or whatever else it is to be called, which is lineally descended from the teaching of Rousseau.

This neo-Radicalism is not a development of Liberal principles; it is as far removed from them as are the views of the party which was finally overthrown in 1832. The Liberal party existed to incorporate in our Statute Book and in the management of our national affairs, without haste, yet without rest, the teachings of those whom it accepted as its theoretic guides; but neither Rousseau nor any of his children, whether of the gushing or blood-drinking order, were ever amongst these.

When we have incorporated in our national life all the best things they had to teach, then by all means let us go further afield and see if there is anything in the neo-Radicalism which we can assimilate. 'Seu vetus est verum diligo sive novum.'

Till, however, that time arrives, let us keep our well-matured views before the country, and try to get them carried into effect. There never yet was a democracy which took, and there never will be a democracy which will take the right road, unless it is led by rightminded, highly-instructed leaders; and he is a traitor to the democracy, as well as to his own conscience, who, believing that anarchy is ruining the House of Commons, ruining Ireland, threatening Great Britain, and distracting her attention not only from her internal affairs but from those defensive measures which are required to make this Empire and all parts thereof reasonably secure from attack, does not say so with as much energy as he can command.

MOUNTSTUART E. GRANT DUFF.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND

BIBLICAL CRITICISM.

un

Two years have now elapsed since I published' a paper in this Review on the relations which exist between modern Catholicism and scientific freedom. My object then was to show that Roman Catholics are as free as other people to hold the doctrine of evolution generally, and the natural evolution of the human body in particular; and I founded my argument upon the facts which concern the erroneous and justifiable condemnation at Rome of that illustrious confessor of science, the aged and unfortunate Galileo. Knowing well how many estimable persons were at that time in a state of great anxiety and distress respecting the question to which I then addressed myself, I purposely (to set their minds at rest as far as I possibly could) so stated my case as practically to challenge censure should the evolutionary doctrine be thought to require it. There were not wanting persons who fully anticipated that I should myself incur severe blame, and I have reason to know that others earnestly solicited my condemnation. That the latter were deemed, by those they addressed, to be more zealous than wise, is what events have so far shown; for, up to the present time, I have not received even a private hint of disapprobation from any ecclesiastical authority. On the other hand, I have been gratified by the receipt of warm thanks from members of the clergy, most varied as to rank and position, and I have also received thanks from a much smaller number of the laity. Early in the present year a most esteemed Superior of one of the mediæval religious Orders wrote to me as follows :

Since your Nineteenth Century article I have very frequently had occasion to explain your views both in England and elsewhere. There is not a shadow of a shade of unorthodoxy about them. That also is the opinion of Cardinal with whom I had a conversation thereanent. Your article was most telling in the right direction, even for theological science. What a pity it is to find so much narrowness amongst those whose duty it is to teach the noblest science of all! ... Deep and far-seeing theological thinkers are rare, but there are some to be found, though they write comparatively little. They have, I am happy to say, more

p. 30.

Modern Catholics and Scientific Freedom,' Nineteenth Century for July 1885,