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Those among them which did not own a little cynically as their purpose the substitution of England for France in the Russian friendship, have all along built on the supposed willingness of France to follow blindly her great ally, and to accept dutifully any new bedfellow. As a matter of fact, the negotiators of this beneficent understanding will have to deal with two partners at once.

However, I must hasten to add that, in the majority of cases at any rate, what would satisfy the one would also satisfy the other. The crux of the whole matter is, before all, a matter of trust. The past is heavily handicapping the present. Everybody is beginning to see it in relation to the Armenian agitation. Thus Cyprus and Egypt stand in the way of the acknowledgment by Europe of the good intentions and disinterestedness of the forward policy. It is no less true that they bar the road to a fruitful understanding with France and Russia.

This Armenian business is in some sense a symbolic exponent of the whole state of things. Here is a hideous nightmare of cruelty, vileness, and madness oppressing the whole of Europe, or rather of Christendom. Here is the old spectre of the Eastern question reappearing within a dark and bloody cloud before the conscience of the people and of the governments of the civilized world. The mere continuance of the status quo is a scandal, and holds up over the peace of our continent the gravest dangers. In the mean while the whole of the great powers remain stricken as with palsy. Diplomacy is just strong enough to paralyze philanthropy; philanthropy is just strong enough to paralyze diplomacy.

England has just seen such an outburst of right-minded indignation as in 1876, during the never to be forgotten campaign against the Bulgarian atrocMes. Twenty years more on the hoary head of Mr. Gladstone have not prevented the old man eloquent from sounding from Land's End to John o' Groats the trumpet calls of his magnanimous anger. If the right honorable gentleman is no longer the member for Midlothian, he considers himself

as the member for oppressed and martyred mankind, and he has nobly fulfilled his mandate. English opinion, without distinction of parties, has rallied around the grand leader of old days. A series of meetings, crowned by that in St. James's Hall, where bishops, peers of the realm, mayors of great cities, Anglican divines. Nonconformist ministers, professors, politicians have met on the same platform, have given loud expression to the mind of the country.

I am not here just now discussing the policy so passionately proclaimed at these meetings. Much as I admire the moral inspiration of the movement, much as I am disposed to subscribe with my whole heart to the ends it has in view, I should have to enter my strongest protest against the childish and hot-headed scheme of a separate action of England and of the recall of her Majesty's ambassador at Constantinople, as well as against the exaggerated, unjust, unfounded, and unchristian charges promiscuously hurled against the unfortunate heir of a deplorable system. For the nonce what I look for is the cause why this great agitation, instead of finding sympathy, not unmixed with criticism, among the nations of the continent, has loosened a perfect tornado of ill-will and bad words.

Undoubtedly there is among too many of the inhabitants of other countries an unshakable conviction that English feeling is hypocrisy. Nothing is more absurd than this impression. It is not necessary to be a very far-looking student of human psychology to know that the English temper is at once uncommonly practical with a kind of matter-of-fact hardness, and strangely emotional. There is in the English soul, under a superficial coat of proud reserve, of affected coldness, of pragmatical no-nonsense-ness, a rich vein of true sensibility, of humanitarian eagerness, of an even aggressive philanthropy. Only we must not forget that the human mind is not without its contradictions or its phases; that Englishmen, if they have their vigils of holy and crusading zeal, have their morrows

of practical reaction; and that historyI mean the most contemporary history -teaches us to fear a little the swingings of the humanitarian pendulum.

How could we forget the tears we or our fathers mingled twenty years ago with those of the generous champions of Bulgaria, but how could we, too, obliterate the memory of that painful awaking from the noble dreams of 1876. when a Semitic statesman knew how to confiscate for the purposes of his egoistical policy the powerful movement initiated by Mr. Gladstone, and how to intoxicate with jingoism, imperialism, and hate of Russia, the selfsame masses which had cheered to the echo, on Blackheath Common, the burning words of the great Liberal leader? We had witnessed an indisputable philanthropic crusade; but an Eastern magician had brandished his wand, and, hey presto! the whole scene had changed, the holy war had degenerated into a political rivalry, and Cyprus was the only monument which remained of this great upheaval of conscience!

Since that time we have seen Egypt occupied under a wholly disinterested pretext; we have heard the solemn promises of a short stay and a prompt evacuation given by Mr. Gladstone, ratified and reiterated by every successive government; and we see now the Nile Valley incorporated in fact with the British Empire, the reconquest of the Soudan undertaken against the advice of Lord Cromer, in order to put back to the Greek calends the execution of engagements which the principal organs of the press and a whole school of politicians begin to treat as null and void. Verily an instructive lesson about the value of self-denying ordi

nances!

Such then is the past which weighs so heavily upon the present. It is a very encouraging sign of the times to find a growing number of public men openly advocating the only means of retrieving these mistakes. A letter like that of the Right Hon. Leonard Courtney to the Times is not only a new proof of the unequalled and incomparable independence of this hero sans peur et sans reproche of true freedom of thought: it is

evidence, among many others, of the progress of sounder views on the questions jingoism has so long succeeded in confusing and entangling.

This way lies the hope of a renewal of the entente cordiale of former times. This way, too, lies the chance of an agreement with Russia. If England begins to tread the road of conciliation in Africa, the chances are for her following the same impulse in Asia. Thus would be made easy the new triple alliance which alone, as we are told by those who know best, is able to resolve by pacific means this Eastern question so dreadfully weighing on the conscience of mankind.

After all, there is no mischief in trying to fancy what would be the results of the conclusion of an understanding, without which it seems there is no motive power sufficient to put into activity the European concert and to set it towards the right ends. As for the general prospects opened by such a consummation, imagination reels before their vastness. Once more I do not presume to answer for England the questions I have brought before my readers. My aim has been all along simply to expound not what England ought to do, but what she ought to do if she wanted one of the two solutions I indicated at the beginning of this article. It is for the English people, and only for them, to make their choice. It is for them to say once for all if they share yet the feeling so eloquently expressed by Shakespeare in his "Henry the Sixth:"

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They may equally try the Triple Alliance and give as epilogue to the Homeric exchange of amiabilities with the German press the acceptance of German hegemony. One thing only is out of their power, and that is to remain as they are, without either an accession or a loss of strength, in a world which has completed the work of consolidation and where two great systems are henceforth to attract in their orbit or to repulse out of their sphere of influence the few remaining isolated bodies.

FRANCIS DE PRESSENSE.

From The Saturday Review. INDIAN FAMINE.

The official reports received by the secretary of state on the agricultural prospects of India make it evident that a prolonged period of stress and anxiety is before the viceroy and the local governments, and loss and suffering for the people. At the same time, there is no reason to believe that the scarcity which is at present severe, and which must become intensified, will develop into famine, if only the rains of the late autumn and winter are normal, and if the experience and energy of which an unlimited amount is at the disposal of the government are fully utilized. No work is more trying, difficult, and harassing than that of famine relief; and there is none in which the higher qualities of the English race, their humanity, courage, and devotion to duty, have been more conspicuously displayed than in the successful defence of the people of India, in past years, against death from famine. Nor, as far as we can judge, is there any part of the administration of India which wins more gratitude and admiration from all classes than the never-ceasing war waged by their rulers against th calamities caused by drought. Richard Temple, in his recently pub lished autobiography, graphically describes the warm acknowledgments of the Bengali leaders and people for the splendid services rendered by him and his officers during the Behár famine of 1874. In these days, when so many

Sir

captious critics of the Indian government labor to persuade the people that they are badly ruled and over-taxed, that the old days of the Moguls were those of plenty and prosperity, it is not without advantage to truth and loyalty that nature, by a widespread calamity, should give the lie to such criticisms. and point out that there never was a native government which attempted to combat famine effectively, or which would have succeeded had it tried, or which would have freely spent, as the English government is prepared to do, millions of treasure to save its people from starvation. The fatalism or, to call it by a truer definition, the deep religious feeling of Hindus and Muhammadans, accepted all natural calamities, such as famine or epidemic disease, as divine dispensations with which it was useless and perhaps impious to interfere; while the inhuman theory of government, which was only overthrown in Europe by the French Revolution, that the people existed for the prince, and not the prince for the people, allowed the poor, dumb masses to perish, without pity and without succor. In British India, the advice and the stern admonition of the supreme government have compelled the rulers of native states affected by famine to follow the procedure which has been adopted and enjoined for British territory; but it is very difficult to keep them up to the mark and induce them to open their treasuries for systematic relief. Famine works, on the English border of Native States, are always flooded by residents of foreign territory, whose rajas should have made provision for them. But it is impossible to refuse work to the starving whatever may be their domicile. Native chiefs are very unwilling to spend money on their people. The late Maharaja Scindhia so bitterly complained of his inability to undertake works of famine relief that the government offered him a loan of half a million at low interest, which he was compelled to accept. But I very much doubted whether this was spent on famine relief, when, after his death, it fell to me

to arrange his affairs, and I found that when he accepted the loan he had four or five millions sterling in the vaults of his palace. I was officially engaged in the attempt to relieve the terrible Kashmir famine of 1878–79, which destroyed a third of the inhabitants of that beautiful and unfortunate valley. This mortality was directly due to the criminal apathy of the maharaja and the greed of his officials, who used the distress as a means of extortion, and who bought up the stores of grain to sell at extravagant prices to the starying people. The Shylock methods of the patriarch Joseph during the famine in Egypt are such as always commend themselves to the Eastern official. Unless Sir Robert Egerton, then lieutenant-governor of the Punjab, had insisted on taking the transport and supply service out of the hands of the corrupt and incompetent Kashmir government, the valley would have been depopulated.

The most disquieting point in connection with the present scarcity is the vast area affected. When distress is

local and confined to a few districts or a single province relief is comparatively easy, as it becomes a question of distribution of food grains which are abundantly supplied from other parts of the country. But this year the whole of India seems more or less affected; Bengal, the North-West Provinces, the Southern districts of the Punjab, portions of Madras and Bombay and the Central Provinces. Of the Native States, those are chiefly affected which border the central desert or the North-West Provinces, where it is probable that distress will be most severe. Fortunately this is the part of India which is most adequately provided with road and railway communication, and it is clear that the great expenditure on railway extension during recent years will be amply justified by the saving of life and revenue which will be due to the facility of grain transport on the new lines; those especially which open out Málwa in Central India, a country which has never suffered from famine and at the same

time is an overflowing granary of wheat, that, in old days, rotted in the fields, or was used for fuel owing to the impossibility of transport. The present distress will still further stimulate railway construction, for every province has desirable schemes prepared and awaiting a favorable opportunity for accomplishment, and of all relief works none are so advantageous as railways. It has been found by experience that it is far better to construct large works such as railway embankments than petty ones in the several villages, such as wells, roads, and tanks; for thousands of persons of all ages and both sexes can be employed under effective supervision, so that the fair distribution of food, wages and medical relief becomes practicable. The question of the comparative urgency of railway and irrigation works in India is receiving much attention in the press, and both are admittedly of supreme importance. But the government of India has probably exercised a wise discretion in devoting its principal attention of late years to railway development, which minimizes the chief danger of famine by allowing rapid distribution of food and equalization of prices. The area now protected by canal irrigation is very large, and much more can be accomplished in provinces favorably situated such as the Punjab at a comparatively small cost. But it must not be understood that irrigation is an unmixed benefit; nor again is the idea that it has a constant effect in increasing an already too dense population supported by experience. Unless constructed with great scientific skill, canals are a curse as well as a blessing; deranging the drainage of a district, water-logging the land and bringing out on the surface a saline efflorescence fatal to cultivation, while they produce a malarial fever of such persistence and malignancy as to diminish instead of increasing the population. On the Jumna canals, in former years, the villages were decaying from this cause, the deaths were abnormally large and the birth-rate as abnormally low. Railway

construction, on the other hand, is an unmixed benefit, both as a preventive against famine and as developing and increasing the general prosperity of the country.

The new element-and a most interesting and important one-which has been introduced into Indian famine relief is the importation of American wheat, of which we learn from the official report several thousand tons have already reached Calcutta, and thirty thousand are believed to have been bought for that market. If the price of American wheat continues low-and it is difficult to say how far it may be affected by the defeat of Bryan and

Free Silver-the export from California may be expected to reach large proportions and form a very important addition to the food supply of India. Auter ican exporters may be trusted, without any action on the part of the Indian government, to realize the value of this new market for their produce. But whatever the extent of the calamity which is now impending, we may be confident that the government wil combat it with resolution and energy, and, so far as man can successfully meet and overcome the maleficent processes of nature, will emerge from the struggle with undiminished credit.

SIR LEPEL GRIFFIN.

Huguenot Bit of London.-In the best part of the western suburbs of the metropolis, not far from Kensington Palace, and close to Holland House, there is a curious relic of olden times called "Edwardes Square." Busy traffic and throngs of people pass by the entrance to this quiet and secluded place, which is known to comparatively few. A short, narrow street is all that divides it from the great highway that leads to Hammersmith and Putney. Omnibuses, carriages, and vehicles of all sorts crowd the road throughout the day, and the market carts for Covent Garden in the early morning leave but little time in the night free from the din of traffic. Going down the little street exactly opposite Holland Park, on the southern side of the Hammersmith Road, we suddenly see an open square, with a vast enclosure of garden and lawn, larger than Lincoln's Inn Fields. The houses on three sides of the quadrangle are very small. The northern boundary is formed by the backs of the loftier houses of Earl's Terrace, facing Holland Park. The origin of Edwardes Square carries us back to the date of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when the expulsion of the Protestants brought so many Frenchmen to our country and caused Huguenot settlements in all parts of the kingdom, in Scotland and Ireland as well as in England. In most

of the localities the refugees were workers who transferred their skilled labor and brought wealth to the land of their adoption. It was not so in the Kensington settlement. Here it was intended to prepare a French Arcadia for families who did not seek their livelihood by manual labor or as skilled artificers, but who only required safety and peace. So Edwardes Square, with its thrifty lodgings and healthy grounds, was built and named after the Kensington family. The Huguenot refugees and their descendants have passed away, and the houses are occupied by those who enjoy the quiet grounds and the economic homes prepared for the proscribed Huguenots. But the end is near. The lease of this Edwardes estate is nearly expired, and the site of the property will in another generation be covered with larger and more valuable buildings. The Huguenot episode will all be forgotten, though known to students of history. Even Leigh Hunt, in his delightful book "The Old Court Suburb." abounding in memorials of Kensington, did not know the origin of Edwardes Square. He repeats the legend that it was built in anticipation of the conquest of England by Napoleon, "when Frenchmen could find a cheap and rural Palais Royal in an English royal suburb!"

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