224 



The Review of Reviews, 



T. Stead. 



March SO, lii06. 



London, February ist, 1906. By W 



January, 1906, has been a famous 

 The Political month in the annals of human pro- 

 Revolutioi. gress. In one brief fortnight the 

 four nations of the United King- 

 dbm have, with unanimous voice, pronounced capital 

 sentence upon a great political party and installed 

 in office by an unprecedented majority the most 

 Radical Administration ever formed in Great Bri- 

 tain. The last Victoa'ian Parliament met December 

 3rd, 1900. The first Edwardian Parliament meets 

 on February 19th, 1906. The extent of the politi- 

 cal revolution which has just been accomplished 

 before our eyes may be seen from a comparison of 



the following figures : 



TJnionists ... 

 Liberals ... . 

 Nationalists 

 Speaker ... . 



1900. 



402 



185 



82 



1 



670 



1906. 



157 



429 



83 



1 



670 



Liberals. Unionists. 



-245 

 + 244 

 1 



Among the Liberals in 1906 are included 54 Labour 

 men, of whom 33 are pledged to independent action. 

 But as upon almost all the issues that divide the 

 parties the Independent Labour men are more 

 I,iberal than the Liberals, just as on all Irish ques- 

 tions the Nationalists are greater Home Rulers than 

 the Liberals, the significance of the political revolu- 

 tic)n is intensified rather than diminished by the pre- 

 sence of the Lalioiir men in the new Parliament. 



Tht The Election was a comprehensive 



SignifJcaace malediction ju-nnounced by the 

 •f Democracy of the Four Nations 



the Overturn, upon the party which by refusing 

 arbitration precipitated an unnecessary war, and then 

 abused the temporary electoral advantage due to 

 the war fever to set back the clock and revO'lutionise 

 the foundations of our national existence. It was 

 a rebuke, unprecedented in its severity, of the party 

 which had been guilty of usurpation masked by the 

 forms of the Constitution, and a peremptory re- 

 minder that those who govern Englishmen should 

 play the game and act " straight." The tactics of 

 the Artful Dodger, the trickery of the thimble- 

 rigger, and the cleverness of the professors of the 

 three-card trick have been so angrily resented by 

 John Bull, that, it is to be hoped, we have witnessed 

 their final disappearance from the parliamentary 

 arena. Honesty is the best policy after all, and the 

 statesmen who aspire to rule the Empire will have 

 to adopt some other ideal than that of partners at 

 a game of whist playing with marked cards. John 

 Bull does not like it. He does not mean to have it, 

 and he has put his foot down with such emphasis as 

 to squelch the late Cabinet almost out of existence. 

 Never has political indignation been expressed with 

 such emphatic reference to the individuals personally 

 responsible. Fot some davs it seemed as if no mem- 



Mr. T. G. Hofridge, K C, Manchester, E , 

 Who had the honour of defeating Mr. Balfour. 



ber of the late Cabinet was to be permitted to return 

 to Parliament. Mr. Balfour fell on the first day. 

 After him :Mr. Gerald Balfour, Mr. Long, Mr. Brod- 

 rick, Mr. Ailwyn Fellowes, and Mr. Lyttelton fol- 

 lowed in the dismal procession to the bottom of the 

 poll. Mr. Arnold-Forster only polled a minority 

 of votes at Croydon, aithought he retained his seat. 

 ShoTt of setting up a_ guillotine in Parliament 

 Square, and shearing off the heads of the members 

 of the late ^linistry, it was impossible to express in 

 more emphatic fashion the national verdict upon a 

 political party and its chiefs. 



The chief offender was spared alive, 



The Funeral together with his son Austen and 



of Protection, his six satellites, in order that they 



might be compelled to endure the 

 additional humiliation of assisting at the obsequies 

 of their cause. In somewhat similar fashion Roman 

 generals spared the lives of their most distinguished 

 captives, reserving them to enhance the glories of 

 their triumph. There have always been Protection- 

 ists left in England. The relics of the Amorites lin- 

 ger long in the land after Canaan has passed into 

 the effective occupation of the Chosen People. But i 

 the recent revival of Protection, from its "dead and 

 damned " condition was solelv one man's work. All 

 the force that there was of the agitation in favour 

 of Tariff Reform was generated under the hat of 

 Jo.seph Chamberlain. He was the Tariff Reform 

 movement. If at any time he had disappeared the 

 whole agitation would have collapsed like a house of 

 cards. Nothing could illustrate this more effectively 

 than the evidence which the General Election afford- 



