358 



The Review of Reviews. 



Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In the House of 

 Commons the English have 465 seats out of 670, 

 the Irish have only 10-5, the Scotch 72, and the 

 Welsh 30. 



But all that availcth nothing in the testing daj- of 

 crisis. John Hull may be richer, more numerous, 

 better represented ; somehow or other he has lost the 

 power to be master in his own house. While he 

 arrogantly prides himself upon holding one-fourth of 

 the world in fee, and acting as terrestrial providence 

 to one sixth of the human race, he is impotent at home. 

 Even on the question of Woman's Suffrage the Con- 

 ciliation Bill is rejected by Irish \otes. But for Mr. 

 Redmond and his myrmidons the Bill would have 

 been carried by twenty-six. 



We who are now the under-dog may dislike these 

 things, or those of our readers who belong to the 

 triumphant Cells may exult in them, but the fact is 

 undisputed. Left to ourselves, we English would 

 have settled our coal dispute without allowing the 

 crisis to develop into a strike and the strike into a 

 civil war. We were not left to ourselves. Our 

 destinies were taken out of our hands. The sceptre 

 has departed from our Israel, and we were perforce 

 compelled to dance at the bidding of our new masters 

 — a grim dance, a dance of Hunger and of Want, of 

 Cold, and sometimes of Death. We are beginning to 

 realise at last what it is to be a subject race. 



It was said that the coal strike proved that a million 

 men could hold up a nation of forty-five millions. 

 But that is to understate the case. The strike was 

 due. not to the action of a million men. but to the 

 action of a minority of the million, numbering all told 

 less than 120,000 in .Scotland and Wales. Manv of 

 these were against the strike, but the local voting 

 majority carried the day. So we witness in shame 

 and humiliation the prostration of John Bull, not 

 before a million men, but before less than go,ooo 

 Celts. 



'J"he pace of a troop is set b}' the [)acc of the slowest 

 horse. But in the great national strike the pace is 

 set by the Celtic horse that takes the bit between 

 his teeth, and compels his English yoke-fellow to 

 follow his mad career. 



This is the last straw. Gradual, stealth)-, but 

 irresistible, the conquest of England is now complete. 

 To the Scotchman, of course, this is in the natural 

 order of things. What more obviously in accordance 

 with the Divine law, whether interpreted by Moses or 

 by Darwin, than that of the survival of the fittest ? 

 Was it not spoken by the ancient patriarch to the Scot 

 of his day : " Let people serve thee and nations bow 

 down to thee ; be lord over thy brethren, and let thy 

 mother's sons bow down to thee " ? With what grace 

 can John Bull appeal against the iron law which he 

 has enforced and still enforces over so many hundreds 

 of millions, that the weaker shall serve the stronger, 

 and that the superior race shall rule the inferior? 

 We used that plea to the Hottentots, and now find 

 that we, in our turn, are Hottentots to the Celt. It is 



unpleasant, but the measure we meted out to others 

 js now being meted out to our; elves, heaped up, pressed 

 clown, and running over. 



We have imagined that we were a self-governed 

 nation. The truth is that we are a Scotch-governed 

 nation. " England, a populous, wealthy and fertile 

 land, governed by a handful of Scots and Welsh," 

 will be an entry in some future encyclopaedia. With 

 the exception of the years of the Salisbury Cabinets, 

 England has never been governed by Englishmen. 

 Mr. Gladstone was of Scotch descent, and the member 

 for a Scotch constituency. Disraeli was a Jew, Sir 

 Henry Campbell-Bannerman was a Scot. Lord Rose- 

 bery was a Scot. Mr. Balfour was a Scot. Mr. 

 Asquith, although of English descent, sits in the 

 Commons as the representative of the kingdom of Fife. 

 The next Liberal Prime Minister will either be a Welsh- 

 man or a North Country Englishman whose con- 

 stituency marches with the Scottish border, and is 

 much more Scotch than English in race, religion, 

 speech and character. When the resignation of one 

 Scot — Mr. Balfour — from the leadership of the Oppo- 

 sition created a vacancy, the Unionist squires and 

 demagogues alike, elected for the most part bv English 

 constituencies, agreed with touching unanimity that 

 only a Scot could be trusted to lead them. Mr. 

 Bonar Law was, as the SaUirday Review lamented, 

 neither a scion of the nobility, a country gentleman, 

 a scholar of Eton or Harrow, a graduate of Oxford or 

 Cambridge ; but all these drawbacks were as dust in 

 the balance compared with the supreme qualification 

 of being a Scotchman. 



\\'hen we turn to the men who rule over us in the 

 leading departments of State, we find Scotchmen 

 everywhere to the fore. The Lord Chancellor, the 

 keeper of the King's conscience, is a Scot. The 

 Secretary of State for War is a Scot. Lord Morley, 

 when he became .'secretary of State for India, was 

 member for the Montrose Burghs. Lord Pentland, 

 formerly Secretary of State for .Scotland and now i 

 Governor of j\ladras, is a Scot. 'J"he Chief Whip of 

 the party is a Scot. The Home Secretary is a Scot 

 who sits for a Welsh constituency. . The First Lord of 

 the Admiralty, although English by birth, sits in the 

 House by the election of Dundee. John Burns was 

 born in London, but the President of the Local Govern- 

 ment Board, as his name implies, is of Scotch descent. 

 Mr. McKinnon Wood is a Scot, for the appointment 

 of an Englishman to his post would not be tolerated 

 north of the 'I'weed. In Sir Henry Campbell-I^anner 

 man's Cabinet Mr. ]5rycc, Lord Elgin, and Lord 

 'J'weedmouth were all Scots, 



In Ireland the King is represented by a Scotch 

 Viceroy ; and in India, until the other day, the 

 Emperor was represented by a Scotchman — Lord 

 Minto, 



Everywhere the chief posts of power and of cmolu-j 

 ment arc monopolised by Scotchmen. We English pa v 

 the taxes ; the Scotchmen spend them. We hav( 

 become the Gibeonitcs of the Cnited Kingdom, th( 



