Reriew 0/ Rei'ifws, i/S/OG 



Leading Articles in the Reviews, 



MR. JOHN BURNS ON THE TRAFFIC OF LONDON. 



Wanted ; 500 Miles of Conduit Tramways. 



Mr. Juhn Burns, as President of the Local Govern- 

 nient Board, discusses the problem of London's 

 traffic in the June issue of the Fall Mall Magazine. 



LiTEEATUKE OF THE SUBJECT, 

 i'ractically everything about the subject may be 

 learnt from the Report of the Royal Commission on 

 London Traffic, for Mr. Burns says: — 



To County Councillors tbis Report is an open book; to 

 tile averiige citizen it will b© a revelation of the movement 

 of population; to tlie rat-epayer it will be as instructive 

 of liow Ills money lias been wisely spent, and signiflcaiit 

 of the bolder yet necessary 3p«nding to come. To the 

 politician it will be a warning ^o keep his hands off the 

 Traffic and Transit Commissioners already installed at 

 Spriny Gardens; and to every one whom faction does not 

 blind, this Keport reveals the enormou3 work already done 

 by the County Council in eighteen years. 



"This document, moreover, is a palpable bint to the pre- 

 sent Government to co-ordinate, unify, consolidate and vest 

 in one body the scattered duties now imperfectly dis- 

 charged by police. Borough Councils, County Council, and 

 all the electric, water, gas. and other authorities. The 

 chief lesson of this report is to remind Parliament that 

 it is elected to govern the Empire, administer the State, 

 discipline the Army and Navy, and supervise its Civil 

 Service. 



A MINISTER FOE LONDON. 



The only fault in the Report is the recommenda- 

 tion to institute an Advisory Board, for such a body 

 already exists a: Spring Gardens, and its achieve- 

 ments are seen everywhere in our street improve- 

 ments. Mr. Burns admits nevertheles's that much 

 remains to be done. He says : — 



The fact ia that London lacks administr-itive unity in 

 matters of traffic, roads and streets. If Parliament is to 

 take a hand in its administration — and this is unneces- 

 eary — there should be a Minister for London who knows its 

 moods. Its dittlcnlties. its river, its subterranean move- 

 ments. trafBc, life, and work. Its labyrinthine drainage 

 system is excellent, and admittedly the best in the world, 

 because there is no local veto, police control, or Govern- 

 mental meddling. Greatest of all absurdities is a Lord 

 Chancellor assuming the rdle of arbiter on subjects without 

 his legal purview alld beyond his civic knowledge. 



HOW THE TRAFFIC SHOULD BE GOVEENED. 



We make a beautiful wide street like Regent 

 Street and allow its approaches to be a dumping 

 ground for railway vans. What is the good of widen- 

 ing the Strand, if we allow it to be filled up with 

 actors' motors, newspaper vans, etc. Kingsway, 

 too, is fast becoming a rendezvous for Covent 

 Garden waggons, or a pest on account of gangs of 

 betting men who seem to prosper there. 



But Scotland Yard is responsible for most of the 

 difficulties that beset the wavfarer in London. The 

 traffic needs efficient regulation and s-ipervision in 

 the main arteries, but this should be accompanied 

 by rigorous removal of all loitering vehicles. 



Many large spaces available as turn-tables for 

 local traffic have been seized for street lavatories, 

 which should not be above ground-level. Wherever 

 possible, cross-roads should be over or under, and 



river bridges should have a viaduct approach, so 

 that right-angle traffic could go underneath. 



'i he omnibuses and horses have to go; in their 

 place London needs 500 miles of electric conduit 

 tramways. The motor-bus is unsuitable, e.\cept as 

 a feeder for branch-lines of Council trannvays. The 

 tramw-ay is the popular, clean, cheap and rapid 

 means of transit. 



THE EMPIRE AND THE NEW SLAVERY. 



By Mr. Frederic Harrison. 



Mr. Frederic Harrison contributes to the L'osiiivist 

 Review for June a brief but powerful article on 

 - The Servile Problem." It will not be read wiih 

 pleasure by the Colonials, who, he declares, are dis- 

 gracing and poisoning the conscience and honour 

 of England ; — 



Eecent debates in Parliament have shown, what has been 

 too evident to serious minds lor years past, that the 

 British horror of all forms of slavery, ardent in the first, 

 half of the nineteenth century, has been steadily evaporat- 

 lug in feeble compromises and hollow pretexts. The wider 

 the bounds of Empire are extended, the more numerous 

 are the barbarous or hall-civiliscd races gathered witliiii 

 It and planted around it. And the richer and more devel- 

 oped these settlements become, the keener is the demand 

 tor unlimited coloured labour and for absolute mastery 

 of the vast native populations. 



Under the increasing pressure of these vast economic 

 needs, and of these ever present dangers, the old sense of 

 human freedom and of human brotherhood by which our 

 great-grandsires abolished the slave-trade and negro sla- 

 very, has tjeen crumbling away. 



The party which for a generation has been in the ascen- 

 danti at home openly stimulated every phase of white 

 domination. On the other hand, the great spiritual force 

 which abolished the slave-trade and then slavery in Eng- 

 land was the evangelical fervour of Bible Christians; and 

 the moralists, poets and orators who had a deep sense 

 of the moral teaching of the Gospel. It was a religious 

 movement, almost entirely Evangelical, little shared by 

 Catholic feeling, which has never repudiated slavery witii 

 the same ardour. But the Gospel religion of Clarkson and 

 Wilberforoe has been dying down all through the second 

 half of the Last century. Churchmanship has taken the 

 place of the Gosiiel, and Bishops and Anglicans reject aa 

 dangerous the plain words of the Bible. An Established 

 Churcli IS the Iriend of Wealth. Power, and Ascendancy. 

 Churchmen, as such, are no friends of the black man. 

 With the decay of the Gospel as the rule of life, the man 

 of colour has lost his true and passionate protector. 



A community built on servile bases is ready to descend 

 to any crime. The man whose life has been passed there 

 cannot recover his moral sanity. 



The result is that there has been growing up a revival 

 of the slave-owning spirit— not exactly for slavery, but for 

 a servile sltiliis: not for the old slave-trade, but for a 

 bureau of Indentured Labour. Tlie temper of Legree is 

 rife in many lands under the Union Jack. The moral in- 

 dignation of Englishmen at home is nick-named unctuous 

 rectitude, or Exeter Hall sentimentality. Slave-drivine 

 mffians dare to mock at nesro-worsliip. by which they 

 mean any Christian or humane feeling. Tlie tone of these 

 colonial "outlaws is that the coloured races are, as the 

 Greeks thought of "barbarians," servile by nature, created 

 to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to white men. 

 Their origin, and all the circumstances of their lives. 

 make the .settlers sturdily self-reliant, fiercely lawless. 

 They insist on Ijeing a Law to themselves. They will re- 

 fashion not only law. but morals, manners, religion, to 

 fit their own case. Thev rapidly descend to all the vice? 

 and exclusive insolences of a slave-holding caste. They 

 must have their own way. and deal with their own 

 hibouiers witliout interference. 



