276 



The Review of Reviews. 



September 1, 1906. 



HOW TO DISH THE RADICALS. 



A Conservative Appeal to the Great 

 Landlords. 



" Sweet are the uses of adversity." The defeat of 

 the late Government seems to be inducing a readiness 

 among some of its followers to adopt a more pro- 

 gressive attitude towards certain social reforms. 

 Here, for example, in the Nineteenth Century, INIr. 

 T. E. Kebbel, writing on Conservative organisation 

 and the agricultural labourers, advocates a policy 

 which it is known has not been acceptable to most of 

 the great landowners. He first of all advises party 

 managers to " fix their attention on the political centre 

 ■'of all rural proselytism, " which is not in the lecture 

 room or reading room, but in the public-house. The 

 village Solon with his circle of admirers must, he 

 urges, be caught and employed. 



THE way to capture HODGE. 



But how to capture the agricultural labourer ? By 

 becoming the champion of the agricultural interest 

 — and making liberal grants of small holdings ! He 

 says : — 



If Conservative reorgajiisation could proceed hand in 

 hand with a wise agrarian reform, a great work might be 

 accomplished. It the English aristocracy knew the things 

 belonging to their peace, they would take up this question 

 and make it their own while there is yet time. The 

 Socialist party have their eye upon the land. and. unlees 

 forestalled by" the timely intervention of the present pro- 

 prietors, may kindle an agitation which it will be very 

 difficult to allay. The example of Eussia is not lost upon 

 them, and unless our great territorial magnates can be be- 

 forehand with them, and, in boating phrase, " take their 

 water," they may expect trouble. 



TO CIRCUMVENT THE SOCIALIST. 



To circumvent the Socialists, he argues, let a 

 strong " Countrv Party " be formed, and regain the 

 counties : — 



The way to regain the counties is to satisfy the villagers. 

 And for this purpose a large and well-organised system of 

 peasant-farming should be inaugurated by the great land- 

 owners- It must not be the work only of a few individuals; 

 there must be a combination of the whole body throughout 

 the kingdom- Every landowner with estates of a certain 

 magnitude should be able to set aside so many acres to be 

 let out in small holdings- If he were a pecuniary loser by 

 the process he would be a gainer of what is far more 

 valuable in the security which he would purchase for the 

 rest of his property- Such a system as this, inaugurated 

 and kept on foot by the whole landed aristocracy, would 

 bind the peasantry to their natural leaders, checkmate the 

 agrarian agitator, and insure to the agricultural and landed 

 interest sufficient weight in the House of Commons. 



CO-OPERATIVE I..\NDOW]>rERS- 



To this end the writer advocates the formation of 

 a great Landowners' Association, in which the richer 

 ones must pay for the poorer, and all together meet 

 the cost of putting up new farm buildings and home- 

 steads. The demand for small holdings among the 

 peasa^ntry is. he savs, on the increase ; and he hopes 

 that the landowning class will keep the great 

 agrarian reform in their own hands, " notwithstand- 

 ing that the Radical Party claims it as their special 

 watchword." And " the thorough and hearty recon- 

 ciliation of these ancient friends, the peasantry and 

 the gentry, would mean the desiccation of other 

 •social sores." 



THE EDUCATION BILL. 



Archdeacon Wilson, writing temperately from the 

 standpoint of a Liberal Churchman in the Indepen- 

 dent Reviac. deplores the opportunities lost by the 

 Education Bill. He reminds us that voluntary 

 schools, though often behindhand in certain ways 

 through want of funds, achieved some of the best 

 results in education, and laments that so few reflect 

 that till the year 1870 all elementary education 

 was due to the initiative of religious people, wholly 

 at their cost till comparatively recently, and under 

 their control. 



SECUIiARISM AND CRIME. 



He contends that a qualification of knowledge of 

 the Bible, and an expressed willingness to teach, 

 have none of the evils of a test of belief. Much of 

 his argument is based on his statement that 



in those nations in which practically nearly the whole of 

 education has been detached from the religious bodies long 

 enough to see the eHect on the second, third, and fourth 

 generations, the Increase of crime, and specially of juvenile 

 crime, h.aa been bteady and even accelerating, while in Eng- 

 land alone it has been steadily diminishing. 



In support of this statement, he cites the editor of 

 the French criminal statistics. Any superintendent 

 of police knows that juvenile, and, after a time, 

 adult crime come from " the residual areas " — the 

 population not attached to any religious body ; and 

 the w-riter's argximent is that the growth of unde- 

 nominational sch.X)ls means the growth of this area, 

 and therefore thf growth of crime. His suggestion 

 is that : — 



The well-tested Germ.an principle of denominational 

 schools, that is, the provision of separate schools for Roman 

 Catholics. Church of England, and undenomination.-vl, should 

 be adopted provisionally in all towns large enough to pro- 

 vide children for each school: and in determining the num- 

 ber of children necessary for a separate school, it should be 

 borne in mind that small schools are extraordinarily edu- 

 cating, and that many teachers are specially suited to such 

 small schools, mth the opportunities they oiler for intimate 

 relations with children. 



• THE PErVTLEQB OF CONFISCATION." 



In the Nineteenth Certtitry Mr. Herbert Paul dis- 

 cusses the prospects of the Bill, and puts rather pun- 

 gentlv the Liberal view of the hollowness of the 

 Church crv, " We want Religion, not Rent." He 



The cry of confiscation has heraided one of the most amus- 

 ing parliamentary dramas that the oldest inhabitant of St. 

 Stephens can remember. After the Government and the 

 Liberal party had been denounced for months as sacri- 

 legious robbers of denominational schools, it suddenly 

 dawned upon the minds of the intelligent gentlemen who 

 liave constituted themselves in the House of Commons the 

 spokesmen of a Church far better represented on the other 

 side that the local authority might refuse to confiscate 

 some Voluntarv school more plentifully provided with dog- 

 m.as than with drains. There was a panic, almost a hub- 

 bub A tyrannical llinistry, bent upon oppressing and in- 

 sultin" a Church to which most of its members belong, was 

 aboutto withhold the privilege of confiscation from Church 

 schools in defiance of right and justice- The essential ab- 

 surdity of the situation is not lessened by the fact that no 

 local body which consisted of sane men would throw away 

 the money of the ratepayers on building new schools when 

 there were old schools fit for the purpose. 



