444 



The Review of Reviews. 



POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 



SIR EDWARD COOK ON THE 

 POLITICAL OUTLOOK. 



In the Contemporary Review Sir Edward 

 Cook writes on the pohtical prospect, which he 

 declares to be unprecedented. The fact that the 

 Mouse of Commons has four first-class Bills 

 before it, which at first sight seems extra- 

 ordinary, is, he points out, due to the Parlia- 

 ment Act and the large powers of obstruction 

 left to an unreformed House of Lords. The 

 Government can only make sure of these 

 measures by carrying them now, and by 

 securing unswerving support for each of their 

 Bills and for themselves. 



BY-ELECTIONS. 



The by-elections show, in his judgment, that 

 " clearly the Opposition is on the upgrade, and 

 the Ministerialists are on the downgrade." A 

 majority of votes may have been cast in the 

 three-cornered elections for the Government's 

 chief items of policy, but the three-cornered 

 fights show that there, at any rate, centrifugal 

 forces are stronger than centripetal. In the 

 House of Commons there is a " tired feeling," 

 but on important divisions the Government has 

 maintained great majorities. The lack of con- 

 centration on one measure may tell against the 

 Government, but, on the other hand, it deprives 

 the Opposition of some critical force. 



FEELING IN THE COUNTRY. 



Home Rule, Welsh Disestablishment, and 

 franchise reform excite neither the old en- 

 thusiasm nor the old animosities. They are 

 taken almost for granted. On the Insurance 

 Act Sir Edward thinks that time is on the side 

 of the Government, when the benefits come 

 home, and because of the power of the accom- 

 plished fact. Sir Edward suggests that Mr. 

 Churchill's utterances may mean that the Oppo- 

 sition might consent to Home Rule if N.-E. 

 Ulster were allowed to remain united to Great 

 F?ritain or granted a separate national consti- 

 tution. Sir Edward thinks that settlement by 

 consent is conceivable but improbable. He 

 concludes by insisting that the present situa- 

 tion requires great cohesion and solidarity 

 among all those forces w^hich claim to be pro- 

 gressive. 



THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE OPrOSITION. 



While not blinking the difficulties and dangers 

 on the Liberal side, he points out that the diffi- 

 culties on the side of the Opposition are great 

 also. The party of order is found advocating 

 red ruin and the breaking up of laws. It is 

 embarrassed by the Tariff Reform which in- 



volves food taxes. It is still in search of a 

 policy, while the Government hold their field : — 

 Klightiness and an impraclicable temper may destroy 

 the Liberal Government. The exercise of common- 

 sense and concentration upon practical purposes will 

 keep it in being until its commission is exhausted. 



POVERTY-STRICKEN ULSTER! 



Mr. T. Galloway Rigg is out to break heads 

 in the Westminster Review, and is moved to 

 scorn at the suggestion that Ulster is the home 

 of prosperity : — ■ 



Wlien in press and on platform all over the country, 

 the assertion is vehemently repeated that Ulster is the 

 only prosperous portion of Ireland; that it is the only 

 manufacturing and industrial district; that in Ireland, 

 outside its borders, the whole country is inactive, de- 

 caying, and poverty stricken ; and that to establish a 

 Parliament in Dublin would be to band over the enter- 

 prising, manufacturing, prosperous, and progressive 

 North, to the incapacity, or worse, of the decaying 

 South and West, it is necessary not once, but many 

 times, to place on record the same facts ; to show from 

 Parliamentary papers and Government returns that the 

 least Irish and least Catholic, and most Conservative 

 part of Ireland — the self-styled Imperial Province — is 

 not the richest portion, either actually or in proportion 

 to population; and that instead of being a manufac- 

 turing province, dotted all over with mills and fac- 

 tories, it is to a greater extent agriculturist than Leinster, 

 and to nearly the same extent as Munster, but unlike 

 Leinster, containing an immense acreage of waste land, 

 as well as land so hopelessly poor and sterile as to be 

 well-nigh incapable of affording subsistence in return 

 for the severest labour. 



This is good, straightforward slogging, and 

 Mr. Rigg then proceeds to quote the figures of 

 Income-tax assessment in order to justify his 

 indignation at the temerity of platform orators 

 who bv vain repetition have created the universal 

 impression that Ulster is a model province com- 

 pared to which the rest of Ireland is a bankrupt 

 estate. Mr. Rigg says : — 



So far from enabling Ireland to make a better appear- 

 ance in comparison with any part of Great Britain, it 

 is a positive drag upon it. Ireland, as compared with 

 England or Scotland, may be poor enough, iut it is 

 ■poorer when including Ulster. 



As for the much vaunted Belfast, Mr. Rigg is 

 at pains to show that it is entirely over-rated, 

 and indignantly asks : — 



But tvhere is Belfast, that city of preternatural 

 energy, industry, activity, and intelligence — where is 

 it? Alas, for its frothy citizens, and for those who, 

 knowing little or nothing about it, admire it, its fnjsi- 

 tion has to be looked for, not at the top of the list with 

 Dublin, but at the foot of it with Cork ! Of the twenty- 

 one leading cities in the United Kingdom, not one of 

 them lias so low an income-tax assessment in proportion 

 to population. That of London is three times as much, 

 those of the next four cities double as much; even Cork 

 has £\\ 6s. to its /lo us. Belfast, instead of being 

 amongst the wealthiest of our great cities, as so many 

 public writers and orators would fain have us believe, 

 is the poorest of them all. 



