characteristic as are the finer uni- that is necessary to make her versal qualities of the race. "the source of employment and It is not to this tragic particu- comfort to her own people," he larity, however, but to other charsays. Mr Dennis does not even acteristics equally real, and almost tell us that she is over-popuequally serious, that our atten- lated. He says of the Irish that tion is called by the book before they are "a starving people in a us. I Mr Dennis's little work is land of plenty." "A country," of the calmest, both in subject he tells us, "capable of producing and treatment. It has nothing in abundance every necessary of to do with politics. It does not life for a population as dense as even inquire into that fertile ques- that of Belgium, fails in point of tion whether English misgovern- fact to support a population less ment is the occasion of all Irish dense by 280 persons per square ills. It takes the Irish ills as ex- mile." It is not, then, even overistent, not the criminal part of population that does it not too them, but the economic and prac- many mouths to feed, not an imtical, and suggests the remedy possible problem such as we have a remedy not far to seek, having been made to believe could only nothing to do with rivalries of be solved by emigration. But perrace, or conflicts for ascendancy. haps emigration itself, with all its His very plain statement is that difficulties, would be an easy cure Irish industry is dying, as Irish in comparison with the simple comfort has died, if it ever in- remedy which Mr Dennis proposes, deed existed, not from political which is in so many words that causes, but from the extraordi- the Irish nation, that much-disnary carelessness and indifference cussed, much-described, little-unof the Irish nation. The indict- derstood entity, should get up like ment is very broad and general, a man and work out its own salvaand it is not of an agreeable char- tion by honest act and deed, by acter. Lynch-law might easily, no new expedients but the use of we should think, lay hold of the means which lie ready at his hand; man who thus ventures to charge by simple care and pains, and a a quarrelsome race with neglect fair day's work, and the sweat of of its best interests and a delib- its brow. This is a very tremendous erate throwing away of all its ad- prescription-it is almost as hard vantages. Mr Dennis does not do as that which Bishop Berkeley, a this, however, with any heat or sanguine Irishman, proposed to indignation. He pours forth no his people in his day-which was lamentations nor even very much only to be good and honest and blame. It is rather to the world, true, no more. Mr Dennis does and the bystanders who look on not trouble himself about the goodat the lamentable spectacle of a ness of the people he discusses. It whole country sinking into idle- is as a practical man of business ness and want, that he states the that he regards them and their case with the seriousness which ways. He speaks the language of it demands, than as making any proverbs, but without their terseassault upon the culprits them- ness. He says, in other words, selves. Ireland hss everything a Waste not, want not; he says, If country wants for prosperity-all a man will not work, it stands to 1 Industrial Ireland. By Robert Dennis. London: John Murray. reason that neither shall he have wherewithal to eat. All this is as plain as any pikestaff; but whether it will convince any Irishman that this and not Home Rule is the panacea for his country, or persuade a troubled Government to set up model farms, model fisheries, model dairies, in order to teach that "bould pisantry, its country's pride," how to do its own work, is a different matter, and one less easy to decide. Here is Mr Dennis's description of the foundation of evil, the first cause of Irish wretchedness:: "Why is the potato so much grown and consumed in Ireland? It is because potato-growing and potato-eating form the simplest process by which the Irish tenant can keep body and soul together. He turns up his land, plants it, waits four or five months, and then digs the crop. The product of these operations is his sustenance. It has not, like cattle, or wheat, or any of the higher products of farming, to be turned into money before it can be made available for his own use. The complex transactions by which producers and consumers in a civilised society provide for the wants of others and secure the satisfaction of their own, do not enter into the economics of the Irish peas ant. He sticks his potato into the ground, and in due time he gathers the harvest. Feeling hungry, he goes to his store, deals himself out potatoes enough for a meal, claps them into a pot, eats them, and is content. The substitution of oats for the potato would place him one degree higher in the scale of agricultural progress by processes which need not be described. We should then get the Irish tenant past the stage at which a man lives from hand to mouth on the free yield of nature, into the stage at which agriculture becomes an industey, providing him by exchange or sale not only with mere sustenance, but with comforts of which he has hitherto had no experience." We have always ourselves had a great fancy for the idea of self-sus tenance in this primitive way, and remember considering the condition of a Highland proprietor on a little estate, where he grew his own mutton, grouse, and trout, gooseberries and honey, as one of almost perfect bliss. To be sure, the laird bought a good many things in addition and sold some, and his table was more varied than that of the potato-grower. We had fancied also that the potato was modified, in all but the poorest cases, with occasional stirabout; and perhaps Mr. Dennis's estimate of the kindly root is a somewhat stern one. But when he comes to subjects better within our understanding,-to the crop which is left to rot because Irish farmers have not yet learned the simple art of compressing hay for carriage by rail"-nay, more, refuse to learn it; and the butter, which loses its market and is superseded on all sides because it is badly made, badly packed, produced from cows uncared for by workers careless and untrained,— the repetition of the endless story begins to work upon the mind with a sickening effect. Fish swarming at the very doors, but no boats to take them, no nets-the women with their handy fingers so easily trained to lace and other dainty work, unable to weave these first necessities of the natural trade, an almost incredible folly; flax, for which Irish fields are specially adapted, a most profitable crop, abandoned for the trouble it gives, so that it has to be imported for the use of the happily still existing loom, the only persistent trade that keeps its hold of Ireland, thanks to the energy of the North; the recurrence of these fatuities and failures, the constantly repeated tale of waste and loss, the work dropping from nerveless hands, will at last begin to tell upon the nerves of the calmest reader. twelve millions annually, while the quality of the butter would be so greatly improved that it might face the competition of the finest Danish." To do this, and to do it all round in everything--to cultivate the fisheries, the flax-growing, the conveyance of meat-to teach the Irish peasant how to work in every one of the primitive trades which nature has put into his hands, but which his nature incapacitates him from doing by any impulse of his own, All these miseries, according to be raised from six millions to every human law and calculation, must increase, if ever the country is cleared from the class who can alone set better things going, and delivered into the hands of the peasant, whose only idea is to satisfy his appetite straight from the produce of his fields. Mr Dennis's suggestion in every case is, that Government should take the matter in hand. The training of dairymaids alone, in schools established for the purpose, would do much for one great industry, as has been proved by an experiment would afford full scope for the already made. "And if to the in- most paternal of Governments. struction of the dairymaids were Perhaps in the long-run it would added the instruction of the far- be cheaper than State emigration. mers as to the management and But where is the "still strong man feeding of their stock, it is calcu- in a blatant land" who will set lated that the output of butter this system of reform in action? in Ireland, even with the pres- It will certainly not be done by ent inferior breed and the lack the action of peasant-proprietors, of buildings and appliances, could either in Ireland or elsewhere. THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEWER AND RUSSIA. THE attention of the public has been drawn in a marked manner to a series of articles on "The Present Position of European Politics," now appearing in the pages of the Fortnightly Review.' I do not propose to deal with either the first or the second of these papers, referring respectively to Germany and France; but on the third, dealing with Russia-or rather, on that portion of the third which deals with the designs of Russia in Asia, and the chances of success of an aggressive policy on her part in those regions-I ask your permission to say a few words. The question is of far too great importance to this country to be left in the position in which the Fortnightly Reviewer has left it; but, in pointing out his sins of omission, I shall at all events be concise. The Reviewer, after dealing in a masterly manner with the causes which have embittered the relations between Russia and England in the East, enters frankly upon the question of the possibilities of a Russian invasion of India. Commencing by urging the serious responsibility of one who is not a soldier to undertake to pronounce a confident opinion on this subject, the Reviewer submits with perfect fairness the conclusions of the military experts of foreign countries. These conclusions point to the probability of the success of the invader and these the Reviewer combats. Before I proceed to the main argument of this article, I shall examine, very briefly, the reasons urged on this head by the Reviewer. I give those of the Reviewer's reasons which appear to me shal low and untenable in his own words. He says: "I doubt whether the Russians have more than a few hundred Turcoman cavalry ready for a long march; but above all, I think that Russia would have, for a great number of years to come, far more difficulty in would be necessary for marching finding the enormous train which 100,000 men across from Herat to Kandahar, than we should find difficulty in supplying an army of 80,000 men at Kandahar, which would be sufficient to hold in check the advance of 100,000 Russians from the Caucasus and 20,000 from Turkestan." The Reviewer then, after devoting about half a page to the real dangers, which, he thinks, threaten India, carries off his reader to Vladivostock and the Amur, leaving Russia waiting patiently behind her present frontier for " some revolution in Herat, or a dexterous use of Ayoub Khan.' For those who like to live in a fool's paradise such a prospect may be brimful of consolation; but I doubt much whether it will commend itself to the ordinary reader, still less to the thoughtful men who have carefully studied the subject. Throughout his long article the Reviewer alludes only twice, and then in a very cursory manner, to the Persian Gulf, and he does not refer at all to the possibility of the absorption by Russia of the country which would give her the command of the Persian Gulf; and yet these are matters pertaining to the Indian question, and well within the range of practical politics. What are we to think of a writer who, like this Reviewer, professes to deal with the whole subject, and yet does not even mention its most important branch? He is too well informed, has been too much behind the scenes, to be ignorant of its importance. How great and all-absorbing that branch is, how intimately connected with British interests in India, I shall have no difficulty in making clear to the most ordinary reader. Let such a reader look at the latest map of Persia, he will see that that country is in the very jaws of Russia. To the north, the Russian frontier extends from Michaelovsk, on the eastern shore of the Caspian, along the northern boundary of Khorasan, to Askabad; thence, turning the eastern angle, to Sarakhs, that Sarakhs of which the late lamented Sir Charles MacGregor pithily recorded that it was "an eye to see and an arm to strike.' Sarakhs commands Mashhad, the sacred city of the Persians; and from Mashhad to Teheran, the capital, the way is neither long nor difficult. To the west, the possession of Batoum and Kars gives Russia a vantage-ground of which, in case of need, she can always make effective use. To the south is the Persian Gulf, 550 miles long, and having a breadth reaching occasionally to 220 miles, much coveted by Russia as one of the bases from which, when the proper time arrives, she will act against India. Now, at this moment Russia is massing large bodies of troops in her possessions east of the Caspian. Those masses threaten, it is true, the territories of our ally, the Amir of Afghanistan, but they equally threaten Persia on her most vulnerable frontier. It is, of course, quite possible that a sudden development of trouble in Afghanistan, similar to that which occurred between the years 1863 and 1869, might tempt Russia to act in that country the congenial part of sov ereign mediatrix. The rôle is familiar to her, and she would know how to play it to her advantage. But should matters remain as they at present, she will hesitate long before she attacks, from her present base on the Caspian, an Afghanistan supported by England, so long as a far more easy prey lies within her very grasp. Such a prey is Persia, already morally subdued. There is not a village in Khorasan which is not permeated by Russian ideas; there is not a province in Persia the inhabitants of which do not regard Russia as the future arbitress of their destinies. And the worst of it is that Russia, fully conscious of this fact, knows that she has but to give the word to become mistress of those fertile valleys of Khorasan, which would become a new and effective base for future operations. Like the King of Israel in the sacred record, the Tsar is in a position to say at any moment to his Chancellor: "Know ye not that this kingdom of Persia is ours, yet we be still and take it not from the hands of the Shah?" At any moment he might give the order to march; and, let it be clearly understood, it would be little more than a march. There would be no fighting, properly so called; there might be a skirmish or two, and all would be over. The Persians, in fact, are already conquered before they have fought. From the moment England entered upon the fatal policy of "masterly inactivity" this was a foregone conclusion. It was simply a ques tion of time. Let us examine now, for a moment, what it is that Russia will gain by her occupation of Persia. In the first place, she will gain, in Khorasan-the ancient Parthiaa territory very fertile, possessing a climate well suited to Europeans, |