Twe maxim that lo who insists on being heard will succeed at last is as old at least as. the parable of The Unjust Judge. Of course, it is not universally true, which no maxims are: the voice of one crying in the wilderness: has no one to hear it; and the person or abuse attacked must be capable of" impression, for it is hard for men to-kick against the pricks, he cireumstances, that is, must be favourable and they are evidently favourable at: the present time for those who are combating abuses and privileges. There a wave of democratism passing over he world, bubbling over on some shores in anarchism and socialism, but not exceeding in more well-ordered communities the limits that enlightened prudence would approve. The theory that there are a few people who ought to govern and a mass that ought to be governed, and take gratefully what government it can get, is worn out, It lingers on in Russia, and the German Enoperor has something of it clinging to him; but it is thin, and will not long protect him against the popular blast, which if not roughly opposed, but managed and guided, may be trusted England. to bring good results, as it does in
It is a very remarkable thing to find this wave of democratism affecting even our Government Offices, the homes of Dickens' lite Barnacles. The spirit which Punch satirised years ago in the song with the refrain—
My Lords are not aware—"And I have the honour to'be"— did not seem likely ever to die out of Whitehall and Downing Street; but not even the triple-guarded precincts of the Circumlocution Office are safe from the invasion of the democratic, any more than the influenza, microbe, Irregularities—from the official point of view—which would have made Ministers and their Chief Clerks of fifteen years ago rise up in horror are now not merely tolerated, but even encouraged. Such a representation as that made recently by the Hongkong Chamber of Commerce would at that time have been simply ignored, or at the best a subordinate clerk would have been told to reply that any communications of the kind could only be received through the proper chatinel, the Chief Superintendent of rade in China, Now the people, as represented by their Chambers of Commerce, insist on being heard; and it is being realised that it is of ten times more value to interest the leading Chambers at home in a cause, than to get any other advocate. We still followalsothe old roundabout course of addressing the Foreign. Office through the Consul and the: Legation at Peking; but we know that-our representation gets there with twice the speed and twice the force through: the Chambers of Commerce of the great commercial centtes at home,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.