Dec. 4.
conditions of chaos and strife from DIFFERENT people, reflecting on essentially different points of view, although beginning with the same hypotheses, naturally come to varying conclusions. But a dispassionate consideration should be possible to those who are not directly conneoted with, although affected by, any: cause of national or industrial strife. It may be permissible, therefore, to discuss briefly two inherent causes of our present trade depression in China and of the prevailing sense \inty, namely the revol tion in China and the late railway strike in Eogland. Slight as may be the outward connexion of these two momentous events, we find similar common root. effects. Both bread of educa ation and of the eaglet-like desire to stretch the wings, to try the strength and to throw off a bondage that at one time was tolerated almost unnoticed, but now has become irksome. Bat the eaglet is often glad of the strong supporting wings of the parent bird that come to its aid. After the passing of the Reform Act of 1867, which enfranchised unskilled as well as skilled labour, Walter Bagehot wrote: " It is desirable that ignorant men, new to politics, should have good issues and only good issues, placed before them." He added a strong warning against in-traducing such men to "topics, the Aiscussion of which in the only form in which that discussion reaches their ear will be to make them think that some new law can make them comfortable—that it is the present Law which makes them uncomfortable—that the Government has at its disposal inexhaustible fund out of which it can give to those who now want without also creating elsewhere other and great wants."
Time alone can show whether the revolutionaries in China may not be disappointed in finding that they have expected too much, as the railwaymen are dissatisfied with the findings of the Railway Commission, and whether they will then decline to accept the decisions of those whom they have accepted as leaders. The revolutionaries in the early days of the movement in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.