University of Virginia Library

4. PART IV. WHAT THE CLUBS AND POLITICIANS DID WITH HIM.

I.—Moved on.

GINX'S BABY'S brothers and sisters would have nothing to say to him. Mrs. Ginx declared she could see in him no likeness to her own dear lost one; and her husband swore that the brat never was his. The couple had latterly been pinching themselves and their children to save enough to emigrate. For this purpose aid and counsel were given to them by a neighboring curate, whose name, were my pages destined to immortality, should be printed here in golden letters. Rich and full will be his sheaves when many

a statesman reaps tares. Finding that a thirteenth child was imposed on them by so superior a force as the law of England the Ginxes hastened their departure.

Their last night in London, towards the small hours, Ginx, carrying our hero, went along Birdcage Walk. He scarcely knew where he was going, or how he was about to dispose of his burden, but he meant to get rid of it. On he went, here and there met by shadowy creatures who came towards his footsteps in the uncertain darkness, and when they could see that he was no quarry for them flitted away again into the night.

He passed the dingy houses, since replaced by the Foreign Office, across the open space before the Horse Guards, near the house of a popular Prime Minister, and up the broad

steps till he stood under the York Column. The shadow of this was an inviting place, but a policeman turning his lantern suspiciously on the man walking about at that silent hour with a child in his arms frustrated his wish. Slowly Ginx tramped along Pall Mall, with only one other creature stirring, as it seemed for the moment—a gentleman who turned up the steps of a large building. Seating the child on the bottom step and telling him not to cry, Ginx instantly crossed the road, turned into St. James's Square, passed by the rails, and stealing from corner to corner through the mazes of that locality, reached home by way of Piccadilly and Grosvenor Place. Henceforth this history shall know him no more.

II.-Club Ideas.

SCARCELY had the shadow of his parent vanished in the gloom before Ginx's Baby piped forth a lusty protest: the street rang again. Ere long the doors at the top of the steps swung back, and a portly form stood in the light.

"Halloo! what's the matter?'' (This was a general observation into space.) "Why, bless my heart, here's a child crying on the steps!''

Another form appeared.

"Is there nobody with it? Halloo! any one there?''

No answer came save from poor little Ginx, but his was decided. The two servants descended the steps and looked at the miserable boy without touching him. Then they peered into the darkness in hope that they might get

a glimpse of his mother or a policeman. A rapid step sounded on the pavement and a gentleman came up to the group.

"What have we here?'' he said gently.

"It's a child, Sir Charles, I found crying on the steps. I expect it's a trick to get rid of him. We are looking for a policeman to take him away.''

"Poor little fellow,'' said Sir Charles, stooping to take a fair look at Ginx's Baby, "for you and such as you the policeman or the parish officers are the national guardians, and the prison or the poor-house the home. . . . . Bring him into the Club, Smirke.''

The men hesitated a moment before executing so unwonted a demand, but Sir Charles Sterling was a man not safely to be thwarted —a late minister and a member of the committee. The child being carried into the

magnificent hall of the Club, stood on its mosaic floor. From above the radiance of the gas "sunlight'' streamed down over the marble pillars, and glanced on gilded cornices and panels of scagliola. A statue of the Queen looked upon him from the niche that opened to the dining-room; another of the great Puritan soldier, statesman, and ruler, with his stern massive front; and yet another, with the strong yet gentle features of the champion Free-Trader, seemed to regard him from their several corners. On the walls around were portraits of men who had striven for the deliverance of the people from ancient yokes and fetters. Of course Ginx's Baby did not see all this. He, poor boy, dazed, stood with a knuckle in his eye, while the porter, lackeys, Sir Charles Sterling, and others who strolled out of the reading-room, curiously regarded him. But any one observing the scene apart might have contrasted the place with the child—the principles and the professions whereof this grandeur was the monument and consecrated tabernacle, with this solitary atomic specimen of the material whereon they were to work. What social utility had resulted from the great movements initiated by them who erected and frequented this place? Ought they to have had, and did they still need a complement? While wonderful political changes had been wrought, and benefits not to be exaggerated won for many classes, WHAT HAD BEEN DONE FOR GINX'S BABY?

The query would not have been very ridiculous. He was an unit of the British Empire —nothing could blot out that fact before heaven! Had anything been left undone that

ought to have been done, or done that had well been left undone, or were better to be undone now? Of a truth that was worth a thought.

"What's all this?'' said a big Member of Parliament, a minister renowned for economy in matters financial and intellectual. "What are you doing with this youngster? I never saw such an irregularity in a Club in my life.''

"If you saw it oftener you would think more about it,'' said Sir Charles Sterling. "We found him on the steps. I think he was asking for you, Glibton.''

This sally turned a laugh against the minister.

"Well,'' said another, "he has come to the wrong quarter if he wants money.''

"I shouldn't wonder,'' said a third, "if he

were one of the new messengers at the Office of Popular Edifices. Glibton is reducing their staff.''

"If that's the case I think you haved reached the minimum here, Glibton,'' cried Sir Charles.

"Can't the country afford a livery?''

"Bother you all,'' replied the Secretary, who was secretly pleased to be quizzed for his peculiarities—"tell us what this means. Whose `lark' is it?''

"No lark at all,'' said Sterling. "Here is a problem for you and all of us to solve. This forlorn object is representative, and stands here to-night preaching us a serious sermon. He was deserted on the Club steps —left there, perhaps, as a piece of clever irony; he might be son to some of us. What's your name, my boy?''

Ginx's Baby managed to say "Dunno!''

"Ask him if he has any name?'' said an Irish ex-member, with a grave face.

Ginx's Baby to this question responded distinctly "No.''

"No name,'' said the humorist; "then the author of his being must be Wilkie Collins.''

Everybody laughed at this indifferent pleasantry but our hero. His bosom began to heave ominously.

"What's to be done with him?''

"Send him to the workhouse.''

"Send him to the d—'' (there may be brutality among the gods and goddesses).

"Give him to the porter.''

"No thank you, sir,'' said he, promptly.

The gentlemen were turning away, when Sir Charles stopped them.

"Look here!'' he said, taking the boy's arm and baring it, "this boy can hardly be

called a human being. See what a thin arm he has—how flaccid and colorless the flesh seems—what an old face!—and I can scarcely feel any pulse. Good heavens, get him some wine! A few hours will send him to the d— sure enough. . . . . What are we to do for him, Glibton? I say again, he is only part of a great problem. There must be hundreds of thousands growing up like this child; and what a generation to contemplate in all its relations and effects!''

The gentlemen were dashed by his earnestness.

"Oh, you're exaggerating,'' said Glibton; "there can't be such widespread misery. Why, if there were, the people would be wrecking our houses.''

"Ah!'' replied the other, sadly, "will you wait to be convinced by that sort of thing

before you believe in their misery? I assure you what I say is true. I could bring you a hundred clergymen to. testify to it to-morrow morning.''

"God forbid!'' said Glibton. "Good-night.''

The right honorable gentleman extinguished the subject in his own little brain with his big hat; but everywhere else the sparks are still aglow, and he, with all like him, may wake up suddenly, as frightened women in the night; to find themselves environed in the red glare of a popular conflagration. Well for them then if they are not in charge of the State machinery. What an hour will that be for hurrying to and fro with water-pipes and buckets, when proper forethought, diligence, and sacrifice would have made the building fireproof.

III.—A thorough-paced Reformer—if not a Revolutionary.

BY the kindness and influence of Sir Charles Sterling, Ginx's Baby that night, and long after, found shelter in the Radical Club. He gave rise to a discussion in the smoking-room next evening that ought to be chronicled. Several members of the committee supported his benefactor in urging that the child should be adopted by the Club, as a pledge of their resolve to make the questions of which he seemed to be the embodied emblem subjects of legislative action. Others said that those questions being, in their view, social and not political, were not proper ones to give impulse to a party movement, and that the entertainment in the Club of this foundling would be a gross irregularity: they did not want samples of the material respecting which they

were theorizing. To some of the latter Sir Charles had been insisting that, whether they kept the child or not, they could not stifle the questions excited by his condition.

"You may delay, but you cannot dissipate them. We are filling up our sessions with party struggles, theoretic discussions, squabbles about foreign politics, debates on political machinery, while year by year the condition of the people is becoming more invidious and full of peril. Social and political reform ought to be linked; the people on whom you confer new political rights cannot enjoy them without health and well-being.''

"But all our legislation is directed to that!'' exclaimed Mr. Joshua Hale. "Reform, Free Trade, Free Corn—have these not enhanced the wealth of the people?''

"Partially; yet there are classes unregenerated

by their reviving influences. Free trade cannot insure work, nor can free corn provide food for every citizen.''

"Nor any other legislation: let us be practical. I own there is much to be done. I have often stated my `platform.' We must clip the enormous expenditure on soldiers and ships; reduce our overweening army of diplomatic spies and busybodies; abstain from meddling in everybody's quarrels; redeem from taxation the workman's necessaries— a free breakfast-table; peremptorily legislate against the custom of primogeniture; encourage the distribution and transfer of land; and, under the ægis of the ballot, protect from the tyranny of the landlord and employer their tenants and workmen.''

"Very good, perhaps, all of them,'' replied Sir Charles, "but some not at the moment

possible, and all together are not exhaustive. Why do you not go to the bottom of social needs? You say nothing about Health legislation— are you indifferent to the sanitary condition of the people? You have not hinted at Education—Waste Lands—Emigration—''

"Oh! I am opposed to that altogether.''

"I forgot, you are a manufacturer; yet the last man of whom I should believe that selfishness had warped the judgment. You have done and endured more than any living statesman for the advantage of your fellow-citizens, so that I will not cast at you the aspersion of class-blindness. Still, I can scarcely think you have looked at this matter in the pure light of patriotism, and not within the narrow scope of trade interests.''

"Quite unjust. Our best economists reprehend the policy of depleting our labor-market.

Emigration is a timely remedy for adversity and to be very sparingly used. Labor is our richest vein—''

"We may have too much of it. Take it as a fact that you now have more than you can use, and the unemployed part is starving; what will you do with them?''

"That is a mere temporary and casual depression, to which all classes are liable.''

"But,'' said Sir Charles, "which none can so ill bear. Nay—what if it is permanent? You look to increased trade. Do you suppose we are to retain our manufacturing pre-eminence when every country, new and old, is competing with us? Can our trade, I ask you honestly to consider, increase at the rate of our population? Besides, for heaven's sake, look at the thing as a man. Grant that we have a hundred thousand men

out of work, and hundreds of thousands more dependent on them—do you think it no small thing that the vast mass should be left for one, two, three years seething in sorrow and distress, while they are waiting for trade! By the time that comes they may have gone beyond the hope of rescue. Ah! if an elastic trade comes back to-morrow, you can never make those people what they were; ought we not to have forecast that they should not be what they are? But I contend that depression has become chronic, the poverty more wide-spread and persistent—how then shall we, who represent these classes among the rest, face the prospect?''

Here interposed a gentleman high in office, a pure, keen, rigid economist of the highest intellectual and political rank.

"My dear Sterling, pardon me if I say you

are talking wildly. Perhaps you don't see that you are verging on rank communism. The working of economic laws can be as infallibly projected as a solar eclipse. You can secure no class from periodic calamity, and so regulate laws of supply and demand by guiding-wheels of legislation and taxation as to save every man from penury. You wish us to send away our bone and sinew because we have no present employment for it, and next year, or the year after, under a recovered trade you will be wringing your hands and cursing the folly that prompted you to do it.''

"I should be too glad of the opportunity,'' replied Sir Charles, sturdily, "but in truth there is an incubus of excessive numbers that no revival of trade will provide for, even if it is beyond our extremest hopes, and I for one

will not be guilty of the inhumanity of keeping fellow-creatures in misery till we can find a use for them. You have forgotten that there are other economic laws besides those you glance at. Several millions of acres of unoccupied land belonging in a sense to the people of this country are to be kept untilled in defiance of the plainest policy that nature and God have indicated to us, namely, that labor should come in contact with land! For want of this conjunction our colonies are to be checked, while at home miserable millions are gaping for work and food.''

"Oh! let them take themselves out. There are too many going already. They will follow natural laws, and where labor is required thither the stream will flow.''

"Mere surface talk, my clever friend,'' replied the other, "the men who are trooping

out at their own expense are our most sober, careful, and energetic workmen. Else they could not go. They go because here so many indifferent ones are weighing down their shoulders. And where do most of them go to? Not to strengthen and develop our colonies, but the United States—a not always friendly people, and just now your free-trader's bugbear!''

"Well, well,'' said the minister, "drop that question. It's utterly impracticable at this time. We couldn't entertain the demand for State-help for an instant. I tell you again you're a Fourierite. You virtually propose to put your hand in the pocket of the upper classes to pay all sorts of expenses for the lower, ''

"You may call me a communist if you please,'' replied Sir Charles Sterling; "I do

not shrink from shadows. Perhaps I am in favor of something nearer to communism than our present form of society. One thing I am clear about: no state of society is healthy wherein every man does not own himself to be the guardian of the interests of the community as well as his own—does not see that he is bound, morally and as a matter of public policy, to add to his neighbor's well-being as well as his own. Does not society, by its protection and aggregation, make it possible for the rich to grow rich, the genius and the ambitious man to pursue their aims, the merchant to gather his vails, the noble to enjoy his lands? For these privileges there is more or less to pay, and it may be that the proper proportion which the capable classes should be called upon to contribute to the common weal has never been correctly adjusted. The first fruit of practical Christianity was community of goods, and but for human selfishness we might hope for an Eutopian era—when, while it should be ruled that if a man would not work neither should he eat, there should also be brought home to every man the care of his poorer, or weaker, or less competent brother. I never expect to see that. I do hope to see the men of greatest ability pay more generously for the privileges they enjoy. The best policy for them too. The better the condition of the general community the better for themselves. You cannot alarm me with epithets. But these views are happily not essential to the support of the Emigration policy.''

"O dear! O dear! mad as a March hare!'' cried the minister, as he stumped from the room.

"Sterling is a good fellow,'' said he to a colleague with whom he walked down Pall Mall, "and a thorough-paced Liberal. Besides, he carries great weight in the House. But he is an enthusiast, and, therefore, not always quite practical.''

By practical the minister meant, not that which might well and to advantage be done if good and able men would resolve to do it, spite of all hindrances, but that which, upon a cunning review of party balances and a judicious probing of public opinion, seemed to be a policy fit for his party to pursue. The first, original and masterly statesmen are needed to initiate and perform—the other is simply the art of a genius who knows how most adroitly to manipulate people and circumstances.

IV.—Very Broad Views.

SIR CHARLES STERLING, Mr. Joshua Hale, and others continued the conversation interrupted by the minister's exit. What was to be done with Ginx's Baby? In the great dissected map of society what niches were cut out for him and all like him to fill? Most of the politicians were for leaving that to himself to find out. The term "law of supply and demand'' was freely bandied between them, as it is in many journals nowadays, with little object save to shut up avenues of discussion by a high-sounding phrase.

Then of these "statesmen,'' most clung, if not to self-interest, to personal crotchets. What is more darling to a man than the child of his intellect or fancy? How the poor poetaster hugs his tawdry verses as if they

were the imperial ornaments of genius! Just in the same way does the politician love the policies himself hath devised, pressing them forward at all hazards, while he is blind to the utility of others. This is the basis of that aspect of selfishness which often mars in the approbation of a country a really honest statesmanship—an egotistic tenacity of one's own creature as the best, which yet is not the criminal selfishness of ambition. Still that egotism is not seldom disastrous to the people's interests. While these statesmen nursed their own bantlings and held them up to national notice, they were apt to avoid or too lightly regard the views of men as able as themselves. For instance, Joshua Hale— who is far above these remarks generally— had put forth a scheme for the solution of the St. Helena property question—very likely a good one, albeit revolutionary, and nothing would convince him that any other could succeed. He wished every man in St. Helena —a turbulent adjunct of the British Empire— to be a landowner, and I do think, neither desired nor hoped that any man in that island should be happy until he was one. Yet there were other men ready to offer simpler remedies, and to prove that if every man in St. Helena became a landowner it would become a very hell upon earth, and more unmanageable than it was before. If these gentlemen do not sacrifice their pet fancies for the sake of a settlement, what will become of St. Helena?

Just now they were discussing Ginx's Baby. One thought that repeal of the Poor-Laws and a new system of relief would reach his case another saw the root of the Baby's sorrow in Trades' Unions; a third propounded coöperative

manufactures; a fourth suggested that a vast source of income lay untouched in the seas about the kingdom, which swarmed with porpoises, and showed how certain parts of these animals were available for food, others for leather, others for a delicious oil that would be sweeter and more pleasant than butter; a fifth desired a law to repress the tendency of Scotch peers to evict tenants and convert arable lands into sheep-walks and deer-forests; a sixth maintained that there were waste lands in the kingdom of capacity to support hungry millions. In fact earth, heaven, and seas were to be regenerated by Act of Parliament for the benefit of Ginx's Baby and the people of England. Sir Charles listened impatiently, and at last burst forth again.

He said: "When you consider it, what

we are all trying to do nowadays is—vulgarly— to improve the breed; but we go to work in a round-about way. At the outset we are met by the depreciated state of part of the existing generation; and one problem is to prevent these depreciated people from increasing, or to get them to increase healthily. No one seems to have gone directly to such a problem as that. The difficulties to be faced are tremendous. Your dirtiest British youngster is hedged round with principles of an inviolable liberty and rights of Habeas Corpus. You let his father and mother, or any one who will save you the trouble of looking after him, mould him in his years of tenderness as they please. If they happen to leave him a walking invalid, you take him into the poorhouse; if they bring him up a thief, you whip him and keep him at high cost at Millbank or Dartmoor; if his passions, never controlled, break out into murder and rape, you may hang him, unless his crime has been so atrocious as to attract the benevolent interest of the Home Secretary; if he commit suicide, you hold a coroner's inquest, which also costs money; and however he dies you give him a deal coffin and bury him. Yet I may prove to you that this being, whom you treat like a dog at a fair, never had a day's—no, nor an hour's—contact with goodness, purity, truth, or even human kindness; never had an opportunity of learning anything better. What right have you then to hunt him like a wild beast, and kick him and whip him, and fetter him and hang him by expensive complicated machinery, when you have done nothing to teach him any of the duties of a citizen?''

"Stop, stop, Sir Charles! you are too virulent. There are endless means of improving your lad—charities without number—''

"Yes, that will never reach him.''

"Never mind, they may, you know. Industrial schools, reformatories, asylums, hospitals, Peabody-buildings, poor-laws. Everybody is working to improve the condition of the poor man. Sanitary administration goes to his house and makes it habitable.''

"Very,'' interjected Sir Charles Sterling, dryly.

"Factory laws protect and educate factory children—''

"They don't educate in one case out of ten. They don't feed them, clothe them,

give them amusement and cultivation, do they?''

"Certainly not—that would be ridiculous.''

"Why, the question is whether that would be ridiculous!'' replied Sir Charles. "I do not say it can be done, but in order to transform the next generation, what we should aim at is to provide substitutes for bad homes, evil training, unhealthy air, food and dulness, and terrible ignorance, in happier scenes, better teaching, proper conditions of physical life, sane amusements, and a higher cultivation. I dare say you would think me a lunatic if I proposed that Government should establish music-halls and gymnasia all over the country; but you, Mr. Fissure, voted for the Baths and Washhouses.''

"Who's to pay for all this?'' asked Mr. Fissure, pertinently.

"The State, which means society, the whole of which is directly interested. I tell you a million of children are crying to us to set them free from the despotism of a crime and ignorance protected by law.''

"That is striking; but you are treading on delicate ground. The liberty of the subject—''

"Exactly what I expected you to say. These words can be used in defence of almost any injustice and tyranny. Such terms as `political economy,' `communism,' `socialism,' are bandied about in the same way. Yet propositions coming fairly within these terms are often mentioned with approval by the very persons who cast them at you. In a report of a recent Royal Commission I find that one of the Commissioners is quite as revolutionary as I am. He says

it is right by law to secure that no child shall be cruelly treated or mentally neglected, over-worked or under-educated. Some people would call that communism, I fancy. But I think him to be correct as a political economist in that broad proposition. Why? Because a child's relation to the State is wider, more permanent, and more important than his relation to his parents. If he is in danger of being depreciated and damned for good citizenship, the State must rescue him.''

"A paternal and maternal government together!'' cries Lord Namby—"a government of nurses. You know I should like to stop the production of children among the lower orders. Your propositions are far in advance of my radicalism. The State must sometimes interfere between parent and child;

for instance, in education or protection from cruelty. But, if I understand you, you actually contemplate a general refining and elevation of the working class by legislative means.''

"Assuredly: I should aim to cultivate their morals, refine their tastes, manners, habits. I wish to lift from them that ever-depressing sense of hopelessness which keeps them in the dust.''

"So do most men; but you must do that by personal and private influences, not by State enactments. How would you do it?''

"How? I think I could draw up a programme. For instance: Expatriate a million to reduce the competition that keeps poor devils on half-rations or sends them to the poorhouse; Take all the sick, maimed, old, and incapable poor into workhouses managed by

humane men and not by ghouls; Forbid such people to marry and propagate weakness; Legislate for compulsory improvements of workmen's dwellings, and, if needful, lend the money to execute it; Extend and enforce the health laws; Open free libraries and places of rational amusement with an imperial bounty through the country; Instead of spending thousands on dilettanti sycophants at one end of the metropolis, distribute your art and amusement to the kingdom at large; The rich have their museums, libraries, and clubs, provide them for the poor; Establish temporary homes for lying-in women; Multiply your baths and washhouses till there is no excuse for a dirty person; Educate; Provide day schools for every proper child, and industrial or reformatory schools for every improper one; Open advanced High Schools for the best pupils, and found Scholarships to the Universities; Erect other schools for technical training; Offer to teach trades and agriculture to all comers for nothing— you would soon neutralize your bugbear of trades-unionism; Teach morals, teach science, teach art, teach them to amuse themselves like men and not like brutes. In a land so wealthy the programme is not impracticable, though severe. As the end to be attained is the welfare of future generations, no good reason could be urged why they should not contribute towards the cost of it —a better debt to leave to posterity than the incubus of an irrational war.''

Will any sane political practitioner wonder to be told that at the end of this harangue the smoking-room party broke up, and that some, as they laughed good-humoredly over

Sterling's egregia, recalled the number of glasses of inspirited seltzer swallowed by the orator? He was so far in advance of the most radical reformer that there was no hope of overtaking him for an era or two: so they determined to fancy they had left him behind.

V.—Party Tactics—and Political Obstructions to Social Reform.

IN the Club our hero revelled awhile under the protection of Sir Charles Sterling, and the petting of peers, Members of Parliament, and loungers who swarm therein. Certain gentlemen of Stock Exchange mannerism and dressiness gave the protégé the go-by, and even sneered at those who noticed him with kindness. But then these are of the men with whom every question is checked by money,

and is balanced on the pivot of profit and loss. I dare say some of them thought the worse of Judas only because he had made so small a gain out of his celebrated transaction. To foster Ginx's Baby in the Club, as a recognition of the important questions surrounding him, though these questions involved hundreds of thousands of other cases, was to them ridiculous. Of far greater consequence was it in their eyes to settle a dispute between two extravagant fools at Constantinople and Cairo, and quicken the sluggishness of Turkish consols or Egyptian 9 per cents. I do not cast stones at them; every man must look at a thing with his own eyes.

But it was curious to note how the Baby's fortunes shifted in the Club. There were times —when he was a pet chucked under chin by the elder stagers, favored with a smile from a

Cabinet Minister, and now and then blessed with a nod from Mr. Joshua Hale. Then, again, every one seemed to forget him, and he was for months left unnoticed to the chance kindness of the menials until some case similar to his own happening to evoke discussion in the press, there would be a general inquiry for him. The porter, Mr. Smirke, had succeeded, by means of a detective, in discovering the boy's name, but his parents were then half-way to Canada.

The members of the Fogey Club opposite, hearing that so interesting a foundling was being cherished by their opponents, politely asked leave to examine him, and he occasionally visited them. They treated him kindly and discussed his condition with earnestness. The leaders of the party debated whether he might not with advantage be taken out of

their opponents' hands. Some thought that a judicious use of him might win popularity; but others objected that it would be perilous for them to mix themselves up with so doleful an interest. In the result the Fogies tipped young Ginx, but did not commit themselves for or against him. Thus a long time elapsed, and our hero had grown old enough to be a page. He had received food, clothing, and goodwill, but no one had thought of giving him an education. Sometimes he became obstreperous. He played tricks with the Club cutlery, and diverted its silver to improper uses; he laid traps for upsetting aged and infirm legislators; he tried the coolness of the youngest and best-natured Members of Parliament by popping up in strange places and exhibiting unseemly attitudes. At length, by unanimous consent, he was decreed to be a nuisance, and a few days would have revoked his license at the Club.

No sooner did the Fogies get wind of this than they manœuvred to get Ginx's Baby under their own management. They instructed their "organs,'' as they called them, to pipe to popular feeling on the disgraceful apathy of the Radicals in regard to the foundling. They had him waylaid and treated to confectionery by their emissaries; and once or twice succeeded in abducting him and sending him down to the country with their party's candidates, for exhibition at elections.

The Radicals resented this conduct extremely. Ginx's Baby was brought back to the Club and restored to favor. The Government papers were instructed to detail how much he was petted and talked about by the

party; to declare how needless was the popular excitement on his behalf; and to prove that he must, without any special legislation, be benefited by the extraordinary organic changes then being made in the constitution of the country.

Sir Charles Sterling resumed his interest in the boy. He had been gallantly aiding his party in other questions. There was the Timbuctoo question. A miserable desert chief had shut up a wandering Englishman, not possessed of wit enough to keep his head out of danger. There was a general impression that English honor was at stake, and the previous Fogey Government had ordered an expedition to cross the desert and punish the sheikh. You would never believe what it cost if you had not seen the bill. Ten millions sterling was as good as buried in

the desert, when one-tenth of it would have saved a hundred thousand people from starvation at home, and one-hundredth part of it would have taken the fetters off the hapless prisoner's feet.

There was the St. Helena question always brooding over Parliament. St. Helena was a constituent part of the British Empire. Every patriot agreed that the Empire without it would be incomplete; and was so far right that its subtraction would have left the Empire by so much less. Most of its inhabitants were aboriginal—a mercurial race, full of fire, quick-witted, and gifted with the exuberant eloquence of savages, but deficient in dignity and self-control. Before any one else had been given them by Providence to fight, they slaughtered and ravaged one another. Our intrusive British ancestors stepped

upon the island, and, being strong men, mowed down the islanders like wheat, and appropriated the lands their swords had cleared. Still the aborigines held out in corners, and defied the conquerors. The latter ground them down, confiscated the property of their half-dozen chiefs, and distributed it among themselves. By way of showing their imperial imperiousness, they built over some ruins left by their devastations a great church, in which they ordered all the islanders to worship. This was at first abomination to the islanders, who fought like devils whenever they could, and ended by accepting the religion of their foes. But the conquerors, afterwards choosing to change their own faith, resolved that the islanders should do so too. Forthwith they confiscated the big church and burying-ground, and, distributing part of the land and spoils among their most prominent scamps, erected a new edifice of quite a different character, in which the natives swore they could neither see nor hear, and their own clerics warned them they would certainly be damned. To make the complications more intricate, these clerics owed allegiance to an ancient woman in a distant country, who had all the meddlesomeness and petty jealousy of her sex, and was, besides, much attached to some clever wooers of hers, wily sinners who covered their aims under the semblance of ultra-extreme passion for her. The prominent scamps died, to be succeeded by their children, or other of the hated conquerors, from generation to generation. The islanders went on increasing and protesting. They starved upon the lands, and shot the landlords when a few gave them the chance, for most lived away in their own country, and left the property to be administered by agents. The Home Government had again and again been obliged to assist these people with soldiers, to provide an armed police, to shoot down mobs, to catch a ringleader here or there and send him to Fernando Po, or to deprive whole villages of ordinary civil rights. Then the yam crop failed, and nearly half the people left the island and crossed the seas, where they continued to hate and to plot against those whose misfortune it had been to get a legacy of the island from their fathers. It would be wearisome to recount the absurdities on both sides: the stupidity or criminal absence of tact from time to time shown by the Home Government—the resolve never to be quiet exhibited by the natives, under the prompting of their clerics. Upon there were ever springing up fresh difficulties. Secret clubs were formed for murder and reprisal. A body called the "Yellows'' had bound themselves by private oaths to keep up the memory of the religious victories of their predecessors, and to worry the clerical party in every possible way. Their pleasure was to go about insanely blowing rams'-horns, carrying flags and bearing oranges in their hands. The islanders hated oranges, and at every opportunity cracked the skulls of the orange-bearers with brutal weapons peculiar to the island. These, in return, cracked native skulls. The whole island was in a state of perpetual commotion. Still, its general condition improved, its farms grew prosperous, and a joint-stock company had built a mill for converting cocoanut fibre into horse-cloths, which yielded large profits. The memory of past events might well have been buried; but the clerics, in the interest of the old woman, fanned the embers, and the infamous bidding for popularity of parties at home served to keep alive passions that would naturally have died out. Besides, latterly folly had been too organized on both sides to suffer oblivion. Everybody was tired of the squabbles of St. Helena. At length there was a general movement in the interests of peace, and to pacify the islanders Parliament was asked to pull down the wings of the old church edifice, remove some of the graves, and cut off a large piece of the graveyard. Some were in favor also of dividing all the farms in the country among the aborigines, but the difficulty was to know how at the same time to satisfy the present occupiers. These schemes were topics of high debate, upon them the fortunes of Government rose and fell, and while they were agitated Ginx's Baby could have no chance of a parliamentary hearing.

Many other matters of singular indifference had eaten up the legislative time; but at last the increasing number of wretched infants throughout the country began to alarm the people, and Sir Charles Sterling thought the time had come to move on behalf of Ginx's Baby and his fellows.

VI.—Amateur Debating in a High Legislative Body.

WHILE Sir Charles was trying to get the Government to "give him a night'' to debate

the Ginx's Baby case, and while associations were being formed in the metropolis for disposing of him by expatriation or otherwise, a busy peer, without notice to anybody, suddenly brought the subject before the House of Lords. As he had never seen the Baby, and knew nothing or very little about him, I need scarcely report the elaborate speech in which he asked for aristocratic sympathy on his behalf. He proposed to send him to the Antipodes at the expense of the nation.

The Minister for the Accidental Accompaniments of the Empire was a clever man —keen, genial, subtle, two-edged, a gentlemanly and not thorough disciple of Machiavel; able to lead parliamentary forlorn hopes and plant flags on breaches, or to cover retreats with brilliant skirmishing; deft, but never

deep; much moved too by the opinions of his permanent staff. These on the night in question had plied him well with hackneyed objections; but to see him get up and relieve himself of them—the air of originality, the really original air he threw around them; the absurd light which he turned full on the weaknesses of his noble friend's propositions, was as beautiful to an indifferent critic as it was saddening to the man who had at heart the sorrows of his kind. If that minister lived long he would be forced to adopt and advocate in as pretty a manner the policy he was dissecting.

Lord Munnibagge, a great authority in economic matters, said that a weaker case had never been presented to Parliament. To send away Ginx's Baby to a colony at imperial expense was at once to rob the pockets of the rich and to decrease our

labor-power. There was no necessity for it. Ginx's Baby could not starve in a country like this. He (Lord Munnibagge) had never heard of a case of a baby starving. There was no such wide-spread distress as was represented by the noble lord. There were occasional periods of stagnation in trade, and no doubt in these periods the poorer classes would suffer; but trade was elastic; and even if it were granted that the present was a period when employment had failed, the time was not far off when trade would recuperate. (Cheers.) Ginx's Baby and all other babies would not then wish to go away. People were always making exaggerated statements about the condition of the poor. He (Lord Munnibagge) did not credit them. He believed the country, though temporarily depressed by financial collapses, to be in a most healthy state. (Hear, hear.) It was absurd to say otherwise, when it was shown by the Board of Trade returns that we were growing richer every day. (Cheers.) Of course Ginx's Baby must be growing richer with the rest. Was not that a complete answer to the noble lord's plaintive outcries? (Cheers and laughter.) That the population of a country was a great fraction of its wealth was an elementary principle of political economy. He thought, from the high rates of wages, that there were not too many but too few laborers in the country. He should oppose the motion. (Cheers.)

Two or three noble lords repeated similar platitudes, guarding themselves as carefully from any reference to facts, or to the question whether high rates of wages might not be the concomitants simply of high prices of necessaries, or to the yet wider question whether colonial development might not have

something to do with progress at home. The noble lord who had rushed unprepared into the arena was unequal to the forces marshalled against him, and withdrew his motion.

Thus the great debate collapsed. The Lords were relieved that an awkward question had so easily been shifted. The newspapers on the ministerial side declared that this debate had proved the futility of the Ginx's Baby Expatriation question.

"So able an authority as Lord Munnibagge had established that there was no necessity for the interference of Government in the case of Ginx's Baby or any other babies or persons. The lucid and decisive statement of the Secretary for the Accidental Accompaniments of the Empire had shown how impossible it was for the Imperial Government to take part in a great scheme

of Expatriation; how impolitic to endeavor to affect the ordinary laws of free movement to the Colonies.''

Surely after this the Expatriation people hid their lights under a bushel!

The Government refused to find a night for Sir Charles Sterling, and after the Lords' debate he did not see his way to force a motion in the Lower House. Meanwhile Ginx's Baby once more decided a turn in his own fate. Tired of the slow life of the Club, and shivering amid the chill indifference of his patrons, he borrowed without leave some clothes from an inmate's room, with a few silver forks and spoons, and decamped. Whether the baronet and the Club were bashful of public ridicule or glad to be rid of the charge, I know not, but no attempt was made to recover him.