TRAVELLING NOTES ON SOCIA.LISM.*-

SIR HENRY WRIXON, an eminent Australian lawyer and politician, being chosen to represent Victoria at the Ottowa Conference in 1894, received at the same time "a commission to inquire into some public questions that interested and

concerned us colonists in common with all the more pro-

gressive communities of the world." Socialism and its spread was the subject that received most of his attention in his tour through the Colonies, the ITnited States, and England, and he has thus been able to present a very interesting sketch of the attitude of a large and important portion of the English-speaking peoples towards social questions. He does not, however, confine himself to this topic in his Notes. We must admit that the more or less irrelevant passages in which he deals with general political questions bring some sense of relief with them, for there is a mono- tonous sameness about the remarks of Socialists all over the world, and it is, after all, an unprofitable task to follow the particular applications that the Fabian dogmas receive under different skies. Sir Henry Wrixon, however, certainly made his subject as interesting as possible by treating it rather from a personal point of view. He is evidently well-read in Socialistic literature, but for the purposes of his inquiry he very wisely thought fit to leave the books on the shelves, and to attend Socialist meetings and converse with upholders of the system vilhi voce. He states and comments on the views that he heard expressed

with eminent fairness ; but he generally has some shrewd practical criticism to offer, drawn from his own experience as

a Colonial politician. For instance, an enthusiastic New Zealander vigorously championed the views that are making such rapid " progress " in that very Socialistic Colony, arguing that "they could not renew, in their social state, the condition that had in the past prevailed in Europe,—the poor wallowing in squalor, misery, and crime. They must.be helped out." The conversation went on as follows :— " He said that he and his friends held that the struggle of life was increasing yearly in intensity—that the prospect of a fair chance for an individual was getting less and less—that in the absence of State control they would have corporative despotism. Let the Government employ the people and treat them fairly. I asked him if he did not anticipate difficulty as time went on from the political representatives advancing claims upon behalf of their workers that industrial conditions could not stand, and mentioned that, in one of the Australian provinces, just on the eve of a general election a motion was made and quickly carried in the assembly to give an increase in pay to the railway labourers, against the opinion of the commissioners, whose duty it was, under the law, to arrange the wages of the employes The members who voted against it were all men marked by the Labour interest at the coming election."

Along with this practical shrewdness Sir Henry brings to his task a keen appreciation of the humorous side of things, and thus relieves his pages with many notes on those apparently trifling matters which often throw more light on a political subject than a whole shelfful of Blue-books. In a passage that would delight Herr Tenfelsdrockh he in- forms us that in Colonial Parliaments hats are worn as at Westminster, but "of all descriptions, from the stately tall silk to the pliable wide-awake, of various shapes and many colours." When a Member wishes to call the attention of the

Chair to a point of order while the House is dividing, and has to do so with his hat on, this question of its shape and hue becomes a dividing line between those who are prepared to swallow all formulas, and those who still cherish the symbolic significance of the stove-pipe. Says our chronicler :—" To put a crushed wide-awake on in order to challenge the notice of the Chair seems an undignified proceeding to onlookers. Sometimes this is done with an air of defiance, however

• Socialism: being Notes on a Political Tour. By Sir Henry Wrison, late Attorney-General of Victoria, &a London: Macmillan and 0o.

awkward the hat. Sometimes a diffident man will borrow a tall hat from a neighbour to serve the turn." What an alle- gory in pantomime,—your uncompromising Danton hurling, so to speak, his wide-awake, "however awkward," at the feet of the Speaker as gage of battle, while the Laodicean Girondist borrows a badge of respectability from the head of a re- actionary neighbour. Another very illustrative trifle is the story of a scene witnessed by Sir Henry in the Canadian Parliament. A division was being taken, the Members sitting in the Chamber while the Clerk called on each by name for his vote. Suddenly "we were startled to hear one Member loudly call upon another, whose vocal talent was well known, to give them a song. The request was readily complied with, and the tuneful legislator led off some popular air, his brethren joining in the chorus with a unanimity that had not marked the previous debate."

Very interesting and instructive are Sir Henry Wrixon's notes on his return to England after an absence, with one short interval, of thirty years. He seems to have found everything in the political world turned upside down, and the Toryism of the last generation masquerading as the Progress 0f to-day. He gives a very apt example :—

" I might illustrate the change by referring to a book that is to be found in most public libraries. Robert Southey may be taken as the typical old Tory, laughed at by Byron, and contemptuously reviewed by Macaulay. Yet if we read the critique of the great Whig upon Southey's Colloquies on Society, the poet now appears to be the advanced man, and the scoffing reviewer the fossil re- actionary. Southey declares that a liberal expenditure on aational works is one of the surest means of promoting the aational prosperity. Macaulay argues that any large expendi- ture by the Government is sure to be attended by waste and corruption, which our experience in the colonies, as to the waste at least, fully bears Out; and adds, * We firmly believe that five hundred thousand pounds, subscribed by individuals for railroads or canals, would produce more advantage to the public than five millions voted by Parliament for the same purpose. There are certain old saws about the master's eye and about everybody's business, in which we place very great faith."

-Sir Henry Wrixon is certainly right in contending that these notions of Macaulay's have been left far behind by progress,

in the current sense of the word. Southey's principle, as his critic describes it, "that no man can do anything so well for himself as his rulers, be they who they may, can do it for him, and that a Government approaches nearer and nearer to perfection, in proportion as it interferes more and more with the habits and notions of individuals," is accepted more and more fully by all political parties, though there is still a " fossilised " remnant that holds Macaulay's

views, and cannot discover how a Government can be wiser than those who claim not only to elect it, but to tell it exactly what to do. Sir Henry Wrixon notices the curious inconsistency with which Socialists of all countries unite in abusing the Government, and at the same time demanding that it is to manage everything. "What surprised me," he says, "with many of the Socialist and Populist champions whom I met, was the union of unmeasured condemnation of the present trustees of the public, joined to equally un- bounded confidence in those of the future." He found Socialism in the United States more temperate than in Europe and England, where he attached, perhaps, too much importance to remarks, e.g., of a "prominent Labour leader," to the effect that "commercial enterprise was the last resort of

scoundrels," But he has given us many very interesting notes on the subject of general politics in America. The exploits of the Governor of Illinois in the matter of the Chicago Anarchists were certainly well worth recalling to his readers. The Governor, having pardoned three men convicted of com- plicity in bomb-throwing, published a "pamphlet of sixty-three pages," in which he maintained that the trial was altogether unfair, and under the heading "Prejudice or Subserviency of the Judge," repeated charges to the effect that the Judge, who, by the way, appears to have written a magazine article on the case, had conducted the trial with "malicious ferocity," and so on. Moreover, "it is stated in the press that in two years a hundred and twenty-eight convicts have been pardoned in Illinois, twenty - two of them being murderers, and that respectable lynching parties justified their summary justice upon the ground that it was the only way that any justice could be secured."

We could fill many pages with interesting extracts from this entertaining and instructive work, in which shrewd sense and keen observation more than atone for occasional slips of style and lapses into bathos. But we must conclude by com- mending its perusal to all who are interested in social and political development.