LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
NATIONAL SERVICE AND THE REFERENDUM. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPEC[ATOR."] Sin.,—In common, no doubt, with most of your readers I found your article on " National Service and the Referen- dum" quite admirable. The remarks about the latter, however, prompt me to ask you what grounds you have for supposing that a British Government will ever adopt a plan so full of common sense ? Pending your explanation I should like, with your permission, to point out a few remarkable things we have done, are doing, and doubtless shall continue to do, which seem to me to forbid the possibility of so sensible a course being adopted. (1) We have seen this our Government by a conspiracy allowing the affairs of the Protestant Church of England in Wales to be settled by a few Romanist Irish- men from Co. Kerry or thereabouts. (2) We have a habit of admitting to this country duty free commodities that we might, would, could, and certainly should produce ourselves, while we heavily tax other commodities that we cannot by any possibility grow in England. A little common sense would make the valleys of Britain "stand so thick with corn that they would laugh and sing." (3) For centuries we have had the services of the pick of English gentlemen in the House of Commons free of charge, and now we pay salaries to a number of men who have, without leave or licence, after the manner of Dick Turpin, transferred £400 per annum from our pockets to their own. (4) For many long years we have promoted the best of our men—speaking generally—to the Upper Chamber of the Legislature, and now we have stripped them of almost every vestige of power. (5) We are practically dependent for our daily bread on sea-borne supplies—neces- sarily liable to interruption—so we carefully keep our stock of wheat down to a supply sufficient to last a fortnight—or is it a month 11 No, Sir, I don't think the Referendum at all likely to fit in with our usual style of doing things, and when the admirable institution whose name I borrow is sufficiently enlarged, I expect to see most of the nation permanently
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