their place. Institutions built up out of poor-very poor-men's pence are not easily raised up afresh. Those that had survived, or

had been reconstituted, were in some instances all the stronger. And, generally, the new spirit infused into the movement, all the less likely to be quenched after M. Giolitti's public vindication, showed that the making of "martyrs " has had its usual effect and produced much promising "seed" for the movement. But there were large gaps; there had been heavy losses; and there had been much suffering and injustice, as the supreme tribunal itself has ruled. And all quite gratuitously.

I am not here taking upon myself to defend Socialist theories, which I do not subscribe to, and which may be right or wrong. The overwhelming majority of Italian "Socialists" probably do not understand them. But for the attitude which they have taken up there is enough justification in abuses so glaring and bad that they need only be named to be resented.

Let us look at the state of things prevailing in Italy. By a recovery which to foreigners appears almost miraculous, but which in Italy itself was foreseen some years ago, at any rate by the more keensighted statesmen and economists, the country is fast wiping out, in its economic aspect, at any rate on the surface, the distressing traces of that poverty and embarrassment which were bound to impress themselves upon it as a result of the great upheaval for union, and which an ill-advised, over-ambitious policy has quite needlessly aggravated. The past period has been a period of revival of industry and commerce almost everywhere; and Italy has, like other countries, benefited by the commercial sunshine prevailing. Undoubtedly this result is, so far as it goes, due in part to the protectionist policy pursued, which has, as Laveleye put it, undone the good accomplished by the boring of Alpine tunnels, in re-erecting international barriers, and has planted factory chimneys where there is no economic justification for them whatever. Thanks to this hothouse forcing, however, Italy has found itself in a position to indulge its ambition of becoming a great industrial power, as by its African policy it had hoped to become a great military one. Whatever may be in store for it in the fature the example of Germany cannot be altogether reassuring for the time its budgets have been rescued from chronic deficiency and its currency is quoted almost at par. However, all these are, after all, mere surface results. The solid foundation has not yet been provided. The tree is kept green by careful watering at the top, but its root is fixed in as yet unreclaimed, barren soil. Agriculture is notoriously suffering. To assist it, duties-exceeding in amount even that "insensé" duty (this is M. Leroy Beaulieu's term) levied in France-have been imposed upon foreign produce. That makes the circle of all-round protection complete-leaving only one significant gap. Labour has

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to bear the burden of it all. But it fails to keep agriculture prosperous. Accordingly more direct subvention has been resorted The treasures of the Bank of Naples are being laid under contribution, grants are made in support of agricultural education, and a proposal is on record, fathered by one ex-Minister and sponsored by another, of even greater influence, to divert £2,000,000 a year from the savings banks for the benefit of farmers to employ poor working-men's money to assist in keeping their food dear. Obviously, all this must be useless while the burden of taxation remains what it is, devouring a full thirty per cent of the yield of the pastures and the fields. Obviously, also, it is bound to serve rather as a damper than as a stimulus to individual effort. Thanks to the adoption of co-operative methods private initiative is at the present moment otherwise pretty active in Italy, in the province of agriculture. But this subsidising materially checks it just as a similar policy does in France, where the land, more favoured in respect of natural fertility and of climate than our own, yields, acre for acre, only half what it does in this country-doubtless because the stimulus of self-reliance is wanting, and cultivators have been taught to look for benefits rather to their neighbours' pockets, filtering their contents through a State department, than to themselves. In Italy the yield is one half less even than what it is in France. There is an increasing employment of artificial manures, foodstuffs and machinery in Italy, and the sky is being effectively cannonaded to keep off the hail. That is so much to the good. However, the once fertile plateaus of the South remain condemned to barren aridity. Nothing is done for the reafforestation of the land, which means that the deficiency of rain must remain chronic. The Agro romano, with its splendid possibilities, in spite of legislation dating back to 1883, continues a malaria-breeding desert. Wines continue to be so badly made that they cannot seriously compete in the world's markets; and the only advice which highly competent counsellors like MM. Luzzatti and Maggiorino Ferraris find that they can give to troubled vine-growers is that they should restrict output.

All these things hit more particularly the cultivator of the humbler class very hard. He has a grasping middleman above him, grinding his face for rent which, after all, pays the middleman very well, though it leaves the tiller of the soil miserable. And he has an even more exacting person-literally more "exacting"-to deal with in the shape of the esattore, or tax-collector, who knows no mercy. Let the cultivator fail to satisfy him, from sheer inability, and at once he forfeits his house and home. Whole communities are known to have been expropriated, their property being seized by distraint, for unpaid taxes. Not long ago a family was turned out of its little holding for the want literally of 16 centesimi (about 1d.) to make up the complete amount of taxes due! Similar

cases have occurred elsewhere. Moreover, there are indirect taxes -on cattle, on farm servants, on credit transactions, on purchases and exchanges, and, on the top of all, a truly exorbitant one on the registration of deeds. Descend in the social scale and you find things still worse worse alike in town and in country. Wages have been improved here and there by what is called "Socialist action, that is, by the union of labourers into co-operative societies for the purpose of collective bargaining. But, on the whole, they still continue miserably low. That, of course, benefits the wagepayer all the more since there is much competition for employment -but at a crushing loss to the wage-earner, who, after all, makes up the bulk of the nation. Day labourers-provided that they can obtain work, which very often they cannot have to be content with 1.70 lire a day at the outside in summer, and 1 lira in winter. Women and children have to work in the fields from six to six, with only one hour's rest allowed, at from 40 to 70 centesimi a day, 10 centesimi being nearly equal to a penny. In the rice-swamps they are kept eight hours at work, up to the knees in foul water, and exposed for hours to the scorching rays of the sun, in consideration of the miserable wage of 80 to 100 centesimi for women and 40 to 60 centesimi for children-trudging, in many cases, five miles and more to their work and back, because the unhealthy atmosphere of the swamps makes the adjoining country altogether uninhabitable. Is it a wonder that, what with this work and altogether insufficient nourishment, taken without the necessary ingredient of salt, they suffer as a class from anæmia and that mortality is great among them? But that is nothing to what they have to put up with in winter, when field-labour ceases and employment becomes scarce. Happy he or she who then obtains intermittent employment at half those starvation wages! In respect of town labourers the condition of things is aggravated by the oppressive consumo, the local duty levied in 316 towns on articles of food, on the top of the "insensé " tax taken by the State. In 1898 Rome collected in this way 1,768,943 lire on flour alone; Palermo, 2,320,200 lire; and Naples, with its poverty-stricken population, 2,999,408 lire!

How, in the face of all this, are the poor to live? Is it surprising that people grow discontented and even mutinous ? In this country there would, under similar circumstances, be something very like open rebellion.

And what do Governments and Parliament do to remedy all this? Precious little. Seeing what are the conditions of political life, very much could not, indeed, be expected. There are men among those who have in turn been summoned to take part in government full of sympathy with the poor. M. Luzzatti's whole life has been devoted to the service of the working classes-in such way as he judges that they should be served. But with all his unique influence

he has not yet been able to carry his proposal to extend the value of contracts given to labour societies beyond the 100,000 lire (£4000) at which it was fixed in 1889. Dr. Wollemborg even lost his post over his proposal, most just in itself, to reform the customs tariff for the benefit of consumers and abolish the consumo a matter now recognised as of so pressing urgency that his successor has been driven into taking it up afresh. One reason is, that there are no "parties" in Italy in our sense of the word, holding well considered and consistent opinions in common, such as ensure some kind of homogeneity and unity of aim. There are mere pro hac vice groups, which may comprise, often for purely personal objects, the most oldfashioned Tory together with the most advanced Radical. It was one of the latter who, as member of a high-Conservative Cabinet, pointed out to me with pride his fauteuil in the Chamber, placed close to the Radicals-" because it is they with whom I am most in sympathy." It is admitted that there is much place-seeking and jobbery. In truth it is the governing classes, and not the naughty "Socialists," as M. Giolitti attests, who are open to the reproach quoted above of forming "purely Parliamentary and political factions with Parliamentary and political aims." What do they do for the working classes? They pass an insufficient Compensation for Accidents law and an equally inadequate Old Age Pensions law, and encourage the working classes in their agitation for a State-endowed Credit Bank, something like the ill-starred Caisse Centrale of France, and likely to end in the same unprofitable way. That is to say, they deliberately train the people who should be given more of the "necessary liberties," in order that they may raise themselves by their own efforts, to lean with their whole weight upon that most deceptive of broken reeds, State socialism-just as Bismarck did in following Lassalle, with the inevitable result of raising up thereby, to his own dismay and discomfiture, the powerful party led by Bebel and Singer.

It is interesting to note in what very different ways the same lesson will impress different minds. We know that it was a famine, and the result of taking off for a time the duty upon corn to meet it -in far-away China-which converted Mr. Gladstone to Free Trade in the early days of his Ministerial career. He argued that what was good in China must be good elsewhere, that what helped the famishing must be of benefit also to the poor not yet brought down to famishing point. Under the stress of a similar famine the Italian Government a short time ago adopted the same effective method of suspending the duty. Professor Pareto says that they dared not resist the popular demand; there would have been a revolution. This is very likely. In any case the duty was taken off. However, "the Devil got well "-at any rate partially well-and his wisdom came to an end. The levying of customs goes on

merrily as before. Factory chimneys smoke; Schio and Biella turn out their indifferent cottons, which Lancashire could supply both more cheaply and of better quality; ships sail from Italian harbours freighted with cargoes which Providence never intended for Italian vessels; the large proprietor sells his corn at a profit; all looks prosperous and flourishing—and below all this show of prosperity there are the myriads of contadini and operai scarcely able to keep body and soul together, not knowing how to clothe themselves, finding themselves systematically condemned to malaria and pellagra. And when in despair they protest against this deliberate neglect, which is more than flesh and blood can bear, down comes an army upon them, as in 1898, itself committing far more illegal acts, as Courts of Law have afterwards acknowledged, riding roughshod over their citizen's rights and their claims as human beings. It is a pitiful picture to contemplate.

However, you cannot expect the labourer or small cultivator to sit still under such treatment. He will, he must cherish some kind of hope. Since it is not offered him by the borghesia, which have for him only the mocking comfort of a reference to Mr. Disraeli's famous "magic of patience," and the roundabout effects of a currency at par in the world's market, he turns for it elsewhere. His reason

tells him that it was not God's providence which ordained that bread should be dear and salt unpurchasable, in the fertile country in which the Georgics were written and whose shores are washed almost all round by the salt sea. These are "the tares that an enemy has sowed among the good wheat of Nature. It was not God's law which condemned him to maize and pellagra, and prevented him, contrary to St. Paul's injunction, from either " working" or "eating." It was not God's ordinance that while the poor are ground down and have taxes squeezed out of them which they cannot evade, because they would be at once found out, the rich should, as they notoriously do, declare only half their income for income tax, and understate the value on which they have to pay heavy stamp duty in sales by one half, thus "graduating" taxation so as to make it light at the top and heavy at the bottom. tell them that all these things need not be. give them hope, they are not disposed to their political theories, their constructive principles. They hear their message, "Cheer, boys, cheer! There's wealth for honest labour!" and are content to follow them.

There are people who And since these people scrutinise very carefully

Now what is it that these leaders, branded in the British press as a self-seeking, “purely Parliamentary and partisan" faction, teach the poor labourers to do? Let us see! But let us look at the solid practical pudding, not at the little sprig of theoretical holly that political conceit has stuck on the top in the shape of learned maxims. Well, in the first place they teach them to raise their