Morley's use of the latter word here, they are all but strictly synonymous; the State is the Family writ large. And in what way and how much are we concerned with the question, 'Is the Family means or end?' What alteration in conduct (or even in sentiment may be expected from a precise knowledge of what the Family exists for? What reason is there for considering the individual a cog or pinion in the State any more than in the Family, and what would it matter if a likeness to cog or pinion could be established in the greater and the smaller relation? In some remote philosophical way the questions repeated here by Mr. Morley have a profitable purpose in them, no doubt, or he would not trouble himself about them. But what is their bearing on the ethics of practical statesmanship? Apparently, this. Worship of the State is wrong. How is this worship manifested? What is it known by? The fervid sentiment called Patriotism. It is this which is wrong, or at any rate that goes wrong. And not the intention, but the danger of those questions--('Is the State means or end? What does it really exist for?' and the rest)—is to put the individual at odds with Patriotism; and to do so upon considerations which stimulate appeal to the individual's sense of personal advantage. Prejudice, perhaps, though I call it conviction, tells me that there is no good in that. To put the individual at odds with wrong-doing cloaked as Patriotism (an imposture, of which we have lately seen some flaunting examples) is itself a patriotic thing to do. But to cast suspicion on true Patriotism as immoral is on every ground as wrong as it can be. Destroy Patriotism, and the staff and shield of freedom go too: there is an end to one of the surest helps of humanity from low conditions to higher ones. Love of country is a moral force, with certain beauties of its own, which works for the advancement of all mankind. It exists wherever there is a people capable of advancing anything, and is generally strongest in those which are the most capable of furthering most good things. Where it perishes, there is a perishing people, soon to be good for nothing. Directly or indirectly, every civic virtue springs from it or is sustained by it, and would languish with it. Instinctive as mothers' love, love of country is felt as moral with as much conviction as the love of truth and honesty. Its complementary passion, detestation of treachery to country, is so deep that a people wronged by another would loathe the traitor who aided them to punish his native land; and even in England at this day I doubt whether any philosopher (I do not say any philosophy) would justify the excessive moralist. No. Patriotism is as good an original virtue as most; a moral enthusiasm calling into play many of the highest and noblest of virtues; and on that as well as on other accounts it remains as necessary and essential a factor in a great evolutionary process as devotion to family was at the

beginning. A time may come when Patriotism will be an outworn agency of human advancement; but for reasons yet to be stated it must not be abandoned in our day if that time is ever to come.

To put ourselves on a right understanding of the matter as a whole, three things are necessary. Firstly, to recognise that the Law of the Beasts is not yet banished from human affairs, but-with modifications and softenings amidst increasing hatred of it-still lives and reigns in international politics. Secondly, to recognise the functions of statesmanship for what they really are. Thirdly, not to be impatient with origins, and to be patient with developments.

On the first of these points no more need be said: it is palpable, and means a very great deal. The safety of the State being so largely placed under this law of the beasts, it is impossible that statesmanship should refuse to go by it. There is abundant room and opportunity for the influence of the Moral Law in international affairs, and its influence is by no means a failure. But they go upon a foundation of the Natural Law; they cannot be removed from that foundation yet; and hence it follows that statesmanship has still to work perforce by the Natural Law, which is brutal, and only as it can by the Moral Law, which is divine. In effect, the statesman is part of an unregenerate order of things, and can only get above them at the risk of losing hold upon them. Here he has to deal with forces as forces, and little with their morality; for whatever that may be, it rarely modifies their weight, subtlety, effect. If met at all, the only way of opposing them often is by use of the same or similar means; appeal to moral principle being (in hard cases, such as we look to in this debate) no more effectual practically than between dog and bear. Yet though that is understood to be 'in the game,' just as in actual war it is understood that ruse and guile are 'in the game' no less than havoc, the statesman might conceivably resolve to use no means of prevention or defence unsanctioned by the Moral Law. But in these same hard cases that would be offering his country to destruction and ensuring its accomplishment. There, then, he stands. He has done what that higher law which is not of the beasts pointed to imperatively. But neither can his country consider his conduct moral nor is it. It is seven times immoral; and if the case should be, as it naturally would in such circumstances, that the more civilised community goes down before the more barbarous, he does a wrong to all mankind. And that exactly shows the true position of statesmanship in international affairs.

The final consideration in the last paragraph not only excuses but justifies on moral grounds the Machiavellian precept, as properly defined and limited: 'If nothing else will serve to secure the existence

of your State in freedom,' &c.; with the implied and essential proviso that recourse to the law of the beasts must never be carried beyond the need. I say justifies on moral grounds. For when Mr. Morley asks, presenting the Machiavellian precept to us as a counsel of despair, 'If moral force and spiritual force are exhausted, with what hope can you look for either good soldiers or good rulers ?' he leads our minds down a wrong turning. For by many signs the truth seems to be that moral and spiritual force is coming into existence by development, not going out by exhaustion. And as the nations rise from barbarism, how they can be protected from destruction by ruder and less scrupulous rivals, so that their spiritual growths may continue, strengthen, and propagate their kind, if not by the only means by which aggression can be foiled or repelled? Moral influences, or any supposed awe that they may shed, will not do it. And (to quote myself) unless the free existence of such a community is upheld through a long period of moral development, and upheld till other States reciprocate the bias to a higher morality, the only way of bringing mankind into the rule of none but moral and spiritual forces is fatally interrupted.

Provide against the interruption, and there is hope; at least so I make out, as follows. The morality of a State may be considered as a trinity in unity. There is that which goes to the perfecting of citizenship, that which goes to the perfecting of individual character, and that which makes for the extension of civic relations or amenities to other States. Through the perfecting of individual character, the perfecting of citizenship; through the perfecting of both, the extension of the obligations and amenities of citizenship to groups of nations.' That is the natural order; the third process depending on the other two. In one way or another Patriotism constitutes nearly the whole morality of citizenship, and in nearly every sense is a determination to maintain the existence and freedom of the State. It cannot be got rid of without destroying the State itself; and' with the ruin of the State the evolutionary process breaks down at some point before the perfecting of citizenship and individual character has prepared a possibility of including groups of nations in civic obligations and amenities.' There has been no time to await and establish a reciprocal bias to a higher system of morality. All goes, and again and again similar beginnings come to the same end.

Here, it seems to me, is clear justification of the Machiavellian precept on moral grounds. Of course it can be misconceived, misconstrued, transformed by arbitrary interpretation, and that cannot be helped. But there will be agreement on one point. If Machiavelism is detestable in foreign affairs, it is not less so in domestic affairs. Doubt about keeping a nation in existence if it may only be done by unveracity, false profession, breach of faith, is not well counte

nanced by the practice of these arts in an infinitely more immoral way to keep a party in office. And if, as appears certain, the best hope of evicting the Law of the Beasts from international affairs is by the elevation of political sentiment in the several States of the world, it is plain that their rulers have a double duty in harmonising their scruples to the tune of Morality begins at home.

FREDERICK GREENWOOD.

JOHN DAY

ONE of the very greatest poets that ever glorified the world has left on record his wish that Beaumont and Fletcher had written poems instead of plays; and his wish has been echoed by one of the finest and surest critics of poetry, himself an admirable and memorable poet, unequalled in his own line of terse and pathetic narrative or allegory. I am reluctant if not ashamed, and sorry if not afraid, to differ from Coleridge and Leigh Hunt; yet I cannot but think that it would have been a pity, a mistake, and a grievous loss to poetic or creative literature, if the great twin brethren of our drama had not given their whole soul and their whole strength to the stage. I cannot imagine that any poetry they might have left us, had they gone astray after Spenser with the kinsmen of the elder of the two, could have been worth Philaster or The Spanish Curate, The Maid's Tragedy or The Knight of Malta. But I do sincerely regret that a far humbler labourer in the same Elysian field should have wasted the treasure of a sweet bright fancy and the charm of a true lyrical gift on work too hard and high for him. John Day should never have written for the stage of Shakespeare. The pretty allegory of his Peregrinatio Scholastica, a really charming example of that singular branch of mediæval literature which had yet to find its last consummate utterance in the Pilgrim's Progress of a half inspired but wholly demented and demoralised Christomaniac, is perhaps better reading than his comedies; and it is not the least of our many debts to the industrious devotion of Mr. Bullen that we owe to him the publication of this long buried and forgotten little work of kindly and manly and rather pathetic fancy. There is nothing in it of such reptile rancour as hisses and spits and pants with all the recreant malignity of a fangless viper, through the stagnant and fetid fenlands of The Return from Parnassus. We are touched and interested by the modest plea—it is rather a plea than a plaint—of the poor simple scholar; but perhaps we only realise how hard and heavy must have been the pressure of necessity or mischance on his gentle and fanciful genius when we begin to read the first extant play in which he took a fitful and indistinguishable part. And yet there is good matter in The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green, however VOL. XLII-No. 248

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