egislate 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 protege 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