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lofty genius, exemplary virtue, and personal godliness. His heretical deeds were the occasion of all the obloquy heaped upon his name and memory :

"In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,

And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds."

If we cannot as yet cherish the hope that, besides erecting in Oxford some visible monument to the mem

ory of Wycliffe, the University should, as an example to Cambridge and to the Scottish universities, institute a Wycliffe Lectureship for the exposition of the works of the great Reformer, it is surely not too much to expect that Oxford should give all possible countenance and support to the project for the printing and the publication of Wycliffe's unprinted and unpublished writings. This, in the meantime, is perhaps the best tribute that can be offered to the memory of Wycliffe. For, as Dr Shirley said, some nineteen years ago, "The Latin works of Wycliffe are, both historically and theologically, by far the most important; from these alone can Wycliffe's theological position be understood: and it is not, perhaps, too much to say, that no writings so important for the history of doctrine are still buried in manuscript."1 These neglected, unknown, and hitherto inaccessible works, are being printed under competent editorship by "The Wycliffe Society." They have more than a mere theological interest. They are important in their relation to the thought which developed itself in the reformation of religion, in the revival of learning, and in the assertion, maintenance, and defence of constitutional liberty in England.

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For from the relation of his work to the University, to the independence of the nation and the sovereignty of the Crown, to the Church and to the people of England, a manifold interest must for ever belong to the name, the life, and the work of John Wycliffe. Corresponding with all this is the manifold obligation of the University, the Crown, the Church, and the people of England. For Wycliffe was the first of those self-denying and fearless men to whom we chiefly indebted for the overthrow of superstition, ignorance, and despotism, and for all the privileges and blessings, political and ligious, which we enjoy. He was the first of those who cheerfully hazarded their lives that they might achieve their purpose, which was nothing less than the felicity of millions unborn-a felicity which could only proceed from the knowledge and possession of the truth. He is one of those "who boldly attacked the system of error and corruption, though fortified by popular credulity, and who, having forced the stronghold of superstition, and penetrated the recesses of its temple, tore aside the veil that concealed the monstrous idol which the world had so long ignorantly worshipped, dissolved the spell by which the human mind was bound, and restored it to liberty! How criminal must those be who, sitting at ease under the vines and fig-trees planted by the labours and watered with the blood of those patriots, discover their disesteem of the invaluable privileges which they inherit, or their ignorance of the expense at which they were purchased, by the most unworthy treatment of those to whom they owe them, misrepre

1 Preface to A Catalogue of the Original Works of John Wycliffe: 1865.

sent their actions, calumniate their motives, and load their memories with every species of abuse!" While we look to the men of Oxford for a thorough though tardy and late vindication of Wycliffe's name and services to the University and to learning, we expect from the people of England a more effective and permanent memorial of Wycliffe and his work than can be raised by any number of scholars or members of

the University. Wycliffe lived for God and for the people. He taught the English people how to use the English tongue for the expression of truth, liberty, and religion. He was the first to give to the people of England the Bible in the English language. What a gift was this! He was in this the pioneer of Tyndale, of Coverdale, and of all those who have

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1 M'Crie's Life of John Knox, Period I. 2 Milton, Paradise Lost, Book VI.

THE COMMERCIAL EXPLOITS OF A COMMERCIAL CABINET.

For nearly five years the British Empire has been "suffering a recovery" from the malign and disastrous effects of the Administration which was ousted from power in 1880. For nearly five years it has been pursuing the paths of pleasantness and peace under the guidance of statesmen whose boast is that they are men of the people -above all, that they are men of business. It is puzzling and anomalous that the condition of the country should correspond so badly with the glowing expectations of five years ago. The sun has shone on us, and bountiful harvests have rewarded the tillers of the soil. Adversity should have been banished from our midst by the combined force of good government and good seasons, but it is still with us. Commercial depression, instead of being dispelled, has deepened and intensified. Markets languish, and prices decline; factories and shipbuilding yards are being closed, or put on short time. Armies of workmen are being thrown idle, and the beggarly soup-kitchen is again hard at work in the poorer quarters of our great cities. Everything tends downward, with two conspicuous exceptions the national expenditure and the income-tax. The Chancellor of the Exchequer acknowledges an expenditure of about 88 millions for the current year, and how many millions more he is keeping up his sleeve is a matter of uneasy conjecture. To carry him on he has got an additional penny on the income-tax; but it is only a foretaste of what he will require next April, if Mr Gladstone's financial canon, that each year should honestly bear its own expenditure, is not to be honoured in the breach rather

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than in the observance, like so many other Pecksniflian axioms from the same mint. Mr Childers has looming ahead of him a vista of deficits and increasing taxation such as ruined the financial repute of the Whig party fifty years ago, and drove the country for safety into the arms of Sir Robert Peel. The taxpayers are beginning to take alarm. The commercial classes are at open war with the Board of Trade. In both Houses of Parliament inquiries into the causes of agricultural and commercial depression are being moved for; and in spite of the clouds of soothing statistics in which Ministers took shelter from the demand, these inquiries cannot be much longer staved off. The industry of the country is in as deplorable a state at this moment as it was in the darkest days of 1837, before railways, steamships, and colonies came to its rescue. Now, as then, it is a commercial Cabinet, an Administration of men of business, that steers it straight for the breakers.

There was a time, and not so very long ago, when political economists of the Cobden school boldly disputed the right of the State to interfere with trade in any shape or form. Private enterprise was a sacred and self-sufficient thing which no Government or Legisla ture could meddle with without doing harm. Manufacturers who were adding factory to factory, and merchants who saw foreign markets stretching toward them with open mouths wherever they chose to look, ridiculed the idea of any Government managing their business for them better than they could manage it for themselves. All they asked for of the State was to be let alone. How many old

speeches of Mr Bright might be fished up from the musty pages of 'Hansard,' which had this for their burden-"The best thing you can do for us is to leave us alone"! But that is no longer the temper of commerce, or of manufactures either, at the present day. The commercial classes no longer complain of legislation as an intrusion and an impertinence. Their grievance now is that they have too little of it. To atone for the deficiencies of the House of Commons they have started miniature parliaments of their own. The Chambers of Commerce which now flourish at every leading commercial centre in the country are quasi legislative bodies. Once a-year they meet in grand conference, and discuss all the knotty questions of the warehouse and the Exchange. The men whose fathers boasted that each kept his own affairs to himself, are now combined together in a great Trade Guild, which has ramifications all over the three kingdoms. They consult together about markets; they endeavour to act together whenever an emergency arises affecting the whole body; they maintain as far as possible uniform scales of wages; they present a united front to the tradesunion when it threatens them with a strike; when the Board of Trade is obnoxious to them they descend upon it in overwhelming deputations which can make even Mr Chamberlain tremble.

about warps and wefts, mohairs and alpacas, mule-twists and watertwists, as if they were episodes in the latest sensational novel. Since commercial treaties came into vogue, the intimacy which has also sprung up between the Chambers of Commerce and the Foreign Office is almost pathetic. Their deputations are not only welcomed at Whitehall, but a special functionary has been told off to act the part of cicerone to them. Mr Kennedy, who appears to fill that office at present, is assiduous in his attentions to the British exporter. With vigilant eye he watches over his interests in every foreign port, and carefully reports to him from time to time the new difficulties that are being thrown in the way of British trade. He takes note of the changes in the tariffs of foreign countries, and makes them known most conscientiously to all who are likely to suffer by them. He can explain at any moment the exact position of every commercial negotiation on the stocks: how this one has been temporarily shelved "in consequence of unexpected diffculties; possible culties;" that one brought to a standstill through the dilatoriness of a Cortes or the ill-timed recurrence of a Ministerial crisis; another killed by a protest from some envious foreign Government after it had been satisfactorily concluded; the next hampered in its working by misapprehensions at home as to its objects. The Commercial Treaty Department of the Foreign Office is one of the busiest as well as one of the blandest of our governing institutions. This year it did the Chambers of Commerce the honour of deputing Mr. Kennedy to attend their annual conference at Wolverhampton. During the meeting he gave the delegates a special audience, and described to them the various

Of late years the relations of the Foreign Office to the Chambers of Commerce have become very animated, not to say effusive. Per manent officials who would have grudged half an hour of their precious time to Mr Cobden or to Joseph Hume when they were young men, have learned to smile on hard-visaged visitors from Lancashire or the Midlands. They listen to long-winded explanations

commercial treaties which are pending at Constantinople. Great difficulty, he said, was being experienced with the Turkish authorities in adjusting the classification of goods under the new tariff. The Turkish Custom-house officials were not familiar with the fine distinctions now drawn between silk and waste-silk tissues, and it puzzled them why we should be so fond of mixing cotton with our woollen fabrics. No date could be assigned for the new system to come into effect; but the delegates would be glad to know that her Majesty's Government "claimed complete most favoured nation treatment for British trade in Turkey."

Something more remarkable than the pig-headedness of the Turks is the serene indifference with which this and kindred episodes are regarded by the British Cabinet and the British House of Commons. They have both been otherwise employed of late, especially during the past four years. Since 1880 commercial subjects have been heard in Parliament only in the brief lulls between outbreaks of Irish agrarianism, new rules of procedure, Bradlaugh scandals, and county franchise gasconade. They have not formed a recognised and essential part of the legislative business of the country. The Legislature is beginning to forget that the industry and the trade of the empire are under its jurisdiction. Few commercial measures are introduced; fewer still are passed. The commercial record of last session, for instance, is grimly humorous in its vacuity. The president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce Mr Norwood, M.P. a Liberal, and a frequent friend in need to the Board of Trade, mourned at Wolverhampton over "the last parliamentary session as having, so far as respected mercantile

and social legislation, proved singularly barren of result." It had produced a few miscarriages, which Mr Norwood sadly enumerated with all the tenderness he could muster for the ruffled feelings of Mr Chamberlain. Sorely against his Liberal grain, he enlarged on the two worst fiascoes of the session-Mr Chamberlain's Merchant Shipping Bill and his Railway Regulation Bill. These provoked, or rather they brought to a head, a flood of hostility among the trading classes such as no previous Cabinet had ever passed through alive.

The commerce of the country was never so openly, directly, and vehemently at war with the Government as during the two months of last session, when Mr Chamberlain was being denounced in every seaport of the United Kingdom. Merchants and shipowners are not much addicted to agitation as a rule. They do not readily rush away from business to hold indignation meetings, as they were doing everywhere last spring. Even the passion of the Anti-CornLaw crusade did not inflame them as did the Merchant Shipping Bill. In the former case, Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet was not of itself an object of attack. It was rather an umpire standing between two violently-opposed sections of the population. It inclined the balance toward the side that seemed certain to win in the end, and thus closed the contest. Even while opposing free trade the Peel Ministry were not personally unpopular; and after they had passed it, they became, except to the rump of their own shattered party, the sponsors of a great fiscal reform. The experience of Mr Chamberlain with his Merchant Shipping Bill was entirely different. He was the attacking and not the attacked party. He rushed gaily and glibly into an adventure which he as

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