Farming in America is therefore a profitable business at which farmers make money, and they can well afford to send us their surplus stuffs at a low price after satisfying the wants of their own country. In a country where farming pays and flourishes abundantly, every other trade and profession flourishes in like proportion, and plenty and contentment reign.

Food.-Provisions of all sorts in America are very cheap, much cheaper than with us in the old country, cheap though we think our food may be, therefore the cost of actual living is very low; and though clothing, luxuries, labor and attendance are considerably dearer than in this country, still the average American workingman lives 100 per cent. better than the average workingman does in Great Britain, because he has higher wages and cheaper food in greater variety.

Resources.-The natural resources of the United States are enormous; in wood, coal, minerals and metals of all sorts it is, without doubt, the wealthiest country in the world. The means of transit, by water and by rail, are as perfect and complete as it is possible to imagine, being, in fact, unsurpassed by any series of countries.

Many other advantages might be mentioned, but I have said enough to show that it need not surprise us to find that a country possessing such advantages, and under such conditions, should at the present time be at least twenty years ahead of Great Britain in invention and in commercial and political ad

vancement.

It will, I think, be at once seen where we have to look for our rival, in commerce and in arts and sciences, in the present as well as in the future; and that, if we can by any possibility keep ahead of or even abreast with the people of the United States, we can quite well afford to ignore all the other older and slower nationalities of the world, and still hold our own in progress and prosperity.

On our present lines, however, it is utterly impossible for us to keep pace with our great competitor, and it be hoves our people, and especially our statesmen, to be stirring.

What are the disadvantages under

which our people in Great Britain labor? Our disadvantages are indeed many, and I will name a few of them, in the order in which I have placed the advantages of the American people, that the contrast may be more clearly seen.

men.

Invention.-When I say that, practically, invention is discouraged by the Government in Great Britain, I simply state the naked truth. Until very lately the Government of this country made it as difficult as possible for inventors to patent and protect their inventions. Now, to be sure, it is a very little easier, in the earlier stages, to do so. But this slight concession was only granted after a committee, in England and in Scotland, of inventors and others interested in inventions, had kept the subject alive at their own expense, and had for years dinned their country's grievances in this respect into the ears of unwilling statesTo show how trifling was the concession granted, I need only mention the exact state of the case as it at present stands. Instead of paying 77. in total fees for a period of seventeen years, as in America, the poor inventors in this free country of Great Britain have to pay the Government the sum of 1547. in Government fees, during a period of fourteen years, for every single invention patented and carried through to completion. That is, the inventors in this country have at the present time to pay twenty-two times as much to the Government, for a shorter period, as the inventors in the United States pay to their Government for a longer period of protection-which, when the difference of time granted for protection is taken into account, gives the ingenious and inventive people of the United States fully twenty-six times the advantage, in every patent, over their brethren in Great Britain. It will be understood, of course, that the costs as I have stated only refer to the fees paid to the respective Governments: there is always to be added the sum payable to the patent agents for preparing the necessary formal and legal documents, and for the preparation of the drawings, etc.; but these additional costs are about the same in both countries.

Unfortunately also in this country, owing to our peculiar laws, it is not possible for an inventor of small means

to retain the protection granted to him, and for which he pays so dearly, on any valuable invention, should a great public company choose to appropriate or infringe the said invention, as, though the lower law courts may decide in the inventor's favor every time, he cannot follow the appeals, say, up to the House of Lords, and ultimately he must, in these circumstances, lose his case as well as his invention for want of being able to continue the fight with hard, hard cash.

This is one phase of the law and justice of this country, about which we boast so loudly in our foolish ignorance. To me it seems as if the law in this case was constructed specially for the benefit of the rich and mighty, and as if justice, forsooth, could be bought only by the longest purse.

There is no body of experts provided by the Government to inquire into the novelty of any invention before allow ing it to be patented, and patents are practically granted indiscriminately to all who can afford to pay for them. The consequence of this is that a patent granted in this country gives no warrant that the "invention" is novel, and it has not the same value as a similar patent granted in the United States. If, again, a patent in this country turns out to be valuable, its novelty has generally to be decided afterward in the law courts at enormous cost, to the ruin, as a rule, of the patentee, and to the ultimate loss of the country. The United States Government considers that an encouragement of invention benefits the country, and gives a stimulus to the genius and inventive faculties of the people; it very wisely does not attempt to reap a revenue from the brains of its people, but it rather puts a premium on invention-instead of unduly taxing it-by running the patent office department most efficiently, but yet as economically as possible. The British Government, on the other hand, keeps invention at a heavy discount, by taxing it at a rate out of all reason, and by reaping a huge revenue annually from its most talented and progressive countrymen.

Taxation.-While the American people are entirely free from imperial taxation, we, the British people, literally groan under it. Our other taxes also,

and our iniquitous mining royalties, etc., are so many, and bear so heavily and so unequally on the trading and working portion of the community, that it is astonishing how the majority of the people can get along honorably and progressively at all. Take the case of London alone. The taxes average from 25 to 30 per cent. on the rental, and the rental is not small, while there is a special tax levied on all coal that comes into London by water, rail, road, or otherwise, to the extent of 13d. a ton. True, this special tax on all coal used in London comes to an end in a year or thereabouts, but there are strenuous efforts being made, and the very greatest pressure is being brought to bear on members of Parliament, to get it re-enacted.

The electric light cannot be applied on any large scale owing to the dead weight hung on it; telephony and telegraphy are so taxed that no private individual can afford to apply them in business, unless through companies heavily handicapped by the Government. Practically no telephonic communication can be had in business, from city to city or from town to town-as it can be had in America-because the Government holds the telegraph and main wires, and will neither take up telephony itself, for the use of the public, nor give reasonable facilities for private companies to do so. Need it be wondered at, therefore, that in the application of these scientific appliances we are far behind America, and that trade languishes in this country when it is in full "boom" on the other side of the Atlantic? certainly most extraordinary that in the application of telephony Great Britain should actually be behind a comparatively poor country like Sweden-where I found last year the telephone in universal use in Gothenburg, and in Stockholm, and the surrounding small towns, among all classes of business men and private citizens.

It is

Education.-It is well known to what an extent the cost of education bears on all classes in this country, and how, in consequence of this, poor people try every expedient to cut short the school term of their children's education. This proceeding cannot of course tend toward enlightening the mass of the people, and until free and compulsory education is

adopted in this country, on the lines of the system which has been so long in use in the United States, we cannot attempt to keep pace with, far less to outstrip, the Americans in progress.

Local Government.-We are wofully deficient in local government in this country, all government worthy of the name being centralized in London, to the disadvantage and enormous cost of the nation at large. No alteration of a railway, not even the widening or the deviation of a road or stream in a county in the heart or at the extremity of either England, Scotland, or Ireland, nor any other petty local matter of this nature, can be accomplished without a previous application to Parliament in London for permission to carry out the work. When an application of this sort is opposed, as it generally is, by interested parties, it becomes a question again of money, and very often a cause of great injustice. An illustration of some magnitude may be given in the case of the Manchester Ship Canal Bill, lately brought before Parliament, which Bill was successfully opposed by a great railway company and other capitalists, by sheer and enormous money expenditure, and thus the unanimous desire of the whole people of a district was thwarted and great good deferred--to say nothing of the heavy burdens incurred by the wasteful use of a long purse in the feeing of lawyers, and in creating obstructions. For years progressive legislation has been blocked because of the utter inability of Parliament to overtake the work given it to do, and everything is in arrears. It seems, therefore, to be little short of the height of madness to attempt to continue to govern our mighty empire, in local as well as imperial matters, from London. We must decentralize more-following the successful example shown us by the United States and our own colonies and establish local Parliaments in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, for the settlement of all matters pertaining to local government in each of these countries; leaving imperial matters to be settled solely by the Parliament in London, if we are to have progressive legislation and to relieve the people of heavy burdens.

Agriculture.-Farming in this country at the present time is not a profitable

business, to say the very least, the whole agricultural industry being in a state of utter stagnation. I do not suppose any man will be found bold enough to say that farmers are now making money-in fact, if the truth were told, we should very likely be informed that any little money which even the richest of our farmers may still possess is rapidly leaving them, and that they are paying their rents as well as the costs of their living out of capital. This is a sad state of matters and it is impossible that it can go on much longer. How is it possible that our farmers can continue to pay heavy rents, in many cases under unjust restrictions, and compete with the American farmers, who, under more favorable climatic conditions, practically sit rent free? Our land laws have much to answer for, and the sooner they are put on a better and more just footing the better. The internal trade of no country can prosper when farming is bad and most of its farmers are in a state bordering on bankruptcy.

Food. Owing to the blessings of free trade outside, our food supply is plentiful and comparatively cheap, but we have to import the greater part of it. Without cheap food in this country multitudes of our fellow-countrymen would die of starvation every year, and without cheap food we could not possibly have cheap labor: while without cheap labor again we could not do an export trade, and without an export trade we should cease to exist as a manufacturing nation.

Our great competitor, the United States, is even now still our best customer, but how long this will continue it is hard to say, seeing she is already supplying our colonies and ourselves with many of our own kind of manufactures. The United States, again, can grow everything in the shape of food which she may ever require within her own borders, and could supply all our wants in that respect besides. The only advantage we have over the United States is, as I have said, that we have cheap labor, and because of our cheap labor, and that only, can we send into her markets raw material and manufactured goods despite her heavy import duties. The import duties of the United States, however, are being gradually but surely lowered, and she is tending

toward the adoption of free trade. When the United States adopt free trade, or anything approaching it, the price of labor in America will come down, and the American people will then be able to compete with us in our own country and run us out of the race, unless we, in the interim, develop our resources, stir ourselves up, and show ourselves as progressive and far advanced as she undoubtedly is in the industrial arts and sciences.

Resources. It should be remembered that our resources in this country-great in our eyes though these may be-are really of little moment when compared with the illimitable resources of the United States. Any one from the old country who has travelled over that vast domain, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the great northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, cannot fail to be impressed by its vastness and the greatness of its natural riches. Everything that man or the hand of man can require is to be found within the borders of the United States, and its people can be shut-as it were -entirely out from the rest of the world, and still live on in plenty and even in superabundance. We, on on the other hand, notwithstanding our great mineral resources, owing to the multitude of human beings within so comparatively small an area and to our ungenial climate, could not live even for a day without aid from the rest of the world.

Under the heading of "Food," I referred to the fact that we were blessed with free trade outside, meaning of course that, with the exception of certain luxuries not absolutely necessary, the world was allowed to send us in, duty free, all kinds of necessary food, raw material and manufactured articles. I am afraid this is, however, not quite an unmixed blessing, seeing that while the rest of the world can send in their wares to us duty free, we really have not free trade by any means among our selves, inside the borders of the United Kingdom. Foolish as we may think the policy of our great competitor to be, under Protection outside, the Government of the United States is not quite so foolish as to put a load on the internal trade, and on the progress of its people,

within its own borders in the manner our Government does.

The cost of transit of goods is very much heavier in Great Britain than it is in America, and our governing powers seem to agree with our great railway companies, that our competitors from the outside ought to have the preference. To give a single case: goods can actually be sent from New York to London, via Liverpool or Glasgow, at a less cost for freight and carriage than we, the British people, can send similar goods by the same rail from Liverpool or Glasgow to London, or vice versa.

I could go on enumerating many more disadvantages under which we labor in this country, but space forbids. I think sufficient has been said to show the true state of matters, and that a remedy must be found somehow or other, and that speedily, if we are in the future to hold our own against our all-powerful antagonist.

Our great competitor-being the greatest agricultural, manufacturing, and mining nation in the world, with unlimited credit, and being besides "essentially British," and having eight thousand daily newspapers-is no unworthy foeman; we must therefore be up and doing while there is yet time to clear the decks of all unnecessary dead-weight.

It may be noted that the Americans are trying to show us in this year of grace what they can produce in invention and manufactures, by holding an exhibition of purely American mechanism and manufactures in London, which is likely to be the Jubilee exhibition (for London at any rate). It should be known that this exhibition is neither instituted nor supported by the American Government, but is a purely private though gigantic speculation got up by some of the most eminent men and manufacturers in the United States; and the mere fact that such an exhibition, solely composed of our great competitor's wares, should take place in the capital of the commercial world, and in the heart of our empire, shows the pluck of the Americans and their determination to cut us ultimately out of the running, even in our own country, if they possibly can.

When was ever such an exhibition held, in a foreign country without Gov

ernment assistance, by any other nation in the whole annals of the world?

Considering the great advance the people of the United Kingdom have made during the past fifty years, in spite of the heavy weights hung on them, by "6 use and wont'' and all other remnants of feudal traditions, it surely stands to reason that, under more favorable circumstances, the advance will be proportionately greater.

How comes it that the "essentially British" Americans are so go-ahead and inventive, if not because they are enlightened and progressive-running lightly, as it were, in the race?

Why again are the mass of the people in the old country (of the same race as the Americans) so comparatively slow, and to all appearance so non-inventive -if not because they are unenlightened

and lethargic-running heavily laden in the race, looking back to the past rather than forward to the future?

In the language of a high authority, "the old nations of the earth creep on at a snail's pace, while the American Republic thunders past with the rush of the express. Why should this be? Who is to blame for the existing state of matters ?

In a free, constitutionally governed country like the United Kingdom, is it not time that the mass of the people were waking up, and insisting on their representatives and statesmen reading the signs of the times, and seeing that the disadvantages under which they labor as a nation are removed, and that the whole country is really governed by the people, and for the good of the people, in every sense?-Nineteenth Century.

THE death of Thomas Stevenson will mean not very much to the general reader. His service to mankind took on forms of which the public knows little and understands less. He came seldom to London, and then only as a task, remaining always a stranger and a convinced provincial; putting up for years at the same hotel where his father had gone before him; faithful for long to the same restaurant, the same church, and the same theatre, chosen simply for propinquity; steadfastly refusing to dine out. He had a circle of his own, indeed, at home; few men were more beloved in Edinburgh, where he breathed an air that pleased him; and wherever he went, in railway carriages or hotel smoking-rooms, his strange, humorous vein of talk and his transparent honesty raised him up friends and admirers. But to the general public and the world of London, except about the parliamentary committee-rocms, he remained unknown. All the time, his lights were in every part of the world, guiding the mariner; his firm were consulting engineers to the Indian, the New Zealand, and the Japanese Lighthouse Boards, so that Edinburgh was a world centre for

that branch of applied science; in Germany, he had been called "the Nestor of lighthouse illumination;" even in France, where his claims were long denied, he was at last, on the occasion of the late Exposition, recognized and medalled. And to show by one instance the inverted nature of his reputation, comparatively small at home, yet filling the world, a friend of mine was this winter on a visit to the Spanish main, and was asked by a Peruvian if he "knew Mr. Stevenson the author, because his works were much esteemed in Peru ?'' My friend supposed the reference was to the writer of tales; but the Peruvian had never heard of " Dr. Jekyll;" what he had in his eye, what was esteemed in Peru, were the volumes of the engineer.

Thomas Stevenson was born at Edinburgh in the year 1818, the grandson of Thomas Smith, first engineer to the Board of Northern Lights, son of Robert Stevenson, brother of Alan and David; so that his nephew, David Alan Stevenson, joined with him at the time of his death in the engineership, is the sixth of the family who has held, successively or conjointly, that office. The Bell Rock, his father's great triumph,