feeling among the Nationalists in the city outside the council was as intense as that within the corporation. They called another special meeting of the council to consider a similar motion, this time with their forces all alined; but no sooner had the town clerk read the requisition than Councilor McEvoy, J.P., a technical spirit whose counterpart is to be found in all human councils, made formal objection to the manner in which the meeting had been convened. The notice had not been served on the town clerk in time, it was not signed properly, not dated, etc., and the lord mayor, sustaining the objection, the effort was abortive.

There were eight centuries of Irish wrath in the determination with which the Nationalists now set about the accomplishment of their purpose. Another special meeting was convened for the third of January, 1882. This time there were formal and strenuous objections from a Mr. Henry Edwards, "Freeman of the City," and Councilor McEvoy, dying in the last ditch, reiterated his former opposition, employing all the finesse of parliamentary obstruction. But one by one these outposts were taken, and a famous debate raged on the motion of Councilor Sullivan, M.P. (seconded by Alderman Meagher), that "the honorary freedom of the city be conferred upon Charles Stewart Parnell, M.P., and John Dillon, M.P., and that they be elected and admitted honorary burgesses of the Borough of Dublin, pursuant to the provisions of the municipal privileges of Ireland, Act of 1875."

Among the several amendments moved. by the opposition, one most vividly recalls the issues of those times: "That inasmuch as the effect of now conferring the honour of the freedom of the city upon Messrs. Parnell and Dillon, avowed signatories of the No-Rent Manifesto, would be to stamp their action in that respect with the approval of the council, the further consideration of the motion be adjourned to this day six months." was the crucial test. A division was taken on this amendment; yeas twenty-three, nays twenty-nine. Whereupon, as the record read, the amendment was negatived, and the original motion was put, and on a division there appeared for the motion twenty-nine, twenty-two against.

It

Thus the day was carried, and at last Parnell and Dillon had their honors; but, alas! by the never-failing irony of life, the two gentlemen upon whom the freedom of the city had just been conferred were at that very moment in Kilmainham jail!

Thus, where Unionist Lord Mayor Moyers, freeman of the city Edwards, and objector McEvoy were powerless, the fates themselves must intervene, and to contend against them the resources of the parliamentary art were drawn upon by Councilor Mayne, who, seconded by Councilor Gill, M.P., moved that a copy of the resolution be forwarded to Messrs. Parnell and Dillon, and that another copy be forwarded to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and he be "respectfully" requested to allow the gentlemen to attend at the city hall and sign the roll of honorary freemen of the city. But his Excellency was obdurate, and the two distinguished members of Parliament remained in Kilmainham jail, their freedom of the city entirely honorary. Their day, however, came at last, for finally, on August 16, 1882, the Irish leaders having been released, a special meeting of the council was convened to give effect to the resolution, and Parnell and Dillon attended, were "received in state by the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor and the Corporation of Dublin," so reads the record, and having signed the roll, the new lord mayor, the Right Honorable Charles Dawson, M.P., presented to each of them a casket containing a certificate of the freedom that had now become more than honorary.

And he performed the ceremony with a joy and satisfaction, no doubt, in the new significance worn by the old event, for he was a Nationalist, and his party in the council and in the city had its revenge. The Nationalists determined to set aside the old precedent of O'Connell, and resolved that never again should a Unionist be elected Lord Mayor of Dublin until Ireland had home rule. From that day to this the mansion house has been occupied by an unbroken succession of Nationalists.

VISITING THE LORD MAYOR

WHEN one waits upon the Lord Mayor of Dublin, one goes, of course, to the mansion house, a stately old building in

Dawson Street, and there, after waiting a bit in the somber hall, with suits of on its dark walls, and bristling trophies of spears and pikes, which for all I know may have been flourished in '98, though probably they were borne in Irish wars long before that time, one is shown into the long drawing-room, and presently the lord mayor enters, with the bars of a curious gold chain showing between the lapels of his frock-coat, the insignia of his office for every-day wear, and not comparable to that massive chain which adorns his Worship on state occasions, when he dons his formal robes. The neodemocratic spirit which pervades all the British Isles in these days has affected the mayors, and they all smile when their robes are mentioned; but they all have their portraits done in oil, in full regalia, to leave in their mansion houses behind them, and the great banquet-hall of the mansion house in Dublin bears its long record of these vanished glories, as the hall of state all round the gallery is hung with the coats of arms of the fifty-eight lord mayors since O'Connell's time. It is a part of the honor it has ever been deemed to be mayor of a city in the British Isles, and it has been an expensive honor always, for mayors are paid no salaries, and robes and chains and oilpaintings cost money, to say nothing of the banquets and the great burden of public entertainment.

In general my lord mayor is paid no salary, and the honor must suffice, and so the position has been reserved as a perquisite and privilege of the very rich. However, in Great Britain and Ireland there is just now a movement, or at least a discussion,-and we have grown used to calling discussions "movements" in this country, to pay the lord mayors, so that the community may enjoy the services of the poor, or the poor may enjoy the distinctions of the community, as one by prejudice or principle cares to view it. Most of the British cities give their mayors no salary, while in others grants, or "allowances," are made to enable them to support the dignity of the position. The general condition, however, is such that it is quite out of the question for any one in the realm to become a mayor in England or Ireland or a provost in Scotland unless he is a wealthy man.

That is, the working-man, and most men of the middle class, and even women, since they are eligible to the mayoral seat, and several of them have served in that capacity in English towns, are debarred from the post. The style they are obliged to support, the functions and ceremonies of state, dinners, and balls, and the proud privilege of heading the subscription-lists of distinguished charities, all entail a lordly expenditure.

The British labor organizations have long been agitating for a reform in this practice, but they have not made much headway against the old and stubborn precedent. The Lord Mayor of London is paid, to be sure, £10,000 a year, but that sum is not sufficient to pay the fifth of his expenses, and the succession to that place is determined by so many aristocratic qualifications that no poor man ever imagines himself as aspiring to it. The Lord Mayor of Liverpool is allowed £2000 a year, and the corporation grants him in addition £800 annually for his horses and carriages. Bristol grants its mayor a thousand guineas each year, and the allowance of the Lord Provost of Edinburgh is £1000, and last year when the king and queen visited Cardiff, the corporation of the Welsh city voted the lord mayor £3000 to enable him to emerge from the social exigency without embarrassment.

Dublin allowed its lord mayor £3600 a year. The mansion house in Dawson Street has two acres of floor space, with halls of state and ball-rooms and picturegalleries, and the lighting and heatingsuch as the heating is-alone cost more than £500 a year, while there is the little item of £500 for the annual banquet. Dublin, old aristocratic town that it is, began to feel the impulse of the modern spirit, and though it had always been its boast that industry had never contaminated its scholarly atmosphere or disturbed its aristocratic calm, it even had a labor movement. The Socialists, I believe, had no foothold there, but only a few years ago the workers of the city did succeed in returning a sufficient number. of their direct representatives to the council to enable them to elect the lord mayor, and they chose Alderman John J. Farrell to the place. to the place. The choice brought out a curious phase of human nature.

HOW THE LABOR PARTY LOWERED THE SALARY OF ITS OWN LORD MAYOR

Now, the worthy alderman kept a newsagent's and tobacconist's shop in Talbot Street, and he was poor, and the moment he was elevated to the post of lord mayor, there occurred a phenomenon not without its precedent and counterpart in the history of the world. His late colleagues of the labor party, acting in accordance with a law of human nature, at once proposed to reduce the emoluments of his estate, and his political enemies gladly joining them, his official allowance was reduced from £3600 a year to £1600 a year.

The action was soothing to the class consciousness of his comrades, of course, and as no one is so fond of a joke as the Irish, it gratified his opponents; but my Lord Mayor Farrell was a sensible and practical sort of chap, and it would seem not without his own sense of humor and his due share of Irish wit. He closed the noble banquet-hall and all those vast and ancient apartments in the mansion house, the annual banquet was omitted, and instead of driving forth in the state coach, he appeared in a modest private carriage. But that was not all. There was a custom of ancient standing and high honor in Dublin, one which the radical labor alderman did not abolish, and that was the aldermanic levee at the mansion house, where every morning whisky and cigars were served by the lord mayor. But in this administration, when an alderman called at the mansion house, the hospitality was of the sort that suggests plain living and high thinking; the butler did not bear forth the stimulating tray of hospitality, and the doors of the long drawingroom were folded close. But this was an incident, one of those absurdities that will always mark the government of men as long as they are human and little.

The present Lord Mayor of Dublin, the Right Honorable Lorcan G. Sherlock, LL.D., though, like all mayors, he has to deal with human nature in every phase of its whimsical exasperations, has not had to encounter many such official expressions of its caprice as this. With him the position is not merely an empty and anachronous dignity; he approaches its duties in a spirit which we call the American spirit, by which of course, in our curious self

sufficiency, we mean to imply a certain brisk efficiency. But on the second thought which may serve the writer, as it may not always serve the speaker, I am not sure enough of the fact to say just that; we have the briskness, as we have the busy air,-the Emperor Domitian was busy catching flies, but in city government we have not yet the efficiency. We lack that for many reasons, some of which inhere in our character as a people, others in what we call politics in the condition to which we have reduced it; but we have it not, and cannot have it for the reason principally that our cities are not autonomous, ruled as they are by rural majorities in state legislature and political bosses in league with public-service corporations. That is, our cities are not democracies, and Lord Mayor Sherlock, like many American mayors, is of the democratic school of political thought. Dublin, indeed, is like an American city in that it is not permitted to rule itself, as are the Scotch cities, for instance, or the English cities, or the German cities, and Dr. Sherlock is like our American mayors, or like some American mayors, in that he is struggling to improve his city against the obstacles of autocracy. He has brought to the office the long experience he gained as an alderman, and, besides, he was secretary to Timothy Harrington when that gentleman was lord mayor.

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY

IN the mere outward form of its government Dublin resembles British cities generally. The city is divided into twenty wards, and each ward elects an alderman and three councilors, and the lord mayor is chosen from the aldermen for the period of a year. But, in contrast to the British cities, or even to some of our American cities, Dublin has the feeblest municipal powers. The city maintains its fire brigade, its technical schools, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, the splendid gallery of modern art, and controls the public markets. The lord mayor holds a petty court where creditors may sue their poor debtors, and he and certain of the aldermen constitute the Port and Docks Board. But, saving the power to do certain public works, this is nearly all. In most of the cities of Scotland and England, and

in Germany especially, the public utilities are owned and operated by the corporations, and there is an extension of municipal activity amazing to the American. But in Dublin there is little of what the English call "municipal trading," and the Americans municipal ownership when they do not call it Socialism. The tramways are owned by a private corporation, and operate a rather inefficient service at a rate of fare several times larger than that in vogue in Liverpool and Glasgow.

It is, however, an expression of the modern spirit of Dublin that has caused the nervous and energetic Lord Mayor Sherlock, who, as I have said, is modern, democratic, and progressive, to institute efforts to correct some of the abuses charged against the tramways company; and here again Dublin is like most American cities in that she has her problem of transportation and her struggle with her street-railway company. Dr. Sherlock is

advocate of municipal ownership, though that statement has no such implication in Europe as it has in America, for in Europe all schools of political thought are in favor, quite as a matter of course, of that policy.

But municipal ownership of the tramways in Dublin must wait, as all else must wait, on home rule. The city is ruled in reality by the Imperial Government, and the limitation of its powers is shown by the fact that even in local improvements the city is not supreme. The council may order and make an improvement, it is true, but if one citizen objects, -and there is always one citizen, of course, in every city who objects to all public improvements, -a government inspector promptly sits to hear the objection, and though the local authorities are permitted to explain and defend their action, the inspector is absolute and may order the work discontinued or carried on, as it pleases him. Even with her own police force Dublin has nothing to do except to contribute to the payment of their salaries. Those slender, well-set-up young chaps in helmets and blue uniforms, with clubs in their belts, are of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, which are a part of castle government, and are to the city what the Royal Irish Constabulary are to rural Ireland. Except the traffic officers in Paris and Brussels, who wield the

batons blancs, they are, as far as I know, the only policemen in Europe to carry clubs, which is natural enough, perhaps, since policemen's clubs are a development from the Irish shillalah.

But in all cities there are forces more powerful than policemen and more potent than laws, compelling changes against all opposition of prejudice and reaction, and these forces are operating to make over Dublin. There, as everywhere, is the silent and invisible force of public opinion, so that the trim young policeman does not enforce, for instance, the obsolete law. which forbids a priest from appearing in public in his clerical garb. And there is the stronger force, the old and irresistible force of necessity. Formerly the sewers of Dublin emptied directly into the Liffey, but the corporation has constructed great intercepting sewers, parallel to the river, and these bear the sewage out of town to disposal plants, where it is purified and its waste reclaimed. In this respect Dublin is far in advance of any American city of which I know; we recklessly flush our sewage into the rivers at our feet, and then stoop and drink of the polluted waters. But Dublin not only purifies her sewage: she refuses to drink of the Liffey, a river once noted for its unpleasant odors, and through her splendid system she has an abundant supply of the best and purest of waters. They call it the Vartray water, and it comes from the city's reservoirs away in the beautiful hills of Wicklow.

DUBLIN'S PROBLEM OF OVERCROWDED

TENEMENTS

BUT for these instances, Dublin is modern. only in her problems, and she has dealt in the modern spirit with the questions of sewage disposal and water-supply only because she is under that general compulsion of necessity which has driven most European cities to reform in these two departments. American cities have not even undertaken them as yet, and, as a result, have an average death-rate from typhoid fever alone that is ten per cent. higher than the average in European cities. Necessity, too, has forced Dublin to deal with another problem, happily not yet. acute in our cities,-though before long it will be, unless we plan our towns bet

ter, as it is in Europe, and that is the problem of housing. Indeed, no other city in the world presents all the elements of the problem more vividly, more pathetically, and I had almost said more picturesquely, than Dublin.

For this proud old city, with its sad memories, has disowned what trade was not crushed by English laws, and preferred to be poor and genteel. Her sons have preferred to go into the army or the constabulary or the civil service, or to seek their fortunes at the bar or in America, rather than to lower themselves by going in for the industries and trades. They have had before their eyes always the aristocratic walls of a great university, which they will not forget refused Oliver Goldsmith his degree, and there has been upon them the influence of the sham court maintained at the viceregal lodge in Phoenix Park and the ugly castle, and always there is the large garrison of red-coated soldiers. All of which has given to Dublin a distinct atmosphere affecting somehow even those who love Ireland and behold in Dublin the invested capital of a virile nation.

Meanwhile decay has succeeded to decay; the old mansions where the aristocracy once dwelt, halls that blazed with light at night and rang with the laughter of sparkling wit, and heard the accents of the most beautiful and perfect English spoken anywhere on the globe, have degenerated into foul tenements. The houses are centuries old, three or four stories in height, without courts or alleys, and about the low, worn steps at their entrances children are swarming and women are "gostering," to use the old Irish word with which the lord mayor deprecates their idle gossiping, and they are all living in single-room tenements. There were 21,133 of them, according to Sir Charles Cameron's report on the health of Dublin for the year 1911. Of these 21,133 single-room tenements, more than 2000 are occupied by more than five persons; in nearly 4500 of them six persons live; in 854, seven persons; in 431, eight persons; and in 146, nine persons.

Figures, of course, are dull, and do not strike the imagination. It is difficult to realize five, six, seven, eight, or nine persons in a single dark room, living there, cooking there, eating there, when they do

eat, washing there, when they do wash, lying down there, sleeping there, getting up there in the morning, and getting up in the morning without hope, without even the dream that the new day will bring forth something interesting or beautiful. No wonder the Irish "Times" says, "Our tenement system is the ultimate cause of most of the city's disease, intemperance, and crime."

It is an advance, I suppose, to discover that a tenement system is the cause of so much evil, and after a while, perhaps, Dublin, and some other cities besides, will go further and find out what causes the tenement system. Meanwhile the corporation has done what other European cities have done, and more and more are doing all the while. It has built cottage dwellings in the suburbs, as, for instance, those at Clontarf, and these it rents to the poor. It has not solved the problem, by any means. No city has done that, and there are many persons in Dublin, and in all the cities of the United Kingdom, who contend that the taxing power of the Government will have to be invoked to do away with the evils.

It has been this very condition, indeed, that brought on the agitation in favor of the land tax, which, under the leadership of the remarkable Welsh radical, Mr. David Lloyd George, introduced the great conflict over the budget. The situation gives force and cogency to the claims of the land-values men, who say that it is the system of taxing property in Great Britain and Ireland that is responsible for all this overcrowding in slum dwellings, and they insist that the remedy is to tax the value of the land, whether used or unused, while lessening and gradually abolishing the taxes on buildings and improvements. There are in Dublin, according to a recent survey, 519 waste spaces, and the land-values men contend that these do not remain vacant because there are no builders or tenants who might like to build on them or live on them, but because the owners demand a price which, added to the rates, would make the erection of houses at reasonable rentals unremunerative. They claim, too, that if these vacant spaces were assessed for rating at the value put on them by the owners, it would no longer be profitable to allow them to remain unused and idle. The