ker was a very
astute man; but here is his forecast of the Reform Act of 1832: "No
kings, no lords, no inequalities in the social system; all will be
levelled to the plane of the petty shopkeepers and small farmers: this,
perhaps, not without bloodshed, but certainly by confiscations and
persecutions." "There can be no longer any doubt that the Reform Bill is
a stepping-stone in England to a Republic, and in Ireland to
separation." Croker met the Queen in 1832, considered her very
good-looking, but thought it not unlikely that "she may live to be plain
Miss Guelph." Even Sir Robert Peel wrote: "If I am to be believed, I
foresee revolution as the consequence of this Bill;" and he "felt that
it had ceased to be an object of ambition to any man of equable and
consistent mind to enter into the service of the Crown." And as late as
1839, so robust a character as Sir James Graham thought the world was
coming to an end because the young Queen gave her confidence to a Whig
Minister. "I begin to share all your apprehensions and forebodings," he
writes to Croker, "with regard to the probable issue of the present
struggle. The Crown in alliance with Democracy baffles every calculation
on the balance of power in our mixed form of Government. Aristocracy and
Church cannot contend against Queen and people mixed; they must yield in
the first instance, when the Crown, unprotected, will meet its fate, and
the accustomed round of anarchy and despotism will run its course." And
he prays that he may "lie cold before that dreadful day." (_Ibid._, ii.
113, 140, 176, 181, 356.) Free Trade created a similar panic. "Good
God!" Croker exclaimed, "what a chaos of anarchy and misery do I foresee
in every direction, from so comparatively small a beginning as changing
an _average_ duty of 8_s._ into a _fixed_ duty of 8_s._, the fact being
that the fixed duty means _no duty at all_; and _no duty at all_ will be
the overthrow of the existing social and political system of our
country!" (_Ibid._, iii. 13.) And what have become of Mr. Lowe's gloomy
vaticinations as to the terrible consequences of the very moderate
Reform Bill of 1866, followed as it was by a much more democratic
measure?]

A LAWYER'S OBJECTIONS TO HOME RULE.

BY E.L. GODKIN.

Mr. Dicey in his _Case against Home Rule_ does me the honour to refer to
an article which I wrote a year ago on "American Home Rule,"[24]
expressing in one place "disagreement in the general conclusion t