placed him beyond the pale of good society, had promised to be one of the stars of English literature at the brilliant period of its poetic revival.

In past times the Isle of Wight has seen many royal visitors. To it Ethelred the Unready fled for refuge. Behind the rampart of its cliffs the fleet of Harold rode in safety. From its harbours William the Conqueror sailed for Normandy, and within its Priory of Carisbrooke arrested his turbulent brother. In its Abbey of Quarr tradition finds the place where Queen Eleanor was immured. At King's Key the same dubious authority seeks the creek in which King John lurked among the island pirates. On the open ground. above the coverts of the Undercliff King Henry VIII. flew his hawks. Through the breaks of the royal forest of Parkhurst King James and 'Baby' Charles coursed a stag. On Ashey Down Charles I. witnessed the review of the troops who were mustering for the expedition to Rochelle. In its ancient fortress of Carisbrooke the same unfortunate monarch was held a prisoner. At Puckaster Cove Charles II. landed, and at Yarmouth the Merry Monarch' was loyally entertained by Sir Robert Holmes.

Such royal visits were of short duration, paid for sport, for business, or for war; if prolonged, the visitor was detained as an unwilling captive of adverse circumstances or superior force. But in recent times the island has been more largely favoured. At Norris Castle the Princess Victoria lived as a child, and the reminiscences of childhood probably influenced the choice which has made the island a favourite home of the Queen. For more than half a century the Queen has resided many weeks in the year at Osborne House, which was purchased in 1840 from the Blachford family. Osborne was once the property of Eustace Mann, who in the troubled times of Charles I. buried a mass of silver and gold in a wood on the estate known as Money 'Coppice.' Tradition, if not a true historian, has proved a true prophet. If the Money Coppice' has never revealed its buried hoard, Osborne has yet spread its treasures broadcast over the island to enrich the inhabitants wherever a womanly sympathy or a royal generosity can extend its open hand. Nor has the island proved ungrateful. Round Osborne gather some of the brightest associations of the Queen's life as a wife and mother; and if in the chancel of Whippingham Church there stand many monuments which record the sad chronicle of her domestic bereavements, the island itself has never been the scene of any one of those events which have darkened her later years with a shadow of gloom.

ART. X.-The Platform: its Rise and Progress. By HENRY JEPHSON. 2 vols. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1892.

MR. R. HENRY JEPHSON has in the two large volumes before us attempted to give an account of the rise and progress of a new power in the State. He has shown, in the task he has undertaken, very considerable industry, and his researches have enabled him to bring before his readers in an impressive manner the great changes that little more than a century has witnessed in the developement of popular government. Mr. Jephson's sympathies, it is satisfactory to find, are always in favour of popular liberty. He believes that though there may be minor disadvantages accompanying the change, on the whole there has been an immense gain to / the nation from the increase of the force and directness with which popular opinion tells upon government. He has not confined himself, however, to writing a mere history of the growth of the platform, for he discusses the nature of its influence at different periods and in different circumstances, and enlarges upon the place which it now occupies in the sphere of politics.

When our author writes of the Platform' he intends to signify that systematic delivery of political speeches by public men to popular audiences, which in the present day occupies such a preponderating share of political discussion. He separates the platform from parliamentary debate on the one side and from newspaper discussion on the other. A few years ago 'the Platform' was irreverently known as the Stump.' The stump orator was a mouthing demagogue who attracted around him crowded audiences of the most ignorant of the populace by the very coarseness of his speech and the violence of his denunciations. At the present day our greatest statesmen, whether peers or members of the House of Commons, choose the public platform for the deliverance of their most weighty speeches. It may be that some great party demonstration' or some complimentary banquet is the occasion chosen; but in neither case is his 'effective' audience, so to speak, those who are listening to the statesman's words, but rather that infinitely greater public throughout the length and breadth of the land, who next day will read in cool blood and at leisure full reports of his utterances and give full weight to his arguments.

Before the middle of the eighteenth century the great religious revival, led by Whitefield and Wesley, collected

together for the first time large masses of the people to listen to the speeches of great orators, and in the huge openair meetings of the time, though their purpose was mainly religious, Mr. Jephson finds the first example of our modern political gatherings. If he were in an archæological frame of mind he might have traced the custom to a remote antiquity. Our Teutonic and Scandinavian ancestors had the same love of public meetings and popular oratory that has come down to ourselves. There probably never was a time in the history of this country in which men were insensible to the marvellous influence of the human voice, or indifferent to the right of public meeting. The germ of the platform, as he truly says, was innate in our Constitution itself, a fact which accounts for the rapidity of its growth when once it came into being.

In the first place, the system of county government which existed in the middle of last century led to meetings of the principal people in the county whenever any public emergency or crisis arose. In each county there was a lord lieutenant, who was the principal representative of Government authority, and who was charged with the preservation of the peace of the county. Under him was the magistracy, and then under them the freeholders, who, as electors of the members of the House of Commons, or Lower House of Parliament, had a sort of recognised position; and when any emergency arose, it was not unusual for the lord lieutenant to convene the magistrates, and sometimes the freeholders, to consider the necessary measures to be taken.'

A few instances of public meetings of the kind are given, and they might be easily multiplied. Moreover the old constitutional right of petitioning the sovereign or Parliament, and the habit of presenting addresses in reference to grievances or matters exciting general interest, frequently led to the assembling of the citizens for public discussion, when speeches were delivered by public men. Even more than these, the right of addressing the electors of each constituency at the time of an election from the hustings proves

'that the platform did exist in one of its phases at this time, and might have been seen in actual operation. Hence it was recognised by the Government as so necessary a right, that in all the chances and changes of history, and all the attempts made to suppress free speech, no attempt was ever made to interfere with public meetings or free speech at the time of an election. In a more or less nebulous sort of way it had thus existed for a considerable period, though not giving evidence of its future developement nor awakening even a suspicion of the part it was to take in the political life of the kingdom.'

The sentiments of the people strongly favoured freedom of speech.

'The ways and manners of life and business in England had in them decided tendencies towards associations, meetings, and speeches; and the self-governing genius of the people was most essentially and eminently one which required some greater outlet than was afforded by the narrow and restricted system of parliamentary representation then existing.'

The first example of a systematic platform agitation on a political question is found in the opposition of certain districts of England to a new cider tax which the first Parliament of George III. had imposed. Public meetings were held, speeches were made by members of Parliament and others, and resolutions passed, with the object of inducing Parliament to repeal the obnoxious measure. But the first general popular agitation in which the influence of the platform made itself felt grew out of the struggle between the House of Commons and the country as to the right of the county of Middlesex to elect Mr. Wilkes as their representative. It was in the course of that agitation that Mr. Burke, though he did not speak at any meeting, gave his full support to the cause of the platform. His general ideas may be gathered from a speech of his delivered in 1771.

"I am not of the opinion of those gentlemen who are against disturbing the public repose. I like a clamour whenever there is an abuse. The fire bell at midnight disturbs your sleep, but it keeps you from being burned in your bed. The hue and cry alarms the county, but it preserves all the property of the province. All these clamours aim at redress. But a clamour made merely for the purpose of rendering the people discontented with their situation, without an endeavour to give them a practical remedy, is indeed one of the worst acts of sedition."

'That the Middlesex agitation did not fall within the latter category is evident from what he further said: Indeed, in the situation in which we stand, with an immense revenue, an enormous debt, mighty establishments, Government itself a great banker and a great merchant, I see no other way for the preservation of a decent attention to public interest in the representatives, but the interposition of the body of the people itself whenever it shall appear, by some flagrant and notorious act, by some capital innovation, that these representatives are going to overleap the fences of the law, and to introduce an arbitrary power." "Standards for judging more systematically upon their conduct ought to be settled in the meetings of counties and corporations."

"The interposition of the body of the people thus recommended, with their platform and their resolutions, had, even so far as it had gone, proved most eminently disconcerting to the King and those in authority. Disconcerting it well might be, for the platform was a new factor in the political life of the country, and carried with it vast potentialities for

the future. Not alone was it a new form of expression of public opinion, but it was actually a new element or source of public opinion, differing quite from the Press, being more tangible, and carrying with it the greater weight which the personal presence of numbers gives to expressed opinion.

Henceforward statesmen would have to reckon with the fact that their policy and acts might be publicly discussed and criticised by the platform in the presence of large gatherings of the people; henceforth they would have to submit to a new form of criticism and of interference in the domain of Government of the most galling and at times most offensive kind, alarming too in this, that it required apparently but one step to pass from criticism to dictation.' (Vol. i. pp. 72, 73.)

Mr. Jephson goes on to trace the progressive influence of the platform in spite of the restrictions of the law and the strong opposition of the Crown. The French Revolution, indeed, had an adverse effect. The country shrank from the dire results of that convulsion among our neighbours, and the attempt of a small minority to introduce French principles on English platforms only tended to discredit these meetings. The Whig party, however, remained faithful to their traditions, and, being constantly in opposition, they sought to compensate for their weakness in Parliament by more frequent and energetic appeals to the public.

For the honour of being the first ex-Minister who used the platform, only two men come into competition-Lord Shelburne and Charles Fox, both of whom we may remember spoke at the Wiltshire meeting in January 1780. In one respect Lord Shelburne must be given precedence, as he had been a Cabinet Minister when he spoke, and therefore must, I think, be regarded as the first ex-Cabinet Minister who ever used the platform; but in every other respect the honour must be awarded to Fox. Lord Shelburne's appearance on the platform was, so far as I am aware, only an isolated event; Fox habitually resorted to it not merely on the occasion of elections, but at cther times also, and used it as a means of conveying instruction to the people, as a defence of his own policy, or as a basis for attack on his opponents. He was also the first Cabinet Minister who used it at the time of an election.

'Pre-eminently does he stand out as the first English statesman of ministerial rank who appreciated the power of the platform, and who systematically used it. Whether or not it was that he liked it for the qualities which render it so much more fascinating to some men than the House of Commons, its freedom, its enthusiasm, its applause, certain it is that he was constantly addressing public meetings, so constantly, indeed, as to earn for himself the name of "the man of the people."

His peculiar position in measure accounted for this. For the greater part of his political life he represented Westminster, then the leading constituency of Great Britain-London city alone exceptedid that stituency was at his very door. He lived amongst his