previous March. Mr. Stapleton (vol. ii., p. 276) refers to two letters in the Wellington correspondence on the Greek Question of Feb. 1827, in terms which seem to imply that the Duke is differing from Mr. Canning. But the letters convey no such meaning. In one of them the Duke only regrets that all the Powers alike have done so little to carry out the St. Petersburg Protocol, with no special reference to Canning at all; in the other, he merely gives his opinion on three drafts of treaties drawn up by the Russian and French Governments respectively, which Canning has enclosed to him with the remark that he and Wellington will be able to do as they like in framing an amended draft out of the whole. The drafts sent to the Duke were not Canning's, and the criticism bestowed on them was not aimed at Canning. It is true that the proposals to which the Duke objected were afterwards allowed by Canning to be incorporated in the Treaty of London. But this did not happen till long after the ministerial crisis had passed away, during which Wellington had no reason to suppose that Canning's views and his own on the Greek Question were not identical.

We cannot see, therefore, that the attempt to trace the rupture between Wellington and Canning to their irreconcilable views in foreign policy, has met with much success in the hands of Mr. Stapleton. The theory is certainly not sustained by their speeches and despatches. The two men had served together for five most eventful years, during which they had been in close correspondence on the affairs of Europe, Canning always asking for Wellington's opinion, and Wellington always giving it with perfect frankness and cordiality. Is it conceivable that two men could have acted together on these terms for so long a period had their views on the main subject of their correspondence been diametrically opposed to each other. Mr. Stapleton has fallen into the habit of speaking of the Duke of Wellington and other members of Lord Liverpool's Government as "the Tories," as if to distinguish them from Canning. This, begging his pardon, is a pity. Canning was as genuine a Tory as either Castlereagh, Wellington or Peel. If he was in favour of Roman Catholic emancipation, so was Castlereagh. If Wellington was stoutly opposed to parliamentary reform, so was Canning. If a distinctive article of the Tory creed was respect for the royal prerogative, Canning specially invoked it in 1827, to save both the King and himself from what they considered oligarchical dictation. As to foreign policy, the conception of a brilliant " Liberal foreign policy adopted by Canning and resisted by his "Tory" colleagues is a mere mirage. Canning was too sensible a man to head a revolutionary crusade. He had no more sympathy with insurrections than either the Duke or the Lord Chancellor.

He had fought against the Liberal Party in the House of Commons, in defence of our ancient institutions, as he himself said, for thirty years. He was the pupil of Pitt, and the inheritor of the best traditions of Toryism. And in justice to that great party as well as out of respect for the memory of both Wellington and Canning we have felt impelled to offer this hasty and imperfect protest against the theory propounded by Mr. Stapleton.

The more one reflects on the complicated negotiations which preceded the construction of Mr. Canning's Ministry, the less is one satisfied with any current explanation of the Duke of Wellington's behaviour. The question of foreign policy alone is clearly insufficient to account for it. We can hardly believe that with a man like the Duke of Wellington, the Roman Catholic question by itself could have weighed so heavily as to deter him from a step otherwise so eminently conducive to the public good. It is said that he disliked Mr. Canning personally, and believed that he had behaved very badly to his friend Lord Castlereagh. Wellington was away from England in 1809, and may have heard only one version of the story. But surely, much of this distrust must have worn away during five years of unbroken friendly intercourse, and could hardly have survived in sufficient force in 1827 to have brought forth such bitter fruits that the Duke, we are sometimes told, supposed Canning to have been coquetting with the Whigs during Lord Liverpool's lifetime. But all these offences, though they might have been very good reasons for cutting Canning altogether, are not good reasons for doing what the Duke did. We are inclined to agree with Mr. Stapleton that a more deferential and, at the same time more cordial, attitude on Mr. Canning's part might have mollified the great soldier, and that, in that case, an appeal to him to come to the King's assistance in the formation of a strong Conservative Ministry, might not have been in vain. But then the very fact that he took offence at an apparent want of friendliness on Canning's part is inconsistent with the supposition that he cherished any prejudice against him. On the whole, perhaps, it is safe to assume that the Duke of Wellington, with his immense fame and his immense services in the background, did not relish the idea of filling a subordinate position. As Master General of the Ordnance, he was absolute in his own department; as Foreign Minister under either Liverpool or Peel he would have been absolute; but not under Mr. Canning. And he might have thought that even slight differences of opinion which were of no consequence while they met only as equals under a common chief, might develop into sources of great irritation when they stood in the relation to each other of first and second. In a word,

Wellington may have felt that his position in a Cabinet of which Canning was the head would be neither dignified nor comfortable; and this he may have thought without any strong opinion unfavourable either to his character or his policy. Wellington would have done very well under a nominal Premier. But Canning, we may be sure, would have been master in his own Ministry; and the consciousness of that may perhaps have had as much influence with the Duke as any other consideration.

It may be worth remarking, in conclusion, that when Wellington and Castlereagh are accused of subservience to the Continental Powers, it is rarely, if ever, France with which the indictment is connected. It is always either the German Powers or Russia. Now the English alliance with the German Powers was of very ancient date, and did not originate in the French Revolution. Under the Stuart dynasty we had been allied with France. The English Revolution split this alliance asunder; and it was the interest of the German Powers to take care that it should never be renewed.

A close alliance, therefore, between themselves and the English Whigs was necessary to both. France, on the other hand, finding in England the ally of her ancient rival, was driven into an attitude of hostility which but for this she need never have assumed. The Bourbons never forgave the part played by England in the war of the Spanish Succession, and without our German alliance we should have been placed in a very perilous position. Had the whole military force of France been available for a war with England, and had Marshal Saxe been instructed to restore James III., what could have prevented him? If Germany dragged us into her quarrels she was at hand to befriend us in our own ;. and thus a feeling of confidence grew up between this country and Austria which, cemented by the Revolutionary war, was not to be forgotten in a day, however we might disapprove of her policy on particular occasions. The system originated with the Whigs, but it was continued almost as a matter of necessity by the Tories; and though Lord Beaconsfield was of opinion that the younger Pitt. might have avoided it, I have never seen any argument in favour of such a view which seemed entirely satisfactory.

T. E. KEBBEL.

DOGS IN DISGRACE.

THE recent epidemic of rabies in Liverpool, together with the outbreak in London (which caused the issue by the Chief Commissioner of Police in December 1885 of an order that all dogs should be muzzled or led), has made some lovers of dogs look with distrust on their canine favourites, and has at the same time led to a demand, on the part of those who have little sympathy with dog-owners, for the compulsory use of the muzzle at all times and in all places for a period of at least twelve months. Public attention has also been forcibly called to the unfortunate death of Lord Doneraile from the bite of a rabid fox, notwithstanding a course of preventive treatment by M. Pasteur; a sad event which has thrown considerable doubt on the success of that eminent scientist's method, as well as on the Report of the Committee appointed by the Local Government Board, which proclaimed the success of the Pasteur system, as a preventive against the effects of the bite of a rabid dog. It should not, however, be forgotten, that it has been shown that the bites of wolves and foxes appear to yield to M. Pasteur's treatment less easily than do the much more common bites of rabid dogs.

As a result of this feeling we have lately seen the formation of an Anti-Hydrophobia Society, which hopes to induce Parliament to enact such legislation as in the Society's opinion will stamp out the disease; and the means by which it proposes to effect this object is a general muzzling of all dogs. The unpopularity and difficulty of enforcing such legislation is exemplified by what happened during the existence of the order within the limited district of the Metropolitan area; for Sir C. Warren has stated that before the police could get the order under the Dog's Act observed even fairly well, it was necessary that hundreds and hundreds of dog-owners should be fined by the magistrates, also that three months before the order was actually withdrawn, and as soon as the Chief Commissioner decided that it should not be renewed, it was found expedient to discontinue the unpleasant practice of summoning of dog-owners before the magistrates. Many people, indeed, to avoid the necessity of muzzling their dogs, changed their place of abode.

But to be effectual all dogs should be made subject to the rule, and unless herdsman's dogs, packs of hounds, sporting dogs, and rat-catcher's terriers are made amenable to the rule which enforces. the use of the muzzle, there would be little chance of the complete eradication of the disease by such a decree. Sheep dogs, particu

larly in the north of England and Scotland, wander over large tracts of country, and are a constant source of danger. It is said that the control to which hounds are subject is a guarantee against their communicating the disease; but every hunting man knows that hounds cannot be prevented from snapping at a cur who affects too great a familiarity with the pack as they pass through a town or village, while it is a common thing for a hound to be lost for days and even weeks, and to form associations of very doubtful character before he finds his way back to kennel. Indeed, hardly a kennel of fox-hounds exists in England which at some time or other has not suffered from that terrible scourge, dumb madness.

Again, there would be no certainty of extinguishing the disease unless dogs were at all times muzzled, as well indoors as out, and it can hardly be expected that owners would comply with such a requirement; yet it is one of the first inclinations of a dog affected with incipient rabies to slip out of his master's house when unobserved, as though unwilling to remain with friends he has loved so well after becoming to them a source of danger and disease.

Even supposing that such a regulation could be enforced, with the result that rabies were stamped out amongst English dogs, there would be either the constant danger of its re-introduction from abroad, or the necessity for the imposition of a quarantine, amounting to prohibition on the importation of dogs. However desirable, therefore, it may be to eliminate hydrophobia from the list of ills to which flesh is heir (and it may be admitted that hardly any sacrifice is too great to attain such an object), it is obvious that the conditions necessary to procure such a result would not be observed even if enacted.

Nor are the results of experiments towards accomplishing this end in other countries of such a nature as to encourage us in England to follow their example; for instance, in Berlin, the capital of a country noted for the severity with which official decrees are enforced, an order compelling all dogs to wear muzzles has been in force for no less than thirty-four years, yet it has not prevented the number of rabid dogs killed being sixty-six times as great twenty-two years after, and sixty-nine times as great twenty years after the introduction of the order as it was in the year immediately following upon its adoption; or in other words, Berlin, like other places where the muzzle is not compulsorily worn, has been subject to epidemics of rabies.

In Vienna again, there were no fewer than ninety-three cases of bites from mad dogs occurred in 1884, although a muzzling order had been decreed in the preceding year, and was still in force.

Few persons will now be found to contend that rabies or hydro