few mistakes were made-that, though the end was a defeat of unionism, yet it is not crushed.' It will teach us our weaknesses, and show us how to perfect our organisations and remedy our defects. It will teach capitalists, too, that their power in combination is great, and may be used for good instead of harm, though it is questionable whether the very nature of the competitive system will permit of lasting harmonious combination of capitalists. As to Mr. Champion's vague references to possible organised disorder, and to the possible cognisance of the leaders as to its existence, I point to the fact that a strong coalition government was thrust from office in Victoria owing to their tacit sanction of the incendiary speeches of Mr. Patterson and a certain Colonel Tom Price, of 'fire low and lay them out' notoriety. Mr. Patterson had accused the strikers of disorder; Colonel Price made preparations to accompany Mr. Patterson's words with bullets; and the answer of the Parliament of Victoria was to put Mr. Patterson and the Government, of which he was a member, into the shades of opposition.'

Labour has not met its Moscow in Australia. Perhaps it may be considered with greater truth the Bull's Run' of the labour war in Australia. Labour will rise there by means of methods more peaceful than strikes; and if peace hath her victories no less renowned than war,' we may hope to witness many labour victories at the ballot-box. When the workers of Australia awaken to the primary importance of their being represented in the legislatures of the various colonies, when labour is represented not by capitalists, as now, but by men from their own ranks and of their own sympathies, then we may see the weapon of the strike fall into desuetude. As Mr. John Burns puts it, we must employ the shining sword of political action' rather than the empty scabbard of trades-unionism.' The next general election in each colony of Australia will tell a tale, and perhaps convert the labour Moscow into another Waterloo.

JOHN D. FITZGERALD

(Labour Delegate, Strike Committee and Labour Council of Australia).

[Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart., M.P., wishes to make the following correction to his recent article on 'The Scottish Railway Strike' in the Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1891.]

It has been pointed out to me that I have been guilty of a misstatement regarding the system of superannuation which I alluded to as having been established for the servants of the London and North-Western Railway Company. I stated that it had been put an end to two or three years ago at the demand of the men.

I regret very much having fallen into this error, though I am proportionately glad to find that it is an error. The fact is that the Pension Society, composed of the artisans and mechanics employed in the locomotive workshops at Crewe, was discontinued in the way I described; but the general Superannuation Fund, the Insurance Society, and the Provident and Pension Society, maintained partly by contributions of the directors and partly by those of the men, continue in full force, the number of members of the Insurance Society being over 40,000.

HERBERT MAXWELL.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF MR. GLADSTONE'S

CONTROVERSIAL METHOD.

THE series of essays in defence of the historical accuracy of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures contributed by Mr. Gladstone to Good Words, having been revised and enlarged by their author, appeared last year as a separate volume, under the somewhat defiant title of The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture.

The last of these essays, entitled 'Conclusion,' contains an attack, or rather several attacks, couched in language which certainly does not err upon the side of moderation or of courtesy, upon statements and opinions of mine. One of these assaults is a deliberately devised attempt, not merely to rouse the theological prejudices ingrained in the majority of Mr. Gladstone's readers, but to hold me up as a person who has endeavoured to besmirch the personal character of the object of their veneration. For Mr. Gladstone asserts that I have undertaken to try the character of our Lord' (p. 268); and he tells the many who are, as I think, unfortunately, predisposed to place implicit credit in his assertions, that it has been reserved for me to discover that Jesus' was no better than a law-breaker and an evil-doer!' (p. 269).

It was extremely easy for me to prove, as I did in the pages of this Review last December, that, under the most favourable interpretation, this amazing declaration must be ascribed to extreme confusion of thought. And, by bringing an abundance of good-will to the consideration of the subject, I have now convinced myself that it is right for me to admit, that a person of Mr. Gladstone's intellectual acuteness really did mistake the reprobation of the course of conduct ascribed to Jesus, in a story of which I expressly say I do not believe a word, for an attack on his character and a declaration that he was 'no better than a law-breaker and evil-doer.' At any rate, so far as I can see, this is what Mr. Gladstone wished to be believed when he wrote the following passage :

:

I must, however, in passing, make the confession that I did not state with accuracy, as I ought to have done, the precise form of the accusation. I treated it as an imputation on the action of our Lord; he replies that it is only an imputaVOL. XXIX.-No. 169. I I

tion on the narrative of three evangelists respecting Him. The difference, from his point of view, is probably material, and I therefore regret that I overlooked it.1

Considering the gravity of the error which is here admitted, the fashion of the withdrawal appears more singular than admirable. From my point of view '-not from Mr. Gladstone's apparentlythe little discrepancy between the facts and Mr. Gladstone's carefully offensive travesty of them is 'probably' (only 'probably') material. However, as Mr. Gladstone concludes with an official expression of regret for his error, it is my business to return an equally official expression of gratitude for the attenuated reparation with which I am favoured.

Having cleared this specimen of Mr. Gladstone's controversial method out of the way, I may proceed to the next assault, that on a passage in an article on Agnosticism (Nineteenth Century, February 1889), published two years ago. I there said, in referring to the Gadarene story, 'Everything I know of law and justice convinces me that the wanton destruction of other people's property is a misdemeanour of evil example.' On this, Mr. Gladstone, continuing his candid and urbane observations, remarks (Impregnable Rock, p. 273) that, Exercising his rapid judgment on the text,' and 'not inquiring what anybody else had known or said about it,' I had missed a point in support of that accusation against our Lord' which he has now been constrained to admit I never made.

The 'point' in question is that 'Gadara was a city of Greeks rather than of Jews, from whence it might be inferred that to keep swine was innocent and lawful.' I conceive that I have abundantly proved that Gadara answered exactly to the description here given of it; and I shall show, by-and-by, that Mr. Gladstone has used language which, to my mind, involves the admission that the authorities of the city were not Jews. But I have also taken a good deal of pains to show that the question thus raised is of no importance in relation to the main issue.2 If Gadara was, as I maintain it was, a city of the Decapolis, Hellenistic in constitution and containing a predominantly Gentile population, my case is superabundantly fortified. On the other hand, if the hypothesis that Gadara was under Jewish government, which Mr. Gladstone seems sometimes to defend and sometimes to give up, were accepted, my case would be nowise weakened. At any rate, Gadara was not included within the juris

1 Nineteenth Century, February 1891, pp. 339-40.

2 Neither is it of any consequence whether the locality of the supposed miracle was Gadara, or Gerasa, or Gergesa. But I may say that I was well acquainted with Origen's opinion respecting Gergesa. It is fully discussed and rejected in Riehm's Handwörterbuch. In Kitto's Biblical Cyclopædia (II., p. 51) Professor Porter remarks that Origen merely conjectures' that Gergesa was indicated; and he adds, 'Now, in a question of this kind, conjecture cannot be admitted. We must implicitly follow the most ancient and credible testimony, which clearly pronounces in favour of гadapnvŵv. This reading is adopted by Tischendorf, Alford, and Tregelles.'

diction of the tetrarch of Galilee; if it had been, the Galileans who crossed over the lake to Gadara had no official status; and they had no more civil right to punish law-breakers than any other strangers.

In my turn, however, I may remark that there is a 'point' which appears to have escaped Mr. Gladstone's notice. And that is somewhat unfortunate, because his whole argument turns upon it. Mr. Gladstone assumes, as a matter of course, that pig-keeping was an offence against the 'Law of Moses;' and, therefore, that Jews who kept pigs were as much liable to legal pains and penalties as Englishmen who smuggle brandy (Impregnable Rock, p. 274).

There can be no doubt that, according to the Law, as it is defined in the Pentateuch, the pig was an unclean' animal, and that pork was a forbidden article of diet. Moreover, since pigs are hardly likely to be kept for the mere love of those unsavoury animals, pig-owning, or swineherding, must have been, and evidently was, regarded as a suspicious and degrading occupation by strict Jews, in the first century A.D. But I should like to know on what provision of the Mosaic Law, as it is laid down in the Pentateuch, Mr. Gladstone bases the assumption, which is essential to his case, that the possession of pigs and the calling of a swineherd were actually illegal? The inquiry was put to me the other day; and, as I could not answer it, I turned up the article 'Schwein' in Riehm's standard Handwörterbuch, for help out of my difficulty; but unfortunately without success. After speaking of the martyrdom which the Jews, under Antiochus Epiphanes, preferred to eating pork, the writer proceeds :

It may be, nevertheless, that the practice of keeping pigs may have found its way into Palestine in the Græco-Roman time, in consequence of the great increase of the non-Jewish population; yet there is no evidence of it in the New Testament; the great herd of swine, two thousand in number, mentioned in the narrative of the possessed, was feeding in the territory of Gadara, which belonged to the Decapolis; and the prodigal son became a swineherd with the native of a far country into which he had wandered; in neither of these cases is there reason for thinking that the possessors of these herds were Jews.3

Having failed in my search, so far, I took up the next work of reference at hand, Kitto's Cyclopædia (vol. iii. 1876). There, under 'Swine,' the writer, Colonel Hamilton Smith, seemed at first to give me what I wanted, as he says that swine appear to have been repeatedly introduced and reared by the Hebrew people,^ notwithstanding the strong prohibition in the Law of Moses

* I may call attention, in passing, to the fact that this authority, at any rate, has no sort of doubt of the fact that Jewish Law did not rule in Gadara (indeed, under the head of 'Gadara,' in the same work, it is expressly stated that the population of the place consisted predominantly of heathens '), and that he scouts the notion that the Gadarene swineherds were Jews.

The evidence adduced, so far as post-exile times are concerned, appears to me insufficient to prove this assertion.