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tion like that of Joseph Hume. He knew that power is poison, and that it erects about itself a system of protective ramparts which only persistent determination can overcome. The lesson he drew from his experience was the simple one that the real path of progress is institutional organization. Petitions, meetings, great words and speeches, left him cold. It was the systematic if minute steps in which he saw the secret of advance. Natura nihil facit per saltum is the chief lesson the enthusiast has to learn. But Place knew well it is the lesson most difficult to teach.

Nor was he handicapped by illusions as to the people. Not the least stumbling-block in the way of democratic progress is the zeal of those who are satisfied that a popular instinct for right is all that is necessary to reform. Place believed in the popular capacity for self-government, but he was not hindered by ignorance as to its difficulties. He recognized that the vast majority of the working class does not find the centre of its interest in politics. He knew that, even if it did, it lacked the education which made possible the mastery of technical detail. He realized that facts are obstinate things which fail to render obedience to popular desire. There is a lesson no student of the democratic process should neglect in his management of the repeal of the Combination Acts. Here is the expert at his best, psychologically imaginative, economically accurate, armed cap-à-pie in the unanswerable panoply of statistics fortified by serried masses of human experience. In our own day, Mr. Justice Brandeis, in the famous brief in Muller v. Oregon, Mr. Bevin, in the recent inquiry into Dockers' wages, have shown us that scientific control of the facts will ultimately produce an unanswerable result. The way is less easy than it seems; and it is certainly far more difficult than the sudden projection into the event of badly-organized mass-action in which French labour seems to put its confidence. The method of Place is the slow and careful tabulation of every instrument of service, the careful organization of resources, the flinging of your power at a given point so that the danger of competing interest is removed. The same grim statesmanship is seen in his hint to Sir Francis Burdett at the preparations needed for a revolution. It is shown in the technique by which Wellington was overthrown in 1831. The management of a case is half the secret of success in efforts such as these. They point to the need of studying the strategy of labour politics with the