houses rising gradually from Holyrood up to the craggy castle; the chasm between the Old Town and the New, showing grassy slopes by day, and glittering supernaturally with lamps at night; the New Town itself, like a second city split out of the Old, fairly built of stone, and stretching downwards over new heights and hollows, with gardens intermixed, till it reaches the flats of the Forth! Then Calton Hill in the midst, confronted by the precipitous curve of the Salisbury Crags; Arthur Seat looking over all like a lion grimly keeping guard; the wooded Corstorphines lying soft away to the west, and the larger Pentlands looming quiet in the southern distance! Let the sky be as gray and heavy as the absence of the sun can make it, and where have natural situation and the hand of man combined to exhibit such a mass of the city picturesque?

In Edinburgh Sketches and Memories, Professor Masson has given us much the best account of the period known as the "Dundas Despotism," and this leads us to his last and greatest service to Scottish history-the editing of the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland from 1578 to 1627. This great work was commenced in 1877, and the first two volumes (1545 to 1578) were edited by the late John Hill Burton. In 1880, Professor Masson published the third volume, and, in 1899, the fifteenth left his hands, and he resigned the work into the charge of his friend, Professor Hume Brown. These thirteen volumes represent an invaluable addition to our knowledge of the seventeenth century, and the minute care with which the editor prepared the elaborate introductions constitutes them an enduring monument to his memory. His method was to choose two or three topics which seemed to him to require investigation and elucidation, and on these he spared neither time nor trouble. He could never have been content with an easily written and rapid sketch, designed to save the reader the trouble of looking at the text. Masson's introductions were intended for the student, and, to the very end, they indicate the same mastery of historical method, the same clear and calm judgment, and the same insight and sympathy which characterised his great book on Milton. It was with universal approval that he was appointed, in 1893, Historiographer Royal for Scotland, in succession to the late Dr. Skene. This post was revived, after a period of abeyance, in 1764, for Principal Robertson, and it had been held by a distinguished historical succession, to which Masson added distinction. In 1895 he resigned his chair in the University of Edinburgh, after thirty years of devoted work. He had taken a deep interest in many spheres of activity outside his strictly professional duty-in the Scottish Text Society, in the Scottish History Society, and in the education of women. His services to the latter cause have been commemorated by the name (Masson Hall) of a residence for women students at Edinburgh.

In his later years Professor Masson was not merely the official representative of Literature in Edinburgh, or the official head of the historical profession in Scotland. He was He was a national possession, and his name evoked an interest and an affection which his great heart deserved and appreciated. All over Scotland David Masson was revered and admired with a love which was no mere tribute to intellectual eminence, warm as the Scottish appreciation of intellectual eminence has always been. Edinburgh was proud of her distinguished citizen, and Aberdeen of her great and loyal son. The band of friends who were privileged to know him in his later years formed but a small company of those who held his name in honour. He was the last representative of the old Edinburgh literary tradition, and with him have died many memories and associations. His work remains and Scotland is still proud of it, but the man was greater than his work, and Scotland is poorer by the loss of a strong and rich personality. Shortly before his death Thomas Carlyle spoke of Masson to a common friend, himself illustrious and revered in Scotland and beyond it, and the words which he used are no unworthy epitaph :-" A true thinking man, sincere and sure of purpose." ROBERT S. RAIT.

SWEATED INDUSTRIES.

SINCE the exhibition held by the Daily News at the Queen's Hall in 1906, public interest has revived on the subject of sweated industries, and it is to be hoped that it will not again die out. The subject seems at last to have struck the imagination of the whole community, claimed its interest, and raised the desire to lessen the burthen of suffering and to endeavour to cure by close investigation and practical means. It is recognised that sweating hurts the trade of Great Britain. It hurts the people of Great Britain, their happiness, health, and progeny, so that effective steps should, if practicable, be taken speedily to restrict its dire influence.

If proof of sweating be wanted, read the evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, the speeches at meetings, the pamphlets which have been written on hard, stubborn facts. The task for the social reformer is to consider how honest and painstaking workpeople existing under this system can be helped. An initial criticism will be at once made, viz., if you raise the wages of these people, you will drive work from the country, admit foreign goods, injure British trade, and let in Germany or France or America; we shall all go down-hill, and the Empire will be ruined. It is not indeed a very strong argument that the British Empire's strength has been based upon the exploitation of slaves, but even if the criticism is not meant to go so far, it does seem to ignore certain historical and mercantile facts. Was the trade of the country irremediably injured by raising the age of child labour in the factories, or by regulating the work of women, or by insisting on sanitary requirements? Are we to have the same howling over again if there be any interference with child labour in button-making, or with the making of clothes in fever-stricken dens? Or, to take minor. industries, has the pottery trade left the country because regulations were made as to the use of lead in glazing? Have American boots again invaded us because the minimum wages of clickers have been raised to 30s. a week? or has the tinplate industry gone downhill because bar cutters received at one time a heavy increase in their minimum wages? Has the music-hall industry ceased because some classes of scene-shifters or stage employees received a rise in wages and a minimum wage? If this were the case, some arbitrators have a serious indictment to answer, and

many conferences of employers and employed in all parts of the country have a still heavier one to meet.

Drive work out of the country! I would boldly say, Let the worst sweated work be driven out of the country, if it must be

Let Germany have it, and when the social reformer in Germany, who seems to be ignored by certain critics, wakes up to the view that Great Britain is dumping her sweated work upon Germany, let China be the next candidate, and secure it for as many unalterable cycles as she may desire.1

Persons who make these criticisms in good faith cannot have any real grasp in their minds of the huge size and extent of our mercantile interests, or of the infinitesimal portion of goods in relation to our real trade which is made by the sweated.

I hold no brief for Free Trader, Tariff Reformer, or Protectionist, but I cannot refrain from saying that to bring sweated industries as an argument in favour of protection is the weakest argument which supporters of protection can produce. When all parties should unite in dealing with the subject, it is a pity. that large controversial topics should be too much mixed up with it. Delay in attempting any palliation, and the consequent spread of the disease, must result from such a course, which appears to involve inability to recognise that this ulcer upon society and trade is sporadic, not necessarily spreading to all branches of a trade, but cropping up in localities to the detriment of the trade, in varying portions of a trade, and under varied circumstances.

But if this initial criticism is put aside, the social reformer must endeavour to leave the region of visionary dreams. It is high time that a practical basis should be sought, even if some experiments and some attempts to obtain it may incur criticism, or even stern condemnation, or require modification from time to time. Even the stern critic may be asked to weigh and measure the balance of advantages.

Of the various suggestions for improvement which have been. mooted in public in this country the most important is the proposed establishment of "wages boards" (an unsatisfactory name, which might be better changed to "price boards "), to consist of employers or representatives of employers, and of employees or representatives of employees in certain trades, processes, and localities, with or without an independent chairman, for the settlement in conference of the sums payable for classes of work, the

(1) It must not be supposed that Germany is sleeping over the subject. Thus in Bavaria and Baden far more stringent legislation has been proposed than any suggested regulation brought forward in this country. boards are included as the principal remedy.

Wages

minimum price to be paid in such classes for the work done in effecting the production of an article, such decisions to govern the rate of wages for the locality represented, and the trade or process represented. According to some, the Wages Boards should be purely local, according to others there should be a central authority, advising, directing, co-ordinating, and even overriding the local decisions.

In addition to Wages Boards, other remedies have also been suggested, such as licensing, the extension of outworkers' lists, and an expansion of the Particulars section of the Factory Acts. It appears to me, with deference to the supporters of these suggestions, that none of them by themselves are sufficient or efficient, that they must be more or less subordinate to Wages Boards, and if and where employed, should be used to assist the decisions of Wages Boards rather than be deemed an adequate safeguard against the action of sweaters. Outworkers' lists, difficult as they may be in certain cases, through the fluctuations of labour, and Particulars orders, elaborate and difficult as the task of compiling them may be, at any rate in the first instance, are both, in my opinion, necessary adjuncts of the working of an effective board, whilst without regulation by Wages Boards such remedies by themselves would be harrying to the individual worker, and probably would not effect any increase in wages. Therefore, I propose to deal primarily with Wages Boards, in relation to their result, their constituent parts, and the practical working of their decisions.

The critic will say, "How will Wages Boards affect employers, middlemen, employees, and consumers? Are you going to ruin employers, drive out middlemen, prevent work being obtained by willing workpeople, and swell the ranks of the unemployed, whilst raising the price to the consumer and the poorest class of the consumer?"

Speaking from experience, I should be disposed to reply that the fair-minded employer is willing to pay a fair wage, if he can ; but if he is undercut in the country as a whole, in cases where he has a big trade, or in the locality where he has a small trade, by sweating employers, he does not know what his neighbour is doing, is naturally suspicious, and is obliged to make his price by what he thinks his competitor is doing. If somebody else round the corner was not paying or thought to be paying less, many employers would be ready to pay higher wages. Get these men together; let them "slate " each other; let them fight the sweater themselves, and insist upon reasonable equalisation of rates, and they will be able to fix a price for their locality, and possibly for the kingdom. Produce them from their shops, let them meet,