the patients in drugs may be estimated when we remember that there is a saving of 75 per cent. on prescriptions made up at the Civil Service Stores, as compared with ordinary chemists' charges. Then, again, the provision of houses for members has been recognised as an undertaking in which the spare funds of societies may be in vested; but the habit of limiting all advantages connected with the use of co-operative funds to the 'joined members' of the cooperative body, has restricted action in this direction. If there were a society of practical working builders, prepared to lay out building estates in workmen's dwellings, there is no reason why such a society should not be entrusted with an increasing proportion of the general funds, and extend its operations so as at last, may be, to compete successfully with those suburban curses, the land speculator and jerry builder. It is simply absurd for cooperators to complain of the dearth of investments, while house property continues to rise in value and nine out of ten working men are villanously housed.

Of course each special enterprise of this kind presupposes energy and enthusiasm that can be specially directed towards its conduct, and a different group of enthusiasts would have to be enlisted in each case. Sanitary reformers would take up the dispensaries as a kind of extra, not demanding their whole time or personal labour. A building society that really built, instead of only employing builders, would have to consist of bricklayers, carpenters, and masons, with a taste for art and architecture, and a passion for good workmanship such as finds little scope for indulgence in these days of high ground-rents and short building leases. These workmen, who are the very salt of the salt of society, have not yet ceased to exist among us, but they are an independent, self-sufficient race, not needing the stimulus of good company to teach them how to spend or save their earnings. Hence, as a class, they are not fascinated by distributive cooperation alone; but once let an alliance be proclaimed between cooperative capital and cooperative labour, and they would take their place as leaders of a great movement in favour of cooperative production.

There is one more point to be considered, or rather reconsidered, from an altered point of view, and that is the great banking difficulty. We have seen that a joint-stock bank, promoted by cooperators, is not cooperative, and runs great risk of not being even successful; but that does not prove that there is no demand for cooperative banking. The people's banks in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere, do a business rivalling even that of the North-country stores in profitableness and extent. They are not mere savings banks: by a simple system of mutual insurance they are enabled to make loans and advances at reasonable interest to customers of a class whose chance of obtaining credit would otherwise be hopeless; instead of existing merely to provide investments, they are essentially cooperative in the sense of bestowing benefits on their members rather as customers than as shareholders. In times of temporary distress, the working classes in

this country must live on their savings, if they have any, and after that they cannot borrow without getting into debt; they cannot borrow money at reasonable interest to be repaid gradually upon the security of character and savings. However good their character, their credit is bad, and those whose credit is bad, if compelled to raise money, can only do so upon improvidently extravagant terms. Hence there can be little doubt that a cooperative bank, established for the benefit of the working classes themselves, and used by them instead of by private traders and rich stores, would meet a real want, and not, therefore, have to complain of want of custom and a superfluity of capital.

But perhaps the branch of banking which has the first claim on the attention of cooperators is that most ancient, now most humble branch of the profession symbolised by the three golden balls. The subject deserves a treatise to itself, and we can only spare a word; but there is probably no one direction in which an application of cooperative principles and customs would produce greater results than this. Weekly dealings at the pawnshop may to a certain extent be a sign of recklessness and improvidence of the more culpable kind; but when we remember that the very poor have no other means of raising money to meet their most urgent needs, and when we realise that from 200 to 1,000 per cent. is frequently charged upon the money advanced on pledges, it will be seen that some of those who have fallen into the pawnbroker's clutches by no fault of their own, can scarcely hope to escape by their own unassisted efforts. There are thousands of families in London who, having once 'got behind,' having been obliged in some one hard winter, through illness, slack work, or any other mischance, to pawn their few household gods for food and firing, have redeemed the same in the following summer, instead of laying by for the winter's needs; henceforward the cycle repeats itself for ever, and the pawn shop draws a revenue from the unhappy family in the long run perhaps amounting to many hundredfold the small sum which began their troubles. It is obvious how easily the cooperative pawn shop, with its division of profits as bonus among customers, would enable the respectable poor to retrieve their position, instead of becoming more and more involved; and as every such shop would naturally be an agency for the other branches of cooperative bank work, many of those who came to squander might be induced to remain to save.' Forethought can only be expected from those who have some reasonable prospect of good to look forward to.

The question for the rising generation of co-operators is really this: Will they attempt and accomplish as much as the generation which has now grown grey or gone to rest, or will they be content merely to carry on upon the old lines the work that better men began, in the face of the oft repeated experience, that a movement which has come to the end of its power of growth soon reaches the end of its idle life by the natural processes of decay and disintegra

tion? There is no reason at present to anticipate such a gloomy end to a gallant career; but as religious orders require periodical reform, and religious zeal periodical revival, so it may well be that to develop all the social possibilities of co-operation we require a fresh influx of enthusiasm and a reversion to the broadest ideals of the ancient pioneers.

EDITH SIMCOX.

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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS ABOUT GARIBALDI.

I.

RELATIONS SINCE THE SICILIAN RISING.

MOST lively picture is before my mind's eye, of Garibaldi's personal appearance as I saw him in spring, 1864, amidst charming surroundings-shortly before his triumphal entry into Londonin the house of Mr. Seely, M.P., in the south-western part of the Isle of Wight.

It

England was then in an indescribable state of excitement. was a time of anxious desire of Reform, not unalloyed with misgivings as to the result of the battle felt to be in the air. Like some fiery meteor, the red shirt' of the Liberator of the Two Sicilies of the Vanquished of Aspromonte, who even in defeat had not lost his halo as a Power of the Future-suddenly rose on the overcast political horizon. With hopeful expectation, with hearts more deeply moved than many among the present generation may be able to understand, great masses awaited his arrival.

Had he not, like a Norse viking, dared with his own hand to strike the crown from the head of the Bourbon King, and with two leaky ships, and a thousand volunteers, attacked and overthrown a Government which commanded an army of 150,000 men and a warfleet of 98 vessels with 832 guns? If such achievements were possible, need any righteous popular cause despair? These were the days when in England no second Reform Bill had yet been obtained; when, out of a population of some nine to ten million men, at most one million possessed the suffrage-whilst from across the Atlantic, where in the Union war the principles of human right had been triumphant, a mighty ground-swell was beginning to thunder towards the English shores.

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With uneasy glance, a small, ultra-aristocratic circle looked forward to Garibaldi's coming. How could the influence of this great Leader whose name was identified with so many revolutions, be diminished among the masses? How could the relations between England and her illustrious ally,' the French Emperor, against whose occupation of Rome the expected 'Guest of the English Nation' had risen, be protected from injury? This was the consideration for a body of men filled with deep anxiety, yet conscious of being unable to stem the torrent of popular enthusiasm.

Garibaldi had landed in Southampton. But before he even stepped on English soil, some highly-placed members of the governing classes, in connection with the Italian Embassy, were suspected of wishing to place an embargo upon him; to have him surrounded,

with the aid of the initiated, like a victim adorned with garlands; and thus to prevent him from being master of his own movements. Honours were to be showered upon him, but he was to be kept within a 'charmed circle.' As a matter of fact, it is well known that before the 'Ripon' touched at Southampton, the vessel was boarded and a hasty war-council held there, and that a pencil-note was obtained from Garibaldi, to this effect:-'Dear friends! I do not wish to receive political demonstrations. Above all, no tumults must be raised! (Sopra tutto, non eccitare dei tumulti.)'

Being the guest of the English nation, the unselfish and easily impressed man of the people had yielded to a desire conveyed to him in his native tongue. He spoke English very imperfectly; and many feared that he had been brought to misunderstand the real state of affairs. In London, at any rate, much dissatisfaction arose among the then leaders of the popular movement. Many thought he had been unfairly subjected to social and political strategy, and that even the delay of his entry into London had been occasioned by it.

For justice' sake it must be stated that he had bound himself beforehand to those who brought him over and offered him hospitality, for a stay of nearly a week in the Isle of Wight. A day after his arrival, I received a letter, dated Brooke House, in which he said he would be very happy to see me. If we are together for a talk '—he wrote-'I will arrange so that we shall have full time for it.'

By correspondence I had been in frequent intercourse with him since the Sicilian rising, and received various notable communications from him, either of a confidential nature, or destined for publicity, as well as precious tokens of friendship. Before me are two portraits he sent to us from Caprera, after 1860. They seem to be taken from an oil-painting, but are most life-like. In them, he has an open, slightly dare-devil' expression; long hair, one of the locks on the right temple being curiously curled in sailor-fashion; and he wears a round Spanish hat, a little cocked on the right side. I do not remember having seen the same likeness anywhere else. The cards bear his name in his own handwriting, as well as the inscription:Al mio amico Carlo Blind, and Alla Signora Blind.' He at the same time added a representation of his simple dwelling on the stony Goat Island where he lived in Cincinnatus' style.

As a prisoner in the Varignano, he sent a photograph showing. him on his couch of pain, where he lay with ankle broken by a bullet from the army of that King upon whom he had conferred the crown of united Italy. His face looks exceedingly wan and sad, as he sits up in bed reading. A letter of thanks, dated Varignano, October 17, 1862, and written partly in his name by a well-known Italian patriot, Augusto Vecchj, in reply to words of sympathy I had addressed to bim after Aspromonte, contains the following:-'We have the Ministers whom you know. We have the King Honest-Man . . . whom you also know. We have a "magnanimous ally"... whom the No. 632 (No. CLII. N. s.)

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