There can be no doubt that the most deleterious influence of our times, which encourages nations to delay and deny to each other justice and the fulfilment of solemn obligations, is the habit of waiting upon the chances of a minister's fall, and a resulting change of policy. So long as almost any day may bring a new set of statesmen, predisposed against anything which their predecessors may have approved, diplomacy will be disfigured by ways that are dark and tricks that are vain: and the logical twentieth of the centuries may be trusted to perceive this. Consequently some method will have to be devised by which a continuous foreign policy may be made compatible with the performance of a nation's will. And here the wiser nature of the new age will assist the constructive genius of the reformer. No doubt the habit of changing our minds on the basic principles of government about once every six years will have been eradicated. Peoples will deliberate more intelligently upon the important questions which they decide by their votes: and it will no longer be thought--or rather, we shall no longer act as if we thought--that a modification of general opinion in regard (say) to Home Rule for Ireland must necessarily carry with it a change of opinion as to whether it is desirable to extend our influence in Afghanistan. When this error is abandoned, probably foreign affairs will no longer be made part and parcel of the work of the same set of men that is elected to manage domestic policy. It will then be possible for the people to express--as they rarely have any opportunity to express under the present system--their sovereign will in regard to international matters. And here, as everywhere, responsibility will certainly exercise an educative influence. When men intelligently realise that by their votes they are deciding the fate of their country, they will deliberate long before yielding a decision so momentous. Inasmuch as the foreign affairs of any nation are truly understood only by a very limited class, because very few people are willing to give up enough of their leisure to the studies necessary for such an understanding, it seems reasonable to think that one feature of the polity of the year 2000 may be the limitation of the right to vote on foreign affairs to men and women who have demonstrated in some sufficient manner their competence to assist in directing the action of their representatives in matters so intricate. The increased leisure with which other reforms already foreseen will endow the people will of course facilitate the acquirement of this competence, and the right to vote on foreign affairs will doubtless be a coveted social distinction, subserving the perennial love of titles and the childlike pleasure of having letters after one's name. Nor need we be too much daunted in this conjecture by the whispered word "oligarchy." When oligarchy really means government by those best qualified to govern--the