The unrestricted influx of destitute aliens into the United Kingdom is a matter which has for some time past attracted a considerable amount of public attention. Within the last few years a Select Committee of the House of Commons has inquired into this question, and has published a report acknowledging its extent and recognizing some of its evils. The Sweating Committee of the House of Lords has dealt with it indirectly, so far as it concerned the subject in hand. Trades Unions and Labour Congresses have passed resolutions condemning, in a more or less general way, the present system of unchecked and unsifted immigration. But it is only quite recently that it has advanced to a place within the realm of practical politics. Few public questions have ripened so quickly as this has done. Last year[1] it was discussed, it is true, but only in an academic way, as one of those matters which loom among "the dim and distant visions of the future." To-day it is emphatically one of the questions of the hour. The Electorate is considering it, the Press--that sure reflex of public opinion--is discussing it, and the leaders of political parties, forced by the growing pressure from beneath, are making up their minds about it. The reasons for this are not very far to seek. Two great causes have tended to bring this question to the front at the present time. One, the recent edicts promulgated by the Czar against his Jewish subjects in Russia, edicts with which no right-thinking man can have any possible sympathy, and which necessarily have the result of driving many thousands of Russian Jews to seek their fortunes anew in other lands; the other, the action this year[2] of the United States Government, in passing a law which has had the effect of practically closing the Atlantic ports to the poorer class of aliens altogether. Now since the inevitable tendency in the movement of peoples is from East to West, and since Great Britain, after America, is admittedly the country to which the greatest portion of these Eastern immigrants come, it follows, as a matter of course, that the action of the American Government in thus shutting their doors to the refuse population of the Old World, cannot fail to have the effect of greatly intensifying the evil here. Our little overcrowded island is really the only place left for them to come--the only country among all the nations of Europe, with one insignificant exception, which has not seen fit to protect its own people against the influx of the destitute and unfit of other lands. These are the two principal causes which have forced this question to the front. There is another also which will prevent its ever again sinking into the background. It is this. The working-classes of this country, with whom rests the balance of political power, have taken the matter up, and, having once taken it up, they will not let it drop. On this I shall dwell more fully later on. I merely allude to it