to the amount of £800, and will give B ownership of the farm subject to a payment for the first five years of £40 per annum, and after that time of £32 per annum for forty-four years. The £8 extra per annum levied for the first five years goes to form an insurance fund. After'wards, of the £32 paid by the tenant for forty-four years, £22 goes to pay the landlord, £8 to a sinking fund to repay capital, and the remaining £2 is devoted to local purposes, notably to the supply of labourers' dwellings. The advance of £33,000,000 is secured on the Consolidated Fund, which is guaranteed against loss (1) by the Irish Probate Duty grant of £200,000 and the Exchequer contribution of £40,000, and (2) by the Irish share of local taxation (Customs and Excise) duties, amounting to £700,000, for the following local grants:-Rates on Government property, grants to model schools, national, schools, and industrial schools, grants to workhouses, dispensaries, and lunatic asylums. The bulk of the money is to be set apart for tenants and farmers under £5) valuation. Such are the main features of the latest of the long and weary attempts which the Imperial Legislature has made to settle the Irish Land Question. It is practically the execution. by a Tory Government of the favourite scheme which John Bright set forth in 1870.

Objections.

Of course it will not settle the Land QuesThe Liberal tion. No one who has ever been in Ireland, or who has looked for a moment into the almost impenetrable jungle of interlaced interests, can expect any Act of Parliament to settle anything. Mr. Balfour, who compares the Irish Land System to a series of geological strata, knows well that his Bill will leave its main features unaltered. If it succeeds its success will be gradual. It can only succeed rapidly at the risk of a convulsion which will immediately necessitate fresh legislation. If it were not that anything ever happens in Ireland according to expectation, it would seem to be a safe prophecy

that the immediate reduction of 20 per cent. in the rent of all purchasing tenants would lead all their neighbours to compel their landlords to agree to sell or to reduce their rents, but no one ever knows what to expect except the unexpected. Mr. Morley conveniently summarised as follows the Liberal objections to the Bill on the third reading :

The first objection is that the probate duty grant was appropriated for a certain purpose without Irish consent. The second is that certain local resources were hypothecated without the consent or sanction or voice, in any shape or form, of any Irish local authority. Thirdly, that the notion of withholding money voted by Parliament for education or other purposes was practically and essentially

unjust. Fourthly, that eviction was your only remedy in case of non-payment of these annuities, and that this eviction on a large scale was an intolerable remedy. The fifth objection is that the scheme of the Bill offered no safeguard against pressure being put by ill-disposed landlords on their tenants in the shape of arrears. The sixth is that outside of each purchase transaction all sorts of ulterior liabilities were left untouched, which would be disclosed after the purchase transaction was finished, and that all sorts of covenants might have been entered into destructive of the policy of this Bill. The seventh objection is inside the purchase transaction, that the security is the entire holding, the tenant's interest plus the landlord's interest, and as the Bill stands we are apparently again going to do what was done in the wellmeant but disastrous measure of 1848, the Encumbered Estates Act, namely, selling the tenants' improvements over and over again. The eighth objection, which is one of the most important of all, springs from the danger we have pointed out of creating by law so great an inequality, so immense a disparity, between two sections of tenants, on the one hand those whose landlords are willing to sell to them, and on the other those whose landlords are not willing to sell; so that you will have two classes of tenants, a privileged class, paying the reduced annuity, and those outside the Bill, who are paying a rent appreciably higher. Those are the main objections which we took, and of these not one has been met.

and Church

Funds.

State The Congested District section of the Land Socialism Bill may yet prove to be the most important. It provides that £1,500,000 of the surplus of the Irish Church Fund shall be placed at the disposal of a Congested Districts Board, which shall be instructed to use it so as to bring about the amalgamation of small holdings, to assist migration and emigration, and generally to develop the industries of any district where the proportion between the total population and the total rateable value is less than £1 6s. Sd. per head. Mr. Balfour anticipates from this provision absolutely incalculable advantages. The Board has not only to provide the machinery of production, but at the same time to teach the people how the machinery is to be used. "What the Board has to do is to consider in its whole scope and bearings the question of the great poverty education, to provide harbours and boats, and above and misery in the West." It is to provide technical all to teach the people how to cultivate their lands to the best advantage, etc. Here is the Paternal State reappearing with its pockets filled with the proceeds of the disendowment of a Church. The example is not likely to be lost on this side St. George's Channel. Mr. Gladstone's remarkable speech on June 19th on the Colonial Bishoprics Fund shows that he is a Free Churchman at heart, and that he has almost convinced himself that State endowments cripple instead of help religion. The demonstration of the practical uses that can be made of a Church surplus by Mr. Balfour's Bill will prob

M CONSTANS, MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR, FRANCE.

ably tend to quicken the movement in favour of creating a similar surplus, first in Wales, then in Scotland, and ultimately in England, where the Church revenue from endowments left before 1703 is over five millions per annum.

Rural

The Re- In Western Ireland the Paternal State, peopling of with its Church surplus, is about to deal England. with the overcrowding of the population on the worst land in the country. In England there is urgent need for the Paternal State to take in hand an evil that is exactly the antithesis to that of the Irish congested districts. The best land in rural England is being denuded of its population. What we want to do is to get the people back to the land. The population of England and Wales, according to the census returns, is 29,000,000, the rate of increase having fallen from 14:36 per cent. in 1871-81 to 11.64 in 1881-91. The increase is confined to urban districts, chiefly to the suburbs of towns. In the five months ending May 31st, 49,652 English people left this country for the New England beyond the sea-30,000 to the States, and 20,000 to our own Colonies-but this drain is nothing compared to the drain to the towns. We want a Depleted District Board in England with ample funds, which shall be authorised to undertake the re-peopling of any district which does not carry a certain minimum proportion of inhabitants to acreage. The experiment which the Salvation Army is conducting in Essex will be watched with intense interest from this point of view. The time is too short to enable them to speak with confidence, but the Army leaders are sanguine that they will be able to pay interest on capital, to feed their labourers, and show a small profit. If they can do this, it is by no means improbable that before long the revenues now devoted to maintain the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the wealthiest of English sects may be transferred to minister to the social necessities of the poorest of the English people.

Social

The wave of semi-socialist legislation is Legislation submerging all Europe. M. Constans, in France. the one strong man whom France has produced since the death of M. Gambetta, has decided that the time has come for responding to the German initiative by introducing an Old Age Insurance Bill, which is to secure for French workmen an annual pension of from £12 to £24 after they reach the age of sixty-five. There are to be payments made by the workmen, other payments made by the employers, and a grant by the State, which will ultimately amount to £4,000,000 per annum. Whatever may be the immediate fate of this measure, it can hardly fail to stimulate the movement towards old-age

vened to secure the twelve-hours day for the 'busmen of Paris than an agitation was set on foot in London for the same limitation of the day's work. Mr. Sutherst, a barrister, who is interviewed on the subject in this month's Help, organised a strike for the twelve-hours day, and after London had been without 'buses for a week, the men carried their point. It remains to be seen whether, in England as in France, the twelve-hours day will be extended to all railway, tram, omnibus and steamboat men throughout the country.

Old Age Insurance.

The example of France in the matter of insurance against old age will not be followed so rapidly, but Mr. Chamberlain's letter last month shows that he is working away at the elaboration of a practical scheme. He has not as yet advanced so far as to discover that the scheme must be compulsory, but he has arrived at one or two conclusions which are worth noting. First, it will not do to begin your pension before sixty-five. To begin it at sixty would diminish the sum that could be paid by more than one half. Secondly, it will not do to forfeit the payment in case of death before sixty-five. It is true that this limitation will reduce the four shillings per week pension to two shillings or less; but notwithstanding this, he thinks "it will be necessary to permit the amount of the subscriptions which may have been paid to be allocated without interest to surviving relatives in the event of death before the age of sixty-five." He has not made up his mind as to the extent to which the State should subsidise the scheme. He has placed himself in communication with the officials of the Post Office and with some of the leading representatives of the friendly societies, and with their assistance he hopes to prepare a definite and practicable scheme which "will be popular with the working classes generally." Mr. Chamberlain will do well not to forget to consult Mr. Albert Pell, the leading representative of the old school of political economists. I interviewed him last month down at his place in Hazelbeach, and found him half disposed to go on the war-path against all schemes of insurance, which would be a great pity.

tion.

One by one all the schemes of the Radicals Free Educa- of twenty years ago are being carried into effect by the Tory Government. Mr. Balfour has no sooner carried the Bill giving effect to Mr. Bright's proposal of 1870 than Sir W. HartDyke comes to the front with his Bill for granting a State subsidy of 10s. per head on all the elementary scholars in schools between the age of five and fourteen. The effect of the measure will be to make education free in two-thirds of our English schools. The Liberals object to this increased endowment of denominational schools without securing at the same time a corresponding increase of popular control. But until we get our Village Councils we may as well leave that question over. When the County Councils have been supplemented by Parish and District Councils, then we shall have a representative administrative apparatus ready to hand to undertake the popular control of all schools maintained out of the rates and taxes. Till then we shall have to potter on as best we can, for the meantime making

such protest, and, if possible, effecting a few amendments in the Bill, but accepting it gladly as a great stride in the right direction.

Parties and Social Programmes.

It is becoming more and more obvious that, excepting Home Rule and the Disestablishment of the Church, there is very little difference between the two parties in British politics. Lord Hartington, on June 24th, referring to the electoral leaflet circulated by the Liberal Caucus, said :

of this land required, let us say, an investment of £400,000,000, half of which was furnished in one form or another by capitalists secured by mortgages and liens. Wher prices were high all went well, but when prices fell the West's great debt to the East

They (the Liberals) are going further "to improve local government in the counties by creating district and parish councils; to make better provision for the housing of the working classes in town and country; to provide free education under the control of the people." They are going "to make provision for the direct and popular control of the liquor traffic; to improve the Poor Law; to extend the Factory Acts in order to do away with the evils of the sweating system; to give labourers and others a fair chance of getting as much land as they can profitably manage.' Now, gentlemen, I say that with one exception I believe that the present Unionist Government and party have dealt or attempted to deal with every one of those subjects. I say with one exception. I do not know that the present Government has made any attempt to reform the Poor Law; neither do I know that a proposal has ever been made by any responsible leader of the Gladstonian party to reform the Poor Law.

From Judge.]

[June 6, 1891, A PARTY OF PATCHES. GRAND BALLOON ASCENSION-CINCINNATI, MAY 20TH, 1891. was payable in dollars, and its nominal dimensions did not shrink with the increased purchasing power of money, and it found itself obliged to pay back much more in value than it had received. The

whole effort of the so-called financial heresies of the farmers' movement is based upon the idea that the average purchasing power of money should remain as nearly stable as possible, and that its subtle appreciation through a term of years is almost ruinous to a young producing community that borrows its fixed and its working capital from older and richer communities. Hence the demand

South last November, it would be blind and stupid to treat the farmers' political movement as a trivial matter. Fundamentally, it is the inflation of the currency and a corresponding advance in the price of products that the farmers want; and the proposed Government loans to individuals introduce a wholly different class of projects. It is impossible to understand the farmers' movement and the motives that underlie the new party, unless one considers in a broad way the nature of the economic development of the West. To state it in the simplest way, let it be assumed that five hundred thousand square miles of good land, wholly unoccupied two decades ago, now support ten millions of people. The occupancy and the use

for free silver coinage, for the direct issue of treasury notes, and for various other monetary and financial experiments. The remedies might prove far worse than the grievance; but it is absurd to regard the Western and Southern farmers who hold to these plans as cheats or repudiators.

Mr. Blaine's temporary indisposition has Mr. Blaine and his been made the occasion for much beWork. wildering newspaper gossip as to his general state of health, his diplomatic tasks, and his

the century. The honours that were paid to his memory in Westminster Abbey had been earned by devoted service to the interests of the British Empire. While the Federation of the British American provinces was not in any sense the work of one man, it is true that Sir John, more than any other, was the statesman who led that important movement, and who worked out the terms upon which the Dominion was formed. It is interesting to note the new appreciation that we are manifesting for our colonial statesmen. The marked and official tributes paid to Sir John at London are without precedent in the history of the British dependencies. But so, also, is the elevation to the peerage of a Canadian, Sir George Stephen. If, as has been intimated, this favour bestowed by royalty is the first step in pursuance of a plan of Lord Salisbury's to create a number of Canadian life peerages, a majority of Canadians will not be pleased. Sir George has led in the achievement of the Canadian Pacific Railroad and cognate enterprises; but democracy is too deep-rooted in North America to make the erection of successful railroad men into titled aristocrats other than generally distasteful. It is, however, noted on the other side as one of the various marks of a growing sense in England of the dignity and importance of the colonies. The dominance of the Canadian Pacific Railway is at least suggested by the designation of Mr. J. J. C. Abbott, the railway company's chief legal adviser, as Sir John A. Macdonald's successor. Mr. Abbott is a Canadian public man of long experience, but he is not so well known as some of his colleagues.

Women to the Front

Mrs. Grimwood, the widowed heroine of Manipur, has been decorated by Her Majesty with the Order of the Red Cross -the Victoria Cross as yet being a monopoly of the male. These unjust monopolies are, however, disappearing before the growing sense of justice in the democracy. Lady Macdonald, the widow of "Sir John A.," has addressed a spirited appeal to the Conservatives of Canada to remain true to the cause which her husband so often led to victory; but although while he lived Lady Macdonald was a potent force in Canadian politics, civilisation has not advanced far enough in the Dominion for the widow to be allowed to survive politically-the decease of her husband. It is an attenuated form of the Indian suttee, the bitterness of which is only slightly modified by the peerage conferred upon her by the Queen. It may be noted as a remarkable indication of the trend of democratic thought that the Governments of the two leading Australian Colonies, New South Wales