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tary purposes, by which all parts of the globe are brought into financial touch with each other.

"The Western men have got it into their heads that Lombard Street is the golden Juggernaut that has crushed silver. It is on a gold basis certainly, but it has never raised a finger to hurt silver or to discourage the use of it by countries which preferred it. Lombard Street has always said in such cases: 'Have a silver standard by all means, and make the best you can of it, so long as you let those who prefer a gold standard also do the best they can with theirs.'

"If we have succeeded in giving a clear idea of the distinctive functions of Lombard Street it will be evident that there is no occasion for it to discriminate against silver as an international form of money. All forms of money find a natural and useful place in its operations. So far as its foreign exchange business is concerned, the greater variety of moneys there are to arbitrate the more profitable for it. With the monetary substances themselves, or their comparative merits as measures of value, it has little to do. Its chief concern is with their relative market values at a given moment and in a given place.

ITS ONE AND ONLY TEST.

"These are truisms in Europe, however unpalatable they may be in Chicago. Moreover, our mone tary standard has little to do with them, and it might be materially modified without affecting them. The Populist threat of free coinage at sixteen to one, so far from being alarming to Lombard Street, would hurt it less than any other part of Europe or America; far less than it would hurt Chicago, and infinitely less than it would hurt Mr. Bryan's own State of Nebraska, for the simple reason that Lombard Street could. sooner than any other disturbed quarter adapt itself to the change. It is the most fluid of all markets, the most difficult to coerce or restrict, and the quickest to readjust itself to changed conditions. Of all outsiders, it has least interest in the vagaries of cheap money mongers, being farthest removed from their reach. Whatever they offer it-gold. silver, greenbacks. Sherman notes, or commercial bills-it will take at the current market price, no more and no less. All dollars come alike to it, no matter what they may be called, or how they may be rated to other dollars. Its one and only test for them is what they may be worth in pounds sterling."

A VEILED suggestion of the inevitable event appears in the Dublin Review, with its minute and most interesting description of Papal elections and coronations, which those who are speculating about the appointment of the next Pope would do well to study. It is curious to note that in the election of the Infallible One most ludicrous mistakes are made by the voting cardinals. Mr. A. Shield gives a very vivid account of the Cardinal of York, the brother of Prince Charlie, and the last of the ill starred Stuarts.

THE

IS ENGLAND HOSTILE TO SILVER? HE editor of the National Review (London) complains that Great Britain is the great bugbear of American bimetallists, and is being "held up to odium" throughout the United States in the present campaign. He protests against such procedure as unjust to the British bimetallists.

"The habit of pouring hatred, ridicule, and contempt upon England at every turn of their affairs has become almost a second nature with American politicians, and so one accepts it as part of the order of things. It is singularly unreasonable in this case, and Americans should be shrewd enough to realize that there is no country in the world more vitally interested than we are in terminating the chaos that has reigned since the ill-considered, or rather the unconsidered, operations of the early seventies deprived international currency of its second string -silver. No country benefited more from bimetallism while it lasted than we did, and no country has suffered more from the fall of prices, the dislocation of trade, the pressure upon production, and the impoverishment of debtor communities, attributable to that folly than we have. The Indian Empire and our Far Eastern trade make the present chaos as detrimental to this nation as to any other, while the collapse of prices has been twice as disastrous to the British farmer as to the Western farmer. The number of Englishmen alive to our true mone. tary interests is increasing by leaps and bounds. The present House of Commons is largely bimetallic in its composition, and has recorded its views in a favorable resolution, upon which the monometallists did not care to divide. Moreover, the Ministry is pledged to reopen the Indian mints, which every economist knows would be a splendid contribution toward the rehabilitation of silver. Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, which only contains one thoroughgoing monometallist, is indeed the most benevolent toward bimetallism that has ever held power in this country."

Four members of this Cabinet the editor groups as "convinced bimetallists "-Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chaplin, Sir M. White Ridley, and Lord James of Hereford. Each of these gentlemen is a vice-president of the Bimetallic League, the object of which is "to urge upon the British Government the necessity of co-operating with other leading nations for the establishment, by international agreement, of the free coinage of gold and silver, at a fixed ratio." Lord Salisbury himself, Lord Lansdowne, Lord George Hamilton, Mr. Goschen, Lord Cross and Mr. Akers Douglas are classed as "benevolent toward bimetallism;" Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Walter Long, and Lord Balfour of Burleigh are regarded as open minded" on the question, while Sir Michael Hicks-Beach is set down as distinctly "hostile," and five members remain unclassified. The editor concludes:

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"Such being the disposition of our political leaders, it is absurd to represent this country as the

uncompromising foe of American wishes. The truth is that the interests of both nations are identical, but both have the misfortune to be to some extent held in bondage by Rothschilds, Vanderbilts, and other products of our common civilization. not easy to persuade and most difficult to dethrone."

THE RECENT SESSION OF PARLIAMENT.

BLACK

The Cause of the Great Fallure. LACKWOOD" in its article entitled "The Last Chapter of Party History," makes no bones about emphasizing the fiasco of the Education act. It says:

"Here we see an administration at the head of a commanding majority, conducted by men of consummate ability and great parliamentary experience, strong in numbers, strong in brains, and strong in their acquaintance with business, completly foiled by a feeble minority numbering only one man in its ranks who has any claim to be called a statesman of the first class. The fact itself is of immense significance.

"The causes of this one great failure we have endeavored to trace with brevity. They are three in number : Miscalculation, obstruction, disorganization. The first was really very trifling, and without the other two would have done no harm. The second was the immediate and obvious agent in bringing about this unfortunate result. The third is a legacy from 1886, when a reconstruction of the party system became necessary-a reconstruction which is still in progress, and therefore necessarily the source of some embarrassments. Great allowances must be made for the leader of a party during this period of transformation. But it cannot go on forever. Either it must terminate very soon, or some new way of carrying on the Queen's government must be found. Deference to sections which are in the party, but not of it, may be carried so far as to make confusion worse confounded, and even perhaps to check the more complete amalgamation of other and more congenial elements.”

Mr. Greenwood's Lament.

Mr. Greenwood, in the Contemporary Review, wrings his hands bitterly over what he regards as the sacrifice of a great opportunity by the Unionist Ministry. He has never been able to reconcile himself to the commanding position which the Liberal Unionists have been allowed to occupy in the Cabinet, and he sees in the history of the late session only too much to justify his forebodings. He is naturally wroth at the release of Daly, the dynamitard, and he can hardly speak for tears concerning the Irish Land act. He says:

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is the extent to which Ministers have weakened the parliamentary party system. As to this he is quite certain :

"It is not as if our party system-for which no one has yet suggested a tolerable substitute-remained at the end of the first session of the new Parliament no weaker than at the beginning. It is distinctly weaker than when this Parliament met; and it has been weakened at its foundations. I can but think that a great opportunity-one which, if turned to good account, would have made at least one coalition glorious-has been misused."

Mr. Chaplin's Failure.

The editor in his monthly survey falls foul of Mr. Chaplin, whom he regards as one of the failures of the Ministry. He says:

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'Mr. Chaplin has shown himself to be quite incapable of understanding the principle or expounding the details of even a secondary measure, and his conduct of the Rating bill left everything to be desired-in fact, he treated it as a mere pero-Rating bill. It is to be hoped that the London Water bill with which we are threatened next year will be confided to different hands. Mr. Hanbury, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, has disappointed the expectations encouraged by the acumen and zeal which he has displayed for some twenty years as a Treasury critic, and Mr. St. John Brodrick has failed to get a single one of the important military bills entrusted to him on the statute book, which must be due to a singular want of diplo macy."

A Word to Mr. Balfour.

An anonymous writer in the Fortnightly Review, in an article entitled "The Schoolmaster of St. Stephen's," takes upon himself to hint mildly that Mr. Balfour is not quite up to his work, and that he had better endeavor to improve next session. Speaking of Mr. Balfour's leadership, he says:

"In his anxiety, perhaps praiseworthy, certainly not imperceptible, to avoid the tendency to play to the gallery which characterized his former associate, Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Balfour at times seems in danger of mistaking a highly superior indifference to the public opinion of the Chamber which he leads for independence and strength in its leader. The consequences revealed themselves with increasing frequency as the session drew to its close. The weekly droppings of journalistic gush may, unless Mr. Balfour is careful, have the proverbial effect of the water falling on the stone, and may yet undermine instead of assuring his position. Perhaps, therefore, it may not seem impertinent to suggest that when Mr. Balfour's visit to Hawarden has closed, it would not be altogether lost time if, instead of the strains of Wagner at Bayreuth, the sands of St. Andrews, or the levels of Berwick, the leader of the House of Commons were to cultivate, under the auspices of Sir William Harcourt at Malwood, the genius and the traditions of the parlia

mentary management whose most successful exponent was the jaunty and virile master of the contiguous Broadlands.”

Justin McCarthy's Views.

In the North American Review for September, Mr. Justin McCarthy makes some caustic remarks on the failures of the session:

"The programme of the session was crammed full of measures, every one of which was to have proved to the country what practical administrators the Tory statesmen were and what good they could do for England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, now that Mr. Gladstone and his Home Rule policy were out of the way. What now is to come of all these promises? There is no time left to give a chance to any substantial part of the legislation which the government announced that it was its business to carry to success. The one great declaration of the Tory statesmen when they took office was that they were going to do substantial good for the people of Great Britain and Ireland and not to waste any time in absurd and impossible schemes of Home Rule for Ireland. Ireland they were going to satisfy by a great measure of land tenure reform. England they were going to satisfy by an Education bill and various other measures of an equally practical nature. Scotland was to have something all to herself, and Wales some peculiar measures of propitiation. Each and every measure was to be of the practical and not the visionary order. Now I think the most disputatious minds will admit that the first business of practical statesmanship is to be practical. It is of little use calling one's self a practical statesman if one brings in measures which cannot be carried into law. But this is exactly the condition of the present Tory government. Whatever any one may say of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule bill, it must be admitted that he carried it through the House of Commons and that it was rejected only by the House of Lords. Whatever may be thought of Mr. Balfour's Education bill, it must be admitted that it had to be withdrawn from the House of Commons. There is actually no time left in the present session during which to carry any substantial measures through Parliament. The Tory members are almost all of them gentlemen who are given up to the moors at the regular season, and whom the stoutest cart-ropes could not hold in their places at Westminster after the 12th of August. Most of the government measures will be withdrawn just as the Educational bill was withdrawn. Nobody cares about the Irish Land Tenure bill, except a few Irish landlords, and these do not care about it in its original form, and only stick to it in the hope that it may be so much improved in their sense as to give them some direct advantages. Therefore there is no rashness in the assumption that the session of 1896 is an absolutely wasted session. In truth, the huge majority of the Tories was in one sense a disadvantage to them. It made them too confident and cocksure."

IN

LI HUNG CHANG.

What He Thought of England.

N the United Service Magazine for September an anonymous writer, who evidently knows what he is writing about, gives some account of the impressions of Li Hung Chang. It would seem that Li left Great Britain firmly determined to introduce railways into China without any loss of time.

"I think I may say that he has quite come to the conclusion that of all forms of travel, the most comfortable is a good saloon carriage, with comfortable seats or sofas, in a railway on a well laid line. On one occasion, when he had been driven some ten miles out of London in one of Lord Lonsdale's excellent carriages, he peremptorily declared that nothing should induce him to go back that way, and he returned by a special train.

"Visions of the dusty travelers who arrived at Eynesford rise before me when I hear of the emphasis with which the veteran Chinese statesman has announced his intention of as quickly as possible getting extensive railways introduced into China. The contrast of a thoroughly dusty road immediately preceding the transit by a well conducted special train, with a special saloon, charmingly decorated with flowers, and with ample room to move or be moved about, may not have been unfortunate or unimportant if its effect on the body and mind of Li Hung Chang leads to the early introduction of railways into that vast Empire.

"Very striking, too, was the fact, to which those who saw him at Portsmouth all testify, that the thing about which he was even then most interested was the story he had heard of our Horse Artillery guns traveling wherever cavalry could go, and that they could go at a rapid pace over banks and ditches. Of the power of our fleet he was well aware, but for him, so far as army training was concerned, the point of importance was not the numbers that we could put in the field at Aldershot or elsewhere, but the nature of the training we are able to impart. Egypt and India and his own experience with Gordon have taught him what sort of armies English officers can make out of native troops. What he wanted to see was a specimen of some of our training at home. No one who watched the keen eye and vivid interest with which he watched, as a specimen of horsemanship, the musi cal ride, or the eagerness with which he saw the Horse Artillery gallop past and then ride over the manèges on Woolwich Common could have much doubt what was passing through his mind, and it may make itself better known hereafter. The tone of the press in Russia, Germany and France was one of disappointment that he had not been more amazed than he was at what he saw."

A French View of Li.

A well known French missionary, Père Coldre, in the Revue de Paris, gives a curious account of

Li Hung Chang, from a French and slightly critical point of view; but the article is one of the most notable contributions to French periodical litera

JOHN BULL'S INTERESTS IN SAMOA. Who Is the Predominant Partner? the Westminster Review for September, Mr. J.

ture, and is written by one who has had the advan- INF. Rose-Soley publishes an elaborate paper on

tage of knowing both the man and the country he describes.

Père Coldre draws a striking contrast between the Chinese and Japanese Envoys sent by their respective countries to the Czar's Coronation. Marshal Yamagata, the brilliant little Japanese soldier, was clothed in the freshest of European uniforms. Li, majestically draped in the ample robes of a Mandarin, might have been a contemporary of Confucius. The following facts about our late Chinese visitor are not without interest. Born on February 16, 1823, he comes of a cultivated and literary Chinese family; he was educated with the greatest care, and became in his twenty-fourth year what we should style First Wrangler, in an examination which gathers together all the intellectual élite of China. There was at that time nothing of the soldier in Li Hung Chang, for it was not until the year 1850 that the great rebellion turned China into a vast battlefield, and ultimately caused the death of twenty million men. Then followed years of fighting; and it was not until 1866, says Père Coldre, that Li first entered into relations with General Gordon. The writer evidently believes that the Chinese Bismarck allowed and even promoted the late Japanese Chinese conflict. The incognate collection of provinces which go to make up the Chinese Empire had become torpid, and Li Hung Chang saw that nothing he could do would rouse them from their apathy. In spite of all his efforts, bribery and corruption reigned supreme, and although he worked unceasingly at the strengthening of the army and the fleet, he saw that only a war-and a war at this Once prticular stage-would save his country. peace was declared, Li Hung Chang proved his extraordinary cleverness, and, thanks to his marvelous astuteness and diplomatic ability, China has come out of the affair with no loss of territory and with the payment of a comparatively small indemnity. One result of his late tour in Europe will be the ex patriation of a hundred German officers, who, tempted by the promise of enormous "pay," will reorganize the Celestial army.

THE Land of Sunshine, edited by Charles F. Lummis, is now in its fifth volume; its pages breathe the spirit of Southern California and the great Southwest. The series of illustrated articles by Mr. Lummis on "The Southwestern Wonderland," the description of "The Old California Vaquero " by Flora Haines Loughead, and the entertaining account of Southern California Indian life and customs by David P. Barrows, which we find in the August number, are among the representative contributions which have recently appeared in this unique periodical. The Overland must look to its laurels.

German and English interests in Samoa, which will not be read with satisfaction at Berlin. For Mr. Rose-Soley's point is that, excepting the great firm of Goeddefroy, which might be bought out tomorrow by any English capitalist-its interests being purely commercial-Samoa is virtually a British settlement.

GOEDDEFROY ET PRÆTEREA NIHIL.

Mr. Rose-Soley's paper is a valuable feature of the extent to which a single commercial firm can create a political interest and establish a position which becomes essential to an Imperial policy. But in Samoa, outside Goeddefroy's firm, the Germans are nowhere. Mr. Rose-Soley says:

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Once we have done with the German firm and its plantations we have done practically with German influence in Samoa. If the German company, as is quite feasible, were to be bought out to-morrow by an English or French syndicate, the national interest in the group would entirely cease. The removal of this one company would leave British influence predominant in every direction, whether in the matter of land, population, or wealth. Let us The Germans own take possession inland first. 75,000 acres, nearly the whole of which belongs to the German firm; the British came next, with 36,000 acres and following were the Americans, with 21,000 acres; the French, with 1,300 acres; and the people of various nationalities with 2,000 acres. Of the cultivated land, 8,100 acres went to the Germans, 2,900 to the British, 500 to the Americans, 780 to the French, and the balance to people of various nationalities. Thus Germany again stands first on the list, but if we deduct the area (7,850 acres) of the plantations owned by the firm, the German landed interest takes the lowest place. Even in the matter of residential white population, Germany, in spite of her many plantation employees, does not come first. Great Britain leads with 193 residents. The Germans are next with 122, then come the Americans, 46; a number, however, which includes 20 Mormon missionaries. There are only 26 Frenchmen, and the total foreigners resident in the group is but 412.

SAMOA ENGLISH BY LANGUAGE

"Out of the German population, nearly one-half are employed by the German firm; the balance are mainly store-or hotel keepers. The professional men, the lawyers, accountants, and so on, are of the English race, the two newspapers published in Apia are printed in the English language, the head of Victoria appears on all the coin in circulation, and the natives, whenever they speak a foreign tongue at all, speak English. The German language has no hold on the land; it is spoken only among a limited

circle, and for all intercourse with natives, or business correspondence, the Teuton has to fall back on English. It is a significant fact that the German firm, though it employs exclusively clerks of its own nationality, keeps its books in English. The import returns are decidedly in favor of the British, for out of £90,000 worth of goods imported in 1894, £75,500 came from Great Britain and her colonies, £16,600 direct from Germany, and the balance from the United States.

-AND BY RELIGION.

"It is more than sixty years since the London Missionary Society first commenced operations in Samoa, and to-day the whole group is nominally converted to Christianity. As far as all outward signs go, the Samoan of to day is a most devout Christian.

"The missionary of to day has become a schoolmaster rather than an evangelist. Thus we arrive at the significant fact that the Samoan people have been, and are being, entirely educated by the missions. The utterly incapable and impecunious Samoan government contributes not a penny toward the cost of teaching its own people. The work has been performed almost entirely by English money and English brains. The London Missionary Society, first in the field, has done the giant's share, and to day it claims as adherents some 27,000 Samoans. In the absence of a census, whether religious or secular, exact figures as to population are not obtainable, but it is estimated that the group is inhabited by about 35,000 natives. Of this number the Roman Catholics, who have many workers in the field, may have 5,000 converts, the Wesleyans perhaps an equal number, the remainder belonging to the London Mission. Thus, with the exception of the small French Catholic Mission, the whole credit of Christianizing these islands belongs to the English, an achievement which certainly ought to rank higher than the purchase of a few thousand acres of land, at a low price, from half savage native chiefs."

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away, the trial in question will be regarded as redounding to the credit of British law, of British administration, or of British policy. It would be absurd for me to discuss the technical legal issues on which the case turned.

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According to the interpretation now placed upon the Foreign Enlistment act by the trial at bar, the Englishmen who sympathized with Kossuth in Hungary, with Mazzini and Garibaldi in Italy, with Ledru Rollin and Louis Blanc in France, and who aided and abetted their attempts to overthrow the established governments of their respective countries would, one and all, if the ruling of the court had been accepted in their day, have been guilty of criminal offenses against the law of England. I do not wish to mention names of individuals. Most of us-I myself among the number-have seen cause of later years to modify the opinions of our hot youth, of the days when we, as young men, 'dreamed dreams' with respect to political refugees. But this much I can honestly say, that if as late as 1870 the Foreign Enlistment act had been understood to render it impossible for Englishmen to show active sympathy on behalf of foreign revolutionists without rendering themselves liable to be punished as criminals in the courts of their own country, the act would have had as little chance of being passed by the British Parliament as Doctor Barnard, a few years before that date, had of being convicted by an English jury for having conspired against the author of the Coup d'Etat. I am not saying that this popular sentiment was right, I am only saying that it did exist, and that the mere fact of its existence would have been fatal to the passing of the act in question, if it had been even rumored that it might be con strued as debarring Englishmen from aiding and abetting' foreigners who had risen in insurrection against their own established governments.

"It is worth while to consider how the principles enunciated in the recent trial would work in practice under contingencies of by no means improbable occurence. Supposing the Turks should elect to put down the Cretan insurrection by the same system of wholesale massacre and outrage by which they restored order in Armenia, there would, in all likelihood, be foreign expeditions fitted out to assist the insurgents.”

Does any one imagine that in such a case as this the persons who were risking their all in order to aid an oppressed population, struggling, and rightly struggling, to be free, should be sent to jail as Dr. Jameson? Mr. Dicey rightly thinks that such a doctrine would be repelled with horror by the national conscience, yet it follows logically from the Lord Chief Justice's ruling.

Approved.

This is brought out very clearly by the enthusi astic comments of the editor of the National Review, who heartily indorses the doctrine. The National Review says:

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