China and made a special study of British commercial interests there. He held that the net result of the negotiations with Russia and Germany to which his Majesty's Government had been parties was that we had not succeeded in maintaining an equal opportunity for British subjects to trade throughout the whole of China and to enter upon economic and industrial enterprise. As to the Pekin negotiations, instead of asking for the heads of officials, we should encourage the reform party in China, seek for increased facilities for trade there, for revised commercial treaties, and for a complete opening of the waterways of the Empire, and British railway concessionnaires should be adequately supported by his Majesty's Government. He referred to the manner in which (though only for a time) Russia had taken possession of the railway from Tien-tsin to Shan-hai-kwan, which was under the control of British subjects (in pursuance of an agreement of which the Foreign Office had taken official note), as making possible British investors in Chinese railways feel insecure as to the adequate protection of their rights. He asked what, if any, undertaking had been obtained that Niu-Chwang, where British trade was very considerable, would be handed back to China by Russia, which had appropriated the civil and military administration of that port, and was collecting the Customs duties. On this last topic Mr. Moon (St. Pancras, Ñ.) also pressed for information.

In reply, Lord Cranborne (Rochester), Under Foreign Secretary (speaking on Feb. 15 and 18) justified the demand of the Powers for the exemplary punishment of highly placed delinquents in China, but admitted the slow progress of the negotiations there. At the same time he expressed the opinion that if a special plenipotentiary had been sent (as had been suggested) from this country matters would not have been expedited. Having detailed the difficulties in the way of commercial and fiscal reforms in China, Lord Cranborne assured the House that the Government was fully alive to their importance. But delay was inevitable. Describing what had occurred in connection with the railway from Tien-tsin to Shan-hai-kwan, he said that the Government had made friendly representations to the Russian Government, and that those representations had been largely successful, the Russians having explained that the occupation was only temporary and dictated by military considerations. They had restored the railway material. Satisfactory assurances had also been given by the Russian Government with respect to the railway north of the Great Wall. They had also declared that any agreement with China with regard to Manchuria was in the nature of a modus vivendi in order to prevent disturbances. The Russian Government expected a guarantee against a recrudescence of disturbance after their withdrawal, but this guarantee would not take the form of the sequestration of territory or of a protectorate. Niu-Chwang had been occupied by the Russians on the ground of military neces

C

sity, but the rights of the foreign community did not appear to have been interfered with, and restoration was promised. Speaking generally the Russian Government had met the British Government in a very friendly spirit.

The considerable satisfaction with which, as Sir W. Harcourt said, the House received the general effect of the UnderSecretary's statement was, no doubt, qualified by a lurking suspicion, to which Mr. C. Hobhouse (Bristol, E.) gave expression, that the British position in the Far East was not quite so good as it was officially represented. It was also felt that there was a certain presumption that his Majesty's Government were lacking in continuous and influential touch with the course of events at Pekin, in view of the divergence between the opinions expressed on their behalf here and the line of action being taken there by Count von Waldersee. In the course of the first part of his speech (Feb. 15) Lord Cranborne had used language strongly unfavourable to any military expedition from Pekin into the interior. Yet a telegram, dated the following day (Feb. 16), from the Times Pekin correspondent stated that, in view of the unsatisfactory character of the communications received from the Chinese Court on the question of the punishment of high officials, a general order had been issued directing the forces under Count von Waldersee's command to prepare to take the field, with a view to an expedition in the spring to Tai-yuen-fu or farther. Asked (Feb. 18) as to this report, Lord Cranborne had no information that any foreign Government desired to undertake an expedition into the interior of China. By February 21 the Government had learned, as was stated through the mouth of Lord George Hamilton, the Secretary for India, that Count von Waldersee had issued an order announcing that, in consequence of the unsatisfactory progress of the peace negotiations, some larger movements might become necessary. The Government, he added, had asked for further particulars, and would, when they had received them, consider whether any fresh instructions ought to be sent to Sir A. Gaselee. expedition took place, but it was believed by many that the menace of one, made apparently without any assent from, and indeed contrary to the views of, his Majesty's Government, exercised a powerful influence in extorting the consent (whether genuine or not appeared uncertain) of the Chinese Government to conform to the demands of the Powers as to punishments.

No

It was à propos of a refusal of Lord Cranborne to answer offhand a question as to whether his Majesty's Government had acquiesced in the substitution of an order to commit suicide for the execution demanded by the Powers in the case of certain high Chinese officials an acquiescence which the UnderSecretary subsequently repudiated on the part of our Cabinetthat a very brisk debate arose (Feb. 18) on the recent practice of refusing to answer supplementary questions" on foreign

66

affairs. Mr. Balfour strenuously defended the innovation as required to guard against embarrassment to diplomacy, and even danger to peace. This view, however, was by no means universally accepted by persons of weight in the House and of authority in the sphere of foreign affairs. Mr. Balfour's "ukase" to the Under Foreign Secretary against answering supplementary questions was deprecated as an unnecessary, undesirable, and even humiliating fettering of the discretion of the occupant of that office. This line was taken not only by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, but by Mr. James Lowther and Sir E. Grey, and naturally by Sir E. Ashmead-Bartlett, and in the division which followed on the motion for adjournment the Ministerial majority sank to 45-249 votes to 204.

An amendment to the Address was moved by Mr. Whittaker (Spen Valley, Yorks, W. R., E.), expressing regret at the absence of any indication in the King's Speech that the licensing laws and the subject of temperance reform would be at all adequately dealt with. The principal and a striking feature of the discussion which ensued was the evidence which was given by speech after speech from Conservative members of weight, such as Sir W. Houldsworth (Manchester, N. W.), Sir Mark Stewart (Kirkcudbright), Sir John Kennaway (Honiton, Devon, E.) and Colonel Pilkington (Newton, Lancashire, S. W.), that there was a considerable body of influential opinion on the Ministerial side to the effect that the Government would be greatly to blame if they neglected to bring forward a substantial though moderate measure of licensing reform, embodying some of the principal proposals on which the majority and minority of Lord Peel's Commission had agreed. Much good, it was urged by speakers of the type just mentioned, would be effected by practical legislation which left on one side for the present the thorny questions in which compensation was involved. In the course of his speech for the Government Mr. Ritchie (Croydon), Home Secretary, gave an emphatic recognition to the magnitude of the evils attending drunkenness, to which vice crimes of violence were largely attributable, but claimed that those who accused the Government of indifference and inaction should wait until the bill mentioned in the Speech from the Throne had been introduced. A full explanation of that bill would be given on its introduction; in the meantime he might say that it was not merely a "chucking-out" bill, as some imagined. It would contain the recommendations made by the commissioners as to habitual drunkards, special licensing inspection officers, and, he hoped, on other points.

The Home Secretary's speech by no means satisfied the anxieties of temperance reformers on the Ministerial side, as was shown by a speech from Colonel Pilkington, who warned the Government against disappointing the hopes of faithful followers; but very few, if any, Unionists were prepared to condemn the Government bill in advance, and as many of the

Irish members were unfavourable to drastic changes in the licensing laws, Mr. Whittaker's amendment was defeated by 273 to 146.

There were two amendments to the address dealing with Irish affairs, each of which occupied a full sitting. The first, moved (Feb. 21) by Mr. J. Redmond (Waterford), declared that the administration of the Irish Land Acts was not satisfactory to any class of the King's subjects in Ireland, and that measure providing for the immediate creation of an occupying proprietary by the operation of a system of compulsory sale would afford the only permanent solution of the land question. The administration of the land system, Mr. Redmond said, did not command confidence, being regarded as partial, inefficient, and excessively costly. The condition of the tenants had not been materially improved by the legislation of 1881, while the landlords were being slowly but surely ruined. The beneficial operation of the existing Purchase Acts was too slow, and the time had come for a statesmanlike scheme of compulsory sale on terms which would be just to tenants and landlords alike. For the first time since the Union the north and south of Ireland were in accord, and his proposal was supported by 95 per cent. of the representatives of that country.

Weight was lent to this allegation of the přeponderance of Irish feeling in favour of compulsory sale by a speech of great earnestness and even passion from Mr. T. W. Russell (Tyrone, S.). In seconding Mr. Redmond's amendment, he laid special stress on the just dissatisfaction which, as he maintained, was caused to the Ulster tenant farmers by the pro-landlord bias of the Chief Land Commission, shown in that court's treatment of appeals on rent questions generally, and of the tenant's right not to be rented on improvements in particular, and by the attempt of landlords and agents to destroy the Ulster custom by an abuse of the right of pre-emption given by the Land Act of 1881. The discontent caused by these things was much aggravated by the anomalous fact that purchasers under the existing Purchase Acts were in a far better financial position than tenants paying judicial rents. Thus the very success of the Purchase Acts necessitated the extension of the principle upon which they were framed. Mr. Russell concluded with an impassioned adjuration to Englishmen not to turn deaf ears to this constitutional demand, and not to wait until they were forced to grant it by those violent methods which he abhorred.

Mr. Balfour pointed out that under the Purchase Acts about one-tenth of the soil of Ireland had passed into the hands of the occupiers, and about 58,000 or 60,000 peasant proprietors had been created. That was a great result, but to make such a purchase compulsory would be a very hazardous step. He believed that the Irish tenantry were individually honest, but they might repudiate their obligations if called upon to do so by their leaders for political purposes. He questioned greatly

whether the industrial population of Great Britain would consent to imperil the credit of the country in order to carry out the purpose of the amendment. Certainly, at a time when we were engaged in a costly war, such a scheme would not be sanctioned by the people, and the Government would be regarded as lunatics if they gave it any countenance.

Mr. Flynn (Cork, N.) and other Nationalist members endorsed Mr. Redmond's claim, and speeches were also delivered in its support by Mr. Lonsdale and Mr. J. Gordon, Ulster Unionist members (Armagh, Mid., and Londonderry, S.).

Colonel Saunderson (Armagh, N.), on the other hand, urged that it would be a fatal error to remove from Ireland the loyal garrison, and to substitute a new set of landlords belonging to a class that openly professed to hate this country.

Mr. Wyndham (Dover), Irish Secretary, after observing that the Government agreed as to the desirability of developing and accelerating the formation of a peasant proprietary, entered with some detail into the question of the defects of the Land Act of 1881, which, he said, had paralysed by its operation the motives previously existing for the improvement and development of the land. He then defended the Judges whose duty it was to administer the acts against the strictures of Mr. Russell, vindicating especially, and with much effect, the judicial conduct of Mr. Justice Meredith against charges involving, as he said, practically either moral perversity or malversation. He contended that if an act for compulsory purchase were passed it would necessitate a most costly and elaborate system of inspection, valuation and appeal, and that all the legal difficulties to which so much objection was taken would be intensified. Finally, he referred to the vast number of impoverished people who would derive no practical benefit from such legislation as was proposed, and asked whether it was worth while to risk 120,000,000l. in carrying out a scheme which would still leave a large part of the land question unsettled.

Mr. Haldane (Haddington) thought the demand of the Irish members would have to be met, and

Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, who said he should vote with Mr. Redmond, laid great stress on the agreement which prevailed among the Irish members on this question. He insisted that the tenants ought all to have equal treatment, whereas now some had the opportunity of purchasing whilst others had

not.

Mr. Macartney (Antrim, S.) having asked, but obtained no answer to, the natural question whether Sir H. CampbellBannerman's speech was to be regarded as an indication that if the Liberal party came into power they would immediately proceed to carry out the policy of universal compulsory sale of agricultural tenancies in Ireland, the amendment was negatived by 235 votes against 140.