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stringent provisions to prevent work being given out from the factories to be done at home after the day's work in the factory. By another, the working week in textile factories is shortened by one hour. This change was brought about at the instance of the cotton factory workpeople of Lancashire. For many years, in the non-textile trades, the working day on Saturday has ended at noon. In the cotton industry, it has ended at one o'clock, as manufacturers universally have worked their plants to the limit allowed by the Factory Act of 1878, which fixed the working week for women and young persons at fifty-six and a half hours. Cotton mill workpeople, although most of them are paid by piece work, had long been dissatisfied with the law which permitted work in the mills up to one o'clock on Saturday. They desired to stop at noon; and at the general election in 1900, in many of the constituencies of Lancashire, Parliamentary candidates, Conservatives and Liberals alike, gave pledges to support an enactment closing the factories at noon. When the Consolidating bill was before the Committee on Trade, a Lancashire member proposed a clause making this change. It was opposed by Mr. Ritchie for the Government, on the ground that a shorter working week would hamper Lancashire in competition with the United States and Germany. On a division, however, the clause was carried. On third reading of the bill in the House of Commons, the Government sought to retrieve the defeat it had suffered in committee. Whips were issued calling on supporters of the Government to vote for the deletion of the clause. Cotton manufacturers also petitioned the House to let the working week stand as fixed by the Factory Act of 1878, and emphasized the plea that Mr. Ritchie had made in committee, based on foreign competition. Again, however, the Government was defeated, and the Act was passed with the clause for which the Lancashire cotton operatives had agitated at the general election.

On another point, the Government had to give way to the Irish Nationalist members. It was originally intended that all laundries, in which more than two workpeople were employed, should be open to Home Office inspection. The Irish members objected to laundries in reform institutions for women of the Roman Catholic Church coming under the supervision of inspectors; and to save the bill, the Government accepted a clause exempting these institutions from inspection. The clause was embodied in the bill in committee at the instance of the Irish members, who threatened, if it

was not accepted, to obstruct the bill. In accepting it, Mr. Ritchie intimated that he did so simply to save the bill, and made it understood that he did not bind himself not to deal with the question at any other time. The act, burdened as it is with enormous detail, much of it technical, is one of the best examples of recent Parliamentary sessions of the working of the plan of sending measures of this kind to standing committees. Except for the opposition to the shortening of the working week in the cotton trade, and to the exemption of laundries in reform institutions from inspection, the House of Commons accepted the bill as it came from the committee to which it had been sent after second reading.

Two new departures in the fiscal system made by the Finance Act of 1901-2 give that measure its chief interest. By the Act of 1900-1, although provision had then to be made to meet the expenses of the war, there were no new departures in taxation. A stamp duty was imposed on contract-notes covering transactions on produce exchanges, and additions were made to the existing duties on beer, spirits, tobacco, and tea. Twopence also was added to the income tax. By the Act of 1901-2, there was another addition of two-pence to the income tax, bringing it up to one shilling and two-pence in the pound; and a revival of part of the fiscal system which had been long regarded as abandoned or obsolete. Import duties on sugar, which are now revived, were levied until 1874, when they were abolished by Sir Stafford Northcote, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Beaconsfield Administration of 1874-80. During the Crimean war, duties were as high as twenty shillings a hundredweight. From 1860, they were gradually reduced, and they stood at three shillings a hundredweight when they came to an end in 1874. Under the new Act, the duties range from 2s. 8d. on sugars not exceeding 76 degrees of polarization to 4s. 2d. on sugars exceeding 90 degrees of polarization. On molasses, the duties range from Is. per hundredweight when not containing more than 50 per cent. of sweetening matter, to 2s. 9d. per hundredweight when containing 70 per cent. or more. On solid glucose, the duty is 2s. 9d. per hundredweight, and on liquid glucose 2s. On saccharine, the duty is at the rate of Is. 3d. per ounce. introducing the bill reviving these duties, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach denied that they were in any sense protective, and treated it as a superstition that merely because the duties were abolished a quarter of a century earlier they could not be reimposed, if an adequate public necessity existed. The cost of the war had created a neces

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sity, and it was in the opinion of the Government "in the true interests of peace and economy that the laboring classes, as well as other classes in the country, should know that they bore the burden of the cost of war, and of the preparations for war." As a large part of the burden of the war had been thrown on the working classes by the increase in the tea, tobacco, and beer dutes in the budget of 1900-1, there were no increases in these duties in 1901, and the duties on sugar are the only taxes by which any new burden is thrown on the working classes. All incomes below £160 are exempt from income tax, and in the Finance Act of 1901, no changes were made in the exemptions and abatements established. under the Finance Act of 1894, the Act which relieved the lower middle classes from part of the burden of the income tax which they had borne previous to Sir William Harcourt's reform.

The most distinct innovation in the Finance Act of 1901-2 is the export duty on coal. It is at the rate of one shilling a ton, and is chargeable on all coal, except such as is proved to the satisfaction of the commissioners of customs not to be of a value of more than six shillings a ton, free on board. Part of the burden of the new duty is thrown on landlords who receive mining royalties; for a clause in the Finance Act provides that "in every case where the person paying the duty shall be the tenant of the mines from which the coal shall have been produced, subject to the payment of a rent or royalty, varying with the selling price of such coal, and the coal shall have been sold at a price inclusive of the duty, then the amount of such duty so paid shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be deducted in ascertaining the amount of such selling price for the purpose of determining the amount of the said rent or royalty." The new duty gave rise to much agitation among colliery proprietors and miners. The principal objection to it was that it was a tax, not on all the coal fields of Great Britain, but on those of Northumberland and Durham and South Wales, which have a monopoly of the export trade. From the Welsh ports of Cardiff, Newport, and Swansea, in 1899, 19,567,690 tons of coal were exported. From Newcastle and other Tyne ports, the exports were 3,484,084 tons. In the year 1901-2, the duty is estimated to yield £2,100,000; the sugar duty £5,100,000 and the additional twopence on the income tax £3,800,000. The suspension of the sinking fund, which was begun last year and is to be continued, will add £4,640,000 to the amount available for meeting the ordinary expenses and the cost of the war. In all, the new or increased

taxes, with the suspension of the sinking fund, are estimated to produce £15,640,000, leaving a balance of £39,707,000 to be borrowed. To this must be added £1,250,000 for interest on the new debt, due to the war, making a total deficit of £40,832,000 for 1901-2 to be added to the National Debt. The total estimated expenditure of 1901-2 is £187,602,000, of which £56,070,000 is to meet the military charges of the war. Besides these war charges, the estimated expenditure on the army in 1901-2 is £30,030,000, and on the navy £30,876,000.

Following a precedent which dates from the accession of George III, Edward VII at his accession surrendered his life interest as king in the Crown Lands, in return for a civil list granted him by Act of Parliament. The civil list allowance of the late Queen as fixed in 1837 was £385,000, made up as follows: Her Majesty's privy purse, £60,000; salaries of household, £131,260; expenses of household, £172,500; royal bounty, £13,200; unappropriated, £8,000. During the lifetime of the Queen, the Prince of Wales, in accordance with an Act passed in 1863, was in receipt of £40,000 from the Consolidated Fund, and the allowance to the Princess of Wales in the same Act was £10,000; and under an Act of 1889 there was payable in respect of the Prince of Wales's children. £36,000 a year; so that the charges on the Consolidated Fund for the Crown and the Heir Apparent were £471,000. By the Civil List Act of 1901, the charges for the King and Queen are fixed at £470,000, classified as follows: privy purse, £111,000; salaries of the household and retired allowances, £125,800; expenses of household, £193,000; works, £20,000; royal bounty, alms and special services, £13,200; unappropriated, £8,000. In addition to this sum of £470,000, settled on the King and Queen, an annuity of £20,000 is settled on the Duke of Cornwall and York; an annuity of £10,000 on the Duchess of York; and £18,000 a year is granted as a provision for the King's three daughters, and a sum not to exceed £25,000 is made chargeable on the Fund for household pensions for servants of the late Queen. At the commencement of the new reign, therefore, the total charge on the Consolidated Fund of the maintenance of the dignity of the Crown is £543,000. In addition to this sum, there are also now chargeable on the Consolidated Fund seven annuities payable to the sons and daughters of the late Queen and to the Duke of Cambridge. These annuities, which were not affected by the resettlement of the civil list, aggregate £64,000, and bring up the total charge in respect of the sovereign and the royal family to £607,000.

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The resettlement of the civil list was effected by a select committee of the House of Commons, which sat behind closed doors. The committee made its report to the House, and its recommendations were embodied in a bill which went through all the usual stages in the House and in the House of Lords and received the royal assent in the customary way. The debate on the bill in the House of Commons was chiefly remarkable for Sir William Harcourt's exposition of the constitutional position of the Sovereign in relation to the Crown Lands. The crown enjoyed the revenues from this property until the civil list was established in 1760. "Parliament," Sir William Harcourt said, "granted the civil list solely out of consideration of what belonged to the dignity of the Sovereign of this realm. If the hereditary estate yielded less, the House of Commons was not governed by that consideration to give a smaller list. If they yielded a great deal more the House would not be bound to give a great deal more. If it were true that these estates could at any time be resumed by the Crown, they could only be resumed, of course, subject to the obligation under which the Crown lay of maintaining the civil charges of this country. It was a right which had never been asserted for a century and a half, and was never likely to be asserted. No doubt we retained the technical form, as we did in the exercise of many other prerogatives-public prosecutions, for instance, which were always undertaken in the name of the King, though the King was not the prosecutor. A great many other rights were asserted, and properly asserted, in the name of the Crown, but to profess that the Crown could deal with the hereditary estates as the estates of a private individual would be an entire error, and was absolutely contrary to constitutional principle." The revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall and Lancaster are not affected by the civil list. Those from the Duchy of Lancaster go to the Sovereign. Those from the Duchy of Cornwall are vested in the Heir Apparent by virtue of a patent of Edward III of 1337.

The only Act of 1901 affecting education was one to end the deadlock due to the decision in the law-courts in the Cockerton case, a decision which made illegal expenses incurred by school boards in giving technical instruction in evening classes. This Act, although intended to empower school boards temporarily to carry on work which was brought to a standstill by this judgment, is of significance; for it brings the school boards into a new and direct relation with the county councils. It empowers boards to