business, Mr. James Lowther (Isle of Thanet, Kent) renewed his protest against the valueless sessional order, which declared it to be an infringement of the privileges of Parliament for a peer to concern himself in the election of members. Mr. Balfour opposed the motion on the grounds previously stated by him, and the motion was rejected by 359 to 90 votes. The debate on the address was opened by Captain Bagot (Kendal, Westmorland) and Mr. W. F. D. Smith (Strand), who were followed at once by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman (Stirling Burghs) in his new character of leader of the Opposition. He complained that the Government had not responded to the Czar's rescript with the readiness and alacrity which might have been expected, and in this connection he challenged the Ministry to show what progress had been made towards establishing a good understanding with Russia, which he believed to be the key to the situation in the Far East. Mentioning what he called the strange pilgrimage of Lord C. Beresford, he asked whether he had gone to China as an emissary of the Government. If the London Government Bill was likely to facilitate the work and sustain the power of the London County Council the Opposition would give it their assistance. He criticised the omission of overcrowded and insanitary dwellings and of old-age pensions, and thought a more prominent place ought to have been given to the question of agricultural holdings. Mr. Balfour (Manchester, E.), in reply, reminded the House that bills were not necessarily mentioned in the Queen's Speech in the order in which they would be brought forward. With regard to the question of the aged poor, he admitted that if this Parliament were to come to an end before it had been dealt with in some manner, the Government would be open to criticism. He assured the leader of the Opposition that no time was lost before a reply was sent to Russia, couched in language of the warmest sympathy. In China our progress had been constant and steady during the last year, and our relations with foreign Powers in the Far East were satisfactory than formerly, and there was much less mutual suspicion. He saw no reason to doubt that the policy of the "open door" would be successful, and that we should have our full share of those concessions upon which so much stress had been put. Lord C. Beresford had not gone to China as a representative of the Government, but on a purely commercial mission. While upon the subject of foreign affairs, he took the opportunity to announce that in future the Under-Secretary would decline to answer questions in that House without notice. This change was necessary in order to obviate possible diplomatic misunderstandings.

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The general debate on the speech from the throne was continued by several speakers, who for the most part pressed the Government to give further information on the future of the Soudan, and on the exact purpose of the Anglo-German Treaty. On both these points the Under-Secretary of State, Mr.

Brodrick (Guildford, Surrey), declared that it would be undesirable in the interests of this country to say more for the present.

Ten sittings were then devoted to debating amendments proceeding from various quarters of the House, in accordance with the received parliamentary privilege of "grievances before supply," and although these prolonged and resultless discussions were seriously criticised in the Press, in the House they were recognised as justifiable in view of the restrictions now placed upon the debates on the estimates. Sir Ashmead-Bartlett (Ecclesall, Sheffield), led the way (Feb. 8) with an amendment urging the Government to take early and effective measures to assist the Chinese Government in maintaining the territorial independence of the Chinese Empire, and especially of the province of Manchuria, in accordance with the unanimous resolution of the House passed in the preceding session. A divergence of opinion among the most bellicose Tories at once became manifest, for Mr. Yerburgh (Chester) "dissociated himself absolutely from a policy which would certainly involve us in a war with Russia, and he was strongly in favour of coming to an understanding with that Power. From the other side of the House Mr. J. Walton (Barnsley, Yorkshire, W.R.) contrasted, to the disadvantage of Great Britain, its position in China as compared with Russia, in commercial as well as in political influence. Replying on behalf of the Foreign Office Mr. Brodrick discriminated between the resolution of the previous session and that now submitted. The former was an academic assurance, while the present was a direct guarantee. He did not believe that the maintenance of our trade and the realisation of our wishes were advanced by speaking with jealousy, still less with hatred, in that House of any Power. The Government recognised to the full the absolute necessity of maintaining British interests in China. Month by month during the past year they had seen advantages gained and restrictions removed. The nonalienation of the Yang-tsze Valley and the opening of its waterways had been obtained; and the Government proposed to send an officer to survey and see how far navigation was possible. The four treaty ports mentioned last March had all been opened or would be open within a month. The opening of Nanning had been made effective within the last few days. The ports occupied by Russia and Germany were both open as treaty ports. British firms were acting in conjunction with German firms in the construction of one trunk railway. The Hankow-Canton line concession had been obtained for a British and American syndicate. To British capitalists concessions had already been granted for 2,800 miles of railways, involving an expenditure of some twenty millions of capital. The right to advance the Burma railway 700 miles had been obtained, and numerous coal and mining concessions had been granted; so that it was unfair to say that British industry and capital had been squeezed out of China. Sir Edward Grey followed, and although he held

that many of the concessions obtained from China were overvalued, he expressed his belief that if the policy of the "open door" were accepted by other nations it would act as the most potent solvent of international rivalries. His most effective criticism, however, was directed against Lord Salisbury's estimate of the value of Wei-hai-wei by evidence of the moral support we had given to China. "The moral support had taken the form of a revolution at Pekin and the deposition of the Emperor of China." After a few other remarks the amendment was withdrawn, its supporters being unwilling to challenge a division.

On the following day (Feb. 9) the crisis in the Church occupied the attention of both Houses. In the House of Lords the Bishop of Winchester (Dr. Randall Davidson) called attention to "statements lately made respecting the action of the bishops in dealing with irregularities in public worship." According to Sir Wm. Harcourt, he observed, the episcopal veto had been systematically used to cover the most flagrant breaches of the law. As a matter of fact, with three trifling but significant exceptions, no living bishop had in any instance ever exercised that veto at all. Twenty-three years previously a case had been vetoed by the then Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol (Dr. Ellicott) on the ground that the facts which were in dispute were at the moment sub judice in the courts of law; and the next case was in 1886, when the Bishop of Exeter (Dr. Bickersteth) exercised his right of veto in a case which, as far as the records showed, seemed to have been of a somewhat insignificant character. The third case in which the veto was exercised was by the Bishop of London (then Dr. Temple) in the case about the reredos in St. Paul's Cathedral. The matter had been already, he considered, decided in a court of law, and further litigation was undesirable. It had also been said that, short of exercising the veto, the bishops had come to an agreement to allow no case to go forward. There had been no such agreement, though he admitted that one bishop (Dr. Ryle of Liverpool) had expressed his intention never again to sanction a prosecution. In truth prosecutions had ceased because the Church at large-Low as well as High-was against them.

Lord Kinnaird, who had presided at the Albert Hall meeting, declared that some action on the part of the bishops was necessary, and gave a number of figures in support of his contention that illegal practices were greatly on the increase, and contended that the only subjects of the Crown precluded from seeking redress from the law were the aggrieved members of the Church of England. The Bishop of London (Dr. Creighton) thought Sir Wm. Harcourt's letters more amusing than instructive. The picture they drew was that of a Church which was entirely riddled by the insidious treachery of a traitorous crew, which was mismanaged by a body of craven and feeble-minded bishops, while in the middle of this universal disaster there

stepped forth the colossal figure of a new Elijah denouncing judgment, but at the same time clamouring that somebody else, of course the bishops, should take off his hands the trouble of slaying the priests of Baal. The bishops, if they had been to blame, had been to blame for having acted as Englishmen and not as ecclesiastics. Prosecution and persecution were very closely connected in the mind of the ordinary Englishman, and those who had to administer the affairs of the Church would always remember that that public opinion which goaded them to prosecute their clergy would be the very first that deserted them and held them up to derision and contumely when they had undertaken the task forced upon them. It was not, however, to be assumed that because the bishops did not prosecute they were doing nothing. They strove their utmost to bring about a good understanding in all parishes where their intervention was called in, and the consequence was that in most country dioceses all disputed questions of ritual were settled by episcopal intervention, on the grounds of the good sense and good feeling of those who lived within the parish. In the diocese of London, which presented peculiar difficulties, his intervention had been generally successful. Some of the clergy indeed were not prepared to accept his decision on the question of the mode in which the services of the Church should be conducted; but, while regretting that that should be so, he acknowledged that on some of the points involved there was a certain amount of legal obscurity. The archbishop had in this crisis undertaken to hear all that could be said respecting any ceremonial which was claimed as being permissible under the regulations of the Church of England.

Viscount Halifax, president of the English Church Union and a leader of the Ritualist party, pointed out that the Albert Hall meeting, of which so much had been made, was largely a Nonconformist meeting, and he asked with all seriousness what business had Nonconformists to meddle with the internal affairs of the Church of England? Those who thought with him denied, and would continue to deny, that it was within the competence of Parliament or the Crown, according to the traditions of the Church of England, to alter matters ceremonial. It was hateful to them to seem to be in opposition to the bishops. It was impossible, however, to assent to the principle that any interpretation of the rubrics could be legitimate which implied that omission to prescribe was equivalent to prohibition to do. Nor was it possible to assent to the principle that use, however long and continuous, could be brought forward as legitimate evidence of what the Church of England permitted or forbade. He entreated his hearers not to risk the chance of certain disaster by endeavouring to force on the consciences of members of the Church of England decisions of secular courts in spiritual affairs. On the other hand, the Earl of Kimberley thought it vain to disregard the fact that the Church was regulated to a large

extent by the Act of Uniformity. There might be things in that act with which they did not agree; still it was the charter under which the Church held her position, not as a spiritual Church, but as a Church established by law and enjoying certain emoluments. Subject to that principle he agreed that the Church should be comprehensive. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Temple) claimed that there had been no remissness on the part of any bishop in insisting that the true doctrines of the Church of England should be observed. He shared with a great many other people the belief that the fewer prosecutions they had the better, and his conviction was that the amount of anything like Romanism in the Church was exceedingly small. "I do not say," he continued, "that there are not men who have really gone beyond the limits of the doctrine which the Church of England prescribes. I do not mean that there are not some here and there, but I am sure they are very few, and I am quite certain in the vast majority of the cases in which the ritual has been complained of the clergy who are indulging in these ritual irregularities have no desire whatever to join the Church of Rome themselves, or to get others to join that Church. . . When you find that a man who is, perhaps, very foolishly going into all sorts of ritual excesses is at the same time devoted to the work which is assigned him to do, you cannot help feeling that you must exercise great delicacy and care before you interfere with such work as his." The Prayer-book distinctly puts it on the bishops and archbishops to settle such matters as were now in controversy if they could, and they aimed at willing obedience. "If, after all, we succeed in bringing about the obedience of the clergy generally, but there are still a few who stand out and refuse altogether to obey, we must consider carefully what step is next to be taken. I have never said, and I certainly do not mean to say, that we shall not have recourse to the courts of law; but we really ought, for the sake of the Church, for the sake of the work the Church is doing, to try every means before we take those harsh means with which the law courts supply us. I appeal to the great body of the laity of this country to support the bishops in quietly endeavouring to set these matters right, as I assure you we really mean to do." After the archbishop had spoken, the subject was allowed to drop.

In the House of Commons the subject was treated in a more militant tone, and Mr. Samuel Smith (Flintshire), as champion of the Evangelical party, moved a direct resolution to the effect that "having regard to the lawlessness prevailing in the Church of England, some legislative steps should be taken to secure obedience to the law." He believed that no change worth speaking about had been made in the practices of the clergy as the result of the charges which the bishops had been delivering during the past twelve months. Besides, the lawlessness was not confined to the clergy; the bishops, who were largely