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dress and therein the Board are a day behind the fair. The dietary should be "adequate and suitable" for all, no doubt, but for the worthy it might be a little more varied. Also it might often be most advantageous to make a distinction in dress. The final recommendation of the circular is of obvious importance, directed as it is to the separation of honest unfortunate girls from enforced contact with the hardened harlot who has sought a refuge in the workhouse. On the whole, the circular marks an advance. Before long we may expect the Local Government Board to sketch an ideal workhouse for Guardians to live up to.

The Close

of

Parliament rose on the 14th of August, since which date all English politicians

have been mute. Irish politicians may the Session. be expected to give tongue at the great National Convention which meets to-day in Dublin, but for another month English political men will be mute. It is rather late to survey the results of the Session. Mr. Balfour scored heavily by the success of his new rules, by which the voting of Supply was distributed over the Session; but he lost heavily over the Education Bill. Mr. Chamberlain's meteoric career dazzled every one when Parliament opened. At its close nothing remains of it but a certain dismal looking forward to of judgment to come when the Committee of Inquiry reassembles next February. Other Ministers remain with their reputation much the same. They have neither gained much nor have they seriously lost ground. The Cabinet as a whole has survived, and survived intact, notwithstanding all the stress and strain of foreign affairs. The Opposition has been picking up a bit, and that, even from the Ministerial point of view, is distinctly to the good.

When members begin talking there will Legislation. be of course the customary exaggeration in eulogy and in depreciation of the legislative output of the Session. It may therefore be as well to put on record the summary from the Queen's speech of the measures placed on the Statute Book this year:

I have given my consent, with much pleasure, to measures for completing the naval defences of my Empire, for lightening the fiscal burdens which press upon the agricultural population, and for protecting the flocks and herds of these islands from the importation of disease. Important measures have also received my sanction for the settlement of trade disputes, for the prevention of explosions in mines, which have cansed the loss of many valuable lives, for amending the Truck Act, for the construction of light railways, for the amendment of the Irish Land Laws, and for facilitating the creation, by purchase, of a larger class of occupying freeholders in Ireland.

Of these measures, the Irish Land Act narrowly

escaped involving the Government in a contest with the House of Lords. It was, indeed, a curious spectacle, that which the early days of August presented to the world. The Unionist Administration-which, through Lord Lansdowne, had humbly recommended the Irish Land Bill to the House of Lords as being very, very much less objectionable than Mr. Morley's Land Bill-found itself confronted by a revolt of the landlords, who carried amendment after amendment in a fashion which seemed at first to threaten the measure with extinction. Even the Unionist press was scandalised at this display of class interest posing naked posing naked and unashamed in the Chamber of Review. Ministers could only command their own votes and the votes of the devoted Liberal remnant, fifteen strong, and about as many Independent Unionist peers. The Duke of Abercorn and Lord Londonderry did as they pleased, being masters of the big battalions, and for a time it seemed as if they would make hay of the Bill. But when the amendments came to be considered in the House of Commons, it was discovered that they did not amount to much after all. Some were rejected, others were accepted, and ultimately an arrangement was arrived at, by virtue of which the Bill as amended received the Royal Assent. Perhaps the most important result of the Bill has been to intensify the antagonism between the different sections of the Irish party by detaching Mr. Healy finally from the party led by Mr. Dillon.

Arbitration

in

Trade Disputes.

Among the measures of the Session one of the most important, although the least noticed, is the Conciliation (Trades Disputes) Act. It authorises the registration of every Board of Conciliation and Arbitration under the Board of Trade Rules-a provision owing its importance solely to the security which such registration gives the State that it will always have a full record of the proceedings of such Boards. But its most important clause is that which gives the Board of Trade a mandate to stimulate the establishment of Conciliation Boards in places where they do not exist, and to take such other steps as they deem fit, to promote peace between employers and employed. It is to be hoped that the Board of Trade may be able to interfere to prevent the strik that threatens to paralyse the whole engineering trade-over a dispute as to the employment of one non-union workman in the yard of one of the associated employers. In 1893 thirty million days' work were lost by strikes and locks-out, to say nothing of the permanent loss of work entailed by

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Li
Hung

The Yellow man with the white money

diverting British trade to the foreigner. Another gigantic strike is threatening in the docks, one of the premonitory incidents of which has been the arrest of Mr. Tillett and Mr. Sexton by the Belgian shire, although he did not propose to purchase Chats

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has been on a visit to this country, and Chang. has even called upon the Duke of Devon

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THE REGIONS ROUND THE POLE.

Government for taking part in a strike of the Belgian dockers. The Belgian authorities who whitewash the murderer Lothaire, naturally arrest English agitators. But even agitators have rights, and Lord Salisbury will do well to see to it that Mr. Tillett and Mr. Sexton have the protection to which they are entitled as British citizens.

worth. Li Hung Chang came to England to seek permission to double the useful duties now levied by China on foreign goods. The duties are fixed by treaty, and can only be increased by our consent. Lord Salisbury, it is said, has only promised to give the proposal a favourable consideration, and Li has had to depart with that. During his stay in

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England he was taken about to see everybody and everything, and in his train travelled a swarm of newspaper correspondents whose chief function was to report Li Hung Chang's interviews with his hosts. The Chinese Grand Old Man paid a visit to the Grand Old Man of Hawarden ; went as far north as Glasgow, where he bought a sewing-machine; and as far south as Osborne, where he was received by the Queen, and inspected the fleet. On the whole he is said to have been much impressed (1) with the extent to which this small island has become the workshop of the world; (2) with the ease of travelling in a first-class saloon railway-carriage; and (3) with the ease with which our Artillery carry their batteries at a gallop over hedge and ditch. He is now in the United States on his way home. He left an agreeable impression on the British public, which hopes much but expects little from his progressive tendencies on his return to Pekin.

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The Tsar at

from the Pole, and 200 miles further north than any one had ever reached before. Then they travelled for four months, enduring great priva tions, to Franz Josef Land, where they wintered, living chiefly on the Polar bears which came to eat them but were eaten instead, until they were picked up by Mr. Harmsworth's Arctic Expedition on the Windward. They were brought back with unprecedented rapidity to the confines of civilisation, where a few days later the Fram herself arrived. Dr. Nansen has done better than any who preceded him. But the North Pole remains to this day undiscovered.

It is announced as these pages are going

to press that the Queen has invited Lord Balmoral. Salisbury, Mr. Balfour, Lord Lansdowne, the Duke of Devonshire and Mr. Goschen to meet the Tsar on his approaching visit to Balmoral. This would seem

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to indicate a desire to arrive at an understanding with Nicholas

II., which a demi - semiCabinet Council

must be on the spot to ratify. Let us hope that Lord Salisbury will have the courage to finally

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break with evil traditions, and offer to the Tsar, as a proof of his anxiety to arrive at a definite understanding with Russia, the shreds of the Anglo

The

Turkish Convention, and an undertaking to evacuate Cyprus the moment the Concert of Europe can agree as to what securities should be taken to protect the Cypriotes from the uncovenanted mercies of the Turk. Parliament has been prorogued, and the Presidential voice of the politician is silent in the Campaign. land. But across the Atlantic the great debate or national hurly-burly that precedes a Presidential election is booming through the land. Not even the hot weather and it has been as hot as if the gates of Tophet had been unbarred-has sufficed to check the preparations which, from Maine to California, are being made to bring every citizen up to the polls in November. Never before, say the party managers, has there been such a demand for campaign literature. Pamphlets and broadsides, posters and handbooks, cannot be produced in sufficient quantities to satisfy the electors' appetite. All that the wit of man can suggest and the ingenuity of the printer can accomplish will be done to bring the issues home to every citizen in the whole Union. There is something imposing in the spectacle.

The

of

According to the New York papers, Real Arena which, with the exception of the Journal, are unanimous in backing Mr. McKinley, the Fight. Mr. Bryan has not got a chance, nor even the ghost of a chance. And the English newspapers, whose correspondents are all located in New York, print telegrams to the same effect. They may be right, just as I may be right if I assert that at this present moment a great cyclone is raging round the ears of the Grand Lama of Thibet. But they know about as much of how things are going in America as I do about the weather in the City of Lhassa. The battle will not be decided in New York. The headquarters of both the contending parties have been established in Chicago, which is 1,000 miles from New York; further, that is, than Berlin or Vienna or St. Petersburg is from London. But even in Chicago we are but on the Eastern edge of the arena in which the battle will be fought out. Beyond Chicago, in the Real West, there lies a whole continent, of which none of our mentors seems even to have heard; but it is there where Mr. Bryan hopes to win.

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a necessary incident of Imperial policy-fails as signally as those same editors in discharging the duties of their respective offices. The failure of the Sultan to maintain order in Crete and to execute reforms in Armenia cannot be more complete than the failure of English editors to keep their readers informed as to the progress of this great campaign in the West. Whether regarded from the point of view of Imperial policy, economic interest, or sociological development, this semi-revolutionary uprising of the Populist democracy of the South and West is much the most important phenomenon of the Recess. But not one single London paper has taken the trouble to send even a third-class correspondent to the scene of the great conflict. Το chronicle the advance of the Egyptian forces in Dongola a whole army of specials are despatched, who, regardless of expense, telegraph reports of thunderstorms and dust-storms, while not a man can be spared to watch the progress of Mr. Bryan's campaign. As for correspondents in New York, they might almost as well be in the moon.

Win ?

The map on p. 209 will show how baseWho will less is the assumption that Mr. Bryan is out of the running. Such a cool and dispassionate observer as Dr. Albert Shaw declares that if the poll could have been taken in August Mr. Bryan would probably have been elected. A Republican of eminence in Minnesota, who arrived in London last week, told me that be believed Mr. Bryan was almost sure to win. He was working for Mr. McKinley, upon whom he had called on his way to Europe; he was well posted in the latest news from the doubtful States, and his deliberate judgment was that Mr. McKinley would have to fight for his life, and could only hope to win, if at all, by the skin of his teeth. The fact is that no one in New York, or in places which rely upon New York for their information, has any idea of the discontent of the West and the South. How deep that discontent goes remains to be proved. But the emergence of this new factor in the politics of the greatest Englishspeaking race is certainly deserving of much more careful and anxious observation than our "able editors" appear to realise.

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