Brazil. A serious outbreak of yellow fever occurred in Rio de Janeiro the first week in March. Of 280 men who made up the crew of the Italian warship Lombardie, 225 were attacked by the disease.

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

Parliamentary Proceedings. The regular session of parliament was opened February 11. There was a brilliant assembly in the house of lords, including the Princess of Wales and more than a hundred peeresses.

In the speech from the throne, the utterance on the Venezuelan controversy with the United States was in a tone of graceful friendliness, conceding this country's rightful interest in the case, and recognizing in effect, though not by distinct mention, the president's appointment of a commission, in the dignified and courteous statement that this government had "expressed a wish to co-operate" in a settlement of the dispute. Though the word "arbitration" was not used, there was expressed a "sympathy with the desire to come to an equitable arrangement," and the trust "that further negotiations will lead to a satisfactory settlement."

Less adequate was the reference to the fanatical atrocities in Turkey. England's official pledges concerning re forms in the barbarous Ottoman government, of which she was long the chief upholder, are not fulfilled by an expression of "deep regret" for the most horrible and astounding crime of modern centuries. South African affairs, suddenly grown embarrassing and complicated, were handled with a firm, delicate, and perfectly adequate touch. "The improvement of the naval defenses of the empire" was declared "the most important subject" for parliament. The "disastrous" condition of British agriculture was deplored; and measures were promised for mitigation of the resulting distress.

Within a week the house had made an unusually prompt dispatch of business. The leaders on the government side were gratified with the peaceable spirit of the opposition, which did not yield to the temptation either to hinder or to hurry the ministers in their delicate dealing with momentous questions such as those touching Venezuela ar 1

Vol. 6.-12.

the Transvaal. Indeed, later in the session the government may find more trouble in managing its enormous majority than from the hostility of the diminished liberals. At present, the greatness of the majority seems to weigh heavily on the house, inducing a lack of interest and a thin attendance.

The conservative chiefs, looking back to the thirtyseven days through which they blocked Sir William Harcourt's budget bill of 1894 (Vol. 4, p. 639), introduced latein February new rules of procedure for the discussion of the financial measures of "supply." These rules, proposed by Mr. Arthur Balfour, first lord of the treasury, limit the discussion by closure on the nineteenth day, and give the twentieth day to the business of report, which latter has often been a ten days' work. The proposal, being contrary to all traditions, caused dismal lament on the conservative side, while the oppoIts adoption may be

sition members made little outcry. expected to give more discussion-real and pertinent discussion, rather than less. For twenty years, night after night has been exhausted through many weeks in committee of supply-the time often squandered by men who merely wished to hear themselves talk: at last, on some warm August night, the house, almost empty, and panting to end the session, has voted millions after millions.

Relations with the United States were not directly dealt with in debates. Lord Rosebery, in an address on February 11, in response to the speech from the throne, welcomed arbitration regarding Venezuela, welcoming also the intervention of the United States as offering a guarantee to the permanence of any settlement that might be reached. Lord Salisbury expressed his concurrence in these views. Armenian affairs were the subject of debate on March 3, but with no practical result. Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett distinguished himself by an absolute denial of the enormity of the massacres, characterizing the vast mass of testimony concerning them from correspondents, consuls, and the British min

ister, and even from photographs, as deception. He was answered by two masterly speeches from Mr. George Curzon and Sir Edward Grey. The resolution finally adopted was a colorless expression of a hope for the Armeniansshowing the British government still clinging, as for half a year past, to their standard policy of avoidance.

On the South African difficulty Mr. Chamberlain spoke on March 31, but with guarded utterance. Parliament seemed to have recognized that the delicacy of the affair at its present stage made it a subject rather for the cabinet and for diplomacy than for legislative action.

The action on naval defense is noticed below, as is also the new education bill.

cess.

On March 31 parliament adjourned for a fortnight's re

Naval Defense. A subject of vital interest to the British empire was presented on March 2 by Mr. Goschen, first lord of the admiralty, in a statement introducing the government's measure for naval defense (p. 63). His address of an hour and a-half was striking in the businesslike simplicity of the manner in which it recommended for the coming year the unparalleled expenditure (total) on the navy, of £21,823,000, including about £4,325,000 falling immediately due. He proposed to apply to this purpose a large part of the unusual surplus (estimated at more than £12,000,000), the result of Sir William Harcourt's admirable administration of the treasury last year. Successive administrations have taken pride in even a small reduction of the national debt; and through the twenty-one years ending March 31, 1895, the debt had been reduced from £769,000,000 to £657,000,000. The proposal, therefore, to use for the navy four millions of the last year's surplus, excited controversy; but what was deemed its most critical point, the appropriation for men, was passed one week later, the negative vote being only forty-five. Mr. Goschen announced that the unprecedented increase in naval power could not be viewed as a menace against the United States, since the estimates had been framed last November. He announced also that Britain had more ships even then in commission than all the other great powers combined; and further, that every ship ready for commission could be manned forthwith by draft on the naval reserve.

It is evidently a general British feeling that the foreign relations of the empire, whose colonies belt the world in a confederacy grander, richer, more vital, and as a whole more beneficent than any other aggregation of peoples known in history, are at this hour in a more critical, at least a more uncertain, stage than ever before since the days of the Spanish Armada. If on questions Asiatic or African, or for mere jealousy of English success, or through anger at England's sometimes too ready lordliness, there is becoming possible an alliance of four great European powers to deliver a sudden blow at Britain's commercial supremacy or at any of her colonial dependencies, then the little British isles deem it necessary to be prepared, and to let the continent know that they are prepared, with a sea power to hold all seas in defense of their most remote colonial possessions.

The New School Bill.-Sir John E. Gorst, vice-president of the council for education, introduced on March 31 the government's school bill, bringing into parliament a question which had excited wide and troublesome public controversy, and thus fulfilling the ante-election expectations raised among the friends of church schools. The causes and the main lines of this contention were outlined in the preceding number of this quarterly (Vol. 5, p. 929). The bill appears to be one of those numerous compromises in which each party considers its claim compromised more than the claims of its opponent; though it is evident that the bill gives the church increase of public money for its schools without giving local taxpayers any increase of control. The Roman Catholics, joining with the Anglican Church in opposing the non-conformists' plea for non-sectarian government schools, are complicating the situation by adding some demands of their own. Under such conditions a measure proposed by a conservative government could scarcely be other than a temporary expedient showing reactionary tendenciesa measure whose misfortune is that it is a compound of religion and politics, because a church is inwoven through the whole English civil state. The enormous conservative majority which is expected to enact this bill or one similar, will be justified as obeying the latest command of the English people at the polls.

The new bill makes the county council paramount in administering, inspecting, and developing education in the country. This transfer of control in part from the national to a local authority-"decentralization of the code," as Sir John Gorst terms it is a desirable reform, as is also the raising of the limit of school age from eleven to twelve years. If this bill becomes law, the board schools hitherto non-sectarian, though not necessarily non-religious, must admit sectarian teaching in school hours at the demand of "a reasonable number" of parents in the case of any elementary school. These board schools, by the reports of the official inspectors, now rank highest for educational results; while the denominational schools rank in lower grades as their denominationalism increases, as follows, Wesleyan, Church of England, Roman Catholic. The denominations not named here mainly avail themselves of the board schools.

Intra-Imperial Free Trade. - What has been termed "the magnificent isolation of England," referring to Britain's lack in recent years of close alliance or friendship with other nations, is operating to draw into firmer union the widely scattered countries that compose the empire. Vague shadows of danger, appealing to the ancient loyalty, summon it into new consciousness of itself; they appeal also to prudence to reinforce patriotism and to confirm the bond between the home land and the colonies along all the lines of common interest, commercial and industrial. Mr. Chamberlain, colonial secretary of state, is moving on these practical lines, not as yet officially, but with suggestions aimed at awakening public thought and preparing the way for an imperial policy nothing less than revolutionary in trade relations.

On March 25 he was the guest of honor at the annual meeting of the Canada club in London. Many prominent men were present. In