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1. Labor legislation destined to regulate the relations of capital and labor in a spirit of Republican solidarity, so as to correct the harshness of economic laws by a co-efficient of humanity.

2. Fiscal reforms apportioning taxation more equitably to the means of the taxpayers.

3. A law of association regulating the relation of civil and religious society in a spirit of tolerance and liberty.

M. Dupuy, with his policy of Republican concentration, is opposed by M. Goblet, with his programme of the Social-Radical alliance. It is too early as yet to forecast the result. Meanwhile the Chamber has been passing resolutions demanding the disqualifying of functionaries and priests from being elected deputies.

Mr. Stead sends us the following sumMay in mary of recent political and social activEngland. ities in England and the British Empire: In May, this year, the "pious fraud of the almanac " brought with it the radiance of June; nor would the May Queen, even on the first of the month, have lacked abundance of flowers with which to decorate her May-pole. The two great sections of the Englishspeaking world each kept holiday on the occasion of opening, the one the Imperial Institute, and the other the World's Fair, amid such pageantry as the Empire and the Republic can supply. With characteristic impetuosity both the English-speaking peoples opened their shows before the exhibits were in place, for Midsummer Day will be past and gone before either at Chicago or at Kensington the spectacle is complete. It does not matter so much about the Imperial Institute, which is not likely to be a popular resort, given over as it is almost entirely to what Lord Rosebery described as "Blue Book and Biscuit," but it was rather a serious matter for the World's Fair. The Imperial Institute was opened by Her Majesty on the tenth of May. The pageant at the opening was pretty and popular, the sun was propitious-it was at the very crown of the

year's prime—and the parade of the Australian and Indian troops was very impressive. After the opening the Prince of Wales held a huge reception, and claret-cup and tea and ices were dispensed from behind one-third of a mile of counter to 25,000 guests representing everybody who is anybody in the great middle class, with a sprinkling of other bodies above and below. Some of the well-dressed crowd hissed Mr. Gladstone, who was present as the Prince's guest,- -an incident the importance of which was absurdly exaggerated. Who can guarantee the good behavior of 25,000 persons, especially when they have been supplied with champagne cup "free gratis and for nothing?" Besides, what did Mr. Gladstone care? Surely every one knows that he is far too securely mailed in the triple brass of his own conscious rectitude to feel anything but a momentary compassion for the vulgarity of the humorists who thought to save the Union as the geese saved the Capitol, by their sibillation. It is much to be wished that at these huge democratic receptions the mob should behave itself like a gentleman. But when party feeling runs high and the wine runs free, occasional contretemps are inevitable, and it is true philosophy to make the least of them by treating them as if they were as much matter of course as a countercheer in the House of Commons.

The Australian Irregular Horse, with The Australian their business-like uniform and their Contingent. jaunty Tyrolese hats, excited universal admiration as they rode through the streets. The Indians were, perhaps, more picturesque, although that is doubtful. But the Australians-well, they were bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, and right royal was the welcome which they received. These stalwart sunburnt sons of Britain who had crossed ocean and continent from the underside of the world to grace the train of the Queen roused British pride, enthusiasm and gratitude. Australian banks may burst

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THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE,

up-that is an incident of a day; but her children can ride like centaurs and fight, if need be, like Britons of the Viking stock, and that is not an affair of the passing moment.

The Australian

There has been all the month no abatement of the Australian crisis. Banks Crisis. have continued to burst not only in Melbourne but in Queensland and New South Wales, until the bewildered newspaper-reader wonders whether there are many more banks left unbroken. All the local banks of Brisbane have gone under; the Melbourne banks have suffered terribly, and the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, an institution which, since 1876, has paid twenty-five per cent. dividend per annum, collapsed on May 15. The Australian Premiers met at Melbourne on the 27th to consider what federal action should be taken to meet the crisis, when they recoiled from a proposal to establish national banks. The result of leaving banking to headlong competition is that Australia has three banks where one would be ample. But with twentyfive per cent. dividends going, it is idle to object; although, as Mr. Henniker Heaton tells us, the sworn value of bank premises in Australia is £5,840,000, or more than a pound per head of the whole population. It has always been a mystery why so many Socialists make such a to-do about nationalizing the land which does not yield two per cent., while next to nothing is said about nationalizing banks which pay from twenty to twenty-five per cent. Surely, as a mere matter of common sense, it would be prudent to take over the best paying business first.

A good deal of somewhat irritating and Running Into Debt at pharisaic preaching has been heard reHome. cently upon the text of Australian extravagance. "Money no object" when expenditure is concerned is not the motto of Australians alone. Mr. Fowler's report on Local Rates and Local Debts contains figures well calculated to make us pause. Australians have a vast and almost virgin continent to draw upon. England is an old country, almost full. But while the annual rent value of land has fallen in the last ten years from 56 to 53 millions sterling per annum, local tax rates have risen since 1868 from 30 to 57 millions, and local indebtedness, which stood at 90 millions in 1874, is now 200 millions. That is to say, the local authorities have more than doubled their debts at a time when the ratable value of lands was diminishing instead of increasing. In face of such figures as these it hardly becomes England to be so very censorious in speaking of Australian finance.

Australia Out of evil cometh good, and the financial and the panic which has smashed half the banks Сарг. in Australia has led to a remarkable and very significant interchange of communication between the Cape government and the government of New South Wales. When the Commercial Bank of Sydney went down the government issued a proclamation making the notes of four banks legal tender for six months, and there were rumors afloat as to

possible financial difficulties that would embarrass others besides bankers. Thereupon the government of the Cape of Good Hope telegraphed to Sydney offering financial help if new South Wales needed it. The offer, which, of course, was due to the initiative of Mr. Rhodes, is a characteristic illustration of the energy and audacity with which he labors to make the unity of the race felt as a political and financial factor all around the world. The offer was declined with hearty thanks, for the colony can get through the crisis without extraneous help, but the proposal will not be forgotten. Every one rightly estimates the fealty of friends by the help they are willing to give us when we are in a tight place. Fair-weather friends are not worth having, but a friend who will back your bill when the duns are at your gate is a friend indeed. It really seems as if Mr. Rhodes may some day make the Cape politically and financially as much the corner stone of the Empire as it is strategically.

Mr. Cecil Rhodes has passed through a The South African Ministerial crisis, the true inwardness of Keystone. which is somewhat obscure. Mr. Merriman and Sir James Sievewright appear to have differed, the former, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, making charges against the latter, who was

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REV. A. HAMILTON BAYNES,
New Bishop of Natal.

Commissioner of Public Works. In order to end the dispute, Mr. Rhodes resigned, and was at once instructed to form a new Ministry. This he promptly did, putting Sir Gordon Sprigg in Mr. Merriman's place and dispensing with the services of both the recent disputants. Mr. Rose Innes also went back into private life, being succeeded as Attorney-General by Olive Schreiner's brother, who has recently been described as the Sir Charles Russell of the Cape. The new Ministry is said to be strong and likely to last. It will be helped by the good news from Mashonaland, where Mr. Jameson reports a wonderful development, fresh finds of gold being of daily occurrence. Fifty ounces of alluvial gold have been brought into Salisbury, and the reefs improve in richness as the work

ings go deeper. The Beira railway is getting on, and will be ready for opening, so they say, at the end of the month. Natal has been celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. Mr. Kruger has been sworn in as President of the Transvaal, and the preliminary steps have been taken for handing over Swaziland to the Boers. President Kruger is said to have urged the Boers to teach their children Dutch. They need encouragement, it seems, to resist the temptations of the allencompassing English. Lord Ripon's vision of "a great African Federation, full of loyalty to the Imperial Crown," will probably be realized when these children who need encouragement to learn Dutch have attained man's estate.

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Debate.

to the consolidation of the Empire makes itself felt, the same tendency is asserting itself at Westminster in the debates on the Home Rule bill, two clauses of which were got through committee between Easter and Whitsuntide. The debate has made it abundantly clear that whatever Little Englanders may think, or the advocates of Irish independence may dream, the British people will never establish any system of government in Ireland that will even in semblance impair the strength, the unity or the cohesion of the Empire. Home Rule will be granted on the day when the English and Scotch people are convinced that it will strengthen the Empire, but not till then. Any kind of Home Rule that might weaken the Empire, or defer its federation, will be voted down. That sentiment has doomed Clause Nine, and the same sentiment will inevitably wreck any and every Home Rule bill that goes a step further than the formula Home Rule in Ireland as in London-mutatis mutandis." When that has been tried and has been found to work well, further concessions may be made. But John Bull is a slow moving, somewhat puzzle-headed creature, and he has a most invincible objection to taking more than one step at a time.

In

Committee.

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The prolonged discussions in committee were terminated by divisions in which the proposals of the Opposition were uniformly supported by a majority of the British representatives, and as uniformly rejected by the Irish members, without whose aid Mr. Gladstone would be in a hopeless minority. The normal majority of fortyfive rose to fifty or sixty, owing to the absence of some ten or a dozen Unionists, whose remissness has excited the indignant animadversions of the Times. The Irish contingent voted like a dumb machine, and on the only occasion when Mr. Redmond ventured to move an amendment, that proposing to call the Irish Legislature a Parliament, he only carried 39 members into the Lobby with him. Yet Mr. Parnell used to say, "Call it a Parliament, and you may make it what you like. Call it anything else, and you will have to make it what we like." Mr. Gladstone, however, while almost humbly subservient to Nationalist sensitiveness on every other point, peremptorily refused to humor them in this matter. So the Assem

bly on College Green is to be a Legislature, and not a Parliament. Carried by the House of Commons by 466 to 40.

The Imperial Supremacy.

The only result in the shape of a successful amendment raised by the Opposition was the acceptance of Sir Henry James' amendment, asserting in good round set terms the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. The amendment runs as follows:

Provided that notwithstanding anything in this act contained, the supreme power and authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland shall remain unaffected and undiminished over all persons, matters and things within the Queen's dominions.

Mr. Gladstone wasted three hours in haggling over this addition to his clause, and ultimately and reluctantly accepted it. Its importance depends, of course, entirely upon whether the supreme power and authority of Parliament is to prevail in Ireland as in Canada, or in Ireland as in London. Every day the debate brings out the hopeless difficulty of getting out of Mr. Gladstone's mind the fatally misleading analogy of the colonies. The fundamental difference between the colonies and Ireland is, that the colonies contribute nothing to the Imperial Revenue, and that Ireland has to contribute over two million pounds a year, and further, that Ireland would never be allowed to secede any more than a State in the American Union would be allowed to leave the United States. Until he realizes the difference which that makes he will never, to use a Hibernicism, open his mouth without putting his foot in it.

Mr. Balfour's Position.

The importance of Sir Henry James' amendment, however, cannot be explained away by misleading references to inapplicable colonial analogies. Mr. Balfour at first was inclined to scout the idea that the form of sound words drawn up by Sir Henry James would do any good, but he subsequently recanted publicly, and explained the significance of this distinct victory for the Imperial party. He said: "Even if, under this bill, it be not followed by other operative amendments, it will be a guide and a justification to future Parliaments to employ the powers which this bill expressly recognizes that they possess. Upon this amendment, either under this bill or under some other bill, we may hope to build a fabric of Imperial supremacy which shall be proof against every attack, and fit for every purpose to which we desire to put it." He did not desire, he told the House of Commons, if Home Rule was ever given to Ireland, that the Imperial Parliament should deal with Ireland in the same minute manner that it now did with England and Scotland. But neither did he desire that the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament should be deprived of all practical meaning or reduced to the mere abstraction which it has become in relation to Australia and Canada. From this it can be seen that the Unionist mind is adjusting itself to the possibility of conceding Home Rule, and at the same time of preserving the supremacy of Parliament. As this

and nothing less or more than this-is what Englishmen desire, there is no reason why Mr. Balfour should not carry a reasonable measure of Home Rule when he re-enters office-say, in 1894 or in 1895.

The

There is something ludicrous about the abHome Rule sorption of the House of Commons in the Pike. details of a bill which every one knows is certain to be rejected without ceremony by the House of Lords. "It reminds me," said a statesman the other day, "of the old receipt for cooking a pike. You had to catch your fish, cook him, stuff him with all manner of costly herbs and sauces, and then-you throw him out of the window. The whole of the session is to be devoted to dressing this legislative pike, which the House of Lords will throw out of the window without ceremony." What adds to the piquancy of the paradox is, that the question whether or not the Lords will be supported by the country in their action against Home Rule depends almost entirely upon the extent to which the other measures, now hopelessly blocked by Home Rule, are passed into law.

Mr. Chamberlain

The House of Commons being thus reduced to impotence for the rest of the year, is naturally seeing how much enjoyment it can get meanwhile. It may not actually, as has been remarked by a witty onlooker, have converted itself into a ring for the purpose of observing stand-up fights between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Gladstone; but it certainly is deriving considerable entertainment from the debating duello between these two distinguished combatants. It is no longer in doubt that, after Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Chamberlain is the best debater in the House. When the G.O.M. is gone, it is Mr. Chamberlain who will wear his mantle, and Mr. Chamberlain who alone can draw the bow of Ulysses. The younger man is coarser, less magnanimous, and infinitely less rusé than the Old Parliamentary Hand, but he is a hard hitter, resolute and indomitable, while as a debater he is lucid and persuasive. If he were but capable of magnanimity he might lead the country yet. But the keen eagerness of the partisan, the rancorous bitterness with which he pursues real or imagined private slights, and the lack of that genial, generous good nature which distinguishes Mr. Balfour, stand in his way. Still, even his worst enemies admit his imperial spirit and his masterful talents in debate, and both qualities have been conspicuous in the debates on Home Rule.

It is a long time since more interest was The Campaign in the taken in the debates in Parliament than Country.

This was

stantly taken part in the debates, and that the speeches have not been too long. Lord Salisbury's pilgrimage to Ulster was a painstaking performance, but it was somewhat of an anti-climax to Mr. Balfour's demonstrations, and his speeches, powerful and able as they always are, were marred by the most maladroit references to the majority of the Irish people as “enemies." A Prime Minister should count no subjects of the Queen as enemies except those in actual redhanded rebellion against her authority. Neither can Lord Salisbury be congratulated upon the wisdom of comparing the inhabitants of three parts of Ireland to the Hittites, Amalekites and the Perizzites, who occupied the land of Canaan before the advent of Joshua. No doubt the English as nearly exterminated the Irishry about three hundred years ago as the Jews did the nations of Canaan. But the Irishry multiplied as the Hivites and Hittites did not, and the Irish cradle soon filled up the gaps made by England's sword. Lord Randolph Churchill, the bravodemagogue of the party, seeks to make up in sound and fury what he lacks in wit and force, but as a platform orator he has abandoned himself too much to the tearing of a passion to tatters to be counted as a very valuable ally in the campaign.

The Jubilee of the Free Kirk.

The Scottish people were celebrating, last month, the Jubilee of the Disruption which founded the Free Church of Scotland. Dwellers south of the Tweed find it difficult to realize how much sacrifice that great act of moral heroism entailed, and what a priceless boon it has been to Scotland. Since the Act of Uniformity of 1662 drove the Puritans out of the Church of England there has been no such object lesson, on a great scale, of fidelity to religious principle in this isle of Britain. Probably there are few, even among the established clergy, who would not admit that the action of Chalmers, Guthrie and their fellows has been the most blessed manifestation of divine grace that Scotland has received in this century. But fifty years ago how differently it was regarded! What with John Knox, the Covenanters, and the founders of the Free Kirk, Scotland has quite a galaxy of patron saints, whose memory to this day helps to make the Scot a better citizen and a nobler man. England, no doubt, is the best country in the world; but how often, when among some fusionless, molluscous and invertebrate Southrons, we find ourselves wishing it were just a little more like Scotland!

That is a curious contrast which is presented between the triumphant celebration of the Jubilee of the Free Church, and the agitated alarm expressed by English Churchmen at the prospect of the disestablishment of the Church in Wales. The Albert Hall, which this year seems as if it were to become the chosen rallying ground of the forces of Conservatism, was crowded on May 16 with an immense throng of ChurchmenPrimate in the chair-for the purpose of protesting

The English Church in Danger. in speeches outside. But last month the House quite eclipsed the public meeting. partly due to the fact that, with the exception of a solitary speech by Mr. Bryce at Aberdeen, and an imposing demonstration in Hyde Park, the Home Rulers have been dumb. But it was also due to the fact that at last the debates in the House have been worthy the reputation of Parliament, that the best men have con

against the Welsh Suspensory bill. Bishop Westcott spoke, and Lord Melbourne, and the Duke of Argyll, and many others. The Archbishop declared that rather than see no establishment at all, he would prefer to see Nonconformity established, from which it is evident that His Grace has no imagination and very little knowledge of the kind of irritation which Establishments produce in Dissenters. The Bishop of Durham's argument in favor of a national church as the spiritual organ of the nation would logically land in the transfer of the endowments of the Anglican and Presbyterian sects to the Civic Church, such, for instance, as the Social Question Unions recently established at Manchester and Rochdale. The whole drift of the time is in that direction rather than towards Disestablishment and Disendowment pure and simple. What is coming is not spoliation, but merely the re-adjusting of the movements to the broadened conception of national religion that prevails in the latter days of the nineteenth century.

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to the duty of Catholics in elections. Lord Randolph is scandalized beyond measure at the suggestion of the Cardinal that there was a close connection between religion and politics, and that "the privilege of the franchise is not a mere personal thing that any one can do what he likes with." This, it seems, is spiritual intimidation, priestly usurpation and we know not what. Probably Dr. Westcott will discover, before the century closes, that the Establishment, instead of making conscience potent in the affairs of the nation, has so Erastianized English Churchmen that they have now not even a conception of such a thing as religious principle as an operative force in political life.

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THE DUKE OF YORK.

The Marriage The marriage of the Duke of York to the of Princess May will take place on July 6. Princess May. The Princess is a great favorite and every one naturally sympathizes with the young girl who, losing one lover by death, has found consolation in his brother. The precedent of the Czarina is one which bodes well for the future of the marriage. Uneasy lies the head that wears the Russian crown, but in all Europe there has not been in our time a more ideally faithful and devoted husband and wife than Alexander the Third and the Empress, who was previously engaged to his brother. The chances of the Duke of York's succession to the throne seem too remote to excite much interest. The Queen, although last month she entered her seventy-fifth year, is still with us, the Prince of Wales has just turned fifty. But there are those who persist in believing that we shall see a Duff dynasty in England yet.

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