396 



GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



of the metropolitan police, the barracks bill and 

 the census bills, which admitted of no postpone- 

 ment, and the contentious votes in supply, all of 

 which had yet to be debated, compelled the 

 ministers to throw all the main measures over- 

 board, notwithstanding Mr. Parnell's with- 

 drawal of his alternative scheme of abating 

 rents by Government aid and his avowal, which 

 surprised his friends and allies no less than it 

 did his adversaries, that the land purchase bill, 

 with some comparatively trifling modifications, 

 would prove acceptable. The bill for the cession 

 of Heligoland demanded attention to the exclu- 

 sion of all other business, and besides the 

 strictures of Radicals and Parnellites on the 

 surrender of the stronghold to Germany and the 

 expatriation of British subjects without their 

 consent and their criticism of the African policy 

 of the ministry, Sir William Harcourt raised 

 the question of the constitutionality of ceding 

 British territory by statute, since it would take 

 a part of the treaty-making power out of the 

 hands of the responsible ministers by vesting 

 the House of Lords with a right of control and 

 veto over such cessions. After defining their 

 views, they declined to take further part in the 

 discussion. Ministerial difficulties were in- 

 creased by the disaffection among the police, a 

 partial strike of the postmen, and the refusal of 

 a part of the Grenadier Guards to obey orders 

 at Wellington Barracks. 



The proceeds of the extra spirit duties, since 

 they could not be hoarded until Parliament 

 should agree to buy out the good-will of super- 

 fluous dramshops, must be applied to some pur- 

 pose, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer pro- 

 posed that in England and Wales and in Scot- 

 land they should be added to the residuary funds 

 of the county councils for the relief of rates and 

 that in Ireland they should be devoted partly 

 to intermediate education and partly to labor- 

 ers' dwellings. Scotch representatives opposed 

 a determined resistance to the provision for Scot- 

 land, setting up, against the interests of prop- 

 erty owners desiring to escape taxation, the 

 claims of the people to free education, which 

 they proposed to extend beyond the elementary 

 branches that are compulsory by law to the 

 whole school course. The police bills were op- 

 posed in like manner by a section of the Scotch 

 members because the English bill proposed a 

 higher scale of superannuation pensions than 

 was adopted for Scotland. These bills having 

 been carried, and other indispensable measures, 

 including the census bills, the Government aban- 

 doned the Indian Councils bill and the bill for 

 the regulation of savings banks, and made haste 

 to wind up the business of the year. 



In the debate on the Irish estimates, which 

 lasted two weeks, the administration was called 

 to account more particularly for the practice of 

 " shadowing " by the police. In the discussion 

 of the army estimates, Mr. Stanhope, Secretary 

 of State for War, stated that the Government 

 was prepared to go a long way in the direction of 

 Lord Hartington's commission in respect to the 

 reorganization of the War Office, though he did 

 not intimate a readiness to go so far as to prac- 

 tically abolish the independent authority of the 

 commander-in-chief. In the Western Australia 

 Constitution bill the Government backed down 



from the position taken the year before, a select 

 committee having modified the bill in accordance 

 with colonial demands by giving the colony 

 absolute control of the vast unsettled regions 

 that imperialists wished to have reserved for fu- 

 ture disposition by the home Government. New 

 regulations were appended to the legislation for 

 stamping out and preventing the introduction of 

 contagious cattle diseases. A bill fixing the lia- 

 bility of directors of companies, introduced in 

 the Lower House by Mr. Warmington, was so 

 amended in accordance with the strictures of 

 Lord Herschell in the House of Lords that it 

 lost most of its usefulness in the eyes of its orig- 

 inal advocates. A bars and gates bill, introduced 

 by Lord Rosebery, passed both houses, but with 

 a compensation clause attached that defeated its 

 essential purpose. A partnership bill and a bill 

 for the revision of the statutes, introduced by the 

 Lord Chancellor, were the principal other meas- 

 ures tnat passed into law, in addition to the 

 amendments in the system of winding up limited 

 liability companies, acts for the allotment of 

 houses to the working classes, and measures for 

 the extensive reconstruction of the army with 

 the object of securing the health and improving 

 the efficiency of the soldiers. 



In the Queen's speech proroguing Parliament, 

 on Aug. 18, mention was made of the Anglo- 

 German and Anglo-French African agreements, 

 to the result of the Brussells conference on the 

 suppression of the slave trade, and the conven- 

 tion of tne South African Republic respecting 

 Swaziland, which the Volksraad had ratified 

 shortly before. The adjustment of the dispute 

 between the Newfoundlanders and French fish- 

 ermen regarding the true interpretation of the 

 rights of France under the treaty of Utrecht was 

 spoken of as the subject of anxious attention, 

 and it was announced that the British Govern- 

 ment had offered to submit to arbitration the 

 difference with the United States respecting the 

 Behring Sea seal fisheries. 



The Labor Agitation. The dockers' strike 

 in London and the activity of the State Social- 

 ists have brought into the ascendant ideas that 

 have always been scouted by trades unionists of 

 the old school, and this tendency was accelerated 

 by the revelations of excessive hours, semi-star- 

 vation, unsanitary conditions, and overcrowding 

 brought out by the investigations of the com- 

 mittee of the House of Lords on the sweating 

 system which made its report in May, 1890. In 

 the demonstration in favor of the eight hours' 

 working day in Hyde Park, London, on June 

 4, nearly 500,000 people took part. The ques- 

 tion was the chief issue before the Trade Union 

 Congress, which opened at Liverpool on Sept. 1. 

 The resolution in favor of a statutory eight 

 hours' day was hotly contested by the represent- 

 atives of the old and new schools, and the latter 

 defeated an amendment declaring that the eight 

 hours' day could best be obtained by the efforts 

 of the unions was defeated by the small majority 

 of 181 against 173. The original resolution de- 

 manding that eight hours should be made the 

 limit by law for all trades, whether desired by 

 the trades or not, was carried by 193 votes against 

 155. Mr. Broadhurst. the leader of the old school, 

 was succeeded as secretary of the parliamentary 

 committee by Mr. Fenwick, a member of Parlia- 



