GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



407 



Condon, Melady, and O'Meara, were in August 

 released from the further operation of the sen- 

 tence of penal servitude under which they had 

 suffered for eleven years. It was stipulated 

 that on their discharge they should not take 

 part in any demonstration, and should not re- 

 main on British soil, though they were allowed 

 to see their friends. 



A resolution in favor of home rule in Ireland 

 was moved in the House of Commons as an 

 amendment to the address at the opening of 

 the first session. Sir Michael Hicks- Beach said 

 that the Government desired to remove every 

 real grievance in Ireland, but could not pos- 

 sibly accept the undefined and undefinable 

 scheme called home rule, especially since the 

 Irish themselves were not united upon it. He 

 then showed how freedom had increased in Ire- 

 land since the opening of the present Parlia- 

 ment. The amendment was rejected by a vote 

 of 301 to 148. The dissensions in the Home 

 Rule- party led to its separation into two fac- 

 tions during the year. 



A strike took place in April among the oper- 

 atives of the cotton-mills in Lancashire, which 

 originated in the adoption of a resolution by 

 the employers to reduce the wages 10 per cent. 

 The operatives endeavored to compromise the 

 difference by offering to accept a reduction of 

 5 per cent., or to submit the matter to arbitra- 

 tion ; but the masters would not agree to their 

 propositions. A strike also occurred among the 

 iron miners of Middlesborough and Stockton 

 against the award of an arbitrator who decided 

 that their wages should be reduced 7i per cent. 

 The excitement induced collisions between the 

 strikers and the police in May, ending in riots in 

 which considerable damage was done to prop- 

 erty in Blackburn and the neighboring factory 

 towns, and the military had to be called out. 

 The masters adhered to their position, and the 

 mass of the workingmen submitted to their 

 terms by the middle of June. 



The depression in trade became very keenly 

 felt in the early part of October, when a number 

 of notices of reductions of wages were given. 

 Conferences of masters and laborers had no sat- 

 isfactory result, the reductions were continued, 

 and the troubles extended to the agricultural 

 laborers, who became involved in strikes and 

 lock-outs. The suffering among the laborers 

 in Sheffield and other large manufacturing 

 towns became by the close of the year a very 

 painful and perplexing feature in the situation 

 of the country. 



The distress was considerably augmented by 

 several great commercial failures, one of the 

 first and most important of which was that of 

 the Glasgow City Bank, October 1st. This in- 

 stitution had stood extremely high in the con- 

 fidence of the public, its last dividend having 

 been made at 12 per cent., and its shares on the 

 day of failure having stood at 236 ; and it was 

 a favorite institution for investment among the 

 people of Scotland. The balance-sheet of the 

 bank as examined by the auditors showed that 



on the 1st day of October, the last day of its 

 business, its liabilities amounted to 12,403,000, 

 while its assets were 7,212,000, and that the 

 total loss, including the capital (1,000,000), 

 was 6,783,000. As the stockholders are un- 

 der conditions of unlimited liability, the loss 

 falls crushingly upon people of moderate means, 

 many of whom had their all invested in the 

 shares, and others of whom will have to give 

 up all to pay their proportion. The auditors 

 found that the loss had been occasioned by 

 criminal mismanagement of the directors and 

 officers of the bank, and these officers were 

 arrested and committed for fraud. Subscrip- 

 tions were opened for a fund for the relief of 

 the poorer shareholders of the bank, which by 

 the middle of December had reached the sum of 

 321,484, while 500,000 were wanted. This 

 failure was followed by other failures, of which 

 150, involving liabilities of 25.000,000, occur- 

 ring in Glasgow and the west of Scotland by the 

 20th of November, were traceable directly and 

 indirectly to it. The West of England Bank, 

 Bristol, failed December 7th, but its directors 

 claimed that it was solvent. It was established 

 in 1834, and had forty-two branches in South 

 Wales and the west of England. The state- 

 ment of the provisional liquidators of this bank 

 showed that its liabilities amounted to 3,353,- 

 265, while its assets were estimated at 3,048,- 

 947, from which a deficiency of 304,318 was 

 predicated. An order was granted later in the 

 month for the compulsory winding up of the 

 bank. 



The year was signalized by several distress- 

 ing accidents. The training ship Eurydice, with 

 330 persons on board, was capsized off the Isle 

 of. Wight March 24th, by the pressure of a 

 sudden squall taking place during a violent 

 snow-storm, and nearly all of the crew and ca- 

 dets were drowned. On the 31st of May the 

 three German ironclads, the Grosser Kurfurst, 

 the Konig Wilhelm, and the Preussen, were 

 sailing together in the English Channel past 

 Sandgate, when the Konig Wilhelm, changing 

 her course to avoid a passing vessel, ran into 

 the Grosser Kurfurst. The latter vessel sank 

 within five minutes, and 284 of the officers and 

 crew were drowned, while 216 were picked up. 

 On the 3d of September the Princess Alice, an 

 excursion steamer on the Thames, carrying 700 

 passengers, mostly families with mothers and 

 children, was run into by the iron screw-collier 

 By well Castle, and nearly 600 persons were 

 drowned within five minutes, only about 100 

 being saved. The circumstances of this disas- 

 ter were investigated by a coroner's jury and 

 the Board of Trade. An explosion took place 

 in the Prince of Wales Colliery, Abercarne, 

 South Wales, September llth, by which 286 

 men and boys lost their lives. Subscriptions 

 were taken for the benefit of the families suf- 

 fering from the last two disasters, which re- 

 sulted in securing liberal funds for both pur- 

 poses. On the llth of October 37 persons were 

 crushed or suffocated and several injured in the 



