324 



GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



place the work under parish councils or other 

 small bodies having been rejected, the House 

 went into committee on the bill before adjourn- 

 ing for Easter. The bill was taken up again in 

 committee, and amendments were made in a few 

 minor points, among them a reduction in the 

 amount of purchase money from one fourth to 

 one fifth, the permission to let holdings up to 15 

 instead of 10 acres, and the treatment of the new 

 holdings as personalty instead of realty in cases 

 of intestacy. The bill was read a third time 

 without debate or division, and was passed by 

 the Lords, who reversed the decision of the House 

 on the intestate clause, but otherwise made no 

 substantial changes. The Ministerialists, to ob- 

 tain the passage of the Irish local-government 

 bill, had considered the advisability of prolong- 

 ing the session into the autumn. A final settle- 

 ment of this question was not arrived at when 

 the debate on the second reading of the bill was 

 opened by Mr. Sexton, who moved its rejection. 

 The anti-Parnellites, who were occupied with 

 their feuds at home, took little part in the de- 

 bate, and the second reading was carried by a 

 majority of 92 on May 24. The Scotch equiva- 

 lent grant bill and the Irish education bill were 

 framed to make provision for the share of the 

 charge of which the state relieved the parents of 

 children in elementary schools when fees were 

 abolished. It was proposed to distribute the 

 Scotch grant partly in aid of secondary educa- 

 tion of the universities and of the maintenance 

 of pauper lunatics, and partly for the relief of 

 local rates. The Scotch members were much 

 divided over the latter clause, but the bill passed 

 substantially as introduced. The scheme for the 

 distribution of the Irish grant met with more op- 

 position. The sum of 200,000 annually was to 

 be distributed partly in a capitation grant, and 

 partly in augmenting the salaries of teachers, 

 coupled with a system of modified compulsion 

 in towns, which was to be ultimately extended to 

 the rural districts. After it had been left to the 

 Irish education commissioners to devise rules 

 under which the schools of the Christian Broth- 

 ers, who had consented to a conscience clause, 

 might share in the grant, the opposition of the 

 Irish members ceased, and the bill was passed. 

 The criminal evidence bill, the Indian councils 

 bill, and the clergy discipline bill were sent down 

 from the Lords before the end of March. The 

 first of these was smothered in committee, owing 

 to a proposition to exclude Ireland from its pro- 

 visions. The second, which increased the mem- 

 bership and enlarged the right of debate of the 

 legislative councils, while it gave the Viceroy a 

 discretionary power to appoint persons chosen on 

 some elective system, was passed with but little 

 opposition. The clergy discipline bill, which em- 

 powered the removal of clergymen convicted of 

 criminal or disgraceful conduct, was met with 

 obstructive tactics at the hands of a few Welsh 

 members, who favored disestablishment. These 

 were overcome by the aid of the clnture. To ex- 

 pedite business and secure the adjournment of 

 the session before the end of June, the Irish local- 

 government bill, the private bill procedure bill, 

 and several minor measures, were dropped. 



Bills for the prevention of betting and the 

 borrowing of money by persons under age, for 

 laborers' allotments^ and for amending the poor 



laws in Ireland and the Scotch borough police 

 and health bilL, were among the minor measures 

 passed during the session. 



An eight-hour bill for minors, a woman-suf- 

 frage bill, a bill to assimilate the law of divorce 

 in England to that of Scotland, a bill empower- 

 ing the local authorities not only to purchase 

 land but to earmark it and claim the unearned 

 increment, the "one-man-one-vote" bill, and a 

 tenure-of-lands bill for Wales, were all rejected. 

 Motions for Scotch and Welsh disestablishment, 

 denouncing the common-law doctrine of conspir- 

 acy, attacking the septennial act, and looking to 

 the payment of members of Parliament, were also 

 rejected. 



General Elections. Lord Salisbury, in his 

 appeal to the electors just before the dissolution 

 of Parliament, while avowing his sense of the 

 importance of social questions, maintained that 

 there would be no time for their consideration 

 were the next Parliament to be taken up with a 

 struggle over Irish government. He also depre- 

 cated the placing of the Protestants of Ulster, 

 and the loyalists of Ireland generally, under an 

 Irish Parliament. 



Mr. Gladstone, in his Midlothian speeches and 

 elsewhere, gave no outlines of the home-rule pol- 

 icy he might be expected to follow, but adhered 

 to the broad lines of his bill of 1886 with the 

 exception of the exclusion of the Irish members. 

 The Parnellites declared themselves his allies 

 only for the limited objects of Irish politics, and 

 then only in case his scheme came up to the 

 level of Mr. Parnell's home rule, while the 

 anti-Parnellites were more stalwart in their sup- 

 port. Mr. Chamberlain and the Liberal Union- 

 ists, as in the previous election, cast in their lot 

 with the Conservatives, sinking all minor differ- 

 ences in their opposition to home rule. The 

 Unionist majority had been cut down from 118 

 in 1886 to 66 at the dissolution. The result of 

 the election was a Gladstonian majority of 42, 

 the Gladstonians having 271 members, the anti- 

 Parnellites 72, the Parnellites 9, and the Labor 

 party 4. a total of 356 : while the Conservatives 

 had 268, and the Liberal Unionists 46, a total of 

 314. The Gladstonians have 196 English, 28 

 Welsh, and 51 Scotch members ; the anti-Par- 

 nellites, 71 Irish and 1 Eng.ish ; the Parnellites, 

 9 Irish ; the Conservatives, 236 English, 2 Welsh, 

 11 Scotch, and 19 Irish ; and the Liberal Union- 

 ists, 32 English, 10 Scotch, and 4 Irish. The 

 political complexion of 562 constituencies re- 

 mained as it was prior to the general election. 

 The total Separatist vote for the United Kingdom 

 was 2,477,856, the Unionist 2.274,842, a majority 

 for the former of 203.014. In Great Britnin, the 

 Unionist vote was 2,139,550, the Separatist 2,105,- 

 736, and in Ireland the anti-Parnellite vote was 

 232.423, the Parnellite 78,618, a total of 308,898, 

 while the Unionist vote was 78.618. 



The Session of the New Parliament. The 

 newly elected Parliament was opened on Aug. 

 4. Mr. Peel, who has served as Speaker for 

 eight years, was unanimously re-elected to that 

 office. The Queen's speech was brief and col- 

 orless. It referred to the fact of the dissolu- 

 tion and the subsequent appeal to the constitu- 

 encies, and said there wa,s no business to detain 

 members at Westminster. Mr. Asquith moved 

 as an amendment to the address a vote of no 



