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get it in the present Parliament they would have it in the next. The real difficulty they had in getting Liberal measures in the present Parliament lay in the fact of men calling themselves Liberal Unionists. As a matter of fact, they were not Liberals at all. They were as rank Tories as any in the House of Commons, and he advised the electors to get rid of them. In the constituencies the Liberal Unionists had no hold. They talked of a third party, but the country had no fancy for new flags and false colours. With regard to the Irish question, upon fair and safe conditions in this empire they were prepared to give to the Irish people the management of their own affairs; but if any man came forward and demanded Home Rule, as Mr. Parnell had recently done, in a spirit of hatred and hostility to the English Empire and the English people, that was not the Home Rule which the Liberal party had advocated, or would ever support. The labour question had been referred to a Royal Commission; but the Commission would not settle the question. It would have to be settled by the Parliament of England, elected by the free voice of those interested. The question of the equality of taxation as between real and personal property was a difficult one, but was one which concerned them all; and the enfranchisement of leaseholds was a most important question to those who desired and had a right to become, upon fair terms, possessors of the houses in which they lived. What they wanted was a real, and not sham, Small Holdings Act; not such a Bill as Mr. Jesse Collings had introduced, of which the motive principle was gone when they took away compulsion. There was a time when the Tory party thought the Chancellor of the Exchequer was their "great card," but the gilt had gone off the gingerbread, for the people had come to think that a surplus was not such a great thing if they had to borrow money to make it.

Mr. Chamberlain, presiding at a conference of members of Parliament and others on the subject of a proposed national scheme of pensions for old age (May 13), explained his views on the subject. It would be a mistake, he said, to complicate the question of age pensions with any proposal for providing sick pay. Any national Government scheme must be a very simple one, as it was almost impossible for Government officials to watch the malingering, which was the evil they had to dread in connection with a sick-pay scheme. The idea to which they should confine themselves was that after a certain age a man should have some kind of provision-rather more than he could now get from the Poor-law, and one which would not be tainted by Poor-law associations. It would not do to allow the proposed Government pension to begin before the age of sixty-five. Up to that age there was always a possibility that a man would be able to earn something for himself. Statistics showed that of men and women living at the age of twenty-five, one in two reached

sixty-five; therefore, the scheme would practically affect half the population. If it were extended to the age of sixty, either the subscription would have to be much larger, or the pension would' have to be much smaller. Another very important question was whether the provision should be compulsory. The feeling in favour of compulsion was growing; but it was neither desirable nor necessary to begin with a compulsory scheme. If a voluntary scheme were started and made progress, it could be made compulsory at some future time. If any scheme of the kind were arranged it would involve Government aid, and private subscriptions would be lost in the case of a man who died before he reached the age of sixty-five. Was it to be a tontine, in which the longest-lived got the advantages, or were the members subscribing to be allowed to withdraw or allot their subscriptions in the event of death? A man ought not to be allowed to withdraw his subscription from the purpose for which it was originally given. The money must be considered as pledged and "ear-marked" for the purpose of providing an old-age pension, and, once put in, it ought not to be withdrawn except in the case of death. But the chances of popularising the scheme would be enormously increased if those representing the persons subscribing were allowed to draw out the amount they had actually paid, or some portion of it, or to allocate it in the case of death before the age of sixty-five; though the money so withdrawn should be without interest or bonus.

An interesting bye-election occurred before Whitsuntide which was not made the occasion of a party contest. The appointment of Mr. W. H. Smith as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports an appointment which gave much satisfaction to the House of Commons and the country-caused a vacancy in the Strand Division, but Mr. Smith was re-elected without opposition (May 12). The ceremony of nomination almost recalled the old system of the hustings, for Mr. Smith was present and made a speech, though his observations had no reference to the election..

CHAPTER 1II.

Whitsuntide Recess Speeches--Lord Salisbury at Giasgow-The Influenza-The Irish Land Bill in Committee-The Newfoundland Fisheries Bill in the Commons-Bye-Elections -Speeches by Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen-The Irish Land Bill passed by the Commons-Useful Bills in the House of Lords -Mr. Balfour at Women's Liberal Unionist Association-Proposed partial abandonment of the Crimes Act--Free Education-Great Britain and PortugalThe Duke of Argyll on the Crofter Districts-Home Rule omitted from a Liberal Programme-Letters by Mr. Chamberlain and Sir W. Harcourt-The Baccarat Case-Manipur-Strong Speech by Sir J. Gorst-Deputations to Lord Salisbury-Imperial Federation and Trade with the Colonies-Mr. Parnell at Bermondsey-Factories and Workshops Bill-Elementary Education Bill- The Irish Land Bill in the House of Lords-Lord Hartington and Sir Henry James at St. James's Hall-Sir W. Harcourt at West Islington-Visit of the German Emperor-Elementary Education Bill in the Lords-Mr. De Cobain-The Speaker and Mr. Atkinson-Civil Service Estimates - Statement on Irish Distress-The Dynamite Convicts-The Indian Budget--Lord Salisbury at the United Club-Mr. Parnell at Newcastle -Mr. Chamberlain on Africa-Sir G. Trevelyan at Downend -Mansion House Banquet to Ministers-Sir W. Harcourt and the Wisbech Election-Mr. Morley on Rural Questions.

THOUGH the Whitsuntide recess was one of the shortest on record, time was found in it for speeches in the country. Mr. Parnell addressed several meetings in Ireland, Mr. Healy spoke at Dublin, and the Secretary for War at Spalding. The chief event of the week, however, was the visit of Lord Salisbury to Glasgow, where the freedom of the city was presented to him. (May 20). In his speech on the occasion Lord Salisbury referred at some length to the relations of this country to the Mahomedan communities of Europe and Asia, and reviewed at still greater length the various African questions of the moment. He observed that one of the great provocations and dangers of war had arisen from the position of the great Mahomedan communities. The civilisation peculiar to them would not assimilate the modern ideas which were essential to progress and even to preservation, and therefore for many years past the solicitude of statesmen had been how they were to keep these Mahomedan communities from crumbling into dust and producing the disturbance which such disappearance must cause, for when a nation died there was no testamentary distribution of its goods, no statute of distribution of what it left behind. The disappearance of a nation meant a desperate quarrel for what it possessed. That danger was passing away, though perhaps very slowly, in some parts not at all. Morocco was still the home of the worst abuses and the greatest cruelty, and would some day be as great a trouble to Europe as other Mahomedan communities further East were twenty or thirty years ago. Turkey, Persia, and Egypt, however, were improving year by year. What was weak in them was thrown off; what was strong in them was developed.

"Our own Mahomedan population in India," Lord Salisbury went on to say, "is the most loyal and most robust and sturdy

portion of the community, and we have every ground for hoping a little development among them. But, with respect to all those Islamic populations, we must always remember that they are Mahomedans. We must not attempt to impose on them the development or the exact growth of the West. They will develop in their manner, and after their nature. If you have got a good larch tree you cannot, by any contrivance, make it grow like an oak; and you will only spoil your larch, and cover yourself with ridicule if you attempt it. The same thing is true of nations, and we must, whether in foreign countries or in our own dominion, be patient with the fact that they are developing. Their growth is different from ours, and it is only by suffering them to follow the law of their nature in all legitimate lines that we can hope for the greatest perfection of which that nation is capable."

Proceeding to speak of the partition of Africa, the Prime Minister said that this was a subject of activity which had grown with startling rapidity. When he left the Foreign Office in 1880 nobody thought of Africa. When he returned to it in 1885 the nations of Europe were almost quarrelling with each other about the various portions of Africa they could obtain. Almost all British enterprise in Africa had been conducted through the agency of three great companies-The Niger Company, and the South Africa and East Africa Companies. The South Africa Company, probably better known in the concrete form of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, a man of remarkable powers, resolution, and will, had taken over a vast tract of Central Africa, which certainly could not be brought under the dominion of the Crown without enormous sacrifice on the part of England, but which, if they had fair good fortune, and were not disturbed by any untoward accidents, they had every prospect of developing highly. They had great mineral wealth in prospect, and that mineral wealth would give them the material with which to pursue their administrative task. This was of interest at the present moment, because this territory covered the country with regard to which England had been negotiating now for a year and a half with Portugal. In these matters the claims of justice and of international law had to be considered. Portugal had for centuries claimed and for many years been recognised by this country as possessing the whole shore from Cape Delgaedo to the north of Delagoa Bay. She had undoubtedly governed, though in a fitful and temporary, and far from effective, manner, land on both sides of the river Zambesi up as far as Zumbo. The Government had had to determine how far her historical claims and her present power of acting up to them justified them in pushing that shore claim into the interior; how far it justified them in recognising her government of the shores of the Zambesi. In both cases Portugal had an historical right which the Government had done their best exactly to ascertain and measure, with the result that they had come to a conclusion with respect to the occupation of territory which

would be beneficial to both parties if their present proposals were accepted. The territory they would recognise as belonging to South Africa was high land on which white men could work and settle, and the peculiarity of English rule was that England was not satisfied with ruling over the natives, but desired that she should fill the land with her own people and her own blood. The melancholy peculiarity of the rule of Portugal was that she did not pour her own blood into the country and people it with her own people, but was satisfied with ruling the natives whom she found there. It was, therefore, fitting that the territory which could only be cultivated by the natives should fall under her rule, and that that on which white men could work should fall to the more active and robust Anglo-Saxon race. The East Africa Company was that of Sir William Mackinnon, whose enterprise and philanthropic determination ought to be mentioned with honour. This company possessed the territory leading from opposite the island of Pemba, which was north of Zanzibar, to the Victoria Nyanza, and also possessed the valley of the Nile from that region until it reached the Egyptian frontier. Of course it would take a long time to carry out colonisation. The East Africa Company was far more purely philanthropic than any of the other undertakings. Its object had been to deal a deadly blow at the slave-trade, the destruction of which had been the animating impulse of English policy in those regions for nearly a century; and they were now within measurable distance. of the utter destruction of that hateful traffic. The slave-trade on the sea now only existed on the eastern coast of Africa and on the shores of the Red Sea. The Sultan of Zanzibar had taken strong measures in Zanzibar and Pemba, which must insure its disappearance within the present generation. But the place where the caravans still went, and where it was of great importance that they should be stayed, was the tract that lay between this great Victoria Nyanza a lake whose area equalled that of Scotland-and the eastern coast of Africa. The slave caravans across that territory could be destroyed by one method, if that method could be applied. Sir William Mackinnon was doing his best to lay a railway from the coast to the Victoria Nyanza. The peculiarity of a railway was that where it was once laid it killed every other mode of locomotion that formerly held the same ground. If a railway could exist from this lake to the coast caravans could no more be employed, as they are employed now, to carry ivory, the produce of the interior, to the coast or back again, and it was by these caravans that the slaves were brought along. It cost two or three hundred times as much to bring goods by caravans as it would to bring them by railway. Of course, when once a railway existed, caravans would become a matter of antiquity, and if no caravans existed there would be no means of carrying slaves from the interior to the coast, because no slave dealer who presented himself with a body of slaves to be carried on trucks to the coast

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