in his policy and in his method. He had abused the powers of party leadership, and the doctrine of reserve and secrecy from the people, and the wielding of party majorities. Mr. Gladstone was an outsider, taken in as a leader over the heads of a great many men who had been Liberal from childhood. When he made up his mind to strike his colours to Mr. Parnell, he did not consult one of his faithful colleagues, who had yielded much to his opinion during a long course of years. If party government was to be conducted in this country on honourable and public lines, surely some degree of openness was necessary between the followers and the chief. Mr. Gladstone had misruled the majority. He had applied the closure, not in a proper manner, but to very nearly a half of the House of Commons, and to a considerable majority of the whole British representatives, and this was a monstrous abuse of the powers which were put into his hands.

In conclusion, the duke remarked that it was not well for the statesman who had denounced the terrorist policy of the Land League to come round to apologising for boycotting and the Plan of Campaign without any apparent excuse, except a shifting of the Parliamentary majority, for so extraordinary a revolution in the moral attitude of his mind. Mr. Gladstone's mild paraphrase for cruel boycotting, "exclusive dealing," was of a kind which tended to make crime "unable to recognise itself"; and Mr. Gladstone, he said, might as well have called the mutilation of cattle "incisive dealing," or murder "conclusive dealing." Brilliant, however, as was the Duke of Argyll's speech, it attracted but ephemeral notice, and public attention soon wandered off to matters of more pressing importance than the estimate of one politician by another.

CHAPTER VII.

The Winter Session-The Parish Councils Bill-Mr. Fowler's Moderation- Mr. Morley at Manchester-The Lord Mayor's Banquet-South African AffairsEmployers' Liability Bill-Mr. M'Laren's Amendment-Third Reading-The Coal Strike-Government Intervention-The Parish Councils Bill in Committee The House of Lords on the Betterment Principle-The Lords on the Sea Fisheries Regulation and Employers' Liability Bills-Naval Defence Debate in the Commons-The East Indian Loan Bill-The Radicals and the Magistracy-Lord Salisbury at Cardiff--The Featherstone Riot The Accrington Election-Close of the Year.

NOTWITHSTANDING the shortness of the recess, and the general dislike to autumn sittings, the House of Commons re-assembled (Nov. 2) in fair numbers, the Ministerialists being especially well represented. The thought uppermost in most men's minds was how far the hopes and promises of finally winding up the work of the session before Christmas would be fulfilled. By agreement, only two bills were to be discussed, and these

In other

were further to be regarded as non-contentious. words, the principle underlying both the Employers' Liability Bill and the Parish Councils Bill was to be accepted by all parties, and the second reading of each measure to be taken without challenge.

On the opening night, the President of the Local Government Board, Mr. H. H. Fowler, certainly did much to conciliate the reasonable scruples of the Opposition. His assurances that there was no intention to employ the bill as a weapon to deal an indirect blow at the Church were the more welcome and satisfactory as the two Houses of Convocation had on the previous day been raising a cry of alarm and asserting that the Church was in danger, because the bill aimed at interfering with Church schools and proposed to place the administration of Church charities in the hands of laymen. In moving the second reading of the bill, of which the general purport has been already fully set forth, Mr. Fowler chiefly dwelt on the three points which had attracted most attention, and on which the Government had somewhat modified their original intentions. With reference to the grouping of small parishes, the bill, as it stood, proposed that the line should be drawn at parishes with less than 300 population. There were about 13,000 rural parishes, and no fewer than 6,000 of them had a population of less than 300, and would, therefore, require to be grouped under the bill. He found, however, that great objections were entertained to the system of grouping in any form. There was no magic in the number 300, and the exact limit of population to be imposed would be left to the judgment of the House. But even if the limit set forth in the bill were left untouched, he should move that there should permanently be a parish meeting in every parish, however small its population might be, and that if a grouping took place each parish should form a ward of the group. Mr. Fowler further suggested that the county councils should have a much greater elasticity than the bill at present gave them with reference to grouping, and to have power to give to any parish, irrespective of its population, a parish council, or they ought to be enabled to group by consent parishes which exceeded the population limit. Adverting to the general alarm felt in the country as to the injurious effect which the bill would have upon the Church of England, the President of the Local Government Board assured the House there was no reason for that alarm. In the first place, the vast majority of the national schools were outside the purview of the bill, and their management was distinctly the affair of the Church. The Government, he declared, were not attempting by any side wind to give effect by this bill to the views for which every one of his colleagues voted in 1890. They desired to avoid this educational question altogether and to abstain from interfering with any elementary schools. Consequently, the Government were prepared to introduce

into the bill words which would set this question completely and finally at rest. With regard to the accusation that the bill would rob the Church of its parish rooms, Mr. Fowler remarked that the question was a difficult one, but the Government would endeavour in committee to protect the rights of the Church of England and of every other religious body, while also upholding the rights of the public. It had been contended that if the trustees of doles or parochial charities for the benefit of the poor happened to be ecclesiastical persons that circumstance alone gave to the charities an ecclesiastical character. This was a position which he could not accept, and, moreover, it was not the law of the land. The Government would, therefore, contend that these doles for general charitable purposes were parochial charities, and that the parish councils should have power to elect the trustees. As to the clause relating to the closed churchyards, it was inserted for a purely sanitary purpose. The freehold of the churchyard would remain vested in the incumbent of the parish, but the county council would be empowered to repair the fences and to keep the place in decent order. The Government had been urged to abandon the clauses for the creation of district councils, and to confine the bill to parish councils, but they were not prepared to take that course. On the question of the administration of the Poor Law, they considered that a popularly elected body in a rural district would be quite capable of administering both the Poor Law and local affairs. In conclusion, Mr. Fowler declared that as the Government desired to make the bill perfectly fair to all parties they would not, as far as details were concerned, assume a non possumus attitude.

Mr. Walter Long (West Derby, Liverpool) and Hon. Edward Stanhope (Horncastle, Lincolnshire), whilst readily recognising the conciliatory tone of the President of the Local Government Board, and accepting so much of the bill as set up parish and district councils, pointed out that the provisions dealing with the Poor Law and sanitary administration stood upon very different ground. To transfer these to bodies elected upon a wholly new franchise, and to allow rates to be voted and expended by those who contributed nothing towards them, was a revolutionary proposal which would give a totally new reading of the English Poor Law, and could not fail to raise strong objections in many quarters. They therefore urged Mr. Fowler to deal with the two points in different bills, of which one at least would pass without serious opposition from any side. The harmony of the second day's debate (Nov. 3) was somewhat broken by an indiscreet speech from the Under Secretary for India, Mr. Geo. Russell (Beds), who had returned to the House at the general election. His apparent object, unintelligible in one who had hitherto been regarded as a strong churchman, was to astonish his friends and anger his foes by adopting a tone as far as possible removed from the conciliatory method

the

of the Minister in charge of the bill. Mr. Russell's speech was, in brief, a vigorous and light-hearted attack upon parson and the squire," and an advocacy of the right of the agricultural labourers, "serfs and cyphers," as he described them, to be freed from the patronage and domination of both of them, and he appeared to be under the impression that both squire and parson exercised a paralysing effect upon the labourers which it was the great object of the bill to destroy. The small squire had, from time immemorial, he said, formed the habit of impressing his own will on everybody and everything within his parish; he regarded the evil and the good, and held that to be evil which was inconsistent with his own habit of omnipotent interference. The large squire took all his notions of the agricultural labourer from bailiffs and landagents, and knew him only at second hand. And the parson, again, though often very hard-working and eager to do good, drank in insensibly the views of the social caste with which he consorted, and therefore tried to be a benevolent despot to the labourer, and to repress the strongest passion he had, that for personal independence; and therefore the rural clergy, as a whole, had not the confidence of their flocks. Mr. Russell looked forward to the abolition of the plural vote for Poor Law guardians and of the official guardians, as the very essence of the bill, which was one to restore dignity and self-dependence to the village labourer.

Mr. A. J. Balfour, when he came to speak (Nov. 6), succeeded in eliciting from Mr. Gladstone a censure on the tone of Mr. Russell's speech, and the remark that it had always been customary to allow subordinate members of the Government to express their own personal views when not speaking on matters connected with their own departments. With regard to the bill itself, Mr. Balfour strongly urged the relegation of the reform of the Poor Law to a separate bill to be brought in when it could be adequately discussed. This appeal was reiterated by Mr. Goschen (Hanover Square), who also made one excellent point in his speech. Mr. Fowler and his friends had, when in Opposition, bitterly attacked the principle of grants being made out of imperial taxes in aid of local rates, on the ground that such grants were only reliefs to the landlord. They now shifted their ground altogether, and, in order to give an appearance of responsibility to the parish councils, declared that the rates levied by them would come out of the occupiers' pockets. In other words, all remission of rates benefited the landlord, whilst all augmentation fell upon the tenant.

Sir Wm. Harcourt (Derby), replying on behalf of the Government, altogether evaded this dilemma, and in reply to the appeal to cut off the Poor Law clauses of the bill, said that in the case of the judgment of Solomon it was the true mother who would not consent to her child being rent in two, and that the Government therefore naturally repudiated the similar

cruel suggestion. The bill was then read a second time without a division.

That the Government wished and intended to adhere strictly to their promise to take up no contentious measure during the winter session was clearly evident from Mr. Gladstone's statement (Nov. 6) with regard to the course of business. Earlier in the day he had informed Mr. Labouchere, who had suddenly espoused the cause of Lobengula and advocated the principles of the Aborigines Protection Society, that the Government had no intention to propose a day for the discussion of affairs in Matabeleland. Later on the Prime Minister, pressed on several sides, made a more general statement, in which he declared his intention, in accordance with the understanding arrived at, to limit the work of the session to making progress with the Local Government (England and Wales) Bill and the Employers' Liability Bill, and to dispose finally of such bills as had already passed the House of Commons. They reserved to themselves the power of taking up any non-contentious bill of pressing necessity, with the general consent of the House. Notwithstanding the strong appeals and remonstrances of Mr. Sexton, he declined to take up the cause of the Irish evicted tenants, but promised a Government bill dealing with the subject as one of the earliest to be introduced in the ensuing session. In like manner he postponed the Places of Worship Enfranchisement Bill, the Eight Hours Bill, and the Equalisation of Rates (London) Bill, speaking fair words to their respective supporters. Up to this everything had gone smoothly, except that Mr. Labouchere had announced his intention of finding the way of making a discussion on South African affairs inevitable, but Mr. Gibson Bowles (King's Lynn), who had taken an active part in harrying the Government, especially in naval questions, intervened (Nov. 7) and asked the First Lord of the Treasury whether her Majesty's Government had considered the great increase in strength of foreign navies in the Mediterranean, and the consequent relative decrease in strength of her Majesty's naval force in that sea as compared with those navies; whether they were prepared to assure the House that, notwithstanding this relative decrease of strength, her Majesty's forces in the Mediterranean were now completely adequate for the protection of British interests and British naval stations in that sea, as well as for the maintenance there of British international engagements; whether they proposed to lay down a new battleship to make good the decrease of strength in her Majesty's general naval forces caused by the loss of the Victoria; and whether they would afford the House an early opportunity of discussing the condition and adequacy of the navy as affected by recent events.

Mr. Gladstone's reply, although framed with his usual caution, had upon his hearers and readers the effect of being

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