are associated with some of the worst passages in the history of Ireland."

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Council of the Birmingham Liberal Unionist Association (April 21), Mr. Chamberlain discussed the attitude of the Gladstonian party-their hopelessness in regard to Home Rule and their tactics with respect to Liberal measures contemplated by the Government. He then went on to advocate a national provision for old age. He said that, after closely examining the returns, he had come to the conclusion that of the working classes one in two, if he reached the age of sixty, was almost certain to become chargeable to the parish. It was almost impossible that one out of two of the industrial population of the kingdom had done anything to deserve the fate which, under existing circumstances, was inevitably in store for them. That was a question which deserved the attention of politicians and statesmen better than some of those theoretical matters of constitutional reform-it was better, a great deal, to keep together the home than to break up a kingdom.

The "small general election" to which Lord Salisbury referred in his speech at Covent Garden consisted of five byeelections, which were pending at the time. The constituencies. affected were the Woodstock Division of Oxfordshire, Whitehaven, the Stowmarket Division of Suffolk, the Harborough Division of Leicestershire, and South Dorset. A few days before Lord Salisbury spoke, indeed, the seat of the late Mr. T. C. Baring, for the City of London, was also vacant, but Mr. Henry Hucks-Gibbs had been returned unopposed (April 18) as a Conservative member for this constituency. At the 1886 election all the five vacant seats were filled by supporters of the Government, though, with one exception, that of Whitehaven, the five constituencies returned Liberal members in 1885. A determined attack was now made on each seat by the Gladstonian party, and as Woodstock was the first division to be polled, Mr. Gladstone issued a manifesto in the form of a letter to Mr. Benson, the Gladstonian candidate for that division, intended to promote the success of the candidates of his party. The letter-manifesto ran as follows:

"Dear Mr. Benson,-Not only in virtue of our common relation to a great University, but on other and wider grounds, I write to offer you my best wishes in the contest in which you are engaged.

"I am the more desirous to write because I would gladly convey, or at least make public, the expression of similar sentiments to those who are fighting a battle similar to yours in defence of the highest national interests; I refer, of course, to our friend Mr. Shee at Whitehaven, Mr. Logan in the Harborough Division of Leicestershire, Baron Sydney de Stern in the Stowmarket division of Suffolk, and Mr. Pearce Edgcumbe in South Dorset.

"Your own and the other constituencies will not have failed to follow that remarkable progress in public opinion in and since 1887 which has given over to the Liberal party, on the byeelections occurring from time to time, a balance of no less than sixteen seats, and has thereby afforded a prophetic indication of what is likely to happen when the whole of the constituencies are invited at the coming dissolution to pass judgment on their present representatives.

"The Liberal party has during the present year made efforts to improve the law with regard to registration and the principle known as that of one-man-one-vote, to the law of conspiracy affecting combinations among workmen, to self-government in rural parishes, and several other questions of importance, and has shown that the urgency of Irish questions has not rendered them inattentive to the interests of Great Britain.

"But the course of events has continued to bring home to our minds, and to the mind of the country, that practically and in the main Ireland stops the way. The large majority of the Irish members, notwithstanding untoward events, have, with the decided support of public opinion in Ireland, shown their determination steadily to pursue the course by which they have so largely won the confidence of this country. We are now dealing with a Land Purchase Bill for Ireland which, in defiance of the sense of the country expressed in 1886, and not, so far as we know, since altered, creates an Imperial liability to facilitate the purchase of Irish estates to an extent commencing with thirty and terminating probably with 100 millions sterling; which makes the Exchequer the direct creditor of the Irish occupiers individually, in numbers which it is likely may be counted by hundreds of thousands, which leaves us to meet default by evictions, which would prove intolerable, and which provides us, by way of security, with an ultimate charge on funds properly and strictly Irish without any consent or control of any local authority in Ireland, or of her representatives in Parliament.

"At the election of 1886 the majority against Home Rule was in a great degree obtained by promises to supply Ireland with a large system of local self-government. Instead of this she was at once saddled with coercion, which there was no outbreak of crime to warrant, and which had for its real object the virtual proscription of that civil right of peaceful combination which has been found so invaluable by the working classes of Great Britain. But five years have passed without any effort to redeem the pledge of Local Government for Ireland. It is still dangling in the distance, and those who will read the speech delivered last night by the Secretary for Ireland will find that it condemns entirely every such measure by denouncing Irish county councils as bodies that are sure to be swayed by political passions, and that cannot be trusted for the fulfilment of pecuniary obligations.

"In the other departments of administration there prevails a similar disposition to prolong or revive that sentiment of hostility between the nations which we, the Liberals, believe that the people of Great Britain have utterly forsworn. The Irish people have seen their peaceful public meetings put down by methods of violence which would not be tolerated for an instant in this country, and which have more clearly than ever shown that under a professed legislative union the civil rights of Ireland are unwarrantably denied or abridged by an action on the part of the present majorities in Parliament against which argument is vain, and which only the decisive action of the constituencies can correct. All we have to desire is that each man in each of those constituencies may justly remember that with him rests the ultimate power in these great matters, and that where the power lies there lies also the responsibility."

This manifesto did not benefit Mr. Benson, for the Conservative candidate for Woodstock was elected (April 21) by a majority of 688, the Liberal majority in 1885 having been only 189. There was no contest in 1886, when Mr. Maclean was returned as a Liberal Unionist. The Conservative poll, as compared with that of 1885, was increased by 310 votes, while the Gladstonian poll was diminished by 567 votes. The poll at Whitehaven came next (April 24), and here again the Conservative position was strengthened. Mr. Cavendish-Bentinck's majority in 1886 was 106, and Sir James Bain now obtained a majority of 233. At Stowmarket (May 6) the Gladstonian candidate carried the seat, with a majority of 214; while the seat for South Dorset was retained for the Conservatives (May 7) by the narrow majority of 40. In the Harborough division the Gladstonian candidate, who was a local railwaycontractor and a large employer of labour, made a bold fight and headed the poll (May 8) with a majority of 487.

It has already been stated that the Irish Land Purchase Bill occupied a long time in passing through Committee in the House of Commons. The measure, however, underwent very little change in the process. The first amendment of importance was one moved by Mr. Labouchere (Northampton) to Clause 1 (April 10). Its object was to prevent the State from guaranteeing the loans advanced for the purchase of land. Mr. Gladstone (Midlothian) supported the amendment on the ground that the country had in 1886-rightly or wrongly-objected to pledge the credit of the State. Mr. Balfour (Manchester, E.) replied that what the country objected to was not the pledging but the imperilling of the credit of the State, and under the present Bill the State would incur no risk. The amendment was rejected by 232 to 138. A long discussion occurred (April 14) on an amendment, moved by Mr. H. Fowler (Wolverhampton, E.), for putting the new land stock on the same footing in regard to dividend as Consols. Mr. Gladstone (Midlothian) and Sir W. Harcourt

(Derby) supported the amendment, but it was opposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (St. George's, Hanover Square) on the ground that the new stock, being of a comparatively small and limited amount, would not command the same position as Consols. The amendment was negatived by 299 to 144. Amendments moved by Mr. Keay (Elgin and Nairn) and Mr. Sexton (Belfast, W.), directed against the principle of guarantees, were rejected by considerable majorities (April 14 and 16). Mr. J. Morley (Newcastle-on-Tyne) moved an amendment (April 16) providing that no guaranteed stock should be issued by way of advance in any county, unless the advance had been previously approved by a resolution of a county council constituted under an Act of the existing or next Session of Parliament. He protested against local resources being pledged without the consent of the locality, and insisted that, unless the proposed plebiscite dealt with each separate advance, it would be an utterly inadequate form of local control. He argued also that the Government were going the wrong way to work in placing land purchase before local government, and said that by so dangerous an experiment they were preparing trouble for the future. Mr. Balfour (Manchester, E.) replied that Mr. Morley's scheme, under the existing state of things, was impracticable. His main objection to it was based on the fact that the local authorities were, in a large number of cases, animated by a desire to further a particular political cause rather than the interests of the country, and it was apparent from their action in the past that if the administration of the bill was subject to the control of popularly elected bodies it would be mainly used to "bear" the interest of the landowner. Mr. Parnell (Cork City) objected to the indefinite postponement of land purchase until the Liberal party were in a position to give it. But he was disappointed at the absence of an assurance from Mr. Balfour that his "imperfect species of local control" would be carried out. Mr. Parnell moved an amendment to Mr. Morley's amendment, providing that, in the event of any measure being passed establishing county councils in Ireland, grants for land purchase should not be made without the consent of such bodies.

The debate extended to another sitting (April 17), when Mr. Chamberlain (West Birmingham)—after Mr. Sexton had supported the amendment-commented on the attitude taken up by a section of the Nationalist party towards the bill, seeing that they seemed "willing to wound and yet afraid to strike." He confessed to having much sympathy with Mr. Morley's amendment, but he could not support it, as it lent itself to the suspicion that it was "a destructive and dilatory amendment," and he preferred to have the bill as it was, rather than no bill at all. He suggested that the Government should do something to give the local authorities a right not merely of assenting to or vetoing the application of their credit, but to stand in the position of landlord after the agreement for purchase had been made, and until the

tenant became the absolute freeholder; the local authority collecting the rent, paying over to the central authority the share due to it for principal and interest, and retaining for local purposes the very considerable balance which would be left. Mr. Balfour was well-disposed towards Mr. Chamberlain's suggestion, but did not see where the means were to come from for carrying it out, and he acknowledged that he had not been much encouraged to give effect to his own idea of a local plebiscite. Later in the evening Mr. T. Healy (Longford, N.) made some comments on the "new enthusiasm" of Mr. Parnell and "his interesting followers" for the principle of purchase. The speech was otherwise personal and offensive, one of the speaker's allusions to Mr. Parnell representing him as "the fox that lost its tail." Mr. Parnell retaliated in a speech of much bitterness, in which he declared-in reference to Mr. Healy's taunts-that he had voted for the second reading because he believed the Irish tenant farmers wanted the bill to be passed. "I did not sneak out of the House," he said, "to avoid expressing an opinion." Both Mr. Parnell's amendment and Mr. Morley's were negatived.

An amendment, moved by Mr. John Ellis (Rushcliffe), requiring half-yearly returns to be made, giving particulars respecting cases of default in the payment of any purchase annuity, was agreed to (April 20), and the first clause was afterwards passed. Mr. Keay (Elgin and Nairn) proposed the omission from Clause 2 of the provision that one-half only of the deficiency of any purchase annuity should be paid out of the guarantee fund (April 20). The debate on the amendment extended to another sitting (April 21), when Mr. Morley urged that the landlord's fifth should be liable for the whole, instead of only half, of the deficit. Mr. Balfour replied that, as the landlord would have no control over the purchasing tenant, it would be unjust to call upon him to make good the whole of the deficiency. Mr. Gladstone supported the amendment, but it was negatived by 205 to 158, and other amendments dealing with the question of the landlord's liability were also negatived, Clause 2 being ultimately agreed to (April 24). Amendments to Clause 3, directed against the contingent portion of the guaranteed fund, were negatived at the same sitting. An amendment was agreed to (April 28) providing for the application of the residue of exchequer contributions to the erection of labourers' dwellings, but a proposal to extend the amendment to artisans' dwellings was rejected, and on the next resumption of the debate Clause 3 was passed.

Another debate on local control resulted (May 1) from an amendment moved by Mr. Mahoney (Meath, N.) to Clause 4, the object being to prevent any levy on the county without the consent of the ratepayers. The amendment was negatived, as were others at the same sitting, and the clause was passed. Mr. J. Morley (Newcastle-on-Tyne) sharply criticised Clause 5,