(in the Quarterly Review) the other day spoke of the avowed resolve of the Opposition to set the calamitous precedent of reversing principles of legislation. If that meant that the new Government would do its best to place the schools that were paid for out of public money under public control, and to set limits to that vested interest of business which the present Government had called into being, then he said, yes.' In these words Lord Spencer held the position of Liberals to be most accurately described, and he entirely concurred in the view expressed, with an addendum, to which he was confident that Mr. Morley would assent, as to "the necessity for removing all traces of sectarian tests from the qualification of teachers." Another piece of legislation urgently needed was " a broad and comprehensive measure to deal with the whole basis and incidence of taxation and rating, which in both town and country now are antiquated, and need drastic reform." With regard to South Africa, the next Government "must earnestly work towards giving the new Colonies the fullest measure of representative and responsible government," and towards fulfilling all financial engagements entered into with the Colonists at the close of the war, ... without continuing beyond the obligations of existing contracts any system of indentured labour." At home local government needed development, and the powers of local bodies were "susceptible of judicious extension.' "Nor can we," said Lord Spencer, "in this connection ever forget Ireland. Liberals will always be ready, at the proper moment, to extend the application of the principle of self-government in that country." They desired that trade unions should have at least the powers and position which every one believed them to hold before the Taff Vale judgment and other recent decisions of the courts of law. Lastly, they were convinced that it was possible to combine efficiency with economy in the organisation of the national forces.

Lord Spencer's above-quoted reference to Ireland was distinctly less uncompromising in tone than previous utterances of his in regard to Home Rule, and when read together with an observation made on the subject by Mr. Herbert Gladstone at Leeds (Jan. 7) appeared to suggest that the Liberal leaders were practically agreed that Home Rule should not be seriously brought forward, at any rate in the first Parliament of the next Liberal Government. Having mentioned a long list of subjects which it would be their duty to deal with, including those referred to by Lord Spencer and several others, such as "housing, poor-law, old-age pensions, electoral reform, registration, redistribution, the reform of Dublin Castle, Irish questions, local taxation, in conjunction with the difficult problems of ground values and the needs of agriculture," Mr. Gladstone said that there would be "work enough to occupy the Liberal Government for the next six or seven years. Some speakers who followed him made specific reference to the House of Lords and Home Rule, whereon Mr. Gladstone was reported to have

replied that if the Liberals were to include such questions as those in their programme "they would not get very far down in the list of measures he had named before they found themselves once more in a general election."

Meanwhile Irish questions were causing considerable discomfort to the Government. The Ulster Unionist Members had adopted an attitude of something like threatened revolt, with special reference to the part which, in their belief, Sir Antony MacDonnell, Acting Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, had taken in furtherance of the propaganda of Lord Dunraven and the Irish Reform Association. And they received no slight encouragement from within the Government, through some remarkable observations made (Feb. 4) by Sir Edward Carson, the Solicitor-General, at Manchester. After having said that

they all knew the fatuous, ridiculous, unworkable and impracticable scheme lately set going in Ireland by certain gentlemen whose names had been attached to it, for the future government of Ireland, Sir E. Carson went on to observe that the grievance of the Irish Unionists was, rightly or wrongly, that the scheme had originated with a permanent official retained under a Unionist Government at Dublin Castle. "I am not making the charge that that is so," continued Sir Edward Carson, "because it would be unbecoming, as a member of the Government, to make any charge against any permanent Civil servant." The charge of the Irish Unionists was that a permanent Civil servant had himself evolved a policy which had been disavowed by the Prime Minister and disavowed by the Chief Secretary for Ireland. "I do not say," said Sir E. Carson, " that it is true, but what I do say is that if it is true it is a public scandal, and against all the best traditions of our public service."

The credit which, under ordinary circumstances, would have accrued to the Government on account of the successful issue of the expedition to Tibet was to some extent impaired by the publication of the Blue-book on that subject to which reference was made at the close of the Indian section of the ANNUAL REGISTER for 1904 as having been issued at the end of January, 1905. It showed that the Government had inflicted a very severe censure on Sir Frank Younghusband for having, as they held, departed from his instructions in arranging for the spreading of the indemnity to be paid by the Tibetans, which he had fixed at 75 lakhs, over as many years, during which the Chumbi Valley should be held as security for its complete payment. The best opinion at home did not condemn the Government for reducing the indemnity to 25 lakhs in the hope that it might be paid off, and the Chumbi Valley evacuated, within three years; as it was recognised that an indefinite occupation of that district would be at variance with pledges which Ministers had made to Russia. But it was strongly held that this change in the requirements of the Lhasa Treaty might have been made as an act of grace to the Tibetans, without the publication,

or

perhaps even the infliction, of any censure on Sir F. Younghusband, who was universally held to have exhibited remarkable wisdom and address in a diplomatic mission carried out under very difficult circumstances and against time.

Two speeches of interest were made by the Secretary for War towards the end of the recess. In the first (Jan. 31) as the guest of the Auxiliary Forces Club, Mr. Arnold-Forster endeavoured, not for the first time, to dispel the idea that he was unfriendly to the Volunteers. Briefly put, what he said came to this: that more money was wanted to secure better instruction of Volunteer officers, more range accommodation for Volunteer shooting, greater opportunities for the whole force to attend camps, and so forth, in order to raise the force to the level of efficiency of which as the Norfolk Commission of the previous year had shown it fell short; and that as it was impossible in existing circumstances to add to the Army Estimates, the only thing to be done was to secure savings by cutting off the least effective portion of the Volunteer force, and to apply the money so obtained to the perfection of the remainder. On February 2 at a Conservative meeting at Chelmsford, Mr. Arnold-Forster dealt with the subject of our general military requirements. He held in effect that while the Navy was adequately maintained, although "raids" might conceivably be made upon our shores, no great invasion of the United Kingdom could take place, or need be prepared for in a military sense. But there was a burden to be borne. In the case of India alone if we were to keep up an Army for war purposes we "should not want 133,000 men but four times that number." To maintain such a force would involve a ruinous expense. We must obtain a reserve that would provide us with the necessary reinforcements in case of war. The best plan would be to have a long-service army recruited for service at home and abroad, and to have a shortservice army which could pass men quickly into the Reserve who could be called up in case of war. Towards the close of his speech the War Secretary said that he hoped that in a few months the Army would have enough long-service men to enable it to do what must be done, and that was to begin the enlistment of men for short as well as for long service.

The recent reforms in the Navy were referred to by Mr. Arthur Lee, Civil Lord of the Admiralty, at a railway dinner at Eastleigh, Hants, on February 2, in a speech which, as reported in the Times of the 4th, contained the following passage: "There had been," Mr. Lee was represented as saying, "a complete redistribution of the British Fleet, in order to be prepared for possible enemies. The balance and centre of naval power in Europe had been shifted during the last few years. They had not so much to keep their eyes upon France and the Mediterranean as they had to look with more anxiety, though not fear, towards the North Sea. It was for that reason that the Fleets had been distributed to enable them to deal with any danger in that direc

tion, should it unfortunately occur, rather than devoting their attention to the Mediterranean. The second great branch of reform had been the placing of the whole of the effective Reserve ships in commission, and they were now ready to go to sea at a few hours' notice. They had been organised in actual squadrons, and would be taken into action if war were declared suddenly. If war should unhappily be declared, under existing conditions the British Navy would get its blow in first, before the other side had time even to read in the papers that war had

been declared."

To these statements a good deal of exception was taken in the German Press. Several Berlin papers of different parties treated Mr. Lee's explanation of the new British naval arrangements as amounting to a direct menace to Germany, and for a day or two there seemed a possibility that the Eastleigh speech would become an "international incident." It was, however, sufficiently obvious that, whether or not the phrases employed by Mr. Lee were altogether felicitous in their wording, the general effect of his remarks constituted nothing beyond a statement that the British Admiralty were making the preparations they were bound to make to meet danger from any quarter by a vigorous offensive. Mr. Lee, moreover, sent to the Press a statement that "the correct version of the debated passage in his Eastleigh speech" was as follows: "The British Fleet is now prepared strategically for every conceivable emergency, for we must assume that all foreign naval Powers are possible enemies. Owing to the growth of new naval Powers we have, unfortunately, more possible enemies than formerly, and we have to keep an anxious eye not only on the Mediterranean and Atlantic, but on the North Sea as well." To this presentation of the case no objection could possibly be raised, even if the words previously reported as having been used were legitimately open to criticism, and the German Press campaign subsided.

A subject of grave national importance was dealt with, but not very impressively, in Part I. of the "Final Report of the Royal Commission (appointed in 1901) on Coal Supplies," which came out in the last week of January. The Chairman of the Commission was Lord Allerton (formerly Mr. W. L. Jackson, Chairman of the Great Northern Railway, and formerly Financial Secretary to the Treasury), and it afforded a weighty combination of men with intimate knowledge of the coal trade and eminent geological experts. They followed the Commission which reported in 1871 in treating 4,000 feet as the limit of practicable depth in working, and one foot as the minimum workable thickness of a seam, and on that basis they estimated the available quantity of coal in the proved coalfields of the United Kingdom as slightly under 101,000,000,000 tons. There were estimated to be some 5,200,000,000 tons lying below 4,000 feet in the proved coalfields, and possibly some 40,000,000,000 tons in unproved fields, but for practical purposes these latter figures

were regarded as only probable or speculative. The annual output was now about 230,000,000 tons. For the last thirty years the average increase in the output had been 2 per cent. per annum, and that of the exports (including bunkers) 4 per cent. per annum. It was the general opinion of the District Commissioners that, owing to physical considerations, it was highly improbable that the present rate of increase of the output of coal could long continue; indeed, they thought that some districts had already attained their maximum output, but that, on the other hand, the developments in the newer coalfields would possibly increase the total output for some years. In view of this opinion and of the exhaustion of the shallower collieries the Royal Commissioners looked forward to a time, not far distant, when the rate of increase of output would be slower, to be followed by a period of stationary output, and then a gradual decline.

The Commission did not work out any calculation of the duration of our coal supplies in these conditions. But the public naturally drew the rough conclusion that they would endure from 350 to 400 years, and the general impression seemed to be that, that being so, there was no cause for uneasiness. To the adoption of this agreeable view the Commissioners must be held. to have ministered by their conclusion that there seems "no present necessity to restrict artificially the export of coal in order to conserve it for our home supply." Nevertheless, a large part of the report was occupied with the subject of possible economies in the working and in the consumption of coal. This discussion was, indeed, enjoined by the terms of the reference to the Commissioners; but they showed a genuine sense of the necessity for such economies. It appeared from their inquiry that lamentable waste was going on in factories, especially small ones, and at collieries, and they quoted an estimate that "if all (stationary) steam engines were as efficient as the best 50 per cent. of the coal now used for steam-raising might be saved." That would mean a saving of something like 35,000,000 tons of coal a year; while if gas engines (which were said to be "now established as the most economical of heat motors") were to entirely replace the average steam engine and boiler installation the annual saving in coal would be several million tons more. Again, "on a safe estimate, more than half of the present consumption of about 32,000,000 tons of coal per year " in domestic use could be saved by the adoption of the principle of central heating in houses, the open fire being only used as supplementary to the general warming by hot-water pipes or stoves. With much positiveness the Commissioners stated that they were "convinced that coal is our only reliable source of power, and that there is no real substitute." There were, however, some possible sources of power which might "slightly relieve the demand for coal." A good deal of economy had been, and much more might be, effected by improved methods