Mr. Seddon, of New Zealand, and Sir E. N. C. Braddon, of Tasmania, dissented from the first resolution because they were of opinion that an effort should be made to render more formal the political ties between the United Kingdom and the colonies. Others of the Premiers were inclined to the view that with the rapid growth of population in the colonies the present relations can not continue indefinitely, and some means will have to be devised for giving the colonies a voice in the control and direction of those questions of imperial interest in which they are concerned equally with the mother country. They recognized at the same time that such a share in the direction of the imperial policy would involve a proportionate contribution to the imperial expenditure, for which, at present, the colonies are not prepared.

The commercial treaties with Germany and Belgium were formally denounced on July 20. Both were terminable on a year's notice. In the treaty with Belgium, signed in London on July 23, 1862, the article referring to colonial trade is worded as follows:

"Articles the produce or manufacture of Belgium shall not be subject in the British colonies to other or higher duties than those which are or may be imposed upon similar articles of British origin."

In the German commercial treaty of May 30, 1865,

an article declares that:

"Any favor, privilege, or reduction in the tariff of duties of importation or exportation which either of the contracting parties may concede to any third power shall be extended immediately and unconditionally to the other."

Another article provides that this stipulation shall also be applied to the colonies and foreign possessions of Great Britain, in which “the produce of the states of the Zollverein shall not be subject to any higher or other import duties than the produce of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland or other country of the like kind; nor shall the exportation of those colonies or possessions to the Zollverein be subject to any higher or other duties than the exportation to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."

The Marquis of Salisbury in his dispatches pointed out that such stipulations were unusual in commercial treaties, and he thought they must have been inserted through an oversight or a want of consideration of the consequences that would flow from them; that the self-governing colonies have for many years enjoyed complete tariff autonomy, and that in recent commercial treaties concluded by Great Britain it has been customary to insert an article empowering the self-governing colonies to adhere or not at will; and, beyond this, these stipulations constitute a barrier against the internal fiscal arrangements of the British Empire that is inconsistent with the close ties of commercial intercourse which subsist and should be consolidated between the mother country and the colonies. The explanatory dispatches contained proposals for the negotiation of new treaties of commerce and navigation, which were accepted by both governments. The German imports from Great Britain in 1895 amounted to £28,900,000, or 136 per cent. of the total imports, while the exports to Great Britain amounted to £33,900,000, or 19.8 per cent. of the total exports. Belgium exports annually to Great Britain more than she receives by over £3,000,000.

The Session of Parliament.-Parliament met on Jan. 19. In the programme of legislation the first place was given to the question of primary education. It was known that voluntary schools were to be relieved without having recourse to the

contested principle of rate aid. The second place was given to a measure for the compensation of workmen for accidents. The third place in the programme was assigned to national defenses, precedence being given to proposals connected with the army. A water bill was offered to London, and Ireland was to have an agricultural department. The other measures mentioned in the Queen's speech were promised on the condition that time permitted their passage through all the stages. These included a criminal-evidence bill, a landregistration bill, a bill-of-sales bill, a companies bill, an agricultural-holdings bill, a prison-madegoods bill, an inebriates'-reformatory bill, and private bills procedure bills for Scotland and Ireland. In the debate on the address the Irish members raised the question of the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland. The commission appointed to inquire into this question reported that the taxable capacity of Ireland was one twentieth that of the United Kingdom, whereas the annual tax revenue collected from Ireland was one eleventh of the total revenue. The Irish Unjonists joined with the Nationalists in demanding that this arrangement, whereby Ireland was overtaxed at the rate of £2,500,000 a year, should be corrected. The conditions of the act of union gave to Ireland a distinct right to be treated as a separate entity for purposes of taxation, for it was therein provided that Ireland was to pay toward the expenditure of the United Kingdom two parts out of seventeen, subject to revision at the end of twenty years. Mr. Balfour averted a discussion on this subject by promising to give an opportunity for debate later, and announcing the intention of the Government to institute a new inquiry. The royal commission that conducted the previous inquiry was appointed by the Gladstonian Government and was presided over by Mr. Childers and, after his death, by the O'Conor Don. The English Conservatives were inclined to dispute the right of Ireland to be treated as a separate entity under the act of union since the provision to that effect had been ignored for eighty years. Statistics were marshaled to show that, after deducting the sums returned in local expenditures, Ireland contributed only one thirtieth to what could be properly called imperial expenditure. The reference to a new royal commission was made to include an investigation into the amount of the common expenditure of the United Kingdom and into the amounts of the net contributions of England, Scotland, and Ireland toward that expenditure after deducting the outlay on common objects. The commission was further instructed to report "whether, when regard is had to the nature of the taxes now in force, to the existing exemptions, and to the amount of expenditure by the state on local services, then provision in the act of union between Great Britain and Ireland, with regard to the particular exemptions and abatements, calls for any modification in the financial system of the United Kingdom."

Patrick O'Brien moved an amendment, pleading the unanimous desire of the Irish people for the release of the remaining dynamiters undergoing punishment in English prisons "for offenses arising out of insurrectionary movements connected with Ireland." The refusal of the Home Secretary to grant an amnesty was supported by a majority of 204 against 132 votes. The question was brought up again later, when Parliament adjourned for the Queen's jubilee, and the Irish members then urged the example of the Transvaal President who commemorated that event by setting free the last of the Johannesburg conspirators. The Parnellites were joined by some of the Radicals in these assaults, and the Dillonites in their demand for the

reopening of the land question had the same support as well as that of the rival Irish faction. Sir Henry Howorth criticised the Home Secretary's action in releasing the dynamite conspirators who were discharged from prison in 1896, but the House of Commons accepted the explanation that it was done on the ground of medical reports.

The subject of Irish university education was raised by an amendment to the address, and the admission that there was a grievance and that something should be done to remove it was extracted from Mr. Lecky, which drew from Mr. Balfour a reiteration of former promises, which could not be carried out immediately because it was impossible to lay a plan before Parliament until the limits of the Roman Catholic claims were known. Other amendments that were withdrawn or rejected protested against the delay in legislating for Scotch crofters, against adulteration of food products, against undermanning merchant vessels, on the registration laws, and on the deportation of paupers to Ireland. Sir William Wedderburn's proposal for an independent inquiry into the condition of the Irish people gave to Lord George Hamilton an opportunity to explain the famine policy of the Indian Government. Coningsby Disraeli's proposal of a conciliatory mission to the Sultan met with no support from any section of the house. Immediately after the address was voted, on Jan. 26, the house took up the Government proposals for the relief of voluntary schools.

Parliament had been convened three weeks earlier than usual in order to get the voluntary-schools bill and the military-works bill through before the close of the financial year, so that they could receive the necessary allocations from the public funds, and be carried into effect immediately, The financial resolutions authorizing the payment of grants in aid of voluntary schools in England and Wales were moved in committee by Mr. Balfour on Feb. 1. He sought to obviate the objections raised by Liberal Unionists as well as by the Opposition to the exclusion of necessitous board schools by promising that they would be dealt with at an early date by Parliament. The present measure proposed to relieve voluntary schools from rates, to do away with the 178. 6d. limit, and to increase the grant in aid of 48. per child in average attendance allowed by the education act of 1896 to 5s., which would make the expenditure on voluntary schools £616,500 instead of £489,000. A distinction was drawn between town and country schools. The Government proposed to encourage the formation of associations of voluntary schools which would advise the Education Department as to how the money could best be expended by enabling the Education Department to refuse any assistance out of the aid grant to schools refusing to join an association, provided no school should be obliged to join an association belonging to a different denomination. When Mr. Balfour expressed a doubt as to the passage of the bill before the close of the financial year, the Liberals proposed an amendment extending the relief to all necessitous primary schools, which was rejected by 355 votes to 150, the Irish Roman Catholics generally voting with the Government on this and on the questions raised later regarding local control and the representation of parents among the managers of aided schools as a condition of the additional grant. Their support more than counterbalanced the defection of Mr. Courtney and other Liberal Unionist friends of the board schools and of the Conservative advocates of rate aid, such as Lord Cranborne and Lord Hugh Cecil. The closure was frequently applied to shut off debate on these points and on the conditions of distribution, on the constitution and functions of the

proposed associations, and on proposals to introduce restrictions on the amount of the grant. The bill was reported without any amendments, and, in spite of the warnings of Mr. Asquith and Mr. Morley, was carried on the third reading, on March 25, by the extraordinary majority of 331 against 131. The House of Lords passed it without amendment, the vote on the second reading being 109 to 15, and it received the royal assent on April 8.

Directly after the voluntary-schools bill was made law the Government introduced the financial resolutions for the promised necessitous board schools bill. A clause in the school act of 1870 sanctions an additional grant to make up the deficiency when the school rate of 3d. in the pound fails to produce 7s. 6d. per pupil. The new bill abolishes this fixed limit and provides for an additional grant, rising on a sliding scale in proportion to the rate required. The effect would be to relieve the majority of the highly rated school districts, and London would probably be the only town in which, owing to the great reserve of ratable value, no relief would be given. The bill was not opposed very earnestly, the only objections being the inequality in the degree and amount of relief to board schools as compared with voluntary schools, and the practical exclusion of London. It passed on the third reading without a division, and became law on June 3. An educational bill for Scotland, passed at the end of the session, confers upon Scotch schools substantially the same advantages secured by the Government measures to English schools of both categories, except that in Scotland the 178. 6d. limit is preserved. The voluntary associations which were to distribute almost the whole of the grant under the English bill began to organize as soon as the bill became law. The Department of Education allowed them all the scope that it was intended that they should have, announcing that it would not recognize an association unless it extends over a sufficiently wide area and includes a large number of schools. The dignitaries of the Church of England, regardless of the protests of the nonconformists and the denunciations of the Liberals, assumed that the act placed the control of education in their hands. They organized the associations not by county lines, but by the ecclesiastical divisions of dioceses and rural deaneries, and not only did not invite the schools of the dissenters to join, but would not receive them.

The workmen's compensation bill was introduced on May 3 by the Home Secretary, but Mr. Chamberlain, who was its author and the originator and champion of the policy of social legislation of which it is an installment, took the leading part in the debates. Mr. Asquith's employers' liability bill had been rejected by the House of Lords three years before because it withheld, in compliance with the almost universal demand of workingmen, the right of contracting out of its provisions. The Liberals exulted therefore when they found that their opponents had reduced this right in their own measure to a hollow sham. The principle of the compensation bill was to throw the ultimate cost of accidental injuries received by workmen in the course of their employment upon industry as a general trade charge to be distributed between employers, workmen, and consumers. The Government professed to believe that the burden would in the end be so distributed, and by an extension of the insurance would become an addition to the cost of production, though it is imposed by the bill in the first place on the employer without inquiry as to whether the fault was his or the injured workman's, or was attributable to neither one. The measure was admitted to be tentative and experimental. It is confined for the present to certain trades, the most

important exceptions being merchant shipping, agriculture, and domestic service. Workshops and building works where no steam power is employed are likewise excluded. For every accident happening to a workman in the course of his employment, in the trades to which the bill applies, the employer is liable to pay compensation, the amount of which is to be fixed by arbitration, within the limits of the scale fixed in the bill. This scale gives, in the case of disablement, half the weekly wages for the period during which the injured workman is unable to work; in case of fatal injury to a man leaving dependents, the employer is obliged to pay for their support either £150 or three years' wages, whichever sum is the larger. The doctrine of common employment is abolished. Contracting out is only permitted when the registrar of friendly societies certifies that the advantages to the men are not less than those offered by the bill. Mr. Asquith criticised the exclusion of any employments from the benefits of the bill and the absence of provisions for the prevention of accidents. Mr. Chamberlain argued that the bill would exercise an effectual, though indirect preventive influence. As to its adoption in agriculture and domestic service, it would probably create hardships in the absence of a more widespread system of insurance, but the Government was willing to consider the possibility of extending gradually in future years the securities now made applicable to the trades in which accidental injuries are most serious and most frequent. The bill passed unopposed into the committee stage, where Mr. Chamberlain showed a willingness to accept amendments proposed on behalf of the employers or the working class, provided the main principles of the bill were left unimpaired. One of these makes the employer liable for an accident caused to a workman in the course of his employment by the act of a stranger, the right to recover from the third party being secured to the master by an express provision. Another gives to an injured workman certain preferential rights against the estate of a bankrupt employer. In the interest of employers an amendment was adopted excluding from the benefits of the act any workman injured through his own serious and willful misconduct. Another requires reasonable notice of a claim, and fixes the limit beyond which none shall be entertained. A third allows the commutation of a weekly allowance into a lump sum, to be settled by arbitration, and not to exceed the aggregate payments of six years. The jubilee festivities interrupted the discussion, and before the bill was reported the Government modified the position it had taken on some points. In one or two cases, such as the inclusion of the shipbuilding industry, Mr. Balfour, who shared Mr. Chamberlain's hope of seeing the scheme embrace all the industries of the country, promised that the subject would be reconsidered in the upper house. The most serious opposition to the bill was offered by the colliery proprietors, who protested that, with the present scant margin of profit and high scale of wages, and with the competition of foreign coal mines in the international trade, it would ruin them to insure against the wholesale accidents that are liable to occur in mines, and that, if the charge were eventually shifted to the consumers, the rise in the price of coal would seriously handicap British manufacturers in the competition that was already sufficiently acute between them and their Continental and American rivals. The Government resisted all such appeals, for after having promised the boons contained in the act and affirmed the principles that it involved it could not retrace its steps without alienating a great part of its working-class VOL. XXXVII.-24 A

support. The House of Lords did, however, introduce some restrictive amendments of considerable importance. The amendment withholding compensation from workmen injured through their willful misconduct was altered so as to revive the principle of contributory negligence, which Mr. Chamberlain had been anxious to banish from the scope of the act. The provision that the employer should be required to make good the deficiency when the funds under a scheme of insurance proved insufficient to pay the statutory compensation was stricken out. A new clause was substituted in regard to subcontracts, giving practically a right of indemnity to the undertaker against the subcontractor. The House of Lords also postponed the commencement of the act till July 1, 1898. Proposals made by Lord Rathmore to free the employer from responsibility for accidents caused by strangers and by Lord Londonderry to restrict his liability to accidents disabling the workman for at least four weeks, instead of for two weeks, were defeated. Lord Salisbury vindicated the bill from the imputation of Socialism. Lord Kimberley approved of the bill in the main, and argued that it must lead to a system of state insurance. Mr. Chamberlain argued that the Lords' amendments did not diminish the value of the bill to workingmen, and nearly all of them were accepted by the House of Commons. The compensation secured to the injured workman by this act will entail no expense either to him or to the employer. It will be settled by agreement between them, or by arbitration, or by the county court judge in the last resort, the cost of adjudication being borne by the state. The act does not deprive the workman of the right that he possesses under the common law to recover damages from the employer for an injury caused by the willful and wrongful act of the latter, or any person for whose act or default he is responsible, but the employer shall not be liable to ray compensation both independently of and also under the act. Mr. Chamberlain estimated that compensation was recoverable under the common law for about 12 per cent. of the accidents that occur in the employments covered by the act, namely, on railways and in factories, mines, quarries, and engineering works.

The surplus in the budget, beyond what was required for the supplementary ariny and navy votes and the postal reforms, was devoted to assisting Scotch education and Irish technical instruction and to the entertainment of the colonial guests during the jubilee festivities. No abatement of taxation was offered, and all parties accepted the proposals of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach without serious protest, except that the Irish Nationalists endeavored to obtain a reduction in the tea and tobacco duties on the ground that indirect taxes contribute too large a portion of the revenue, while some of the Conservative upholders of property rights, like James Lowther, protested against the retention of Sir William Harcourt's death duties.

The question of the overtaxation of Ireland was brought up again on March 29, when Mr. Blake moved a resolution declaring that Ireland was unduly burdened and required an instant remedy. Mr. Whittaker, an English Radical, moved and an Irish Conservative, Col. Waring, seconded an amendment declaring that the United Kingdom must continue to be regarded as a whole for fiscal purposes. Mr. Balfour, pronouncing the inquiry conducted by the commission in connection with the home-rule bill to have been incomplete and inadequate, would promise no legislation until a supplementary investigation placed the Government in possession of the facts regarding the expenditure to be set off against the excess of taxation. The

Chancellor of the Exchequer denounced the theory of taxing communities on some doctrine of their taxable capacity instead of keeping to the present plan of taxing individuals. Though the Opposition generally voted with the Irish Nationalists, Mr. Blake's motion was lost by a majority of 317 to 157. On May 6 Mr. Knox moved that the relief given to the British farmers by the agricultural rating act of 1896 operated as a bounty in their favor against Ireland, and that perfect equality should be granted. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and Mr. Goschen, in contending against this proposal, abandoned the ground of perfect unity and equality throughout the United Kingdom, and put forward a plea that the Nationalists hailed as involving Separatist principles. They denied that Ireland was suffering from agricultural depression, although the Land Commission was at the time reducing rents on that very ground, and they insisted on the plan of equivalent grants. The claim of Ireland for equal relief, although it was supported by the entire body of Irish members, Unionist as well as Nationalist, was defeated by a majority of 219 to 127. A few days later Mr. Balfour unexpectedly disclosed an entirely new Irish policy. The Government had till then limited the proposals of Irish legislation for the year to the agricultural-department bill, a poor-law bill, and a measure to reduce the number of Irish judges. The Irish members had exhibited no pronounced satisfaction over the promised agricultural department, which was not sufficiently popular in its basis to suit some, while others complained of the meagerness of the funds to be placed at its disposal. It was to be a department with a parliamentary head to look after Irish agriculture and other industries, and at the same time an independent board with a fixed separate income to institute experiments in the development of Irish resources. The proposal to reduce the number of Irish judges was opposed by Irish members of both parties, and the poor-law bill awakened no interest. The proposal to spend £500,000 in developing the tourist traffic in Ireland was received with satisfaction commensurate with the boon. The accession of the Irish Nationalists to the ministerial majority on the question of the voluntary schools and the defection of the Irish Unionists on questions of Irish finance had created a new situation. The Irish landlords were angrily protesting against the sweeping reductions of rent made by the Land Commission. Many of them were as fiercely denunciatory as the Nationalists in their invectives against England for overtaxing Ireland. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer refused to give Irish agriculture the relief from rates that had been accorded to England a crisis arose that, if not checked, would tend to unite all Ireland under the Nationalist banner. Mr. Balfour had long been pledged to deal with the problem of local government for Ireland. He now showed his mastery of political strategy by rising at once to the exigencies of the situation. The Irish department and poor-law bills were withdrawn, and he announced a more comprehensive policy for the following year by which the Government intended to deal with the rating grievance, and to give relief to the landlords by assuming the half of the poor rate which they now pay, and to the tenants by paying half of the county cess, of which the whole is now paid by the latter. This plan would remove the main obstacles that stand in the way of giving Ireland local governing bodies like those lately established in England and Scotland, and would obviate all necessity for special restrictive and penal conditions, especially as the remaining taxation on owners could not be increased beyond the average of recent charges. The promises contained in Mr. Balfour's statement were hailed with satisfaction

by all parties in the house, and by Irishmen of all shades of opinion, by Conservatives, Liberal Unionists, and Gladstonian home rulers, by Ulster landlords and Ulster tenants, Dillonites, Healyites, and Redmondites. The Irish landlords were willing to abandon their control, which was already doomed, of the local authorities in view of the clear gift of £250,000 a year which they pay in poor rates, which also relieved them of all apprehension regarding the misapplication by the new local authorities of any funds contributed by them; the Nationalists saw in the scheme the promise of a large measure of popular local government capable of expansion in the direction of their aims; and the tenants, beyond gaining control of their local affairs, received a bonus of £400,000 a year, the amount of half the county cess. The Irish landlords obtained the appointment of a commission, presided over by Sir Edward Fry, to inquire into the administration of the land-commission courts, and they brought before the House of Lords their complaints of rent reductions and of the fixing of tithe rent charges out of proportion to the existing value of the land, but they met with no satisfactory response from the Governiment. When the Nationalists urged the question of a Catholic university for Ireland, Mr. Balfour declared that it was impossible to deal with it during this session, and that the next would be taken up with the Irish local-government measure. The bill for reducing the number of Irish judges was not introduced till late in July, when it was passed, the Irish members on both sides who had threatened to oppose it having been conciliated by the promised concessions, and by a pledge that the economies to be realized by the abolition of three judgeships and the consolidation of courts, amounting to £15,000 a year, would be applied to Irish purposes.

In the middle of July the leader of the House made his calculations as to what part of the uncompleted legislation could be saved and what bills would have to be sacrificed. The fisheries bill and the criminal-evidence bill were abandoned. This latter, a measure for enabling an accused person to be a witness, while it was supported by Sir Edward Clarke and many legal experts, encountered the opposition of other professional authorities. A bill to model the procedure in Scotch private bills on that adopted for provisional orders, which would be cheaper and would afford facilities for local inquiries, was postponed till another year in order to give time for criticism and discussion. The land transfer bill was rescued after it had undergone considerable amendment. There have been many bills introduced that had for their object the registration of titles and the simplification of sales of land, but the landowning class have a prejudice against the easy transfer of land, and the solicitors have always fought against measures reducing the difficulties and costs of conveyancing. The act of 1897 is a tentative one intended to give the system of compulsory registration an experimental trial, at first in a single county, to see if it can be adapted to the social and business conditions of England. The bill relating to limited companies was sacrificed. The promised London water bill was not introduced because the Government had decided that further inquiry ought to precede comprehensive legislation on this subject. At the instance of the London County Council eight bills had been brought in for the purchase of water companies' works by a private member. Three fourths of the county boroughs of England already had the water supply in their own hands. The County Council desired to buy out all the companies supplying the metropolis with water so as to secure uniformity in charges, in quality, and in the supply of water as soon as possible. The Government declined to support these

bills, holding the proposed plan to be impracticable. A royal commission would be appointed to inquire into the subject, and in the meanwhile the Government introduced and carried a bill giving increased facilities to an aggrieved consumer to obtain redress from a water company that fails to provide an adequate supply. A Scotch congesteddistricts bill and a public-health bill for Scotland were finally enacted.

The Duke of Devonshire had in his hands a bill for the conversion of the University of London into a teaching university. It was a compromise measure, dealing with a matter that has been long the subject of public discussion and of negotiations between the various interests involved and the advocates of educational reform in the metropolis. The influence of the defenders of the existing system of examinations was still strong enough to cause the postponement of the measure. The Duke of Devonshire expected also to bring in a bill to promote the organization of secondary education, a subject of still wider discussion, as it is of more general interest; but this bill was not produced. The foreign prison-made-goods bill, prohibiting the importation of goods made in foreign prisons that compete with any products of British industry, was placed on the statute book to please the trade unionists, who had demanded such a measure.

The house affirmed the principle of female suffrage by its division on the second reading of the bill for the extension of the parliamentary franchise to women possessing the same qualifications as men, which obtained a majority of 71. The bill got no further, and later in the session a petition signed by many ladies was presented, setting forth that the petitioners viewed with indignation and alarm the existing procedure that reduced legislation to a game of chance and permitted the repeated and insulting postponement of the consideration and satisfaction of the just claims of women to citizenship, and praying that the house would reform its procedure so as to secure in future the fair consideration of all public questions with some regard to their relative importance. The cause of this indignant outburst, so different from the customary humble petitions as to strike aghast the sticklers for the dignity of Parliament, was that the opponents of woman suffrage in the House of Commons, alarmed at the ease with which the bill reached the second reading, no one on the front benches venturing to oppose it, prevented it from proceeding further by deliberately prolonging discussion on the verminous-persons bill, which provides for washing unclean tramps at the public expense. Parliament was prorogued on Aug. 5.

Labor Questions.-In the early part of the year a local trade dispute was going on in Wales that was of national importance in its political bearings. There was a protracted strike in the slate quarries of Lord Penrhyn, who refused to recognize the trade union. The President of the Board of Trade finally attempted to mediate between the parties to the dispute, acting on the authority conferred by the conciliation act. For this he was fiercely as sailed by Tories in Parliament, who were applauded by the majority of their party, while the Oppo

sition sat silent.

The trade unionists found much fault with the Government for its failure to carry out in the naval and military workshops the fair-wages resolution of Feb. 13, 1891, and for retaining on the list of contractors for Government work persons who employed blackleg labor. The use in public offices of American typewriting paper, Bavarian pencils, and similar foreign goods was also objectionable to the unionists, who asked that only goods of British manufacture or production should

be supplied. The fair-wages resolution prescribed that Government and Government contractors should pay the wages current in the trade. The officials were inclined to dispute the contention that the trade-union scale determined the current rates in all localities. A select committee was appointed in 1896 by the House of Commons to report on the manner in which the fair-wages resolution was observed in Government contract work. The committee made its report in July, 1897. It recommended that a common form of contract be used by all the Government departments. As regards the administration of the resolution. it reached the conclusion that the departments had, as a whole, loyally endeavored to carry out its provisions, though in the case of some of them there was a lack of confidence in their ability or desire to enforce the spirit and letter of the resolution, and it was alleged that there was no uniformity of interpretation or of administration. The departments generally interpreted it as meaning the rate of wages generally accepted as current in the district where the work is carried on, and in this the committee upheld them, believing that in no trade is there a general current rate of wages prevailing throughout the country. In regard to other points complained of, such as the undue employment of women, boys, apprentices, and improvers, walking time, etc., the committee stated that the decision must depend on whether the contractor is enforcing conditions not recognized in the trade or departing from the usual conditions of employment. Subcontracting is held to be legitimate where the form of contract is customary in the trade, or where the contractor in the ordinary course of his business sublets that particular part of the work. The committee thought that it would be advantageous if a list of the Government contractors, together with the nature of their contracts, were laid before Parliament from time to time and published, so that the public would know the names of firms doing Government work.

One of the most determined trials of strength between workmen and capitalists ever known in England began early in July. The masters in the engineering trade had formed an Employers' Federation for the purpose of emancipating themselves from the conditions imposed by the Amalgamated Engineers, one of the strongest and richest of the trades unions, having a membership of 90,000 and a fund of £350,000 available for fighting purposes. A contest was inevitable, and the men chose a time when the employing firms had many orders to fill and a prospect of brisk trade ahead. The engineers of London made a demand for an eight-hours day, raising a popular issue which the Employers' Federation could not meet with good grace, especially in that particular locality, for in London a number of them had already granted the eight-hours day without detriment to their business. The employers were aware that the demand for London was the prelude to a general movement, and they took prompt and strong measures. They posted not only in London, but on the northeast coast, and at Glasgow and Greenock, and on the whole west coast, notices for the discharge of 25 per cent. of the men, hoping thus to cut off the supply for the maintenance of the strikers in London. The unions soon retaliated by calling out the remaining 75 per cent. The strike embraced the whole country, stopping the building of ships and most of the dependent trades. The boilermakers, however, refused to take part in the struggle. Both men and employers were confident of victory. The strike and lockout lasted till the close of the year, with disastrous effects on the commercial and industrial business of the country. At first 80,000 men were thrown out