the second reading, three more in what was virtually a second reading debate on an amendment moved on going into Committee. For nineteen nights in Committee we struggled with the interminable amendments of the Messrs. Healy and Mr. Chance. The Report took four and the third reading two more nights, and the 8th of July had then been reached. So that, in all, this Bill had occupied the time of the House for forty-four nights. It had done so, notwithstanding that the Closure had been applied thirteen times in the Committee stage, and that a still more drastic remedy had been used to bring the discussions, both in Committee and on Report, to a summary close. This was the motion that unless all amendments had been disposed of by a given date, they should then be divided on seriatim, and without discussion. In Committee the last fourteen clauses of the Bill were agreed to without challenge, in pursuance of this motion. On the Report, the Parnellites and Radicals left the House and sat in the galleries, when the motion was carried without waiting for the day when it would take effect. In consequence, the House proceeded at once with the remaining amendments. Those standing in the names of Parnellites were negatived without a division, and thus, in a few minutes, eleven pages of new clauses and amendments, were disposed of. It was a memorable night. It marked one of the lowest points of Separatist failure. It was the day before the Spalding Election, "qui primus alma risit adorea" for them. Mr. Dillon's speech against the motion had been tame and spiritless. Their theatrical departure from the House had fallen flat, and left us in possession of the field. Some Conservatives crossed over to the Opposition benches, and sat by the side of the Liberal Unionists and Mr. Bradlaugh, who, with characteristic sobriety, shewed his contempt for the puerilities of Mr. Labouchere and the Parnellites. A succession of useful Private Members' Bills came on for discussion. Progress was made with them in a rational way; old Conservative members said they were reminded of the House of Commons in its better days. Some of us thought that Obstruction had collapsed. Alas! alas! on the next day came the Spalding Election, and the spirits of the Obstructives instantly revived. On the Criminal Law Bill, then, as on the Procedure Rule, there had been a prodigious waste of time. But, again, it was the Unionists who had succeeded in their object, the Separatists who had failed.

It is necessary to recollect that the latter had fondly imagined that the Government would not be able to carry a "Coercion Bill,” in the teeth of the combined opposition of Gladstonians and Parnellites. Mr. T. P. O'Connor trumpeted this prediction through the country, and in the House of Commons, on March 25th, Sir

William Harcourt burst into this windy pæan: "I have sat in this House for some years, and I have arrived at the conclusion that the time of the House is not likely to be occupied so much with this Coercion Bill, as we might have anticipated before the last division. This Bill is aborted before it is formed. The legions of the Government are deserting. Neither the Government troops nor the Liberal Unionist troops will face the guns of the constituencies." "There was a great fear on this side of the House that this Coercion Bill would take up a large part of the Session. I do not think it will. I think, although we must go through the struggle, the Bill is practically dead. The Government may go on for a time with a sort of suspended animation, but the division of a party, which cannot count on their supporters to stand by them on such a division as this, must be approaching completion."

The Gladstonian leaders have repudiated with indignation the charge that they helped to obstruct this Bill. They have admitted that unnecessary amendments were proposed, and discussed at unnecessary length; and it is worth noting that in all the divisions that took place on these amendments, these leaders never opposed the Parnellites, and that in none of the applications of the Closure did they support the Chair and the overwhelming majority of the House; and only once, significantly immediately after the Whitsuntide recess, did one of them, Sir W. Harcourt, make any attempt to shorten the debates.

The Criminal Bill having left the House of Commons on July 8th, the second reading of the Irish Land Bill was taken on July 11th, and in all was debated for sixteen days, being read a third time on August 6th. There was no such persistent opposition to this Bill as to the Criminal Bill, and the Rule of Procedure. The orthodox tone of the Gladstonian leaders at first was one of contemptuous incredulity of the sincerity of the Government's desire to pass it. Then they endeavoured to damn it with the faintest of praise, or to shunt it by a specious amendment, such as that moved by Mr. Campbell-Bannerman on the second reading. It was significant that the Gladstonians had intended to press this, which, in effect, would have been a hostile amendment, to a division, and that it was the interposition of Mr. Parnell that alone deterred them from so doing. Later, it was their endeavour to suggest possible points of divergence between the views of the Radical and Liberal Unionists and the Government, to magnify the actual differences between them, to propose entangling amendments, in a word, to do anything and everything, short. of directly opposing its provisions, to impede the passage of the Bill. It cannot be disputed that in passing this

Bill, despite these tactics, the Government won a third notable victory.

Supply has not yet been entirely voted, but already it has taken up more days than did the total number of votes in it, in either of the last two years, and after the Irish Criminal Bill, has made the largest call upon the time of the House.

The listener to the ordinary Radical speaker would certainly believe that the work of this Session had been confined to the business of which I have now given some account, and that with the exception of these two Irish Bills, it had been barren of legislation. And, without doubt, it was the intention of the Separatists to impress sterility upon it. Mr. Labouchere, in the House of Commons on the 17th of February, said bluntly: "It was absolutely impossible that the present Government could bring in any sound legisla tion. It seemed to him that this ought to be made an educational Session, and that the very best use they could turn it to, was to occupy the time of Her Majesty's Government as long as possible by making speeches, because the Government, if left to their own devices, would only produce what the majority of the House would consider bad legislation, and every moment that members did not occupy with their speeches would be devoted to a bad use." which Mr. Labouchere hoped would happen, Mr. Gladstone apparently thinks has happened. For, in his speech in London, on July 29th, he said of this Session, "You have the loss of the absolute stoppage of the work, the great work, of beneficial legislation."

That

It is charitable to suppose that Mr. Gladstone really did not know of the "beneficial legislation " that was then being proceeded with. And this is quite possible, for, while Mr. Gladstone hurried back from Hawarden to apologize for the intimidation of the National League, he has but once (so far as I can remember), been present in the House of Commons this Session when any British legislation was under discussion. In this indifference to sober work, his chief lieutenants have faithfully followed his example. As a matter of fact, the Government has succeeded in passing, apart from smaller bills, three measures, unquestionably of "beneficial legislation," and of considerable magnitude and import. These are the Merchandise Marks Consolidation and Amendment Act, the Labourers' Allotments Act, and the Coal Mines Regalation Act. Mr. Gladstone, speaking to London Liberals in the speech of July 22nd, said, "I do not deny that I believe there has been a Bill passed about merchandise marks." (Laughter.) These London Liberals laughed at the Disraelian superiority of their idol to such prosaic matters. But in his Report to the Trades Union Conference, Mr. Broadhurst, M.P., thus refers to this Act: "Although the measure did not contain all the provisions that the workmen

engaged in the hardware and textile trades desired, yet they had reason to believe that it would do much to protect honest manufacturers in their trades, and restrain the fraudulent speculators, whose shameful frauds had produced such disastrous results in the foreign and colonial markets of our hardware productions." Briefly it provides that to sell goods bearing false trade descriptions, or forged trade marks, is a criminal offence, unless the vendor, on whom the burden of proof is placed, can show that he has done this innocently.

The Labourer's Allotments Act, while restricted in its scope to the creation of Allotments, strictly so called, and as opposed to small holdings, seeks to achieve this end by means which approve themselves to Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Jesse Collings. It introduces the "blessed" principle of compulsion, and enables the Local Sanitory authority, on the petition of six local electors on the Parliamentary register, to acquire lands compulsorily, and to let them for allotments to the "labouring population" in plots of up to an acre in extent. The Coal Mines Regulation Act embodies the recommendations of the last Royal Commission, and by elaborate rules enforces on the management of mines, the precautions and appliances that modern science suggests for the greater security of the miners. It gives permanence to the position of the check-weighman, and prohibits the employment of children under twelve years of age.

Nothing could have been more marked than the contrast between the conduct of the actual miners' representatives and that of such drawing-room demagogues as Mr. P. Stanhope and Mr. Cuninghame Graham. The former assisted the passage of the Bill, and were brief and relevant in their criticisms of it. The latter were constantly proposing impracticable amendments, and supporting them by irrelevant partisan diatribes. The climax of the contrast was reached on an amendment which proposed to compulsorily place an eight hours' limit on labour in mines. This was opposed by Mr. Burt and Mr. Bradlaugh, but supported with inflammatory rhetoric by Mr. Graham and Mr. Conybeare. Much time was saved to the Committee of the House by the repeated conferences which the Home Secretary had during the progress of the Bill with representative mine owners and miners. Understandings were arrived at, and misunderstandings dissipated. In the event, a Bill has been passed, which gives satisfaction to all connected with the mining industry. It is right that these tributes to the skill and patience of the Home Secretary should be quoted. Referring to the set of rules relating to shot-firing in mines, Mr. Burt said: "He must, in justice to the Home Secretary, frankly admit that he had given this matter his greatest consideration, and had taken

the utmost pains in dealing with this complicated and difficult subject"; and "he recognized the difficulties of the subject, and he frankly and gratefully acknowledged that the right hon. gentleman had shown every disposition to deal with it in such a way as to secure safety to the miners." While Sir Hussey Vivian said: "He had great pleasure in saying that the Home Secretary had met the requirements of the various interests, both of the owners and the men working in the mines, in a very admirable spirit. . His recollection went back to Sir G. Cornwall Lewis, and he could say that he had never seen any Home Secretary who had devoted himself more earnestly to the preservation of life in the mines than the right hon. gentleman opposite."

Mr. Bradlaugh's Truck Act is another considerable measure; and he would certainly admit how much assistance he received from the Government, from the Attorney-General in particular, and from the cordial and general co-operation of Conservative members.

Mr. Gladstone, in his after-dinner speech to the Scotch members on the 16th of July, said, "The name of Scotland has hardly been mentioned during the last six months in the political arena"; and "You, in common with other parts of the country, you have suffered, not from a contraction or limitation, but from an almost absolute and total extinction of the efficiency of Parliament, and the action of Parliament." But it is a fact that both the Mines and Truck Acts affect Scotland largely. It was Scotch evasions of the existing truck law that induced Mr. Bradlaugh to attack the evil again. It is the fact that the following Scotch Government measures have this Session passed into law. They are, the Secretary for Scotland, the Crofters' Holdings, and the Criminal Law Procedure Acts; and, as I write, Mr. Smith has stated that it is the determination of the Government to pass the Technical Schools (Scotland) Bill, which will for the first time introduce technical instruction into the system of State-subsidized elementary educa tion. The Secretary for Scotland Act transfers to that Minister many of the powers and duties hitherto vested in the Home Secretary it received in the House of Lords the emphatic approval of Lord Rosebery. It is hardly permissible for an Englishman to give a judgment on Scotch legal matters; but it was plain from the speeches of even Radical Scotchmen that this Criminal Procedure Act was a comprehensive and sensible measure of legal reform, acceptable to all classes of Scotch people. It is also the fact that Scotch private members have been successful in passing a more than respectable number of bills.

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Of the bills of English private members that have become law, I cannot pretend to give a complete catalogue; but I will mention