The discursive debate and the divisions which ensued on the night of the introduction of the Budget gave abundant promise of the difficulties through which the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have to win his way before finally securing the assent of the House of Commons to his fiscal proposals. Sir W. Harcourt complimented him on the honesty, as well as the ability and lucidity of his statement, and having entered an initial protest against the proposed coal tax, went on to dilate on the appalling cost of the war and the great expenditure which would, as was now recognised, be required for various purposes in South Africa when the war was over. Objections were raised by several other members, not all on the Opposition side, to the export duty on coal, and in regard to the sugar duty it was urged by members, notably Mr. Broadhurst (Leicester) and Mr. T. C. Taylor (Radcliffe, Lancs), that it would bear oppressively on the working classes. Financial authorities like Sir E. Vincent (Exeter) and Mr. Beckett (Whitby, Yorks, N.R.), on the Ministerial benches, enforced the grave lessons of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's statement in regard to the necessity for more effective control over public expenditure. In the end the formal resolution sanctioning the sugar duty was carried, but only by 183 to 123, and on that authorising the export tax on coal the Ministerial majority fell to 44, the numbers being 171 to 127, at which result, of course, there were loud Liberal and Nationalist cheers.

Outside the House, however, the Budget, with the exception of one feature, awakened remarkably little opposition. The general feeling seemed to be that on the whole it was right that everybody should pay something extra towards the expenses of the war, and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had done his best, and a pretty good best, to be fair all round. The only serious opposition which he had to face in the country was directed against the shilling a ton duty on exported coal. For more than a fortnight the movement against the imposition of this tax was carried on with an energy and vehemence which gave it a somewhat formidable appearance. The agitation naturally was keenest in the districts where coal was mainly or very largely raised for export. The Chancellor of the Exchequer at once recognised that there was a case for consideration in regard to the treatment of existing contracts for export. This aspect of the subject was pressed upon him (April 19) by a deputation of Unionist members for constituencies in the northeast of England, and on the following day it was made known

at Newcastle that the Chancellor was prepared to consider a temporary concession in favour of such contracts. It was requested on behalf of the Exchequer that all contracts of the kind in question should be delivered to the collector of Customs on or before April 26 for examination and subsequent return, bond being meanwhile given, and payment made, as already directed, pending final adjustment.

This prompt and necessary concession no doubt diminished, and indeed removed, the worst apprehensions excited in some quarters by the proposed export duty on coal. But it did not by any means avail to arrest the agitation which had been set on foot. Meetings of persons interested in the trade in the exporting districts were reported from day to day, at which protests of the most emphatic kind were registered. Northumberland and Durham coal-owners and commercial men denounced the proposed tax as inevitably disastrous in its operation. A meeting of miners' delegates in the former county affirmed that it would lead in a short time to the "extinction" of their industry. Language nearly, if not quite, as strong was used by coal-owners and miners in South Wales, although in that district there was a section of opinion among persons connected with the trade which declined to join in the denunciation of the proposed tax. The Chancellor of the Exchequer received large and influential deputations from coal - owners, ship - owners, merchants, and others in the north-east of England, in Scotland, and in South Wales, from the Mining Association (coal-owners) and from the Miners' Associations of Great Britain. The deputations from the exporting districts set forth, among other things, that the proposed tax would operate most unjustly, seeing that it would be levied practically from them alone and not upon the coal districts of the country generally-which was almost the only point in the opposition case which made any impression on the public mind. They represented that in several of the most important foreign markets for coal there was a very small margin of difference in the price between the British and competing foreign coal, and that the tax, by adding a shilling per ton, would therefore cut out a very large proportion of our coal. The tax thus would not be realised, a large amount of coal would be thrown unsaleable on the market, collieries would be shut up, and great numbers of miners thrown out of employment. The deputation denied that the foreigner could be made to pay the tax, and denied that, having regard to the average for a moderate number of years, the coal trade had enjoyed any such prosperity as could have prepared them to bear such a burden as that which it was proposed to put upon them

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was quite courteously but frankly sceptical in his reception of the representations thus made to him, and unquestionably his disposition and that of the public to listen to the cry of distress raised by the coal

owners and others in the exporting districts was rather diminished than increased by the deputation from the Mining Association of Great Britain, who endeavoured to create the conviction that the whole coal trade of the country would suffer very seriously, if not ruinously, through the disturbance caused by the shilling export duty. It might be, and indeed probably was, the fact that over a considerable number of years the profits of the coal trade, with the exception of those enjoyed by a limited number of comparatively new and particularly well situated mines, had been small. But the public were only too well aware that for many months past there had been an almost unprecedented boom in coal, and that prices had been obtained which must have meant enormous profits to large numbers, if not to the great majority, of the persons interested in the trade. The only deputation whose reception by the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed for a moment to suggest that he might possibly be induced to reconsider his position on the main question was that which represented all the Miners' Associations of Great Britain. To them Sir Michael Hicks-Beach said that he felt impressed by what they had said, "not as representing those to whom this is a question of more or less wealth, but as representing men to whom their wages are a matter of daily bread." At the same time, he added that, in view of the fact that in spite of all obstacles the export of British coal had actually doubled within the last thirteen years, he could not think that the shilling duty would have the effect upon it which the deputation supposed. Even so the representatives of the miners appeared to carry away a certain amount of encouragement from their interview with the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

If, however, which is very doubtful, they had really produced any impression on his mind which might conceivably have ripened into a recognition of the wisdom of withdrawing one of the leading features of his Budget, it was the representatives of the miners whose attitude almost immediately afterwards made any such withdrawal absolutely impossible. The miners' deputation waited on the Chancellor of the Exchequer on April 29. On May 1 the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, at a conference in London, passed a resolution directing that those districts which had not already considered the question of laying the pits idle in resistance to the proposed export duty on coal should do so forthwith, and that another conference should be held on May 8 to decide finally what should be done. The resolution also recommended all miners to leave off work unless the tax were withdrawn. This extraordinarily injudicious resort to a policy of menace at once removed every doubt as to the necessity for a firm adherence by the Government to the fiscal policy which they had announced, or as to the decisive support of that policy by the House of Commons and by public opinion. In view of the threat of coercion thus addressed to Parliament

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and the nation on behalf of the miners, and perhaps not repudiated quite promptly enough by the coal-owners, all hopes which the Opposition may have cherished of putting the Government in a tight place on the coal duty withered in a moment. view of the same threat the earnest protest in a letter to the Times against the proposed tax from so justly respected a northern Unionist as Lord Grey became a mere beating of the air. It was interesting, moreover, on the merits of the question, apart from the tactics of the opponents of the tax, to know that on the morrow of the Budget speech the doyen of living English economists, Professor Alfred Marshall, of Cambridge, wrote to the Times a letter in which, while recognising that there were difficulties connected with Sir M. Hicks-Beach's proposed export duty on coal, he expressed the opinion that it was not deserving of condemnation on general economic principles, and in particular that while the main burden of such a duty is borne by the country levying it, other countries are forced to contribute a small share.

Before reaching the debate on the coal tax the House of Commons had been occupied with various topics, connected with the Budget and otherwise. On April 19, after a good deal of grumbling which was not confined to members of the Opposition, a resolution proposed by Mr. Balfour sanctioning morning sittings for Government business on all Tuesdays up to Whitsuntide was carried, but only by 192 to 145.

In Committee of Ways and Means the Chancellor of the Exchequer formally moved a resolution empowering him to raise a loan of 60,000,000l. by the creation of more "Goschens" (i.e., stock bearing 23 per cent. interest up to April 5, 1903, and thereafter 2 per cent.), by the issue of further stock or bonds under the War Loan Act, 1900, and by the issue of Treasury Bills or Exchequer Bonds. Mr. Bryn Roberts (Eifion, Carnarvonshire) moved that instead of a new issue of Consols there should be created a Transvaal Loan Stock, to be secured primarily upon the assets of the colony under an Imperial guarantee. Sir M. Hicks-Beach, however, pointed out that, as the Transvaal could not possibly meet the charge at the present time, the proposed change would be prejudicial to taxpayers at home, because British stock, pure and simple, commanded a better price in the market than stock only guaranteed by Great Britain. The amendment was withdrawn, and the resolution then passed by 186 to 117.

The question of University education in Ireland was debated under conditions somewhat modified from those existing when it was last before the House of Commons, by the fact that the Government had lately consented to the issue of a Royal Commission to inquire into the subject. This consent was conveyed by the Lord-Lieutenant (Lord Cadogan) to a deputation headed by Lord Morris and Killanin, and including the Roman Catholic Bishop (Healy) of Clonfert and the Rev.

Dr. Hamilton, President of Queen's College, Belfast, which waited upon him (March 10), from the Senate of the Royal University, to urge that such an investigation should be held, not only into the working of the Royal University, but into the question of University and higher education in Ireland generally. Lord Cadogan expressed the keenest interest in the subject, and frankly recognised that the alleged injustice under which Roman Catholics suffered with regard to higher education was the dominant factor in the desire at present felt for a consideration of perhaps an entire renovation of the existing system. He, however, entirely refrained from anything in the shape of a committal of the Government to any particular kind of solution of the problem. Trinity College, Dublin, he intimated, would not be included in the inquiry-an exemption which he understood to have the approval of the deputation. It was in these circumstances that, on the motion for going into Committee of Supply on the Civil Service Estimates (April 22), Mr. Roche (Galway, E.) moved an amendment to the effect that no provision for University education in Ireland could be regarded as equitable which did not secure facilities for such education to Roman Catholics without violence to their religious feelings. In seconding the motion, Mr. Dillon (Mayo, E.) described Trinity College, Dublin - the exclusion of which from the scope of the promised inquiry he disapproved-as a "foreign institution," which, to this day, discouraged the study of the ancient language and literature of Ireland. The Irish people were not asking for a University which should be governed by priests, but for one which should be Irish in sentiment and spirit. On the other hand, Colonel Saunderson (Armagh, N.) thought it useless to attempt to conciliate the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland in the manner proposed. What their loyalty was they had shown by taking the side of the Boers on the question of the war, and by the fact that when Queen Victoria died they alone among British subjects evinced no sorrow. The amendment was supported in a maiden speech by Mr. Morris (Galway City), the one Irish Roman Catholic Unionist in the House, and himself a graduate of the University of Dublin, of which he spoke with respect and affection, though insisting on its essentially Protestant character; and by Mr. Fitzalan Hope (Brightside, Sheffield), who spoke the sense of English Roman Catholics. Sir Edward Carson (Solicitor-General for Ireland) expressed the opinion that it would be necessary to meet the Roman Catholic demand in some form or another. On behalf of the Irish Presbyterians, Mr. John Gordon (Londonderry, S.) opposed the concession, as did Mr. Macartney (Antrim, S.). Mr. Haldane (Haddingtonshire) observed that Parliament must choose between giving the Irish Roman Catholics no University education at all and giving them denominational education, and that being the position, he was in favour of giving them denominational education. Mr.