for the producer of coal to put a penny of the tax upon the miners. That the coal-owner would be able, in spite of the imposition of the tax, to obtain such a price for his commodity as would enable him to continue his export trade he did not doubt. Although the prices of exported coal and of freight were enormously high in 1900, our export trade increased. There were two reasons for this. First, our steam coal enjoyed a monopoly, and the superior quality of North country gas coal was recognised abroad. Secondly, our cheaper freights favoured our coal producers in their competition with foreigners. As to Westphalian coal, which some people thought would take the place of ours in Germany and countries supplied by Germany, it was of coarser quality than English coal, which was still much in demand, as the exports to Germany proved. Taking a series of years he found that the demand for coal had always exceeded the supply, and as the demand for coal throughout the civilised world increased enormously every year, the loss of one market was balanced by the gain of another. With a trade increasing by leaps and bounds it was absurd to imagine that the addition of a shilling a ton could injure the industry seriously. In 1841 a large export duty was put on coal, and in 1843 the volume of the trade actually increased. If he was wrong in believing that when the market was good the tax would fall on the foreigner, the coal-owner would be in a position to bear the burden. He calculated that last year the coal-owners made 34,000,000l. more profit on a capital of 110,000,000l. than they made in 1897. He questioned whether the tax would diminish the trade at all; but it might possibly check its increase, and he should not regard that as an unmixed evil, as it would retard the exhaustion of coal in the cheap seams. Turning to the question of existing contracts, he explained that he had not made full inquiries into this part of the subject before proposing the duty, because it would have been inexpedient to do so. Had his plan become known, probably a good many more contracts would have been entered into. But he meant to deal liberally with existing contracts, not only in the interest of those who had made them, but in order that there might be as little dislocation of the trade as possible. He insisted that the tax was a just one, which would fall, if it fell upon any one in this country, upon shoulders which were well able to bear it.

Sir J. Joicey (Chester-le-Street, Durham) dwelt on the unfairness of the proposed tax, as bearing on one particular section. of the trade; and several other Members, including one or two Ministerialists, connected with the mining districts joined in the protest on that and other grounds. A speech of special interest, and even charm, was made by Mr. Burt (Morpeth), who maintained that the Chancellor of the Exchequer's great fallacy was in having taken an admittedly exceptional year, and gauged the whole situation by that exceptional year in a trade liable to constant and extreme fluctuations. The principal speech, how

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ever, and one of marked ability, in opposition to the tax was from Sir Edward Grey. He joined (May 6) in condemning the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposal because it would bear severely on particular districts. He did not believe that the consumer would pay the full amount of the tax, as British coal generally did not monopolise the foreign market. The prosperity of the coal trade, he contended, was waning, and as to colliery-owners' profits he declined to admit that a just idea could be formed from recent figures of the average position of the industry. Sir M. Hicks-Beach appeared to have been influenced by the doctrine of ransom ; but, if wealth was to be taxed as such, it would have been better to increase the death duties or the demands made upon income-tax payers. He differed from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had declared that the demand for coal always exceeded the supply; if the right hon. gentleman were right it would be difficult to account for the fluctuations in prices. In bad times pits which might have remained open if this tax had not been imposed would have to be closed. Some colliery-owners would keep their pits open, but would give smaller wages, and others would close their pits. Wages would fall all round, a prospect which the miners naturally viewed with alarm. The fact that this duty was partial in its incidence on the coal industry also rankled in their minds. He regretted that a general strike should have been threatened, because the threat made it more difficult for the Government to reconsider their position; but he warned the Committee not to regard this matter lightly. A strike in the circumstances would be a direct ultimatum from one section of the community to all the other sections; it would be the nearest approach to civil war in this country for many years. If it was the object of the Government to reduce the export of steam coal, which was the coal we wanted for our Navy, the proper thing to do would be to acquire part of the Welsh coalfields for the purposes of the State. That the tax would restrict the exportation of Welsh coal he did not believe; in fact, it might stimulate its export. The classes of coal that would be affected would be those of inferior quality. He maintained that this tax violated the elementary principles that the burden of a tax should be spread over as wide an area as possible, and that large receipts should be secured. The demand of the Government, while inflicting great injury on a section of the population, would bring very little profit to the Exchequer, and it was difficult to foresee when the agitation against it would end.

In the course of an elaborate defence of the proposed tax Mr. G. Balfour (Leeds, Central), President of the Board of Trade, showed that during the last thirty years the export coal trade of this country had quadrupled, while the total output of coal had only doubled. The increase had gone on progressively, whether prices were high or low, and the trade had not been affected by

fluctuations in values or freights. Those being the facts, to say that the trade would be seriously crippled by a shilling duty was paradoxical. It was not true of our export trade that the supply exceeded the demand. Foreign countries wanted our coal, because it was better than theirs and because it was necessary for them to supplement their own supplies. Sweden, Italy, Spain, Egypt and to a certain extent Russia were dependent on this country for the coal which they consumed; and of the total amount of coal imported by European countries no less than four-fifths were exported from Great Britain. He did not agree with those who were afraid of German and American competition, for, in spite of the development of German mines, the supply of the country was not sufficient for its necessities; and, by reason of the great difference in freights, he did not apprehend that in normal conditions our coal could be displaced by American coal in the markets which were of most importance. The coal trade, as he gave figures to show, was in a very exceptional position, and well able to pay the tax should it have to do He found it difficult to credit the rumour that there would be a strike. Such action on the part of the miners would be selfish and unpatriotic, and would amount to veiled rebellion. But a strike on a large scale could not succeed unless the community sympathised with the movement, and in the present case it would not do so. In any case, he declared, the Government were determined to adhere to their proposal.

SO.

Mr. G. Balfour's observation as to the absence of any sympathy on the part of the community with a miners' strike against the coal tax was very distinctly confirmed by the debate. Hardly any unfavourable criticism of the proposed duty came from Members who were not connected with mining districts, while Sir H. Vincent (Sheffield, Central) and Mr. Lowe (Edgbaston, Birmingham) supported the Chancellor of the Exchequer the former saying that he could not have devised a more popular tax than this coal duty. Mr. Asquith (Fife, E.) dwelt on the disastrous effect which the proposed tax would have on the Scottish export trade, and maintained that any specially prosperous industry might be taxed on the strength of the arguments used to defend the coal duty. In his reply on the debate Mr. A. Balfour denied that the Government's finance was that of taxing an industry because of its prosperity, and expressed his disbelief in the threatened injury to the export trade from the coal tax. On the contrary, he believed, not without regret, that it would go on increasing as it had done during the last thirty years.

The division showed a majority of 106 for the confirmation of the resolution sanctioning the tax, the numbers being 333 to 227. The result of the bye-election for the Monmouth Boroughs, where the polling took place on May 7, was remarkable as showing an absence of reaction against the Government even in a district the inhabitants of which might be expected to have

decided feelings on the subject of the export duty on coal. The vacancy was caused by the unseating, on petition, of Dr. Rutherfoord Harris, who was returned as a Conservative by 4,415 to 3,727-majority 688-at the general election, against Mr. A. Spicer. Yet, though Mr. Spicer now had a largely increased poll-4,261-the Conservative candidate, Mr. Sheriff A. Lawrence, obtained 4,604, thus securing a majority of 343. The chief organisations connected with the coal trade recognised that a mistake had been made in the tactics of the agitation against the new tax, and at a conference concluded on May 8 of mining delegates convened by the Miners' Federation of Great Britain it was resolved that, in view of Sir M. HicksBeach's statement that the tax would not in his opinion affect miners' wages, the delegates did not see their way to recommend a general stoppage of work at the present juncture, but recommended that if any district were asked to submit to a reduction of wages in consequence of the tax, another conference should be summoned and the question of a general strike reconsidered. At a meeting of the Mining Association held in an adjoining room (at the Westminster Palace Hotel), and attended by many colliery-owners, resolutions were passed the same day condemning alike the tax and the proposed stoppage of the mines, and suggesting that, pending an impartial inquiry by a tribunal to be appointed by Parliament into the expediency of an export duty, the money required should be raised in the current year by a duty on the whole output of the kingdom for the past year.

In the latter part of April there was a recrudescence of agitation among the more extreme opponents of the South African war in this country, which contributed in an appreciable degree to the conspicuous accentuation a few weeks later of the division in the Liberal party on that subject. The most prominent figures in this movement were Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer, who had come to England as the delegates of the Afrikander Bond. Excluded, as having no possible locus standi it was inevitable that they should be, from the privilege which they had desired of being heard at the bar of the House of Commons, these delegates proceeded to address meetings in different parts of the country. One of their first audiences was also the first annual gathering (April 24) of the "League of Liberals against Aggression and Militarism" at the Westminster Palace Hotel. There they spoke to a resolution re-affirming (at least in theory) an emphatic protest against the annexation of the South African Republics, supporting Sir H. CampbellBannerman in his denunciation in advance of any system of Crown Colony government in South Africa, and urging all Liberals to sustain him in his conciliatory policy towards the Dutch people. Mr. Merriman denounced what he alleged to be the oppressive working of martial law in Cape Colony; said that an attempt was being made to rule one faction by another faction, and one could not imagine anything more terrible than

that; and held up Sir A. Milner to opprobrium as a partisan. The Bond delegates addressed a meeting (April 26) in Edinburgh, where they encountered a great deal of opposition, half an hour or so being occupied in the removal of disturbers by stewards and the police before Mr. Merriman could make his speech in favour of restoring the independence of the two Boer Republics. The association of certain extreme Liberals with this propaganda gave point to Mr. Herbert Gladstone's candid recognition at Leeds (April 26) that, eminently unsatisfactory as in his opinion was the existing Government, nobody at the present time could assert the possibility of an alternative one.

No such division appeared in the ranks of the Irish Nationalist Members. They could always be relied on, as has been seen, to take part in large numbers in any proceeding calculated to clog the wheels of Parliamentary progress, and now and then they occupied a full sitting, as of course was within their right, in the setting forth of what they regarded as some special abuse on the part of the Irish Administration. Thus the evening of May 3 was entirely occupied with a discussion on the subject of "jury packing" in connection with the recent trial and conviction of Mr. P. A. McHugh, M.P. for North Leitrim, on a charge of seditious libel, for which he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment as a first-class misdemeanant. It was maintained by Mr. T. P. O'Connor (Scotland, Liverpool) that Mr. McHugh's real offence was that of denouncing in another case the very practice by the resort to which his own conviction was subsequently secured. The AttorneyGeneral for Ireland, Mr. Atkinson (Derry, N.), denied this, and said that Mr. McHugh's real offence was that in his newspaper, the Sligo Champion, he had attacked and vilified a jury who had returned the only possible verdict in a case of agrarian intimidation. The men challenged were not challenged as Roman Catholics, but as members of the United Irish League, who could obviously not be trusted to judge fairly in cases which concerned the league. Even Mr. T. W. Russell (Tyrone, N.), who had become comparatively friendly to the Nationalist Members, allowed that Mr. McHugh had been rightly convicted, but he argued that it would be better to suspend trial by jury in political and agrarian cases than to persist in challenging Roman Catholic jurors; the more so as the Protestants who had to serve were exposed to serious danger. The reduction moved in Irish law charges was backed by Sir R. Reid (Dumfries Burghs), who held that the right of challenging jurors had been abused in Ireland, and even by Mr. Haldane (Haddington), who contended that no good was gained by these prosecutions, the real evil of the Irish situation lying much deeper than could be reached by such means. Mr. Wyndham, the Irish Secretary, concluded the debate in a speech of moderate though firm tone, but the Ministerial majority was only 68-173 to 105.

The decision of the London School Board, arrived at soon