and the Cape. For some reason the Cape Government did not see their way to beginning the new system on Christmas Day, but before that time the adhesion of the Indian Empire had been declared and that of the great bulk of the Crown colonies. Australasian finances were held by Australasian Governments to render delay necessary in their case, but hope was cherished that before many months more had passed they and all British South Africa (Natal came in with the first flight) would be included. within the new Imperial Postal Union.

The public conscience received a disagreeable shock from the proceedings connected with the inquiry into the bankruptcy of Mr. Ernest T. Hooley, extremely well known as a company promoter, who had for some years been understood to be making hundreds of thousands or even millions by the process of buying and selling great businesses. In the bankruptcy court Mr. Hooley explained his modus operandi to have consisted chiefly in producing an effective front-page to prospectuses, adorned with the names of persons of social distinction, and he frankly avowed that to a large extent this had been done by pecuniary transactions on his part with the eminent persons in question. There ensued a shower of indignant disclaimers, many absolute, some partial and qualified. The public were not able to judge between Mr. Hooley and his noble friends. One of them was so unfortunate as to be proved to have made him an indirect offer of money, contemporaneously with an endeavour to obtain a modification of his evidence, in such fashion as to persuade a judge that he had committed the offence of contempt of court. This series of unpleasant incidents produced a great effect on the public mind, which the Lord Chief Justice endeavoured to deepen and make permanent by some vigorous observations which he addressed to the new Lord Mayor on November 9 upon the discreditable and injurious practices connected with the promotion of companies.

Before the end of the year considerable anxiety was excited by the large numbers of persons who in many districts claimed magisterial exemption from vaccination for recently born children under the much-discussed clause inserted in the new Vaccination Act in favour of "conscientious objectors." In the light of the wholesale applications made, and granted, under that provision, it seemed difficult to continue to cherish the hope on which some eminent persons had based their support of the grave change in the law made in the session of 1898, that it would in fact lead to a diminution of prejudice and an increase in the acceptance of Jenner's great safeguard.

A prolonged limitation of the water supply in East London, in the autumn of the year, which caused great inconvenience, led to a powerful reinforcement of the movement for the acquisition of the control of all the Metropolitan Water Companies' undertakings by the London County Council. A resolution in favour of that policy was passed in the council by a vote in which a considerable number of Moderates joined the Progressives.

The question of securing the South Wales sources of water supply for the capital was also much discussed, and public opinion probably moved in that direction.

CHAPTER VI.

SCOTLAND AND IRELAND.

I. SCOTLAND.

RARELY has Scotland's participation in the work of administering the empire and discharging imperial obligations in the field been more strongly in evidence than in 1898. To one Scottish nobleman, the Earl of Aberdeen, giving up the Governor-Generalship of Canada after a very successful tenure, during which the great Dominion has drawn definitely closer to the mother country, another Scottish nobleman, the Earl of Minto, was chosen as successor. Scottish pride was deeply stirred by the conspicuous part played by Brigadiers bearing such well-known Highland and Lowland names as Macdonald, Wauchope and Maxwell in the destruction of the power of the Khalifa, and by Scottish regiments both in the Soudan and in the fierce fighting at Candia which led to the liberation of Crete. Lord Kitchener was welcomed with immense enthusiasm in Edinburgh, where the University conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, and with the Marquess of Dufferin he received the freedom of the city, the two distinguished "junior burgesses" being subsequently banqueted by the Lord Provost. The return of the 1st Battalion of the Gordon Highlanders, after many years of foreign service, was also celebrated in the Scottish capital with great popular enthusiasm and civic hospitality, in honour especially of the magnificent gallantry displayed by the regiment, under Colonel Mathias, in the storming of the Dargai Heights and elsewhere in the Indian frontier wars. In such ways as these the happy identification of imperial activity and interest which is covered by the word "British" was abundantly and impressively illustrated. In this light perhaps the most profoundly interesting of all the domestic events of Scotland in 1898 was the joint appearance (Oct. 25) of Lord Rosebery as president of the Associated Societies of Edinburgh University and Mr. Balfour as Chancellor of the University, at a meeting at which the former delivered an inaugural address and the latter filled the chair. Lord Rosebery's appeal to young Scotsmen to cherish and live up to an exalted ideal of local, national and imperial citizenship was conceived in his most eloquent and impressive vein, and was echoed and eulogised with great earnestness by Mr. Balfour.

In regard to party politics, the record of the year in Scotland is an almost absolute blank. No bye-election occurred to test

the relative strength of the Ministerialists and the Opposition. In the absence of stimulus of that kind, no question on which political parties were engaged on opposite sides can be said to have taken any general or even considerable hold on public attention, although eminent front-bench men like Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Asquith duly and ably addressed their constituents. It could not fail, however, to be of interest to Scottish Liberals that both the statesmen just mentioned were among those spoken of as "in the running for the succession to Sir W. Harcourt's place as leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. In view of the prominence given by Mr. Asquith in one or two speeches to the subject of the taxation of ground values, as a feature of the legislation to be undertaken by Liberals when they were next in power, it is worthy of notice that a bill enacting the important fiscal change in question was drafted during 1898 by the Glasgow Corporation. That enterprising body was naturally forward in connection with any legislation that might add to the resources of local authorities, seeing that it had recently undertaken in connection with the city tramways, and was about to seek powers to undertake in connection with a telephone system competing with that of the National Company, responsibilities involving very large outlay. A considerable amount of irritation having been excited, and perhaps still more expressed, with reference to the failure of the Government measure for improving the procedure in respect of Scottish private bills, a pledge was given during the recess on behalf of the Ministry that in some way or other that question should be dealt with in the session of 1899.

Quite in accordance with Scottish feeling, a sum of some: 35,000l., available under the equivalent grant made to Scotland, to balance the financial provisions of the Irish Local Government Act, was devoted to the development of secondary and technical education. During 1898 the Scottish Education Department became the sole supervising authority for secondary as well as elementary education, and in an interesting speech which he delivered at Paisley on September 14 Lord Balfour sketched the lines on which, with the aid of their enlarged resources, the department proposed to meet their enlarged responsibilities. He referred to the new system of "labour certificates and “merit certificates" and pointed out that, while the former were merely designed to serve as loopholes to those whose circumstances made longer attendance at school impossible, the latter opened the door to secondary education. It was the wish and aim of the department to make secondary schools available for all whose circumstances or talents made it expedient that they should take advantage of them. If legislation should prove necessary to establish a complete and connected scheme, Lord Balfour promised that he would not hesitate to ask for it, but for the present the Education Department would proceed tenta

tively. The union, or rather reunion, in 1898 between the University of St. Andrews and University College, Dundee, was an event of favourable augury in the sphere of higher education.

Following on the termination of the great engineers' strike, trade and employment in Scotland were good throughout the year. In particular, the output of shipbuilding on the Clyde exceeded by many thousands of tons that of the most prosperous of previous years.

In the ecclesiastical sphere, Scottish history in 1898 presented some features of considerable interest. Chief among these was the elaboration by a joint committee of the Assembly of the Free Church and the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church of a basis of union between the two bodies, and the subsequent discussion by their presbyteries throughout the country of the terms of creed subscription embodied in that scheme. Thereon a good deal of difference of opinion was developed, illustrating the presence of divergent theological points of view, if not between the Churches as a whole, yet between important sections of them. The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the completion of the Shorter Catechism furnished an occasion in celebration of which leading clergy of the Established, the Free, and the United Presbyterian Churches took part (May 22) in a joint service in St. Giles's Cathedral. Nor was it by any means without interest that a few days later (May 27) the Archbishop of Canterbury addressed the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on methods of temperance work. This event had no precedent in Scottish ecclesiastical history.

II. IRELAND.

The great and absorbing event for Ireland during 1898 was the passage of the Local Government Act. The first actual operation of that measure, however, will fall to be described. under 1899, and all that can be recorded at present in regard to it are indications as to the spirit in which it is likely to be worked. To that interesting subject reference will be made later on. In February there appeared the report of the royal commission appointed to inquire into the working of the Irish Land Acts. This was a very weighty document. The commissioners were Sir Edward Fry, formerly one of the judges of the Court of Appeal in England, Mr. George Fottrell, Mr. George Gordon, Dr. Traill (Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin), and Mr. Robert Vigers, and their conclusions were unanimous. Considering the small number of cases heard by the Civil Bill Courts, the discrepant practices in them and in the Land Courts, and the costs incident to the removal of cases from one tribunal to the other, the report recommended that the jurisdiction of the Civil Bill Courts in respect of the Land Acts should be abolished. Coming to the duties of assistant commissioners and court valuers,

the report observed that they had been left unguided on many difficult questions, including the definition or explanation of the words "fair rent" and "true value." It was remarkable that in many cases assistant commissioners and court valuers had been found to agree in their results, though differing in their processes and in the principles by which the results had been arrived at. In such cases agreement on the part of valuers was, if possible, more strange than their differences. To get rid of the suspicion existing in the minds of one political party against the officials appointed by a party of different political views, and the suspicion which the changing of assistant commissioners and court valuers from one province or district to another created, the report suggested that all assistant commissioners and court valuers should be permanent officials, paid on a sufficiently liberal scale, and entitled to a pension or allowance in the event of their services not being required, either permanently or temporarily, by reason of the diminution of work. The lay assistant commissioners and court valuers, besides possessing a practical acquaintance with the value of land, should have passed a suitable examination in the subjects with which they would be called upon to deal.

Power should be given the sub-commissioners to state cases for the Land Commission, either on the application of a litigant or of their own proper motion; and power should be given to the Land Commission to require sub-commissions to state such cases if an applicant showed that the statement of such a case was proper. In some cases the inspections of land, the commissioners believed, had been made with undue haste. As to the hearing of appeals, the decisions of the Land Commission in a very great number of cases did little more than register the decision of the court valuer. Moreover, the business was disposed of with a rapidity and with a silence as to the grounds of the decisions which created dissatisfaction in the minds of litigants. It would not be wise to abolish rehearings or appeals, but it was desirable to check the course of indiscriminate appeals, which might be done by placing a heavier stamp on the notice of appeal, by depriving the appellant of the right to retire from his appeal without the leave of the court, and by requiring security for costs.

Turning to the question of "fair rent," the commissioners in their report said: "In our view, assuming the law to be, as at present decided, that occupation interest is not to be taken into account in fixing the fair rent of the holding, the annual sum referred to in paragraph A of section 1 of the act of 1896 (which we may call the gross fair rent) is the annual sum at which, after all the circumstances of the case, holding, and district have been taken into consideration, the holding in the landlord's hands might reasonably be expected to let from year to year to a solvent and prudent tenant who desired to derive a benefit from the occupation of the tenement and not from its sale; and