Chapter 382: , Laws of 1889, to read as follows (8)

Within three hours from the first startling report the success
of the operation was made known. The King had borne it well
and was in a satisfactory state. From that time on there were
none but good reports. On the 5th of July he was declared to
be out of danger. On the 15th he was removed to the royal
yacht _Victoria and Albert_ and taken to Cowes. At the
end of seven weeks he had recovered so fully as to be able to
bear the fatigues and the strain of a trying ceremony, and the
King and Queen were crowned in Westminster Abbey on the 9th of
August, with somewhat less of magnificent public show than had
been prepared for the 26th of June, but nevertheless with
regal pomp.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1902 (June-August).
Conference with the Prime Ministers of the Self-Governing
Colonies.

See (in this Volume)
BRITISH EMPIRE.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1902 (July).
Resignation of Lord Salisbury.
Mr. Balfour’s succession to the Premiership.
The new Ministry.

Failing health compelled the Marquis of Salisbury to ask, on
the 11th of July, for relief from the cares of the office of
Prime Minister. His resignation was accepted, and Mr. Arthur
J. Balfour, First Lord of the Treasury in Lord Salisbury’s
Ministry, was invited by the King to the vacant place. Some
changes in the Cabinet followed, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach
retiring from the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, and being
succeeded by Mr. C. T. Ritchie; Mr. A. Akers-Douglas entering
the Cabinet as Home Secretary; Mr. G. Wyndham continuing in
the office of Chief Secretary for Ireland, but coming into the
Cabinet; Mr. Austen Chamberlain, son of the Right Honorable
Joseph Chamberlain, also receiving a Cabinet seat as
Postmaster-General.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1902 (August).
Passage of Licensing Bill.

See (in this Volume)
ALCOHOL PROBLEM: ENGLAND: A. D. 1902.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1902 (September).
Arrangements of the Government with the Cunard Company and
the International Mercantile Marine Company.

See (in this Volume)
COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL: INTERNATIONAL.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1902-1904.
Coercive proceedings against Venezuela concerted with Germany
and Italy.
Settlement of Claims secured.
Reference to The Hague.

See (in this Volume)
VENEZUELA: A. D. 1902-1904.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1902-1904.
The Mission of Colonel Younghusband to Tibet.
Its advance in force to Lhasa.
The Treaty secured.

See (in this Volume)
TIBET: A. D. 1902-1904.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1903.
Passage of the Land Purchase Act for Ireland.

See (in this Volume)
IRELAND: A. D. 1870-1903.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1903.
Declines to be a party to the building of the Bagdad Railway.

See (in this Volume)
RAILWAYS; TURKEY: A. D. 1899-1909.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1903 (March).
Debate in Parliament on the South African Labor Question.

See (in this Volume)
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1903-1904.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1903 (March).
Passage of the Employment of Children Bill.

See (in this Volume)
LABOR PROTECTION.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1903 (June).
The Celebration of Empire Day.

A Canadian custom of celebrating Queen Victoria’s birthday,
June 24, as Empire Day, was taken up in Great Britain in 1903,
and "the movement," says the London _Times_, "has spread
with striking rapidity." The day is made especially
interesting in the schools, where the morning of the day is
given to addresses on citizenship and the Empire and to the
singing of patriotic songs, while the afternoon is a
half-holiday.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1903 (May-September).
Mr. Chamberlain’s declaration for Preferential Trade with
the British Colonies.
The political commotion excited.
Mr. Balfour’s puzzling attitude on the questions raised.
It is made clear by the correspondence when Mr. Chamberlain
resigns.
The latter’s propagandism.

In June, 1902, when, as Secretary of State for the Colonies,
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain addressed the Conference of Prime
Ministers from the self-governing British Colonies, his mind
was manifestly not prepared to accept as a practicable
proposition their request that the United Kingdom would grant
"preferential treatment to the products and manufactures of
the Colonies."

See (in this Volume)
BRITISH EMPIRE: A. D. 1902)

{231}

"Preferential treatment" meant an Imperial protective-tariff
policy, with discrimination of duties in favor of imports from
British colonies. As the products of the colonies were mostly
food stuffs and raw materials for manufacture, it meant a
taxing of the supplies of these to British tables and British
industries from every source outside the colonies. It meant an
artificial higher pricing in the market of the British Isles
for everything in which cost bears hardest on the livelihood
and the living of their people. Mr. Chamberlain, in 1902, was
waxing ardent in the high mission he had undertaken, of
unifying and consolidating the great British Empire,
strengthening the ties of family between Mother England and
her scattered brood; but he had not yet been persuaded that
the mother could afford to expend quite so much as this of her
own well-being on premiums for the allegiance of her
offspring.

In the course of the next year, however, the Colonial
Secretary spent some weeks in South Africa, and seems to have
been remarkably intensified in his imperializing aims by what
he saw and learned. He came home filled with the conviction
that England must, for the sake of a really unified and
incorporated Empire, abandon the free opening of her markets,
which gave her people the cheapest food and the cheapest
materials for labor that the world at large could furnish, and
must wall them and gate them, with differing keys to the
locks, so that her own colonists might be given the
"preferential" admission they claim. If he had arrived at that
conviction before going to South Africa he had made no sign of
it; but it was proclaimed soon after his return, in a speech
to his constituents at Birmingham, on the 15th of May, which
shook England as no sudden development in politics had done
for many years. The time had come, he declared, when the
country must decide for or against a deliberate policy of
Imperial unification, which required it to reciprocate the
preferential tariffs which the colonies had adopted or were
offering to adopt. Canada had given Great Britain a preference
in her tariff, first of 25 per cent., afterwards increased to
33 1/3 per cent., and was ready to go farther if the British
Government would reciprocate, in allowing a drawback on the
shilling corn duty (a duty which had been levied for a year
past, and was about to be removed). At the Colonial Conference
of the previous year the representatives of Australia and New
Zealand had expressed readiness to act on the same line. A
recent conference of the British colonies in South Africa had
recommended the Legislatures of those colonies to give the
Mother Country a similar preference on all dutiable goods of
25 per cent. Whether this policy of the colonies should be
developed in the future or withdrawn depended now on the
treatment given to it by the people of Great Britain.

"The people of the Empire," continued Mr. Chamberlain, "have
two alternatives before them. They may maintain if they like
in all its severity the interpretation—in my mind an entirely
artificial and wrong interpretation—which has been placed on
the doctrines of Free Trade by a small remnant of the Little
Englanders, of the Manchester school, who now profess to be
the sole repositories of the doctrines of Mr. Cobden and Mr.
Bright. They may maintain that policy in all its severity,
though it is repudiated by every other nation and by all your
own Colonies. In that case they will be absolutely precluded
either from giving any kind of preference or favour to any of
their Colonies abroad, or even protecting their Colonies
abroad when they offer to favour us. That is the first
alternative. The second alternative is that we should insist
that we will not be bound by any purely technical definition
of Free Trade, that, while we seek as one chief object free
interchange of trade and commerce between ourselves and all
the nations of the world, we will, nevertheless, recover our
freedom, resume that power of negotiation and, if necessary,
retaliation whenever our own interests or our relation between
our Colonies and ourselves are threatened by other people.

"I leave the matter," said Mr. Chamberlain, "in your hands. I
desire that a discussion on this subject should be opened. The
time has not yet come to settle it, but it seems to me that
for good or for evil this is an issue much greater in its
consequences than any of our local disputes. Make a mistake in
legislation. Yet it can be corrected. Make a mistake in your
Imperial policy. It is irretrievable. You have an opportunity;
you will never have it again."

Naturally this speech, from a Minister of the Crown, as
important and influential in the Government and in his party
as Mr. Chamberlain, caused an immense political commotion. It
had suddenly injected a new issue into the politics of the
United Kingdom, involving some reconstruction of the party in
possession of power, and a fundamental readjustment of
principles in some part of it, more or less, according to the
following that Mr. Chamberlain secured. Would he leave the
Ministry or the Ministry leave him?—was the question of the
hour. It remained unanswered for three months or more, while
controversy over the propositions of Mr. Chamberlain raged and
the situation became more puzzling every day. Meantime the
head of the Government, Mr. Balfour, was acting like a
faithful adherent to the English principle of freedom in
trade, by advocating a repeal of the incongruous corn duty
levied the year before, but speaking, at the same time, like a
man of open mind on the question of preferential trade,
treating it as one that demanded careful thought. "If foreign
countries," he said, "should take the view that our
self-governing colonies could be treated as separate nations
we must resist their policy by fiscal retaliation. There must
be a weapon to our hands with which to meet those who might
attempt to disintegrate the Empire by fiscal means. The
question whether we should be justified in raising revenue
with the object of drawing the different portions of the
Empire more closely together was certainly well worth
consideration."

All that he said in these months conveyed the impression that
he was in an undetermined, waiting state of mind on the
question raised by Mr. Chamberlain, not yet convinced that his
colleague should be supported in the new policy proposed, but
quite likely to be. That, however, was not the attitude in
which he could hold the two coalesced parties, Conservative
and Liberal Union, that were behind him in the Government. The
issue had instant activity there, dividing both. The Premier
could suppress debate on it in Parliament, as he did, but
everywhere else in the kingdom the rage of controversy
gathered heat, and party lines on the side of the Government
were rapidly confused. Two members of the Cabinet resigned,
while Mr. Chamberlain kept his place in it until the 9th of
September, when he addressed to Mr. Balfour a letter which
offered his resignation, for reasons stated as follows:

{232}

"Owing to admitted differences of opinion in the Unionist
party the political organisations of the party were paralysed
and our opponents have had full possession of the field. … I
recognise that serious prejudice has been created, and that,
while the people generally are alive to the danger of
unrestricted competition on the part of those foreign
countries that close their markets to us while finding in our
market an outlet for their surplus production, they have not
yet appreciated the importance to our trade of Colonial
markets, nor the danger of losing them if we do not meet in
some way their natural and patriotic desire for preferential
trade.

"The result is that, for the present at any rate, a
preferential agreement with our Colonies involving any new
duty, however small, on articles of food hitherto untaxed is,
even if accompanied by a reduction of taxation on other
articles of food of equally universal consumption,
unacceptable to the majority in the constituencies. …

"I suggest that you should limit the present policy of the
Government to the assertion of our freedom in the case of all
commercial relations with foreign countries, and that you
should agree to my tendering my resignation of my present
office to his Majesty and devoting myself to the work of
explaining and popularising those principles of Imperial union
which my experience has convinced me are essential to our
future welfare and prosperity."

Mr. Balfour’s reply to this, when published, disclosed the
fact that he was wholly in agreement with Mr. Chamberlain, and
that they were now parting company in order to pursue a common
purpose more effectually on different lines. Both saw that
England was not to be drawn easily away from its fundamental
belief in freedom of trade; that what they had undertaken
would require much persuasive labor and considerable time, if
accomplished at all; wherefore Mr. Chamberlain accepted an
assignment to the missionary field of the imperialist cause,
while Mr. Balfour would continue his endeavor to hold a party
in waiting for the fruits of the mission, and in possession of
the government as long as circumstances might permit. The
programme was disclosed frankly in the two letters. In that of
Mr. Balfour he said:

"Agreeing as I do with you that the time has come when a
change should be made in the fiscal canons by which we have
bound ourselves in our commercial dealings with other
Governments, it seems paradoxical, indeed, that you should
leave the Cabinet at the time that others of my colleagues are
leaving it who disagree on that very point with us both. Yet I
can not but admit, however reluctantly, that there is some
force in the arguments with which you support that course,
based as they are upon your special and personal relation to
that portion of the controversy which deals with Colonial
preference. You have done more than any man, living or dead,
to bring home to the citizens of the Empire the consciousness
of Imperial obligation, and the interdependence between the
various fragments into which the Empire is geographically
divided. I believe you to be right in holding that this
interdependence should find expression in our commercial
relations as well as in our political and military relations.
I believe with you that closer fiscal union between the Mother
Country and her Colonies would be good for the trade of both,
and that, if much closer union could be established on fitting
terms, its advantage to both parties would increase as the
years went on and as the Colonies grew in wealth and
population.

"If there ever has been any difference between us in
connection with this matter it has only been with regard to
the practicability of a proposal which would seem to require,
on the part of the Colonies, a limitation in the all-round
development of a protective policy, and on the part of this
country the establishment of a preference in favour of
important Colonial products. On the first of these
requirements I say nothing, but if the second involves, as it
almost certainly does, taxation, however light, upon food
stuffs, I am convinced with you that public opinion is not yet
ripe for such an arrangement. …

"I feel, however, deeply concerned that you should regard this
conclusion, however well founded, as one which makes it
difficult for you, in your very special circumstances, to
remain a member of the Government. Yet I do not venture, in a
matter so strictly personal, to raise any objection.

"If you think you can best serve the interests of Imperial
unity, for which you have done so much, by pressing your views
on Colonial preference with the freedom which is possible in
an independent position, but is hardly compatible with office,
how can I criticise your determination? The loss to the
Government is great, but the gain to the cause you have at
heart may be greater still. If so, what can I do but
acquiesce?"

So Mr. Chamberlain left the Cabinet, with Mr. Balfour’s
blessing and God-speed, and went out to preach the gospel of
commercial imperialism, under the more carefully chosen name
of "fiscal reform." His co-laborer, who stayed at the helm of
State, was so favored by circumstances as to hold it for
somewhat more than another year. But the propagandism made no
satisfying progress in that year; it seems doubtful, indeed,
if Mr. Chamberlain won as many disciples as he lost from his
first following.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1903 (August).
Employment of Children Act.

See (in this Volume)
CHILDREN, UNDER THE LAW: AS WORKERS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1903 (August).
Communication to the Powers that were parties to the Berlin
Act of 1884-1885, asking their attention to the Administration
of the Congo State.

See (in this Volume)
CONGO STATE: A. D. 1903-1905.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1903 (October).
Settlement of the Alaska boundary question.

See (in this Volume)
ALASKA: A. D. 1903.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1903-1904.
Canadian measures to establish British sovereignty over land
and sea of Hudson Bay region.

See (in this Volume)
CANADA: A. D. 1903-1904.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1904.
Arbitration of boundary dispute between British Guiana
and Brazil.

See (in this Volume)
BRAZIL: A. D. 1904.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1904.
Her rivals in the Persian Gulf.

See PERSIA: A. D. 1904.

{233}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1904 (April).
The agreements of the Entente Cordiale with France.

See (in this Volume)
EUROPE: A. D. 1904 (APRIL).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1904 (April-August).
Agitation over the Licensing Bill, which passed Parliament
after much bitter debate.

See (in this Volume)
ALCOHOL PROBLEM: ENGLAND: A. D. 1904.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1904 (July).
The question of Church Attendance in school hours.

See (in this Volume)
EDUCATION: ENGLAND: A. D. 1904.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1904 (October).
The Dogger Bank incident of the voyage of the
Russian Baltic Fleet.

See (in this Volume)
JAPAN: A. D. 1904-1905 (OCTOBER-MAY).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1904-1905.
The Esher Army Commission and its Report.

See (in this Volume)
WAR, THE PREPARATIONS FOR: MILITARY.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905.
Reopened controversy with the United States over Newfoundland
Fisheries questions.

See (in this Volume)
NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1905-1909.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905.
Action with other Powers in forcing financial reforms in
Macedonia on Turkey.

See (in this Volume)
TURKEY: A. D. 1905-1908.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905.
Unemployed Workmen Act.

See (in this Volume)
POVERTY, PROBLEMS OF: ENGLAND: A. D. 1905.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905 (March).
Partially Representative Legislative Assembly created in
the Transvaal.

See (in this Volume)
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1905-1907.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905 (April).
Order relating to Underfed School Children.

See (in this Volume)
EDUCATION: ENGLAND: A. D. 1905.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905 (April).
Treaty with Nicaragua concerning the Mosquito Territory.

See (in this Volume)
CENTRAL AMERICA: NICARAGUA: A. D. 1905.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905 (June).
Change in the office of Speaker of the House of Commons.

After a service of more than ten years in the speaker’s chair
of the House of Commons, Mr. W. C. Gully resigned, on account
of failing health, and the Deputy Speaker, Mr. J. W. Lowther,
was chosen in his place, with no dissent. Subsequently, Mr.
Gully was raised to the peerage and received an annual grant
of £5000 for life.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905 (June).
Frauds in the sale of surplus army stores in South Africa.

An exciting scandal, connected with the sale of surplus army
stores, in South Africa, after the closing of the Boer War,
came to light in June. It was found that stores had been sold
to certain contractors at very low prices, and then
repurchased at high figures under new contracts entered into
with the same contractors. Several army officers, including
two colonels, were implicated in what the investigating
committee described mildly as "a cleverly arranged
contrivance."

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905 (August).
New Defensive Agreement with Japan.

See (in this Volume)
JAPAN: A. D. 1905 (AUGUST).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905 (August).
Resignation of the Viceroyalty of India by Lord Curzon.

See (in this Volume)
INDIA: A. D. 1905 (AUGUST).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905-1906.
Resignation of the Balfour Ministry.
The Liberal Party in power.
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman Prime Minister.
His Cabinet.
His attitude toward Ireland.
Strength of the Labor Party in Parliament.
Its representative in the Cabinet.

The Education Act of 1902, the apostasy of Mr. Chamberlain and
his Conservative Unionist followers from British Free Trade
principles, proclaimed in 1903, and the Licensing Act of 1904,
had each, in turn, been productive of bitter disagreements and
ruptures which rapidly lowered the strength of the party in
power. It had been in control of the Government since 1895,
when its opposition to Irish Home Rule was endorsed by a large
majority. The next election, in 1900, during the war in South
Africa, reinforced its Parliamentary support, and it could
count, during the two years following, on more than 400 votes
in the House of Commons, against about 268. After that period
its Parliamentary majority in the popular chamber ran down,
until, in the later months of 1905, it was no more than 75 or
76. This would have been an ample majority if it had
represented an equivalent preponderance of public support,
which, manifestly, it did not. For three years the
"by-elections,"—that is, the special elections ordered for
filling vacancies in the House as they occurred,—had been
going steadily against the Government, and nobody doubted that
a general election would throw it out. It was challenged again
and again to give the country an opportunity to express its
feeling in the matter, by a dissolution of Parliament, without
waiting for any nearer approach to the end of the term. This
it would not do; but, on the 4th of December, 1905, the
Premier, Mr. Balfour, surprised the country, and likewise his
own Cabinet, it was said, by placing his resignation in the
hands of the King.

This proceeding was regarded as an artful manoeuvre in
politics, for the embarrassment of the opposition. As
explained at the time by a journalist who wrote of it on the
side of the latter,—"The Liberals naturally desired that the
country should have an opportunity of going to the polls on
the clear issue raised by the record of ten years of Tory
administration. They regarded Mr. Balfour and his party as
being in the dock, and before they took office they wished to
have the verdict of the country returned by the votes of the
electors. But this, for equally obvious reasons, Mr. Balfour
wished to avoid. By resigning now, he compelled his opponents
to undertake the task, first of forming a new administration,
with all the risks which it involves of personal slight and
sectional differences, and, secondly, of facing the risk of
any untoward incident arising in the next few weeks which
might be used against the new-born government. It also would
enable them to obscure to a certain extent the real issue
before the country. Instead of simply voting for or against
Mr. Balfour and his administration, they would be asked to
express their opinion upon a new ministry, which had not had
any opportunity of giving the country a taste of its quality.
But as Mr. Balfour could not be compelled to stay in when he
had made up his mind to go out, and as it was such a relief to
get rid of him on any terms, the Liberals consented to face
the disadvantages of taking office before the dissolution."

{234}

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was invited by the King to form a
Ministry, and accepted the Commission. The organization of his
Cabinet was completed within the week following Mr. Balfour’s
resignation, and it took office at once. Parliament was
dissolved on the 8th of January, 1906, and a new Parliament
was summoned to meet on February 13th. Elections began on the
12th of January and were finished for the most part by the
19th. In their total result, they returned 375 Liberals to the
House of Commons, 55 Labor representatives, who would act on
most questions with the Liberals, and 83 Irish Nationalists,
whose attitude towards the new Ministry would depend upon its
attitude on Irish questions, and seemed more likely to be
friendly than otherwise. Against this array on the side of Sir
Henry and his colleagues, of pledged partisans and conditional
allies, the Conservative Unionists had Secured an Opposition
in the House that numbered only 157. The political overturn
was one of the most remarkable that the United Kingdom has
ever known.

The Cabinet as formed when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman took
office was made up as follows:

Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury,
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.

Lord Chancellor, Sir Robert T. Reid.

Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Herbert H. Asquith.

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,
Sir Edward Grey.

Secretary of State for the Colonies,
the Earl of Elgin.

Secretary of State for War,
Richard B. Haldane.

Secretary of State for Home Affairs,
Herbert J. Gladstone.

Secretary of State for India,
John Morley.

First Lord of the Admiralty,
Lord Tweedmouth.

President of the Board of Trade,
David Lloyd-George.

President of the Local Government Board,
John Burns.

Chief Secretary for Scotland,
John Sinclair.

President of the Board of Agriculture,
Earl Carrington.

Postmaster-General,
Sydney C. Buxton.

Chief Secretary for Ireland,
James Bryce.

Lord President of the Council,
the Earl of Crewe.

Lord of the Privy Seal,
the Marquis of Ripon.

President of the Board of Education,
Augustine Birrell.

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster,
Sir Henry H. Fowler.

The following were not members of the cabinet, but formed part
of the administration:

Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,
the Earl of Aberdeen.

Under Secretary for the Colonies,
Winston L. Churchill.

First Commissioner of Works,
Louis Vernon-Harcourt.

Attorney-General,
John Lawson Walton.

Solicitor-General,
William S. Robson.

That Lord Rosebery had no place in the new Liberal
administration was due to his wide disagreement with most of
the leaders of his party on the question of Home Rule for
Ireland. When he succeeded Mr. Gladstone as Prime Minister, in
1894, he quite distinctly discarded that line of Irish policy,
and his antagonism to it had undergone no change.

See, in Volume VI. of this work,
ENGLAND: A. D. 1894-1895)

On the other hand, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had remained
faithfully sympathetic with Mr. Gladstone’s idea of Ireland’s
due from England, and had reannounced his standing on it in a
recent speech. "My opinion," he said, "has long been known to
you. It is that the only way of healing the evils of
Ireland,—difficulties of her administration, of giving
contentment and prosperity to her people, and of making her a
strength instead of a weakness to the empire,—is that the
Irish people should have the management of their own domestic
affairs; and so far from this opinion fading and dwindling as
the years pass, it is becoming stronger, and, what is more, I
have more confidence in its realization. … If I were asked for
advice by an ardent Nationalist, I would say my desire is to
see the effective management of Irish affairs in the hands of
a representative Irish party. … I trust that the opportunity
of making a great advance on this question of Irish government
will not long be delayed, and when that opportunity comes my
firm belief is that a greater measure of agreement than
hitherto as to the ultimate solution will be found possible,
and that a keener appreciation will be felt of the benefits
that will flow to the Irish communities and British people
throughout the world, and that Ireland, from being
disaffected, impoverished, and discouraged, will take its
place as a strong, harmonious, and contented portion of the
empire."

That Sir Henry, maintaining this posture on the Irish question
of questions, could be the accepted leader of the Liberal
party and the Premier of Government, afforded clear evidence
that the party, and the country which confided power to that
party, were at least more nearly prepared to make the great
concession to Ireland than they were to refuse it; but the
question entered slightly into the parliamentary canvass,
though the Conservative-Unionists strove hard to make it the
dominant issue. The public mind was occupied so fully with the
fiscal and educational controversies of the last three years
that the motives in its voting came mostly from them. The
mandates of the vote were understood to be especially for the
amending of recent legislation on those subjects and on the
terms of the licensing of the liquor trade. It was equally
understood that Irish measures in the Gladstone spirit should
be looked for, not hastily undertaken, but in due time.

The fact of most impressive significance in the result of the
parliamentary elections was the sudden weight that had been
given in the House of Commons to the representation of Labor
by laboring men. Since 1903 the Labor Party had emerged in
British politics as a force to be taken into serious account.

See (in this Volume)
LABOR ORGANIZATION: ENGLAND: A. D. 1900-1906; 1903; and
SOCIALISM: ENGLAND.

Of its 55 members in the new Parliament a considerable number
had been elected by a combination of Liberal and Labor votes;
but the same combination went as often to the increase of the
Liberal representation. One large section of the Labor voters,
organized under the name of the Independent Labor Party, stood
aloof from such alliances entirely. It had been formed some
years before, under the lead of Mr. Keir Hardie, a Scottish
miner, with Socialistic beliefs, but opposed to the aims of
the Marxian Socialists, and expecting nothing substantially
beneficial to the working class from any political party. His
mission was to create a Labor Party that would fight its own
battles on its own ground. He made no great headway until the
Taff Vale decision of 1902 roused the British Trade Unions to
fight for their lives. That brought them into the ranks of the
Independent Labor Party, and prepared it for the powerful
showing it made in the elections of January, 1906, when it
polled 303,000 votes, and elected 30 members who are free
lances in the House. The remaining 25 Labor Members act with
these on labor questions, but otherwise are to be reckoned as
allies of the Liberal Party.

{235}

Foremost among these latter is Mr. John Burns, who represents
the Labor Party not only in Parliament but in the Ministry of
Government, being the first of his class to be called to a
Cabinet seat. A London editor who wrote of him when he took
that seat said:

"He has been a working engineer, a strike leader, labor
agitator, a London County Councilor for eighteen years, and
member of Parliament for fourteen. He is a great leader who
never had a party, but whose influence has been felt in every
labor movement in England for the last twenty years. The labor
and social policy of the London County Council has been
largely inspired and directed by him. He has also molded labor
legislation in Parliament. Mr. Burns has ‘scorned delights and
lived laborious days’ for the sake of the workers. He is an
avowed Socialist. He has never changed his principles, only
modified his methods. He is a real Fabian, a skillful
opportunist, a tireless worker, and a first-rate organizer.
Since he became a Socialist who does things, he has been
ostracized by the Socialists who only agitate. Mr. Burns is
exercising great influence within the Cabinet, and is one of
the men in the confidence and in the secrets of the Prime
Minister, who seeks his advice in many matters outside Mr.
Burns’s department."

The same writer gave the following account of the many
important duties and great responsibilities of the office
filled by Mr. Burns, as the President of the Local Government
Board, which supervises the administration of local government
in all England and Wales:

"As President of the Local Government Board, Mr. Burns has
multifarious duties committed to his charge. He has to
sanction local loans, supervise the finances of local
authorities, hold inquiries into proposed new undertakings,
exercise the (almost) legislative powers which Parliament has
delegated to him by way of provisional orders, and is armed
with large powers of initiative, inspection, revision, and
veto, so that in some respects he can revolutionize the whole
system of local administration. In the domain of Poor Law his
authority is paramount. He revises, for example, the rules and
regulations which guide the system of relief and the
administration of the Poor Law, passes plans for new
workhouses, settles the wages of the nurses and porters, and
fixes the amount of snuff (if any) which a pauper may receive.
Sanitary legislation is also under his supervision, as he acts
as Minister of Public Health, and beyond the more strictly
local governmental functions belonging to his department there
is the social side of his work, such as the administration of
the Allotments Acts, the Unemployed Act, inquiring into
housing conditions, etc."

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905-1906.
Sudden German hostility to the Anglo-French agreement
concerning Morocco.
Demand for an International Conference.
The Conference at Algeciras and the Act signed there.

See (in this Volume)
EUROPE: A. D. 1905-1906.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905-1906.
Pan-Islamic agitation in Egypt.
Menacing attitude of Turkey.
The Tabah incident.

See (in this Volume)
EGYPT: A. D. 1905-1906.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905-1909.
Action in Persia during the Constitutional Revolution.

See (in this Volume)
Persia.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905-1909.
The Aliens Act.
A new policy of restriction on the admission of aliens.
Its working.

See (in this Volume)
IMMIGRATION: ENGLAND: A. D. 1905-1909.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1905-1909.
Progress in cooperative organizations of industry.

See (in this Volume)
LABOR REMUNERATION: COOPERATIVE ORGANIZATION.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1906.
Prevention of Corruption Act.

See (in this Volume)
CRIME AND CRIMINOLOGY.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1906 (March).
Report of Royal Commission on Labor Disputes.

See (in this Volume)
LABOR ORGANIZATION: ENGLAND: A. D. 1906 (MARCH).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1906 (April).
Convention for determining and marking the Alaska Boundary Line.

See (in this Volume)
ALASKA: A. D. 1906.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1906 (April-December).
Fate of the Liberal Education Bill, passed by the Commons
and killed by Amendments in the House of Lords.
Resolution of the Commons, contemplating a change of
Constitutional Law respecting the Legislative Powers of the
House of Lords.

The Education Bill was brought forward by the Government in
April and passed by the Commons in December.

See (in this Volume)
EDUCATION: ENGLAND: A. D. 1906

When the bill had been killed by destructive amendments in the
House of Lords, the Prime Minister, Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman, proposed to the House of Commons a
resolution, which was adopted, declaring that "the power of
the other house to alter or reject bills passed by this house
should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the
limits of a single Parliament the final decision of the House
of Commons shall prevail." In plainer words, this proposed an
amendment of what has been, since 1832, an unwritten but
understood rule of the British Constitution, namely, that the
House of Lords cannot defeat a measure which has been passed
by the Commons in successive parliaments, and thus certified,
by an intervening election, as being the embodiment of a
popular demand. The proposed amendment is to give the force of
law to a repeated enactment of the House of Commons, even
"within the limits of a single Parliament," and without the
intervention of an election.

The Premier has explained that this resolution is adopted only
to foreshadow action which the Government intends to take at
some convenient future time. So far as indicated by the
Premier’s resolution, he and his colleagues, if they do
anything affecting the peers in Parliament, will not touch the
existing composition of the aristocratic house, but will only
shorten the suspense in which it may hold legislation that is
persisted in by the popular house. As now exercised, the
practical effect of the suspensive veto of the Lords, if not
submitted to by the government, is to bring about what is
actually a referendum of the question at issue to the people.
The proposed constitutional amendment would eliminate the
referendum and empower the Commons to override the opposition
of the Lords.

{236}

The legislative function of the House of Lords would not
differ substantially then from that performed by the President
of the United States. Acts of Congress require the approval of
the President to make them law. His disapproval sends them
back to Congress for reenactment, if two-thirds of both houses
persist in them; annulling them if they do not. The function
is simply a critical one, and involves no exercise of
legislative powers, if the language of our Constitution is
correct; for that instrument, in the first section of its
first article, says: "all legislative powers herein granted
shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which
shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives."
Thus the reference of legislation to the President for his
approval or disapproval is not recognized as a grant to him of
participation in the exercise of legislative powers."

In this view the British House of Lords, when its part in
legislation is reduced, like that of the American President,
to mere criticism, expressed in approval or a suspensive veto,
cannot rightly be regarded as a legislative body, and
Parliament can hardly be counted among the bicameral
legislatures, as we have counted it hitherto. The House of
Commons will hold all the powers of legislation; the House of
Lords will be its official critic, commissioned only to make
it think twice in the enactment of some of its laws.

The King has no voice now in the making of British laws,
although, when his prerogatives are described, it is still
said that "he may refuse the royal assent to any bills." Two
hundred years ago it ceased to be prudent for royalty to
exercise that prerogative, and Queen Anne, in 1707, asserted
it in practice for the last time. The sovereigns of the
reigning House of Hanover have never enjoyed the satisfaction
of refusing assent to an act of Parliament. Even George III.
did not venture it, though he stoutly asserted his right.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1906 (May).
Withdrawal of the last British garrison from Canada.

See (in this Volume)
CANADA: A. D. 1906 (MAY).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1906 (SEPTEMBER).
Army Order instituting the General Staff.

See (in this Volume)
WAR, THE PREPARATIONS FOR: MILITARY.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1906 (December).
Broadened self-government extended to the Transvaal and the
Orange River Colony.

See (in this Volume)
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1905-1907.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1906 (December).
Passage of the Workmen’s Compensation Act.

See (in this Volume)
LABOR PROTECTION.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907.
Drink in its relation to crime.

See (in this Volume)
ALCOHOL PROBLEM: ENGLAND: A. D. 1907.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907 (August).
Act legalizing Marriage with a Deceased Wife’s Sister.

The following are the main provisions of the Act to legalize
marriage with a deceased wife’s sister which, after many years
of agitation by its advocates and many defeats in Parliament,
was passed finally in 1907:

"1. No marriage heretofore or hereafter contracted between a
man and his deceased wife’s sister, within the realm or
without, shall be deemed to have been or shall be void or
voidable, as a civil contract, by reason only of such
affinity: Provided always that no clergyman in holy orders of
the Church of England shall be liable to any suit, penalty, or
censure, whether civil or ecclesiastical, for anything done or
omitted to be done by him in the performance of the duties of
his office to which suit, penalty, or censure he would not
have been liable if this Act had not been passed:

"Provided also that when any minister of any church or chapel
of the Church of England shall refuse to perform such marriage
service between any persons who, but for such refusal, would
be entitled to have the same service performed in such church
or chapel, such minister may permit any other clergyman in
holy orders in the Church of England, entitled to officiate
within the diocese in which such church or chapel is situate,
to perform such marriage service in such church or chapel.

"Provided also that in case, before the passing of this Act,
any such marriage shall have been annulled, or either party
thereto (after the marriage and during the life of the other)
shall have lawfully married another, it shall be deemed to
have become and to be void upon and after the day upon which
it was so annulled, or upon which either party thereto
lawfully married another as aforesaid.

"2. No right, title, estate or interest, whether in possession
or expectancy, and whether vested or contingent at the time of
the passing of this Act, existing in, to, or in respect of,
any dignity, title of honour, or property, and no act or thing
lawfully done or omitted before the passing of this Act shall
be prejudicially affected nor shall any will be deemed to have
been revoked by reason of any marriage heretofore contracted
as aforesaid being made valid by this Act.

"3.
(1) Nothing in this Act shall remove wives from the class
of persons adultery with whom constitutes a right, on the
part of wives, to sue for divorce under the Matrimonial
Causes Act, 1857.

"(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act or the
Matrimonial Causes Act, 1857, it shall not be lawful for a
man to marry the sister of his divorced wife, or of his
wife by whom he has been divorced, during the lifetime of
such wife.

"4. Nothing in this Act shall relieve a clergyman in holy
orders of the Church of England from any ecclesiastical
censure to which he would have been liable if this Act had not
been passed by reason of his having contracted or hereafter
contracting a marriage with his deceased wife’s sister.

"5. In this Act the word ‘sister’ shall include a sister of
the half-blood."

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907.
Probation of Offenders Act.

See (in this Volume)
CRIME AND CRIMINOLOGY: PROBATION.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907.
French testimony to the good work of the English in Egypt.

See EGYPT: A. D. 1907 (JANUARY).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907 (April-May).
Conference of Imperial and Colonial Ministers at London.
Discussing Preferential Trade, Imperial Defence, and other
subjects.
Resolutions adopted.

See (in this Volume)
BRITISH EMPIRE: A. D. 1907.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907 (May).
Proposed Councils Bill for Ireland rejected by the Irish
National Party.

See (in this Volume)
IRELAND: A. D. 1907 (May).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907 (July).
Capture of Kaid Sir Harry MacLean in Morocco for ransom, by
Raisuli.

See (in this Volume)
MOROCCO: A. D. 1904-1909.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907 (August).
Convention with Russia containing arrangements on the
subject of Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet.

See EUROPE: A. D. 1907 (AUGUST).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907 (August).
Establishment of a Court of Criminal Appeal.

See (in this Volume)
LAW, AND ITS COURTS: ENGLAND.

{237}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907 (August).
Qualification of women for election to County and
Borough Councils.

See (in this Volume)
ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907 (August).
Patents and Designs Act.

See (in this Volume)
PATENTS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907 (November).
Abortive Compromise Education Bill.

See (in this Volume)
EDUCATION: ENGLAND: A. D. 1907 (November).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907 (November).
Treaty with France, Germany, Norway, and Russia guaranteeing
the integrity of Norway.

See ENGLAND:
EUROPE: A. D. 1907-1908.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907 (November).
Treaty with France concerning Death Duties.

See (in this Volume)
DEATH DUTIES.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907-1908.
Institution of the Territorial Force.

See (in this Volume)
WAR, THE PREPARATIONS FOR: MILITARY.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907-1908.
Proposals in the House of Lords of Reform in its Constitution.

Consequent, no doubt, on the increase of popular hostility to
the House of Lords which it had provoked by its dealing with
the Education Bill of 1906, and the serious threatenings of an
undertaking in the House of Commons to "end or mend" it as a
branch of Parliament, the Lords, in 1907, gave thought among
themselves to the expediency of a constitutional reformation
of their House. In February, a bill was proposed to them by
Lord Newton which provided in its first two articles as
follows:

"1.
(1) After the termination of the present session of
Parliament a writ of summons to attend and to sit and vote
in the House of Lords shall not be issued to any temporal
peer of the peerage of England entitled by descent to an
hereditary seat in the House of Lords (in this Act referred
to as an hereditary peer), unless he is a representative or
a qualified hereditary peer within the meaning of this Act,
nor to any lord spiritual, unless he is a representative
lord spiritual within the meaning of this Act."

"2.
For the purposes of this Act the expression ‘qualified
hereditary peer’ means an hereditary peer who possesses any
of the qualifications specified in the First Schedule to
this Act."

The schedule referred to was as follows:

"QUALIFICATIONS ENTITLING AN HEREDITARY PEER TO A WRIT
OF SUMMONS:
I. The holding at any time of any of the following Offices:—

1. High judicial office, within the meaning of the
Appellate Jurisdiction Acts, 1876 and 1887.

2. The office of First Lord of the Treasury, Secretary of
State, Chancellor of the Exchequer, President of the
Council, or Head (not being a permanent Civil Servant) of
any other Government Department.

3. The office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Secretary
to the Lord Lieutenant.

4. Office of Viceroy of India, or a Governor of the
Presidency of Madras or Bombay, or of Lieutenant-Governor
of any Province of India.

5. Office of Governor-General of the Dominion of Canada or
of the Commonwealth of Australia, or of High Commissioner
of South Africa, or of Governor of any Colony.

6. The Office of Parliamentary Under Secretary,
Parliamentary Secretary, or permanent Under Secretary, in
any Government Department.

7. Office of Lord of the Admiralty or member of the Army
Council.

8. Office of Minister plenipotentiary, or any higher
office, in His Majesty’s Diplomatic Service.

9. Office of Vice-Admiral, or any higher office, in His
Majesty’s Naval Forces, or of Lieutenant-General, or any
higher office, in His Majesty’s Land Forces.

"II. Election to serve in the House of Commons on not less
than two occasions before succeeding to the peerage."

In addition to the hereditary peers thus qualified to sit in
the House of Lords as proposed to be reformed, the Bill
provided for the election by the peers, from their own number,
of representatives, to the extent of one-fourth of their whole
number; and likewise for the election by the lords spiritual,
from their ranks, of representatives in the same proportion of
number; such representatives to form part of the House of
Lords in Parliament. It authorized, further, the appointment
by the King of peers for life, to be "peers of Parliament,"
these never to exceed one hundred in number.

Debate on the Bill in May resulted in the substitution for it
of a resolution, that "a Select Committee be appointed to
consider the suggestions which have from time to time been
made for increasing the efficiency of the House of Lords in
matters affecting legislation, and to report as to the
desirability of adopting them, either in their original or in
some modified form." The report of the Committee (twenty-five
in number, having Lord Rosebery for its elected chairman) was
not brought in until near the close of the following year. Its
recommendations were considerably on the lines of the Bill
described above. It suggested that the reformed House of Lords
should be made up of three classes of members, namely,
hereditary peers who had held certain high public offices—
much the same as those scheduled in Lord Newton’s Bill; two
hundred representative "Peers of Parliament," elected from the
whole body of the peerage, not for life, but for a single
Parliament, and ten lords spiritual, to include the two
archbishops and eight bishops to be elected. The
self-governing colonies, in the judgment of the Committee,
should be represented in the House of Lords, and twenty years
of service in the House of Commons should entitle an Irish
peer to a seat in it.

The plan submitted by the Committee would reduce the House
from 617 members to about 350. No action has been taken on the
report.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907-1908.
The Small Holdings Act.
The first year of its operation.

In 1907 an Act passed Parliament which provided for the
acquisition by local authorities of land to be divided into
small holdings for sale or lease to buyers or tenants who
could not otherwise be placed on it for self-support. The
results from the first year’s operation of the Act was
reported in September, 1909, by the Board of Agriculture and
Fisheries, which administers the law. The following are
statements from the report of the Board:

"Stated shortly, the result, so far as small holdings are
concerned, of the first year’s work since the Small Holdings
and Allotments Act, 1907, came into operation has been that
23,285 applications have been received by county councils for
373,601 acres, that 13,202 applicants have been approved
provisionally as suitable, that the estimated quantity of land
required for the suitable applicants is 185,098 acres, that
21,417 acres have been acquired by county councils, of which
11,346 acres have been purchased for £370,965, and 10,071
acres leased for total rents amounting to £11,209, that the
land acquired will provide for about 1,500 of the applicants,
and that 504 of them were in actual possession of their
holdings on December 31, 1908.

{238}

"It may seem at first sight that the progress that has been
made in satisfying the keen demand for small holdings which
the Act has disclosed has been small, but the figures do not
give at all an adequate idea of the amount of work that has
been actually done. It must be remembered that practically the
whole of the first six months of the year were occupied in the
preliminary work of constituting committees, issuing forms,
receiving and tabulating applications and holding local
inquiries, and that until this work was completed little
progress could be made in the acquisition of land. … The rate
at which land is being acquired is now increasing rapidly, and
we have little doubt that by Michaelmas, 1909, not less than
50,000 acres will have been obtained. In addition to the
holdings which have been provided by county councils, the
returns we have obtained show that over 700 applicants have
been supplied with holdings by landowners direct, mainly
through the intervention of the councils.

"In considering the results already accomplished it must also
be borne in mind that the problem is to fit particular men to
particular land, and not merely to acquire whatever land may
be in the market and to offer it in small holdings. The great
majority of the applicants desire land in close proximity to
their homes, and it is obviously more difficult to acquire a
large number of detached plots than to take a whole farm or
estate and divide it into a number of small holdings. …

"A striking feature of the applications made under the Act has
been the small extent to which the applicants desire to
purchase their holdings. Out of the 23,295 applications
received during the year, only 629, or 2.7 per cent.,
expressed a desire to purchase. … The Act imposes no direct
obligation on councils to provide houses, but we are of
opinion that where an applicant desires a holding to which he
will devote his whole time and from which he will get his
whole living councils should be prepared to erect a house and
the necessary buildings."

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907-1908 (December-March).
Appeals to other Powers for effective measures to
rescue Macedonia from its dreadful state.

See (in this Volume)
TURKEY: A. D. 1905-1908.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907-1909.
Anglo-Russian action in Persia.

See (in this Volume)
PERSIA: A. D). 1907, and after.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907-1909.
The Campaign of the Militant Woman Suffragists or Suffragettes.

See (in this Volume)
ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907-1909.
The disaffection in India.
Its character, causes, and meaning.
Hindu and Moslem feeling.
The past of British Government and its fruits.

See (in this Volume)
INDIA: A. D. 1907-1909.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1907-1909.
Negotiation by the President of the Board of Trade of a
General System of Conciliation and Arbitration Boards for
Settlement of Labor Disputes in the Railway Service.

See (in this Volume)
LABOR ORGANIZATION: ENGLAND: A. D. 1907-1909.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1908.
Estimate of King Edward VII. as a Diplomatist.

Mr. Isaac N. Ford, the American newspaper correspondent in
London, has much well-informed opinion in Europe and America
to support him in the following estimate of the diplomatic
influence exerted by King Edward, which he expressed in
January, 1908: