Lord Salisbury's Aliens Bill was discussed in the House of
Lords on Tuesday, when Lord Rosebery made a very able speech, denying, as we think justly, that there is so much urgency in the danger of our getting a lot of useless, because used-up, foreign labour shot on the waste-heaps of English industry, that a Bill for preventing that misfortune should be hurried through the Lords in July, in order to prolong indefinitely the labours of the House of Commons in August and September. According to the statistics of the Board of Trade, as weeded out and interpreted by the experts of that Board, there is not the least sign of growth in the number of immigrants who come to England and stay here. Indeed, they think that the number of those who come here, and who do not proceed to some American or Colonial or other port, is decidedly on the decrease. On the more important question as to imported Anarchists who may get us into trouble with other nations, by plotting crimes here which they carry out• abroad, Lord Rose- bery was still more confident in his refusal to consider the question of taking power for their expulsion, or im- prisonment if they refuse to go. We had twice passed such measures in times of danger, and had never once used the power so bestowed, and at present there is no evidence at all that any Anarchist plot, French, or Spanish, or Italian, has been concocted on our shores. The bomb exploded near Greenwich Observatory was probably the only one which foreign Anarchists had prepared.
