The only important paragraph in the Queen's Speech, read by
Commission on Tuesday, refers to this difficulty. After mention- ing that the Arbitrators appointed under the Treaty of Wash- iugton have held their first meeting, Her Majesty proceeds :—" In the case submitted on behalf of the United States large claims have been included which are understood on my part not to be within the province of the Arbitrators. On this subject I have caused a friendly communication to be made to the Govern- ment of the United States." For the rest, the speech is .occupied with small things. Bills are to be brought in to abolish the Queensland slave trade in Polynesians, for the improvement of Scotch Education, for the Regulation of Mines, for enforcing Sanitary Measures, for the amendment of the Licensing System, and for the " Administrative Improvement " of Ireland ; but, with the exception of the Ballot Bill, there is no strictly political measure in the programme. Her Majesty congratulates the country on the freedom of Ireland, " with few exceptions," from serious crime, on the general diminution of crime in Great Britain, and on the material prosperity of the country, and ends with an appeal to the well-known assiduity of Parliament in the work of legislation, which, " from the increasing exigencies of modern society," still grows upon its hands.
