NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE tension of the situation has been in no way relaxed. It is rumoured, we believe on good grounds, that the Government has offered to submit the question as to the character of the attack on Pul-i-Khisti to any European Sovereign ; and much will depend upon the Russian answer. If it is unfavourable, Sir E. Thornton will, it is believed, be recalled from St. Petersburg, and then actual hostilities will be close at band. It is not anticipated that the reply will be satisfactory, the Russian Government losing no opportunity of protesting that General Komaroff acted entirely within his orders. Both Governments are pressing forward preparations, that of Russia having forwarded a million sterling in gold to Central Asia, to be used where the paper roubles would be of no value ; and the British Government increasing its fleet in every direction. On Thursday, moreover, orders were issued to the Admiralty to prepare for the transport of a large body of troops under sealed orders. Nine ocean steamers, averaging 4,000 tons, were accordingly taken up, and more will be at once secured, the capacity of each being 1,200 men. The total number, therefore, to be despatched should be from 15,000 to 20,000 men, who are probably destined, with the forces withdrawn from the Soudan, for Kurrachee and Bombay. Preparations of this kind do not indicate much hope, nor is much entertained.

The rumour of a proposed arbitration, strongly affirmed in the Standard, receives support from a little-noticed letter addressed by Mr. R. B. Brett to the Times. Mr. Brett states that Mr. Gladstone, in the great speech condensed below, undoubtedly meant to imply that the attack on Pul-i-Khisti was eminently a case for arbitration, and adds that "there is good reason to believe that a proposal of this kind has been made by the Government to Russia, and a refusal to accept it must inevitably justify the English nation in the opinion of all civilised men." This letter, though printed by the Times in small type and in an unimportant position, comes from Lord Hartington's private secretary, and is therefore of serious importance. It is not known on what day the answer will arrive ; but there is a general impression that it will not be delayed beyond Wednesday, and that before the end of the week the world will know whether it is peace or war. The actual declaration, however, may be delayed by the necessity of communicating with Cabul. The Queen arrives in England on her return from the Continent to-day.

Mr. Gladstone on Monday proposed the Vote of Credit for eleven millions, in one of the most powerful speeches he ever delivered. Part of it was devoted to a justification of the form of the Vote, which, as regards the movement of troops from the Soudan, is hypothetical, and part to a comparison between this Vote and that of 1878; but Mr. Gladstone soon entered upon a higher strain. He informed the House that, although he could not define the degree of danger in which we stopd,—" for that does not depend upon any choice of mine,"—and although it was impossible to place full information before the House without misleading it, and although everything would be done and had been done "by just and honourable effort" to avoid "that sad contingency, the rupture of relations with a great Power like Russia," there was a full case for preparation. Reserving to the fall our impartiality, and refusing to prejudge the incident of Pul-i-Khisti, he still maintained that we were bound to defend the Ameer of Afghanistan, "our protected ally ;" that the "solemn covenant" of March 17th, made to protect him, had been followed by a bloody engagement ; and that "the attack was a Russian attack, that the Afghans suffered in life, in spirit, and in repute, and that a blow was struck at the credit of a Sovereign, our protected ally, who had committed no offence." Therefore, Mr. Gladstone protested against any demand for delay, which would only give an impression of indecision ; whereas "1 believe that with one heart and one soul, and one purpose only, you will go forward to perform and meet the demands of justice and honour."

So profound was the impression produced by this speech that, although the Tories intended to raise a debate on the Soudan, and Mr. Labouchere to propose the reduction of the vote by four millions, when Mr. Gladstone sat down the vote was put from the chair and passed without one dissentient, an action which so impressed Mr. Gladstone as at once "patriotic and forbearing," that on Thursday he voluntarily apologised to the Opposition for having, in his references to the vote of 1878, imported controversial matter into the debate. "I feel," he said, "that these words of mine might have had a tendency to cause a descent from the higher ground of the matters which we have had under consideration to a lower ground, and might have had a tendency—and had a tendency, I will say—to revive a controversy which is bygone, and whicle belongs to the last Parliament, which none of us would desire to revive, and the revival of which in connection with the higher subject is undoubtedly not for the public advantage." This voluntary apology from a man who never dreads debate, profoundly impressed the House, and should increase greatly the public sense of the gravity of the circumstances under which even Mr. Gladstone holds that silence is golden.

It was stated in London on Wednesday that the Russians had advanced to Meruchak, a point outside the debateable zone, and thirty miles nearer to Herat. Lord E. Fitzmanrice, questioned in the evening, admitted that the statement was accurate, the occupation of Meruchak having been twice telegraphed, once directly and once in an incidental allusion, by Sir Peter Lumsden. The Russian advocates in this country also admitted it, and defended it on the ground that Meruchak was a mere appendage of Penjdeh, and would necessarily be occupied. The occupation was, however, doubted at Simla ; and on Thursday another telegram was received from Sir Peter Lumsden admitting that he had been misinformed. The Russians had not advanced. It will be noted that while the Russian Government claims eight days as a reasonable time for sending a message to General Komaroff, it denied the truth of this report at once, as if it were well aware of all that is passing on its frontier.

Mr. Childers's Budget wag a very reasonable one, and in one respect a very remarkable one. Its sensation was the amount of the deficit, its strategy in the deficiency of sensation with which this deficit was met. The main idea of it was to divide the burden of the great deficit almost equally between the year in which it occurs and the future, raising something like half of it by taxation, and the rest by postponing the payment of Debt and the incurring of a small new Debt. As regards taxation, Mr. Childers showed very clearly that the tendency for many years back had been to throw an increasing burden on property and less and less on to the consumption of articles used by all classes ; and Mr. Childers held, therefore, that on the present occasion a fair share of the new taxation should be thrown on to articles of general consumption, for which purpose he selected spirits and beer. He adopted our suggestion of equalising the death. duties on real and personal property ; and though he only gets 2200,000 in the first year, ultimately he hopes to get 2850,000 by this change. He did not propose to impose any new tax, or to increase the tax on any raw material or on the necessaries of life. But he paid a humorous tribute to the inventiveness of his many correspondents in suggesting taxes, stating that it had been proposed to him to tax cats, soda-water, photographs, bicycles, and advertisements, as well as sugar and tea.

Mr. Childers gave the revenue and expenditure of the past year as follows :— Showing a deficit of 21,050,000 on the past year, that is, the year 1884 85.

For the current year Mr. Childers estimated the espenditore and revenue, before making any change of taxation, and reckoning the Income-tax at only 5d. in the pound, as follows :— Showing a deficit, without providing for the Vote of Credit of 211,000,000, of 2302,000. To this must be added 210,000 for telegraphs if the Telegraph Bill passes as it stands at present, increasing the deficit to 23,732,000; while including 2200,000 of probable Supplementary Estimates and £11,000,000 for the Vote of Credit, the deficit mounts up to the enormous sum of 214,932,000, or close on 215,000,000.

For this great deficit, Mr. Childers proposed to provide as follows :—By raising the Income-tax from 5d. to &I. he would get £'5,400,000; by equalising the death-duties so as to make real and personal property pay at the same rate, he would get in the current year £200,000; by a tax on Corporate property he will get £150,000; by increased spirit-duty 2900,000, and by increased beer-duty 2750,000; and by minor charges, including a small charge on the stamp-duty, he would get £100,000 more. This gives 27,500,000. Farther, by intercepting the action of the Sinking Fond wherever it is convenient to do so (in other words, by postponing the paying off of part of the Debt), he gets 21,600,000 more, making in all 212,100,000, which leaves still a final deficit of 22,832,000 anprovided for, and for which at present Mr. Childers does not propose to provide.

Mr. Chamberlain delivered an effective speech, as the guest of the Eighty Club, on Tuesday, on the chief points of which we have dilated in another column. He suggested that a war which interferes with and delays internal reforms is not altogether unpalatable to tile reactionaries of the present time ; but to him it was a matter of serious pain and grief to think that there should be any probability of these reforms being indefinitely postponed. However, as the Government were not yet "required to abandon all hopes of a peaceable and honourable settlement, which shall enable us to maintain our obligations to others, and which shall secure the honour and interests of the Empire without in any way infringing the dignity or self-respect of other nations," he would prefer to dwell on the brighter side of the prospect, the hope of reform. He hoped that as the Club had on another occasion listened to. "very orthodox expositions of high-and-dry Liberal policy," it would not object to hear how the situation presented itself to "one who has certainly never worshipped with Whigs in the temple of Brooks's." His own main object in politics was to raise the general condition of those among whom he lived; and he held political influence to be "the chief, if not the only, influence by which any large amelioration of unfavourable conditions, any extensive improvement in the condition of the masses of the population, could possibly be secured."

Mr. Chamberlain first attacked Lord Salisbury's proposal toreturn to a vigorous foreign policy and to embark on vaguely conceived projects of " Fair-trade ;" and then passed to Mr.. Goschen's speech to the Eighty Club delivered on March 100, and since published in the Nineteenth Century, and declared that he found it "as barren of suggestion as even Lord Salisbury's manifesto." Mr. Goschen, he said, was all for criticism. He abandoned all useful reforms to the "Salvation Army of politics," as be termed the Radicals. But we must assure Mr. Chamberlain that Mr. Goschen, though he suggested that among the enthusiastic Socialistic reformers who would catch at any remedy for misery, without carefully examining whether it might not do, as the old poor-law did, much more harm than good, were to be found men very like the Salvation Army in religion, did not suggest criticism as an equivalent for beneficent legislation, but only as the sieve through which to sift proposals for beneficent legislation. Indeed, Mr. Goschen is even now one of the most active of the Commissioners onthe dwellings of the poor. Mr. Chamberlain expressed his own deep conviction that a great extension of the power of local government would enable the new local parliaments to increase the comforts, "to secure the health, and to multiply the luxuries" of the poor, and "to carry out a vast co-operative system for mutual help and support." Well, we quite agree with Mr. Goschen that if that means that local governments may tax the people in order to provide them with good stores at the public expense, it is a proposal which requires the most elaborate sifting, if it is not to issue in the bankruptcy of local government boards by the score and the hundred.

How perfectly gratuitous is the thirty-first clause of the Bill empowering the Australasian Colonies to federate themselves, —the clause by which Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon assumed that New South Wales was to be tempted into the Federation,— but which certainly makes the Federation a mere empty name, because it empowers any Colony to withdraw from it at pleasure, only appeared on Monday, when the Times published a letter from Mr. Murray Smith, the Agent. General of Victoria, showing that New South Wales has never asked for that clause, and has, indeed, declared that such a clause would make no difference as regards her disinclination to join the Federation. Sir Saul Samuel has declared that his instructions do not empower him to take any part in the dis-. cussion of the Bill ; and he has, therefore, expressed no wish at all for this clause, which deliberately undoes all that the Bill proposes to do. Nay, we are told that the Victorian Government had waived their objection to the clause if its insertion would have removed the objections of New South Wales, but that the offer was not aczepted. That, then, on which Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon insist as propitiating New South Wales, New South Wales is entirely indifferent to, so that the significance of the Bill is destroyed for no good purpose of any kind. Clearly the thirty-first clause should be struck out in the House of Commons.

A Parliamentary paper has been published this week which contains a statement of the reasons of the Victorian Government for disapproving this thirty-first clause, one of which is so formidable that we are amazed at Lord Derby's and Lord Carnarvon's adhesion to it. The Bill requires that at least four Colonies must be represented in any Federal Council. Now, that number has only just been reached. The new clause would not bring in either New South Wales or New Zealand, but the new clause would enable any one of the four Colonies which have joined the Federation to leave it at will, and as, by so leaving it, it would reduce the number of Colonies represented to three, it would nullify the whole Confederation so far as this Bill legalises it. Did any builder ever provide so elaborately for the complete collapse of his structure, as Lord Derby appears to be providing for the collapse of the Australasian Federation P The incident of the Bosphore Egyptien has been closed, without the resignation of Nubar Pasha. The Egyptian Government, while maintaining its right to suppress that paper, admitted that a clause of the Capitulations protecting foreign domicile had been disregarded, and applogised for the disregard. The Minister of the Interior called on the French Consul, and this satisfaction was accepted. The printing-office which had been seized was restored "unconditionally ;" but it was arranged that the Bosphore should not reappear. It is added that a general law will shortly be prepared applicable to the entire foreign Press ; but we should say that law will be found to take a great deal of time. The Government of Cairo is not willing to give up its power of summary suppression in the last resort, while foreign editors prefer Consular protection to any law whatever. The whole affair would be contemptible, but for the eagerness with which M. de Freycinet seized on a trumpery pretext to assert himself in Egypt, and the rabid fury betrayed by the Opportunist journals. They can hardly desire a quarrel with England ; but they like to push every trumpery dispute up to the verge of a quarrel. Then they think "France is felt."

The visit of the Prince of Wales to Ireland terminated on Monday, and has been, on the whole, unexpectedly successful. Not only did the respectable classes manifest an eager loyalty, but the lower classes received their visitor respectfully, and in some places even with friendly enthusiasm. The attempts of the enrages Nationalists to provoke demonstrations were usually failures, and even in Cork were suppressed more by the general good-feeling than by the police. The most satisfactory feature of the journey, perhaps, was the great eagerness to see the Prince, and the total breakdown of the Parnellite policy of maintaining a sullen indifference. It seems quite probable that the Queen herself would be received in Ireland with an outburst of good-will, and that those were right who maintained that the temper of the Irish masses, though not, perhaps, their conduct, was due in part to a continuous sense of slight., The House of Hanover has not been gracious to Ireland, and the Irish belong to the races who feel sympathy much more keenly than justice. We do not mean to say they have had till lately much justice either, but only that now that we try to give them some, we should not expect it to be overvalued. Something else besides is sought, which a reserved and shy people find it difficult to give, but which the Royal Family might possibly bestow.

Mr. Bartley, lately the principal Conservative Agent, publishes a remarkable paper in this month's Fortnightly. He declares that his party must, to survive, become frankly Democratic, must elect its chiefs from below, instead of by cooptation, and must allow men not of high rank to rise to positions of importance. It must cease, in fact, to be governed by an oligarchy, must take the lead in recasting the Land Laws, and must, moreover, permit the House of Lords to be radically reformed. All that is sound advice ; but will not the Conservatives reply that it is Liberal advice P If government by the landed gentry is to be given up, and the hierarchical order of Society is to be overturned, and the House of Lords is to be improved till it ceases to be aristocratic and becomes efficient, what is there left to conserve P Mr. Bartley may be an excellent Tory; but he is evidently tainted with the idea that everything which exists should be useful, which is fatal to true Conservatism. The lilies of the field want to be lilies, not to be worried with demands that they should be edible. If they are to be eaten, they might as well be potatoes. Mr. Auberon Herbert on Monday, in a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, affirmed that the Spectator had published insulting criticisms on that journal. A little amazed, for we had intended only to smile at its astounding credulity, we referred back to the article, and found a sentence which might possibly be misinterpreted. We did not intend to accuse its conductors of being "agents" of the Russian Government, but of publishing every evening the views of those agents, as they admittedly do. The Editor of the Gazette is perfectly right, if be believes the Russian case, in stating it; and he can only state it as the Russians state it for themselves. He does that with wonderful exactitude, Russian diplomatists even on the Continent all making exactly the points made in the London paper, such as that the incident of Pul-i-Khisti is trivial, and ought to be forgotten. We hardly know anything more creditable to the national character than the nonchalant fairness with which Englishmen by thousands buy the Pall Mall, read its Russian articles, see Mr. Gladstone accused of "wanton crime" in even thinking of war with Russia, and pass on their way to vote eleven millions in support of Mr. Gladstone's view. At least M. de Giers cannot say that the English people have never heard the Russian case. It has been put before them with some exaggeration, and some needless abuse of the British Government, but as clearly as M. de Giera could put it himself, and with all his touching confidence in the value of words.

A singularly striking instance of fidelity to duty and presence of mind, under circumstances of a kind which destroy all presence of mind in the majority of men, was given during the fatal fire which took place on the morning of yesterday week iu Union Street, Borough. The shop of an oilman, Mr. H. Chandler, in that street took fire in the early morning of Friday week, and in consequence of the inflammable character of the stock, the fire burned most fiercely. Mr. Chandler, his wife, and a little boy all perished in the flames ; but a nursemaid, Alice Ayres, who was in charge of three little girls, and who could easily have saved herself alone, first took off the bed and threw out of the window a feather-bed, and then threw each of the little girls into it, finally jumping herself, but not till the heat and smoke had so confused her brain that she missed the bed, and dislocated her spine on the pavement of the street. She died in Guy's Hospital, after setting an example to us all of courage and fidelity such as we have hardly seen since Mr. Rabbeth sucked the tube by which he hoped to save a child from diphtheria, though he only communicated the fatal disease to himself. In a young nursemaid, bewildered by a frightful fire, the courage and devotion are even more remarkable. Alice Ayres deserves to be remembered.

Professor Ruskin has written to the Pall Mall Gazette to state that he has resigned the Slade Professorship at Oxford, not from any sense of the burden of years, or any indisposition to lecture on Art at Oxford, but solely on account of the vote of Convocation sanctioning vivisection in the physiological laboratory of the University. Moreover, he stated in writing to the Vice-Chancellor that this was his sole motive, and he had intended that his letter to that effect should be read to Convocation. Thus the University of Oxford has not only lost Professor Ruskin, and the ennobling influence of Professor Ruskin's lectures, by its vote, but what it has gained by that vote must, we fear, be regarded as the gain of a moral loss almost as severe.

The Conservative leaders are sparing of out-of-door speeches just now, but Mr. Gibson spoke at Cheltenham on Wednesday. It was an effective speech of the forensic kind, spoiled, as usual, by exaggeration. Why will Mr. Gibson never perceive that he would be twice as effective if he would distinguish P There is plenty of criticism, just or unjust, to be passed on the Government policy in Egypt, in South Africa, and in Eastern Europe ; but why spoil the criticism by the previous sentence, that "there was not a single point of important policy at home or abroad since the Government came into office in 1880 in which they have not blundered "14 He himself acknowledges that the choice of Lord Dal:feria may save India, and that the Government is right in the Russian struggle.