NEWS OF THE WEEK.

SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART led the great force under his command against the Afridis in the Sampagha Pass on Friday, carrying the Pass, according to a hasty and imperfect telegram—which is all we have yet received—with unexpected ease. Victory was considered certain, for Sir William has a very large force with him, eleven thousand Europeans and twenty-four thousand Asiatics; and it was believed, chiefly, however, because of hisknown character, that he had conquered his frightful difficulties of transport. Never- theless, the experts will be greatly relieved, for we never remember to have seen them more anxious. The grand cause, we take it, is that the Afridis have evidently found a leader who understands his business, and utilises all the best qualities of his men,—their courage so long as they are not charged, their amazing readiness to fight in the dark, and their—quite novel— straight shooting. On the other hand, our European soldiers feel their losses, and their horrid discomforts, and the vexatious delays, and are most eager to "finish," so if they get a fair chance they will charge with a will. The majority of them are schoolboys, brave enough, but ill-taught, ill-fed, and with no experience,—recollect that, if anything goes wrong.

A most alarming telegram has been received this week from India. It is stated that the Plague, besides appearing in the Punjab, has broken out in Hurdwar, the place on the Ganges thronged at all times with Hindoo pilgrims, and in March visited by dense crowds, among whom are thousands of the wandering religious mendicants. If that is true, the Plague will be diffused slowly all over Northern India, where there are many cities, Benares is one, crowded to suffocation. India seems to have entered on s. cycle of misfortune.

The Six Powers have, it is reported, fixed upon a Governor- General for Crete. This is Colonel Schaeffer, a native by birth of Luxemburg, who has had some experience in organising troops, who distinguished himself in Egypt as an opponent of the slave-trade, and who speaks Turkish and a little Greek. He is only forty-one, and he married an Armenian lady of some rank in Constantinople. No doubt seems to be entertained of his qualifications ; and it is probable that if he had the means to pay them, he could take two thousand time-expired Luxemburgers with him to form a nucleus for a Cretan gendarmerie, and play the part of the marines in a man-of-war. His selection is a step forward, but there is much to be done before he can be despatched to Crete. He must receive some sort of a commission from the Sultan, who will hold out for a tribute not named in the original decisions of the Po were ; he must be accepted in some way by the Cretan Assembly ; a loan of E200,000 must be raised to pay for his expenditure before revenue can be collected ; and, above all, it must be settled whether the Six Powers are to control him through their Consuls, acting collectively, or whether he is to be considered independent of any body except his nominal suzerain. There will be months wasted in a diplomatic discussion of all those subjects, during which Christians and Mahommedans will continue plundering each other.

The negotiations between France and England in regard to West Africa reached a sort of crisis at the beginning of the week. On Tuesday evening a semi-official note was published in the French newspapers of a very minatory character. The note began by stating that grave difficulties were likely to take place in the Borgu and Nikki regions because the Niger Com- pany's officers were inciting the people to rebellion, and because the Senegal authorities had been obliged to hurry up troops as a preventive measure. The note goes on to point out that the British negotiators empowered to confer with the French negotiators "have been in Paris for more than a week, and everything leads to the belief that the British Government is seeking to let things drag on, and has no intention of discuss- ing them." The note ends, " There is no doubt that means will be found to foil these tactics." If this note was really semi- officially inspired with the desire to influence English public opinion, we can only say that the French Foreign Office is very badly informed as to the best method of doing business with England. The result has been a most remarkable out- break of unanimity of feeling in regard to the West African question. The whole English Press is supporting the British Government in the matter. We have given elsewhere our grounds for declaring that the Cabinet cannot give way to France for the sake of a quiet life, and we will not attempt here to go into the details of the squabble. Talk about details just now is only jogging the driver's elbow. We may note, however, that the angry growl with which the semi-official note was received here has had an extraordinarily sobering effect on the Parisian papers. They talk now of what e. subject for regret it would be if the two countries were really to quarrel.

Great discussion is going on both in Italy and Germany as to whether the British Government has ever guaranteed Italy against naval attack in the Mediterranean. It is asserted that she did so in 1891, Count Robilant having refused on behalf of the Italian Government to re-enter the Triple Alliance unless this security was accorded her. It is admitted, how- ever, that the agreement was not in the form of a treaty, which must have been laid before Parliament, but was only a memorandum, signed by Lord Salisbury and Count Robilant, expressing the wishes and intentions of both Powers. It is possible that even this statement is too definite, but no one who has watched the course of Italy at Constantinople and in Africa can doubt that an understanding has existed, and doer exist, between the two countries, or that it is one cause of the tension between Great Britain and France. The under- standing was kept secret, we imagine, because the British Government did not wish to commit itself to the Triple. Alliance, or to abandon its permanent policy of leaving itself a free hand in all Continental disputes. As to the under- standing itself, there could have been no fear of Parliament, all Englishmen being quite aware that we need an ally in the Mediterranean. in order to keep the great route to India safe against an attack which can only come from France.

The quarrel between the Government of Austria and the German Opposition has become suddenly more acute. It is indispensable to renew the Ausgleich, or arrangement for equalising the position of Austria and Hungary, at all events for one year, and the Germans in the Cisleithan Parliament have decided to resist it by obstruction, so as to compel terms to be made with them. The majority, which does not care if the Constitution is suspended, is determined to make no concession, and it is very doubtful if the Bill can be got through. In that event it would be necessary for the Emperor to intervene with the strong hand, and either suspend the Constitution as impossible, or decree some radical change in it to which the population would not object. It is believed that his Majesty would adopt the second course, and propose the adoption of universal suffrage without debate, under the threat that if his advice were not accepted he would stretch his prerogative to establish the broader franchise by decree. As we have pointed out elsewhere, the Emperor favoured this change when the last deadlock occurred, and revolutionary as such an exercise of the prerogative seems to Englishmen, it is difficult to see whence resistance could arise. Insurrection is out of the question, and the first measure of the new Parliament would be a Bill of Indemnity for the Monarch's advisers.

An incident has occurred in Germany which excited a perfectly extraordinary degree of interest. The Czar is staying at Hesse Darmstadt, his wife's native place, and the Grand Duke of Baden, who is the most liberal Sovereign in Germany, telegraphed his wish to call upon his highly placed relative. The Czar telegraphed back in a way described as "curt" that he did not wish for the visit, and all Germany rose in commotion. The Kaiser and Czar were quarrelling, Hesse and Baden were at loggerheads, the Czarina had been insulted about her conversion to the Greek Church, the "English" ladies of the Royal houses were fighting the " German " ladies,—the explanations were endless and often silly. Letters, however, have passed between Carlsruhe and Darmstadt, and the incident is officially declared to have been " closed." By far the most probable explanation is that the Empress of Russia, who enjoys running about at Darmstadt as if she were a girl again, felt bored by the idea of a cere- monial visit, and that the Emperor, in kindness to her, stopped it by a message which, like most messages by telegraph, was "curt." The story is only important as showing, with many other facts, how completely the Royalties on the Continent have recovered their personal importance.

We regret to record the death on Wednesday morning, from strangulated hernia, of the Princess Mary, Duchess of Teck, the most popular of all the cadets of the Royal house. She was born in 1834. Though a first cousin of the Queen and mother of the future Queen- Consort, the Duchess latterly stood at an immense dis- tance from the throne, more, we think, than seventy steps, the German Emperor, for one, being nearer than herself. Englishmen, however, forgot that in their strong liking for her frank ways, her genuine kindliness, and her habit of interesting herself in their pursuits and needs. She was connected in different ways with scores of benevolent societies, for many of which she was willing to undergo much fatigue and considerable annoyance. She was, in fact, really good, in the half-rough, half-dignified way which Englishmen prefer to everything except an aristocratic gentleness. It was a singular incident in the career of the Duchess, who ultimately made a marriage not quite Royal, that Napoleon III., just before the coup died, selected her as his future Empress, and formally or informally offered her his hand. A Protestant with a popular fibre in her nature and great common-sense, the Princess might have changed his destiny, and that of France.

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, speaking to his con- stituents at Stirling on Monday, showed himself no more able than his colleagues to suggest any definite line of policy. After a rather half-hearted reference to Home-rule, he dealt i with the Engineers' Strike. If it was true that the masters had formed the deliberate intention of smashing the Union, he might say of their policy that its wickedness was only equalled by its folly. "If the policy were successful, the employers of labour would be left face to face with surly and aggrieved and discontented men." There were, he admitted however, limits to the interference of the men. If interference were pushed too far it would be fatal to the trade of the country. The introduction of forty-eight hours a week into Government workshops had been amply justified by the results. All this is very true and very sensible, but unfortunately does not help forward a solution for the employers' grievance, that the Unions have passed the limit of interference, and not content with collective bargaining as to hours, wages, and conditions of labour, attempt to deal with the question of output,. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman also referred to the Indian Frontier War and to foreign policy, but here his remarks were of a very conventional order. Of the advocacy of any special principles there was not a word. There was plenty to• show that the speech was made by an enemy of the Govern- ment; nothing that it was made by a man with a distinct policy which he was anxious to impress on the country.

Mr. Courtney, speaking at Liskeard on Wednesday last, made a very interesting defence of the aid given by the- Government to voluntary schools,—a speech which will fill• the rectories with delight. That the supporters of voluntary schools should also have to pay School Board rates was, he declared, an inequality which they were entitled to resent. The Opposition leaders steadily passed by this complaint, though they were perfectly well acquainted with all the con- ditions of the Education problem. "The situation was, in fact, entirely parallel to what used to obtain in the old days, when Dissenters were forced to pay Church rates in support of the fabric of the church which they did not use, at the same time that they had to keep up their own chapels and places of worship." He did not know how the Opposition got over the difficulty, but the only explanation which occurred to him was "that whereas on the former occasion they were on the side of the minority who resented the pay- ment of a tax which they did not like, they were now on the side of the majority which approved of a tax which was levied on others." Few clerical Tories have gone further than this in setting forth the grievance of those who pay both subscriptions and rates. Mr. Courtney ended his speech by warning the voluntary schools that if they wanted to make sure of the continuance of the new grant they ought to try to interest the parents in the management of the schools. The speech was very characteristic of its author, and will fall like a bomb-shell among the Political Dissenters, who have always looked upon Mr. Courtney as at heart with them. To• find him defending, and defending in such terms, their pet aversion, voluntary schools, will be indeed a blow.

On Wednesday Mr. Frederic Harrison at a meeting of the Irish Literary Society made a most interesting speech on Burke, though, as we think, he was on the whole far too eulogistic. Burke was the greatest of rhetoricians—we use the word in its older and better sense—and he was also a con- siderable political thinker, but to true statesmanship he can lay no claim. The world in which Burke lived, said Mr. Harrison, "was a world of narrow prejudices, of party violence, of mean and ambitious spirits, amidst whom Burke soared like a superior being." Surely this is going much too far. Could anything have been more narrow, more prejudiced, more full of party violence, or more unworthy of a free and noble spirit than the way in which Burke attacked Warren Hastings ? His language and his conduct would have been gross and unseemly if he had been an Old Bailey advocate. Yet Burke at the Hastings trial was not a professional advocate, but a man undertaking a great public trust, and one of a semi-judicial character. But though it is impossible to study Burke closely and at first hand, and say that he soars like a superior being, he was, we admit, one of the greatest mas- ters of political diagnosis that the world has ever seen. He brought little in the way of remedy for the ills he described, but his insight was beyond praise. When he said of the Jacobins that they would rather " tyrannise in a parish of atheists than rule the whole Christian world," and declared that their benefits were superficial, their errors fundamental, he showed that he had recognised the true and essential spirit of Jacobiniem at its very birth. We note with great satisfaction that Mr. T. W. Russell, speaking at Fintona on Tuesday, entered a strong plea for equal treatment of Catholics and Protestants as regards University education in Ireland. "Put yourselves in the place of the Catholics," he said to his Protestant audience, " and see how you would like the experience of Dublin University entirely in the hands of your religions opponents, with the Fellows and Professors all Jesuits, with the Catholic Divinity School there instead of at Maynooth, and mass being sung every day in the chapeL" No doubt in theory Trinity College is as open to Catholics as to Protestants, but since the Roman Catholics object to a mixed University, and will not make use of it, Trinity College remains what it is by tradition, a Pro- testant seat of learning. In Ireland the only fair plan is to give the Catholics a University of their own as well endowed as Trinity College. We trust that the Government are bear- ing the matter in mind, and that they will without delay give the Irish Roman Catholic Church what she desires and deserves. Next Session is bound to be an Irish Session. Why should not the Government have a University Bill as well as a Local Government Bill?

The Cape Times of September 29th gives an account of a visit to the slave-market opened by the Cape Government in Cape Town, at which the Bechuana prisoners are disposed of to farmers who desire indentured labourers. Probably the account is a little written-up, but the ugly fact remains that a specially odious form of slavery—the sale of prisoners of war —has come into existence. But though we feel bound to make a protest in regard to the reaction against the English view of slavery which is taking place in South Africa, we do not say that the home Government is to blame. We gave responsible government to the Colony, and we cannot take back that gift. What we can do is to insist that the Imperial forces shall never be used to put down native risings without a strict agreement that the Colonial Office is to participate in the final settle- ment. Under ordinary circumstances we must look to the growth of a healthier sentiment in the Colony itself. We are glad to see signs of this in the meeting of the South African Political League, presided over by Mr. Rose-Innes, an account of which is given in a telegram in Thursday's Times. It is evident that Mr. Rose-Inns and his friends are bestirring themselves in the matter of the treatment of the natives. That is a hopeful sign. One meeting of protest at Cape Town is worth a hundred at Exeter Hall. Indeed we are not sure that action here does not sometimes do more harm than good, for it gives the men on the spot an excuse for not coming forward and sweeping their own doorsteps clean, to use Mr. Rose-Innes's metaphor.

The vacant Puisne Judgeship has been given to Mr. Darling. The Opposition newspapers have been making a great fuss about this appointment, declaring it to be a political job, and insisting that Mr. Darling knows no law, has no practice, and is altogether quite unfit for the Bench. No doubt the Lord Chancellor might have found many eligible barristers with much larger practices than Mr. Darling, but we cannot help thinking the whole outcry has been very much overdone. We have no cause to defend Mr. Darling, but a sense of common fairness obliges us to point out that Mr. Darling has acted as a special Commissioner of Assize, and that while thus exercising the functions of a Judge he has shown himself eminently capable of conducting judicial proceedings. Mr. Justice Darling's friends may remember that when Lord Blackbnrne was made a Judge the appointment was denounced with the utmost fury as a gross job and as a scandal because the new Judge had no practice. Yet Lord Blackburn proved as good a Judge as ever sat on the Bench. We must note another legal appoint- ment, and one about which there will be no two opinions. Mr. Justice Vaughan Williams is to have the Lord Justiceship vacated by Lord Ludlow. The new member of the Court of Appeal has all the qualities which ought to belong to a great Judge,—high character, sound learning, vigilance, and abso- lute fearlessness. Mr. Justice Vaughan Williams is the sort of Judge who would commit the Heir-Apparent, or what is more in these days, a Cabinet Minister, for contempt, with- out thinking he had done anything in the least noteworthy.

Lord Rosmead (Sir Hercules Robinson) died at his house in London on Thursday evening between S and 9 o'clock.

Had Lord Rosmead not allowed himself to be persuaded into returning to South Africa in 1895 his career would have been a very successful one, for during the nine years of his first Governorship he undoubtedly did notable service to the Empire. The end of his career, and his betrayal by the man for whom he had done so much, and who had induced him to go back to Cape Town, was exceedingly pathetic. It says much for our public life that during the troubled end of his career Lord Rosmead received nothing but fair and just treatment from all aides. Under the circumstances it would have been unjust to blame him, and he never was blamed.

The war between the officers and men in the engineering trade is a little nearer peace, because five-sixths of the men's resources accumulated in the Union treasury have been spent. Moreover, though neither the Federation nor the Society have yet frankly accepted the scheme for a conference laid before them by the Board of Trade, both show a sulky willingness to discuss its terms. The masters say the demand for an eight-hour day must be given up, and the men say that if they surrender it the notices for a lock-out ought to be simultaneously withdrawn. Both demands are fair if the conference is to be really an arbitrating body, but that is not certain, the bitterness of feeling being still very great. It is contended by men like Mr. George Livesey that it will never be ended until the employers and the met together establish a profit-sharing system, with the long-terns engagements which that system necessarily involves, and he urges both, through the Times, to consider this solution. Mr. Livesey, we need not say, is no Socialist, but an experienced employer of labour who dreads the Socialist trend of the new Unionism, and who has carried out his idea successfully in the great gasworks under his control.

Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Chancellor of the Exchequer, made an important speech on Thursday at Bristol, in the course of which he clearly explained the position of the Government about the currency. It is divided in opinion, but unanimous as to conduct. Monometallism may be true, or bimetallism may be true, but the Government will not tamper with the standard or override the refusal of the Indian Government to reopen its mints. Sir Michael was a trifle sardonic over the statement of that Government that it was preparing to establish a gold standard, wishing, he said, to know more particularly how they were going to do it. So do we, having always been taught to believe that gold poured into India disappeared like rain falling upon sand. It is, however, quite true, as Mr. Macleod says in the Times, that masses of gold, perhaps three hundred millions sterling, do exist in India, most of it hoarded, and it is also true, and very puzzling, that in the native States gold mohurs do keep afloat. If we are not mistaken, the Travancore Treasury pays in gold and silver indifferently, and issues a wonder- fully small gold coin, thinner than the tin of a capsule. Native travellers from native States bring quantities of mohurs to London, where they are eagerly purchased to use in jewellery.

The latest telegrams from New York are favourable to Mr. Low's chances of election as Mayor, that is, to the victory of the decent citizens. There was reason to believe that Mr. George, the agrarian fanatic, would at the last moment exert his great popularity with the discontented in favour of Mr. Low, and his sudden death will have the same effect. Mr. Low should win on Tuesday, unless there is an underground agreement between the Democrat and Republican "machines" to keep him out.

The polling in the Barnsley division of Yorkshire took place on Thursday, in a thick fog. The result, which was declared on Friday, was as follows :-

Walton (L) ... 00a ... ... 6,744 Blyth (C) ... ... ... 3,454 Curran (1 L)

1,091

In 1895 Lord Compton's poll was 6,820. In 1892 it was 6,739.

The Unionist poll in those elections was,-1895, 4,633 ; and in 1892, 3,498. It will thus be seen that there has been no accession of strength to the Home-rulers, and that the Inde- pendent candidate has drawn his votes chiefly from the Unionists.

Bank Rate, 3 per cent.

New Consols (2,i) were on 1riday, 1118.