council elections. He impressed upon them the necessity of taking up seriously the question of the housing of the poor-of devoting all their power to getting rid of the existing scandalous conditions-if they wished to maintain their hold on public opinion.

Although politically the year had been full of trouble and perplexity the trade of the country continued to enjoy a good deal of the prosperity which had marked the previous year. Colliery proprietors were able to maintain higher prices than had been reached since "the boom" of 1873-4, and the prices did not seriously slacken other industries until the second half of the year, which, as it advanced, witnessed a reduction in the production of iron and steel, due as much to American competition as to the lack of fuel. Woollen and worsted industries were also affected by overproduction and speculation, and the cotton market by a failure of the supply of cotton from America, two bad crops having followed in succession. And on the other hand the war in China was seriously affecting one of the chief markets for such goods. In most branches of trade, engineering included, the signs of increasing competition with foreign countries, especially Germany and the United States, had to be faced, and it was becoming more and more evident that in future Great Britain would not enjoy that monopoly of trade which she had possessed throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century.

The outlook at the end of the year which closed the nineteenth century could hardly fail to arouse misgivings as to the future in all except the imperviously self-satisfied. The course of the war in the Transvaal found us confronted with difficulties for which our forces were unprepared and which our rulers had never foreseen. The light-heartedness with which we had entered upon the struggle for supremacy in South Africa had been sadly clouded, but the arduous task before us was still scarcely realised by the country at large, whilst the general thriving condition of the artisan and agricultural classes caused the increased taxation to be borne without grumbling. The paralysis of Great Britain in the councils of Europe, recognised by the press of our own as well as of foreign countries, attracted no attention in Parliament and raised no indignant protests from any quarter, except from a few ardent and irresponsible Jingoes. Lord Salisbury was given an absolutely free hand; and his policy of graceful withdrawals in face of the firm insistence of other States was accepted with a shrug of indifference by the bulk of the nation. In China, where so far as could be gathered from the scanty official news our advances to a better understanding and a common policy among the Powers had been ignored or politely put aside, we found ourselves as isolated as in Europe, and our efforts to maintain an understanding with the United States seemed liable to fail through the prominence suddenly given in the Washington Senate to the Nicaragua

Canal question. Whatever the rights of this case may have been, the proposal by one party to tear up a treaty which had been ratified by two was a new departure in diplomacy, and showed as little regard for the goodwill of Great Britain as for the danger of any complications which might arise. The only compensating consideration was that the United States, in common with the nations of Europe, having embarked on a course of colonisation, the responsibilities entailed by such possessions would render the preservation of peace more possible; but against this was to be placed the lessening influence of rulers and politicians and the increasing power of popular passion.

In the narrower circle of home affairs the country had little reason for congratulation. In Parliament no fresh reputations had been made, and several had suffered eclipse. The Ministry -after their appeal to the country under conditions which failed to commend themselves to any but strict partisans-found themselves stronger by two seats, and weaker in public esteem, than at the beginning of the year. Recourse had been had to every means by which the popular imagination could be excited, and its love of military display fostered. Rowdyism, when directed against the opponents of the war, was treated with indulgent forbearance; and during the elections statesmen did not hesitate to appeal to the passions of their hearers, avoiding thereby the need of defending the shortcomings of the Government. The political situation at home at the close of the century, moreover, as well as the national had many points of resemblance with that which marked its opening; but the methods by which it had been reached were widely different. In the interval which separated the dawn and the close of the nineteenth century the principles of religious toleration, of popular government, of commercial freedom, and of compulsory education had been established; and the country, especially during its last half, had become rich and its people comfortable, so much so indeed that not a few who looked below the surface were tempted to ask whether the vigour and self-reliance of harder times were not disappearing, and whether the nation was not passing through dilettantism to decay. Healthier symptoms, however, were to be found in our colonies, of which the importance was becoming more steadily recognised, and in them the germs of a more thoroughly democratic government of the whole empire might be found. The consolidation of our colonial and Indian possessions was the great work of the century after the downfall of Napoleon; and this peaceful ambition was the chief aim of the Sovereign, who during her occupation of the throne throughout more than half its course had united the empire by the bonds of personal devotion to herself, had made loyalty popular, and by her love of truth and purity and by her devotion to duty had lifted the heart of the nation to a higher ideal than it had ever before recognised.

CHAPTER VI.

SCOTLAND AND IRELAND.

I. SCOTLAND.

BOTH politically and ecclesiastically 1900 was a memorable year in Scotland. In 1899 there had been seen indications at once of the strength of Liberalism at home, as illustrated by several bye-elections, and of Imperial feeling in relation to external affairs. In the last year of the century these two currents of feeling were destined to come into conflict. The Imperial section of the Scottish Liberal party found exponents of conspicuous ability and weight in Lord Rosebery and Mr. Asquith. Their clearly defined attitude on all questions relating to the South African war brought into sharper relief the persistence of a very different temper among other influential members of the Opposition like Mr. Morley, Mr. Bryce and Sir Robert Reid, and even Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Nowhere, probably, was the extraordinary exhibition of Liberal disunion, afforded by the division (July 25) on the motion for the reduction of Mr. Chamberlain's salary, taken to heart more seriously than in Scotland. More sorrowfully, it may be, but not less surely than in England did large numbers of electors in Scotland who had never before given anything but a Liberal vote conclude that the party, uncertainly led and certainly not controlled by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman at Westminster, had for the moment shown itself disqualified for the conduct of Imperial affairs. This conclusion was not modified by the efforts of Liberal candidates of divergent sections to minimise their differences when the dissolution of Parliament was declared. Thus when the polls were closed it was found that, for the first time since the Reform Bill of 1832, Liberals had failed to obtain a majority among the representatives of North Britain, having lost eight seats-East Aberdeenshire, Edinburgh (South), Dumfriesshire, the Blackfriars and Bridgeton divisions of Glasgow, Sutherlandshire, Orkney and Shetland, and the Wick Burghs, and gained only one-Inverness-shire. Thus a Liberal majority of ten in the representation of Scotland was turned into a Unionist majority of four.

The solid support given to the Unionist Government by the commercial and industrial metropolis of the country, not a single Liberal being returned by the seven divisions of Glasgow, gave to the result of the Scottish elections more than a local Some of its aspects were indicated in an interesting speech made at Leith (Nov. 19) by Mr. Munro-Ferguson, who had shortly before resigned the office of Liberal whip. Two days after Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, speaking at Dundee, had maintained that four-fifths of the Liberal party were in substantial agreement on Imperial questions, and had condemned

the exclusive attitude of the Liberal Imperial Council, Mr. Munro-Ferguson, a strong Imperialist, declared that it was futile to keep up the appearance of cohesion in the Liberal party when there was no such unity of purpose. He added that personally he saw no ground for alarm in the tendency of the various sections of the party to act independently. On the contrary he believed that that course offered the surest hope of ultimate success, "for the strongest group would attract support, it would come to represent the party, and so an Opposition would be formed which would eventually make a Government.' In the extreme north the indignation already aroused among his constituents in Caithness-shire against Dr. Clark by his pro-Boer attitude was intensified by the appearance of his letters in the correspondence found at Bloemfontein (page 189), and resulted in his decisive rejection at the poll. Nevertheless the Liberalism of the far northern county still declared itself; the successful candidate, Mr. R. L. Harmsworth, a Liberal Imperialist, polling 1,189 against 1,161 for Mr. D. Henderson, a Conservative, while Dr. Clark only obtained 673 votes, and another Liberal, Mr. F. C. Auld, 141. On the other hand, Orkney and Shetland, for the first time in sixtythree years, rejected a Liberal candidate; Sir Leonard Lyell, who had sat for the islands since the last Reform Act, only polling 2,017 votes against 2,057 recorded for his Unionist opponent, Mr. J. C. Wason.

The main determining element of the elections of 1900 in Scotland was, no doubt, the war in South Africa. The Unionists were, however, appreciably aided by the general satisfaction felt. at the recent course of legislation affecting Scotland. This embraced the new scheme of procedure enacted with regard to Scottish Private Bills and the Agricultural Holdings Act Amendment Act, by which the machinery for settling differences between landlord and tenant was greatly simplified and the cost reduced.

The confident expectations cherished at the close of 1899 as to the approaching consummation of the union between the two principal Presbyterian bodies outside the Established Church of Scotland were realised in 1900. At the May meetings of the leading representative courts of the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church the final arrangements for the formal act of union were considered and determined-an attempt on the part of a number of lay office-bearers of the Free Church to secure delay with a view to a direct referendum to the constituent congregations being overruled. The General Assembly of the Free Church and the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church held their last separate meetings on October 30, when the resolution for union was carried by 643 against 27 votes in the former, and unanimously in the latter body. On the following day they formally constituted themselves the "United Free Church of Scotland," in the

Waverley Market, in presence of an audience computed to number 6,000 persons. Principal Rainy, of the Edinburgh Free Church College, the chief promoter of the fusion from his own side while Professor Orr had been the most conspicuous leader of the movement from that of the "U. P.'s"-was elected first Moderator of the Assembly of the new denomination.

The opponents of the union, though unable to stop the action of the representative bodies of the uniting Churches, were not wholly silenced. Their strength lay chiefly in the Highlands and Islands, where Free Churchism of the older type had persisted much more extensively than in the south. There were a few individual Lowland Free Church congregations in which feeling was very strongly divided on the question of union with the United Presbyterians; but the only Presbyteries which finally withheld their collective approbation from that step were those of Dingwall, Lochcarron, Skye and Inveraray. The total number of the dissentients was not known, but it was considerable enough for them to resolve not only to carry on a distinct corporate existence, but to initiate litigation with a view to the establishment of their title, as the true "Free Church of Scotland," to the edifices and property of the whole of the original Free Church founded at the Disruption in 1843. Assuming that no such catastrophe as the judicial endorsement of this claim happened, there seemed to be every prospect of important economies in effort and expenditure for religious purposes as the result of the fusion. Naturally there were not wanting prophets of dissension and even secession as likely to grow out of the questions of practice and even of principle left over by the uniting bodies for the decision of the United Church. However that might be, it seemed possible that the fusion of the chief outside Presbyterian bodies might lead to a suspension and conceivably a permanent cessation of the agitation for the disestablishment of the national Church of Scotland.

Commercially and industrially, 1900 was in the main a prosperous year for Scotland. In most of the principal departments of manufacture of metal products there was a great abundance of work. The output of the shipbuilding yards fell short by only a few thousand tons of the splendid "record" of 1899. A total surpassing all previous Scottish figures, and also those of England for the year, was attained by the locomotive builders north of the Tweed. The makers of pig-iron, on the other hand, and the manufacturers of malleable iron and steel, were increasingly hampered by the extraordinarily high prices of fuel. And the steel makers found themselves subjected to the competition of the products of foreign and particularly American furnaces at rates which, under existing conditions, it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to meet. The coal-miners, like their employers, had a remarkably good year. In the textile trades, except in the case of the Dundee jute manufactures, there was a marked falling off in prosperity and in the amount of work required in the latter part of the year.