POLITICAL MISCELLANEA.

LIBERAL v. CONSERVATIVE EXPENDITURE.

THE following table, showing the gross expenditure during the last sixteen years, will enable a comparison to be made between the cost of governing the country under Liberal and Conservative Ministries respectively: :

Total excess of Liberal over Conservative expenditure, £5,963,417 per annum. The statistics are taken from official sources, viz., the "Statistical Abstract of the United Kingdom," issued by the Board of Trade in 1888, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Budget Speech, April 15th, 1889.

Although it is not practicable, owing to the changes of Government in 1885 and 1886, to apportion accurately the financial responsibility of each Ministry, it is believed that the plan here adopted, for the reasons given below, is one which states the facts as fairly as possible.

The expenditure of the year ending March 31, 1886, has been placed to the account of Mr. Gladstone's Government, inasmuch as the Estimates were prepared by them, and during a large part of the year the Administration was under their control. No injustice is done by this, as they are credited with any savings effected by the Conservatives between June, 1885, and January, 1886.

Similarly, the expenditure for the following year (1886-7) is attributed to Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, inasmuch as the Budget was framed by Sir William Harcourt, and the Liberals again reap the credit of the reductions effected under the succeeding management of Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Goschen, which resulted in a surplus of £776,000.

The original estimates for 1886, including a vote of credit of eleven millions, amounted to £99,872,000, and if the payment of about six millions previously devoted every year to the reduction of the National Debt had not been suspended, the actual expenditure would have been 98 millions, the highest since the Crimean War.

"ONE MAN ONE VOTE."

MR. GLADSTONE has placed in the foreground of his programme the proposal to reopen the question of the representation of the people, by depriving the electors of every right of voting which does not depend upon mere residence. The scheme is open to great objections for the following among other reasons:

1. TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.-It is a fundamental principle of politics that taxation should always accompany representation. John Stuart Mill, the great Radical authority writes: "It is important that the assembly which votes the taxes, either general or local, should be elected exclusively by those who pay something towards the taxes imposed That representation should be co-extensive with taxation, not stopping short of it, but also not going beyond it, is in accordance with British institutions." "One man one vote " destroys this principle by ignoring the rights of property and insisting on residence alone as a qualification, irrespective of the payment of taxes.

2. DESTRUCTION OF ANCIENT RIGHTS.-The property franchise, in nearly its present form, has been in existence since the reign of Henry VI. The freeholders are the most independent and valuable element in the electorate, and have often asserted the rights and privileges of the people against the encroachment of kings and nobles. The working man who buys a cottage out of his savings would be deprived by Mr. Gladstone of any vote unless he chooses to live in it. The man of business, who may be the largest ratepayer in a constituency, would not be allowed to vote in it if he should happen to reside in another district. These are samples of the injustice which Mr. Gladstone's proposal would work.

3. DISTURBANCE OF THE SETTLEMENT OF 1884.-The extension of the county franchise was carried in 1884, with the concurrence and assistance of both the great parties in the State. It would not have been allowed to pass had it been a measure of disfranchisement. Mr. Gladstone himself voted against the principle of "one man one vote" when it was proposed on May 26th, 1884, and set his face against any attempt to abolish the property franchise. Various abuses which had crept in were, however, done away with, and both parties agreed to regard the Franchise Act as a settlement of the Reform question for many years to come. The principle of "one man one vote" is equivalent to a breach of Parliamentary compact.

4. FACTIONAL NOT NATIONAL ÎNTERESTS. - The change is now demanded by Mr. Gladstone avowedly on party grounds, because, as he asserts, the vote of the owners of property was cast against Home Rule. The abolition of the ownership vote therefore is proposed solely with the aim of removing one of the obstacles to the policy of separation on which Mr. Gladstone has embarked. It was safe from attack while he was in office.

5. FALSE PRETENCES. The agitation against the property franchise is based on erroneous statements. Mr. Gladstone has argued that Home Rule was defeated by 76,000 votes, but that the verdict of the country was overpowered by 586,000 pluralist freeholders, of whom 327,000 voted, 245,000 being Unionists and 82,000 Gladstonians. These statistics are entirely incorrect and misleading. The whole number of ownership voters is 504,000, of whom only 121,000-or about one in every fifty of the entire electorate-are non-resident, and not more than half of this number vote at elections. The remaining 383,000 occupy the property they own, and though their names appear on the registers as owners, they differ in no degree from ordinary occupiers. Mr. Gladstone's attempt to magnify the influence of this class, with the double object of distorting the verdict of the people in 1886, and preparing the way for further franchise agitation, is thus founded upon an entire perversion of the actual facts.

FREE EDUCATION.

THE word has apparently gone forth that Gladstonian candidates at elections are henceforward to inscribe on their programme the advocacy of "Free Education."

In this, as in many other instances, the unpleasant necessity of recanting their former opinions, and doing violence to the professions of their leaders, is forced upon the devotees of the Gladstonian cult. The language of the ex-Premier in his address to the electors of Midlothian at the General Election of 1885 on the subject, was as follows:— "The subject of a gratuitous primary education, to be paid for from sources wholly public, is one on which I desire to reserve a final judgment. There are obvious arguments in favour of the plan, which, because they are obvious, it is unnecessary to repeat. But it appears to me to suggest some difficulties which demand at any rate a grave consideration. According to the habits of this country, a contribution towards the cost of the article tends to its being more thoroughly valued by the receiver. It seems necessary to consider with care what will be the effect of the change on primary education other than that which is supplied by public authority. The rule of our policy is, that nothing should be done by the State which can be better or as well done by voluntary effort; and I am not aware that, either in its moral or even its literary aspects, the work of the State for education has as yet proved its superiority to the work of the religious bodies, or of philanthropic individuals. Even the economical consideration of materially augmented cost does not appear to be wholly trivial. Again, will there not be under the new system an increased jealousy of the introduction into the schools of any subject not strictly rudimentary? There remains the religious difficulty. The nation does not appear to be disposed to confine the public teaching in the primary schools to matters purely secular. If this be so, how are we to ask the entire population of Churchmen, Nonconformists and Roman Catholics to accept one and the same scheme of religious instruction, in despite of their denominational differences, and above all, a scheme prescribed and limited by the authority of the State in a country and at a period when a large mass of opinion has grown up which is totally adverse to the use by the State of any prescribing and limiting authority at all in religious matters. There may be modes of meeting all or some of these difficulties, but until such modes have been

carefully weighed and not found wanting, it would be premature in me to endeavour to press forward generally the subject of gratuitous primary education."

MR. MUNDELLA, Minister of Education under Mr. Gladstone's Government, in opposing a scheme for free education in Scotland, brought forward by Dr. Cameron, M.P., was equally emphatic. These are the principal arguments used by him on that occasion, May 18th, 1881:

"If you introduce this free system, it seems to me that you will have the very greatest difficulty. You will bring about difficulties that you do not anticipate, and I think it would be far better that Scotland should go on improving, strengthening, and widening the quality of her education rather than involve herself in new difficulties by this mode of expenditure.

"At present a working man has to pay fees only so long as his children are at school; and you say he had better pay 5s. a year constantly, than pay 12s. a year for the time his children are at school. But if you increase the cost of education so much that the rates are very largely enhanced, it will be a burden to the working man, because the rates have to be paid by him before his own children can go to school, and he must pay them after they leave school, or if he has no children at all, and the rates would remain a burden to him as long as he is a householder.

"I have made out a list of the rates required to meet the existing fees of the School Board, and I find in 117 parishes they would require 3d. in the £, in 44 it would be 4d., in 35 it would be 5d., in 26 it would be бd., in 10 parishes 7d., and so on it goes until it comes to 20d. in the £ Suppose you make the School Board schools-the schools with an attendance of 35,000-free, what will happen to those schools where the other 23,000 children are educated, and how are you going to deal with the 12,000 Roman Catholics? Are you going to make the 12,000 Catholics in Glasgow pay their share for the free teaching of those 35,000 children in the Board schools, and for the teaching mind you of what is practically a Presbyterian faith and the Bible and the Shorter Catechism?

"But if you had, under this Bill, free education throughout Scotland, how could you expel children from Board schools for irregularity of attendance?

"North Germany, Saxony and Wurtemburg, where fees are paid regularly, and have been paid from time immemorial, are the countries where there is best and most regular attendance at school to be found in the world."

THE SWEATING SYSTEM.

ON March 7th, 1889, the following Gladstonian and Parnellite members voted against the Supplementary Estimate out of which the expenses of the Sweating Committee are paid. If they had been successful, this inquiry, to which so much interest attaches, would necessarily have been brought to an end:

The list includes the names of the following "labour representatives :-Messrs. W. Abraham, Burt, Cremer, and Fenwick. Their tactics were condemned by Mr. Howell, another working man member, who said: "The Sweating Committee was doing most valuable work, and, although he was opposed to increased expenditure, he intended to support the Government on the present occasion."-Times, March 8th, 1889.

BOYCOTTING AND STRIKES.

MR. GLADSTONE has laboured to draw a comparison between the intimidation practised in Ireland and the legitimate action of working men in England in combining to obtain an increase of wages.

In a letter to Mr. Seymour Keay, of September 24th, 1889, he said:"Had English law been formed on like principles with the Irish Act of 1887, the dock labourers of London, who have recently vindicated their claims by a strike, would have seen their leaders put in prison like Irish members and Irish priests by the score, and would have been denounced as enemies of the law and order to which both they and the Irish people have conspicuously shown their attachment."

It is part of the curious irony of events that this very argument was used by Mr. Parnell against the boycotting clauses of the Crimes Bill of 1882, introduced by Mr. Gladstone's Government, and that it was ridiculed and repelled by no less a person than Mr. Gladstone himself. These are his words, as given in Hansard, on June 12th, 1882:

"The proposition of the hon. member (Mr. Parnell) was that he wished to take care that the government should not, under the pretext of putting down 'Boycotting,' also put down that species of combination which workmen were permitted to use in England. Now those combinations which workmen were permitted to use in England were usually directed to some object of benefit to themselves; but the combination of labourers in Ireland was generally attended with the opposite result-namely, of injury to the persons who used them. It was, in fact, a complete inversion of the strike as understood in England. It resulted, it was true, in loss to the employers; but it resulted also in loss to the labourers. In the case mentioned by the hon. member for the City of Cork, the labourers did not strike for the purpose of obtaining an increase of their wages, and probably no inducement which the landlord might offer would be likely to satisfy them. The strike in this case was done for a purpose extraneous to that of obtaining a benefit such as had been described."

It only remains to be added that Mr. Balfour's Act of 1887 is framed on the same lines as that of 1882 in respect to offences of this class, with the important safeguards, absent from Mr. Gladstone's Act, that a prosecution cannot be instituted without an information being sworn, and an order issued by the Attorney-General, and an appeal from the magistrate's decision is allowed in most cases.

THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN v.

TRADES UNIONISM.

AN attempt has been made to support the principles of the Plan of Campaign among English audiences by comparing that institution to an English trades union. Mr. W. O'Brien, M.P., declared in Tipperary that it was, the same in all essential parts, and was to serve the same purpose.

We collate a few of the rules of an ordinary trades union in England or Scotland with the corresponding directions, if any, laid down by the Nationalist Leaders for the conduct of the Plan:

TRADE UNION RULES.

1. The first rule is that it (the union) shall consist of as many members employed in and about the various collieries as may think proper to join."

2." Its (the union) funds, books, or other property shall not be appropriated in any other manner or to any other purpose than as provided for in these rules."

PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.

1.-"I am alluding now to the combination among the tenants known as the 'Plan of Campaign.' Now, let me say this, that if there be a man in Ireland, and I do believe there is-if there is a man in Ireland base enough to back down, to turn his back on the fight, now that coercion has passed, I pledge myself in the face of this meeting that I will denounce him from public platforms by name; and I pledge myself to the Government that, let the man be whom he may, his life will not be a happy one, either in Ireland or across the seas."-Mr. Dillon, M.P., Freeman's Journal, 24th August, 1887.

2.-The Plan of Campaign is secret. It has no known treasurer, no books, no audit

3.-"To secure the prices and wages the members may at all times contract for.

"The government of the association shall be conducted by an executive board. The board shall meet to transact the business of the association, and shall deal with all questions relative to the association's welfare in the manner stated in these rules."

5. "The board shall have a president, whose duty will be to preside at all meetings and see that the business of the association is conducted in a proper and legal manner."

6.-" A correct account of all moneys paid must be kept, and an entry made of the income and expenditure at every board meeting. A correct balance-sheet will be produced showing the income and outlay every three months, and distributed to the members."

"Every person having an interest in the funds of the association shall have full liberty to inspect the books and names of the members on any lawful day," within certain specified hours.

3.-The "Plan" is intended to secure the evasion of contracts. Mr. Dillon said at Glenbeigh, Jan. 23, 1888:

"I challenge Mr. Roe to come and face me in the County Mayo or Tipperary. I will show Mr. Roe, if he has any stomach for such work, men who can pay and won't pay, because I tell them not to pay. I will show him men who 'avow' that they can pay and refuse to pay because they are in the Plan of Campaign."

4.-The "Plan " has no executive board, no regular meetings, and is bound by no rules.

5.-The "Plan" has no such rule, its whole proceedings being conducted in an improper and illegal manner.

6. Mr. Dillon gave the analogy for this rule at Eyrecourt, 28th November, 1886, thus:

"One thing you may be perfectly certain of, that the committee which we have elected on this estate will make it their business and you need not take any trouble about it-that they will make it their business to ascertain who betrays the combination. Well, the man who betrays the combination (that is, withdraws from it after he is satisfied that he has been mistaken in his estimate of it) will never see a shilling of his money back again.”—Freeman's Journal.

IRISH EVICTIONS SINCE 1849.

THE following statistics, compiled from various Parliamentary returns, show the number of PERSONS evicted from their holdings in Ireland for non-payment of rent and other causes since the year 1849, after deducting those who were re-instated either as tenants or caretakers.

It is believed that the returns largely overstate the extent of actual evictions, as they take no account of any re-instatements other than those which were effected immediately after the eviction. On this point the Constabulary report that "it is impossible to say how many tenants have been since re-admitted, or may be re-admitted during the six months allowed for redemption."

Making allowance for these inaccuracies, however, the figures are sufficient to destroy the value of the assertion, sedulously made and repeated by Gladstonian speakers, that upwards of three million persons have been evicted in the last forty years.

They show, too, that the average number of eviction decrees which have been executed under Conservative Governments has been less than the half of those which has been enforced by Liberal Ministers.

NUMBER OF PERSONS EVICTED IN IRELAND SINCE 1849.