We need not dwell long on the rather stormy Parliamentary history of the last decade, on the divisions and disappointments of the Irish Home Rule party, once so powerful, or on the various attacks aimed at the Welsh and Scottish Church establishments and at the principle of "hereditary legislation" as embodied in the House of Lords. Some useful legislation has been accomplished amid all the strife. We may instance the Act in 1888 creating the new system of County Councils, the Parish Councils Act, the Factory and Workshops Amendment Act, and the Education Act of 1891—measures designed to protect the toiling millions from the evils of "sweating," and to assure their children of practically free education.
Substantial good has been done, whether the reins of power have been held by Mr. Gladstone or by Lord Salisbury—whose long tenure of office expiring in 1892, the veteran statesman whom he had displaced again took the helm—or by Lord Rosebery, in whose favour the great leader finally withdrew in 1894 into private life, weary of the burden of State. In 1897 we again see Lord Salisbury directing the destinies of the mighty empire—a task of exceptional difficulty, now that the gravest complications exist in Europe itself and in Africa. The horrors suffered by the Armenian subjects of the Turk have called for intervention by the great powers; but no sooner had Turkish reforms been promised in response to the joint note of Great Britain, France, and Russia, than new troubles began in Crete, its people rising in arms to shake off the Turkish yoke.
Meanwhile our occupation of Egypt is compelling us to use armed force against the wild, threatening dervishes in the Soudan, and well-grounded uneasiness is felt as to the position and action of our countrymen in Southeastern Africa in connexion with the Boer republic of the Transvaal. The British South Africa Chartered Company, formed in 1889, adventurous and ambitious, loomed large in men's eyes during 1896, when the historic and disastrous raid of Dr. Jameson and his followers startled the civilised world. The whole story of that enterprise is yet to unfold; but it has added considerably to the embarrassments of the British government. Hopes were entertained in 1890 that the British East Africa Company, by the pressure it could put on the Sultan of Zanzibar, had secured the cessation of the slave trade on the East African shore; these hopes are not yet fulfilled, but it may be trusted that a step has been taken towards the mitigation of the evil—the "open sore of the world."
If we turn to India, we see it in 1896-7 still in the grip of a cruel famine, aggravated by an outbreak of the bubonic plague too well known to our fathers, which, appearing three years ago at Hong-Kong, has committed new ravages at Bombay. Government is making giant efforts to meet both evils, and is aided by large free-will offerings of money, sent not only from this country, but also from Canada. "Ten years ago such a manifestation would have been unlikely. The sense of kinship is stronger, the imperial sentiment has grown deeper, the feeling of responsibility has broadened." Kinship with a starving race is felt and shown by the Empress on her throne, and her subjects learn to follow her example.
But the sense of brotherhood seems somewhat deficient when we look at the continual labour wars that mark the period in our own land. From the Hyde Park riots of socialists and unemployed, in the end of 1887, to the railway strikes of 1897, the story is one of strikes among all sorts and conditions of workers, paralysing trade, and witnessing to strained relations between labour and capital; the great London strike of dock labourers, lasting five weeks, and keeping 2,500 men out of work, may yet be keenly remembered. There seems an imperative need for the wide diffusion of a true, practical Christianity among employers and employed; some signs point to the growth of that healing spirit: and we may note with delight that while never was there so much wealth and never such deep poverty as during this period, never also were there so many religious and charitable organisations at work for the relief of poverty and the uplifting of the fallen; while not a few of the wealthy, and even one or two millionaires, have shown by generous giving their painful sense of the contrast between their own wealth and the destitution of others.
It has been a period of sharp religious disputes, and every religious and benevolent institution is keenly criticised; but great good is being done notwithstanding by devoted men and women. The centenary of the Baptist Missionary Society, observed in 1892, recalled to mind the vast work accomplished by missions since that pioneer society sent out the apostolic "shoemaker" Carey, to labour in India, and reminds us of the great change wrought in public opinion since he and his enterprise were so bitterly attacked. The heroic missionary spirit is still alive, as is proved by the readiness of new evangelists to step into the place of the missionaries to China, cruelly murdered at Ku-Cheng in 1895 by heathen fanatics.
The immense development of our colonies during the reign has already been noticed; some of them have made surprising advances during the last ten years. In southern and eastern Africa British enterprise has done much to develop the great natural wealth of the land; but the frequent troubles in Matabeleland and the complications with the Transvaal since the discovery of gold there may be regarded as counterbalancing the material advantages secured. Ceylon has a happier record, having more than regained her imperilled prosperity through the successful enterprise of her settlers in cultivating the fine tea which has almost displaced China tea in the British market, Ceylon exporting 100,000,000 lbs. in 1895 as against 2,000,000 lbs. ten years previously. Canada also now takes rank as a great maritime state, and the fortunes of Australia, though much shaken a few years ago by a great financial crisis, are again brilliant; in the world of social progress and democracy it is still the colonial marvel of our times.
H. M. Stanley
The last census, taken in 1891, in Great Britain and Ireland showed a vast increase of population, sixty-two towns in England and Wales returning more than 50,000 inhabitants, and the total population of the United Kingdom being 38,104,975. Alarmists warned us that, with the ratio of increase shown, neither food nor place would soon be found for our people; and a great impetus being given to emigration, our colonies benefited. But despite such alarms, articles of luxury were in greater demand than ever, the tobacco duty reaching in 1892 the sum of £10,135,666, half a million, more than in the previous year; and the consumption of tea and spirits increased in due proportion. The same year saw great improvements in sanitation put into practice as the result of an alarm of cholera, that plague ravaging Hamburg.