[THE ILBERT BILL (1883).]
Source.—The Times, March 5.
Four weeks have elapsed since we first called attention to the disapprobation and discontent excited among the English residents in India by the Bill for subjecting them to the criminal jurisdiction of native judges and magistrates. The measure, of which we then pointed out the dangers, has since assumed a portentous importance. The whole non-official European community has been convulsed by it.... As for the asserted symmetry which is to follow from it, and the asserted inequalities which it is to remove, it will not, and cannot, do what it has been credited with doing. It removes one inequality while it leaves a dozen others untouched, and the inequality which it does remove is just that which is most clearly justifiable. It is a pandering, we will not say to native opinion, for no such opinion has been formed for it, but to the noisily expressed views of the native Press, and of one or two native civil servants, who are anxious to exercise the powers which the Bill confers, and who are on that very account so much the less fit to be trusted with them.... The Bill may be unimportant in itself, but it is one among many signs of the new ideas and new principles upon which the Government of India is to be conducted, ideas and principles which are utterly at variance with those by which our position in the country has been gained and held.
[FENIANS AGAIN (1883).]
Source.—The Times, March 16.
A terrific explosion occurred last night at the offices of the Local Government Board, Parliament Street, Westminster. The report was heard about half a minute after nine o'clock in the House of Commons. So great was the force of the explosion that the floor of the House and the galleries shook. At the time there was but a thin attendance of members, it being the dinner hour. The Duke of Edinburgh was in the Peers' Gallery, and he turned round at once and spoke to Sir Henry Fletcher, who was sitting near him. The Speaker rang his bell, and inquired the cause of the alarm.... The explosion occurred in the ground floor of the Local Government Board, smashing the stonework into splinters, and breaking into fragments the windows, portions of which lay strewn in the surrounding streets. Alarmed crowds gathered.
[THE MAHDI (1883).]
Source.—Sir Reginald Wingate's Mahdiism and the Egyptian Soudan, pp. 2, 5, 12-14. (Macmillans.)