Gov. Magoon has declared vacant the seats of the senators and representatives elected to the Cuban Congress in 1905, and another election will be held. The rivalry of Moderates and Liberals continues, while the Liberals, particularly, are divided among themselves. It is evident that American occupation of the island must continue for some time.
Separation of Church and State.
That order of history which is “philosophy teaching by example” has been moving steadily and persistently over the face of Europe toward a policy which the fathers of our own republic foresaw and adopted a hundred and twenty years ago. Perhaps the most pronounced feature of Liberalism in the Old World today is the conviction that the separation of church and state must become an accomplished fact. A movement so vast could not be carried forward without being complicated in some measure with bigotry and fanaticism, but on the whole it may be said that it is inspired and sustained by the highest motives of state policy.
From a Drawing by “Spy.”
THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
The present Liberal ministry in England, which succeeded the Balfour government, appealed to the country on the issue of free trade and was overwhelmingly sustained. But since that time it is safe to say that the Education bill, introduced by Augustine Birrell, President of the Board of Education—and whimsically called the “Birreligious bill”—has been the measure most discussed by the British people and the world at large. Briefly stated, this bill provides that, beginning with January of next year, only such schools as are provided by the local educational authorities throughout England shall be recognized as public schools, and after that date no public funds can legally be spent on any other schools. In other words, if the present denominational voluntary schools wish to receive government support they must become public schools, and as such must be content with the same undenominational teaching that is given in other public schools. The bill provides, further, that attendance shall not be compulsory, and that there shall be no religious test for teachers chosen by the local authorities. In those schools which are taken over by the educational authorities from the religious organizations—by the consent of the latter, of course—religious instruction may be given two mornings a week, but not by the regular staff of teachers, and not at the public expense. The bill further provides that $5,000,000 shall be appropriated for educational purposes by the government.
This measure, which has set all England in a ferment, was passed by the House of Commons, but in the House of Lords it met vigorous opposition, particularly from the spiritual peers, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. On Dec. 6 it passed the upper house, so mutilated as to be unacceptable to the Commons. The agitation in favor of mending or ending the chamber of peers has been coming prominently forward. No basis of compromise between the upper and lower house has yet been found. Since the Education bill is sent back to the House of Commons with its most vital features stricken out, the Liberal Government will probably go on to other legislation, equally unacceptable to the peers, and thus force them to reject a number of measures which are demanded by the people. They will then appeal to the country, and the ending of a system of hereditary legislators may be involved in the popular mandate.
PREMIER GEORGES CLEMENCEAU.
On the Liberal program is a bill abolishing plural voting. Under the present system of property qualification a large landowner may not only vote where he resides but in every other place where he has property, and as the elections do not occur in England, as they do in this country, on one and the same day, it is entirely practicable for such a landowner actually to vote for half a dozen parliamentary candidates. Of course the peers will oppose any reform of the present system of plural voting, and thereby will come in collision with popular sentiment again. The land tenure bill, by which a tenant may secure greater permanency in his lease or compensation for improvements in case he is dispossessed, and the trades unions bill, exempting the funds of labor unions from damage suits against members of such unions who may commit a tort, are also in the Liberal program, and both will be resisted by the upper house, thereby contributing to its own undoing.