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a year, but to be determinable at the end of six months by a month's notice from either party, if either should wish to determine it. It was said that the leaving of the "overtime" in the discretion of the masters gave a great victory to the latter. But the men had, through their leader, Mr. Burnett, always expressed their wish to save the masters from serious trade difficulties by working overtime when it should really be necessary to execute important contracts, and the extra price to be paid for overtime must always be a real check on needless and arbitrary demands for it. The masters in fact promised to yield every thing, after ten weeks, which they said it was impossible for them to yield.

More practically interesting to the general public was a strike of the telegraph clerks which took place in the month of December. Manchester was the chief seat of the strike, but Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast, and several other large centres, were much incommoded. The circumstances of the strike were these:

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It seems that the clerks, not being contented with Government treatment, formed for themselves a sort of trade union, called the Telegraphic Association. The Post-office authorities regarded this as a means of promoting disaffection, and nine of the employés of the Manchester district were suspended for connexion with the society. The other clerks to some extent taking their side, 120 struck work at Manchester. The same day at Liverpool a deputation of telegraphic manipulators waited upon the postmaster and requested him to demand of Mr. Scudamore, the head of the department in London, that all the clerks who had been suspended for joining the association should be reinstated. The deputation stated that, unless the request was immediately complied with, the members of the association in Liverpool would strike. Mr. Scudamore was communicated with by telegraph, and declined to accede to the demand. About fifty telegraph manipulators then left their work, but their places were immediately filled up, partly by clerks who had been sent down from London to meet the emergency. The movement was repeated at Glasgow, where seventy clerks struck; at Dublin, 200 turned out; at Bradford, twelve; and it is calculated that about 570 in all joined the insurrection. The Irish Times related how, one day in Dublin, on the bell ringing from London advising the clerks at the General Post Office that important intelligence was about to be transmitted, the male employés, numbering about sixty, with a number of young ladies who were working in circuits, rose from their instruments en masse, and refused to receive or transmit messages. The female telegraphists joined the strike in Dublin. Twenty-three telegraph clerks in Edinburgh struck, but their places were filled up.

Although the terms offered by Mr. Scudamore were rejected by the body of the Manchester men at one o'clock on December 12, which closed the time of grace during which they might return to service without prejudice, several individuals had yielded. At a meeting held in the evening, a resolution to accept Mr. Scudamore's

terms, if the men could be received upon that condition, was carried by about fifty votes against a dozen, the members of the Executive Committee, whose suspension was the proximate cause of the strike, remaining neutral. A deputation then waited upon the postmaster, who replied that he could now only deal with individual applications for return to service, but he would accept as many as were willing to resign their connexion with the association. These terms, after some discussion, were accepted. All the clerks who remained on strike after one o'clock were served with written notices of dismissal in the course of the afternoon. The strike at Dublin also terminated, the men having agreed to sign a paper expressing their regret at. having joined in the movement.

More general uneasiness, however, was caused by this strike than by any that had occurred, and the general anxiety for some definite means of meeting and forestalling the danger of these combinations was much and sensibly increased. The constitution of some powerful Court of Arbitration was the measure that found most favour with those conversant with the difficulties of the subject; but the prospect of such a court seemed as far off as ever when the year closed.

CHAPTER V.

The Colonies-Fenians at the Red River Settlement-Australia-Declaration respecting the Rights of the Colonies-British India-The Mussulman Population -The Wahabees-Hostilities with the Tribes-The Murder of Chief Justice Norman-Home Affairs-The School Boards and Education-Contagious Diseases Acts-Report of the Commission-The Census in Parliamentary Boroughs-The Money Market during the Year-Trade and Joint Stock Speculation-Mining and other Companies-Public Securities-Commerce-Increase in Imported Food-Differences in the Church-The Voysey and Purchas Judgments-The Archbishop's Letter-Dr. Magee-The Tichborne Trial-Retirement of the Speaker-Mr. Brand-Mr. Childers at Pontefract-Peaceful Close of the YearThe Queen's Letter.

THE year 1871 passed without the occurrence of any events of active importance in the colonial dependencies of our Empire. The peace of the interior of the Canadian dominion was once more, but slightly, disturbed by an idle attempt of some Fenian agitators to excite the population of the Red River Settlement, now the territory of " Manitoba," in which the revolt of Niel and his confederates took place in 1870. They crossed the frontier from the American State of Minnesota, but seem to have exhibited no eager appetite for fighting, and were easily induced to surrender to a small force of United States' troops which followed them. The leaders were brought before the State authorities, but released, on the ground (which certainly appears obvious enough) that the acts alleged against them took place out of American jurisdiction, and were not (we conclude) within the provisions of extradition law.

The Australian colonies had for some years been feeling their way (through the action of some of their ablest and most energetic citizens) towards a federation, if not political, at least for commercial purposes. But this arrangement, which promises so many advantages, has hitherto been prevented by intercolonial difficulties. An approach towards it was made this year, in connexion with the dissatisfaction felt with certain provisions of our Treaty with the Zollverein, and with some expressions in a despatch of Lord Kimberley in relation thereto, which deserves record as having produced an expression of sentiment respecting the rights of the colonies to maintain their own tariffs, irrespective of any commercial treaties entered into by the mother country; and, farther, of the right of the colonies to impose any duties they think fit on British or other goods "not being differential;" that is, as appears from the contexts, not differential as against foreign countries.

"The Memorandum on the subject of Lord Kimberley's Despatch, as agreed to by the Delegates from New South Wales, Tasmania, and South Australia.

"We are of opinion that the right of the Legislatures of these colonies to direct and control their fiscal policy, as among themselves, without interference on the part of her Majesty's Ministers in England, is a right which it is our duty to assert and maintain.

"We desire that the connexion between the mother country and her offspring in this part of the world should long continue, and we emphatically repudiate all sympathy with the views of those who, in the Imperial Parliament and elsewhere, have expressed a wish that the bonds which unite us should be severed.

"As members of the British Empire, the relations of which with other countries are conducted by the Imperial Government, we deny that any Treaty can be properly or constitutionally made which directly or indirectly treats these colonies as foreign communities.

"With the internal arrangement of the Empire, whether in its central or more remote localities, foreign countries can have no pretence to interfere, and stipulations respecting the trade of one part of the Empire with another, whether by land or sea, are not stipulations which foreign Governments ought to be allowed to become parties to in any way.

"We all agree that efforts should be made in our respective Legislatures to provide at as early a period as practicable, for this mutual freedom of trade; but we at the same time assert the right of the colonies we respectively represent to impose such duties on imports from other places, not being differential, as the colony may think fit."

"The Resolutions in reference to Intercolonial Tariffs as agreed to by the Delegates from New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, and Victoria.

"The Delegates from the Governments of New South Wales,

Tasmania, South Australia, and Victoria, in conference assembled, having had under their consideration Lord Kimberley's circular despatch of the 13th of July, 1871, have unanimously adopted the following resolutions :

"1. That the Australian colonies claim to enter into arrangements with each other, through their respective Legislatures, so as to provide for the reciprocal admission of their respective products and manufactures, either duty free, or on such terms as may be mutually agreed upon.

"2. That no Treaty entered into by the Imperial Government with any foreign Power should in any way limit or impede the exercise of such right.

"3. That Imperial interference with intercolonial fiscal legis. lation should finally and absolutely cease.

"4. That so much of an Act or Acts of the Imperial Parliament as may be considered to prohibit the full exercise of such right should be repealed.

"5. That these resolutions, together with a memorandum from each Government, or a joint memorandum from such Governments as prefer to adopt that method, shall be transmitted to the Secretary of State through the Governors of our colonies respectively. "Signed at Melbourne this 27th day of September, A.D. 1871. "JAMES MARTIN, Attorney-General and

Premier,

"GEORGE W. LORD, Colonial Treasurer,
"JOSEPH DOCKER, Postmaster-General,

"J. M. WILSON, Colonial Secretary and
Premier,

"JAMES DUNN, M.L.C.,

"JOHN HART, Treasurer and Premier,
"WILLIAM MILNE, Chief Secretary,

"W. MORGAN, M.L.C.,

"C. GAVAN DUFF, Chief Secretary and
Premier,

"GRAHAM BERRY, Treasurer and Com

missioner of Customs."

New South

Wales.

Tasmania.

South

Australia.

Victoria.

In British India no events occurred of a nature to disturb the general peace of society and the steady progress of material improvement by public works. The troublesome predatory inroads of the Looshais, a wild tribe or collection of tribes inhabiting the forest country bordering on Assam, occasioned the only frontier disturbance; but these were of sufficient importance to require in the latter end of the year an expedition of British forces, respecting which no complete information has as yet been obtained.

But in the absence of actual disaster the public mind of India, and of those at home who take an interest in Indian affairs, was a good deal agitated by discussion respecting the disposition of the Mussulman population of that country towards its Government. Out of the total number of 150,000,000 who inhabit

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British India (omitting the protected territories) about 25,000,000 are Mahometans. They are scattered in very unequal proportions over the surface of the country, most numerous in the extreme northwest, in Oude and other northern wealthy provinces, in parts of Bengal, and in particular districts of the south long under Mahometan rule: generally, it may be said, in the most advanced districts, which still contain indications of the wealth and power attained by members of the conquering faith in the times when they held the great peninsula in subjection.

"To this day," says Mr. Hunter, the author of a very remarkable essay on "Our Indian Mussulmans," "the peasantry of the Delta of the Ganges is Mahometan. Interspersed among these rural masses are landed houses of ancient pedigree and of great influence. Indeed, the remains of a once powerful and grasping Mussulman aristocracy dot the whole province, visible monuments of their departed greatness. At Murshedabad a Mohammedan Court still plays its farce of mimic state, and in every district the descendant of some line of princes sullenly and proudly eats his heart out among roofless palaces and weed-choked tanks."

When the English became masters of Bengal they found the Mahometans, so to speak, in possession. The new conquerors regarded them as paramount; the Hindoos, or Gentoos, as they were then called, as a secondary or subordinate body. So much was this the case, that when Warren Hastings had leisure to turn his mind to the subject of education and other civil wants, he recorded a minute (to quote the words of Mr. Nassau Lees, late Principal of the. College of which he speaks) "in which he declared that learning was disappearing from the land, and that, as the Government considered it expedient to retain the civil administration of the country in the hands of the Mussulmans, an institution for their education should be established. With this view he founded the Mahometan College of Calcutta." But, once deprived of their supremacy as conquerors, the Moslems, both of Bengal and other parts of India, dwindled in importance; the subordinate races began to assume a position more in accordance with their numerical superiority. The system of education at Calcutta (to be mentioned only as an instance of the general change) was to a certain extent Anglicised and reduced, "as regards the upper classes in Bengal, ostensibly to little more than the substitution of the Hindoo College with an English education for Hindoos, for the Mahometan College with a Mussulman education for the followers of Islam." The system of competitive examination, under which native candidates are now mainly introduced to civil employment, is said in addition to militate (speaking still chiefly of Bengal, the most opulent of Indian provinces) against the interests of the Mahometans; a prouder, perhaps more indolent race, outstripped by the active, ambitious, and pliable youth of the Hindoo races. But this and other alleged causes of dissatisfaction felt by the descendants of the quondam conquerors in a land where British rule has now enforced equality, must

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