The rumours of an early Dissolution are reviving fast. This
Parliament met for the first time on August 12th, 1895, and might therefore sit until July, 1902, but it is an un- written Constitutional rule that no Parliament shall expire by effiuxion of time. If it did we might in a great emergency be left without a Parliament, which would mean either a paralysis of government or the calling of a Convention. Few Parliaments survive even five complete years, and it is imagined that if the war is over by July this Parliament will not. Those who believe this say that all necessary business, especially financial, is being rapidly pushed forward, that the Liberals will not regain popularity until the war has been forgotten, and that the Government hopes, after surmounting a grave emergency and greatly strengthening the Empire, to preserve its irresistible majority. They even argue that the extension of the principle of compensation for accidents to the agricultural classes is a highly contentious proposal, and that it was only accepted, as it was on Wednesday, without a division, by both sides of the House, in view of the importance of the labourers' vote. Such speculations are very natural, especially when one party greatly dreads a Dissolution, and the precedents rather favour them, but they are a little like speculations on the result of a war. You never quite know what will happen, or what is in the mind of the Commander- in-Chief.
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