NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE list of New Year honours presents only one feature of interest, the peerage conferred upon Sir Joseph Lister, the founder of antiseptic surgery. That is an honour which will delight not only the medical profession, no member of which has previously received a peerage, but all who are able to understand the immense reduction which Sir Joseph Lister has effected in the sum of human misery. Only Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform, ever did more. Five baronetcies are distributed, one of them being received by Mr. F. Wills, most fortunate of tobacconists, and four- teen knighthoods, all doubtless deserved by their recipients, who are, however, almost totally unknown men. Even the officials selected are not the most prominent of their kind. It is a pity while such decorations are still valued not to distribute them with a little more frugality and a little more care. Lord Salisbury, we fancy, alike as aristocrat and philosopher, holds the minor distinctions in some con- tempt ; but though the feeling is healthy in itself, it should not be indulged by Premiers. The distribution of honours is, while the Monarchy lasts, part of their regular business, and should be managed, like their patronage, with discrimination. In the regular Services, in particular, it is watched with eager attention, and the lists are often re- ceived with comments which would, if Ministers heard them, make the ears of those who bestow them tingle.

All manner of statements and denials have been published this week as to the relations between Spain and the American Republic. We believe the substantial truth to be that Spain has appealed to her allies, and has received both from France and from the Powers composing the Triple Alliance assur- ances of a certain measure of support, provided that reason- able concessions are made to the Cuban insurgents. Spain can accept this advice from her friends without loss of dignity, and accordingly Senor Canovas has agreed to open negotiations with Gomez, the Cuban leader, through the United States. The terms are not yet settled, but will probably include the recognition of a Cuban Parliament, with financial control, but with no other control over the Executive sent from Spain. The Administration at Washington is desirous to end its term of office with a diplomatic success, and is at the same time aware that to threaten Spain might involve a more formidable war than was expected, and is conse- quently ready to advise the leading insurgents to accept terms. Whether they will agree is not yet known, but it is probable they may, as the disapproval of the United States would greatly dishearten their followers. It is more than likely that peace, if it is to be proclaimed, will be preceded by the retirement of General Weyler, who is regarded in America as an ogre, upon evidence which so far as we can see is rather

that of his previous administration than of his present one. He has poured out death, but we have seen no evidence that he has executed any one against whom he had no proof that he was either a rebel or actually favourable to rebellion. Un- happily that description includes most Cubans.

The plague in Bombay has proved a terrible visitation. Not only has the death-rate risen to the almost incredible figure of one hundred per thousand, but the ravages of the disease have broken down the spirit of resignation which in such circumstances usually marks an Asiatic populace. Two hundred thousand persons are known to have fled from Bombay, and the exodus still continues, so that certain branches of business are entirely at a standstill, and there is danger that the fugitives may spread the disease all over Western India. It has already ap- peared in all its severity at Kurrachee, whence it may spread eastward through the Punjab, where the popula- tion is already weak from scarcity, up to the head-waters of the Indus. The English, as usual, are exempt from the panic, and are exerting themselves for the relief of the people ; and it is to be hoped that the Government, availing itself of the popular alarm, will take some really despotic and efficient sanitary measures. Bombay, like every other city in Asia, wants better water, drains carried farther out to sea, and, above all, lateral ventilating shafts driven right through the city, without regard for any rights whatever. The city can afford any reasonable compensation, and the work should be done by Government,—if necessary, under the protection of rifles. It is absurd to be possessed of absolute authority, and guided by absolutely certain science, and yet hesitate when the lives of millions are at stake to use one and rely upon the other.

Mr. McKinley, the President-Elect of the United States, is still silent as to his policy, according to etiquette ; but his closest friends are making very definite promises in his name. They are said to be a " moderate " increase of the Tariff, "on Protection lines ; " the restoration of the Reciprocity Treaties ; an effort towards international bimetallism ; the devotion of surpluses to the retirement of greenbacks ; a large increase in the National Bank system, branch banks in the interior receivingt he privileges of national banks ; and economy in Government expenditure. That is an intelligible programme; but one would like to know what Mr. McKinley means by " moderate " Protection, by " economy " in a country where the Pension List consumes more than half the free revenue, and by this absurd sentence, "the maintenance of all kinds of money on a parity with gold." Is everybody to be paid in gold, silver, copper, or paper at discretion ? If not, where is the " parity " P

On Monday a crowded meeting was held in the Mansion House, Dublin, to support the recommendations of the Financial Relations Commission for treating Ireland as a separate financial entity, and taxing Irishmen less than citizens of Great Britain of the same means, on the ground that they are citizens of a poorer State with less commercial and material advantages. The Protestant Archbishop of Dublin and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin were both present. Mr. Ion Trent Hamilton moved the first of the resolutions, which was seconded by Lord Plunket, the Pro- testant Archbishop of Dublin, who dwelt on the solemnity of the treaty of Union, and declared that there is no occasion at all to treat Wiltshire or any of the poorer parts of Great Britain, which have no such treaty, as Ireland which has such a treaty,—though it has been ignored for eighty years, while a totally different financial policy has been steadily substituted, mainly by Mr. Gladstone himself, —should be treated. We suspect that if the treaty has been ignored sub silentio for eighty

years with good reasons, it will not be enforced now, and that if it has been ignored for bad reasons and Ireland has suffered by its being ignored, the poorer parts of the United Kingdom will insist on being treated as Ireland has been treated, and that the result will be financial chaos. The best speech was the O'Conor Don's, who is always shrewd and always moderate, but as we have shown elsewhere, his speech showed conclusively that though Ireland has always had financial exemptions, the whole tendency of the financial legislation since 1817 has been to assimilate the taxation of persons of equal means whether in England or in Ireland. and to drop the idea of taking the " taxable capacity" of the three kingdoms as the standard of our financial system. At present, however, Ireland seems to be as unanimous as Ireland knows how to be, in making the demand to have the whole financial policy of the United Kingdom revolutionised in her own favour.

Another meeting, not quite so weighty, but even more striking in its incidents, was held at Limerick on Tuesday for the same purpose. Lord Dunraven was in the chair, which was addressed both by the chairman and the (Roman Catholic) Bishop of Limerick, Bishop O'Dwyer, the same who made so courageous a stand against the "Plan of Campaign" in 1886 and the following years. Now, however, Dr. O'Dwyer is quite on the Irish side, and expressed his impression that if the Unionist Government are not willing to pay back the overtaxation of the Irish people, Irish Unionists might find it necessary to withdraw their support from the Unionist Government. Indeed, it was a question whether Union with England was not "dear at any price." It is evidently a great relief to the good Bishop that he finds himself morally at liberty to attack England with a certain élan. The sensation of the meeting, however, was the rising of John Daly, the released dynamiter, to support one of the resolutions, and especially to pronounce a high panegyric on Lord Castletown, whom he evidently hoped to hail as the " Washington " of Ireland. Lord Castle- town will hardly, we think, enjoy the enthusiastic appreciation of this famous artist in bombs. Lord Dunraven, however, admitted him to the platform, when Mr. Daly expressed his hope that English tea might be emptied into the sea like the tea on which Boston refused to pay duty. Lord Dunraven, Bishop O'Dwyer, and John Daly on the same plat- form, raising their voices for the same policy, and with the last of the three, the ex-convict, ecstatic in praise of a Conservative Irish Peer and Lord-Lieutenant, make a very remarkable historic group.

Mr. Rhodes has been making a sort of Royal progress through the cities of Cape Colony. The Anglo-Saxon colonists very sincerely, though very mistakenly, imagine that he somehow stands up for them against Downing Street interference on the one side and Boer tyranny on the other, and farther, that he is pre-eminently the friend of South Africa. At Port Elizabeth Mr. Rhodes made a characteristic speech. He told his hearers that he was going to meet and be examined by his fellow- countrymen. "I know," added Mr. Rhodes, "their unctuous rectitude, but I also know that I have your sympathies with me in the trouble I am about to meet." In spite of this cynical attempt to create ill-feeling in the Colony against England, one cannot help enjoying the splendid sang froid of the remark. Mr. Rhodes's hearers no doubt believed from these words that Mr. Rhodes was going back to fight, single-handed and unsupported, against a host of enemies. Yet, in fact, he has almost the whole of the influential British Press fervently on his side, a large section of the House of Commons and of the House of Lords, the most powerful part of the commercial community, all the music-halls, and all the great ladies. A man who can combine the influences, we will not say of the Court but of Court circles, with those of journalism, Radical and Tory, the Irish Members, Society, and the Stock Exchange, is hardly the man to pose as a person exposed to oppression. The doubt in Mr. Rhodes's case is not whether he will get fair treat- ment, but whether the case against him will be allowed a hearing. Mr. Rhodes also received a great ovation at Kimberley, and at the railway stations en route for Cape Town. The extreme section of the Dutch Press is, however, calling for meetings of protest to be held by the Afrikanders.

Mr. Rhodes reached Cape Town itself on Wednesday, and was received by a section of the population with great rejoicing. His carriage was dragged by fifty Rhodesian troopers in their shirt-sleeves and adorned with red pagarees, while twenty thousand people ire said to have assembled to hear Mr. Rhodes reply to the address which was presented to him by the Mayor. We trust that the public here will not be led into the mistake of supposing that this reception shows that Cape Colony is anything like unanimous in Mr. Rhodes's favour. In truth, if the details of the reception are examined, they show how greatly Mr. Rhodes has lost popularity. Two years ago all the prominent citizens and all the chief politicians would have been mentioned as appearing at any function such as that of last Wednesday. Now these names are absent. Mr. Rhodes's speech in reply to the address was not specially remarkable. There was no abuse of England or talk of "unctuous rectitude" on this occasion. The speech ended by the declaration that he still adhered to his formes opinion that his public life was only just beginning.

A French service newspaper, La _Marine Franca lee, makes some curious criticisms on the weak spot in the British Navy. Though the manning of our Fleet is a difficulty, it is admitted that our seamen are of high quality. Sailors and gunners are able and skilful, and the discipline of the ships is excellent, though gentle. The petty officers also are spoken of in high terms. Our executive officers, however, are pronounced to be the least educated in the world. A fifth-form boy in France would feel insulted at being asked such childish questions as are put at the end of the second year. The British Fleet must not be judged by its glorious past. Nelson and his great contemporaries were masters of the naval science of their time. "Who dare say the same thing of modern British officers " The men who control modern ironclads must not only be seamen but men of science. But the English system, though it may give us the former, can never give us the latter. We have no objection to criticism, but we prefer to accept Captain Mahan's judgment, which is that the English Captains and Admirals are the best in the world. If things are as represented by La Marine Frangaise, how is it that the English Fleets constantly perform evolutions which the French do not dare to attempt, and that our ships, unlike those of all foreign nations, do not employ pilots F We have not forgotten the story of the French cruiser which went aground and remained so fast that her consort abandoned the task of getting her off as hopeless. Fortunately, an English man-of-war came along and asked to be allowed to try. In a very little time by the aid of judiciously applied chains and hawsers the stranded vessel was afloat, and the French officers and crew were cheering our ship. Very likely our officers are clumsy at book-work, but we expect they have quite enough science to work their ships and lay their guns.

The Prussian Government has engaged in a characteristic enterprise. It fancies that too much freedom in dealing has reduced the prices of produce, and has passed a Bill which prohibits dealings in "futures," and compels all members of the Exchange to submit to minute rules as to settling their prices, advertising their prices, their hours of meeting, and a variety of other details, one being that business must begin and end at the sound of a bell ! The members are furious, and threaten to open new free Exchanges, or even to suspend business altogether until the Bill, which took effect yesterday, is repealed. The Bill has been dictated by the Agrarian party, who are wild with their sufferings from low prices, and have a fancy that if brokers could not deal in futures, imports would be diminished. They might as well believe that if there were no drain-pipes or reservoirs there would be less water in their fields. They do not seem to see that if they are right the Collectivists, whom they hate, are right too, for they will have proved that the Collective State can manage even the sale of agricultural produce better for the com- munity than individuals can. They will fail, of course, and after a short period of conflict and exasperation the new rules will be sufficiently evaded to be endurable; but the experiment throws a flood of light upon German methods of thought. It does not even occur to anybody in Germany that if Govern- ment passes a Bill against the hail, hail will fall all the same.

Mr. Balfour on Saturday made a speech at Haddington, the chief town of his own county, in support of the political services of the Master of Polwarth. He declared that Liberal Unionists and-Conservatives were now "inextricably inter- twined," and that "no revolution which he could contemplate was ever likely to separate" these two branches of one party. The Scotch, for historic reasons, had always believed that Conservatives represented class interest, but slowly the truth upon that subject was reaching the people, and there was growing up throughout Scotland a party devoted to the Unionist view of Imperial obligations and of domestic policy. The people will adopt, probably in the lifetime of men now living, "the principles by which alone States may become great, and permanently maintain their greatness." We have no doubt whatever as to the ultimate adoption in Scotland of Imperialist principles, which exactly suit a people at once haughty, kindly, and esurient, but we are not quite so con- fident, for reasons given elsewhere, of the adhesion of Scotch- men to the Unionist domestic policy. They do so love intel- lectual contention.

The Indian archmologists have made a " find " of real interest. Dr. Fahrer, the archnological surveyor of North- Western India, recently visited Mama Paderlya, in Butaul, a district of the Nepal Terai, and there found the monolith, previously believed to exist, on which the " Emperor " Asoka had placed an inscription recording that this was the birth- place of Buddha. The monolith stands amidst the ruins of a vast array of monasteries, and on it is an inscription record- ing that Asoka in the twentieth year of his reign (say 239 B.C.) erected the monument to mark the birthplace of Buddha, who was probably born a King's son in Kupilavastu in some year of the sixth century before Christ. The ruins around the monolith will be thoroughly excavated next year, the famine, which is bitter in the Nepalese Terai, preventing work this season. No human being, not excepting St. Paul or Mahommed, has exercised such influence over the religious thought of mankind as Gantama, and anything which makes him a reality or illustrates his history is of distinct intellectual interest. He revealed nothing in theology which seems true to Westerns ; but born a King among Pagan populations, he arrived by meditation at rules of conduct closely approaching those approved by Christianity. Europe despises Asia, but no successful creed has ever arisen in any other division of the globe.

A great sliding bog about an acre in extent came down on Monday from the high land on the border between the county of Cork and the county of Kerry, and, taking a southerly course, swept everything before it for a mile or two, over- whelming completely the house of Donnelly, one of the Earl of Kenmare's bog-rangers and quarrymen, and suffocating all his family, eight in number, only a daughter, who after a long stay in service had been enjoying a holiday at home, and had returned to her place on the very evening before the bog-slip, escaping the fatal stream. On Wednesday a rough temporary bridge over the bog-slide had been made, but this was soon overwhelmed by afresh movement of the bog, which was sliding as fast on the latter part of Wednesday as on Monday, the day when its motion first began. The calamity was due to the great rains and a heavy gale, which set in motion a very ill-moored piece of bog on very high land over a thousand feet above the sea. A bog-slide moves like a glacier, only at a much greater rate, its fluid constituents lending themselves to a much more rapid motion. It is, we believe, still slowly advancing.

Mr. Haldane, M.P. for Haddingtonshire, delivered a lecture in Edinburgh on Tuesday night on the future of Liberalism. Lord Wemyss (when formerly he sat in the House of Commons he was Lord Elcho) had challenged him in the Times of Monday to define Liberalism, which he once declared to be in its modern form "a living lie," and on this " courageous " language, as Mr. Haldane satirically called it, Mr. Haldane made a few pungent comments. He treated Lord Wemyss's negative Liberalism, the Liberalism which insists on the liberty of the citizen to do as be pleases, and to resist all restrictions on commerce or freedom which cannot be conclusively shown to injure the community, as obsolete, and maintained that Lord Wemyss had much the same conception of Liberalism as Rousseau and Robespierre. But it is surely very nnhistoric of Mr. Haldane to look upon Robespierre as unwilling to impose any restrictions upon human liberty,----or life,—which could be avoided. For his own part, Mr. Haldane thought that the negative theory of Liberalism is quite inconsistent with modern experience, and that in relation to land, education, and a score of other subjects, Liberalism requires at least as many positive modi- fications of human preferences as negative vetoes on arbitrary interference with human preferences. Perhaps so. But that is no answer to Lord Wemyss's question as to the true defini- tion of Liberalism. And so far as we can judge from the report of his lecture, we doubt whether Mr. Haldane himself knows how to define the Liberalism be himself accepts. Would it be the habit of mind which cares more about the welfare of the masses than about the welfare of the classes '?

A letter from Mr. Gladstone to Mr. Quaritch, the eminent bookseller, was published on December 24th, a little to late for us to notice. In it Mr. Gladstone describes book-collecting as a " vitalising " pursuit for which he him- self had neither wealth nor time. He has, however, collected in his lifetime some thirty thousand volumes, and among them about thirty improvements on the Book of Common Prayer, not one of which, says Mr. Gladstone with a smile which will console many Churchmen's hearts, has ever reached a second edition. Mr. Gladstone thinks books have become more accessible and cheaper, but complains gently both of the quality and the cost of modern book- binding. Of the deterioration in quality there can be no doubt, modern " russia," for example, perishing in a dry room ; but we should ourselves be inclined to express more surprise at the really extraordinary absence of enterprise in the trade. Wherein lies the difficulty of so binding a cheap book that it will lie open ? Is there no thread that will be as indestructible by damp or time as hair or coir? Wire is abominable. And is it impossible for chemists to make a glue which will continue to hold even if it gets a little dry ? Our great bookbinders can still produce most artistic work—at a price. It is in the mechanical details of the trade that improvement is required. Most binders seem never to open a book.

The Mahommedan Oriental Defence Association has issued a protest against the system of representation which is the one real demand of the Indian National Congress. The system, say the Mahommedans, would give them only one-fourth the representation, while they are entitled by their political and military energy and their social standing to at least one-half. That is a theory which if carried out would produce some very striking results. A Parliament of five hunched Members elected in India on that principle would, in fact, contain two hundred and fifty whites, one hundred Sikhs, sixty Mahom- medans, and perhaps ninety Hindoos. What a fancy men have for appropriating inapplicable plans because they have been successful elsewhere. There is not an able native in India who does not know that within ten years of the depar- ture of the British, the continent would be governed by a despotic Mussulman Sultan, who had defeated the Sikhs, crushed the Mahrattas, and found some Bengalee to organise for him a financial system. Any " representative " who then opened his mouth, except to extol the Sultan, would have molten lead poured into it as a hint to be constitutional.

The Revenue Returns for the three-quarters of the financial year now concluded are on the whole very satisfactory, the only point of any questionable character being the probable increase in the items of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach's estimated expenditure, of which, of course, we cannot as yet judge. The net increase of Revenue on the quarter that has just expired, as compared with the same quarter of last year, is more than half-a-million (namely, 2517,377), and the net increase on the three-quarters now expired is over a million and three- quarters as compared with the same period of last year (namely, 21,780,298). This shows a very considerable increase over the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Estimates for the Revenue of this year, and we may be pretty sure that his resources will be a good deal larger than he expected, what- ever may be true of the demand on those resources. We may reasonably expect, whatever course may be taken with refer- ence to the Education Bill, that the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer will be placed in a good position to meet all the reasonable demands on the national purse. And we hope there is no reason to fear demands that are much more than reasonable.

Bank Rate, 4 per cent. New Consols (n) were on Thursday, 111f.