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1872.]

TREATY OF WASHINGTON.

415

The English commissioners, in accepting these rules, and agreeing that the decisions of the arbitrators should be governed by them, denied that our government had in any way failed in the performance of international duties, or had neglected to use every proper precaution to prevent the departure of the privateers; on the contrary, they maintained that they had even gone beyond those duties by purchasing ships which were suspected, though without a proof, to be designed to be employed in the same manner as the Alabama.

But after the terms had been fully arranged and the treaty ratified, a difficulty arose which at one time seemed likely to prove fatal to it. The English negociators had all along understood, and believed that they had clearly made it to be understood by the American negociators, that the arbitrators were only to take into their consideration the amount of the actual and direct damage done by the privateers, whose depredations had given rise to the treaty; but the American government set up a claim for indirect damages-that is to say, for the expense that the United States had been put to and the losses they had sustained consequence of the failure of our government to prevent the privateers from quitting our ports. These indirect claims were made under the three following heads:

in

1. The losses in the transfer of the American commercial marine to the British flag.

2. The enhancement of the payment of insurances.

3. The prolongation of the war, and the addition of a large sum to the cost of it.

These claims were firmly resisted by the English commissioners, and at length virtually waived by the American government.

When all the questions arising out of the negociations had been satisfactorily settled, arbitrators were appointed in accordance with the stipulations of the treaty. They were-Count Frederic Sclopis, for Italy, President; Chief Justice Cockburn, for England; Mr. Charles Francis Adams, for America; M. Jaques Staempli, for Switzerland, and Viscount Itajuba, for Brazil. They met on the 15th, and again on the 19th of June, when they formally rejected the indirect claims. The discussions were carried on with occasional adjournments till the 25th of December, when

the president delivered the decision of the tribunal. It was agreed that in the case of the Alabama and the Florida, Great Britain had failed to fulfil the duties prescribed by the first and third rules of the treaty, but that in the cases of the Retribution, the Sumter, the Nashville, the Tallahassee, and the Chickamauga, she had not failed. The tribunal awarded 15,000,000 dollars, or about 3,000,000l., for the satisfaction of all claims.

These

Another award made this year, in accordance with the stipulations of the Washington treaty, was also against us. The right to the possession of the island of San Juan was referred to the arbitration of the Emperor of Germany, who decided that it belonged to the United States. two disputes, which a few years before would probably have led to a long and bloody war, were now decided by a judicial tribunal, whose award involved no humiliation of the party against which they were given.

While our diplomatic relations with the United States of America were thus placed on a satisfactory footing, those with France were somewhat impaired in consequence of the approach of the time when the treaty negociated by Mr. Cobden would expire. The French government, though actuated by the most friendly spirit towards our own, was compelled by the great increase of taxation which their disasters and their prodigious war indemnity necessitated, to introduce some modifications into a treaty framed under very different circumstances. The president of the French republic, M. Thiers, and his minister of finance, M. Pouyer-Quertier, both vehement protectionists, were naturally opposed to the free-trade principles on which the treaty was based, and wished to carry the inroads on those principles even further than the necessities of their country required. However, great allowance was properly made on this side of the water for the difficulties by which the French government and nation were surrounded, and the changes that were proposed to be made, though highly objectionable, produced no abatement of the cordial feeling which had now for a long time subsisted between the two nations. On both sides, too, efforts were made to maintain the free-trade character of the treaty, and contributed in no small degree to bring about the retirement, first of M. Pouyer-Quertier and afterwards of M. Thiers.

1872-3.]

THE COAL FAMINE.'

417

The close of the year 1872 and the commencement of 1873 was a period of strikes, rumours of strikes, arising from a general demand on the part of the working classes for increased wages and shorter hours of labour. There were strikes of agricultural labourers, masons, bricklayers, painters, plasterers, metal-workers-in a word, almost every trade connected with building; threatened strikes of bakers, causing serious uneasiness, and, lastly, strikes of metropolitan policemen and gasmen, creating very great alarm. Five of the chief participators in the last-mentioned strike were indicted for a conspiracy, tried before Judge Brett, convicted, and sentenced to be imprisoned for twelve months. The severity of this sentence excited a good deal of compassion for men whose conduct would otherwise have been regarded with general indignation. But the most serious of all the strikes that happened about this time was that of 10,000 colliers in Wales, drawing after it the compulsory idleness of 60,000 men engaged in the iron trade. The consequences of the cessation of labour of so large a number of persons engaged in one branch of industry was very serious. The price of coals, which for a great number of years had been steadily increasing, was now suddenly doubled, producing what was not incorrectly described at the time as a 'coal famine.' tunately for the poorer classes of our countrymen, the winter of 1872-3 was exceptionally mild, and therefore the scarcity of fuel thus produced was less severely felt than it would have been if the winter had been more rigorous. In connection with this subject Sir W. Armstrong delivered an important speech at Newcastle, in which he drew the attention of the English people to the rapid increase that was taking place in the consumption of coal, and to the waste which was a principal cause of that increase. He stated that our consumption of coal was accelerating at the rate of 4 per cent. compound interest per annum, and that if this increase continued our stock of coal, large as it is, would be exhausted, and therefore, that if the enhanced price of that commodity should prove to be the means of producing more care and economy in its use, it would be an ultimate advantage. He also stated that the coal annually raised was consumed in nearly equal proportions under three great divisions. 1. Domestic consumption; 2. Steam

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engine consumption; and 3. Iron making and other manufacturing processes. He suggested various means by which this precious article of daily consumption might be economised, and suggested the increased use of machinery and the diminution of the number of men directly employed in getting coal, as a means by which the supply might be equalised with the legitimate demand.

The commencement of 1873 was marked by the illness and sudden death of one who, though a foreigner, had for many years filled a large space in the eyes and in the affections of the English people. On the 9th of January the Emperor Napoleon III. terminated his chequered and eventful life at Chiselhurst, whither he had retired after his liberation from captivity in Germany. The long time that he had resided in this country, the intimate relations he had invariably laboured to maintain, and, on the whole, had succeeded in maintaining, with the English government, the admiration with which his high-souled empress was generally regarded, and the misfortunes which had overclouded his latter days, combined to produce a very strong feeling of regret at his decease, and to evoke a much warmer manifestation of sympathy throughout England than was made in the country which he had so long ruled, and in which he had once enjoyed such unbounded popularity.

The fifth session of the parliament elected in 1868 commenced on the 6th of February, 1873, and was inaugurated by a royal speech, delivered by commission, which contained the following announcements and promises of legislation:

'A measure will be submitted to you on an early day for settling the question of University Education in Ireland. It will have for its object the advancement of learning in that portion of my dominions, and will be framed with a careful regard to the rights of conscience.

'You will find ample occupation in dealing with other legislative subjects of importance, which for the most part have already been under your notice in various forms and at different periods. Among these your attention will speedily be asked to the formation of a Supreme Court of Judicature, including provision for the trial of appeals.

'Among the measures that will be brought before you,

1873.]

DUBLIN UNIVERSITY BILL.

419

there will also be proposals for facilitating the Transfer of Land, and for the amendment of our system of Local Taxation, of certain provisions of the Education Act of 1870, and of the General Acts regulating Railways and Canals; together with various other bills for the improvement of the Law.'

The large majority given to the Liberal party at the last election was an expression of national confidence in Messrs. Gladstone and Bright, and more especially in their ability to deal with inveterate evils that afflicted Ireland, and to unite that country to Great Britain, not only by legislative enactments but by ties of loyalty to her sovereign and attachment to her institutions. The government had responded to these expectations by bringing forward measures of justice to Ireland comprised under three heads. 1. The disestablishment of the Irish Church. 2. The settlement of the land question. 3. The enactment of a national system of education under which the rights of conscience would be fully respected. Two of these objects had been fully effected, and it was hoped that the present parliament would crown its labours by carrying out the third. Accordingly, as we have already seen, the subject occupied a prominent place in the Queen's speech, but the government did not propose to deal at once with the whole of so large and difficult a question, but only with that portion of it that related to the highest kind of education-that imparted in universities, leaving the other part of the question to be considered in a future session. The object of the bill now introduced was to create a new university in Dublin, no longer, as at present, identified with Trinity College, but of which that college, together with others already in existence, or hereafter to be brought into existence, should form a part, each standing in reference to the new university on a footing similar to that on which the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge stand to their respective universities, except so far as the peculiar circumstances of Ireland, and especially the preponderance of the Roman Catholic religion, seemed to render necessary peculiar safeguards. Among these safeguards was a provision excluding from the new university the teaching not only of theology but also of mental and moral philosophy,

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