changes at the Admiralty. The "Megara," which had long since been placed at the bottom of the list of store-ships, as comparatively unfit for service, was, through some unexplained caprice, selected by the authorities to convey a large number of naval officers and seamen to Australia in the early part of this year. In the short passage between Plymouth and Cork the ship was found to be overloaded, and having proceeded on her voyage she was finally run aground on an island in the Southern Ocean in a sinking state. During her stay at Queenstown Mr. Baxter, representing the Admiralty in the interregnum between Mr. Childers and Mr. Goschen, had contradicted with more than official bluntness the complaints which had been preferred by well-informed Members; but when the loss of the ship was discussed Mr. Baxter was judiciously silent.

Sir J. Hay, in asking for information on the subject, stated that the " Megara" was properly a store-ship, and that, apart from any question as to her safety, she ought not to have been used as a troop-ship on account of her imperfect steam-power and slow rate of speed. In the beginning of this year she was ordered to be surveyed at Sheerness, but the cost of a thorough survey being greater than the department thought it right to incur, the expenditure was checked, although it was reported that the plates at the bottom of the vessel were considerably worn. When the subject was referred to in the House of Commons, the replies of the Secretary of the Admiralty were of the most flippant and even insolent character. It was quite evident why the "Megæra" went down. The plates were worn out, and there was a hole in her, and consequently it was necessary to run her ashore.

Mr. Goschen, assuming entire responsibility for sending the "Megæra" to sea, though he had only been a very short time at the Admiralty, asked the House to suspend its judgment as to the exact cause of the disaster until particulars arrived, and mentioned that, fortunately, the ship had forty tons of provisions intended for Sydney besides her own stores, so that the crew and passengers would have ample supplies at command. Moreover, in addition to the steamer chartered from Hong Kong, which was expected to arrive about August 29, her Majesty's ship "Rinaldo" had been ordered to proceed from Singapore with provisions. In consequence of the remonstrances of the captain and of the officers who were passengers on board the "Megara," he directed the examination of the ship at Queenstown. She was reported to be overcrowded, and to have leaky ports; but when 100 tons of cargo had been removed, and the ports repaired, she was reported fit for sea, and sailed accordingly. No reference was made to the thinness of the plates at the bottom of the ship in any of the complaints which reached the Admiralty at this time. Before being commissioned she had been twice docked within a short time, and her defects repaired. Mr. Barnaby, the assistant constructor, then reported as follows:"I beg leave to state that the Megara,' having undergone repair

at Sheerness, is reported to be complete. She is a good sea-boat, and, although more than twenty years old, is sound and strong. Her boilers are, however, only good for one year's service." As she was only wanted for a nine months' trip, this warranty seemed sufficient. The account which had been given of the ship by the different officers who had commanded her down to 1870 were all favourable. No trace of any report by Mr. Reed as to the thinness of the bottom of the "Megara" could be found at the Admiralty, but it was true that he surveyed her in 1866, when she was reported fit for two years' service at a certain expense, had repeatedly passed estimates for her repairs, and approved her use, and never gave a hint, as far as he could ascertain, of her unseaworthiness, even to Mr. Barnaby, his own assistant and relative. As to Mr. Reed not being allowed to communicate with the First Lord and other officials at the Admiralty after he retired, all that Mr. Childers refused to do was to receive private communications on public matters. A week after the ship sailed a question was put in the House, apparently on information supplied by Mr. Reed, and he would only say that he would rather be himself with his ignorance of that report than he would be any one else who knew that the plates were thin and did not state it. The affair, Mr. Goschen said, was a most serious one, which must be rigidly inquired into, but in the meantime he deprecated exaggerated statements which might destroy the confidence of the navy, and create something like a panic.

Lord Henry Lennox explained that the Board of Admiralty, to which he was attached, after the report that she was fit only for eighteen months' or two years' service, placed her at the bottom of the ships to be employed; and though during their tenure of office a great pressure came upon them to provide ships for carrying stores in connexion with the Abyssinian war, they did not employ the Megæra," and did not deem her sufficiently seaworthy for such a voyage as would then have been necessary. Mr. Goschen's statement was based upon the false assumption that the leakage of the "Megæra" which was reported at Queenstown came from the maindeck ports. It was not to be supposed that either the captain or the admiral at Queenstown would dream of examining the bottom of a ship which had just been despatched on a voyage round the world; they would take it for granted that the Admiralty had seen to that, and would never have sent out a ship under such circumstances. As to the reports of officers who had been out in the ship at different times, nobody disputed that she was a good vessel in her day, but wore out in the course of time.

In a less important matter-which nevertheless excited strong local interest-Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Lowe unnecessarily exposed the Government to defeat. Epping Forest to the East Londoner is like Continental Europe to the middle class. Lying within an easy istance of Hackney, Bethnal Green, Stepney, Limehouse, and Bow,

the favourite and only resort for fresh air to the great mass of

cockney holiday-makers. Epping Forest is a Royal Common, with royal rights of Forest over it, and real deer-now dwindling, it is true, to some dozen phantom specimens wandering within its precincts. If it were not for these privileges, the Common of Waltham Forest-which is the proper name of Epping-would long since have been eaten up by the advance of building speculations. Under the Enclosure Act, unfortunately, the process of absorption began. The trustees of Lord Cowley, who is owner of the larger proportion of the manors which make up the Forest, began to enclose in every direction; and this bad example was followed by other Lords of the Manor at Walthamstow, Chingford, Chigwell, West Hatch, Sewardstone, Thoydon Bois, and Loughton. If instant and strenuous resistance had not been made to these encroachments, the whole heritage of Londoners in the Common rights of Epping would have been filched away without redress. The Crown had the power to interfere in virtue of those forestal privileges which royalty claimed over the ancient deer forests of Waltham; but, instead of exercising those rights to keep Epping intact, the Commissioners of Woods and Forests began to sell the rights of the Crown to the Lords of the Manor at a few pounds per acre. Fortunately, Mr. Fawcett and other Members protested energetically in the House of Commons against the encroachments. The Government were compelled to move in the matter, and a Bill was brought in appointing a Commission to investigate and settle the rights of the Crown, the Commoners, and the Lords of the Manor. The Commission, as at first proposed by Mr. Ayrton, was to consist of two gentlemen connected with the locality, but in no way representing the people who enjoy the advantages of Epping, and of one barrister representing the Enclosure Commissioners. After strong protests from Mr. Harcourt and Mr. Fawcett, Mr. Locke, the member for Southwark, was added to the Commission; and a motion by Mr. Cowper-Temple for preserving the Forest was carried against the Government by a decisive majority. Not more successful was an attempt, audaciously made and arrogantly persisted in, to wrest from the citizens of London, under colour of Crown rights, their fair share of the land lying beside the western portion of the Thames Embankment. On this point Mr. Gladstone saw his majority split up, and found himself threatened with defeat by a Conservative private Member. Then, and not till then, did he yield so far as to accept by way of compromise an inquiry before a Select Committee. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and his subordinates fought the battle for the alleged rights of the Crown with remarkable obstinacy before this Committee, but in vain. The Report of the Committee was formally considered, and a resolution proposed by Mr. Smith, the member for Westminster, was adopted, affirming the propriety of granting a lease of the disputed land lying between Whitehall and the embankment to the Metropolitan Board of Works, in order that it might be set apart as a public garden for purposes of recreation.

The Deceased Wife's Sister's Bill, passed as usual by the Com

mons, was this year thrown out by the Lords, with an increased majority (97 to 71); and Mr. Jacob Bright's Bill for conceding the Parliamentary franchise to female householders, if single women, was defeated by 220 to 151, after a debate in which the honours were carried away by Mr. Bright himself, who argued his case in the regular fashion, but with clearness and fairness; and by Mr. H. James (Taunton), who made a bold and incisive speech against the Bill; reminded Mr. Gladstone that," if fame had no past, popularity had no future;" declared that the "sympathetic element in the nature of women blinded them to all logic;" argued that girls could not have a regular training in the world to fit them for political life; deprecated the influence the Bill would give to the clergy, and knocked to pieces the argument from the Throne by saying that her Majesty, specially trained by statesmen as she was, obeyed "the guidance and direction of a foreigner, simply because she was a woman and he was a man." The speech greatly raised Mr. James's position in the House. It was the speech of a man who was weary of talking around a subject, and went straight to the root of the matter. Mr. Bouverie argued that the claim came mainly from philosophers, who would relax marriage; and another speaker hinted that all strong-minded women were ugly.

The most remarkable point in the Debate was the half adhesion of the Premier, who seemed to think a visit to the polling-booth would injure women, but that, the ballot once established, they might be admitted to the franchise-an intimation which drew from Mr. Henry James, in the same speech, a spirited and earnest rebuke of Mr. Gladstone's instability and love of paradox.

Mr. Gladstone was more firm, however—at all events for the moment,-in his resistance to a scheme of another description.

There was a large attendance of members when Mr. Miall rose to propose a resolution, declaring that it is expedient at the earliest practical period to apply the policy initiated by the disestablishment of the Irish Church to the other Churches established by law in the United Kingdom.

Before the hon. gentleman was allowed to commence his speech, Mr. Gathorne Hardy deposited upon the table a large roll of paper, and, amid the cheers of the gentlemen sitting behind him, informed the Speaker that it was a petition from Bradford, signed by 24,700 persons, against the motion about to be submitted to the House.

Mr. Miall took no notice of this incident; but, entering at once upon the subject, moved, "That it is expedient, at the earliest practicable period, to apply the policy initiated by the disestablishment of the Irish Church to the other churches established by law in the United Kingdom." He presented the question, not as a Dissenters' grievance, but as a matter of national policy; and in combating the usual objections to an abstract resolution, he said his chief object was to ascertain practically how far the House was disposed to apply to Great Britain those principles which it had put into operation in Ireland. Vindicating the opportuneness of the

motion, he disclaimed all hostility to the Church or Church parties; and he asserted that the raison d'être of the Establishment had disappeared, and that she herself was convulsed by internal dissensions. Next he went on to argue that the Church system had failed in every way, and that it was unwise any longer to be bound by its fetters. It had failed to secure universality, harmony, and uniformity of worship; and it had failed to supply the spiritual wants of the country, for the greater part of recent Church extensions were due to the voluntary principle working within its borders, not to connexion with the State. On the unjust appropriation of the whole ecclesiastical revenues of the country to one particular Church he expatiated at length; and he held that the precedent of Ireland was conclusive in favour of the Disestablishment of the Church in England. Next he touched on the social mischiefs of an Established Church, and on the disadvantages to the Church of being cramped by state control, and urged that she would be all the safer by Disestablishment when the time of revolutionary attacks should come.

Mr. J. D. Lewis seconded the motion, treating it from the point of view of a Churchman desiring ecclesiastical freedom.

Mr. Bruce opposed the motion on the part of the Government as inopportune in point of time, and unjustified by any legislation of past years. And Sir R. Palmer, because, among other mischiefs which disestablishment would work, it would weaken or destroy the Church which is "the very inheritance" of the poor, both in rural parishes and in the poor populous districts of great towns and cities.

This argument was met by Mr. H. Richard by reference to the case of Wales, where the neglect of the ministers of the Establishment had been repaired by the exertions of Nonconformists, and of Churchmen acting according to the voluntary principle.

When Mr. Scourfield had resisted, and Mr. W. Williams had supported the motion, Dr. Ball, with true Irish vehemence, denounced the half-heartedness with which Mr. Bruce had opposed the resolution, and asserted that the Church would be defended as long as the defence did not peril the existence of the Ministry, and would be abandoned as soon as its desertion could secure their safety. Mr. Disraeli remarked that the proposal was a reversal of the policy of the old Puritans, who had always appealed to the temporal power in spiritual matters; and he answered the argument, founded on continental and Irish precedents, by examining the consequences of disestablishment in France and Ireland. The Irish precedent, he admitted, led logically to the disestablishment of the Church here, but we were governed more by rhetoric than logic, and fortunately, for the experience of Irish disestablishment was not encouraging. Who, he asked, prompted this appeal to the House of Commons? In answering this, Mr. Disraeli expressed a confident belief that the great majority, both in the House and in the country, was decidedly in favour of the Church. He attributed the movement to Noncon