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which it is believed will be attained through the unquestioned supremacy of Great Britain.

The Natal Congregational Union have addressed to the Congregational Union of England and Wales a memorial which was received in London at the end of January, 1900.

The Natal Congregationalists, while, as Christians, deeply deploring the war, express their deliberate conviction that, humanly speaking, the conflict was inevitable. The war had long been premeditated and prepared for by the Boers, with a view to military and political dominion over the whole of South Africa, and the plea of fighting for independence was but a blind to hide the real aim of the enormous military preparations of the Republics which commenced years before the disastrous Jameson Raid. The memorialists desire to impress upon their fellow Christians in England "that the "Boer ideal of Government is a military oligarchy, "the power being exclusively in Dutch hands, while the British "ideal is based upon the equality of all white men " and the humane and just treatment of the “native races, and they believe that this is only to be "realized by the complete success of the British arms, and that "in British administration lies the only hope of uniting the "various States of South Africa, and of the permanent peace "and prosperity of the whole country. For this great and large "numbers of the Colonists of Natal, very many of whom belong to the Churches and Sunday Schools of the Union, are now "fighting at the front."

Lastly, the memorialists state that they deem it of importance that Government on British lines should be established in every State of South Africa, under one flag, as in Canada and Australia.

THE REV. F. W. MACDONALD, President of the Wesleyan Conference, presided at a special service for intercession in connection with the war, and for our soldiers and sailors and their wives and families, at Wesley's Chapel, City Road, London, on January 10th, 1900. The President, in his address, incidentally explained why he declined to use the word "humiliation." To use it would have been to suggest that we were engaged in an

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unjust cause-a cause of which we should be ashamed. He declined to lend even the semblance of approval to that idea.

THE REV. HUGH PRICE HUGHES, of the West London Mission, an ex-President of the Wesleyan Conference, having been invited to attend a meeting held at Plymouth on December 30th, 1899, for the consideration of observing a national day of humiliation, telegraphed as follows:

"No humiliation, but thanksgiving for readiness of "Englishmen to surrender all, even life itself, to ensure "freedom for Africans and justice for our "kinsmen.”

Writing to the Methodist Times of January 11th, 1900, the Reverend gentleman says:

66

“We have casually become acquainted with a Boer lady, now in London, whose sympathies are, of course, with her own 66 race. She speaks in strong terms of the unscrupulousness and unrighteousness of "the Kruger party. She says, as we all knew, that "before the raid the more liberal and enlightened party represented by General Joubert was rapidly growing, and but "for Dr. Jameson's insane and unpardonable conduct, the 66 performances of President Kruger and his ruthless military oligarchy might have ended before now. Many of the quiet "Boers are totally opposed to his methods of Government, his "mendacity, his political unscrupulousness, " and his scandalous misuse of public

"money."

The Methodist Times, of September 21st, 1899, says:

"Wesleyan Methodists hate war, and are prepared to do "anything reasonable to prevent it. But we are certainly not "prepared to say that we have no duty to the British Empire. "Events seem to prove that what President Kruger "really desires in his heart is to destroy "British ascendancy in South Africa,"

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| clear statement of which is best far the people.

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THE RIGHT HON. J. CHAMBERLAIN, M.P., the Secretary for the Colonies, speaking at the Annual Banquet of the National Union of onservative and Constitutional Associations in London, on June 29th, 900, said :

WHAT THE UNIONIST PARTY HAS TO FIGHT AGAINST.

We (the Unionist Party) were brought together by a common danger. How great that danger was we are only, perhaps, just now beginning to ppreciate, when we reflect what our situation would have been to-day if ve had had a Parliament in Dublin, co-ordinate with our own, manned by the enemies of England. But I daresay that many of us on both sides hought at that time that our alliance was only temporary, and that it would naturally come to an end with the crisis which had brought it nto existence. The fight for the Union, we can all see now, was only a chapter in the greater fight for the Empire. Those men who with a light heart would have brought about the disintegration of the United Kingdom are substantially the same men who did their utmost to prevent the expansion of the Empire. Those who would have thrown over their fellow subjects and co-religionists in Ulster are now ready to desert the loyalists in South Africa and the Uitlanders in the Transvaal. At all times they have stimulated and encouraged the ill-feeling which exists against us abroad by their misrepresentation of the policy of this country, by their libels and slanders on those who are entrusted for the time with its destinies. At the same time, they have attempted to divide us at home by appeals to passion and prejudice and by their efforts to set race against race and class against class. For 14 years we have fought shoulder to shoulder against the forces of dissension and disorder, and the longer we fight the better we like it.

A TRUE NATIONAL PARTY.

There has worked out of this alliance a true national party. We retain our separate organizations, we retain our separate names, which are familiar to all and are to the advantage of all. But we are the national party, and have received, in consequence, a greater amount of public support than has ever been awarded to any party since the time of.the Reform Bill, and we have accordingly secured the strength to deal with a number of questions which have baffled, and must have baffled to all time, the efforts of Governments which are founded strictly upon old party lines.

ITS ACHIEVEMENTS.

Just let me remind you of the results which this alliance has achieved. I venture to think there is no time in our recent history-in the present century-which has been more fruitful of good than its closing years. In no time has so much good work been done. In this time Conservatives and Liberals, forgetting ancient animosities, laying aside personal prejudices which at the commencement of this great change were

no doubt very strong, have worked together for the good of the Empire and for the material progress and welfare of the masses of the population in this country, especially of late.

OUR IMPOTENCE OF A FEW YEARS AGO.

Let me recall what was the state of things only a few years ago. Englishmen-Britons-were compelled to confess that the influence of their country had sunk almost to the lowest ebb. We had lost the old traditions of Palmerston, Canning, and Pitt, and we were, perhaps, less hated than we had been at previous times and than we have been since, and it was only because we were thought so weak that we were not feared. The defences of this country had been neglected. Our Colonies had lost their confidence in us. They resented our apparent indifference to their wishes and their welfare, and they had almost lost their pride in the connexion with the old country when they saw that we appeared to undervalue it. Then came the climax, when a great Englishman, the leader of one of the historic parties, proceeded to hand over, to throw aside the policy of 80 years, and to create within a few miles of these shores a hostile and co-ordinate Parliament. I think it is not too much to say that at that time the heart was weak and the extremities were cold.

A GLORIOUS CONTRAST.

Now, what a contrast! We need not take a pessimistic view of the position of our land or of the great Empire of which it is the centre. We have in the interval defeated the policy of disintegration, which now only claims a mere handful of friends, even in the party which once made it the principal item of its programme. We have restored the pride and realised the unity of the British Empire, we have created a Navy which is admittedly the finest in the world, and which. bears at least some due proportion to the possessions and the responsibilities of the country.

THE ARMY IMPROVED.

And if our Army is not all that we could wish it in its organization and administration, if we are bound in those respects to admit defects, yet let us be fair and let us admit, also, that there have been in recent years great improvements, without which we could not have undertaken the task which no other nation could possibly have dealt with; a task which would have been impracticable for ourselves only five years ago. Lord Lansdowne is held responsible by his critics for the organization of the Army; he did not create the organization of the Army, he inherited it. What he has done, even in the brief time during which he has been at the head of that great department, has been to make immense improvements.

FOREIGN QUESTIONS DISPOSED OF.

We have secured a peaceful settlement of many questions which had been allowed to drift by previous Governments, and which were becoming a serious danger to the Empire. Our differences with France in regard to Siam, in regard to the Hinterland of West Africa, in regard to Egypt; our differences with Germany in regard to West Africa and in regard to the Pacific; our differences with the United States in the regard to the boundary of Venezuela-all these have been settled peacefully to our satisfaction, on fair and reasonable terms, by the wise and skilful handling of Lord Salisbury. Then we have destroyed the cruel and barbarous tyranny of the Mahdi. We have restored to civilization the vast country

which had previously been devastated and depopulated by his rule. We have given back to Egypt the control of the great river upon which her life depends, and we have, I think, infused a new spirit of energy and development into all our distant possessions.

A RECORD PERIOD OF PROSPERITY.

The prosperity of the country during the last five years has been beyond all record. Never before was labour so well employed or so well remunerated, and let me say, in passing, that there is no reform, revolutionary or otherwise, which is so important to the masses of the country as that they should have full employment and proper remuneration.

SOCIAL REFORMS CARRIED.

But what we call social reform-the great work with which, I beg you to remember, the honourable traditions of the Conservative Party have been invariably associated since the time of Lord Shaftesbury and the first Factory Acts has been vigorously pursued. The spread of education, the extension of local government, the promotion of a system under which the labourers in the country have been enabled to get upon the land by allotments and small holdings, the assurance which has been given to artisans in the cities, and now to the agricultural population also, of fair compensation in case of accident-these and a score more of measures, less important perhaps individually but certainly not less important as a whole, dealing with mines and factories and the relations between employers and employed, form a great mass of practical constructive legislation which, I think, without vanity, we may consider will contrast favourably with the revolutionary projects of the Newcastle Programme, 38 of which were promised to an expectant nation and not a single one of which was ever fulfilled.

THE QUESTION OF THE GENERAL ELECTION.

I say that in the record which I have laid before you to-night-a rief review of the work of five years-we have no reason, independently altogether of the question of khaki or the question of the war, to fear the results of a comparison between five years of the Unionist government and three years of Radical mismanagement. But still less have we reason to fear a comparison if we do consider the question of alternative policies with regard to the war.

RADICAL DALLYING WITH KRUGERISM.

I observe that some of the hon. members of the Opposition who are now eagerly addressing their constituents are anxious to show that Cæsar and Pompey are very much alike, especially Pompey. I cannot help thinking that they mistake the shrewdness and the wisdom of the man in the street. I doubt whether he has forgotten the attitude which their leaders took in the trying and anxious times when we were engaged in negotiations and did not know from day to day, whether they would result in peace or in war-when they took the unpatriotic line of encouraging those with whom we were negotiating, when they repudiated the notion of military preparation, when they carped at our policy and quibbled over technicalities, while President Kruger was preparing for an invasion of Her Majesty's territories, and President Steyn, as we now know, was drawing up his manifestoes and declarations in view of aggression while he was declaring to Sir Alfred Milner that the Republics would under no circumstances take the initiative. I think for all these things there must be a retribution.