NOTES OF THE MONTH.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 656, 27 July 1876, Page 4

NOTES OF THE MONTH.

(Spectator.) It looks very much as if we should have another African war on hand. That execrable tyrant the “ King” of Dahomey, was not at all alarmed by the fate of his neighbour, the King of Ashantee, who, he said, had suffered no real harm from the capture! of Coomassie, and his agents recently outraged a British merchant, Mr Turnbull, at the port of Whydah. Commodore Hewett, despatched to inquire into the affair, decided that the King must be fined 500 puncheons of palm oil, whereupon the King replied that he would pay the fine at Abomey, in bullets and powder. This message, however, was improved by his agents at Whydah into a reply that the King would do as he pleased in his own territory, and hoped the Commodore would leave off palaver and turn trader. Commodore Hewett has accordingly ordered a strict blockade of Whydah, which will be felt at Abomey in want of revenue, but will probably induce the King to attack Bntim territory. In that case, it will be necessary to punish him, and we trust that, in his case, the Abyssinian precedent will be followed, and not that of Ashantee. It is useless to attack a barbarian of this kind, whose destruction is slaughter, unless, as Lord Napier said, he is made to come down from his throne. He does not care how many of his people are killed, or have their huts burned down. . . ~ The Khedive has cut the knot of his finance by “ unifying” all his debts —the public debt, the floating debt, and the Daira, or private debt—into one consolidated stock, at 7 per cent, issued at different rates, in accordance with the interest paid. The total amounts to the extraordinary sum of £91,000,000, or at least £5,000,000 more than the highest previous estimate, and places on Egypt;a burden of £6,370,000 a year, Whether the floating debt has recently been increased, as it will be remembered Sir Stafford Northcote hinted might be the case, or the Daira debt was larger than was suspected, is not known. Certain sources of revenue are to be made over to commissioners for collection, and they, if unsatisfied, are to have right of action against the Khedive before the Consular Courts. In spite of these provisions, however, the creditors are not hopeful, since, even if the private estate pays a promised £600,000 a year—which, according to Mr Cave, it does not yield—the revenue not hypothecated will, on the most favorable estimate, barely provide for the Administration. The Khedive, as we have argued elsewhere, has, in fact, promised too much for his own purpose, even if the revenue of Egypt is £10,000,000 a year, which, while cotton is at a norma.! price, is almost incredible. Egypt is not so fertile, that it should pay, head for head, ten times the taxation of Bengal. The Irish Peers have made a grand coup for themselves. Lord Inchiquin recently introduced a Bill to forbid the creation of more Irish Peers, to seat four more representative Peers, to introduce the minority principle, and to allow Irish Peers to stand for Irish counties or boroughs. The last would be a most Conservative proposal, but all were resisted by Government except the first, and the measure will, it is believed, pass with that one clause. After it is passed, an Irish Peerage will be valuable, and a baronetcy will be the only hereditary honor in England which can be granted to a man not wealthy enough to accept a seat in the Lords.

Mr Baillie Cochrane raised a debate on the progress of Russia in Central Asia, and especially her conquest of the Khanate of Rhokand. His idea is that Russia will take Merv, that she will then be too near Herat and that we must, to protect ourselves, acquire influence over Afghanistan, Sir G. Campbell, on the contrary, who made a very important speeph on the Mohammedans of India, whom he described justly as among our best subjects, thought watchfulness, and not restlessness, our best policy. Sir H. Havelock denounced the Native Army in India as “ rotten from head to foot,” and Mr Disraeli took the opportunity to repudiate bis own escapade on the Titles Bill. He did not mean to defy Russia, for he was not at Russo phobist. He did not object to her conquest of Tartary, and only hoped the Tarta-s might be as happy under her rule as the natives of India had been under ours, He deprecated “a policy of silent suspicion,” and only meant in h's speech on that occasion to intimate that “human nature is much influenced by associations in connection with titles.” The truth is, we suppose, that Mr Disraeli used his famous argument about Russia without a thought of its meaning, and when he found it criticised, withdrew it. That is the kind of “ policy ” the country has to put up with, and for all that appears, approves, On May 10th Lord Granville, as Chancellor of the University of London, presented the degrees and other honours gained by its students, and made a speech, in which he dilated at some length on the changes suggested by the Government in relation to the Civil Service of India; and deprecated, as did also Mr Lowe, the proposal to pay a bounty of £3OO on all Civil Service candidates who, after their success at the preliminary examination, go to Oxford or Cambridge for the two years which must intervene before they go out to India. This would not only be unfair to students of University College and King’s College, London, but, as Mr Lowe subsequently insisted, it is needlessly underrating the attractions of the older Universities, to suppose that they need a bounty on the importation of students to make them attractive. Lord Granville also took occasion to say that he thought the time was coming when the admission of women, to medical degrees more especially, must be fully and fairly considered. The demand for women as physicians was increasing, and women anxious for a qualification to practice are now driven abroad for their degrees. The remark is quite correct. The present writer happens to know that one lady-the wife of a clergyman—is now studying medicine abroad in order to qualify herself to practise, who would probably much have preferred to study at homo, had she been permitted to get her diploma here. What vast good might not the wives of the clergy do in their parishes, if they could gain the influence appertaining not merely to gratuitous tracts and flannel, but to liberally dispensed medical advice I The Lord Mayor entertained the representatives of Literature at a public dinner at the Mansion House on May 6th, the speeches at which can hardly be regarded as any accession to the literature on behalf of which they were delivered. Lord Houghton compared the men of Letters and the men of the ?ress to the Lords and Commons of Litera-

tuiG) the former holding the chief tank and the latter the chief power,—which was an ingenious but hardly an accurate comparison as not only do a great many Lords sit in the Commons, or Commoners in the Lords, but it is a great deal more usual, we suspect, for Lords to go down into the Commons than the Commoners to be elevated to the Lords Mr Froude recalled an ancient banquet, in which there “ was a porpoise at one end of the table and a sturgeon at the other and Mr SMa, haying pledged himself to remember “long, joyfully, and with heartfelt gratitude,” the compliment paid to Literature by the Lord Mayor.—a promise lightly made, we fear, and perhaps, by this time, lightly broken, —recounted with somewhat quaint candour, in answer to the toast of “ The Drama,” his own dead failure in producing a burlesque. Men of literature had better enjoy themselves in private, if they cannot give us better gleanings than these. City hospitalities, apparently, do not invigorate the brain.