British and Foreign Items.

Hastings Standard, Issue 430, 20 September 1897, Page 4

British and Foreign Items.

[The Spectator's News Summary.] Loxdo:c, August 7. THE DENUNCIATION OF TREATIES. On Saturday it was announced that the German Commercial Treaty had been •' denounced " by the British Government, and would terminate, therefore, on 30th July 1898. On Monday a similar announcement was made in regard to the Belgian Treaty. In a year's time, therefore, there will be nothing to prevent the colonies shaping their tariffs with absolute freedom. Contrary to expectation, there has been no great outburst of ill-fie'ing in Germany. The more sensible papers, indeed, declare that England is far too good a customer to make it advisable to try a policy of reprisals. Probably in both cases new arrangements will be made which, while leaving the colonies free, will not put any fresh obstacles in the way of our exports. In England the denunciation of the Treaties has been received with a chorus of approval by the organs of both political Parties. It is clear that the general sense of the nation is in favor of giving the colonies complete fiscal autonomy. BRITAIN AND HER FRENCH SUBJECTS. Sir Wilfrid Laurier's speech made in Paris on Monday last was so able and so adroit that it deserves special notice. French Canada loved France, and never more than when she was unfortunate ; " but the bonds uniting it with Great Britain were imposed not by force but by gratitude and affection, gratitude to the great nation which protected not only its liberties, but its interests; for two days ago that protection of its interests had gone to the point of denouncing commercial treaties." There had been no animosity of race in Canada, and never had it appealed in vain to the noble and gonero'is English race. But though the political relations of France and Canada had been for ever separated, theircommercial relations were capable of immense development. " Quebec might supply France with timber, hides, and raw material of paper." In a wor„l, Sir "Wilfrid contrived to be sentimental, loyal, and do a little business all in one breath. It is curious to think that French Canada would fight to the last man rather than become a French colony and be ruled from Paris.

THE COLONIES AND TRUST INVESTMENTS. The Daily Telegraph gives prominence to the fact that at the recent conference between Mr Chamberlain and the Colonial Premiers the latter strongly urged the claim of the Colonial stocks to be included in the list of trustee investment —i.e., to rank as stocks in which trustees may invest unless specially forbidden to do so by the trust deed. The objections to such an enlargement of the existing statute are obivous. Parliament, to begin with, has no control over colonial loans, and though the colonial funds are now perfectly sound, any colony might, by entering upon a policy of wild borrowing, reduce its stocks far below the level of safety. Again, the easy terms on which the colonies would get money were the loans made trust securities might make them borrow too rapidly and too much. If, however, some automatic check could be placed on colonial borrowings, these objections would disappear, and both colonies and the ccsti/i que truxtnit would greatly benefit. Our solution of the problem is to enact that the colonial stocks shall be Trustee stocks when the indebtedness does not amount to more than, say, £GO per head of the white population. Under such a scheme no colony could increase its indebetedness unless its prosperity had also increased, for in the colonies population is a certain test of prosperity. The advantage of the scheme would be its automatic character. If a colony overborrowed, its stocks would drop out just as do the debentures of a railway company if it passes a dividend. The colonies might also meet a legal objection that is sometimes raised by making their Treasuries act on the decrees of our Courts in the same way as does the Bank of England. LIFE AT KLONDIKE. A correspondent, evidently well informed, gives in Monday's Times an account of the Klondike gold diggings which will certainly not tend to stop the gold rush. He dwells very strongly upon the dangers and difficulties to be encountered, but adds that the ground now being worked " yields from Idol, to lOdol. per pan oil an average." The Dominion surveyor reckons that a miner washes 1000 pans a day, but others think 800 a more conservative estimate. " Even 800dol. (£160) a day per man is enough to account for a gold rush, but the richer dirt, yielding £1920 for a day's work, is sufficient to entice even staid fathers of families to risk the terrors of an Arctic ■winter." He goes on the describe the lot of the miner who is lucky enough to reach the Yukon without disaster as follows :—" Eight months of semi-darkness in a tent with a sheetiron stove, and a temperature from 60deg. to 80deg. below zero, thawing out the pay-dirt with fires and piling it up to be washed in the summer, is the lot of the industrious good-seeker, w T ho may add to his comfort by building a log-hut if he feels disposed." The price of food at the diggings is of course, appalling, Flour is £lO per sack of 1001b when it is fairly plentiful ; whe i it is not it goes to the highest bidder, and those who cannot bid high must starve. The gold-belt is 800 miles long. The width is said to indefinite. The Time's correspondent estimates that there will be 50,C00 miners |oa jtbe head-wa tecs of

tlie Klondike before winter. How many will return depends upon whether or not the Canadian Government facilitate the supply of food. THE SLANDERS ON BRITISH SOLDIERS. The charges inaclu by Professor Gokhlee have ended iu an abject apology—there is no other expression possible. Sir William Wedderburn has also apoligised for having helped to give those accusations currency. It is difficulty to understand how Sir William Wedderburn could have listened for a moment to charges which, if he had reflected, he must have known were almost certain to prove unfounded. If, as was apparently alleged, British soldiers had outraged Indian women before credible witnesses, it is certain that the matter would have at once been brought before the Courts. The fact that no proceedings took place, as well as the inherent improbability of the charge, ought to have prevented Sir William Wedderburn's patronage of these falsehoods even before they were exposed and withdrawn. FORCED LABOR IN RHODESIA.

The Daily Chronicle has published portions of Sir Richard Martin's report to the Colonial Office on the Chartered Company—a report which the Colonial Office has hitherto refused to make public. The report shows that the fears as to the establishment of slavery by the company, under the form of compulsory labor, were only too well founded. After mentioning that Lord Grey and Mr Vincent do not allow that any regulation exacting compulsory labor was ever promulgated by the Government, Sir Richard Martin continues--" This 110 doubt is correct, but .that a system of compulsory labor did exist I have no doubt, and it is difficult to believe that it was put in practice as universally as it appears to have been throughout Matabeleland without the knowledge of the Government." The following are the principal conclusions arrived at by Sic Richard Martin: —(l) That compulsory labor did undoubtedly exist in Matabeleland if not in Mashonolaud ; (2) that labor" was procured by the various Native Commissioners for the various requirements of the Government, mining companies, and private persons; (8) that the Native Commissioners in the first place endeavoured to obtain labor through the Indunas, but failing in this they procured it by force. It is hardly possible to conceive a worse adminstrative record than this. There is, no doubt, little risk of the scandal beiqg repeated, nor do we doubt that the London Board were entirely free from any desire to tolerate such infamies. But what are we to say of a system which allowed slavery in its worst form—slavery in mines—to be established under the British flag ? -