their avarice, bound the men, flogged them till their bodies were a bloody, mangled mass, cicatrized the wounds with red hot ramrods, plucked out their beards hair by hair, tore the flesh from their limbs with pincers, and often, even then, dissatisfied with the financial results of their exertions, hung the men whom they had thus beggared and maltreated from the rafters of the room and kept them there to witness with burning shame, impotent rage, and incipient madness, the dishonoring of their wives and the deflowering of their daughters, some of whom died miserably during the hellish outrage.”

A POLICY OF EXTERMINATION.

Bad as these things may appear to us to be, they were but the normal unpleasantness of Turkish rule in the Christian district. Of late things have become much worse, for the result of European intervention, when it is not effectual, aggravates instead of alleviates the mischief: "Yet while the Commission of Inquiry was still sitting at Moush the deeds of atrocious cruelty which it was assembled to investigate were outdone under the eyes of the delegates. Threats were openly uttered that on their withdrawal massacres would be organized all over the country-massacres, it was said, in comparison with which the Sassoon butchery would compare but as dust in the balance. And elaborate preparations were made-ay, openly made, in the presence of consuls and delegates-for the perpetration of these wholesale murders; and in spite of the warnings and appeals published in England nothing was done to prevent them.

"In due time they began. Over 60,000 Armenians have been butchered, and the massacres are not quite ended yet. In Trebizond, Erzeroum, Erzinghan, Hassankaleh, and numberless other places the Christians were crushed like grapes during the vintage. The frantic mob, seething and surging in the streets of the cities, swept down upon the defenseless Armenians, plundered their shops, gutted their houses, then joked and jested with the terrified victims, as cats play with mice."

A DESPAIRING APPEAL.

The Armenians, as Dr. Dillon reminds us, have a right to expect sympathy from the Christian world: Identity of ideals, aspirations, and religious faith give this unfortunate but heroic people strong claims on the sympathy of the English people, whose ancestors, whatever their religious creed, never hesitated to die for it, and when the breath of God swept over them, breasted the hurricane of persecution."

Dr. Dillon thus concludes this appeal to the conscience of Christendom: "If there still be a spark of divinity in our souls, or a trace of healthy human sentiment in our hearts, we shall not hesitate to record our vehement protest against these hell-born crimes, that pollute one of the fairest portions of God's earth, and our strong condemnation of any and every line of policy that may tend directly or indirectly to perpetuate or condone them."

THE

THE SULTAN OF TURKEY.

By One Who Knows Him.

'HE most noteworthy contribution to the first December number of the Revue de Paris is an anonymous article dealing with the Eastern, or, more properly speaking, the Armenian question. The writer, who is evidently well acquainted with Turkey, and, what is more important, with the Sultan, devotes a great deal of space to the "Sick Man." He seems to believe Abdul Hamid is by no means as weak and incapable a personage as he is often supposed to be:

"Most people will admit that the profession of being Sultan of Turkey is not-at any rate, at the present time-an agreeable one. The man who has now occupied the Turkish throne for nearly twenty years has certainly owed the length of his reign to the very real qualities displayed by him in the government of his peoples.

"The Sultan is a small dark man, with a sallow skin, roving and uneasy eyes, and a slight, feminine hand. Yet in this same frail hand he holds all the threads binding together the Mussulman world, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and of the Dardanelles, the Koran and the Bible, the sabre and the lancea good handful truly.

IN NO SENSE A EUROPEAN.

The present Sultan is is no sense a European, and when dealing with any of the questions affecting him this fact should not be shirked. Europe is not dealing with a Mehemet Ali; the Sultan is a true Turk-an 'old' Turk, and a pious Mahommedan. You have only to enter his palace at Yildiz to see that this is so. In the ante-chambers, leaning up against the walls, sitting cross-legged on the sofas, is an endless procession which might have come out of the Arabian Nights. Men with gray beards and white, their turbaned heads bent over their beads, all waiting for an audience, which, if slow in coming, is always sure to be granted. A glance at all these people, hailing from every corner of the Eastern world, is a proof of how truly the Sultan can boast of being religious head and chief of his race.

of his Empire; and when the circumstances of his succession to the throne are considered, it must be admitted that in these matters he has done well. Whatever be the value of the councilors and advisers with whom he is surrounded, his past has been owing to himself, and it is he, and he alone, who can resolve the problem brought about by the excesses which have lately occurred in Armenia."

The writer discusses the subject with moderation and considerable impartiality. He regrets European intervention, and especially deplores the naval demonstration, which is likely, he considers, to lead either to too small or too great a result.

REPRESENTATIVE BRITISH VIEWS ON THE VENEZUELAN QUESTION.

MR.

R. H. M. STANLEY, M.P., the African explorer, who recently returned to England from a tour in the United States, contributes to the Nineteenth Century an article on the issue between Great Britain and America. He says that during his trip he discovered the Americans were working themselves into an extremely angry temper over the Venezuelan boundary question.

He landed in New York in the middle of September, and found that there smoldered in certain sections an intense fire of hatred toward the English. On his return, he warned every one that a storm was brewing, and he was not unprepared for the vehemence of the outburst when it came. The following paragraph contains the gist of his article.

A EUROPEAN COMMISSION.

"Now, the Americans believe that we have been steadily encroaching upon the territory of the Vene. zuelan Republic, and because for seventy-two years the United States has claimed a right to interfere in all affairs relating to the New World, they have undertaken to speak authoritatively in the pending dispute about the territory which they consider to have been wrested from Venezuela. It is the challenge of this right of interference that is the real cause of the present strained relations between England and the United States. The boundary dispute is of trivial importance, except as it is the cause of the greater issue, viz., the right of the American people to speak with authority upon all questions affecting the territorial integrity of American States. We believe our Premier to be right in his contention that, after fifty-five years of possession of the territory, we ought not to be molested in our occupation of it; and we think it a high-handed measure on the part of our kinsmen to venture upon deciding whether the frontier which we have been consistently maintaining for over half a century is the right one or not. Nevertheless when the consequences of our refusal to submit the territory in dispute to arbitration are going to be so tremendous, every prudent, religious, moral and intellectual feeling of a large number of our people will be aroused against the necessity of such wholesale frat

ricide, and I suggest, in order to satisfy their tender consciences, that we appoint a European Commission of our own to examine our claims, and report to our Foreign Office. Every European power-nay, all the world-is interested in averting such a war, which will be the deadliest stroke to civilization that it could receive; and if our government requested Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium to appoint their respective commissioners for the purpose just specified, I feel sure that the entire British race, from these islands to the Antipodes, would be unanimous for the defense of British dignity, honor and rights, if we were discovered not to be willful aggressors on the territory of our neighbor. If, on the other hand, we have unknowingly overstepped our just frontier, it will be found that we are willing and ready to do that which is right."

A Suggestion of Compromise.

Mr. Edward Dicey, in the same magazine, also takes a serious view of the dispute, and strongly counsels a compromise if a compromise be possible: “I can quite understand and appreciate the motives which induced Lord Salisbury, as they had induced his predecessor, to reject the idea of arbitration as inadmissible. Still I cannot but think that if our Foreign Office authorities had realized the possibility of the American Republic considering herself --with or without reason-as entitled to have a voice in the settlement of the Venezuela frontier question, they would not have closed the door against the idea of arbitration. As things are, I see great objections to our retracting this refusal, as such a retraction would under the circumstances be tantamount to an acceptance of the American contention that the Monroe doctrine confers on the United States a sort of protectorate over the republics of North and South America, and would also expose us to the reproach that we had yielded to threats what we had refused to argument. Moreover, even if we were disposed to admit the principle of arbitration, it would be difficult, if not impossible, after what has occurred, to find an arbiter whose judgment would, on the one hand, command confidence in England, and whose award, on the other hand, would be accepted as final across the Atlantic. Still, considering we are all agreed as to the possibility of a war with America being a calamity to be averted by every means not involving disgrace, ccmmon sense points out that it would be wise not to treat our controversy with Venezuela as a res judicata, but to display a readiness to modify our opinion if any reasonable ground can be adduced for so doing.

"But my own idea is that the mode in which we can best show that we have an open mind in respect of the Venezuela difficulty can safely be settled by the government. All I contend is that, in view of the consequential damages' which a war with America might entail upon us, common sense bids us not to persist in a non possumus attitude. If we stretch a point to enable the Americans to retreat

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without discredit from an untenable position, if we forego the enforcement of our full legal rights, and if by so doing we preserve peace between the two great Anglo-Saxon nations of the world, we shall not only have done what is right, but we shall have done what is best for the fortunes, the interests, and the honor of England."

British Imperialism.

In the number of the Investors' Review (London) which appeared just before President Cleveland's Venezuelan message was sent to Congress, the editor, Mr. S. J. Wilson, had this to say regarding British Imperialism:

'The modern style of cheap conquest is a curse to us, and a hindrance to our advancement as the leading mercantile and civilizing power of the world. A false spirit dictates this line of conduct, and has come to govern our attitude toward the settlements our race has effected in Australia and New Zealand, in North America and South America. We bluster about drawing the bonds of brotherhood closer together' between the far apart sections of this Empire,' and in doing so run right in the teeth of their interests and ours. Our glory ought to be to allow our people wherever they settle and find homes to develop into free and independent nations; not to drag them at the tail of vulgar 'Imperial' triumphal processions, calling on all the world to behold our grandeur. And we do practically let them alone, for the plain reason that we cannot do otherwise; therefore is the brawling fire-eater class of patriot all the more a creature unclean. The united wisdom of our Parliament is barely sufficient to guide our own home affairs; to rule states or committees at the other end of the world is wholly outside its capacity. We cannot even throw an intelligent supervision over India, which requires it more than all our other dependencies put together, and the colonial possessions ' fulfill their destinies' much as an overruling fate may determine, without other help from us than a bad example; and they would have to take care of themselves altogether were we to be involved again in any great struggle on the continent of Europe."

PHILOSOPHY OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE.

MR. GEORGE GUNTON, who has his own views

on every conceivable subject relating to politics and economics, declares in the opening article of his magazine (which we have to note has been changed from Social Economist to Gunton's Magazine) that the Monroe Doctrine is the application of the principle of protection to the evolution of Democratic institutions on the American continents. He considers it an entire misconception of this doctrine to assume that it involves or remotely implies a dictatorial attitude on the part of this republic toward other countries. "It is like the early free-soil demand for the non-extension of slavery. It is a dec

As one would infer from the contradictory dispatches appearing in the daily press, much of the news sent out from Cuba is not to be relied upon. Mr. Howard says: Little is known to the outside world of the actual state of affairs in Cuba during the present war. The greater part of the news published abroad is derived from Spanish official notices or from some Spanish source, and is always untrustworthy, and, if unfavorable to Spain, is deliberately falsified. Other reports are made by the agents appointed by the various newspapers in the principal seaport towns of Cuba, and their dispatches necessarily consist for the most part of a résumé of the rumors which are incessantly being circulated from mouth to mouth, and which, whether favorable to Spain or no, are usually either so distorted as to be beyond recognition or entirely without foundation."

"It is seldom that the insurgents in the field can send dispatches giving their version of affairs. Every day the difficulty of forwarding reports through the Spanish lines is increasing, and the undertaking becomes more hazardous. Every one passing through the lines is suspected and is liable to search, whether provided with a pass or no. Communication is kept up with the towns; but the. news, when it arrives at all, is usually very much behind the time, and has been already discredited by previous reports.

Mr. Howard goes on to say that "Inland the island is in the hands of the insurgents; but the towns are Spanish, and in the hands of the Spaniards are the means of reporting the progress of a campaign of what would appear to be almost unbroken success for themselves. Spanish troops have been poured into the island in thousands upon thou sands, and there lost sight of. The general impression is that the insurrection is being sustained by bands of savage, undisciplined, and half-armed guerrillas, outcasts of Cuban society, and negroes who, hunted from place to place by the Spanish regulars, and condemned by the better class of Cubans, maintain themselves in the woods and mountains and carry on a marauding warfare of rapine and murder, avoiding the Spanish forces, save when they are in vastly superior numbers.

SPAIN ON THE DEFENSIVE.

"The statements of the victorious progress of the Spaniards are false, and the reports are absolutely unreliable. At the end of October the Spaniards were everywhere practically standing on the defensive; they held the towns, certain positions along the coast, and after a fashion the railroads, which usually run a very short distance inland. The rest of the island is Free Cuba,' and is in the hands of the insurgents. The Spaniards seldom venture inland in any direction away from their base and never with a force of less than two thousand or three thousand men, and even then the disorganization of their commissariat and the hostility of the country are such as to prevent them from keeping the field for more than a very few days at a time.

"Almost every Cuban on the island is in sympathy with the insurrection; nothing is more false than to suppose that only those who have nothing to lose favor the revolt. Rich and poor, educated and uneducated, even the children born in the island of Spanish parents-all are against Spain.

"In the whole island there are some 25,000 insurgents under arms, all, both infantry and cavalry, carrying the machete as a side arm, and a rifle of one kind or another, usually a Remington.

"General Antonio Maceo is the moving spirit of the whole revolt. He is a tall, broad shouldered mulatto, with a reputation for reckless bravery and a good knowledge of Cuban warfare, gained during the last insurrection. He is the hero of the Cubans and the terror of the Spanish soldiery. The President of the Republic, the Marquis of Santa Lucia, is a man very nearly eighty years old, a stately and courteous old gentleman. The rest of the government is almost entirely composed of young men, who are almost all under forty; shrewd, pleasant fellows they seemed, full of zeal and hope in the future, and apparently by no means oversanguine.

M2

THE CRISIS IN THE TRANSVAAL.

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AJOR F. D. RICARDE-SEAVER contributes to the Fortnightly Review for January the second part of his article on The Boer, Briton, and Africander in the Transvaal," which is very timely just now in view of the agitation of the Uitlanders. His forecast of the future political destinies of the Transvaal is in line with the generally accepted belief as to Great Britain's intentions in South Africa:

"1. Suppression of the present Dopper Boer domination as exemplified by President Kruger and his Hollander allies.

"2. Installation of a 'buffer' government with an executive composed of advanced Progressive Boers. This to be transitory and created expressly with the object of establishing liberal reforms and the granting of the franchise to all duly qualified Uitlanders.

3. The advent of a more enlightened class of

legislators composed largely of the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Dutch elements, whose mission it would be to bring the Transvaal within the orbit of the Cus toms Union, as now existing between the Cape Colony, Natal and the Orange Free State. This would be the first step towards local federation.

"4. And lastly, while retaining its local independence and form of government, the political, commercial and social union of the Transvaal with all the states comprised within that vast area from Tanganyika on the north to Cape Town on the south, and from Delagoa Bay on the east to Damaraland on the west, the whole constituting that united South Africa of Mr. Rhodes' early dreams, beneath the ægis of Imperial British suzerainty and under one flag." WHAT OF CECIL RHODES ?

Mr. Seaver recognizes in Mr. Cecil Rhodes the man of the situation. He says:

"In all this great work of reconstruction and reform, it may naturally be asked: 'And the great South African statesman, Cecil Rhodes, what of him? Where is his place, and what rôle is he likely to play in this great political drama?' To those who have had the privilege of close fellowship, and the advantage of studying his character and working with him during the last eight years, the answer is not far to seek. I have had occasion in other circumstances to qualify him as a man who knows what he wants and goes straight to his goal. (Alas! how few of our statesmen can aspire to this definition !). When the history of a 'United South Africa' comes to be written, an impartial historian cannot fail to do justice to Mr. Rhodes. To his persistent efforts and untiring energy will be due in great measure the consummation of this magnum opus of his life. Those who accuse him of moneygrubbing and financial scheming with the sole object of amassing wealth, know little of the man or his attributes. If he seems to covet wealth it is more for the power its possession gives to enable him to carry out his vast schemes of empire to the glory and advantage of the Anglo-Saxon race, than to the satisfaction of any selfish or sensual enjoy. ment.

"He has built up for himself an idol on the vast Karoo conceived in early youthful dreams and matured in manhood, shaped and fashioned from the stern material of firm resolve immutable as adamant, and before which he has worshiped for years, and still worships. This idol, as his detractors and enemies would have it, is not Mammon, but the far nobler and more lasting monument of human ambition, the banding together under one flag of many peoples and many races, and the grouping of many states beneath the ægis of Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Witness his conquest from barbarism of that vast territory stretching from the Limpopo 'on the south, away across the Zambesi to Lake Tanganyika on the north, covering an area of over a million square miles. All this he has saved in the scramble for Africa,' and his bitterest enemies

must admit that but for him it would have been lost forever to the British Empire."

THE ALASKA BOUNDARY QUESTION.

R. R. E. GOSNELL, Provincial Librarian,

MR. Retria, D. C., writing in the Canadian

Magazine, declares that the United States gained great advantage over England when, in 1867, our government became the owner of that stretch of country, 1,100 miles in its greatest length and 800 miles in its greatest width, known as Alaska. The sum paid was $7,200,000 and, says Mr. Gosnell, the transaction turned out to be a gilt-edged real estate investment, notwithstanding that at the time there was strong opposition to it in the United States.

A GILT-EDGED REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT. Little was known of the resources of Alaska then, and the folly of buying a field of ice and a sea of mountains was forcibly commented upon. For political, if for no other reasons, says Mr. Gosnell, Great Britain should have prevented such an accomplishment. "If her statesmen had made themselves familiar with the conditions of the coast from narratives of the distinguished navigators of their own country, or the history of the Hudson's Bay and Russian Fur companies, they must have known that the wealth of furs and fish alone would have justified its purchase, to say nothing of rounding off their North American possessions." Because Russia wanted to sell, it was thought Russian adventurers had extracted the meat and wished to dispose of the worthless shell for a consideration; John Bull was not to be taken in. Alaska had never been of great importance to Russia-certainly of no political importance. It was far from the seat of government, and was separated from Asia by a sea and all but inaccessible overland. Russia had given up her designs of extending settlements on the American coast after the experiment on the American coast and at the mouth of the Columbia, and was content with Alaska as a fur preserve, to bestow as a concession to a company of fur traders. As a field for population or extending political influence it was out of the question; besides, Russia had too much to do in carrying out her traditional policy of encroachment nearer home. Russia acted wisely in relieving herself of a responsibility that brought little or nothing in return. Great Britain lost an immense opportunity thereby, and inherited as a consequence the Behring Sea dispute and the Alaska Boundary question, the costs of which combined, it is safe to say, would have paid for the territory. Since that time Alaska has developed rich gold mines, a great fur trade, and a salmon canning industry that have rendered it extremely valuable, with possibilities of much greater things.

The rest of Mr. Gosnell's article is taken up with an attempt to establish the true boundary line between Alaska and British Columbia, and is too technical to be presented here.

THE BOND OPERATION OF 1895.

N the Political Science Quarterly Mr. Alexander

subjects to a thorough and severe examination last year's bond operation, leading up to this remarkable financial episode with an investigation of the situation which made it seem necessary for our government to issue bonds in time of peace. He reviews the experiment in detail, pointing out that the methods of the syndicate involved theoretically unsound economics; that in at least one way its operations in exchange indirectly aggravated the evil whose consequences they were intended to avert, and that while for several months the syndicate was able to prevent export of gold withdrawn from the Treasury, their undertaking broke down completely before the expiration of the contract.

The substance of his review of the bond operation is as follows: The syndicate began with the market under complete control. Gold exports ceased practically at once, stock market prices rose and confidence returned. Through February, March and April no gold was withdrawn from the Treasury. The domestic gold due under the contract was paid within three weeks; five millions monthly came to the government by the European steamers, and by June 25 the $100,000,000 reserve was again intact. Up to this time the syndicate seemed to have achieved complete success. As a matter of fact, its real perplexities were still before it. Foreign buying ceased almost as suddenly as it had begun, and by the time the syndicate had covered its "short" exchange, sterling rates had advanced again to their former high level. Most serious of all, the economic law of a disordered currency, the penalty of which the syndicate for the time had averted, began again to operate.

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In July something happened which occurs invariably at one stage of a market corner: Every New York banker commanding large local and foreign capital had been identified with the syndicate; the motive for such union being undoubtedly as much the wish to help the government as the hope of gain. Indeed, most of the bankers lost eventually through their abandonment of the open market. But with the syndicate houses selling no exchange below $4.90, and with a trade profit in specie shipments to cover sales at $4.89, a New York firm previously concerned in the coffee import trade, but with powerful European connections, entered the market, offered exchange one cent below the syndicate, and, shipping gold to make good its sterling drafts, withdrew the specie from the Treasury. The firm's first shipments of gold were apparently undertaken to discharge its own trade debts abroad. But it very soon extended its operations to the drawing of foreign exchange for the benefit of other trade remitters. When this happened, of course the house instantly had the market in its hands. The syndi cate held to its former non-competitive exchange