Tue leader-writer at a loss for an interesting subject has often felt disposed to adopt as his title, " About Nothing in Particular," and Mr. A. J. Wilson has had the moral courage to do it, and this is the title of the first article in the July issue of his always welcome magazine.. The article turns out to be a recollection of many articles that he hes written lately, the gist of it being that there is a very seamy side to the ""Gubilious' junketings" which were the order of the day when he wrote. He notes that one would gather from seeing the great Jubilee Procession that the British Empire is a military Empire, "modelled... on the blood and gold-raking Empire of old Spain, rather than the practical, custom-tariffless, citizenship-endowing Empire of Rome. Stupid, commonplace minds, like that of the present writer, had been given to en-terrain the notion that the glory of the British Empire lay in the splendid progress it lias made in the arts of peace. But these arts had no direct place in the Commemoration Show." So Mr. Wilson goes on to show the cotton backing to all the Imperial velvet; the financial necessities of the Colonies and the heart-burnings of their representatives as to the honours they were to receive; and the famine in India, Yet, "indeed, England's is a great empire after all, the greatest in some respects this world has ever beheld. Spain in the height of her magnificence could never have brought together such a variety of camples of fighting materials from all the ends of the earth as will be gathered to traverse the streets of London on June the 22nd to de honour to the noble lady who who has been sixty yeas a queen. It was a magnificent spectacle, or rather will be, for this is Glorious South African Committee" is written necessarily before it can take place, a spectacle well calculated to intoxicate the imagination and fill people's minds with vanity, to the forgetfulness of Eastern questions, Soudan campaigns, South African race problems, Chinese complications, and India's despair. Yet, and credit' notwithstanding, if this great Empire is not founded upon justice and equity as between the component parts thereof, it is destined to perish more swiftly than it has arisen, It cannot be kept alive by lending and borrowing money, as good people in the City of London think; nor yet by subsidies and doles from the British Exchequer, such as is to be bestowed on Canada for its wild project of 'a fast-mail service,' or for an all Empire' cable telegraph system—which shall be at its British eud American, by the way. 'I'o deal fairly with the subdued races and nations, to help them up towards salfgovernment and self-reliance, to spend our strength in making them strong rather than to drain their strength for our own exclusive and immediate profit, these are the ways by which an enduring dominion may be created. An empire of syndicates of exploitation, of loan-mongers, of gold-grubbers and company-hatchers, that is a thing surely most perishable, although stock and share prices should be for ever on the mount,'"
But we are not, Mr. Wilson says, a military nation and our groutness has been achieved by hard, honest work not by usury and gold-hunting and stock-jobbing. Then the Cassandra spirit with its sarcastic taint overpowers him again, and he concludes by saying How ensy it would be to point out the weak spots in our panoply of gilt armour, the hidden bankruptcies, the thousand and one elements making for, decay, hut the reader shall be spared' the infliction. Painful realities will come soon enough to us all, and there are. skeletons enough at the feast for those who care to open their eyes and look, And to most of us always is not the dominant thought thankfulness for the daily bread? lo how many of those gorged just once by Lipton's cheque, was the meal their one and only taste of the sweetness of empire'? Away with these thoughts, let us be merry and sing the song of triumph and boast with the loudest! Are not Consols at 113? Is it not in the power of all bankrupt businesses to become limited ility companies? May not scanty incomes, overstrained, be eked out by buying for the rise' on the Stock Exchange? With this resource open to it, and gold and tributes of oil and spices and wine flowing ever into the country, why should the imperial race trouble itself with work? Work is the heritage of slaves. 'I'heir masters should stret around in uniforms, -hire mercenaries to fight for them, and bet." 'The next article' headed "That almost too satirical, but it agrees in the main with what we wrote yesterday morning. The Committea was inten~ tionally made a fas it was all a great, if somewhat bitter, joke, from Herr Beit's eagerness to further the expansion of the British Empire, to Dr. Jameson's secret preparations made in the very sight of the keen-eyed Boers, Mr. Chamberlain is distrusted by his new friends the Tories, and therefore, "to conquer the premiership he must court the fire-eaters of drawing-room and platform—agio and share-punting of imperialists, who never did stroke of honest work in their lives, and know as much of empire building and sustaining as cows of astronomy. This he must do, and smile sweatly on the Press'" Then comes the suggestion that the whole Beit-Rhodes-Jameson affair was a German plot, which would have succeeded if Jameson had not made such a mess of his part of it. Meanwhile, the Chartered Company is drawing to its and, "and the hour may he near when we humble tax-paying Inbour-gnarled citizens shall be asked to buy it out at its own valuation, and to take its obligation upon our weary but well-flattened backs." And we in China can only mourn to think how much attention is given at home to what Mr. Rhodes is doing, and how little to China, when the valley of the Yangtze is many times worth to our present and possible trade the whole of Africa south of the Equator, This is followed by an interesting summary of the annual reports of eight Inrge shipping companies, among which the Indo-China is included. As to this last the writer says "Tt will be noticed that 1892 was very bad year, as much as £81,875 having to be taken from underwriting account, while another £10,000 was transferred in 1895 to increase the amount allowed for depreciation, Additions continue to be made to the tonnage, and the fleet at the end of last_year numbered 29 vessels, repro-senting a tonnage of 56,740 tons, while the book value is £674,744, or nearly £12 per ton. It may well be doubted, however, if the real value is' anything like this amount, and a year ago the auditors asked for a careful revision, with a view to determine whether the amount already written off has been fully adequate for the past and what percentage may be considered sufficient provision for the future, Chis is an important matter; and if the depreciation allowed is inadequate, dividends ought to be kept moderate until the book value is properly written down. The immediate prospects as to dividend are by no means promising, for the fall in exchange will make a large hole in earnings, and depreciation ought to claim the rest."
The sordid story of those colossal swindles, the Central and Union and Southern Pacific Railroade, is continued, and we learn that the profit netted: by the gang who constructed the twa
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.