has lately been made in Hyderabad which shows that the Government of India have been systematically cheated by the sepoys in Native regiments. It is a rule that when rupees rise above a certain rate in the Bazaar, the sepoys are allowed a certain sum'of compensation. The natives (and this applies to other countries besides India), never seem better pleased with themselves than when they can got the better of the Sirear(or Government), and in this case they have managed to do it successfully for some time by the native ofligers colliding with the bazaar clerks and quoting a higher price for rice and s0 receiving compensation which was not due to them. Io appears therefore that the sepoys have been receiving about Rs, 2 per head per mensem more than they were entitled to, and, of course, mea, officers (native), and bazar authorities justice without qualifying the grant with impossible conditions. If he does not, then the Government will demand justice for the Outlanders and will he prepared to exert force in order to obtai pliance with that demand. The dispatch in answer to the Outlanders' petition to the Queen was, it is now announced, ready before the President of the Ormge Free State issued his invitation for the conference at Bloemfontein, but was held back in view of the possibility of a settlement of the whole ditticult; Now that the conference has failed, the dispatch has gone forward, and when, ina few d is publisher to the world it will, I think, be found that Her Majesty's Government ave adopted the cause of the Outlanders much more completely than was generally expected.
KHARTOUM AND THE MAuDI's HEAD, There have been two big debates in the House of Commons and one in the Lords during the past week on the subject of Lord Kitchener's victory at Khartoum. First, the Commons had to consider a Royal mes intimating Her Majesty's desire that she should be enabled to confer_a grant of £30,000 on the conqueror of Omdurman, and then both Houses took into consideration an address of thanks to Land Kitchener and the officers and men of the victorious armies. Unfortunately-} the House of Commons could not in either case be induced to give a unanimous vote. Mr. Morley had, of course, publicly announced his intention of voting against the desecration of the Mahdi's remains and although he did not carry the Leader of the Opposition with him, he succeeded in getting the support of fifty-one members out of a House of 444. And no one in the whole House had the courage to express unqualified approval of the course of scuttering Ahmed' Mahomed's remains in the Nile and carrying off his skull in empty kerosene em, Still the explanations given mitigated to some extent the seriousness of this act of barbarity. appears that there was no mutilation, as had been supposed, 'There was indeed no possibility of such a thing, as the tomb contained nothing but a' heap of disconnected bones. During the second debate the question of the alleged slaughter of wounded dervishes was again" introduced. But this charge had already been disproved to the satisfaction of most people, and the vote of thanks was pused by 347 to 18, the minority consisting almost entirely' of Irish members, Lord Kitchener was present during the first debate in the Commons and also dui the debate in the Lords, where, of course, the vote of thanks was passed without a dissentient voice.
BIRTHDAY HONOURS, It was expected that, in celebration of Her Majesty's eightieth birthday, there ould be a specially long and interesting tot honours, but it proved to be com= paratively short and far from interesting. Perhaps the most notable points about it were its omissions, Everybody expected that Mr. Henniker Heaton would be rewarded on the success of his long agitated scheme of Imperial Penny Postage; but his name does not appear. It is rumoured that an honour was offered which he declined because it was less than he felt that he deserved. The Pact Laureate, tov, is again absent, possibly because he docs not care about 1 knighthood, "He dove nut improve as a poet, but he might fairly wan honour which has been bestowed Morris. Almost the only names of interest to the general public re Mr, H. M. Stanley, who gets a G.C.B., Professor Burdon Sanderson; who ix ide a Baronet, Professor W. H. Preece, 4 KEB, and Mr. Alm nit, Who is knighted. Mr, Stanley was offered a G.C.M.G. nine years ago, but he was at that time a naturalised citizen the United States, and therefore felt bound to decline the honour. There is a general feeling of sitisfuction that no new peers have been created, for the wholesale manufacture of Lords "during the. last generation or two requires check Lord Salisbury has himself create eighty seven during the different terms of lis premiership.
ZOLA AND DREYFUS, Now that Captain Dreyfus has been in effect declared innocent by the unanimous judgment of the forty-seven judyes of the French Court of Appeal, M: Zola has emerged from his exile among us and has returned to France. For the last sev months he has been' living at the Queen's Hotel at Norwood under the name of M. Richard; and if the people at the hotel or any of the residents of the districts round the Crystal Palace recognised him from his portraits—as one would think that some of them must surely have done—they respected his incognito. It was stated recently that he had taken advantage of his stay England to study our language and had iny mastered it; but this is not the case, He managed, it is true, to learn enough to puzzle out the meaning of the telegrams about the Dreyfus case which appeared in the English papers, but mainly he relied for his news on the daily visits of his publisher and agent, Mr. Vizetelly, and he does not attempt to speak English,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.