the public to free fishing for trout with certain limited exceptions, objected to any close-time being enforced unless that right to free fishing were first legally established. According to the evidence from all parts of the Tweed, it appears that the proprietors in whom at present the legal right to trout-fishing is vested are extremely liberal in granting facilities to the public to prosecute trout-fishing to

their hearts' content. Under these circumstances we are unable to recommend such an alteration in the law as Mr Brown suggests; but, though it is somewhat beyond our province to do so, we recommend that the general law of Scotland should be amended so as to provide a close-time for trout, and that the sale and possession of trout should be made illegal during the close-time.”

it that Mr A. L. Brown and Mr
Thomas Shaw are so anxious to
acquire this free fishing? Is it
for the benefit of the respectable
angler in that Border constitu-
ency? Not so. I defy Mr A. L.
Brown or Mr Thomas Shaw to
produce a single respectable angler
from the Hawick Burghs who has
expressed himself in favour of such
an enactment. I may here quote,
as of more weight than any words
of
my own, a memorandum regard-
ing the origin and progress of the
Upper Teviotdale Fisheries Asso-
ciation, the largest and most impor-
tant association of the kind in

Scotland, prepared for the Duke of Buccleuch by the secretary of the Association on April 9, 1894. These fisheries, it may be mention

Mr A. L. Brown, having thus
failed to influence the Tweed and
Solway Commissioners in favoured
of a bill for free fishing, has now
proceeded, in conjunction with
his successor in the Border
Burghs, Mr Thomas Shaw, the
ex-Solicitor-General for Scotland,
to concoct a scheme whereby to
defeat Sir Herbert Maxwell's bill
for a close-time for trout. In
order to do this effectively, he
has entered into an unholy alli-
ance with certain Irish members
who have blocked the bill. It
may very reasonably be asked
what the Irish members have
to do with blocking a bill for a
close-time for trout in Scotland,
especially when, as I have shown
above, the trout and pollen in Ire-
land have the benefit of a close-
season. The reason Mr Brown
has had the audacity to make
public in the press it is that
"the Border Burghs have helped
the Irish cause." Thus, for party
purposes, certain members of the
Irish gang are blocking a bill
about which they, in all pro-
bability, know nothing and care
less! But in whose interests is

in passing, are connected chiefly with the very constituency which had for its representative in Parliament Mr A. L. Brown in the past, and possesses Mr Thomas Shaw for the present. After showing that the Association was formed in 1881, so that "all respectable anglers could obtain liberty to fish, for the payment of a small annual fee, and which Association would have the power to enforce an annual close-time for trout, and to protect the waters from unlicensed fishers and poachers," the report goes on to show what has been done in that direction since the commencement of its operations. Licences have been granted, the waters have been protected, and the trout-fishing has improved enormously. But a still further benefit has been conferred upon all the decent anglers in the neighbourhood through the action of this Association. The memorandum thus puts it :

"By preventing any one fishing for a livelihood, by prohibiting any angler

30.

HARCOURT AND CANNING.

"IT is clear that they [the Greeks] had everything to gain by complying with the wishes of the Powers instead of taking the law into their own hands. They would probably have done so, had all the Govern ments of the six great Powers been able to adopt simultaneously prompt decisions. But three of them were hampered by Philhellenic manifestations at home, which are in a measure responsible for the war."- Vienna

now extended to Greece can wipe out the events of the last six weeks, or restore her to the position which she has lost, and which it will take her at least half a century to recover. Dissipated for ever are the idle dreams which native revolutionists and foreign sympathisers had so long cherished. The action of the English Radicals, with Sir William Harcourt at the head of

Correspondent of the Times,' April them, has had an effect exactly the

reverse of that which they professed to have in view. Their object was to exalt Greece and trample upon Turkey. Now Turkey is stronger- stronger both morally and materially-than she has been for the last twenty years, and Greece is crushed.

We wonder what the gallant "one hundred" think of their handiwork now. But however the war had ended, our opinion of their folly, and of the attitude adopted by their leader, would have been just the same. It is this mischievous meddling of the English Liberals while negotiations with foreign Powers are in progress that has constantly been the source of the gravest embarrassment to Ministers and Governments, whether Whig, Tory, or Liberal. Let us appeal again to Sir William Harcourt's hero, Mr Canning. The singularly close parallel between the European situation in 1823, when Mr Canning was straining every nerve to prevent a war between France and Spain, and the situation in March, when Lord Salisbury was doing his best to prevent war between Greece and Turkey, has never, we think, been noticed. The situation arose out of the Spanish Revolution, which made Ferdinand VII. virtually a

In the May number of 'Maga,' we suggested that Sir William Harcourt, if he really sympathised with the Greeks, must some times have an uneasy quarter of an hour with himself when he reflected on the probable effect of his own violent declamation on that excitable and vainglorious people. We added, "Those who are sincerely anxious for the welfare of a race to whom the whole civilised world is so deeply indebted, would have shown them more real kindness by pointing out the danger of the course on which they have now entered, than by encouraging them in efforts calculated to embarrass and disable the best friend they have in Europe." Were these idle words, written only in the spirit of a partisan? No; events have only too abundantly justified them. The "unwise Philhellenism," allowing it to have been sincere, to which the " 'Times' refers, has brought about the result which we foresaw, more completely and more quickly than we expected. Greece has been humbled in the dust; and her Radical friends are principally to blame for the result. Whatever terms of peace may be ultimately arranged, no favour or indulgence