ended in the defeat of the latter; and as the year closed, General Sir George Pomeroy Colley was making a futile effort to quell the rising and reconquer the Transvaal. The Ministerial programme of domestic legislation was popular, but it [Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE: QUEEN ELIZABETH’S LIBRARY, FROM THE QUADRANGLE.] took a long time to carry it out. At the end of July business was seriously in arrear, and yet Ministers said that they were determined to push on all their Bills. Towards the end of August no great progress had been made, and the proposal of a Session which might be prolonged into October was seriously discussed. The obstructive strategy devised by Mr. Parnell in Lord Beaconsfield’s Parliament was now developed with great success by the little band of Tories called the Fourth Party, under the leadership of Lord Randolph Churchill. Their method differed from Mr. Parnell’s in one point. He obstructed great measures in mass, so to speak. The Fourth Party organised persistent and systematic obstruction in detail, that is to say, they wasted small scraps of time all through a sitting at odd moments, the cumulative effect of which was most serious. Nor did they on this account refrain from obstruction on the system practised by Mr. Parnell when occasion served, only they carried it on without raising the clamant scandals that spring from prolonged and melodramatic sittings. At the end of August their efforts provoked Lord Hartington into revealing the fact that in the course of the Session Mr. Gorst had made 105 speeches and asked 18 questions, that Lord Randolph Churchill had made 74 speeches and asked 21 questions, that Sir H. Drummond Wolff had made 68 speeches and asked 34 questions, while three Irish Members had delivered 160 speeches and asked 30 questions. In fact, six Members (Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Gorst, Sir H. D. Wolff, Mr. Biggar, Mr. O’Connor, and Mr. Finigan) had delivered during the Session 407 speeches. Still, the Government persevered and, after Lord Hartington’s exposure of the tactics of the Opposition, business progressed more rapidly. A Burials Bill, allowing Dissenting ministers to hold services in parish churchyards at the burial of their dead, was passed. Sir William Harcourt passed a Bill giving farmers an inalienable right to kill hares and rabbits. Mr. Dodson’s Employers’ Liability Bill was fiercely obstructed, but it passed and gave great satisfaction to the working classes. It made employers responsible for accidents to their work-people where the accident was traceable to the conduct of the master’s representative, or any workman or person who might reasonably be supposed to be his representative. In the House of Lords, it is true, Lord Beaconsfield succeeded in limiting the operation of the Bill to two years, but this period was extended to seven years by the Commons. The Supplementary Estimates had devoured the small surplus which Sir Stafford Northcote’s Budget showed in March.