326] FOEEIGN HISTOEY. [1899.
sequently adjourned, for public interest was for three months centred in the proceedings of the Peace Congress which was assembled at the Hague.
During the six months' recess the only incident of political interest was the formal complaint made by Mirsah Effendi, the Turkish envoy, to the Minister of Justice, against Minas Tchernaz and Ahmed Eiza, representatives of the "Young Turkey " party, who had come to the Hague to lay their griev- ances before the Congress. They were somewhat summarily arrested and brought oefore a magistrate, who, despite of his eager desire to be agreeable to the Sublime Porte, was forced to admit that the Dutch law did not permit him to interfere with peaceable travellers. This decision was fully approved by the public, who regarded the proceedings as altogether at variance with the traditional hospitality of Holland.
On the reassembling of the States-General in the early autumn, Mynh. van Naamen van Eemmes was elected President of the Upper and Mynh. J. H. Gleichman of the Lower Chambers, but little desire to proceed to real business was shown, although the Budget was more than usually in arrear. The proceedings of the Peace Congress had left behind them a feeling of dis- satisfaction, which the Socialists were not slow to seize upon and to turn to their own profit. Encouraged by the example and success of their Belgian comrades the parliamentary social democrats summoned a meeting at Amsterdam (Nov. 19) to discuss the electoral question (Kies-recht Congress), and to prepare the ground for universal suffrage. It was decided to organise local centres which should bring together the forces of the democracy, and undertake the instruction of public opinion in that sense. At the same time national feeling was growing weary of the interminable and barren despatch writing of diplomacy, and a desire for closer commercial intercourse with their neighbours was felt throughout the country. A ballon d'essai in the shape of a proposed Customs Union with Germany was put forward, which was met by the strongest opposition from Ministerial quarters, for the Piersons Cabinet, although wholly favourable to the principle of free trade, was strongly opposed to such an innovation, which might easily be inter- preted as a first step toward absorption in the powerful German Empire.
The great historic event of the year, however, so far as regarded the Netherlands, was that its capital had been selected as the meeting place of the Peace Congress, brought about by the un- remitting efforts of the Czar of Eussia. The preliminaries which had first to be settled at one moment seemed to threaten the realisation of the project, for Italy notified her intention to hold aloof if the Pope was represented, and Great Britain refused almost as uncompromisingly to assent to an invitation being addressed to the South African Eepublics, on the ground that they had no right to foreign representation but through their
