§ MR. GRANTsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If he could afford any information with regard to the riots in Belgium, whereby ten men lost their lives, and a large number were seriously wounded?
LORD STANLEYThe reports which I have received as to the recent disturbances ascribe them, not to any political cause, but to discontent among a portion of the mining population, caused by a recent reduction in the rate of wages. I have not heard anything about money being distributed among the insurgents; indeed I apprehend that it would be hardly proper to speak of them as insurgents; the whole thing appears not to have been so much an insurrection as a riot, though, undoubtedly, a riot on a rather serious scale.