§ Order for Committee read.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House will, upon Tuesday next, at Two of the clock, resolve itself into the said Committee."—(Lord Richard Grosvenor.)
§ Mr. CHAPLINsaid, that on this occasion he rose for the purpose of opposing the Motion that the Bill be taken at 2 o'clock on Tuesday next. He had some reason to complain of the very scant Notice that had been given to the House of the intention of Her Majesty's Government to appropriate the Tuesdays for the rest of the Session. It was true the noble Lord had made an announcement to that effect last night; but he (Mr. Chaplin) should like to call the attention of the House to the circumstances under which that announcement was made. He did not say it was the fault of the noble Lord; but, whosoever the fault, it was the fact that the Motion was made during the dinner-hour, when the House was nearly empty, and nine out of ten Members in the building were not in a position to know that such an announcement had been made. Let the House for a moment consider what were the Motions that were to be superseded in this high-handed way by the action of Her Majesty's Government. He had looked at the list of Motions for Tuesday, and found that there was a Motion to be made on the subject of Lunacy, and another on the much-vexed question of the Deceased Wife's Sister. Whatever might be the opinions they entertained on the last-named subject, there could be no doubt it was one which excited very considerable interest in the House and very widespread interest in the country. Then, he observed, there was a Motion down for leave to introduce a Bill for Sunday Closing, which was also a question that excited great interest in the country and in the minds of many hon. Members in the House. There was, further, a Motion by an Irish Member in regard to the remuneration of teachers in primary schools in Ireland. Even this did not exhaust the whole list; because there were other Motions which 1184 would be brought forward on Tuesday, if opportunity occurred, which did not appear on the Paper. He happened to know of one himself—a Motion in which he was interested, which he submitted to the House of Commons last year, and which he had been anxiously waiting for an opportunity of bringing forward again this year. The question was one which excited great interest in the agricultural community of this country. He was anxious to call attention to this—that, in spite of all remonstrances from the Opposition side of the House last Session, it was the fact that the importation of diseased cattle into this country had been permitted almost every month. This was a state of things which caused great anxiety and alarm amongst the agricultural portion of the community, and it occurred at a period when the interests of agriculture were most depressed, and when the condition of the agricultural classes deserved the earnest attention of Parliament and the country. The Motion on that subject would be superseded entirely if this proposition of the noble Lord were accepted. But he wished to remind the House that it was not only the Motions which stood on the Paper for Tuesday next, but the Motions for every succeeding Tuesday in the Session, which would be superseded if the noble Lord's Motion were adopted. On consulting the Order Book, he found that the first Motion of importance down for a Tuesday after the Tuesday he had referred to was one which would ask the House of Commons to declare that the maintenance of the Church Establishment in Scotland was indefensible. No one who was at all acquainted with public feeling in Scotland, whatever opinion they might entertain with regard to it, could deny that this was a question which excited immense interest in Scotland at the present time; and it was a question which he should think, judging from what had fallen from him with regard to it, possessed considerable interest for the noble Lord himself. An hon. Member sitting on his left (Sir H. Drummond Wolff), he also found, had a Motion down on the Paper for a Tuesday—a Motion of immense importance, in which he proposed to call the attention of the House of Commons to the recent course of events in Egypt, and move a Resolution. This subject was one which deserved the attention of the House, and 1185 which ought not to be summarily disposed of by the action of the Government in taking the days of private Members. This Motion was followed by one standing in the name of a most devoted and constant supporter of the Government—the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands)—and it had reference to the present enormous amount of the National Expenditure. This Motion was practically a Vote of Censure on the Government for the extravagant expenditure in which they were indulging at the present time. He (Mr. Chaplin) should like to know what would have been said by the other side, supposing the Conservative Party had been in power, and they had been guilty of a similar expenditure to that which right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench were incurring, and a Vote of Censure on them had been proposed, and they had endeavoured to supersede it by appropriating private Members' days? There was a vast number of other Motions—beyond those he had mentioned, he saw a list of eight or nine, all of them deserving of the attention of the House of Commons—which hon. Members were waiting for an opportunity of bringing forward. There was one which related to the question of arrears of rent in Ireland; another which called attention to the progress of Russia in Central Asia. Although it was perfectly true that there had been four or five occasions of late on which the House had been counted out on the nights which were appropriated to private Members, they must remember that these "counts out" had been very much the fault of Her Majesty's Government in not assisting, as they ought to have done, in keeping a House; and that it had so happened that those private Members who had Notices on the Paper which did possess great interest to the House of Commons had not been fortunate enough to obtain a place on the Paper, which gave a reasonable hope that their Motions were likely to be considered. All these Motions to which he had alluded were to be sacrificed by the action of the Government. If the Government had intimated to the House that they intended to raise any question of great importance on Tuesday; if they had given the smallest idea, for instance, that the House might expect to hear from them a statement on a subject 1186 which all classes were waiting so anxiously to hear something about—namely, the policy they proposed to pursue in Ireland for the future, in the place of that which had so disastrously collapsed—or, indeed, if they had given the House some reason to imagine that they intended to adopt some proposal really to facilitate the progress of Public Business in the House, and which would have commended itself to the general sense and feeling of the House of Commons, then, he believed, on both sides of the House, there would have been a general disposition to give them every opportunity they sought; but the House had heard of nothing of the kind. On the contrary, judging from the utterances of the Government, there was every reason to believe that they intended to proceed with their 1st Resolution as to Public Business in the House, without any alteration or modification whatever, although it was repugnant to almost every hon. Gentleman on that (the Opposition) side, and to the vast majority on the Ministerial side of the House. Practically, it came to this—that they were asked to sacrifice all the days of private Members for the rest of the Session in order to give facilities to the Government for proceeding with proposals which did not commend themselves in any considerable degree to the general sense or feeling of the House. But he thought he might, perhaps, on even broader grounds than these, ask hon. Members to resist this Motion. Unless he was mistaken, the present Government last Session appropriated a larger amount of public time than had ever, in his recollection, been appropriated by an Administration; and what had been the result? Nearly the whole of that time was devoted to the consideration of Irish questions, and to the development of what they were pleased to call the Irish policy of the Government; and what had followed on that, which he would call their misuse of so much time? Why, it was described the other night by an hon. Member who was a most devoted and consistent supporter of Her Majesty's Government—a Member for whose opinion the Government entertained the utmost respect, and whom they had appointed to serve in a most responsible position in Ireland—he was speaking of the hon. Member for the County of Cork (Mr. Shaw). This hon. 1187 Member had said that what had followed on the policy of Her Majesty's Government, to which so much of the public time had been devoted, was this—"that at the present moment"—he (Mr. Chaplin) was quoting the hon. Member's exact words—"there was absolute war between the Government and the people of some counties of Ireland." If the Government had so misused the time placed at their disposal last Session, and then called upon private Members to sacrifice the days appropriated to private Members, and such results were to follow from that sacrifice, the less time that was in future placed at the disposal of the Government the better—for, so far as he was able to form a judgment, the more time they got, the more mischief they did. He therefore proposed to omit the words "at Two of the clock."
§ Amendment proposed, to leave out the words "Two of the clock."—(Mr. Chaplin.)
§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
§ SIR R. ASSHETON CROSSI am not going to enter into the large question which my hon. Friend has raised; but, with every wish to further the Business of the House, there is one matter upon which I wish to ask a question of the noble Marquess, not relating to any Motion for Tuesdays, but to the Bills which come after Motions. Very often on Tuesdays the Motions disappear, and the Wednesdays are absolutely absorbed already, so that no one has a chance of putting down a Bill for fair discussion. The only chance, therefore, is that any Bill which it is wished to promote should be taken on Tuesday, when the Motions are practically disposed of. But if the Government take four hours from the Tuesday Sitting, there is very little chance for such a Bill, and its chance is almost reduced to a nullity. It is sometimes said that the House of Lords have not done much work; but they have undoubtedly passed one or two Bills of importance, and it is with regard to one of those measures, which deals with a question of vital importance at the present moment, especially having regard to the recent agricultural depression, that I wish to ask a question—I mean the Bill relating to Settled Estates. I shall not enter into the 1188 merits of that Bill, but it deals with that question in a large and comprehensive spirit; and I think it is due to the trouble taken by the Lord Chancellor upon the matter that the House of Commons should express its opinion upon the second reading of this Bill before any long time shall have elapsed. I am sure the noble Lord will agree that it is a matter of great importance, and one in which great interest is felt by the country. If the Government are going to take the whole of the Tuesdays into their own hands, I hope I may have an opportunity of taking a discussion upon the second reading of that Bill. I quite admit that, it being down for Tuesday, which is a Motion day, there is some chance of getting it on; but if you take half of Tuesday away, that chance is reduced to a nullity. I hope, if the Government persist in this Motion, some facility may be given for the discussion of that measure.
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONI do not propose to follow the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin) into the remarks he has made with reference to the Procedure Rules of the Government, or their policy in Ireland. No doubt, the hon. Member thinks that any opportunity is a sufficient peg upon which to hang an attack upon the Government; but I am under the impression that sufficient time has been given to those subjects, and that, at all events, there will be other opportunities, perhaps more appropriate than this, for discussing them. The fact is that, although the time has varied in different ways, the practice of asking for Morning Sittings on Tuesdays and Fridays has been resorted to in previous years very much earlier than is now proposed. In 1878, when the Conservatives were in power, five Morning Sittings had actually been held before the date at which I am now addressing the House—namely, on March 19th, for Supply; on March 26th; on March 29th, for the Mutiny Bill; on April 12th, for Ways and Means; and on April 16th, for the Budget Bill. The hon. Member says the House might have considered this proposal if we had any measure of first-rate importance to bring forward. The hon. Member has altogether omitted to state whether he considers the Municipal Corporations Bill of importance or not. It does not appear to be one in 1189 which he takes any interest; but I venture to think it is, at least, of as much importance as any of those I have enumerated, and which, during 1878, were discussed at five Morning Sittings before this date. Then the hon. Member says we are going to appropriate the Tuesdays. That is putting the case a little too strongly. We are only going to ask the House to give us the Morning Sitting, and the Evening Sitting will remain for private Members; and if private Members will only avail themselves of the Evening Sitting they will still have as long a period for the discussion of any Motion as they have thought it desirable to take on any Tuesday up to the present time this Session. The hon. Member has alluded to some of the Notices, and he appears to consider that they relate to matters of very great importance. All I can say is, that it is extremely unfortunate that all the importance and apparent interest in these Motions should have managed to postpone themselves until a Tuesday at the end of April, and that, on those successive Tuesdays on which those measures of importance might have been brought forward, the House has been so unfortunate that nothing has been presented for its consideration except matters which could not attract the attention of a quorum of 40 Members. The hon. Member reproaches the Government with not having kept a House; but it is impossible for the Government to take that responsibility. It never has been taken by the Government. I do not think a quorum of 40 Members is an unreasonable proportion to ask the House to form; and if an hon. Member has a Motion to bring forward, and cannot secure the attendance of 40 Members without the assistance of the Government, I think he has no great reason to complain if the Sitting is cut short. The hon. Member has raised the consideration of subjects which are still on the Paper for discussion. I make this proposal, in great part, for the purpose of suggesting a way of preventing time from actually being wasted; and, as I have already said, on six successive Tuesday nights, although there is a great deal of work to be done, the House has adjourned within a few hours of meeting. That, so far as the Government are aware, is a state of things extremely likely to be repeated; and we 1190 think it will he for the convenience of the House and in the interests of the public that, at all events, the mornings of these days should be applied to making progress with Public Business. There is one other ground upon which I may appeal to the House to assent to this Motion. I think that any Member who has attended the course of Business during the present Session must have observed how large a proportion of the time nominally appropriated to the purposes of the Government is virtually appropriated to independent Members. The hon. Member talks of our appropriating the time of private Members; I have shown that we do not appropriate the whole of Tuesdays. We only ask for a certain portion of Tuesdays by taking a Morning Sitting; and if hon. Members will recollect how many Mondays and Thursdays, when Supply has been on the Paper, almost the whole time has been spent in Motions that the Speaker leave the Chair, I think they will come to the conclusion that some reciprocal concession is due to the Government. The hon. Member opposite said a short time ago that every delay in Business is owing to the mismanagement of the Government, and the Prime Minister said he never recollected a time when that statement was not made by the Opposition. I dare say it has often been made with considerable truth; but, at the same time, I think the House must admit that it is impossible for us, or any other Government, to make bricks without straw; and if the whole of the time on nominal Government nights is to be appropriated by discussions on the Motion that the Speaker leave the Chair, and we are not allowed the privilege which has been given to other Governments in the matter of Morning Sittings, I do not see how the House can expect the Government to make any progress. With reference to what has been said by the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir R. Assheton Cross), the Government altogether acknowledge the importance of the Bill to which he has made reference. That Bill was, I believe, accepted and supported by the Representatives of the Government in "another place," and I have no doubt whatever as to its importance. The right hon. Gentleman acknowledges that the prospects of taking a discussion on its second read- 1191 ing are somewhat remote. I do not know that I can recollect any recent occasion upon which the discussion of an important Bill has been able to take place on Tuesday night; and, therefore, I do not think the right hon. Gentleman makes any great sacrifice in regard to the proposal I now submit. I am quite certain, however, that my right hon. Friend at the head of the Government will be willing to admit the importance of the subject, and to make any arrangement by which it would be possible to give an opportunity for its discussion. I trust the House will agree to what I believe is a thoroughly precedented proposition. I may now add that, although we propose to ask the House to give us a Morning Sitting on every remaining Tuesday of the Session, the only question before us now is that a Morning Sitting shall be taken on Tuesday next.
MR. GORSTsaid, he hoped that the House would not be insensible to the observations of the noble Marquess; and if the noble Lord had asked the House to devote one Tuesday to the transaction of Government Business, he did not think that proposal would have been met with the opposition which had now been evoked.
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONI said, in giving Notice yesterday, that my intention was to ask the House to give us, as a rule, Morning Sittings on Tuesdays, but that nothing was now before the House except a proposal for a Morning Sitting on Tuesday next.
MR. GORSTsaid, it was the Notice of the noble Lord that he had that design on the rights of private Members which caused alarm. There was no action he studied in the opposition to the late Government with more interest than the noble Lord's own example. He found that in 1875, which was the first complete Session of the late Conservative Government, when they made a proposal, which, he admitted, went further than the present proposal—namely, to take the whole of Tuesday, June 22nd, the noble Lord, who was then the Leader of the Opposition, thought it his duty to come to the House and protect the rights of private Members. That was rather a remarkable Session, because the time of the Government had been greatly taken up, in the early part of the Session, by the renewal of the Peace Preservation Act, which had been in force for five 1192 years, and a great deal of time was wasted on the discussion of that Bill; but the noble Lord, on the 22nd of June, not only complained of the conduct of the Government in wishing to appropriate the time of private Members, but made an observation, on the proposal to take Morning Sittings, which induced the impression that he would hardly have made such a proposal as he now placed before the House. The noble Lord said the Government had made a liberal use of Morning Sittings, that had begun as early as the 16th March. There was another Morning Sitting on the 30th April; another on May 4th; another on May 11th; and the Morning Sittings began, as a rule, on May 24th in previous years. He (the Marquess of Hartington) found that the exceptional rule was never adopted earlier than May 11th, and the formal Resolution had been adopted on May 26th, June 3rd, or July 2nd. The example of the noble Lord, in making these observations, had such an effect on the present Postmaster General (Mr. Fawcett), who was at that time very jealous of the rights of private Members, that he moved an Amendment, resisting the proposal to take the days of private Members, and made some strong observations on the importance of preserving the rights of private Members, which, no doubt, if he were in his place to-night, he would now have repeated. He called upon the then hon. Member for York (Mr. J. Lowther) and other hon. Members to support his Resolution; and so impressed were the Government of that day of the reasonableness of that opposition, that they consented to the adjournment of the debate until the following Thursday. Mr. Disraeli being present on the Thursday, the Motion was not discussed, but was, for the time, abandoned. In consequence of the impression made by this opposition by the noble Lord and his Friends, in 1876 the regular Tuesday Morning Sittings did not begin until June 13th; in 1877 they did not begin until June 19th; in 1878, which was the year quoted by the noble Marquess, the general taking of Morning Sittings did not begin till June 4th; while in 1879 they only began on June 10th. He (Mr. Gorst), therefore, thought he was quite justified in saying that if the Government were now asking for a I Morning Sitting for the specific purpose 1193 of making progress with the Corrupt Practices Bill, it would be wise for the House to agree for that particular purpose; but if the Government were, as the noble Lord threatened, going from Tuesday next to take every succeeding Tuesday, and so extinguish, to a great extent, the rights of private Members, he thought he was justified in applying to such Parliamentary proceedings the epithet "unprecedented."
§ MR. J. LOWTHERsaid, he was informed that the right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster General, on a former occasion, had referred to him. He had not been aware that the right hon. Gentleman had done him that honour; but the sentiments which he had expressed on that occasion were identical with those which he entertained now—namely, that the proposal to commence Morning Sittings was really one which it would be unwise for the House to decline to adopt. In regard to the question of "counts out," and the duty of keeping a House on private Members' nights, he ventured to differ from the opinion expressed by his hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin), that the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India (the Marquess of Hartington) was wrong in declining, on the part of the Government, any responsibility for the "counts out" which had taken place on various Tuesdays during the present Session. He agreed with the noble Lord that it had never been considered the duty of the Government of the day to keep a House on the days devoted exclusively to the Motions of private Members. The noble Lord also referred to the fact that much of the time which was nominally placed at the disposal of the Executive Government had been, during the present Session, monopolized, to a very great extent, by private Members in availing themselves of the opportunities afforded to them, on the Motion for going into Committee of Supply, of bringing forward independent Motions of their own. But the noble Lord might have gone a little further. He might have referred to the fact that not only had those legitimate opportunities of calling attention to grievances before going into Committee of Supply been taken advantage of by private Members, but that during the present Session there had been more than one instance, on a Government 1194 night, in which the very illegitimate practice had been resorted to of moving the Adjournment of the House at the time of Questions. He ventured to call the attention of the noble Lord, and of the Government generally, to the fact that if the legitimate opportunities were taken away from private Members, they would invariably find that the temptation was the greater to have recourse to the illegitimate practices he had referred to, and that private Members would adopt less orderly means for calling attention to grievances, and for eliciting the opinion of the House upon Ministerial answers to Questions, which seemed to annoy them, and which were deemed unsatisfactory. The Government, in the New Rules of Procedure, proposed to take away the opportunity of moving the Adjournment of the House at the time of Questions; and the proposal afforded an additional reason why the non-official Members of the House should feel disposed to scrutinize very closely any additional weapons that were proposed to be placed in the hands of Her Majesty's Government. He hoped the noble Lord would not lose sight of the fact that by proposing to take away from the Members of the House the time-honoured precedents under which they were able to bring forward almost any matter in which they took a legitimate interest, the Government had contributed largely to those disorderly practices which, undoubtedly, seemed to have made considerable way during the time that the present Ministry had held the reins of Office. He hoped that the noble Lord, seeing that the feeling of a large section of the House was decidedly opposed to the proposal which he had brought forward, would reconsider the decision to which he (Mr. J. Lowther) hoped the Government had not definitely arrived; and that he would, at any rate, allow the ordinary proceedings of the House to take their usual course until such a period of the Session had arrived as would enable the Government to assure the House that they had certain definite measures to submit, and to ask the House to give up its time for that purpose. When this system of Morning Sittings was first introduced, he remembered that it was distinctly laid down at the time by Mr. Disraeli that they were only for the progress of Bills in Committee. If the noble Lord had 1195 his Hansard in his hand, he would be able to see at once that that was the ground upon which the concession of Morning Sittings was originally advocated on that (the Opposition) side of the House. It had always been held that Morning Sittings should not be encouraged except when the pressure of Public Business was very great, and there were specific measures to bring forward.
§ MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYsaid, he merely rose in order to point out that Her Majesty's Government were not so blameless and so free of responsibility in regard to recent "counts-out" on Tuesdays as they were endeavouring to make out. The right hon. Gentleman who had just spoken (Mr. J. Lowther) said it had never been the habit for the Government of the day to admit that it was any part of their duty to keep a House on the days devoted to the use of private Members. But he (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) apprehended that when the Government put an important Motion down upon the Paper, it really became their duty to keep a House in order that they might have an opportunity of bringing it forward; and that was precisely what had occurred in the present Session. On two, at least, of the days on which the House had been counted out, the Government had put down a most important Motion for the appointment of the Public Accounts Committee. Up to the present time there was no Public Accounts Committee in existence. On three or four occasions the Motion had been put on the Paper for Tuesday, and yet the Government took no pains whatever to keep a House. Under these circumstances, he could not agree with the right hon. Gentleman who spoke last that the Government were altogether free from responsibility for having allowed the time of the House to be uselessly frittered away.
§ SIR JOHN HAYsaid, he happened to have been present on five of the occasions when the House was counted out by Mr. Speaker; and he might, therefore, be supposed to be a witness upon the question now under consideration. If the noble Marquess simply proposed that the Government should have a Morning Sitting next Tuesday, and that the propriety of continuing Morning Sittings on the subsequent Tuesdays should be reserved for future discussion, he should have nothing further to say; 1196 but he gathered that the real intention of the Government was to take possession of all remaining Tuesdays during the Session. He was bound to say that, on three of the occasions on which he had been present, when it was moved that Mr. Speaker should count the House, the Prime Minister was in his place, and on two of them the right hon. Gentleman was taking notes, in order to answer questions of very great importance which had been raised in the discussion—once upon a Scotch question, and once upon an Irish question. On each of those occasions the Prime Minister was upon the Front Bench when the House was counted out. In one case there were 38 Members present, and in the other 34. The right hon. Gentleman remained on the Treasury Bench all the time prepared to take part in the debate, and to answer the various questions of importance which were raised; but, nevertheless, the House was allowed to be counted out. He must confess that that was a circumstance which he had never witnessed, either in the time of Mr. Disraeli or of Lord Palmerston. It was said that the Government had themselves arranged for these "counts out" on Tuesdays, in order that they might say to the country—"See how impossible it is to conduct the Business of the country unless we carry our Resolutions." He thought the Government were to blame for not having taken the entire Sitting on Mondays for the purpose of proceeding with the Estimates on that day without the interposition of any other Motion. That course might have been adopted from the very commencement of the Session, as it had been in other years, the only stipulation being that, on the first occasion upon which a particular class of Estimates was submitted, one Resolution having strict relation to them might be discussed. But no proposal of that nature had been submitted to the House this Session, and the result was that the House found themselves engaged in the consideration of the Estimates at 3 o'clock in the morning, and that many of the Votes were taken without any due and adequate discussion at all. It was said that this course had been taken by Her Majesty's Government, and that "counts out" on no less than six Tuesdays had been tacitly assented to, so that they might go to the country and impress the 1197 people with the absolute necessity of the clôture. So far as the future Tuesdays of the Session were concerned, he had a special interest in Tuesday, the 2nd of May, seeing that a Motion in his name stood first on the Paper. The second Motion on the Paper was one by the hon. Member for Glamorganshire (Mr. Hussey Vivian), who desired to raise the important question of addressing Her Majesty praying her to withhold her assent to the Statutes proposed by the University of Oxford Commissioners for Jesus College. His (Sir John Hay's) Motion was even of greater importance, and he had very little doubt that he should be able to get a quorum, even if he were compelled to put it off until 9 o'clock. It was as follows:—
That the detention of large numbers of Her Majesty's subjects in solitary confinement, without cause assigned, and without trial, is repugnant to the spirit of the Constitution, and that, to enable them to be brought to trial, jury trials should, for a limited time (in Ireland), and in regard to crimes of a well-defined character, be replaced by some form of trial less liable to abuse.He might almost suppose that Her Majesty's Government did not wish to have that question discussed, and that they intended, if possible, to prevent its discussion. He had, however, been promised so much support that he trusted, even if it were deferred until 9 o'clock, that he should obtain a fair hearing, and that the question would be duly considered. His own opinion was that the Government ought to be anxious to give facilities for the discussion of such a question rather than endeavour to defeat it by a side wind. At the present moment, and in the present state of Ireland, there could be no more important question for consideration than that of the persons who had been so long detained without trial.
§ MR. DILLWYNremarked, that hon. Members opposite professed great zeal for the rights of private Members, and called upon Members on the Liberal side of the House to participate in their feeling; but he did not think their zeal was quite pure in the matter. The hon. Member for Mid Lincoln (Mr. Chaplin) mentioned the case of several Members who had been shut out and prevented, by the counting out of the House, from bringing on their Motions; but towards the end of his speech the hon. Member let the cat out of the bag, and showed 1198 that the real desire on the part of hon. Members opposite was to stop any Government Business from being transacted at all. The hon. Member said that the measures introduced by the Government had been so objectionable in their character and so dangerous that he wished to see them stopped altogether, and that was the reason of his opposition to the present proposal. ["No!"] At all events, the hon. Member gave that as his own reason for the Amendment he moved; and he (Mr. Dillwyn) had no doubt that that reason was the very reason which would commend the Motion of the noble Marquess to the votes of hon. Members who sat on that (the Ministerial) side of the House.
§ MR. HEALYsaid, he should like to say why he had not the smallest objection to the Government taking a Morning Sitting on Tuesday; but why he should view with some anxiety any proposition to give up all private Members' nights to them for Morning Sittings. As yet the Government had given no indication of what their policy in regard to Ireland was to be; and if Morning Sittings were to be used for the purpose of passing a Coercion Bill for Ireland, he should give to the proposal the most strenuous opposition in his power. He would remind the House that Her Majesty's Ministers were already pledged with regard to a variety of measures, not one of which had as yet seen the light. One of these measures was for the extension of Municipal Government, others for Grand Jury Reform, Poor Law Reform, Bankruptcy, the Repression of Corrupt Practices at Elections, the Conservancy of Rivers and Prevention of Floods, the Codification of the Criminal Law, the amendment of the Laws affecting Patents, and the establishment of a Peasant Proprietary. Upon five of these subjects the Government stood positively pledged to introduce reforms, and in regard to three of them the pledge was given in the Queen's Speech. Not one of these Bills, nor, indeed, not a Bill upon any subject whatever, had been printed. Under these circumstances, until the Government showed their hand, it was not to be expected that the House would tacitly give up all its privileges, and enable Ministers to appropriate the whole of private Members' days to Morning Sittings. He thought the House should be fairly informed what 1199 the programme of the Government was, and what the measures were which they desired to carry out. He strongly objected to take any step in the dark, and he would strenuously resist any proposition to give continuous Morning Sittings to the Government until they stated the way in which they proposed to arrange their Business, and the use to which they intended to put the Morning Sittings. At the same time, he had no objection to give up next Tuesday. He was not about to enter any protest against the counting out of the House, for he had on several occasions approved the Speaker's attention being called to the fact that 40 Members were not present; and he should ever be willing to support a Motion to that effect. It had always appeared to him an extraordinary thing that millions of money should be voted when but a small number of Members were present; and he was inclined, on a future occasion, to move that the number required to form a quorum should be enlarged.
§ MR. R. N. FOWLERsaid, he would remind the noble Marquess that there were some very important Motions upon the Paper for next Tuesday. Amongst those was the Motion of the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. R. T. Reid), which excited a great deal of public interest, and which so large a number of Members of that House were pledged to support; and also that of the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Stanley Leighton), which, if the House met at 9, would, no doubt, occupy it until half-past 12 o'clock. The effect of the Government proposal to take Tuesday as a Morning Sitting, for the purpose of interposing another Motion, would probably be that the hon. Member for Hereford would have no chance of bringing on his Motion in regard to the Deceased Wife's Sister. If that were so, the responsibility would rest with the noble Marquess.
§ VISCOUNT FOLKESTONEsaid, as the Government proposed to ask for a Morning Sitting, not only on Tuesday next, but on every Tuesday during the Session, hon. Members would be glad to understand that the Government would give timely Notice of their Motions on that subject, so that their proposals might be adequately discussed.
§ MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he thought it was not a fair argument to say that 1200 private Members had a very slight appreciation of their rights, because they did not keep a House on Tuesdays. The fact was that private Members had no corporate interest in any particular Motion. Before the House could take any interest in private Motions it was necessary that they should be laid before it, and when this had been done it would be an easy matter to keep a House on a future occasion. However important the question raised might be, unless this were done only five or six Members might know anything about it. The difficulty was that Motions had often to be introduced on the responsibility of a Member who had not made his position in the House; and in that case, unless the Government contributed to the keeping of a House, the Member, whose Motion might raise a question of great public importance, did not even obtain the opportunity of laying it before the House. Again, it was impossible to keep a House for private Members unless the Government accepted the responsibility of so doing, because there was scarcely any private Motion which would have more than a dozen backers. But he regretted to see that the occupants of the Front Benches were acting upon the principle that they had no responsibility towards private Members in this respect. He felt convinced that if this policy were pursued, a great many private Members would feel themselves relieved from their responsibility to the Government on the Government nights; and he could strongly corroborate the statement made by an hon. Member that evening, that, as surely as the Government prevented private Members bringing forward their Motions on legitimate occasions, the illegitimate occasions which would be availed of would multiply. It was neither in the purview of the proposed New Rules nor in that of the Rules now existing to prevent illegitimate occasions arrising; and the Government of the day would therefore do well to take great care that the Business on Tuesdays, up to 12 o'clock, should not be interrupted by "counts." He could quite understand the occupants of the Front Opposition Bench not wishing to throw stones at the Government about the matter of not keeping a House on Tuesdays, for both Parties appeared to be in permanent conspiracy against non-official Members in this respect. As 1201 he had before pointed out, the result of the present practice would be to increase the temptation to new Members to take illegitimate, if they could not find legitimate, opportunities of bringing forward their Motions.
§ MR. CHILDERSsaid, there was no intention on the part of the Government to move any general Resolution with respect to Morning Sittings on Tuesdays, as the noble Lord the Member for South Wiltshire (Viscount Folkestone) seemed to suppose. The usual course was to move to put a Bill down for Tuesday, and to intimate that from that time there would be Morning Sittings on the following Tuesdays. His noble Friend had been very careful to explain that the Government would be quite willing that not the morning alone, but even the whole of any particular Tuesday, if within the control of the Government, should be given up for the discussion of any subject of adequate importance.
EARL PERCYasked if hon. Members were to understand that the Government practically intended to take all the Tuesdays during the Session for Morning Sittings, because, as far as he was aware, that was certainly not the impression which the House had derived from the statement of the noble Marquess.
§ MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, that he and other Members, on a previous Tuesday, had inferred that there would be no "count out" from the fact that the Government had placed a Notice on the Paper relating to the Committee of Public Accounts. He pointed out that if private Members were deprived of the opportunities for bringing forward their Motions, which were accorded to them by the Rules of the House, they would be under the necessity of taking such care as they could of their own interest. There was an important Motion, of which he had given Notice, that he should have been glad to bring on if he could get the opportunity for doing so on Tuesday; but now that the Government were about to take Tuesdays for Morning Sittings this was no longer possible. He was, therefore, driven to the necessity of infringing upon one of the Government days; and, accordingly, he had given Notice that lie should move the Resolution he had referred to on the next Government day 1202 —that was to say, the following Monday, on the Motion for going into Committee of Ways and Means.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, it was clear that the noble Lord had unintentionally conveyed a false impression to the House in his statement of the intentions of the Government with regard to the Morning Sittings on Tuesdays; because the statement he made had been entirely contradicted by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War. The right hon. Gentleman stated that the whole of the remaining Tuesdays throughout the Session would be taken for Morning Sittings, whereas the noble Lord gave the House to understand that the proposal was an isolated one and referred to next Tuesday only.
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONI gave Notice yesterday that I should propose Morning Sittings on Tuesday next, and on succeeding Tuesdays.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, he was aware of that. Their complaint was, however, that the speech which the noble Lord made that evening had altered the impression which many hon. Members had, who came down for the purpose of preventing the Government getting next Tuesday and succeeding Tuesdays during the Session, their opposition having been mitigated by their belief, derived from the noble Lord's statement, that the Government only intended to take next Tuesday for the purpose of a Morning Sitting. They now found that it was the intention to take all succeeding Tuesdays.
§ Question put.
§ The House divided:—Ayes 100; Noes 50: Majority 50.—(Div. List, No. 70.)
§ Main Question proposed.
§ SIR JOHN HAYasked for a distinct intimation from the noble Marquess as to when the Government would propose to take the remaining Tuesdays; and when they would propose to take Tuesday, the 2nd of May, because he had an important Notice down for that day respecting the imprisoned Irish "suspects."
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, if the right hon. and gallant Baronet would put down the Question on the Paper, he would answer it on Monday.
EARL PERCYsaid, he considered the reply of the noble Marquess to be so unsatisfactory that he felt bound to move the adjournment of the debate.
§ VISCOUNT FOLKESTONEseconded the Motion.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Earl Percy.)
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, he would undertake that the Government would not attempt to fix a Morning Sitting for next Tuesday week until next Thursday.
§ Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Main Question put, and agreed to.
§ Committee deferred till Tuesday next, at Two of the clock.