HC Deb 12 July 1900 vol 85 cc1394-423

THIRD READING.

Order for Third Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."

MR. STEADMAN (Tower Hamlets, Stepney)

I rise not for the purpose of obstructing the Third Reading of this Bill, but for the purpose of informing the House that the Housing Committee of the London County Council or some of its members waited on the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board in the form of a deputation, and the result of the interview was that the right hon. Gentleman could not see his way to adopt any of their recommendations as to the extension of the time for the repayment of loans to one hundred years. He said he thought that there was something to be said in favour of the suggestion that the land should be made an asset off the building, but I am sorry the right hon. Gentleman did not see his way to adopt it. It is quite true that he adopted one suggestion in that regard, but that will not materially alter the present condition; it is a mere manipulation of figures—taking a penny out of one pocket and putting it into another. I quite admit that what was in the Bill as it was originally introduced was good, but the right hon. Gentleman assumes, because he is going to enable municipalities to purchase land outside their own boundaries, that that is going to solve the housing problem. He might just as well say, "We enable you by this Bill to purchase all the land in England if you desire so to do, and you can have workmen's trains, cheap trams, light railways, etc., to carry the workman from his employment to his home." I speak upon this question not from a theoretical but from a practical point of view and the workman's point of view, having lived the whole of my life among the workmen, and knowing the social conditions under which they live. And I want to know what is the right hon. Gentleman going to do with the, half a million workmen living in the County of London to-day, whose average wages do not exceed 15s. a week. Is it possible—build as many houses as you like outside the County of London—for those men to remove their goods and chattels, and pay fares to and from their employment, when they are fortunate enough to have any, out of such a scanty wage? There is another point with reference to working men residing outside the county—men occupying the same position as myself when I was at work. I was a riverside worker, and I had to be at my employment at six o'clock in the morning. Does the right hon. Gentleman assume, oven if I could get a house outside the county that I could get into, that I should live in a place which would entail upon me the hardship of having to get up at four o'clock in the morning in order to get to my employment at six? There are thousands of people in that position, and therefore, though the county council buy as much land as they please outside the county and build as much as they like, there will always be the same demand as now for houses inside the county. Go east to Walthamstow, Upton Park, and other places, and you will find that private enterprise has built hundreds of houses outside the county, and the working man who has not to get to his employment until eight or nine o'clock in the morning has been for years availing himself of the advantages offered by that private enterprise, and has moved into the suburbs. In twelve years in Stepney, where I reside, half the population have removed to the suburbs, and in consequence of the demand for accommodation the landlords there have increased their rents. While I am prepared to accept the advantage that we, as a municipality, shall have under this Bill, I say it will never solve the housing problem. I am sorry to say that in my opinion the Bill will pass its Third Beading in a far worse form than when it was originally introduced, because the right hon. Gentleman has accepted an Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Chelsea which is going to enable municipalities to buy land and lease it, if they think fit, to the jerry builder, and any other speculator who comes along. That is the most dangerous principle that could be inserted in the Bill. I am not a supporter of Her Majesty's Government, I have been a Radical all my life; but, at the same time, I may say there is a right hon. Gentleman in this House who, during the short period I have been a Member, I have learned most highly to respect. I allude to the First Lord of the Treasury.. Hon. Gentlemen laugh, and my respect may not be worth much to him, but he is above all things a gentleman, and a workman can appreciate a gentleman when he meets with one; at the same time I notice that the right hon. Gentleman has a charming manner of avoiding arguments put forward on this side of the House. I well recollect on the Second Reading of the London Government Bill of last year how in winding up the debate he taunted Members on this side of the House for putting forward as he considered no remedy, and we have had a repetition of that attitude on the Second Reading of this Housing Bill. Again he taunts us with criticising a measure and putting forward no remedies, and waives away as. with a magician's wand all arguments adduced from this side of the House upon this subject. He takes credit to himself and to the Government for the fact that all these Bills which have been introduced and have become law have been passed by Conservative Governments I do not deny it. [Cheers.] Yes, but stop a moment; I do not know whether hon. Gentlemen who cheer that remark have ever visited a fair; if they have, they have seen shows where the audience is admitted for a penny or twopence, and on the platform outside which the showman exposes the whole of his wares. The man outside is induced to go in, and thinks he is going to see a good show, but finds after all that the show for which he has paid is not so good as that which he saw outside for nothing. And it is the same thing with a Tory Government so far as we are concerned. Their labels are good. The Bills of past years and the Bill of this year are labelled all right, but so far as the contents of the Bill are concerned, I say, in the interests of my class, they are absolutely worthless. That has been proved; if the Bill of 1890 had solved this problem we should not be in the fix in which we are to-day, a difficulty ten thousand times worse than the question that the Bills of ten years ago were supposed to have solved. That proves that these Bills are worthless. [A VOTCE: Why not vote against it?] Because there may be a little good in it. If I am hard up and want a shilling and somebody offers me a penny, I take it because it is better than nothing at all, although it would not do me the good that a shilling would. The reason why these Bills are worthless is because the Government do not tackle the question from the proper point. It is really a land question. What is required is a fair rent court. But the First Lord of the Treasury denounced the establishment of a fair rent court. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board must know that there are what are known as assessment committees. They assess the rateable value of houses; when the assessment goes up the tenants have a right to appeal and in most cases the assessment is lowered. In the case of the gas companies also the Government says they shall not go above a certain price per 1,000 feet for gas. That is a principle adopted to protect the consumer from the monopoly, and it is a good one for that reason. We want now protection for the workpeople against the slum owners. We have no fair rent court, and the slum owner goes on in his own sweet way, and the municipalities who want to clear him away have to compensate him heavily. We get no extension of time, and we do not get the land as an asset off the building. The day will come when this evil will have so spread that the Government then in power will have to take up the matter from the proper standpoint. The workman is often condemned, and if he has a bad quality there are thousands ready to pick him to pieces; but they forget that for the one bad quality he has ninety-nine good qualities. How can anybody expect the workman of to-day to be a bright and good citizen, living as he does in the slums, where the very atmosphere which he breathes is evil, and when you take into consideration his miserable surroundings? A workman may be crushed, heart-sore, sick and sorry, and walking the streets seeking employment, but a good Samaritan comes along and takes him by the hand and gives him a lift and alters his entire surroundings. What we have to do, if the Government want to turn out bright citizens, is to level up the employees more nearly to themselves, instead of keeping them down as they do. to-day. Put them into decent dwellings, so as to improve their social conditions, because while they remain in the slums they will remain as they are. Alter the surroundings of the working man and you alter his disposition. The workmen are accused of spending their time in public houses. Visit the shims to-day, and it will be found there are more public-houses there than in any other part. Is it any wonder that a man who lives and sleeps with his wife and family in one room, where everything has to be done, if he has a penny in his pocket should be tempted to spend a few hours in the glare and glitter of a public-house, rather than go to the miserable hovel he calls home? In conclusion, I certainly trust that sooner or later some Government will deal with this question in a practical manner. The reason the present Government are unable to deal with it is because they are above all the upholders of the sacred rights of property. But when those rights have gone to the extent that they have to-day in London, extortionate rents on the one hand and untold misery on the other, it is time for the Government to step in and say they have gone too far, and that they must be attacked and destroyed in order to save the nation.

*MR. COHEN (Islington, E.)

The hon. Gentleman opposite has come forward on I he present occasion because this Bill does not deal with the housing problem in a particular manner. He complains that the measure before us does not solve the housing problem. I have followed the debate through the various stages of this Bill studiously, and I am not aware that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, still loss the Leader of the House, have ever claimed that it did solve the problem, but I venture to claim for it that it is a most practical and solid contribution towards the solution of the most difficult problem that the House has had to face for ten years, and I venture to tell the hon. Member that the Utopian Government which he hopes is going to solve the question will never succeed in doing so by one Act of Parliament alone. It can only be done by gradual legislation. It could never be done by one Bill, because in the course of one session the House would never get through more than six or seven clauses of the Bill. My hon. friend referred to the efforts of the London County Council. It has been my pleasure to be a member of the body long before my hon. friend joined us, and I should be the last to say a word against it: but as for their efforts they have not only failed to find a solution, but absolutely and hopelessly failed to offer even any practical contribution towards the solution; they have suggested patting obligations on the railway companies to run cheap trains to carry people who do not exist to places where houses have not been erected, and it is in that way that many well-meaning people have approached the solution of this difficult question. Not being able to carry out their Utopian and ideal schemes, their policy has resulted n nothing being done, and although some of us do regret that this Bill does not go a little further, we nevertheless consider that it contains a substantial and concrete contribution to the solution of this problem. I believe we shall not only have a diminution of the pressure which exists at the present moment, but a cessation of the rapacity of the slum landlord, with whom nobody has any sympathy and to whom we want to put an end. You cannot do away with him while the tenants are compelled to pay the rent he asks, but if you erect cheaper houses elsewhere the trade of the slum landlord will disappear. I earnestly hope that my hon. friend, with whom I seldom have the honour to agree, will take some profit from the experience of this effort, and will see that by tackling this problem systematically and gradually we shall offer a substantial contribution to the solution of a problem which is almost the plague of London, which is acknowledged to he pressing, but which some of our philanthropists have failed to solve, because they preferred to have nothing if they could not get everything. I desire to thank my right hon. friend for the Bill before the House.

*MR. ROBSON (South Shields)

I think the hon. Gentleman who has just addressed the House, although we recognise in him one who, as much as ourselves, has the wel- fare of the masses at heart, entirely misses the force of the argument addressed against the Bill by the hon. Member for Stepney. The Government is perfectly right to proceed by steps; but all that we asked, and ask still, is that the step should be a real, genuine, and efficient step—in fact, that it should be a step forward; and our complaint against the Bill is that it is nothing of the kind. Instead of being a real and effective step forward towards the solution of the problem, it is a title and a name, and nothing more. Now that we have the Bill before us in its final form we are better able to appreciate how far we were justified on this side of the House when we pointed out that the limited scope of the Bill would be fatal to its efficiency. Ministers said when the Bill was before Committee that they were anxious to hear and accept all the Amendments that might make the Bill more workable or make it more acceptable to the local authorities invited to adopt it. That took the edge off a good deal of the criticism on the Second Reading; but it has, happily, no place on this stage of the Bill. The Committee has done its best, and the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill has, with great courtesy and ability, done his best to make the Bill what it is. But according to us it remains what it was on the Second Reading—an absolutely futile measure. I say nothing against the three clauses added to the Bill. My hon. friend the Member for Stepney has made some pungent and just criticism on the clause added by the hon. Member for Chelsea. I do not stop to criticise that at all. If anything I am disposed to approve of it. The three j minor clauses added to the Bill must make it a little more effective; but they do not touch the objection we urged on the Second Reading, and urge still— namely, that the Bill as it stands is not acceptable to the local authorities, and is not likely to be adopted by them. Speaking in a general sense, it will be wholly useless for the purpose for which it is in- tended. There are some exceptional cases, such as the offer of land made by my hon. friend the Member for Whitechapel to the County Council of London, where the Bill may be of service; but, speaking generally. [venture to say that it will be of no service at all. It is put forward as being a measure to enable local authorities to relieve their slums and congested areas by transferring the population out- side. That is an excellent object. It is an object in which, I am quite certain, all those on this side of the House are extremely desirous to assist the Ministry to the utmost of their ability, but it is idle to suppose that this can be carried into effect by simply telling the local authorities that they may adopt this Bill if they please. The local authorities are conscious, and justly conscious, of the great number of difficulties in their way. These difficulties ought to be as obvious to the central authority as to the local authorities. For instance, there is the question of communication, raised on the Second Reading, between the overcrowded district and the new settlement. There is the question of jurisdiction —namely, whether the new settlement shall be placed under the jurisdiction of the district founding it of the district in which it is placed. All these are difficulties which at once occur to the mind of any local authority desirous of considering this Bill; but all these questions have been excluded—I say deliberately excluded—by the Government themselves. Without treating the Bill as one covering the whole ground, but simply as a step, each of these matters is essential in considering the efficiency of that step; but the Government have prevented us considering it entirely, because they have chosen a title so restrictive, limited as it is to a mere fraction of another Act, that any proposal, to make the Bill workable and acceptable is necessarily beyond its scope, and therefore cannot be considered by the House at all. That is the complaint we make about the Bill. In the last clause there is a statement to the effect that it may be cited as the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1900. That title meets with the approval of the hon. Member for East Islington. That is a platform title, and I daresay we shall see it on electioneering leaflets in time, but it is not the title of the Bill. It is not the title which is placed at the head of the Bill, and decides whether any particular proposal is or is not within the scope of the Bill. We desired to enlarge its scope on the Second Heading, and it is very important to the House and the country to see how the Government met that suggestion, because that marks the difference—if this be a party question at all—between the two parties in regard to the Bill. What did we propose on the Second Reading? We pointed out—and I have not heard anyone seriously controvert the proposition—-that you could never get the local authorities to deport their population to districts outside their areas unless you give them some guarantee as to cheap communication between the old district and the new settlement. That is a vital question to be considered in approaching this Bill. How did the Government approach it? The right hon. Gentleman, the First Lord of the Treasury rose at the end of the debate, and, dealing with the proposal in the Amendment I had the honour to move, he made a statement I listened to with rather more astonishment than I sometimes feel when I hear statements made in this House. He did not take the trouble to controvert the proposition that cheap train communication between the overcrowded district and the new settlement was essential; but he said, speaking on the advice he received from the Department, that the Cheap Trains Act of 1883 already provided whatever was fair and necessary in the way of communication between the overcrowded district and the proposed new settlement. The right hon. Gentleman is entirely mistaken. I do not wish to reproach him for the mistake. He is obliged to make statements upon the information he receives, but this I will venture to conjecture. I will venture to say that the Law Officers never told him that the Cheap Trains Act was sufficient for getting communication as between the overcrowded district and the proposed new settlement. Let me remind the House of what my proposal was, and how the failure to meet it was fatal to the Bill. I pointed out that the Cheap Trains Act of 1883 is applicable only as between already settled districts. The Cheap Trains Act is not intended to apply to a measure of this kind at all. It is only intended to apply where, as between two or more districts there is already an existing deficiency in the supply of cheap train facilities to meet the already existing demand. That is the Cheap Trains Act. In the case of this Bill, any local authority proposing to adopt it finds itself faced with this dilemma: On the one hand, it cannot avail itself of the Cheap Trains Act of 1883 until the new district is fully settled; but, on the other hand, it cannot settle that new district until it is able to promise to the popula- tion going there that they shall meet with proper facilities for cheap train communication. In order to remove that dilemma, I ventured to ask the Government to extend the scope of their Bill by adopting the proposal which I put before the House, and which met with approval from a very substantial number of hon. Members opposite. My proposal was to enable the municipality to go before the Railway Commissioners or the Board of Trade, and to ask for an Order under the Cheap Trains Act in advance of the population—that is to say, an Order to anticipate the settlement of the population, so that a cheap train service should be laid on for the people who go there either contemporaneously with the settlement of the people or in advance of the people. That is not possible under the existing Act, but it seems to mo so small an extension that was asked that the Government might very well have made it. When the First Lord of the Treasury said that the already existing law was adequate for the purpose he made a very serious mistake. Mark the significance of such a mistake on the part of the right hon. Gentleman. He is in this House the head of the Government, and he showed with regard to a paramount necessity in order to make this Bill efficient, that he and his colleagues were wholly uninformed or misinformed as to the existing state of the law. It shows that the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues have not considered this question as a whole, or else they would at once have been struck, as anybody is who approaches the question, that the first difficulty standing in the way is, How are you to deal with the question of communication? I must say that although the First Lord of the Treasury spoke last in the debate on the Second Reading he was, I believe, the first to import into that debate anything in the nature of party recrimination, for he certainly dealt in that wholesale. One is accustomed to it. I suppose it is a staple Parliamentary product, but I confess I was somewhat surprised that he should seek to import party recrimination into the debate while unconsciously revealing that neither he nor his colleagues had considered the initial difficulty of the question. I pass to another point which has a most important bearing on the application of the Bill. This Bill is an invitation or suggestion to the local authorities that they should part with some of their population, with the result, of course, that they would thereby diminish their rateable value. At the same time as they are called upon to part with some of their population and to diminish their rateable value they are invited to assume a somewhat substantial financial risk. They are also to be under the obligation of incurring all the trouble and anxiety which is involved in the formation of a new settlement. I tell the House as a practical man that these are all substantial and formidable impediments in the way of the adoption of this Bill. A local authority does not wish to see its population diminish, but it is apprehensive, with perhaps much better reason, of any elimination of the rateable value on which they rely for the obligations they have to moot. At the very time that they are called upon to diminish their population and their rateable value they are also called upon by this Bill to assume a new and indefinite liability in the purchase and laying out of a new building estate. These considerations would make a corporation hesitate before it undertook to carry out a scheme for the erection of workmen's dwellings. If they had been able to go to the ratepayers and say that they saw no risk attaching; to such a scheme, because they would buy laud at the agricultural value and give it suburban value by means of the Cheap Trains Act, that itself would practically have removed the financial risk of adopting this measure, but in the absence of any such provision the local authorities would be extremely chary before they ran the financial risk which would undoubtedly be involved, especially when it means that under existing circumstances the better part of their population will be removed and the more casual class remain. A local authority in considering whether it should apply the Act will see that if they apply the Act the ratepayers they will lose will be by no means the least remunerative class. That is an additional reason why they should hesitate to apply the Act. This Bill as it stands is opposed to the financial interests of the local authorities who are invited to adopt it. [An HON. MEMBER: No, no!] An hon. Member says "No, no!" I have no doubt that in time he will be able to deal with the arguments I address to the House, but he will see that to invite a local authority to diminish its population and its rateable value, and to undertake a new liability without any guarantee whatever of cheap communication between the new settlement and the old district, is undoubtedly opposed to the financial interest of the local authority. I venture to say that the conflict between those corporate financial interests and the philanthropic motives by which the Bill is inspired is wholly unnecessary; for if the Government had consented to enlarge the scope of their Bill so as to admit a clause enabling the Local Government Board, upon representation from the local authority concerned, to place the new settlement under the jurisdiction of the old district, the local authorities, seeing that they would then be exchanging an artificial, unhealthy rateable value in an overcrowded district for a healthy rateable value in a new and growing district, would have been stimulated to deal with this overcrowding question drastically. If a clause with this object were embodied in the Bill, it would turn what is now a futile measure into a great measure of social reform. As to compelling the local authority to exercise this power in respect of overcrowding, as in the case of insanitary dwellings—to talk of such a thing is to talk absolute nonsense. I hope that the debates on the Bill may be of more use than the Bill itself, for if it has thereby been made clear what is the real difficulty standing in the way of local authorities they will have done some service. As the Bill stands, I see no reason why we should vote against it. We have not the slightest objection to the addition by the Government of ornamental titles to the Statute-book, if that is the desire of the Government. We venture, however, to make our protest. It may be that the right hon. gentleman in charge of the Bill, when he sees that it is inoperative at a later stage, may bring in a measure to make it operative. When he does that he may depend upon it that he will meet with no inconsiderable support from Members on this side of the House.

*MR. WYLIE (Dumbartonshire)

Perhaps I may be allowed to say one or two words in reference to the question of communication, to which the hon. Member for South Shields has referred as being of vital and paramount importance, and also in support of the Third Reading of this measure. Much of the success of the Bill will depend upon the travelling facilities afforded to the working classes. Some hon. Members opposite have expressed the conviction that the working classes, and especially the labouring classes, will not be able to afford the fares necessary for conveying them to and from the urban districts. The county which I represent has probably the cheapest service of workmen's trains in this or, as far as I know, any other country, and it affords a very good illustration of what can be done by energetic and intelligent railway enterprise. In Dumbartonshire hundreds of workmen travel to and from their work every day. For this they are charged 1s. per week, or 2d. per day for a double journey of about twenty-four miles, which is equal to 1d. per twelve miles of comfortable railway travelling. The trains run at convenient hours in the morning, and are waiting for the men when their work is finishes at night. Owing to these great facilities hundreds of working men are enabled to enjoy the advantages of much cheaper and better situated houses than would be possible in the manufacturing districts in which they are employed. A largo percentage of these working men are labourers—not perhaps on the small wages of 10s. or 12s. per week, referred to by the hon. Member for Stepney, but receiving 16s. or 20s. per week. A great many of this class avail themselves of these admirable facilities, because they find it more advantageous to pay the 1s. per week in fares than to pay the highly increased expenses in manufacturing districts. I can assure the House that these cheap rates pay the railway companies. When the competing company which secured these advantages was being promoted in Parliament it was stated before the Committee of the House of Commons that the then sole existing company, the North British, which was conveying workmen not at such a low rate as that to which I referred, but still at a very cheap rate—about eight miles per day—was earning by its service of workmen's trains at the rate of 10s. 4d. per train mile, while the average over their whole system was only at the rate of 3s. 9d. However this may be, I can assure the House on undoubted authority that the very low rate does pay the railway company, and I think this is a very good object lesson to railway directors, because it shows that if they are willing to encourage large numbers of working men to travel morning and evening by the introduction of low fares and convenient trains it will be advantageous to their companies. It is also a very good illustration of what can be done under existing conditions and by one mode of travelling only. But the facilities for travelling are rapidly increasing. New modes are being invented; old methods are being improved. The Lord Provost of Glasgow told me that by good management of the tramways they are now able to carry ordinary passengers one and a half miles for a penny, which they expect soon to be able to increase to two miles; whilst workmen they carry at the minimum rate of three miles for a penny, and that, too, will probably soon be improved upon. Thousands of tradesmen now travel to and from their work by means of bicycles, and I believe before very long thousands more will be conveyed by motor cars. Under this aspect of the question and inasmuch as I believe this measure will probably take out of the hands of land speculators and jerry builders much of the work which has hitherto been very badly performed, I think the Bill opens up a brighter future for the working classes and for the teeming masses in our large cities and towns who are cooped up in the most unhealthy manner in respect of their homes and their surroundings, upon which so much of their physical and moral welfare depends. I think we may congratulate the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board on having introduced this unpretentious but very useful measure, and on the able and conciliatory manner in which he has conducted it through its various stages. I give my cordial support to the third reading.

*MR. JONATHAN SAMUEL (Stockton)

When the Second Reading of this Bill was before the House I ventured to offer a few observations upon its shortcomings, and I desire to do the same tonight. Although the measure has passed through various stages it is still very defective, and in my opinion will be of no practical use to the corporations throughout the country. The practical and eloquent speech of the hon. Member for Stepney shows that what is wanted in reference to the housing of the working classes is not a Bill enabling local authorities to do that which they never will do, namely—to invest-their money and run the risk of speculative property outside their boundaries, but some practical measure which shall give to the local authorities power to deal with the slum property which exists in every town. The hon. Member for Stepney, with his practical experience, has. shown that this measure cannot deal with the slum property. An argument used by the hon. Member for East Islington about the London County Council desiring to have facilities for cheap railway fares outside the presort area admits of that argument for this reason. The London County Council have found from experience that they cannot go on pulling down slum property in London under Part 1 of the Act of 1890 without an enormous cost to the rates. I have said before there is a possibility of this Bill being applied to London. It may be; but I cannot understand that the County Council should go on spending money outside its own area to provide houses for the working classes living in the inner parts of this great city. What I do say i is, that unless a measure is brought in by this or some other Government altering the existing law you will never deal with the question of the housing of the poor in the manner in which it should be dealt with—namely, by doing away with slum property. I have had some experience in this matter. In the town which I have the honour to represent we have a slum property, and I have sat on a Committee for a considerable time trying to effect some improvement in this property, but it is. impossible under the complicated Sections 6, 8, and 9, of the Act of 1890, for any local authority to deal with such slum property except at an enormous cost to the rates. I heard the speech on the Second Reading of the President of the Local Government Board. The right hon. Gentleman pictured in glowing terms the powers which exist under the Act of 1890; he showed what could be done and how to do it. I ask him, has he had any experience on any local authority in dealing with this slum property? That is a practical question, because it is impossible to carry out this work if the interests of existing ratepayers are to be safeguarded. I should like to call attention to how this Bill will apply to some of our large municipalities. The power under this Bill is to enable local authorities to purchase land outside their boundaries. Take Leeds. There the housing of the working classes is as difficult as in London, but there is no want of land. The area of Leeds is 21,552 acres; it is equal in area to the ten new boroughs on the north side of the Thames —Islington, Hampstead, St. Pancras, Marylebone, Paddington, Kensington, Hammersmith, Greater Westminster, Chelsea, and Fulham. What is the use of passing a measure to permit Leeds to buy land outside its own area when it has crying evils within its area that it cannot deal with because of the existing law? Then take Sheffield. Sheffield has 19,000 acres, and there the same difficult problem exists. Sheffield is also equal to ten of the new London boroughs; Liverpool is equal to eight; Birmingham, Nottingham, and Bristol are equal to five. Therefore there is plenty of land within these boroughs, but the councils will not go on spending money in costly schemes at the expense of the existing ratepayers. I do not wish to make this a party question, but it is no use citing the number of Bills the Conservatives have brought in. What we, as representatives of the local authorities, want are practical measures of a tangible character which can be put into force and at a cheap rate. I quite agree with the hon. Member for South Shields that you cannot get the small boroughs of 3,000, 4,000, or 5,000 acres to undertake to spend money outside their areas. They will not buy land for building at a cost of thousands of pounds, with the risk of a cost to the rates, unless they can get complete control and jurisdiction over that area. All the money now spent in our boroughs is for the purpose of inducing people to come into the boroughs, and not to send them outside. This measure simply permits the boroughs to buy land outside, and, therefore, there is no chance of it being put into effect. There is only one other matter to which I wish to refer, and that is in reference to the compensation question. At a meeting to-day of the municipal corporations there was a strong feeling expressed that it was unfair that corporations should have to compensate landowners to the extent of 10 per cent. beyond the valuation. The Government refused to accept an Amendment moved from this side of the House limiting that compensation, and I contend that if they really wished to make this measure practicable they should have accepted some of the important Amendments which would cheapen the cost in the event of the local authorities putting the Bill into operation. I hope the time will soon arrive when there will be a Government in power which will deal with this question in a manner which will be effective and a lasting boon to the community, and by which the matter will be settled for a great many years to come.

MR. JOHN BURNS (Battersea)

I have not ventured to address the House on this Bill either at the Committee stage or on the Second Reading, and I rise to-night only to make one or two practical suggestions in addition to those which have been offered not alone from this, but also from the other side of the House. Before I deal with the points in which I am specially interested I want to say this: The country has been agitated during the last four or five years with the housing problem on its moral, social, and physical sides. In the village as in the town, and especially in London, we have hoped that the Government, face to face with this agitation, would bring forward a Bill grappling with the problem much better than this Bill does, and when the country hears, as it will hear, especially after the Bill has been in operation a year, that all this agitation and the sentimental articles in the papers, from The Times downwards, have resulted simply in this elementary measure, which goes only a little way on the right road, it will come to the conclusion that the Government's mountain has laboured and produced a ridiculous mouse. I venture to think that the Government, face to face with the need for better housing, face to face with the demand for wider powers on the part of local authorities, could have done better than they have done, even accepting the Bill as they originally brought it in. They might have accepted several Amendments from the bon. Member for South Shields, and they ought not to have refused some of the Amendments moved by the hon. Member for Stepney, with whose practical know- ledge, sympathy, and speeches in regard to this question I entirely associate myself. But the Government have resolved to restrict this Bill to the simple question of allowing local authorities to go outside their municipal jusisdiction for housing purposes. That, on the face of it, seems a plausible, practical, and remedial thing to do, but when we know that this new power is circumscribed by the adoptive and optional character of the Bill, a considerable amount of the plausible benefit which we at first thought this Bill might confer is removed. My objection to the Bill is that it is optional in its adoption, and unless a local authority is compelled by the indignation of the inhabitants to adopt the Bill there will be very little improvement effected by this measure. The Bill is very limited in its scope, and In practice it will be found to apply to a very limited area. Unless the personnel of parish, district, and county councils is considerably altered, I do not expect to see rural elysiums cropping up in bricks and mortar for the ideal lodging of agricultural labourers. I am positively convinced that unless some of the landlords who dominate parish, district, and county councils are forced to abandon their hidebound objections to agricultural labourers being better housed, this Bill will be a dead letter in rural districts. The Bill and the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman ignore the salient fact that some of the worst slum-ridden districts in the provinces and in London are governed by the worst of slum-owners, who, on the local authorities who have to put this Act into operation, will do everything within their power to keep the poor people in the slums, because a bigger profit can be made out of them there than in a district two or three miles outside the City jurisdiction. This Bill will not force the slum-owner, who is also a parish, district, or county councillor, to depart from his own interest, and that will make against the extension of the Bill. There is no compulsion which the central authority can apply to the local authority which neglects its duty in regard to the housing of the poor, and the net effect of the measure spread over the next few years will be about as great in the rehousing of the poor as that of the Workmen's Dwellings Acquisition Bill of two years ago—it will be practically nil. Let me go a bit further. The Bill applies to very few local authorities, as the bulk of them do not want to go outside their own areas for land for housing purposes. Some of the worst slums are in districts which have not yet reached the maximum of their municipal expansion, and this Bill will not touch those places to any appreciable extent. In a word, with the exception of a few cities such as Sheffield and Birmingham, and perhaps Leeds to some extent, this Bill applies to London in the main. Let me deal with its application to London. Although this Bill mainly applies to London, its beneficial features will be absolutely inoperative unless the Government follow up this Bill by an immediate alteration—I would suggest the revocation—of the Standing Orders that prevent the London County Council, the housing authority, having that free hand in the extension of municipal electric traction which the County Council ought to enjoy. Unless by an alteration of the Standing Orders of this House the veto is removed by which the vestries prevent the London County Council going from the centre of London to the area outside where this Bill can apply, the measure so far as London is concerned for the next five years will be a dead letter. How do I prove that? Supposing the London County Council were to buy 100 acres at Mitcham for artisans' dwellings. Suppose further the Council, not being the road authority between Westminster and Mitcham, want to get the people who are congested at Westminster to the artisans' colonies which the light hon. Gentleman thinks under this Bill the Council will be able to erect at Mitcham. That thought of the right hon. Gentleman is ideal, it is optimistic, for the facts are these: Unless you make the London County Council, which is the tramway and housing authority, also the road authority, the respectable people of Wandsworth, who do not want the poor to come between the wind and their nobility, will veto any proposal the Council may make for electric traction through their area, with the result that the Bill will be hung up, the housing schemes suspended, and this measure will be waste-paper. I respectfully suggest to the House of Commons and to the President of the Local Government Board that if this Bill is to do any good—and it will do most good to London if anywhere—that good cannot be accomplished unless the road authority in London is also the housing and the traction authority. If the veto of the vestries is not removed we shall have the respectable retired grocer of Balham, the respectable coal-merchant of Tooting, and the company-promoter who lives on the borders of Mitcham saying, "We do not want Mr. Chaplin's Bill; we do not want these colonies of workmen outside. But we will not object to it on the merits of the housing scheme. We will put up our friends on the local vestry to say that traction is not wanted in this neighbourhood; we will not pay the sum necessary to widen the streets." They will have no end of factitious and fictitious excuses, and the result will be that the Council will be unable to achieve the objects of this Bill. I agree with the remarks of the hon. Member for Stepney as to the effect of the environment of working men on their character, and the effect of better houses upon men, women, and children. I agree that Part I might have been amended, and Part II. could have been improved almost beyond recognition. This Bill could have been stiffened if the government had desired it, because the House was ready to accept anything which the Government was willing to put forward. But, notwithstanding this, I still think that so far as London and many big cities are concerned the solution of the housing problem, to a great extent, will be found less in rehousing the dishoused poor in insanitary areas than it will be found in throwing the responsibility upon local authorities of providing cheap and rapid electric traction in order to distribute the poor themselves over a wider area than that congested area in which they now live. Dealing with this problem is like dealing with manure, which is no good in heaps, but is very beneficial spread over a lot of ground. I believe that relief to these congested districts will come to a great extent from cheap and rapid electric traction. The President of the Local Government Board must realise that, concurrently with his desire for this Bill to allow local authorities to deal with this problem outside their own area, there is growing up a strong objection to localities — and especially municipal authorities—getting quicker and better electric traction in their hands. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to help the housing of the poor he will have to take no notice of this spurious agitation against municipal trading in regard to electric traction. If he desires to deal effectively with this question he must take no notice of the gentlemen who have caused the two Houses of Parliament to institute a joint Committee, the object of which is to get electric traction in the hands of companies and monopolies, when, if it were placed in the hands of local or municipal authorities, with the necessary control over the roads, it would do more good in one year in the way of settling the housing problem than this Bill will do in nine or ten years. The hon. Member for Dumbartonshire made an admirable and excellent speech, but it had very little relevance to this Bill or to the housing problem. I think his speech would have been more appropriate when the Cheap Trains Bill was before the House. The hon. Member has stated that the railway companies in Scotland had been compelled to carry people twenty miles for twopence, and what is good enough for Dumbartonshire is good enough for London. [An HON. MEMBER: It is done now in London.] Yes, I know that the Great Eastern Railway do it, but they have done it more to take colonies of workmen to help them to pay for their line. The Great Eastern Railway was then almost bankrupt, and they paid their dividends by giving cheap trains. But one swallow does not make a summer, and all the other railway companies do not do the same as the Great Eastern Railway have done. The Government did a great deal to prevent the success of this Bill when they asked their supporters to throw out the hon. Member for West Islington's Cheap Trains Bill, which was the necessary complement to any Housing Bill whether under Part I., Part II., or Part III. The President of the Local Government Board has given us the power to go outside, providing the local authorities are willing; but by the rejection of the Cheap Trains Bill the Government have denied the workmen, whom they expect to benefit, the opportunity of that cheap and rapid transit which ought to precede the passing of this Bill. What the Government have given with the left hand they have taken away with the right by not giving the facilities to compel railway companies to provide these cheap fares, which they ought to have done. I wish to say a word or two with regard to one portion of London in particular. I allude to Chelsea. If we have to have landlords I would rather have a big landlord than a small one. The most objectionable sort of landlords I know are those who belong to the retired grocer class with religious proclivities, who have invested their money in bricks and mortar in which the poor live, and who now grind the faces of the poor. If I am to choose a good landlord, I would rather have a large one, and one of the best is Lord Cadogan, or the Duke of Westminster, or the Duke of Bedford. But what happens in these cases? Lord Cadogan has converted Chelsea during the last twenty years from being a working class district into a sort of South-Western Belgravia and a middle and upper class flatland. He has turned all the workmen out of Chelsea for the improvement and betterment of his property, and his dominion over Chelsea, benevolent though he may think it, has been a positive curse to the labourers and the artisans and the men who previously lived in Chelsea and near to their work. It seems to me that the day is not far distant when you will have to apply to the Dukes of Westminster and Bedford and Earl Cadogan, who are improving the poor off the face of this earth for the benefit of their property, the same provisions as are now applied to railway companies, and which you are now seeking to apply to the County Council, and which you impose upon the School Board when they pull down houses for the building of polytechnics, and thus displace the poor. You are going to segregate this vast city into parishes of the poor and parishes of the rich, which, from the point of view of housing, is a mistake, and from the point of view of social development will be a disaster. By this policy you are bringing about a division of the classes, which you have always pretended that you are anxious to avert, and thus you are bringing about in London one of the worst social characteristics that it is possible to conceive. I sincerely trust that my hint to my friend Earl Cadogan will be conveyed to him by his friends in the spirit it which it is given, and that we shall no longer see the Duke of Westminster and Earl Cadogan displacing the working class of Chelsea, and compelling them to go into portions of Fulham and into my constituency of Battersea. [An HON. MEMBER: But they are Radicals.] That is not so, for they are of the very poorest class, and the very poor are almost always more Tory than the rich; they are chloroformed by the publicans, and by beer and blankets, and they are the dependents of South African millionaires, who tell them that it is their business to support gentlemen who have made their money in Africa and who come over here touting for a coronet, while if they asked for such a thing in their own land they would be put in prison instead. This Bill brings no pressure to bear upon the rich landlord, nor upon a reluctant local authority, It does not deal with a reluctant district council dominated by a landlord. What remedy does it bring to the dock labourer and the casual worker in the East End of London? Why, none at all. My hon. friend the Member for Stepney asked for the establishment of a fair rent court, but that was refused. There are hundreds of foreigners who are exacting more money out of those who reside in small tenements in the East, and inflicting greater hardships upon the poor, than ever Isaac Gordon made out of his clients. This kind of thing has to be stopped, because if it is not stopped we shall see the beginning of such an agitation that I trust we never shall witness in the East End of London. The last thing I have to say is in regard to that infamous clause which provides that local authorities may buy land at the ratepayers' expense, and when the money has been captured, the landowners get on the district council and lease the land bought at the ratepayers' expense to traffickers in land, who will make a profit out of it without incurring the responsibility of purchase. That is a mischievous blot on this Bill. This measure was said to be brought in to help the costermonger, the dock labourer, and the poor men who had to labour about Covent Garden and Drury Lane, but it will not help them at all. They cannot go to live at Tooting, Richmond, or Kingston. This Bill is another instance of that vicious class of legislation which the Government have in more than one respect introduced. It is another instance of giving to him that hath and taking from him that hath not. It helps the clerk and the higher paid workman, who feel less the pressure of congestion than the stevedore, the waiter, and the footman in the West End. [An HON. MEMBER; It makes more room.] Yes; but it is to such a very small extent, that is hardly worth the trouble of drafting a Bill to provide it. This measure does not grapple with the difficulty, and does not provide the remedy which some of us thought it would provide. It enables local authorities to go outside their areas to do what they have not the power to do inside. That is precisely what provincial districts do not want, and, so far as London is concerned, this provision is rendered useless by the fact that the London County Council will not be able to go out of their district unless this Standing Order is revoked. I wish to make a final suggestion. I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman if he intends proceeding with the revocation of the Standing Order, and, if he cannot do that, will he promise to bring in a Bill next session to enable the county council to be the road as well as the housing authority? This Bill whispers housing reform to the ear and breaks it to the hope of every poor workman.

THE PEESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. CHAPLIN,) Lincolnshire, Sleaford

The hon. Member for South Shields has complained that this Bill is a title and a name, and nothing more. He also says that every Amendment which would have made the Bill a reality has been excluded. I doubt very much whether the points raised by the hon. Member could have been inserted in the Bill even if its scope had been altered in the manner he suggested. Why did the hon. Member for South Shields not try to move some Instructions upon these points? There was at least a possibility that he might have succeeded, and these questions could have been raised. All I have to say is that no Instructions of any kind were moved, and I doubt whether any single Instruction, if so placed upon the Paper, would have achieved the object which hon. Members opposite have in view. The hon. Member for Battersea says the Bill could have been stiffened if we had been willing to accept some of the various Amendments which were put down. We heard a good deal upon the Second Reading of the Bill about a num- ber of comprehensive Amendments which were to be moved in Committee, but why were none of them moved? I waited in daily expectation to hear what those comprehensive Amendments were which were going to transform this Bill into a great and comprehensive measure, but they never came. I can count on my fingers the serious suggestions which have been offered by hon. Gentlemen opposite. One of them was the extension of the period for the repayment of loans. But if that had been carried it would have been absolutely trivial. The hon. Member for Hoxton admitted that the Amendment which I accepted at his hands would do ten times more to assist the local authorities in giving effect to this measure than any other Amendment—than if I had accepted all the Amendments which were moved for extending the period of the loans. But even on that point hon. Gentlemen must remember that their proposals were opposed and objected to by all the greatest financial authorities sitting upon their own side of the House. With regard to the question of locomotion, the hon. Member for South Shields has said that what is wanted is a change in the law. My right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade and myself had the pleasure of receiving a deputation from the County Council upon this subject not many days ago. The President of the Board of Trade explained to that deputation the provision made by the existing law. I think he made out a convincing case that all they required could be obtained without any changes in the law under the present law, and he gave them assurances which, as far as I can judge, were received with satisfaction and wore considered sufficient by the members of the County Council who formed the deputation. The hon. Member for Battersea has raised another question which is of even more importance than the question of cheap trains. he has pointed out what is the fact, that under Standing Order 22 very great difficulties may be placed in the way of the County Council in London in case they wish to make a tramway beyond their own area. The effect of that Standing Order is that the consent of any outside authority is an absolute condition before any Bill upon this subject can be introduced. My right hon. friend and myself have considered this question most carefully, and, after a conference with the Chairmen of Committees in both Houses, I am in a position to say that the Government are willing to make such alterations in that Standing Order and propose them in due course as will modify those restrictions and allow the question to be brought before Parliament and leave to the Committee the decision as to whether the matter should go forward or not. I do not know that there are many other questions with which I ought to deal in reply to what has been said. I am very strongly of opinion myself that when these questions were first discussed upon the introduction of the Bill, when it was stated so freely by many hon. Members opposite that this was a small, inadequate, futile, and absolutely ridiculous measure as an amendment of the law, nine-tenths of the hon. Gentlemen who made those statements were in entire ignorance—or, if not, they were singularly ill-informed—as to the existing state of the law. I have endeavoured, to the best of my ability, since these discussions began to make public and bring home to the minds of those interested in this question how immense, how wide, and how enormous are the powers which are already vested by law in the local authorities. I am pretty certain in my own mind that the real reason why, during the passing of this Bill through Committee, we have had none of those comprehensive Amendments which were foreshadowed was that the more hon. Gentlemen opposite made themselves thoroughly acquainted with this subject the more difficult they found it to frame any Amendments which were not already dealt with under the existing law upon this subject, or which were not provided for by the changes made by the present Bill. As regards London, to which the hon. Member for Battersea has referred, I hope for much from the new boroughs which are about to be constituted. With regard to districts outside the metropolis, I hope that the publicity which has been given to this question by the discussions in this House may lead to greater activity upon their part. Say what you will upon this question, and do what you will to try and extend the law, it is, after all, upon the action of the local authorities and the way in which they perform their duty that we must rely. It becomes daily and hourly more apparent that what really is wanted in regard to this question is a more effective administration of the existing law, rather than new measures of legislation.

SIR WALTER FOSTER (Derbyshire, Ilkeston)

I am very sorry to have to rise to discuss the Third Reading of this Bill at so late an hour, but I hope we shall have a further opportunity of considering this measure before the Third Reading is taken. I think that would be a convenient course to the House for this reason if for no other reason, that the Bill as it is before us at present is imperfect and incomplete. Moreover, the Bill has never been reprinted since those clauses were added to it on the Report stage, and it is very inconvenient at this stage of the Bill to have before us an imperfect transcript of the Bill which the Government propose to place upon the Statute-book. When I went to get a copy of this Bill I was surprised to find that the clauses added on the Report stage were not added. I hope, therefore, we shall have an opportunity of considering the Bill in its complete form before the Third Reading is carried. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, in the speech which he has just made, has referred to the absence of certain action on the part of hon. Members on this side of the House with reference both to Instructions and Amendments, and he suggested that if we desired very large powers to be added to this Bill we should have taken more opportunities of putting down Instructions. The right hon. Gentleman seems to forget that the opportunity of putting down Instructions was limited, because that stage of the Bill was not expected to be so short. I remember one evening we were not expecting this Bill to be taken at all by the House, and when I came back I found that one stage of the measure had been taken unexpectedly. Of course that shut out the possibility of putting down certain Instructions which would otherwise have possibly been put down. I do not say that this was designedly done, but it put us at a disadvantage with reference to the addition of further Instructions which might have been put down to extend the Bill, as was desired by many hon. Members on this side of the House. There were many Amendments of substance which we desired to move, but which were unfortunately shut out by the narrow title and narrow purview of the Bill itself. Hon. Members of considerable position in the party to which I have the honour to belong, men of most moderate views, have declared that this evil is so great, and that the difficulties and dangers of bad housing of the people are becoming such serious questions affecting the social condition of the people, that they are prepared to take even revolutionary steps to amend the present condition of things. When that spirit exists, it is more than disappointing, for it is absolutely disheartening to have a measure brought in and discussed, and which is described as a Bill for housing the working classes, which, by its very title and drafting, prevents Amendments of a large and generous character being put upon the Paper. Then we come to the question in connection with this Bill of what can be done under it. There were several points that I wished to raise myself, and I am sorry to have to say, with reference to the Bill itself, I regard it with great disappointment. It does not answer the expectations I had formed of the measure that would be introduced. The Bill has not met, after all, the great difficulty we have to face in this matter in order to take poor people out of bad and insanitary houses. There are plenty of powers on

the Statute-book for turning people out of bad houses and for shutting up those houses; but what we want is power to re-house the people, and this Bill does not give us that power to any appreciable extent in the rural districts, and it gives us that power under very unfortunate conditions even in large cities and in London. I am very anxious that we should consider this Bill fully and thoroughly before it passes to another House, and I think it is advisable that we should discuss it at much greater length. The right hon. Gentleman says it is desirable that the public outside should understand the Bill thoroughly; but for that purpose so far we have had very small opportunities of discussing the measure. With reference to the re-housing difficulty in London the Bill gives the local authorities opportunities of re-housing by taking them outside their area. But the taking of them outside the present areas under, existing conditions is almost impossible You cannot take people outside the areas of these local authorities——

It being Midnight, Mr. SPEAKER proceeded to interrupt the Business, whereupon—

MR. CHAPLIN

rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."

Question put, "That the Question be now put."

The House divided:—Ayes, 108; Noes, 38. (Division List No. 216.)

AYES.
Acland-Hood, Capt. Sir A. F. Balfour, Rt. Hn. G.W. (Leeds) Boscawen, Arthur Griffith-
Allhusen, Augustus Hy. Eden Banbury, Frederick George Brassey, Albert
Anson, Sir William Reynell Beach, Rt. Hn. Sir M. H. (Bristol) Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John
Arrol, Sir William Bemrose, Sir Henry Howe Bullard, Sir Harry
Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John Bethell, Commander Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H,
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (Manch'r) Blundell, Colonel Henry Cavendish, R. F. (N. Lanes.)
Cavendish, V. C. W (Derbyshire) Goschen, Rt. Hn. G. J. (St. Geo.'s) Peel, Hon. Wm. Robert W.
Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. (Birm.) Goulding, Edward Alfred Penn, John
Chamberlain, J Austen (Worc'r) Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsb'y) Pilkington, R. (Lancs, Newton)
Chaplin, Right Hon. Henry Greville, Hon. Ronald Platt-Higgins, Frederick
Charrington, Spencer Hamilton, Rt. Hn. Lord George Powell, Sir Francis Sharp
Cohen, Benjamin Louis Hanbury, Rt. Hn. Robert Wm. Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward
Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse Henderson, Alexander Purvis, Robert
Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow) Hermon-Hodge, Robt. Trotter Rentoul, James Alexander
Cross, Herbert S. (Bolton) Hoare, Sir Samuel (Norwich) Richards, Henry Charles
Curzon, Viscount Jebb, Sir R. Claverhouse Ritchie, Rt. Hon. Charles T.
Dalkeith, Earl of Keswick, William Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)
Dalrymple, Sir Charles Knowles, Lees Round, James
Davies, Sir H. D. (Chatham) Lawrence, Sir E Durning-(Corn) Russell, T. W. (Tyrone)
Dickinson, Robert Edmond Lawson, J. Grant (Yorks.) Sinclair, Louis (Romford)
Digby, J. K. D. Wingfield- Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine Smith, A. H. (Christchurch)
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- Long, Col. C. W. (Evesham) Smith, J. Parker (Lanarks)
Douglas-Pennant, Hon. E. S. Long, Rt. Hon. W. (Liverpool) Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)
Dyke, Rt. Hon. Sir W. Hart Lowe, Francis William Thornton, Percy M.
Faber, George Denison Lowles, John Tomlinson, W. E. Murray
Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edw. Loyd, Archie Kirkman Tuke, Sir John Batty
Finch, George H. Lucas-Shadwell, William Warde, Lieut. -Col. C. E. (Kent)
Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool) Welby, Lt -Col A. C. E. (Taunton)
Fisher, William Hayes M'Killop, James Willox, Sir John Archibald
Flower, Ernest More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire) Wilson, John (Falkirk)
Gedge, Sydney Morgan, Hn. Fred. (Mon'mths) Wodehouse, Rt Hn. E. R. (Bath)
Gibbons, J. Lloyd Morrell, George Herbert Wylie, Alexander
Gibbs, Hn. Vicary (St. Albans) Morton, A. H. A. (Deptford) Wyndham, George
Godson, Sir Augustus Fredk. Mount, William George Young, Commander (Berks, E.)
Goldsworthy, Major-General Murray, Rt Hn A Graham (Bute.) TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Sir William Walrond and Mr. Anstruther.
Gordon, Hon. John Edward Nicholson, William Graham
Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John Eldon Pease, Herbert P. (Darlington)
NOES.
Bramsdon, Thomas Arthur Hedderwick, Thos. Chas. H. Reckitt, Harold James
Brigg, John Horniman, Frederick John Robson, William Snowdon
Broadhurst, Henry Jones, W. (Carnarvonshire) Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)
Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn Kearley, Hudson E. Sinclair, Capt. J. (Forfarshire)
Caldwell, James Lambert, George Smith, Samuel (Flint)
Cawley, Frederick Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'land) Soames, Arthur Wellesley
Dalziel, James Henry Lough, Thomas Spicer, Albert
Dillon, John Macaleese, Daniel Sullivan, Donal (Westmeath)
Doogan, P. C. MacNeill, J. Gordon Swift Thomas, David A. (Merthyr)
Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan) M'Leod, John Williams, John Carvell (Notts)
Flavin, Michael Joseph Maddison, Fred.
Foster, Sir W. (Derby Co.) O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny) TELLERS FORTHE NOES—Mr. Herbert Gladstone and Mr. Causton.
Goddard, Daniel Ford O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)
Hayne, Rt. Hn. Charles Seale- Oldroyd, Mark

Bill read the third time, and passed.