MENTAL DEFICIENCY BILL.

HC Deb 03 June 1913 vol 53 cc807-49

Order read for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment to Question [28th May], "That the Bill be now read a second time."

Which Amendment was to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three months."—[Mr. Booth.]

Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question." Debate resumed.

Mr. MONTAGUE BARLOW

When the Debate was adjourned on Wednesday last I was endeavouring to put to the House the case for the local authorities in regard to this Bill. I had said a word or two about the question of liberty, and I do not wish to go over the same ground, but I should like to refer to a, letter in the "Times" to-day from Miss Dendy, who is extremely well known to those who have paid any attention whatever to the subject with which the Bill deals. It is a forcible letter, and I would ask attention to it specially by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood). She proves conclusively that the line recently taken by him and his friends in regard to liberty is an unfortunate line, which has already had extremely unsatisfactory results. I should like to read two short quotations from the letter. In one of these she gives a most telling instance of the mischief which is done by inducing mentally defective children in some cases to return with their parents. She says:— A woman has just taken away her little girl whom we had been able to cleanse and feed so that she had very greatly improved. The father in this case would have liked to leave the little one with us; he says he finds his wife drunk on the floor night after night when he conies home from work. The child has gone back to the most cruel neglect and ill-treatment because the mother protests that she loves her too dearly to do without her! Where is the liberty for such a child as that? It is thraldom of the most horrible description. She finishes her letter with these words:— It is a curious perversion of the desire for justice and liberty which would leave helpless little children at the mercy of human beings who are themselves the slaves of their animal passions. It is in the name of liberty that young girls are brutally ill-used, little children murdered, outrages of all kinds committed and we are asked to allow all this to go on indefinitely!

Mr. BOOTH

Will the hon. Member give particulars of that case?

Mr. BARLOW

I have read the extract exactly as it is given, and if the hon. Member desires, I can procure such further substantial facts as Miss Dendy will be able to give. I wish now to return to the point with which I was dealing when the Debate was adjourned, namely, the question of expenditure, and the contribution in aid of the burdens now thrown upon the local authorities. Under Section 28 of the Bill expenditure falls under three heads. The local authorities are to ascertain what are the numbers of persons defective in their area, and they are to provide suitable supervision. Then they are to provide suitable and sufficient accommodation for such persons as are sent to certified institutions by Orders under this Act, and they are to make provision for the guardianship of such persons when placed under guardianship by Orders under this Act With regard to these two latter classes there is assistance from the Government. There are two more items of expenditure: the appointment of officers and the making of annual returns. The expenditure involved under this Act is divided into two categories—current expenditure and capital expenditure. Both are involved in the new classes of duties thrust upon the local authorities. The whole burden of this expenditure falls, so far as the first and third sets of duties to which I have referred are concerned, upon the local authorities. The cost of the whole administration depends on the numbers involved. Before the Committee last year the Home Secretary stated that the numbers involved would be about 20,000. He said very much the same last Wednesday. We know that under the Bill as it stands £150,000 is the amount which is provided by the Government for what I call the second class of duties. With regard to the accommodation and guardianship of persons under the Act, of those sent under guardianship Orders, the contention of the local authorities shortly is this: First, the number of 20,000 is very much less than the actual number, and secondly, that even if it were an adequate number, the amount provided by the Government, £150,000, does not go anything like half way to provide accommodation for those two classes. The Royal Commission, which went into this very thoroughly after very careful statistical computation, arrived at the conclusion that 046 of the population is mentally defective, of whom about 50 per cent. required accommodation. Working out those numbers, it comes to this, that about 70,000 people require accommodation. I have not heard these figures criticised, and I do not think that the Home Secretary in any way made any attempt to show that they are excessive or exaggerated.

Mr. WATT

Does the 70,000 include Scotland?

Mr. BARLOW

I understand that it does. The Home Secretary has given us figures which I think are admitted as to the cost of institutional support, and of support if boarding out is involved. Support in an institution costs 14s. a week, or roughly £36 a year. Boarding out is estimated to cost 8s a week, or about £20 a year. The average cost on that basis may be taken as at least £30 a year, and if you apply that to the 70,000 people who require treatment, it means an annual cost of over £2,000,000 a year. But even taking the figures of the Home Secretary, 20,000 people, and multiplying that by £30, you get £600,000 a year cost. But what the Government is giving is £150,000, and that £150,000 is to be half. We are told that no local authority is to be under any obligation with regard to accommodation unless the Government give half, and the Government are to give up to £150,000. There is some small addition, which we are glad to accept, in the case of those who are sent under orders by the Home Secretary or of the Court. Expenditure on them is not to count as part of the £150,000. Apart from that, £300,000 is primâ facie under the scheme of the Bill to be sufficient to cover the cost of accommodation.

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. McKenna)

How do you arrive at the amount of £30?

Mr. BARLOW

I take it as an average between £36, the cost in institutions, and £20, the cost of boarding out. What we contend on behalf of the local authorities is that this £150,000 set aside under the Bill is entirely inadequate. It takes no account of those duties which are imposed on the local authority of ascertaining the numbers, of supervision, of appointing officials, and of making returns, which is to fall on them without any help, and, so far as it is a question of providing adequate accommodation, we are in this dilemma: We say that the 20,000 is only about one-third of the number you have to deal with. If you have got a locality where feeling is strong on the subject, as we have in the North, pressure would be brought by the inhabitants to provide accommodation for all those in the area who are mentally defective. But it is not fair to the local authorities that the local authorities should be put in the position that in such a case they should have to make up the deficiency, and pay a great deal more than half the expenditure, because this pressure by the inhabitants will be so great. It has been suggested that, as time goes on, we shall get more money from the Government. Some of us have experience of the possibilities of getting more money from the Government for local expenditure, and we are not very hopeful of being able to do better in the future than we have done recently. A word or two now about capital expenditure. The local authority under the Act has no authority to borrow money from a bank, whereas the Imperial Government have. What we feel strongly is that if we are to spend money on putting up premises and so on the Government should be prepared to advance us money beforehand on an approved plan. I believe that this suggestion has already been put to the Home Secretary. Something of that sort should be possible. We may be told that this is only a matter of administration, and that it is not a matter of substantial grievance. Voicing the views of local authorities, I say that it is a very substantial grievance, because they have great difficulty in getting large capital sums beforehand for works which are to be carried out over a period of years. If it is suggested that there is no precedent for doing this, I understand that in the case of sanatoria and dispensaries under the Insurance Act provision is made for the advance up to three-fourths or four-fifths of the costs. If it can be done in the case of the Insurance Act, we should treat this, which is a very analogous matter, a question of health and national burden, on the same footing. The same kind of reasoning applies in both cases. The urgency and the national character are the same, and we might secure from the Government, in order that no delay may occur in this case as in the other, that the Government should be prepared to advance a considerable portion of the necessary expenditure on approved plans under this Bill.

There is another point as to which some uncertainty was caused in the country by what the Home Secretary said last Wednesday. What he said was:— So far as a ditty is imposed upon a local authority under this Bill, it is limited to the extent to which the cost of carrying out the duty is borne by the State as to one-half of the amount"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Wednesday, 28th May, 1913, col. 222.] That is quite explicit. The local authority will have no duty imposed on it except that of which the State bears half the cost. We should like it to be more, but we cannot say, if the Act really definitely were so, that the local authorities would be very much aggrieved. He goes on to say:— It will not include half for the maintenance of that which might be termed the general administrative charges of the local authority, and which the local authority will have to hear in any circumstances."—[OFFICIAL, REPORT, Wednesday, 28th May, 1913, col. 223.] I cannot reconcile those two utterances. As I read the Bill, what is secured is that the Government are prepared to pay half the charges up to a limit amounting to £150,000 for accommodation. They are riot prepared to pay any of the charges of the local authorities or any portion of them or assist in any portion of them which covers the ascertaining of mentally defectives, which will require a large staff of persons.

Mr. McKENNA

There is no such duty in the Bill.

Mr. BARLOW

I am very sorry if I have misread the Bill, but I may point out that Section 28 says—

"the local authority are hereby empowered, and it shall be their duty, subject to the provisions of this Act and to regulations made by the Secretary of State, to ascertain what persons within their area are defectives and subject to be, dealt with under this Act, otherwise than at the instance of their parents or guardians."

You must ascertain who the whole number are before you know—

Mr. McKENNA

The hon. Member must read that in conjunction with the first two Clauses. They have only got to ascertain who are defectives subject to be dealt with under the Act. The only class subject to be dealt with are those who are neglected and so on.

Mr. BARLOW

I quite agree, but that will almost inevitably involve the ascertainment of practically everybody who is mentally defective in the area. I do not see how you are going to ascertain who belong to a special kind of mentally defective people unless you ascertain all those who are mentally defective in the area. They are to provide for the supervision of such persons, and, according to the Home Secretary, there is no assistance from the Imperial Government, nor is there any assistance from the Government towards employing a sufficient number of officers or other persons to assist in the performance of the duties imposed under the Act, or to make an annual report to the Board, or such reports as the Board may require. A very considerable trained staff of doctors will be required, with assistance—clerks, and so on—to deal with all the returns. All these duties mean extra expenditure, and the Bill does not provide one penny-piece towards it. I do not understand what the Home Secretary means when he says:— It will not include half the maintenance of that which might be termed the general administrative charges of the local authority, and which the local authority will have to bear in any circumstances. I do not quite see, when new duties are imposed on the local authorities, why they should have to bear the charges in any circumstances. The Home Secretary went on to say:— I have made inquiry as nearly as I can, and I think I am not very far wrong in saying between 20,000 and 30,000 people. That is, people who are to come under the Bill. Then the right hon. Gentleman proceeded:— That is, I am quite aware, not more than one-third of the whole number of people who will ultimately have to be dealt with. Put it will take a considerable time before we shall be able under local administration to absorb these 20,000 or 30,000. As I understand it, the right hon. Gentleman does not include in his purview more than 20,000 or 30,000. Here, again, I am obliged on behalf of the local authorities to say that this is not fair. The hon. Gentleman's proposal does not cover the ground, and it puts the local authorities in an equivocal and invidious position if they are not to be able to take up actively the treatment of mentally defective persons; or, at any rate, if they do, in the case of some, as a matter of actuarial calculation, half the burden will be borne by the Government, but in the case of a 'large number of others none of the burden will be borne by the Government at all. In regard to this general question of the local authorities and the mentally defective, it is felt that this is one more instance of those additional burdens which are continually being thrust upon the local authorities without adequate satisfaction from His Majesty's Government. The next Bill on the Paper is one to deal with the educational side of the treatment of the mentally defective. In regard to this treatment, I would point, out that you are going to have confusion of authorities; you will have a major local authority and a minor local authority for education of defectives, and the whole burden of the cost is to be thrust on the local authority. Not so very long ago, in the early days of 1911—I remember it, because it was the first occasion on which I addressed the House—there was a Debate on a Motion that a small Committee should be appointed to deal expeditiously with the subject, and the Government were disposed to accept the proposal. Speakers on this side of the House drew attention to pledges which had been given that this question of local burdens should be dealt with, and dealt with promptly, by His Majesty's Ministers. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had said:— Whoever stands at this box next year will have to deal with the problem, and deal with it thoroughly. Lord Crewe, in another place had said:— If we find ourselves next year in a position to devise the means, we shall make an attempt to deal with the whole subject. That was in 1910. The right hon. Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlan) also spoke in the Debate, and used strong language, but I do not think too strong language, when he said:— We are told by the right hon. Gentleman opposite that what the Government meant by dealing thoroughly with the question was the appointment of a Committee, which would make it impossible to have any legislation on the subject this year.… I say that is a pretty monstrous thing."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th February, 1911, cols. 812–813, Vol. XXI.] The feeling in the towns is very strong. Members on both sides of the House have had ocular demonstration of that fact either by deputations, by circulars, or otherwise. My own Constituents in the borough of Salford feel so strongly that I have found leading supporters of the Government suggesting that the local authorities should go on strike and refuse to administer the further burdens thrust upon them. If the Government proceed in this policy of thrusting burdens upon the local authorities towards which they do not provide an adequate share of the expense, then it will produce two extremely unsatisfactory results—it will disorganise more and more the work of local government, and it will produce amongst the ratepayers, and amongst those who have to administer local government such a disgust that it would be very difficult to get the necessary reforms in educational and health matters carried through, because their feeling will be, and they will say, "Yes, this is another measure for imposing upon us burdens which we ought not to be asked to bear without proper contributions from the Imperial Government." With these few words of criticism, and apart from the objections which I raised, my feelings are generally in support of the Bill.

Dr. CHAPPLE

I need not follow the hon. Member opposite in his criticism of the details of the Bill. I will confine myself as nearly as possible to the general principle underlying it. I have listened with great interest to the Debate so far, and many of the contentions of those who have spoken show that they have not a proper conception of the meaning of the term "feeble - mindedness." Feeblemindedness is not a disease, it is a condition. The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood) showed clearly that he had no conception whatever of what is meant by experts when they use the term "feeble-mindedness." [An Hon. MEMBER: "There are others in the same position."] The hon. Member suggests that there are many others in the same position. It is more essential, I submit, to get a clear definition of terms, when you are discussing a question which is scientific or semi-scientfic, than it is in almost any other discussion. The hon. Member referred to Cowper, the poet, and spoke of his feeble-mindedness. Could anything be more grotesque? Cowper suffered from melancholia, a disease of the brain. Feeble-mindedness is a condition—it is a condition of arrested development of the brain. A clear conception of the term feeble-mindedness should be kept in mind. It is as impossible to get a scientific definition of feeble-mindedness as it is of insanity. There is no accurate definition of insanity, but, with sufficient experience, it can be detected, just as feeble-mindedness can be, detected. Feeble-mindedness is in-born in a child; it is a congenital condition which belongs to the brain. The hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth) said the mother of Bacon was feeble-minded. He actually told us that Bacon's mother died of feeble-mindedness, and he drew the conclusion that feeble-minded women bear great sons. The fact is that the mother of Bacon was one of the most cultured women the country ever produced. She was a linguist; she could write fluently Italian, Greek, Latin, and French, and she used in her letters quotations as freely in those languages as we would use quotations from Shakespeare in our letters. In the last year or two of her life she was overtaken by senile decay, and died at the age of 82, yet the hon. Member for Pontefract quotes that fact in support of his statement that feeble-minded women bear great sons. Then the same hon. Member referred to the mother of Lincoln. What are the facts? Mrs. Lincoln was one of the most saintly and cultured of women as culture was possible in the far West and she was an omnivorous reader. Lincoln said of her:— All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother. Yet the hon. Member quoted her as an illustration that feeble-minded women bear great sons. The mother of Turner was referred to as feeble-minded, and the hon. Member cited her as an example of a feeble-minded mother bearing a great son. It is one of the most grotesque statements which could be made, and I am surprised that the hon. Member for Pontefract is not here to listen to what I have to say. If he had said that Turner was feebleminded I might possibly have agreed with him, for it was said that he was "almost feeble-minded" in all other subjects than painting. Feeble-mindedness being a condition of the brain, and not a disease, is the most hereditary of defects. Dr. W. Duncan McKim, a great writer, in his book on "Heredity and Human Progress," says:— The capacity for evil of one feeble-minded woman appears beyond all conception when we reflect upon the long line of paupers and criminals to which she may give origin. It is probable that no defect is more surely transmitted from parent to child than this one of feeble-mindedness. As is generally admitted, it is very exceptional for the children of feeble-minded parents to be mentally sound. A recent writer has found in sixty-one families 267 feeble-minded individuals—an average of four and one-third to each family. That is a scientific statement on the subject. It should be remembered that feeble-mindedness is not a disease, but an arrested development, and belongs to a child at birth and prior to birth; it is an hereditary condition. It is with that condition that we are dealing. It is easy enough to detect it, and there is no difficulty whatever in proving that the condition is due to arrested brain development, and is hereditary. The condition of the mentally defective child is as a rule congenital; that is to say, the brain has stopped growing previous to birth. In sonic eases it may arise in childhood from convulsions or epileptic fits, which may arrest development after birth to such an extent as to bring the child within the category of the feeble-minded. The Bill from start to finish assumes that you have detected feeble-mindedness and classified your child, and once you have done that you have come to the conclusion that the child is at a grave disadvantage, and is going to be at a disadvantage all through life. Because it is so afflicted, this Bill holds out a kindly hand and takes that child under its protection for its own benefit. The hon. Member for Pontefract calls that anti - Christian. This Bill comes along and takes care of these children, instead of leaving them to the world to be buffeted about and made the victims of their adverse circumstances. A statement appeared a little while ago that a feeble-minded woman had thirteen illegitimate children to as many different fathers, nearly all feeble-minded. Contemplate the tragedy to that woman and lose sight of the community for a moment. What did it mean to that woman bearing, children in poverty and degradation and pain? Contrast the taking of that woman off the streets and sending her, say, to Darenth, one of the finest managed institutions in the country, with the tragedy of her suffering and pain and degradation! In that institution no one suffers either pain or any consciousness of restraint. The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme speaks of locking them up and keeping them in prison, but to say that is a prostitution of words. If he had ever been in that institution he would not say so, and I admit that there are people in that institution who take a more balanced view of these things than the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme. I refer to those over the age of sixteen. I admit that some modification of the treatment of those under sixteen is required. Those over sixteen are at work and their minds are' educated through their hands.

That is the only principle on which education of the feeble-minded should proceed. There should be no attempt to teach the feeble-minded child that two and two make four. I have visited these institutions in England and Scotland and the only complaint that I have to make of those institutions is that they try and teach lessons. That is a mistake and is cruelty and persecution. I remember very early in life reading a graphic account of how a teacher boasted that after three years of constant training she had managed to get an idiot to count the buttons on his coat. I never got over that tragedy of three years' persecution of that child and the three years' waste of life of that teacher. In our special schools for these people there should be no such thing as a lesson and no teachers at all, except kindergarten teachers, mechanics, and others who teach through the hands only. If you go to Darenth you find all over sixteen at work, and the superintendent will tell you that when he wants to punish any offender, man or woman, he takes them away from their work. A man whom he took away from work cried like a child because he was not allowed to continue. I have visited the Larbert institution where I found a boy who had been engaged for six weeks in making a many-coloured woollen mat. Before that six weeks he was the most refractory child in the institution. He threw chairs at the nurses, smashed all the things around him, and it was almost impossible to keen him in discipline. When I saw him he was industriously engaged in the making of the mat. I lifted it to look at it and he screamed for he thought I was going to take it away. Contrast the position of that little child, happy and contented with this occupation, with its position if you thrust it out into the adverse circumstances of outdoor life, where it would be impossible for him to be anything but miserable. You have the child there under discipline, and under the kind and humane and Christian management of a great institution.

The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme calls this the grossest materialism. He said we are making a law for the "lower orders." As a matter of fact, we are making a law for all the orders high and low. These institutions will be open to the rich as well as to the poor, and, as a matter of fact, the rich take as much advantage as the poor of such institutions. They cannot keep a feeble-minded child or idiot or imbecile at home. It is almost impossible to do so, and they make use of institutions, which are always open to the rich. We are providing for the poor under this Bill, and we are saying to the afflicted poor, "We are going to give you the same place, the same luxuries, the same protection, the same happy lives that the rich enjoy." Though we are doing that, the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, loyal to some fetish, uses these extravagant words, and says there is an attempt to steal the child. There is no attempt to steal any child. Anyone who has a defective child may keep it at home. What is the truth of this matter and what do those acquainted with the subject complain of? Miss Dendy, writing on this subject in today's "Times," says the trouble is that though we take in these feeble-minded children and train them, with whatever brains they have, to do some particular thing, the feeble-minded Parent comes along and tries to coax the child out, when he sees that the child can make something that could be turned into pennies, to be used perhaps for drink. They have the power now to take them out. Miss Dendy says that they take out the children to degradation, ruin, and misery. We want to remedy that. The Members who are hostile to this Bill accuse us of stealing the children and taking them away from their parents. I have no patience with the extravagant language used by some hon. Members. The one interest, said the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, of those who support this Bill is the production of wealth by the community.

I think I have said enough to show that the one interest of those who support the Bill is the protection of the feeble-minded and defectives from themselves. The justification for the Bill is that there is a large number of defectives who are suffering in our community to-day, and we want to protect them from their suffering. Those defects, as I have said, are all hereditary and not diseases, but congenital arrests of brain development, which are the most hereditary of all brain conditions. Being so, those feeble-minded people produce defective children. It is a cruel thing to the individual child, and cruel to make any woman the mother of an idiot. I know of nothing more pathetic than to see the homes where idiots and imbeciles are. I have gone into a home and heard the screeching, half-barking sound of an idiot tethered in the back yard like a dog, with the pathetic, grief-stricken mother doing all she could to hide it. Do you mean to say it would not be a kindness to go to the mother and say, "We have a magnificent institution; we will take that child and protect it?"

Mr. PRINGLE

That is done under the existing law.

Dr. CHAPPLE

The whole family, and sometimes the whole community suffer from the liberty of the defection, but the child itself never suffers because it is taken to a home of that kind. It is remarkable how happy those children become as soon as you begin to methodise them and give them something to do. There is no consciousness of restriction or of gaol or of bars and bolts to which the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme refers. Those are some of the aspects of the question that occurred to my mind as I listened to this Debate. I am justifying the whole principle of the Bill, and not dealing with details, some of which could be modified with advantage in Committee. In the meantime, I think that speeches such as have been made on the floor of this House and pulished all over the country are doing an immense amount of harm. Miss Dendy, in her letter to the "Times," said that already the speech made by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme had had the result of one of the children being taken away from the home. Those speeches give an entirely warped idea of what the Bill is. My own idea is that it was, is, and will remain one of the most popular Bills that this Government has introduced. Throughout the whole of the country it is amazing to find how this question has become the subject of practical conversation, even among ladies who previously thought it was a subject which should not be discussed. It is in the interests of the individual and of the community and of the unborn that all these people should be protected from them-selves. Because those principles are at the bottom of this Bill, it has my most hearty support.

Mr. PRINGLE

I confess I find myself in the unfortunate position of disagreeing very largely with what has been said on both sides. I cannot find myself either at one with the opponents of the Bill or those who are its most wholehearted supporters. I desire, in the first place, to make an appeal to the Government against going on with this Bill and other measures like it which are cumbering their programme. In making this appeal I am expressing an opinion which is very widely shared by other hon. Members who sit on these benches. I can quite understand the position of hon. Members opposite who come here with professions of friendship for this Bill and say that it is an uncontentious measure, and in fact are offering almost fulsome flattery to the Home Secretary, their language on this occasion being in marked contrast with that which they apply to him on almost every other occasion. I think he would do well to listen to his friends. What is the situation? They speak in this effusive way of the philanthropic intentions of the Government and of the beneficent effects of this measure when it is put into operation, but what happens when this Bill goes upstairs? We had this Bill last Session, and it was sent to a Committee upstairs. Then the whole burden of finding a quorum for this Bill for discussion in Committee was thrown on Members on this side. [An HON. MEMBER: "No, no."] Yes, I have attended more regularly than the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite.

Mr. HARRY LAWSON

No, no.

Mr. PRINGLE

I remember very well the hon. Member for Mile End (Mr. H. Lawson) was one day in the Committee and I was going to leave, because it was near the luncheon hour, whereupon he said, "It is your duty as a supporter of the Government to keep a quorum, as it is a Government Bill."

Mr. HARRY LAWSON

I was there.

5.0 P.M.

Mr. PRINGLE

I wish to point out what that means. I wish to point out that we have to be in those Committees in order to get through Bills which are approved equally on both sides. Meanwhile, hon. Gentlemen opposite look in when it suits them. They can go away at 4 o'clock, unless they have a snap Division on. We have to sit here, but they can look for their selected moment of attack. In introducing these Bills and attempting to pass them through the House the Government are really enlarging the opportunities for defeat, and it is on that ground that I, on behalf of many other Members, am now appealing to them not to proceed further with these measures. They are giving us a dead cargo. They must cut that dead cargo adrift, if the vessel is not to go down. I, therefore, oppose the Second Reading, in the first place, in view of the Parliamentary situation. We know that, as things are at present, we are not working under normal Parliamentary conditions. The Opposition is not acting as a regular Opposition. It is fighting a guerrilla warfare. I do not complain of the action of the Opposition. Holding the views that they do of the general policy of the Government, they are entitled to do it. But let the Government recognise the situation, and deal with measures of this kind on the basis of facts as they are. If they do that, they will not proceed with this measure.

I also quarrel slightly with the provisions of the Bill. I do not propose to follow the hon. Member for Stirlingshire (Dr. Chapple) into the general problem of the feeble-minded. I agree very largely with what be said about the hard and cruel lot of the feeble-minded in this country. I agree that the problem requires the consideration of Parliament. But while one admits the urgency of the problem, it does not follow that the particular proposals contained in this Bill are the best way of dealing with it. The speech of the hon. Member himself displayed clearly the confusion of mind which marks so many of the so-called experts who are advocating this Bill. He said that there was a great deal of difficulty as to the definition of feeble-minded. I agree. He then gave us a definition which is not in the Bill. He said that it was a case of arrested development. That in many respects is an admirable definition and better than the one in the Bill. What is the definition of the Bill? It says that a feeble-minded person is one who, while not being an imbecile, yet requires the protection of the law. In other words, a feeble-minded person is regarded as simply a degree better than an imbecile, who is a degree better than an idiot. It is not a difference in kind, as the hon. Member for Stirlingshire argued, but a difference in degree. So that we have the most eloquent and fluent support of the Bill differing altogether from the definition in the Bill.

Dr. CHAPPLE

That is not what I said. The condition is one of arrested brain development. The definition may be quite different, but it must be loyal to that condition. An idiot is the lowest form of mental defect, an imbecile is the next lowest, and the feeble-minded next. Then you get to the normal.

Mr. PRINGLE

Even the explanation of the hon. Member has not quite cleared up the matter. Let me go further into his speech. He gave us a distressing picture of an idiot chained to a post in a backyard. But under the existing law, without this Bill at all, you can deal with idiots. The change made by this Bill is to bring within the purview of the law a class who never before came within it. Moreover, the Bill is to deal with these people under compulsory powers. We must remember that the hon. Member has said that the feeble-minded are those nearest to the normal; consequently they are those in respect of whom we should be most chary of exercising compulsory powers. We should, in cases like these, exercise to the utmost extent the voluntary principle. We should endeavour by all the means in our power to encourage and assist those voluntary homes which are at the present operating so admirably in this country. I would be in favour of State assistance for these institutions, so that many of those people who are anxious voluntarily to enter them might be enabled to do so. It would then be impossible to describe them as prisons, because it would be possible for the people to leave them, and there would be no fear of any cruel punishments or cruel discipline in connection with them. But immediately you confine people by compulsion, you make it possible to have these cruel and objectionable punishments. Hard instances have been quoted where children have been withdrawn by their parents, not because they wished to protect and care for the children, but simply to make a profit out of them. I should certainly be prepared to deal with such exceptional cases. I would be prepared so to amend the law as to prevent parents whose character was objectionable from withdrawing their children from such institutions. But we have no right to prevent parents whose character is unexceptional, who are doing their duty to their children, from objecting to having their children immured in these institutions or from withdrawing them if they so desire.

Dr. CHAPPLE

That is not in the Bill.

Mr. PRINGLE

I think it is. At any rate, that is my interpretation. In fact, the whole point of the case is that under present conditions parents can withdraw the children, and the object of the Bill is to put an end to this state of affairs, so that the parents cannot withdraw the children. The cases cited only justify the State's interfering where the character of the parents is bad, and not where the character is good, and the parents care for and protect the children. I think that we have had enough compulsion in this Parliament. I was one of the few Members who objected to compulsion in the Insurance Act. There were four Members on[...] this side who had the honour of objecting to compulsion in the Insurance Act, but we got so little support from the other side that we did not go to a Division. Compulsion is now the main argument on Tory platforms against the Insurance Act. If this Bill is passed, with these compulsory powers, wherever a child has been taken by compulsion you will have the same arguments used on Tory platforms. I suppose I shall be told by the President of the Board of Education that I am giving a wrong interpretation of his Bill if I suggest that under it in the country districts it will be possible to take away defective children from their homes and send them to a residential special school compulsorily.

The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Pease)

I do not want to deal with the provisions of my Bill which is not before the House, but it ought to be clearly stated that a very large majority of the children whom we have been discussing this afternoon will be returned to their parents from the special schools daily. There will be a comparative few in rural districts, where it would be impossible to provide special schools for them without some residential arrangements being made in connection with those schools. Where such residential arrangements were made, it would merely mean taking the children who are educable from their parents for four or five days in the week, and returning them probably on the Friday until the Monday morning.

Mr. PRINGLE

I am glad to have that explanation from my right hon. Friend. I do not desire to misrepresent his Bill. I have been accused of misrepresenting the provisions of the Bill before the House. I am glad to have it from him that in many rural districts there will be cases where children will be withdrawn from their homes and placed in residential schools independently of whether their parents consent or not. Granted one case of compulsion in any parish, and you will have an uprising. You will have the mother weeping, because we all know that it is to these defective children that the mothers are most attached, and it will be put forward as another case of hard, tyrannical compulsion exercised by a Radical Government. Under the guise of a non-contentious measure, we, at any rate who sit below the Gangway, will not give any more electioneering capital to hon. Gentlemen opposite. That is not the only point upon which we shall be liable to attack. I hope the Government will bear this in mind.

The Bill creates a certain number of officials. If there is one count in the indictment of which we hear more frequently than of any other at every by-election it is as to the hoard of officials which the Government have brought into existence for the purposes of corruption. I mean political corruption. I am not using the word "corruption" in any invidious sense from the moral point of view. I use it simply from the point of view of the spoils system. The Leader of the Opposition mentioned the spoils system in one of his speeches, but, after getting the statistics in the matter, he conveniently never said a word further about the matter. But the underlings of the baser sort still repeat the charge on platforms where they are not reported. We are now proceeding with another measure which creates new officials, and we are doing it to please hon. Gentlemen opposite. Last week we were appointing judges, also to please hon. Gentlemen opposite. A few weeks ago they introduced a Housing Bill which created other officials, and they made it a leading matter of attack in the Cambridgeshire election that the Government had not adopted it. All these measures add to the list of new officials appointed by the Government for the purpose, as it is said, of political corruption. This Bill does the same thing. We, on these benches at any rate, object to putting this weapon of attack into the hands of the enemy, and we appeal to the Government not gratuitously to give it to them. We say that the Government have already in hand sufficient urgent measures to be passed this Session. They have sufficiently exhausted the time and energies of a single Session. Let us do that work. Let us not overload our ship. Let us see that the work that we were sent here to perform is done.

Mr. CROOKS

I do not know quite where we have got to. We have heard a good deal about making capital for party and of saving money out of the poor little imbeciles and idiots. It seems to me that a more barbarous kind of argument I have not listened to. I have taken some trouble to understand this question and I know a little about it. It is perfectly true that there is a certain class of children who are not certifiable, and that is the trouble. First, we were going to set up an institution; there was to be a new authority to deal with these feeble-minded people under the Bill. Then I think an observation was made by the hon. Member for Pontefract that you could not put new wine into old bottles That was a tremendous score. But I would remind the hon. Member that there is such a thing as putting new whisky into old vessels—which is, by the way, still done. I have listened very carefully to the speeches of the hon. Gentlemen the Members for Newcastle-under-Lyme, Pontefract, and North Down, and now I am in as big a fog as ever I was as to what they propose to do for these feeble-minded children. What are they doing? Are they trying to do anything? We always hear on these occasions about mandates. Let me inform the House about my mandate. I have not gone down to the Market Square to my Constituents to ask them to support or to oppose this Bill, but I have received, without asking, a letter from the borough council—which is a Tory borough council. I have enough evidence against the Tories here to show pretty clearly that they will not be able to use it in evidence against the Liberals. The borough council has passed a resolution approving the principle of the Bill. After full consideration, they ask that the Home Secretary may reintroduce and pass it in the present Session with a view to it becoming law. That was followed by a petition containing 150 or more signatures from the Women's Cooperative Guild. This petition said:— We, the undersigned, representing many forms of social and philanthropic activity in your constituency, are convinced that certain legislation for the better care and control of the mentally defective is, in the interests of themselves and the community, an urgent necessity. We, therefore, venture to appeal to you to support through all its stages in the House of Commons the Mental Deficiency Bill introduced by the Home Secretary on 25th March, and to use your influence with the Government to secure its passage into law during the present Session. In addition to these 158 signatures, there were 120 persons who signed a memorial embracing seven societies of various grades dealing with philanthropic matters and the welfare of the people generally. They sent this to me, and in it they said that:— As the help of these societies is being constantly asked in mentally deficient cases, and in view of the impossibility of dealing adequately with those concerned in the present state of the law, these societies urgently request the Government to pass the Mental Deficiency Bill as amended without further delay. In the opinion of these societies, this Bill will afford the care and protection necessary for the most urgent cases. In addition to these, I have received a petition signed by 102 representative men—Church of England clergymen, Free Church ministers, justices of the peace, the Mayor and ex-Mayors, and men representing the friendly societies in the constituency which allows me to represent it. I may, therefore, at least, say that I have got a mandate to support this Bill quite apart from what I know of the matter generally. I remember a tremendous fuss being made in this matter by some who asked whether we were living in a Christian land! The Scriptures were quoted. I look upon this as a Christian measure, and I would like to ask people and the hon. Members who talk of Christianity to remember that the Lord's Prayer—to quote Scripture, as has been done—says, "Lead us not into temptation." The temptation of these poor creatures is beyond description. We talk about removing them from prison and putting them into a worse prison under the various Clauses of this Act. The hon. and learned Member for North-West Durham (Mr. Atherley-Jones) emphasised several points the other evening as the wickedness of the whole proposal. There is not a single line in the Bill but what protects parents and children too. Let me ask the House for a moment to look with me at Clause 2, Sub-section (1), where we are told you will get the dragging away of children from loving parents, which is an abomination in the eyes of a free, liberty-loving country! That sounds well. But look at this: This Clause says that a person who is defective may be, under the Act, sent to or placed in an institution for defectives or placed under guardianship—

"(a) At the instance of his parents or guardian, if he is an idiot or imbecile or is under the age of twenty-one; or

(b) If in addition to being a defective he is a Person—

(i.) who is fount neglected, abandoned, or cruelly treated." Is that wrong? That you should take those who have been neglected, abandoned, or cruelly treated, and see to them? Is that done in the interests of party government? Or are you to say, "It has nothing to do with us; what does it matter to us! In the interests of liberty, let the child lie there and rot; what do we care"? We are told that there are no safeguards at all in the Bill. Let me read the Clause further. Paragraph (iv.) says:—

"(iv.) who is an habitual drunkard within the meaning of the Inebriates Acts, 1879 to 1900; or

(v.) in whose case such notice has been given by the local education authority as is hereinafter in this Section mentioned; or

(vi) who is in receipt of Poor relief at the time of giving birth to an illegitimate child, or when pregnant of such child.

"Every safeguard is made for hearing before a judicial authority. Then the claim is made, and made openly, as though those who made it really believed it, that the Press should be admitted to examinations of the character indicated. Where is their faith in human nature? Where is the credit to the people who have been doing this magnificent work for years and looking after the interests of those concerned? I have been connected with many such cases where the people certified have been present, and I can imagine the mother or father, sister or brother being compelled to give evidence before the magistrate, or a medical man asking that the child may be put under some control, and for all that to be flamed about in the public Press! I can imagine nothing more wicked, nothing more vile, and nothing more cruel to the people who are cursed with some relative suffering under such conditions of mental deficiency.

Is there anything new about this proposal? I am told that this time they are all to be brought within the four corners of the law. It is about time. The hon. Member for Stirlingshire talked about Darenth. I could tell him about many such institutions, and could tell how much they tend to the good of those concerned. The right hon. Member for the Strand Division, when he was in office, did much for mentally deficient children. I heard the other evening my hon. and learned Friend who sits beside me. He apparently did not know—although he knows all about the Lunacy Acts—that children might be removed on the mere signature of a guardian from a person who is too poor to take care of the child at home, but could not go to a special school if its parents could not care for it, without the guardian getting an order for its admission. The guardian had only to go down and sign a paper that in his opinion the child was fit to be sent to an institution. Where was the control? Where was it like to being in a prison? When it was for the benefit of the child, surely to goodness it should be taken! The House, or some Members of it, will remember the Committee which was set up a good many years ago to inquire into the administration of Poor Law schools. Mr. Mundella was chairman. There was another Committee set up again during the time of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon. With this was associated the Metropolitan Asylums Board, of which hon. Members have heard so much. They set up a schame for improving imbeciles. Part of this work is being done in London, apart from Act of Parliament. Small schools dealing with the mentally deficient have been set up, and they have had a marvellous, wonderful, and miraculous experience. Children who were silly, and pushed, and shoved, and buffeted about, and whom no one cared for, whom one was told the policemen looked after—the policeman who has been pictured as a monster of iniquity, although we have heard a good deal about the policeman looking after these poor little children—children were taken, I say, and sent to these mentally deficient homes, and cared for; and wonderful indeed was the improvement that took place!

I remember a voluntary institution. I do not think that the English language can supply me with words of gratitude sufficiently to explain how much I feel that the people connected with it and with similar places should have taken up these imbeciles from time to time in a voluntary manner and looked after them, dealing with the poorest of the poor, whose parents were very poor, and had either to drag them about with them, or to turn them out into the streets. These little children have gone to mentally deficient homes and they have improved beyond all knowledge. It will be within the recollection of some hon. Members that in connection with the Local Government Board we were allowed to keep these children until they were sixteen years of age. I want hon. Members to note that. That is the law as it then stood—and, by the way, as it stands now. The law describes a person of sixteen as an adult person. When we took these children there were three homes, one at Fulham—where we had one special school—there was a home at Peckham, and there were two homes in Lloyd Square, Pentonville. The whole of the children were improved by the treatment. We came to the Local Government Board and asked to be allowed to spend money without a voucher. That was a distinct departure. We had no authority and no right to spend money without producing a voucher. We got the permission we asked for, and these children were given a shilling to spend, and so we endeavoured to see whether their brains were expanding. The experiment was a tremendous success. The children yielded to that kind of treatment. I can bear out what the hon. Member for the Stirling Burghs said, that that kind of treatment develops their little minds better than anything else. Then we had a deputation from those connected with the children, who said, "Why do you look after these children till they are sixteen, and then allow them to go back to the workhouse to be kept there as prisoners?"

Talk about the liberty of the subject, and the wickedness of control! I know two men who had mentally deficient daughters. One of the daughters fell a victim quite early in life, and had a child. She was sent away. The parents claimed her back again, as parents will claim children taken who fall in one form or another. What I would say to hon. Members who are opposing this on the principle of liberty is: "What would you do in a case of that kind for the sake of the mother or the father?" You say you would not interfere with the liberty of the girl. Very well then, I have no argument in that case. I cannot argue with men like that. I have got another case where the story is exactly the same. I persuaded the, mother in that case to allow the child to go away. I said to her, "Remember, some day you must go, like the rest of us, over to the majority, and then who will look after this child?" She allowed it to go, and in about three weeks took it out of our care again. She fell a victim again, and so far as I know at the present time, is in the workhouse. Is that the kind of liberty you like to act upon? Here is this Bill, which allows persons to petition that their children should be admitted to an institution. It asks at least that the children when neglected should be cared for and controlled. Surely there is nothing wrong about that! When these women came to us by deputation and asked that we should be allowed to keep these children beyond sixteen, they pointed out that all the education and all our training was wasted—that when they came back they might as well write over the portals of the door of the workhouse, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!" What was the consequence? We asked permission to keep these children after they were sixteen. We received a very prompt refusal from the Local Government Board. The child is an adult at sixteen, and therefore we were told that we were bound to give up control. We asked the Local Government Board to receive a deputation upon the subject and they did, and when we got there we received the usual formal greeting, "Good morning, and will you state your case," but we put the boot upon the other leg and said, "You tell us we are not to be allowed to keep those children after sixteen years of age, and will you tell us why?" They said, "The parents may demand the children," and we said, "If the parents are sufficiently foolish to demand the children, we shall give them up," and then the concession was made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Strand enabling the Metropolitan Asylums Board to have control of these children until twenty-one years of age. My hon. Friend who spoke just now said, "I am in favour of some control, but do not do anything because you are ruining the Government." That is a weak kind of argument.

Mr. PRINGLE

You very nearly ruined them last night.

Mr. CROOKS

Thank goodness we did not quite. That is not a good argument at all why we should not do anything. After all, you are dealing with human beings, and it is for them I am pleading and asking the House to give a Second Reading to this Bill. I ask them to read the three speeches made against this Bill by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood), by my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth), and my hon. Friend who said there was nothing further to be said in favour of the Bill. He called upon the Press, which he said was stronger than any other power in the land. I have heard other views on that sometimes according to the convenience of the moment, and then the Press said, in reporting the speeches, "The Government must give some answer to this." What is to be said on this was said by Miss Dendy, who is the greatest authority on the subject, who has begged money, prayed for money, done everything, sacrificed her life to this object. Surely of her it may be said she has lived laborious days in the interests of our poor humanity. She got several cases, it seems, already at a cost of £150,000, but what is money compared with life and human beings. I have had as much experience in local administration as any Member of this House, and I do not think the taxpayers care how much they spend as long as it is properly spent, and there is nothing you can do in which you can defend your position so well as spending money in saving the lives of the people. They talk of liberty, but let me quote some cases:— A little feeble-minded girl. Turned into the streets by her father. Found by the school attendance officer and placed in safe keeping. Was actually starving and filthy—verminous. Horribly disfigured by burns. Her feeble-minded brother (an adult) had put her on the fire and held her there. This boy's mother left her husband and went away with her brother, who is the boy's father. There are three children of the union (two boys and a girl), all of whom came to the workhouse. The girl is already living a bad life. H.H. is in safe keeping if no one interferes. An abnormally-developed and over-grown girl. At thirteen had already suffered every evil that can fall to the lot of a woman. Had several times been taken home by respectable men whom she had accosted. It was difficult to train her into habits of common decency, but at eighteen she was a happy girl living a simple, wholesome life, and her health, which had been very delicate, had improved. Her father, a drunken, disreputable man, then came and persuaded her to leave her shelter. A strong boy, small; high grade feeble-minded; subject to very violent attacks of temper, in which he does not know what he is doing. His father murdered his mother. So far as the law goes, this boy is 'at liberty' to leave his home at eighteen. Talk of liberty of the subject to live a life like that with all the danger to the community. Men talk about stealing! As if anyone wanted to take them for the sake of taking them; as if anyone wanted to lock them up for the purpose of finding a job for a doctor or a nurse or a policeman, when the whole experience of our lives shows the contrary. I have never known—and I have seen tens of thousands of lunatics—I have never known a medical man or a justice of the peace or a nurse in an institution—and they are heroic, these nurses—who would not at the first signs of returning sanity have been the first to have gone to the doctor to give them a chance.

The whole horror of the thing would be that you should go chasing up one street and down another to find a little boy who wants looking after. To say that these people are imprisoned or that there is a limitation of the liberty of the subject is absurd. I ask the House not to be led astray or led away, and I do say with all the feeling at my command this Bill is absolutely necessary. We talk about prisons and we know that 20 per cent. of the people in prison are mentally defective. You talk about the injustice of removing them to lunatic asylums. It is much better to be a patient than a prisoner. I believe that the overwhelming opinion of the country is in favour of this Bill. I believe if there was one thing to be said against the Government which will be stronger than another, it would be that they had an opportunity of saving and safeguarding these people when in office, and did not do so, and they will be asked, why did they not do it. Was it the fear of the consequences of creating other officers? Surely you should keep in your mind the sacred cause of humanity and save them when you have the opportunity.

Mr. M'CURDY

I shall only trespass on the time of the House for a few minutes to give the reasons why I should vote for this Bill with the greatest possible pleasure. I shall vote for it because I regard it as a scientific attempt to deal with the social evil of the very greatest magnitude. It is not denied there are at the present time some 70,000 feebleminded young persons in this country whose lives are not only a source of misery to themselves but a source of degradation and misery to others, and whose very existence must lower the national standard of life in this country. I regard this Bill as a welcome sign of the awakening social conscience of the community which demands that social evils of this kind shall receive attention at the hands of the Government, and I find myself very far from sympathising with the views expressed by my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Lanarkshire when he appealed to hon. Members on this side of the House not to encumber the Liberal programme by measures of this description. I should like to ask him quite plainly in favour of what measures does he propose we should jettison a useful cargo of this character?

Mr. PRINGLE

Home Rule and Welsh Disestablishment.

Mr. M'CURDY

In favour of improving the political constitution of the United Kingdom, of rectifying a political injustice in the system of religious establishment for portion of the United Kingdom, and perhaps, if time permitted, in favour of further polishing and building temples of liberty by improving the constitution of the House of Lords. It is not by building up temples of liberty and by polishing and repolishing political constitutions that the people can grow up to proper manhood and healthy national life. Man does not live by political reform or by the recasting of liberty alone. In passing, I confess for myself I have but little enthusiasm for these great measures which my hon. Friend has mentioned, and why? Because the political enthusiasm which I felt for them in an abounding measure some twenty-five years ago, when I first took an interest in politics, has become a little stale and grey-headed, like myself. The new century has brought new social problems, and it is with one of these problems this Bill makes a courageous effort to deal. My hon. Friend believes that if you bring forward a measure of this kind you afford material out of which party capital will be made at by-elections. Was there ever a more unwise reason put forward for not doing what we believe to be our duty in face of a gigantic social evil—because misrepresentation may be made upon party platforms at forthcoming by-elections? This Bill, of course, must be read side by side with the next Bill on the Order Paper, and, taking the two together, the State attempts to deal with this important problem. This Bill provides suitable and separate schools for this unfortunate class of the community, and it provides, in the second place, that remedial measures shall be taken in the best manner and that scientific advice shall be provided for the child and that the State will provide the institutions where its scientific treatment may be conducted. It was suggested by the hon. and learned Member for Durham that in the old days before the Lunacy Act came into force there were evils in the nature of improper detention which the Lunacy Acts were intended to remedy, and the implication was that there is reason to anticipate that similar improprieties and similar cruelties may be perpetrated in the case of feeble-minded members of the community for w hose benefit these institutions are erected.

Mr. ATHERLEY-JONES

I never said that. What I spoke of was people who were practically sane being placed in these institutions.

Mr. M'CURDY

I am very much obliged to my hon. and learned Friend for his correction, and I think perhaps I obtained the latter part of my suggestion from the speech of another hon. Member. But I think the suggestion, from whatever quarter it may have come, was very effectively answered by the hon. Member (Mr. Crooks) in the passage in which he asked this House to consider to whose possible interest it would be to detain as feebleminded in these institutions children who were not feeble-minded. It is quite unnecessary for me to deal with that point further. There is, I think, one possible Amendment to this Bill which no doubt, if it be necessary, the Government will consider, and that is the question of whether it might be made plain by positive words in the Bill that in the case of a defective child whose parents are willing and are in a position to give the child proper care and attention—I am not referring to the question of attendance at school—that that is a fact that should prevent an order being made against the will of the parent and that that matter should be taken into consideration by the judicial authority in deciding whether in the interests of the child such an order should be made. I entirely associate myself with the views so eloquently expressed by the hon. Member who preceded me, as regards the danger of making a fetish of the word "liberty," and of attempting to deprive these children in the name of a useless liberty, of what I believe under the Act will be the care and guardianship of the State, exercised for their interests, and for their interests alone.

Mr. HARRY LAWSON

Until I listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Lanark, I thought that the informing, and if I may say so, the almost inspiring speech of the hon. Member for Stirling, had had some effect upon the unrepentent band of curious-minded persons who sit in a group below the Gangway. The hon. Member for Lanark talked about this Bill as deck cargo. I do not know whether there came through his mind the deck cargo of 70,000 feeble-minded persons, which the State has to carry, much to its detriment, much to the loss of efficiency, and much to the increase of degradation at the present moment amongst the uncared for and untrained, because the remedy proposed by the Royal Commission and embodied in this Bill has been so long denied. That seems to be a deck cargo of a more serious kind than any the hon. Member thought of. He is afraid that the Opposition are going to use this Bill as a party weapon, but I do not wish to adopt a Pharisaical tone. Those who lived through the "pigtail election," know what can be done in the way of party expedients.

Mr. PRINGLE

The Insurance Act is more recent.

Mr. HARRY LAWSON

I do not want to take too high a tone. This Bill is founded upon a Unionist measure, and the chairman of the Unionist party is one of its principal promotors. We are much too proud of being associated with this great social reform ever to attempt to use it against the party opposite. I think that disposes of the argument which the hon. Member used just now. Those who sat on the Grand Committee have heard a good deal of this kind of talk, and this Bill has been traversed by an unending and sluggish stream of sloppy sentimentalism on the subject of personal liberty of which we have had a great deal of experience. Those who have talked about this Bill as an interference with personal liberty are surely living in the Dark Ages. They talk as if we were still in the time of Valentine Vox, and as if it were still possible to spirit away persons for motives of spite and greed, unknown to the public, and without the least official cognisance or control. Quite apart from the question of the judicial authorities created under this Bill to whom such large powers are given, the hon. Member has to recollect that we live in days of publicity. The reporter with his note book and camera is abroad in the land, and there could not be a scandal which would not be inquired into immediately, and which the hon. Member and the right hon. Gentleman who sits next to him would not make the most of at the earliest opportunity. Conceive the scandal that would arise from the complaint of the family, or from the public knowledge of the locality. Would public attention not be immediately directed to it. It is absurd to talk of things; being done which were possible in the early times of Queen Victoria. Those things are not possible now, but apart from that the hon. Member is aware that no adult can be dealt with under this Bill who is not already within the grasp of the law. Every child becoming an adult must perforce have his case reviewed and reconsidered.

I want to take the House back for the moment to the basic facts on which this Bill is based. A Royal Commission sat for three years, composed of men specially selected for their expert knowledge of the question, and they reported in such a way that no Government could long have neglected to deal with the problem. Their first words would almost have served for a preamble for this Bill, and the House will pardon me if I read them. They said:— The facts indicate evils of extreme gravity which require the speediest attention. Very many of the feeble-treaded are untrained and uncared for. Leading irregular and purposeless lives they become entirely undisciplined and fall into vice and crime, and except so far as the special classes of the local education authorities may have in a few cases met the need in some degree there is no public organisation to train them according to their ability and to control and supervise them especially in the early years of life when most can be done to ail them effectually. That was the Report of the Royal Comission in 1908. What is more important is to consider the facts in regard to crime, which are as true now as they were then! The Commissioners of Prisons, the magistrates, and the judges, are urging this House to do all they can to put a stop to what is not only a crying scandal, but a prolific evil, producing every other sort of evil in our social system. In our convict prisons 16 to 20 per cent. are cases 'of congenital or infantile mental deficiency. Even in the "starred" class of prisoners 17 per cent. are mentally deficient, whilst 25 per cent of the ordinary prisoners belong to the class with Which this House is now called upon to deal. Those figures must impress themselves upon anyone not led away by theory. Are hon. Members aware what is the fate of these poor people who wander from gaol to gaol, and from workhouse to workhouse, when turned out of prison? All that can be done under the old Act is to take them to some workhouse, without the power of making them enter the doors. They are let loose again upon society, and they return to their homes. What does that mean? Hon. Members are always trying to do something to make for clean lives and clean homes, but what misery and degradation those people bring to the homes to which they return! It is not only the personal effect; it is the way in which they drag down their families and all their connections, for they bring them almost to the same level as themselves. Is this House at this time of day going to refuse to do anything for those who have the misfortune to have feeble-minded people quartered upon them in the hope of raising their condition in life and freeing them from this tremendous handicap? These facts are the ground on which the Bill is brought in, and upon which Clauses are drawn, and I do not believe for a moment, that hon. Members will listen to the general objection because there may, in the dark days, have been some scandal before the Lunacy Acts were passed—[An HON. MEMBER: "And since."] Those are not the scandals brought forward by the hon. Member for Durham. He referred to those before the Lunacy Acts were passed. There may have been some scandal in connection with cases of those whom their friends wished to get rid of.

The figures reported by the Royal Commission speak for themselves, and I will only say a word from the other point of view. My fear is that not enough will be done under the Bill because of its financial provisions. I fear that in the different districts of the country, because of the high figure at which the rates now stand, there many be an indisposition to take advantage of the powers conferred upon the local authorities. The general inspector of the Local Government Board who was examined by the Royal Commission said the great difficulty is that the rates are going up. He said that in regard to the special schools now there is to be another call for local expenditure, and I press upon the Home Secretary that when we get upstairs he should consider carefully whether he is not able to extend further financial aid on behalf of the Exchequer. I say that because, if he does not, the risk is that the least will be done where the most is required. The Royal Commission say that, of course, as we know, there is a larger proportion of feeble-minded in rural than in urban areas. It is notorious that rural authorities are less likely and less able to expend public money than the great corporations of the great towns. Supposing the right hon. Gentleman cannot increase the amount which is given in the urban areas, there is a strong case for his increasing the proportion for rural areas. I want him to do that, because it is no good our placing a measure like this upon the Statute Book unless there is a reasonable chance of the local authorities giving it an effective administration.

Everything depends upon finance when we get the Bill in operation and practice, and I do think that there is a grave fault in the parsimony of the Exchequer which appears on the face of the measure as we have it in our hands to-day. The precedents of the past few years, after all, have not been in favour of niggardliness on the part of the Treasury. If it was possible to increase the expenditure upon old age pensions by 30 or 40 per cent., surely, in regard to the small amount required for dealing with this social evil, so grave as we know it to be in this Bill, the case is a far stronger one? I hope that if the Bill is passed the Home Secretary will do something to ensure that the law in regard to lunatics, idiots, and the feebleminded is consolidated and brought into consistency with itself. It will be very awkward for the local authorities and the judicial authorities to have to administer a code which presents so many points of difference and anomaly as there will

be after the passing of this Bill. Lord Loreburn is the Chairman of a Joint Committee of both Houses which has done excellent work in consolidating the law in regard to many different kinds and classes, of public affairs, and I hope that the whole law will be remitted to that Committee in the hope that they may not only consolidate it, but where required, bring up suggestions for its amendment so that it may be made in harmony with itself. I only wish to express the hope that when we get into Grand Committee drastic steps will be taken to see that the time we are now spending upon this measure is not wasted. Last year we had a bad experience upstairs, which we do not wish to repeat. I am quite certain that there is nobody who does not feel that if we can pass a measure this Session, with the Amendments which those who are experts in the matter will be able to suggest when we are n story higher, we shall have done a great deal to heal a sore which I think is doing more mischief than any other that I know of, and which literally stinks to the country for redress.

Mr. McKENNA

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, 273; Noes, 96.

Division No. 99.]	AYES.	[6.1 p.m.
Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)	Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Falconer, James
Acland, Francis Dyke	Cawley, Harold T. (Lancs., Heywood)	Farrell, James Patrick
Addison, Dr. Christopher	Chancellor, Henry George	Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles
Agnew, Sir George William	Chapole, Dr. William Allen	Ferens, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson.
Alden, Percy	Clancy, John Joseph	Field, William
Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbartonshire)	Clough, William	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace Edward
Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud)	Clynes, John R.	Fitzgibbon, John
Arnold, Sydney	Collins, G. P. (Greenock)	Flavin, Michael Joseph
Baker, Harold T. (Accrington)	Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.	France, G. A.
Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)	Condon, Thomas Joseph	Furness, Stephen W.
Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple)	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd
Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset)	Cotton, William Francis	Gill, Alfred Henry
Barnes, George N.	Cowan, W. H.	Ginnell, Laurence
Barran, Rowland Hurst (Leeds, N.)	Crooks, William	Gladstone, W. G. C.
Barton, William	Crumley, Patrick	Glanville, Harold James
Beale, Sir William Phipson	Cullinan, John	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford
Beauchamp, Sir Edward	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Goldstone, Frank
Beck, Arthur Cecil	Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)	Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland)
Bentham, George Jackson	Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)	Greta, Col. J. W.
Bethell, Sir John Henry	Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan)	Griffith, Ellis J.
Black, Arthur W.	Delany, William	Guest, Major Hon. C. H. C. (Pembroke)
Boland, John Pius	Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas	Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.)
Bowerman, Charles W.	Devlin, Joseph	Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)
Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)	Dickinson, W. H.	Hackett, John
Brace, William	Donelan, Captain A.	Hall, F. (Yorks, Normanton)
Brady, Patrick Joseph	Doris, William	Hancock, John George
Brunner, John F. L.	Duffy, William J.	Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis (Rossendale)
Bryce, J. Annan	Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley)	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)
Burke, E. Haviland-	Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.)	Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds)
Burns, Rt. Hon. John	Elverston, Sir Harold	Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire)
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)
Buxton, Noel (Norfolk, North)	Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)	Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)
Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney C. (Poplar)	Essex, Sir Richard Walter	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.)
Byles, Sir William Pollard	Esslemont, George Birnie	Hayden, John Patrick
Hayward, Evan	Molloy, Michael	Rowlands, James
Hazleton, Richard	Molteno, Percy Alport	Rowntree, Arnold
Helme, Sir Norval Watson	Mond, Sir Alfred M.	Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.
Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Mooney, John J.	Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)
Henry, Sir Charles	Morgan, George Hay	Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)
Herbert, General Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	Morrell, Philip	Scanlan, Thomas
Hibbert, Sir Henry F.	Morison, Hector	Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles E.
Higham, John Sharp	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)
Hinds, John	Muldoon, John	Scott, Leslie (Liverpool, Exchange)
Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.	Munro, Robert	Sheehan, Daniel Daniel
Holmes, Daniel Turner	Murphy, Martin J.	Sheehy, David
Hughes, Spencer Leigh	Needham, Christopher T.	Sherwell, Arthur James
Illingworth, Percy	Nicholson, Sir Charles (Doncaster)	Shortt, Edward
Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus	Nolan, Joseph	Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John Allsebrook
Jardine, Sir John (Roxburgh)	Norton, Captain Cecil W.	Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)
John, Edward Thomas	Nuttall, Harry	Smith, H. B. Lees (Northampton)
Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim)
Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Soames, Arthur Wellesley
Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth)	O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)	Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert
Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)	O'Doherty, Philip	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)
Jones, Leil Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)	O'Dowd, John	Stewart, Gershom
Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)	O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.)	Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)
Joyce, Michael	O'Malley, William	Sutton, John E.
Keating, Matthew	O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.)	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
Kelly, Edward	O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid)	Taylor, Theodore, C. (Radcliffe)
Kennedy, Vincent Paul	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.	Taylor, Thomas (Bolton)
King, J.	O'Shee, James John	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)
Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)	O'Sullivan, Timothy	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, West)	Palmer, Godfrey Mark	Toulmin, Sir George
Leach, Charles	Parker, James (Halifax)	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Levy, Sir Maurice	Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander
Lewis, John Herbert	Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham)	Wadsworth, John
Long, Rt. Hon. Walter	Phillips, John (Longford, S.)	Walton, Sir Joseph
Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Pirie, Duncan V.	Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay
Low, Sir Frederick (Norwich)	Pointer, Joseph	Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)
Lundon, Thomas	Pollard, Sir George H.	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Lyell, Charles Henry	Pollock, Ernest Murray	Webb, H.
Lynch, A. A.	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)
Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)	Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)	White, Sir Luke (Yorks, E.R.)
Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)	Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
McGhee, Richard	Priestley, Sir Arthur (Grantham)	Whitehouse, John Howard
Maclean, Donald	Priestley, Sir W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)	Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.
Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.	Radford, G. H.	Whyte, Alexander F. (Perth)
MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South)	Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)	Wiles, Thomas
Macpherson, James Ian	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
MacVeagh, Jeremiah	Reddy, Michael	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen)
M'Callum, Sir John M.	Redmond, John E. (Waterford)	Williamson, Sir Archibald
M'Curdy, Charles Albert	Redmond, William (Clare, E.)	Wilson, Rt. Hon. J. W. (Worcs., N.)
McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
M'Laren, Hon. F.W.S. (Lincs., Spalding)	Rendall, Athelstan	Winfrey, Richard
M'Micking, Major Gilbert	Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)	Wing, Thomas
Manfield, Harry	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glasgow)
Masterman, Rt. Hon. C. F. G.	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Young, William (Perth, East)
Meagher, Michael	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)	Younger, Sir George
Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)	Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)	Yoxall, Sir James Henry
Menzies, Sir Walter	Robinson, Sidney
Middlebrook, William	Roche, Augustine (Louth)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr.
Millar, James Duncan	Roe, Sir Thomas	Gulland and Mr. Wedgwood Benn.
NOES.
Amery, L. C. M. S.	Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)	Hamersley, Alfred St. George
Archer-Shee, Major Martin	Craig, Ernest (Cheshire, Crewe)	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.
Atherley-Jones, Llewellyn A	Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet)	Hill-Wood, Samuel
Baird, John Lawrence	Craik, Sir Henry	Hogge, James Myles
Baker Sir Randolf L. (Dorset, N.)	Dalrymple, Viscount	Hope, Harry (Bute)
Barnston, Harry	Dalziel, Davison (Brixton)	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)
Bathurst, Charles (Wilts, Wilton)	Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir. J. H. (Kirkcaldy)	Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian)
Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)	Denison-Pender, J.	Hunt, Rowland
Bird, Alfred	Denniss, E. R. B.	Jessel, Captain Herbert M.
Blair, Reginald	Doughty, Sir George	Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement
Booth, Frederick Handel	Eyres, Monsell, Bolton M.	Lawson, Hon. H. (T. H'mts., Mile End)
Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith-	Falle, Bertram Godfray	Lloyd, George Ambrose (Stafford, W.)
Bridgeman, William Clive	Fell, Arthur	Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury)
Bull, Sir William James	Flecher, John Samule (Hampstead)	Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Colonel A. R.
Burn, Colonel C R	Gibbs, George Abraham	Martin, Joseph
Butcher, John George	Gilmour, Captain John	Mason, James F. (Windsor)
Campbell, Captain Duncan (Ayr, N.)	Goldsmith, Frank	Morrison-Bell, Capt. E. F. (Ashburton)
Campbell, W. R.	Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)	Nellson, Francis
Cassel, Felix	Greene, Walter Raymond	Newton, Harry Kottingham
Cator, John	Gretton, John	Nield, Herbert
Clay, Captain H. H. Spender	Guinness, Hon. Rupert (Essex S.E.)	Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A.
Clive, Captain Percy Archer	Guinness, Hon W. E. (Bury S. Edmunds)	Outhwaite, R. L.
Courthope, George Loyd	Hall, Frederick (Dulwich)	Paget, Almeric Hugh

Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)	Stanier, Beville	Watt, Henry Anderson
Peel, Lieut.-Colonel R. F.	Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)	Weston, Colonel J. W.
Pringle, William M. R.	Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North)	Wheler, Granville C. H.
Pryce-Jones, Colonel E.	Sutherland, John E.	Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset, W.)
Randles, Sir John S.	Talbot, Lord Edmund	Wood, Hon. E. F. L. (Yorks, Ripon)
Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel	Terrell, George (Wilts, N.W.)	Wood, John (Stalybridge)
Rees, Sir J D.	Terrell, Henry (Gloucester)	Yale, Colonel C. E.
Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)	Thomson, W. Mitchell (Down, N.)
Smith, Harold (Warrington)	Touche, George Alexander	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr.
Spear, Sir John Ward	Tryon, Captain George Clement	Wedgwood and Sir F. Banbury.

Question put accordingly, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

The House divided: Ayes, 368; Noes, 11.

Division	Ayes	[6.11 p.m.
Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)	Cotton, William Francis	Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.)
Acland, Francis Dyke	Courthope, George Loyd	Guinness, Hon. Rupert (Essex, S.E.)
Addison, Dr. Christopher	Cowan, W. H.	Guinness, Hon. W. E. (Bury S. Edmunds)
Agnew, Sir George William	Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)	Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)
Alden, Percy	Craig, Ernest (Cheshire, Crewe)	Hackett, John
Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbartonshire)	Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet)	Hall, Frederick (Dulwich)
Amery, L. C. M. S.	Craik, Sir Henry	Hall, F. (Yorks, Normanton)
Archer-Shee, Major Martin	Crooks, William	Hamersley, Alfred St. George
Arnold, Sydney	Crumley, Patrick	Hancock, John George
Baird, John Lawrence	Cullinan, John	Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)
Baker, Harold T. (Accrington)	Dalrymple, Viscount	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)
Baker, Sir Randolt L. (Dorset, N.)	Dalziel, Davison (Brixton)	Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire)
Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.
Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple)	Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)
Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset)	Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)	Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)
Barnes, George	Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan)	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire)
Barnston, Harry	Delany, William	Hayden, John Patrick
Barran, Rowland Hurst (Leeds, N.W.)	Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas	Hayward, Evan
Barton, William	Denison-Pender, J.	Hazleton, Richard
Bathurst, Charles (Wilts, Wilton)	Denniss, E. R. B.	Helme, Sir Norval Watson
Beale, Sir William Phipson	Devlin, Joseph	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)
Beauchamp, Sir Edward	Dickinson, W. H.	Henry, Sir Charles
Beck, Arthur Cecil	Dixon, Charles Harvey	Herbert, General Sir Ivor (Mon., South)
Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)	Donelan, Captain A.	Hibbert, Sir Henry F.
Bentham, G. J.	Doris, William	Higham, John Sharp
Bethell, Sir. J. H.	Doughty, Sir George	Hill-Wood, Samuel
Bird, Alfred	Duffy, William J.	Hinds, John
Black, Arthur W.	Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley)	Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.
Blair, Reginald	Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.)	Hodge, John
Boland, John Pius	Elverston, Sir Harold	Holmes, Daniel Turner
Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith-	Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)	Hope, Harry (Bute)
Bowerman, Charles W.	Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)
Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)	Essex, Sir Richard Walter	Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian)
Brace, William	Esslemont, George Birnie	Hughes, Spencer Leigh
Brady, Patrick Joseph	Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.	Illingworth, Percy H.
Bridgeman, William Clive	Falconer, James	Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus
Brunner, John F. L.	Falle, Bertram Godfrey	Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh)
Bryce, J. Annan	Farrell, James Patrick	Jessel, Captain H. M.
Buckmaster, Stanley O.	Fell, Arthur	John, Edward Thomas
Bull, Sir William James	Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles	Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)
Burke, E. Haviland-	Ferens, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson	Jones, Edgar R. (Merthyr Tydvil)
Burn, Colonel C. R.	Field, William	Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)
Burns, Rt. Hon. John	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace Edward	Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes	Jones, Leif Straiten (Notts, Rushcliffe)
Butcher, John George	Fitzgibbon, John	Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)
Buxton, Noel (Norfolk, North)	Flavin, Michael Joseph	Joyce, Michael
Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney C. (Poplar)	Fletcher John Samuel	Keating, Matthew
Byles, Sir William Pollard	France, Gerald Ashburner	Kelly, Edward
Campbell, Captain Duncan F. (Ayr, N.)	Furness, Stephen	Kennedy, Vincent Paul
Campion, W. R.	George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd	King, Joseph
Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred	Gibbs, G. A.	Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Gill, Alfred Henry	Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)
Cassel, Felix	Gilmour, Captain John	Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, West)
Cator, John	Ginnell, Laurence	Lawson, Hon. H. (T. H'mts., Mile End)
Cawley, Harold T. (Lancs., Heywood)	Gladstone, W. G. C.	Leach, Charles
Chancellor, Henry George	Glanville, Harold James	Levy, Sir Maurice
Chapple, Dr. William Allen	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Lewis, John Herbert
Clancy, John Joseph	Goldsmith, Frank	Lloyd, George Ambrose (Stafford, W.)
Clay, Captain H. H. Spender	Goldstone, Frank	Lloyd, George Butler (Shrewsbury)
Clive, Captain Percy Archer	Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)	Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury)
Clough, William	Greene, W. R.	Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Colonel A. R.
Clynes, John R.	Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland)	Long, Rt. Hon. Walter
Collins, G. P. (Greenock)	Greene, Colonel J. W.	Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas
Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.	Gretton, John	Low, Sir Frederick (Norwich)
Condon, Thomas Joseph	Griffith, Ellis Jones	Lundon, Thomas
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Guest, Hon. Major C. H. C. (Pembroke)	Lyell, Charles Henry
Lynch, A. A.	Parker, James (Halifax)	Spear, Sir John Ward
Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. A. (S. Geo., Han. S.)	Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert
Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)	Stanier, Beville
Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)	Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham)	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)
McGhee, Richard	Peel, Lieut.-Colonel R. F.	Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)
Maclean, Donald	Peto, Basil Edward	Steel-Maitland, A. D.
Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.	Phillips, John (Longford, S.)	Stewart, Gershom
MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South)	Pirie, Duncan V.	Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)
Macpherson, James Ian	Pointer, Joseph	Sutherland, John E.
MacVeagh, Jeremiah	Pollard, Sir George H.	Sutton, John E.
M'Callum, Sir John M.	Pollock, Ernest Murray	Talbot, Lord Edmund
M'Curdy, C. A.	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)
M'Laren, Hon. F.W.S. (Lincs., Spalding)	Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)	Taylor, Thomas (Bolton)
M'Micking, Major Gilbert	Priestley, Sir Arthur (Grantham)	Terrell, George (Wilts, N.W.)
Manfield, Harry	Priestley, Sir W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)	Terrell, Henry (Gloucester)
Marshall, Arthur Harold	Pryce-Jones, Col. E.	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, North)
Mason, James F. (Windsor)	Radford, G. H.	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)
Masterman, Rt. Hon. C. F. G.	Randles, Sir John S.	Touche, George Alexander
Meagher, Michael	Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)	Toulmin, Sir George
Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Menzies, Sir Walter	Reddy, Michael	Tryon, Captain George Clement
Middlebrook, William	Redmond, John E. (Waterford)	Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander
Millar, James Duncan	Redmond, William (Clare, E.)	Wadsworth, John
Molloy, Michael	Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)	Walters, Sir John Tudor
Molteno, Percy Alport	Rees, Sir J. D.	Walton, Sir Joseph
Mond, Sir Alfred Moritz	Rendall, Athelstan	Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay
Mooney, John J.	Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)	Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)
Morgan, George Hay	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Morrell, Philip	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Webb, H.
Morrison-Bell, Capt. E. F. (Ashburton)	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)	Weston, Colonel J. W.
Morison, Hector	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)	Wheler, Granville C. H.
Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)	White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)
Muldoon, John	Robinson, Sidney	White, Sir Luke (Yorks, E.R.)
Munro, Robert	Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Murphy, Martin J.	Roche, Augustine (Louth)	Whitehouse, John Howard
Needham, Christopher T.	Roe, Sir Thomas	Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.
Newton, Harry Kottingham	Rowlands, James	Whyte, A. F. (Perth)
Nicholson, Sir Charles N. (Doncaster)	Rowntree, Arnold	Wiles, Thomas
Nield, Herbert	Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.	Williams, John (Glamorgan)
Nolan, Joseph	Rutherford, John (Lancs., Darwen)	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen)
Norton, Captain Cecil W.	Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)	Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset, W.)
Nuttatl, Harry	Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)	Williamson, Sir Archibald
O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Sanders, Robert Arthur	Wilson, Rt. Hon. J. W. (Worcs., N.)
O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)	Scanlan, Thomas	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)	Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles E.	Winfrey, Richard
O'Doherty, Phillip	Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)	Wing, Thomas
O'Dowd, John	Scott, Leslie (Liverpool, Exchange)	Wood, Hon. E. F. L. (Ripon)
O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.)	Sheehan, Daniel Daniel	Wood, John (Stalybridge)
O'Malley, William	Sheehy, David	Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glasgow)
O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.)	Sherwell, Arthur James	Yate, Colonel C. E.
O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid)	Shortt, Edward	Young, William (Perth, East)
Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A.	Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John Allsebrook	Younger, Sir George
O'Shaughnessy, P. J.	Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)	Yoxall, Sir James Henry
O'Shee, James John	Smith, Harold (Warrington)
O'Sullivan, Timothy	Smith, H. B. Lees (Northampton)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr.
Paget, Almeric Hugh	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim)	Gulland and Mr. Wedgwood Benn.
Palmer, Godfrey Mark	Soames, Arthur Wellesley
NOES.
Atherley-Jones, Llewellyn A.	Outhwaite, R. L.	Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough)
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Pringle, William M. R.
Booth, Frederick Handel	Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr.
Hogge, James Myles	Thorne, William (West Ham)	Watt and Mr. Martin.
Neilson, Francis	Wedgwood, Josiah C.

Bill read a second time.

Mr. MARTIN

I beg to move, "That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House."

Question put, "That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House."

The House divided: Ayes, 15; Noes, 358.

Division No. 101.]	AYES.	[6.24 p.m
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	M'Kean, John	Touche, George Alexander
Booth, Frederick Handel	Neilson, Francis	Watt, Henry Anderson
Dalrymple, Viscount	Outhwaite, R. L.	Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough)
Hall, Frederick (Dulwich)	Pringle, William M. R.
Hooge, James Myles	Pryce-Jones, Colonel E.	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr.
Hunt, Rowland	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel	Wedgwood and Mr. Martin.
NOES.
Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)	Delany, William	Jessel, Captain H. M.
Acland, Francis Dyke	Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas	John, Edward Thomas
Addison, Dr. Christopher	Denison-Pender, J.	Jones, Rt. Hon. Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)
Agg-Gardner, James Tynte	Denniss, E, R. B.	Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)
Agnew, Sir George William	Devlin, Joseph	Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)
Alden, Percy	Dickinson, W. H.	Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)
Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbartonshire)	Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott	Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)
Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud)	Donelan, Captain A.	Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)
Amery, L. C. M. S.	Doris, William	Joyce, Michael
Archer-Shee, Major M	Doughty, Sir George	Keating, Matthew
Arnold, Sydney	Duffy, William J.	Kelly, Edward
Baird, John Lawrence	Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley)	Kennedy, Vincent Paul
Baker, Harold T. (Accrington)	Edwards, Clement (Glamorgan, E.)	King, Joseph
Baker, Sir Randalf L. (Dorset, N.)	Elverston, Sir Harold	Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement
Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)	Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)	Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)
Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset)	Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)	Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)
Barnes, George N.	Essex, Sir Richard Walter	Lawson, Hon. H. (T. H'mts., Mile End)
Barnston, Harry	Esslemont, George Birnie	Leach, Charles
Barran, Rowland Hurst (Leeds, N.)	Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.	Levy, Sir Maurice
Barton, William	Falconer, James	Lewis, John Herbert
Bathurst, Charles (Wilts, Wilton)	Falle, Bertram Godtray	Lloyd, George Butler (Shrewsbury)
Beale, Sir William Phipson	Farrell, James Patrick	Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury)
Beauchamp, Sir Edward	Fell, Arthur	Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Colonel A. R.
Bonn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)	Fenwick, Rt. Hon. Charles	Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas
Bentham, G. J.	Ferens, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson	Low, Sir Frederick (Norwich)
Bethell, Sir J. H.	Field, William	Lundon, Thomas
Bird, Alfred	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace Edward	Lyell, Charles Henry
Black, Arthur W.	Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes	Lynch, A. A.
Blair, Reginald	Fitzgibbon, John	Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)
Boland, John Pius	Flavin, Michael Joseph	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)
Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith-	Fletcher, John Samuel (Hampstead)	McGhee, Richard
Bowerman, Charles W.	France, Gerald Ashburner	Maclean, Donald
Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)	Furness, Stephen	Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.
Brace, William	Gibbs, George Abraham	MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South)
Brady, Patrick Joseph	Gill, A. H.	Macpherson, James Ian
Bridgeman, William Clive	Gilmour, Captain John	MacVeagh, Jeremiah
Brunner, John F. L.	Ginnell, Laurence	M'Callum, Sir John M.
Bryce, J. Annan	Gladstone. W. G. C.	M'Calmont, Major Robert C. A.
Buckmaster, Stanley O.	Glanville, H. J.	McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Bull, Sir William James	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	M'Laren, Hon. F.W.S. (Lincs., Spalding)
Burke, E. Haviland-	Goldsmith, Frank	M'Micking, Major Gilbert
Burn, Colonel C. R.	Goldstone, Frank	Manfield, Harry
Burns, Rt. Hon. John	Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)	Marshall, Arthur Harold
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Greene, Walter Raymond	Mason, James F. (Windsor)
Butcher, John George	Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland)	Masterman, Rt. Hon. C. F. G.
Buxton, Noel (Norfolk, North)	Griffith, Ellis Jones	Meagher, Michael
Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney C. (Poplar)	Guest, Major Hon. C. H. C. (Pembroke)	Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)
Bytes, Sir William Pollard	Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.)	Menzies, Sir Walter
Campbell, Captain Duncan F. (Ayr, N.)	Guinness, Hon. Rupert (Essex, S.E.)	Middlebrook, William
Campion, W. R.	Guinness, Hon. W. E. (Bury S. Edmunds)	Millar, James Duncan
Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred	Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)	Molioy, Michael
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Hackett, John	Molteno, Percy Alpert
Cassel, Felix	Hall, F. (Yorks, Normanton)	Mond, Sir Alfred Mcritz
Cator, John	Hamersley, Alfred St. George	Montagu, Hon. E. S.
Cawley, Harold T. (Lancs., Heywood)	Hancock, John George	Morgan, George Hay
Cecil, Lord R. (Herts, Hitchin)	Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis (Rossendale)	Morrell, Philip
Chancellor, Henry George	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Morrison-Bell, Capt. E. F. (Ashburton)
Chapple, Dr. William Allen	Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire)	Morrison, Hector
Clancy, John Joseph	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas
Clay, Captain H. H. Spender	Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)	Muldoon, John
Clive, Captain Percy Archer	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.)	Munro, Robert
Clough, William	Hayden, John Patrick	Murphy, Martin J.
Clynes, John R.	Hayward, Evan	Needham, Christopher T,
Collins, G. P. (Greenock)	Hazleton, Richard	Newton, Harry Kottingham
Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.	Helme, Sir Norval Watson	Nicholson, Sir Charles N. (Doncaster)
Condon, Thomas Joseph	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Nolan, Joseph
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Henry, Sir Charles	Norman, Sir Henry
Cotton, William Francis	Herbert, General Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	Norton, Captain Cecil W.
Courthope, George Loyd	Herbert, Hon. A. (Somerset, S.)	Nuttall, Harry
Cowan, W. H.	Hibbert, Sir Henry F.	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)
Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)	Higham, John Sharp	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)
Craig, Ernest (Cheshire, Crewe)	Hill-Wood, Samuel	O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)
Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet)	Hinds, John	O'Doherty, Philip
Crooks, William	Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.	O'Dowd, Jahn
Crumley, Patrick	Hodge, John	O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.)
Cullinan, John	Holmes, Daniel Turner	O'Malley, William
Dalziel, Davison (Brixton)	Hope, Harry (Bute)	O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.)
Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian)	O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid)
Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)	Hughes, Spencer Leigh	Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A.
Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)	Illingworth, Percy H.	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.
Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan)	Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus	O'Shee, James John
Dawes, J. A.	Jardine, Sir J. (Roxburgh)	O'Sullivan, Timothy

Paget, Almeric Hugh	Rowlands, James	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Palmer, Godfrey, Mark	Rowntree, Arnold	Toulmin, Sir George
Parker, James (Halifax)	Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Rutherford, John (Lancs., Darwen)	Tryon, Captain George Clement
Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)	Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)	Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander
Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham)	Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)	Verney, Sir Harry
Peel, Lieut.-Colonel R. F.	Sanders, Robert Arthur	Wadsworth, J.
Peto, Basil Edward	Scanlan, Thomas	Walters, Sir John Tudor
Pirie, Duncan V.	Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles E.	Walton, Sir Joseph
Pointer, Joseph	Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)	Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay
Pole-Carew, Sir R.	Sheehy, David	Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)
Pollard, Sir George H.	Sherwell, Arthur James	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Pollock, Ernest Murray	Shortt, Edward	Webb, H.
Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John Allsebrook	Weston, Colonel J. W.
Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)	Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)	Wheler, Granville C. H.
Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)	Smith, Rt. Hon. F. E. (L'p'l., Walton)	White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)
Priestley, Sir Arthur (Grantham)	Smith, H. B. Lees (Northampton)	White, Sir Luke (Yorks, E.R.)
Priestley, Sir W. E. B. (Bradford)	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim)	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Radford, G. H.	Soames, Arthur Wellesley	Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.
Randles, Sir John S.	Spear, Sir John Ward	Whyte, A. F. (Perth)
Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)	Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert	Wiles, Thomas
Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)	Stanier, Beville	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Reddy, Michael	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen)
Redmond, John E. (Waterford)	Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)	Williamson, Sir Archibald
Redmond, William (Clare, E.)	Steel-Maitland, A. D.	Wilson, Rt. Hon. J. W. (Worcs., N.)
Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)	Stewart, Gershom	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Rees, Sir J. D.	Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North)	Winfrey, Richard
Rendell, Athelstan	Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)	Wing, Thomas
Richardson, Albion (Peckham)	Sutherland, John E.	Wood, Han. E. F. L. (Yorks, Ripon)
Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)	Sutton, John E.	Wood, John (Stalybridge)
Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Talbot, Lord Edmund	Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glasgow)
Roberts, George H. (Norwich)	Taylor, John W. (Durham)	Yale, Colonel C. E.
Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)	Young, William (Perthshire, East)
Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)	Taylor, Thomas (Bolton)	Younger, Sir George
Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)	Terrell, George (Wilts, N.W.)	Yoxall, Sir James Henry
Robinson, Sidney	Terrell, Henry (Gloucester)
Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, North)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr.
Roche, Augustine (Louth)	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)	Gulland and Mr. Wedgwood Benn.
Roe, Sir Thomas

Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned," put, and agreed to.