HC Deb 01 August 1879 vol 248 cc1898-918
MR. PLIMSOLL,

in rising to call the attention of the House to the condition of Malta; and to move— That, in the opinion of this House, the cost of maintaining the Police, and of draining, repairing, lighting, cleaning, and watering the streets, &c. in Malta, should he paid out of a rate upon house and other property (upon which, at present, no rates or taxes of any kind whatever are levied), and not, inter alia, out of a tax upon wheat and other grain for food, and upon potatoes and other vegetables, which, as a matter of fact, actually takes more per head from the very poor who live in cellars than it takes per head from those who live in the best houses in the streets and squares; and the House is therefore further of opinion that it is the duty of Her Majesty's Government to take such steps as may he necessary to secure the abolition of the taxes on food in Malta on and from the 1st day of January 1881; said, that the Resolution embodied his whole case, and was in strict accordance with the facts, the statements it contained being rather under than over the real facts. They referred to a case of injustice and hardship, which was so gross in its circumstances, so cruel in its incidence, and yet so easily capable of remedy, that he had great hope it would not survive its exposure to the House. The Maltese people, although oppressively, were very lightly taxed. The whole of their external defence was paid for by a contribution of £5,000 to the Imperial Exchequer, or about 8d. per head of the population; whereas we paid £1 per head for the maintenance of our Army and Navy. The total taxation per head of the population for all purposes was only 13s. 7d., as against at least four times that sum in this country. And yet, from the mode in which the taxes were levied, they were paid with far less ease than the heavier taxes in this country; and as to three-fourths of the people, they were crushing in their effects. No rates or taxes of any kind were levied directly, except about £3,000 raised by licences to wine and spirit dealers. Much the larger portion of the taxation of the country—£62,827—was derived from the taxes upon wheat and solid food; £41,624 from beer, wines, and spirits; £1,773 from oil and vinegar; for the rest, the income consisted of rents and harbour dues. An examination of the tariff showed that the term "solid food" was very wide, and included wheat, barley, and corn of all kinds, besides lentils, peas, and beans; and, lest the poor should take to vegetables in their inability to afford even the inferior kinds of corn, there was also a tax on potatoes and other vegetables. No more astonishing way of raising an income had ever been discovered, though the case of Malta was somewhat analogous to that of the Ionian Islands, where advantage having been taken of our English ignorance of the language, it had now and then happened that extreme severity had marked the proceedings of the authorities. In a Parliamentary Paper of the year 1878, Mr. Rowsell had said, that the Maltese upper and middle classes paid 10s. 10d. per head per annum in taxes, while the working classes contributed as much as 15s. 7d. The incidence of the wheat tax was such, that the richer classes paid 5s. and the poorer 10s. per head per annum. The beggars paid more per head than those who rode in carriages. People who swept the streets, and went without shoes and stockings, paid more per head for the making of those streets and the sweeping and cleaning than the noblemen and gentlemen who swept past them, in their carriages. An Englishman might imagine, judging from the absolute amount of taxation per head, that it was so trifling that it could not possibly have the crushing effect complained of by the Natives; but it was to be remembered that wages were very low in Malta, the daily average being, perhaps, not much more than 1s. Mr. Rowsell's schedule of wages showed that to be the case; and the American Consul, who had long personal experience of the Island, had mentioned that the great number of the poor was the effect of the high price of bread. Consequently, the amount of mendicity in Malta was something appalling. The poor seldom had more than the bare means of relieving their hunger, and they had the additional misery of living in dwellings that were utterly unfit for habitation. He could speak on that point from his own personal observation, as, in his curiosity to know how men could possibly live on the current small wages, he had visited the houses of the poorer classes. The whole city was built upon white freestone, making what miners called "good roof," and advantage had been taken of the material to sink deep cellars under the houses, so that one might see palatial piles of buildings with cavernous cellars, tier upon tier underneath, the lowest of which might be fully 40 feet below the level of the street. These places were damp, unventilated, foul—dreadfully foul—and the stench appalling. He spoke only of what he had seen, and he believed that at least a quarter of the city was underground. It would easily be supposed that such damp, ill-ventilated, and foul lodgings had their effect on the death-rate. That it had a deleterious effect was proved by the fact that the Governor had appointed a Commission of six medical men to inquire into the subject, the death-rate being 45 per 1,000, although Malta, per se, was naturally a healthy place. Dr. Giulio, in his Report, had said that those who had seen only the best parts of Malta could form no adequate notion of the bad hygienic state of the other parts. In particular, the drainage was exceedingly defective, and so highly charged was the atmosphere of many of the houses, that the inmates ran the risk of being poisoned by hydro-sulphide of ammonia. If any other evidence was needed as to the deplorable condition to which the poorer Maltese had been reduced by excessive taxation, it would be found in a Petition that had been presented to the House, and which recited "the heartrending misery which prevails already among the poor." Now, he wished to know why that misery had been inflicted, incurred as it was for the purpose of paving and lighting the streets, draining the town, and doing many other things, simply, as he believed, for the benefit of the upper classes? In very many cases the proceeds of the taxation seemed to be misapplied—as, for instance, in the maintenance of a University, where the sons of the rich received a semi-gratuitous education, paying only in fees, at the rate of 2s. 6d. monthly per family, the sum of £248 a-year, whilst £4,397 came from the people's food; and the building, at a very considerable cost, of an opera-house. He might mention that the opera-house had been built on land belonging to the community, and that £48,000 had been spent on its erection. On a careful examination of the expenditure upon the Island, he found that a sum of £71,000 was spent which in England, or elsewhere, would be paid out of local taxation. Why, he desired to know, should there be no rates or taxes in Malta? There were no better cared-for or more copiously watered streets than those in Valetta—equal in all respects to the best looked after streets in the West End of London or the fashionable districts of Brighton; and all this was done without any householders' tax; but it should be clearly understood, out of the taxes on solid, food. He should like to know why the people who lived in good houses in the town should not pay for that which cost money, and which they enjoyed? In no other place in the world with which he was acquainted were these things, as well as gas, police, sewage, obtained without the payment of a single sixpence by those whom they chiefly benefited—the householders; and he might add that it seemed also that these existing evils were only coincident with our occupation of the Island; for previously to that the owners of property had to pay their share of the general taxation. Now, a rate of 2s. 6d. on the house property would, according to Mr. Rowsell, give £40,000 a-year, and if the rate were made general it would realize £70,000 a-year, which would enable the Government of the Island to abolish the taxes on food and the harbour dues, so as to make Valetta a free port. Mr. Rowsell said that the upper classes in Malta had an "hysterical objection to pay money;" but if they had money's worth, why should they have it paid for out of the most miserable class of the population? It was no doubt said that if the taxation were altered it would affect the selling value of property; but even if this were so, it only showed that the owners of property had hitherto derived more than they ought to do from it, because they were allowed by our neglect to rob the poor. If the value of property were diminished by a rate, Malta by being better governed would enjoy greater prosperity than it had ever enjoyed. It was said that nine-tenths of the people were perfectly content with things as they were; but it was impossible to suppose that people would be content to be robbed in this way. It was said that no public meetings had been held to complain of bad administration; but the people were threatened, and warned not to hold public meetings. It appeared to him that the upper classes were robbers of helpless infancy and stealers from street beggars. Malta had two cardinal wants—the first was indicated in the terms of his Motion, and the second was that of a Governor whose sole business should be the good government of the population of the Island. If Malta were made an absolutely free port, the number of ships that would call there would be very considerably increased, and there would be an increase of work for the population of the Island. Malta, alone of all the Colonies that he knew, owed absolutely nothing. It had £80,000 in the Funds, and the estates of the Knights of Malta, which successive English Governors had recognized as State property, were worth not less than £1,300,000. If there were a Governor who would put the saddle on the right horse, he might, by seeing that the population of the Island was fairly and justly dealt with and that the latent industries of the country were developed, initiate a period of prosperity the like of which had never been known before in the Island. He (Mr. Plimsoll) thought he had proved the existence of a grievous wrong and a terrible injustice, that the remedy was easy, and that the objections were selfish and frivolous. But with energy and determination they could easily be overcome. The injustice was so terrible that he hoped the House would lift the burden off the shoulders of those unfortunate people. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the Resolution which stood in his name.

MR. ISAAC,

in seconding the Resolution, said, he would not offer any apology rising to support the hon. Member for Derby, nor would he follow him through all his remarks. He (Mr. Plimsoll) had, no doubt, been carried away by his excessive kind-heartedness and sympathetic feelings; and although he (Mr. Isaac) could not go to the same extent, he considered the Resolution was one which not only deserved, but demanded the consideration of Parliament. His hon. Friend the Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) had referred, in the course of his speech, in terms of condemnation to the action of a gentleman with whom he (Mr. Isaac) had been acquainted for many years, General Straubenzee. He would tell his hon. Friend that a better man did not exist in. the British Army than the gentleman whom he had charged, he had almost said, with crime. He would ask his hon. Friend whether the fault did not rest with the laws the Governor had to put into force, rather than with any action of the man himself? The points which ought to be considered were the appointment of a civil, in addition to a military Governor, the re-adjustment of taxation, the sanitary condition of the whole Island, and the education of its people. The re-adjustment of taxation was imperative, because the present system pressed unequally on the people. The poor and working classes were heavily taxed—the idle, the rich, and the noble paid, comparatively, no taxes—the duties levied upon grain, food, and alcoholic liquors were, indeed, a serious hardship upon those who were compelled to pay them. With regard to the first point, it might be said that no change could be made which would be satisfactory to the people. We had heard that said of other places greater and smaller than Malta; but had always found, when the changes had been made, that they proved to be beneficial, not only to those who had at one time been oppressed, but equally so to those who had been considered oppressors. Considerable changes had been made in the government of the Island, both before it was ceded to this country and since the cession. In 1800, when the Island was taken by this country, we had to inaugurate some system of government. After 1814 we made great changes. In 1816 a change was made; in 1834 another change; in 1838 another; and in 1849 the Constitution of the Island was entirely altered. Not taking his information from what had been said in the House by the hon. Member for Derby, or from the letters he had written, but from persons who had been employed in the government of the Island, or had resided there for many years, he believed that though his hon. Friend had put his case very strongly, he had not exceeded the bounds of reasonable complaint as to the way in which Malta had been governed, and the unfortunate poor of the Island had been treated. During the last half-century we had made great, strides in carrying Free Trade principles into operation in this country; we had removed from the edibles used by the poor all taxation; and he saw no reason why, according to justice and common sense, we should not do the same for the poor of the Island of Malta. As to the necessity for the re-adjustment of taxation, it could be proved that the lower classes in Malta were much more heavily taxed than the nobles and other classes. The principal kinds of food which the people had to subsist upon were bread, macaroni, with occasionally a few olives, a fish sandwich, and a little garlic. He had been told by a gentleman who had lived four years in the place that in the old capital of the Island, with over 3,000 inhabitants, they killed butcher's meat only one day in the week, and the demand for it was so small that they had to send the greater part to Valetta to be disposed of. The people were, therefore, obliged to use grain and those things which were taxed by the laws of the Island. That was a system of taxation which ought not to exist in any Dependency or Colony of the Crown. The question had also been mooted with regard to a land tax. What country in the Empire did not pay a land-tax, or a house tax, and a large number of other taxes? Why should Malta be the only place in Her Majesty's dominions which did not pay the land tax? He thought there would be no difficulty in raising a fair and reasonable rate of taxation for Imperial purposes from all the property in the Island, and that these changes, if carried, would be for the benefit of all parties, and were not without precedent. He believed that if Her Majesty's Ministers were to take this matter into consideration, so that some great reform was made, they would do that which would redound to their credit as much as anything they had done in the course of their Administration. In the first place, then, he would abolish the tax upon food, and supply the deficiency by a tax upon the property of the Church, and all other property, which at present enjoyed an immunity from taxation. He would, too, have the sanitary condition of the dwellings of the poor better ventilated and drained. The necessity for this was more than proved by the statement made by his hon. Friend (Mr. Plimsoll), from the experience he had gained on the spot; but if those statements needed additional arguments to impress them on the House, he (Mr. Isaac) could state, from the best possible authority, that during the general drainage repairs in Valetta the stench from the open roads was fearful—the soil, super-saturated with, sewage and gas leakage, caused an epidemic of the measle type amongst adults, as well as children, along the whole route of the excavations, and caused the loss of many lives. Another instance of the serious effects of want of proper sanitary reforms was in 1865–6, when upwards of 200 deaths occurred amongst the inhabitants of ground Mezzanine and underground floors before any case occurred to the occupants of the proper houses. Lord Clarence Paget, when at the opening of the new Hydraulic Dock, in January, 1873, said, that according to the last Census, the population of Malta was 124,000, being about 1,200 to the square mile, and, therefore, denser than any other part of the globe; and, that what was still more striking and appalling was its rapid increase, being something like 1,000 in every year. He suggested the Maltese should colonize the shores of the Mediterranean, and particularly pointed out Cyrenica, formerly one of the principal granaries of ancient Rome. That surely and clearly proved that emigration was the only way of providing for the population; and if they had to emigrate, it must be to a place where they could speak the language of the people. He thought, then, that they might establish elementary schools in the Island, in which the people might be taught English; it was highly desirable that they should learn to speak some other language than the mixture of Italian and Arabic which was their vernacular. He should rejoice if the glory and honour of improving the condition of the Island of Malta belonged to a Conservative Government. If, instead of holding Malta for the Maltese, they regarded it as an English Colony, the effect would be to make the nobles feel they were Englishmen, and thus would be infused into the society of the Island a more truly English feeling, and a belief that it had been left, amongst other important duties, to a Conservative Government to reform the laws and the government of the important Island of Malta, that had been so long neglected by the masterly inactivity of their Liberal predecessors.

Amendment proposed, To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, the cost of maintaining the Police, and of draining, repairing, lighting, cleaning, and watering the streets, &c. in Malta, should be paid out of a rate upon house and other property (upon which, at present, no rates or taxes of any kind whatever are levied), and not, inter alia, out of a tax upon wheat and other grain for food, and upon potatoes and other vegetables, which, as a matter of fact, actually takes more per head from the very poor who live in cellars than it takes per head from those who live in the best houses in the streets and squares; and the House is therefore further of opinion that it is the duty of Her Majesty's Government to take such steps as may be necessary to secure the abolition of the taxes on food in Malta on and from the 1st day of January 1881,—(Mr. Plimsoll,) —instead thereof.

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

MR. MAC IVER,

who had the following Notice upon the Paper:— To call the attention of the House to the condition of Malta; and to move, That, with respect to local administration, no outlay of public money should take place, no taxes should be imposed, nor any law be passed, except with the consent of a majority of the elected Members of the Council of Government; said, he should not have thought that the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) ever had been in Malta, had he not seen the hon. Gentleman there. It certainly did not appear, either from his speech or from the speech of his hon. Friend behind him (Mr. Isaac), that they knew anything about the Island. Let him (Mr. Mac Iver) remind the House how Malta became a part of the Empire. In 1798 the Maltese bravely withstood the French and maintained, their independence, and afterwards they willingly placed themselves under British rule. Therefore, they owed something to the Maltese. The Maltese were a deeply religious Roman Catholic people, and he (Mr. Mac Iver) had a letter from their Archbishop, who was certainly not in favour of the views of the Mover and Seconder of this Resolution. For himself, having spent years of his life in Malta, and still maintaining his associations with the place, he now spoke on behalf of the Maltese; and he was supported by a Memorial from the elected Members of the Council in the views he ventured to urge. There was not the smallest pretence for saying that the elected Members of the Council did not represent the feelings of 999 out of every 1,000 of the inhabitants. Acknowledging the perfect sincerity of the hon. Member for Derby, he yet thought that hon. Gentleman was apt at times to take an exaggerated and distorted view of facts. The undisputed facts in this matter were, that the entire revenue of Malta derived from any kind of taxation was about £100,000, and that of this amount some £50,000 was raised by those taxes to which the hon. Member for Derby was opposed. The hon. Gentleman evidently thought that the whole of the deficiency in regard to that £50,000 might reasonably be recouped from a charge of some kind or other on house property. Now, the population was about 150,000, and the number of houses perhaps something like 30,000. Nine out of ten of the houses in which the people lived were rented at £2 or £3 a-year; and if they put a tax of 20s. or 30s. on each of those houses, that would be very like adding 40 or 50 per cent to the house rent which the people had hitherto paid. That was, practically, what the hon. Member's proposal came to. There were in Malta no rich persons, or not more than about half-a-dozen, and the great bulk of the revenue required to meet local needs must be obtained from the great mass of the population. The real question, therefore, was, how could that be done with the least inconvenience and distress to the Maltese people? Surely, the wishes of the people themselves ought to have some weight, and they were averse from any material change of their system, of taxation. Although a few agitators had done their best to stir up discontent, the inhabitants of the Island were not dissatisfied; they were a law-abiding, well-conducted community, who desired ever to remain a portion of the British Empire; but they did feel that sometimes the House of Commons forgot the circumstances in which the Island became a part of our Empire and did not sufficiently regard the wishes of the Maltese people. Malta enjoyed the reality of an unrestricted commerce with all parts of the Mediterranean, and was, practically, almost a free port, Customs duties being levied on only one or two articles. The general prosperity of Malta depended upon its continuing to be the cheapest port of that part of the Mediterranean; but the Free Traders had proposed changes in the finances of the Island which threatened to destroy its trade altogether, and that had been the occasion of the riots which had occurred there. The hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) complained that the taxation of the Island was in favour of the rich, as against the poor; but this statement was based upon imaginary data. Much stress had been laid upon the fact that extensive drainage works had been undertaken by the Government in Malta; but the truth was, that those drainage works had been executed, not for the advantage of the Maltese, but of the British Fleet and of the troops who were quartered there. The demand of the Maltese people was that, with respect to local administration, no expenditure should be incurred, that no taxes should be imposed, and that no law should be passed, except with the consent of a majority of the elected Members of the Council of Government; and, in his opinion, that was a most reasonable proposal. Malta and Cyprus were both on the high road to India—the former was over-populated, the latter was thinly-populated—and, therefore, the best thing we could do was to induce the surplus population of Malta to emigrate to Cyprus.

SIR GEORGE BOWYER

rose to second the Amendment.

MR. SPEAKER

pointed out that it had already been seconded.

MR. ANDERSON

said, he had expected, after listening to the first portion of the speech of the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Mac Iver), that it would be shown that his (Mr. Anderson's) hon. Friend the Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) had no case, for he set out by promising to demolish it entirely; but after hearing the remainder of the speech, and particularly the remarkable conclusion at which the hon. Member for Birkenhead had arrived, he thought that the arguments of the hon. Member for Derby were unassailable. What was it that the hon. Member for Birkenhead proposed to do for the people of Malta? Why, his proposal would be to send them from the frying-pan into the fire. The only thing he had to offer for their good was to deport them to Cyprus. Malta, he (Mr. Anderson) believed, was hot; but no one would venture to compare it to Cyprus. The hon. Member wished to induce the people of Malta to consent to be deported from an uncomfortable Island into a still more disagreeable place. He did not suppose the hon. Member's Maltese friends would be very grateful to him for that proposal. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Mac Iver) compared the proposal to impose a house tax on Malta to the Chancellor of the Exchequer adding 30 per cent to our own house tax; but the analogy was quite in another way, the present system at Malta was just as if the right hon. Gentleman had undertaken the paving and cleansing and lighting of the Metropolis, all of which were to be paid for out of the general taxation of the country. In Malta the Customs dues were used for those purposes; and, not only that, but in Valetta a University was kept up and an opera-house had also been erected, at great cost, by the same means, and it was not right that the lower classes of the Islands generally should have to provide for the maintenance of the buildings there. Malta, in fact, was made pleasant and gay, at the expense of the people, for the officials sent from England. It was complained that the poor people of Malta were taxed on food for the sake of keeping the upper classes free from taxation, and making the place in every way pleasant to them. In all the taxes which affected the poor people, they were made to pay much more heavily than the upper classes. The hon. Member for Birkenhead had questioned the figures of Mr. Rowsell, who said that, while the working class were taxed at the rate of 15s. 7d. per head, the officials and wealthier classes who had £500 or £1,000 a-year or more paid only 10s. 10d.; and he had asserted there were no figures in the Report to sustain that argument. But Mr. Rowsell had figures, and these showed that there were 27,000 of the official and wealthier classes in Malta, and 112,000 poor persons whose average wages were 1s. a-day. He showed how the amount was made up, and his figures were incontestable. [Mr. MAC IVER denied there was any calculation of the kind.] He would refer the hon. Gentleman to page 15, where the calculation was clearly set out. Mr. Rowsell showed that in the matter of bread duty alone the rich class contributed 5s. and the poor class 10s. per head. The hon. Member for Birkenhead also went on to show that a tax on house property would prove inoperative, and that it would not be possible to raise the required amount in that way. But Mr. Rowsell proved to the contrary. He proved that 6d. in the pound of rental would yield £8,000 a-year; but in this country 2s. 6d. was a low rate for local purposes, and that rate in Malta would yield £40,000 a-year. He (Mr. Anderson) felt that the House would accept the statements of Mr. Rowsell in preference to the opinions of the hon. Member for Birkenhead; for they showed, to the satisfaction of most hon. Members of that House, that Malta, after being for nearly a century in our possession, was about the worst-governed spot in Her Majesty's Dominions. We governed the Island not for the good of the people there, but entirely with a view to the fortress. He suggested that a civil Governor, to be paid by Malta, should be appointed, as well as the military Governor, whose salary, reduced from £5,000 to £3,000 a-year, ought to be paid by us. For the last 25 years the Government of Malta had been a dictatorship, for the military Governors had been very much under the influence of the permanent officials, and Sir Adrian Dingli was the real Dictator at Malta. Some of the Governors we sent out were very weak, and entirely in his hands. The late Governor, Sir C. Straubenzee, had been of this class, an amiable well meaning man, but as weak as water, as was proved by his conduct in the riots of last year, when he had been censured by the Colonial Secretary for allowing the mob to enter the corridors of the Palace. There was another difficulty in connection with Malta, and that was the state of the franchise. The hon. Member for Birkenhead had a Resolution on the Paper, recommending that there should be no outlay of public money, except with the consent of the majority of the elected Members of the Council—a rule that had been enforced for some time by Lord Cardwell, but had been abandoned of late years, with the result that the votes of the eight elected Members were usually swamped by those of the nine official Councillors. So flagrant was this system that in one case the casting vote of an official had made an addition to his own salary. That swamping of the elected Members' votes, however, would be a greater grievance, if the elected Members represented a larger constituency than the 2,000 persons who composed the electorate. At first sight the franchise seemed liberal enough, being based on the principle of a £4 occupancy; but it was too severely restricted by the absurd stipulation that no one should vote who did not understand English or Italian, both of which were foreign languages in Malta. In this country we sanctioned even the illiterate voter; but on the Maltese system we would not only abolish him, but require every voter to understand Welsh or Gaelic. That was a point on which reforms were urgently needed and might be very usefully introduced in Malta; as if that restriction were removed, the constituencies would be largely increased, and the Members of the Council would be more truly representative. The widening of the franchise, and the appointment of a civil Governor to attend to the civil business of the Island, were the two subjects with respect to which the Secretary of State for the Colonies would, he hoped, take immediate action. In conclusion, he would say that the lower classes, he thought, had been compelled to pay taxes which should have been put on the wealthier classes through property taxation; and he urged, in the strongest manner, that the Resolution should be adopted, and the taxes on food in Malta should cease from the 1st of January, 1881.

SIR GEORGE BOWYER

said, that the speech of the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Mac Iver) had been so comprehensive and had gone into so much useful detail that his own observations need not be long. He fully admitted the good intentions and benevolent objects of the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll), a well-known instance of which, in the case of our merchant seamen, would be familiar to the House. It had struck him, however, that the part played by the hon. Member in the present case was a little Quixotic. The circumstances of the hon. Member's Motion reminded him of the celebrated reply given by the Needy Knifegrinder in The Anti-Jacobin— Story, God bless you! I have none to tell, Sir, for, in fact, though they had heard how the Maltese were starved and ill-treated, that unhappy people had not told their own story or pleaded their own wrongs. Had the hon. Member come to the House with any Petition from them, and could he mention any public meeting that had been held in support of his views? He (Sir George Bowyer) had in his hand a pamphlet written by the hon. Member, and would ask the attention of the House to two extracts from it, which would show the exaggeration and absence of exact thought and argument that had characterized his statement. In one of those passages, he had attributed the insanitary condition of the place to the import duties on corn; in the other, he had hotly attacked the Government of the Island, of course, including in his denunciations the Secretary of State. In that second passage he had written that he had seen in London portraits of the great brigands of Palermo, and among them those of Leoni and his gang, with whom, he said, he had rather stand at the Judgment Day than with the men who had inflicted on Malta the terrible evils of which he complained. He (Sir George Bowyer) did not mean to assert that the condition of things was perfect in Malta; but he did say that, if modifications in the taxation were to be made, they ought to spring from the wishes of the people themselves, and not to be imposed on the people by the Free-traders of this country. The Maltese said they were used to the fiscal system they possessed, and that any substitutes that might be proposed for the existing taxes would be far more grievous than those in force at present. They thought their system was not one to be complained of, and they asked to be let alone. This was a very reasonable view for them to take, and he hoped the House would be disposed to accept it. Without Protection, the cultivation of cereals, which, from a military point of view, was of great importance, would probably cease altogether in the Island. He had had Maltese affairs passing through his hands for a number of years; and he believed the Government would do wisely in refusing to adopt any large scheme of alteration in the financial system of the Island, and confining themselves to the consideration of political details. He strongly deprecated the slighting manner in which the hon. Member for Derby and others had referred to the Maltese nobility. They were an ancient and honourable class, possessed of education and high attainments, and holding a distinguished position in the Island. The hon. Member for Birkenhead had pointed out what was the real defect in the mode of government in Malta—namely, the constitution of the Legislative Council. Hon. Gentlemen who wished to benefit the inhabitants would be taking a much more useful course if they applied themselves to the remedy of this political grievance. The opinions of the Representatives of the people ought to have the greatest possible weight; but their voice was stifled. The people of Malta were loyal—in fact, there were no more loyal subjects of the British Crown and they deserved great consideration. He maintained that Gibraltar, Malta, and Cyprus were most important to this country for military and political purposes, and it was important that we should cultivate the goodwill of the inhabitants of those places. If they were friendly to us, half the battle was gained. Although Malta was a small place, we were bound to hear its case. There was a military Governor. He was a most gallant officer, and deserved the greatest respect in a military and in every other point of view; but his chief work was the care of the garrison. A civil Governor would be employed in other ways. In Ireland we had a Lord Lieutenant and a Commander-in-chief. Why should there not be the same arrangement in Malta? The people of Malta paid £5,000 a-year out of their pockets for this Governor, who was chiefly employed as commander of the English troops. They said—"We do not think it is fair that we should have to pay the salary of a Commander-in-chief for Imperial purposes and not for the purposes of the Island." That point deserved consideration, with a view to its being remedied.

MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY

said, that it was possible to live in a place, and to come out of it, without any very accurate perception of the condition of its inner life. Now, although he had never been in the Island of Malta, he knew something of the state of things which existed there, and had no difficulty, basing his opinion even on the speeches of the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Mac Iver)—and he (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) was not sure that he would take the views of that hon. Member on any social or political question—and the hon. and learned Baronet the Member for Wexford (Sir George Bowyer), both of whom had lived at Malta, in coming to the conclusion that the system of taxation which prevailed in the Island was not entitled to the approval of the House. In his opinion, neither speech had touched the fringe of the question before the House. There was on the one side a great degree of penury and squalor; while upon the other there was a class who, though perhaps not rich in the sense in which people were said to be rich in this country, were well off; and yet the greater portion of the taxes of the Island were raised on the food on which the poor for the most part lived. Surely, that could not be an equitable state of things; and it was, under those circumstances, absurd, he thought, to speak of the people of Malta as being contented, with their squalor and underground cellars, in the way the hon. and learned Baronet the Member for Wexford had done, considering the abject condition in which they were placed; and he was glad his hon. Friend the Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) had paid the Island a visit and was able to tell the House—what the official Reports did not do—the real facts of the case. He should like, he might add, to see some system of real representation established in Malta, so that reforms might be instituted from within; but by whatever means the end was effected, the present unjust—he had almost said ridiculous—system of taxation, which operated so unjustly, ought to be abolished. In conclusion, he thought they owed a deep debt of gratitude to the hon. Member for Derby for bringing this subject under public attention.

SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH

said, he was in the unfortunate position of not being able to agree either with the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) or his hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Mac Iver). Though sympathizing with much in the speech of the hon. Member for Derby, he could not but think it somewhat exaggerated, and that the hon. Member made rather too much of the bread tax in attributing to it all that was wrong in the condition of the Island. The bread tax was not even the main source of taxation, for only one-half of the taxes raised came from that source. He acknowledged that was a large amount; but it was less than would he inferred from the speech of the hon. Member for Derby. The hon. Member represented the tax as a burden imposed by the richer classes in Malta upon the poorer. That was hardly correct, for the hon. Member was unable to bring forward any instance to show that the poorer classes were themselves opposed to the tax. And, surely, the mendicancy of the Island was to be attributed to the poorness of the soil and the scarcity of employment rather than to that cause. The hon. Member also thought that the insanitary condition of the Island was due to the tax; and he instanced houses he had himself seen in some of the worst quarters of the city. There was, he (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) would admit, a block of buildings, containing about 1,600 persons, which ought certainly to be swept away in any sanitary improvement which might be made; but that particular place was no more a fair sample of the whole of Malta, than a slice from the Seven Dials would be of the state of London. We had, in this country, for many years freedom from taxation on bread; but in spite of that we had found it necessary to pass Artizans' Dwellings Acts, and we had to meet no slight opposition to the taxation required for sanitary purposes. He understood that even in the town which the hon. Member represented, though there was no bread tax, there was a certain amount of disinclination, on the part of the Corporation, to adopt the provisions of the Artizans' Dwellings Act, though it was very necessary that it should be done. He quite admitted that this tax on food was objectionable for many reasons; and he had stated those reasons in the despatch he addressed last year to the Governor of Malta. He quite admitted, also, that the sanitary condition of the Island was capable of improvement, and he had done a good deal since he came into his present Office to promote that improvement. The drainage of what was called the "Three Cities" had been under consideration in Malta; and, finding that by the existing system, which was described as "a system of elongated cesspools," the sewage of a city with 50,000 persons was discharged into the harbour, and remembering that this country, on account of our Naval and Military Departments, was prepared to contribute liberally to the expenses, he felt himself justified in directing that the proposed scheme should be passed through the Council, in spite of the opposition of the elected Members. That step had occasioned much complaint on the part of the hon. and learned Baronet the Member for Wexford and others, who said that Malta had been taxed for the benefit of this country. But Malta would pay only four-sevenths of the cost of a work which was very much for her benefit. The passing of a measure similar in its provisions to our Public Health Acts, which might enable the Government to deal with the insanitary condition of some of the worst places in the Island, had been pressed for some years past upon the Council of Malta, but had been stopped by the opposition of the elected Members. There, again, the question arose whether it would not be in the interest of the Island that the opposition of the elected Members should no longer be allowed to prevent the necessary reforms? When he came into Office, he found that his Predecessor had directed an Inquiry into the system of taxation, and a Report had shortly before been received at the Colonial Office. The subject was new to him; but he had considered it as far as he could; and last summer he addressed a despatch to the Governor of Malta, proposing that one-half of the bread tax should be taken off. It appeared to him that was as far as it was possible to go, considering that there was a heavy burden on the Revenues of Malta for drainage and other matters, and it would be necessary to provide from other sources what was lost by taking off that portion of the tax. The question was necessarily postponed to the present year, and the matter was then brought forward by the Members of the Government in Council, and debated. He was now waiting for the Report of the debates in the Council; because, before proceeding any further, he wished to have before him the views, not only of the official, but of the elected Members of the Council, on this important subject. Some years ago, one of his Predecessors in the Colonial Office—Lord Cardwell—addressed a very well-known despatch to the Governor of Malta, wherein he stated his views as to the weight which should be attached to the opinions of the elected Members of the Council in these and similar questions. Lord Cardwell stated that great consideration should be shown to the opinions of the elected Members of the Council in matters of local interest, and that no vote of local taxation or expenditure should be passed against a majority of the elected Members, unless in very exceptional circumstances, when the public credit was immediately at stake, and never without an immediate Report to the Secretary of State. Having regard to that view, which had been expressed so solemnly by one of his Predecessors at the Colonial Office, he (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) had thought it was only fair and right that he should pay every consideration to the opinions of the elected Members of the Council on such a subject. He should have failed to pay that consideration if he had, without even hearing the opinions of the elected Members, pressed on the Council of Malta so great a change in their system of taxation as would be involved in the abolition of half this bread tax. As soon as he received those opinions, he should give them the consideration to which they would be entitled; and it would then be his duty to take such action in the matter as the circumstances seemed to him to demand. He trusted, however, that the House would not, that evening, fetter his action upon this question by adopting the Motion of the hon. Member for Derby. That Motion amounted to an expression of opinion that, whatever might be the views of the Maltese, who were the people concerned, at a certain date—namely, in the year 1881—the whole of this bread tax should be repealed, and the whole fiscal system of the Island changed; and that, with regard to certain items of expenditure—such as drainage, lighting, paving, and so on—they should be paid for by the imposition of a rate. But he was assured that the imposition of a rate would be, of all things, the most distasteful to the Maltese: and not merely to the wealthier classes, but to all the householders of Malta. Was that House not merely to alter the whole system of Maltese taxation, but to insist on the householders of Malta declaring a rate for certain purposes, whether they liked it or not? Moreover, would such a proceeding really carry out the views of the hon. Member for Derby? The most telling part of the hon. Member's speech was his account of the wretched habitations in which some of the poorer classes of Malta had to live. Did the hon. Member suppose that if the taxation were divided into two portions, as he would recommend, sanitary reform would become more popular in Malta, if it were to be effected by the levying of a rate, instead of being paid for by the present system of indirect taxation? He was afraid that the adoption of the hon. Member for Derby's proposal would defeat the hon. Gentleman's own object. There was force in the remark of the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy), that reform should come from within rather than from without. Surely, even the hon. Member for Derby would wish that there should be a proof given of the desire of the people, or some portion of it, for a change before it was made. At present, the mass of the people were not represented by the small electorate of Malta; and he thought it a matter which was deserving of consideration whether, in this and similar questions affecting the Island, the first and wisest step would not be to increase in some way the electorate? For these reasons, he would ask the House not to pass the Motion of the hon. Member for Derby; but to leave the matter in his hands, and allow him to try to deal with it on the principles which he had indicated.

MR. PLIMSOLL

rose to reply, but—

MR. SPEAKER

informed him that he was not entitled, by the Rules of the House, to make a second speech.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 120; Noes 62: Majority 58.—(Div. List, No. 201.)

Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," put, and agreed to.